The Magus, A Revised Version (72 page)

He gave a little shrug.
‘
I dabbled in it.
’

‘
That glimpse
I
had of your papers suggested more than dabbling.
’

‘
They were not by me. The title pages were not genuine.
’

I had to smile at him then: the curtly dismissive way in which he made such statements had become an almost sure sign that they were not to be believed. Of course he did not smile back, but he evidently felt that I needed reminding of his more serious self.

‘
There is some truth in what I have told you. To that extent your question is fair. There was an event in my life analogous to the story I invented.
’
He paused, then decided to go on.
‘
There had always been a conflict in me between mystery and meaning. I had pursued the latter, worshipped the latter as a doctor. As a socialist and rationalist. But then I saw that the attempt to scientize reality, to name it and categorize it and vivisect it out of existence, was like trying to remove the air from the atmosphere. In the creating of the vacuum it was the experimenter who died, because he was inside the vacuum.
’

‘
Was your coming into wealth something like the de Deukans story?
’

‘
No.
’
He added,
‘
I was born rich. And not in England.
’

‘
Then the First World War

‘
Pure invention.
’

I took a breath; for once he was avoiding my eyes.

‘
You must have been born somewhere.
’

‘
I have long ceased to care what I am, in those terms.
’

‘
And you must have lived in England.
’

He glanced up; searching, unsmiling, yet somewhere beneath there was a hint of irony.
‘
Does your appetite for invention never end?
’

‘
At least I know you have a house in Greece.
’

He looked beyond me, and past the sarcasm, into the night.
‘
I have always craved for territory. In the technical ornithological sense. A fixed domaine on which no others of my species may trespass without my permission.
’

‘
Yet you live very little here.
’

He hesitated, as if he began to find this interrogation tedious.
‘
Life is more complicated for human beings than for birds. And human territory is defined least of all by physical frontiers.
’

Maria brought a dish of stewed kid and removed our soup-plates, and there was a little silence. But unexpectedly, when she left, he looked at me. He had something more to say.

‘
Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically. For those many years I lived a selfish life. I
off
ered myself every pleasure. I travelled a great deal. I lost some money in the theatre, but I made much more on the stock market. I gained a great many friends, some of whom are now quite famous. But I was never very happy. However, in the end I did discover what some rich people never discover
–
that we all have a certain capacity for happiness and unhappiness. And that the economic hazards of life do not seriously affect it.
’

‘
When did you start your theatre here?
’

‘
Friends used to come. They were bored. Very often they bored me. An amusing person in London or Paris can become insufferable on an Aegean island. We had a little fixed theatre, a stage. Where the Priapus is now.
Et voil
à
.
’

‘
Have you kept in touch with any of my predecessors?
’

He was serving himself a little of the stew.
‘
Before the war it was not like this. We acted other men
’
s plays. Or versions of them. Not our own.
’

‘
Barba Dimitraki talked about a firework display. He saw it from the sea.
’

He gave a little nod.
‘
Then without knowing it he saw an important night in my life.
’

‘
He couldn
’
t remember when it was.
’

‘
1938.
’
He kept me waiting a moment.
‘
I set a match to my theatre. The building. The fireworks were in celebration.
’

I remembered that story about burning every novel he owned; and was going to remind him, but suddenly he gestured with his knife.

‘
No more. Let us eat.
’

He ate very little of the excellent stew and long before I had cleared my own plate he was on his feet.

‘
Finish your dinner. I will return.
’

He disappeared indoors. Soon after that I heard low voices, Greek voices, upstairs; then silence. Maria brought dessert, then c
off
ee, and I waited, smoking. I still hoped against hope that Julie and her sister would arrive; I badly needed their warmth, normality, Englishness, again. All through the meal, his talking, there had been something sombre and withdrawn about him, as if more than one comedy was over; so many pretences were being dropped
–
and yet the one that concerned me showed no sign at all of being jettisoned. I had believed him when he said he did not like me. I somehow knew now that he would not keep the girls away from me by force; but a man with such formidable powers of lying … I nursed a tiny terror that he knew I had met Alison in Athens, had somehow got proof for them that I too was a liar, and of a much more banal kind.

He reappeared in the open doors of the music-room, a thin cardboard folder in his hand.

‘
I should like us to sit there.
’
He pointed towards the drinks table, now cleared by Maria, by the central arch of the front of the colonnade.
‘
If you would bring two chairs. And the lamp.
’

I carried the chairs over. As
I
brought the lamp, somebody came round the corner of the colonnade. My heart leapt a fraction of a moment, because I thought it was
finally Julie, that we had been
waiting for her. But it was the Negro, dressed in black. He carried a long cylinder; went over the gravel in front of us and then, a few yards out, set the cylinder on its tripod end. I realized what it was
–
a small cinema-screen. There was a harsh ratcheting noise as he unfurled the white square and hooked it up, adjusted its angle. Someone called quietly from above.

‘
Entaxi.
’
All right. A Greek voice I didn
’
t recognize.

The Negro went silently back the way he had come, without looking at us. Conchis turned down the lamp to its lowest glimmer, then made me sit beside him, facing the screen. There was a long pause.

‘
What I am now about to tell you may help you understand why I am bringing your visits here to an end tomorrow. And for once it is a true story.
’
I said nothing, though he left a little pause as if he expected me to object.
‘
I
should like you also to reflect that its events could have taken place only in a world where man considers himself superior to woman. In what the Americans call
“
a man
’
s world
”
. That is, a world governed by brute force, humourless arrogance, illusory prestige and primeval stupidity.
’
He stared at the screen.
‘
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationship between objects. Whether the objects need each other, love each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women
–
and absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellow-men. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death.
’

He paused. His mask-face looked as concentrated, as inward, as I could remember having seen it. Then he said,
‘
I will begin.
’

E
ëåõèåñéá

‘
When the Italians invaded Greece in 1940, I had already decided that I would not run away. I cannot tell you why. Perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was guilt, perhaps it was indifference. And here, on a remote corner of a remote island, it did not require great courage. The Germans took over from the Italians on April 6th, 1941. By April 27th they were in Athens. In June they started the invasion of Crete and for a time we were in the thick of the war. Transport aeroplanes passed over all day long, German landing-craft filled the harbours. But after that peace soon alighted back on the island. It had no strategic value, either to the Axis or to the Resistance. The garrison here was very small. Forty Austrians
–
the Nazis gave the Austrians and the Italians all the easy Occupation posts
–
commanded by a lieutenant who had been wounded during the invasion of France.

‘
Already, during the invasion of Crete, I had been ordered out of Bourani. A permanent lookout section was posted here, and the maintenance of this observation point was the real reason we had a garrison at all. Fortunately
I
had the house in the village. The Germans were not unpleasant. They carried all my portable possessions over there for me; and even paid me a small billeting rent for Bourani. Then just when things were settling down, it happened that the
proedros,
the mayor of the village that year, had a fatal thrombosis. Two days later I was summoned to meet the newly arrived commandant of the island. He and his men were installed in your school, which had been closed since Christmas.

‘
I was expecting to meet some promoted quartermaster type of
off
icer. Instead I found myself with a very handsome young man of twenty-seven or eight, who said, in excellent French, that he understood I could speak the language fluently. He was extremely polite, more than a little apologetic, and inasmuch as one can in such circumstances we took to each other. He soon came to the point. He wanted me to be the new mayor of th
e village. I refused at once; I
wanted no involvement in the war. He then sent out for two or three of the leading villagers. When they came he left me alone with them, and I discovered that it was they who had proposed my name. Of course the fact was that none of them wanted the job, the odium of collaboration, and I was the ideal
bouc
é
missaire.
They put the matter to me in highly moral and complimentary terms, and I still refused. Then they were frank
–
promised their tacit support … in short, in the end I said, very well, I will do it.

‘
My new but dubious glory meant that I came into frequent contact with Lieutenant Kluber. Five or six weeks after our first meeting he said one evening that he would like me to call him Anton when we were alone. That will tell you that we often were alone; and that we had confirmed our liking of each other. Our first link was through music. He had a fine tenor voice. Like many really gifted amateurs, he sang Schubert and Wolf better
–
in some way more feelingly
–
than any but the very greatest professional
lieder
singers. That is, to my ear. On his very first visit to my house he saw my harpsichord. And rather maliciously I played him the Goldberg Variations. If one wishes to reduce a sensitive German to tears there is no surer lachrymatory. I must not suggest that Anton was a hard subject to conquer. He was more than disposed to be ashamed of his role and to find a convenient anti-Nazi figure to worship. The next time I visited the school he begged me to accompany him at the school piano, which he had had moved to his quarters. Then it was my turn to be sentimentally impressed. Not to tears, of course. But he sang very well. And I have always had a softness for Schubert.