The Revolt of Aphrodite (14 page)

On the first floor there was a sort of large drill hall full of smoke and the noise of feet and chairs scraping; there was also a good deal of laughter and clapping, as if at some performance or other. Banubula stopped outside a dirty door sealed by a bead curtain. “I’m not going in,” he hissed “but we’ll just see. I think he’s acting the fool for them now.” And with sinking feelings I heard the flat nasal whine of Sipple, punctuated by the roars of laughter of the merry tars. “Yes, you may laugh, my sirs, you may laugh—but you are laughing at tragedy. Once I was like you all, I wore me busby at an angle. Then came that fatal day when I found myself abrogated. I found myself all
slanting-dicular
to the world. Up till then my timbrel was normal, my pressure quite serene. I lived with Mrs. Sipple in a bijou suburban house with bakelite elves on the front lawn. Not far from Cockfosters it was. (Cheers!) Every day I rose, purified by sleep, to bathe and curl my hair, and put on a clean artichoke. I travelled to Olympia in a Green Line bus like the public hangman with my clothes in a bag. It wasn’t exacting, to act the clown—a pore fart-buffeted blorque. But when me whiffler abrogated I lost all my confidence. (Clapping.) Ah you may laugh, but when your whiffler becomes a soft lampoon what’s to be done? I found my reason foundering, gentlemen. I started drinking tiger-drench. I had become alembicated. I had begun to exflunctify. Then when I went to see the doctor all he said was: ‘Sipple you are weak in Marmite.’”

All this must have been accompanied by some fitting stage
business
of an obscene kind for it was greeted with roars of laughter. From where we stood we could not see Sipple; the balcony overhung him. He was immediately beneath us; all we could see was, so to speak, his reflection in the semicircle of barbarous faces, expressing a huge coarse gratification. Banubula consulted his watch. “Four more minutes” he said. “And then he’s off. Phew, what a relief!” He
stretched in the gloom and yawned. “Now let’s go and have a drink, what?” We went downstairs again and crossed the courtyard; as we reached the lighted café a large black car drew up in the street outside and two men climbed out, yawning, and made their way directly past us, looking neither to right nor left. Banubula watched them pass with a smile. “That’s the committee” he whispered. “Now we are free.” And in a heavy jolting way he started to hurry along the street towards the corner of the square where the taxis were, coiling and uncoiling long legs.

“I can’t tell you the relief” he said sinking back at last on the back seat cushions and mopping his brow. Indeed his face had become almost juvenile and unlined. “Now you can come and watch me pack, and I will share my whisky with you.” I was puzzled by my own equanimity, by the ease with which I seemed to be accepting this succession of puzzling (even a little disquieting) events. “I’ve stopped asking questions” I said aloud to myself. Banubula
overheard
me and gave a soft chuckle. “Just as well to save your breath” he said.

I sat on the bed and watched this infernally clumsy bear-like man trying to fold a pair of trousers and squeeze them into his suitcase. He was a trifle tipsy again, and his little performance would have almost done credit to the clown Sipple. “Here,” I said “let me help you.” And gratefully Banubula slumped into a chair and mopped his white brow. “I don’t know what it is about clothes” he said. “They have always eluded me. They seem to have a life of their own, and it doesn’t touch my life at any point. Nevertheless I wear them very gracefully, and pride myself on being quite smartly turned out. These shoes come from Firpo in Bond Street.” He stared at them complacently.

I had shaken a batch of notepaper out of his coat pocket; it fell on the floor. “O dear O dear,” said the Count “how forgetful I am.” He took the papers, set them alight in the ashtray and sat watching the flame like a child, poking at it with a matchstick until the paper was consumed and the ash broken up. Then he sighed and said: “
Tomorrow
I shall return to Athens and my dear. To resume my old life again.”

“And Sipple?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. “What
will become of him?” Banubula played with his lucky charm and reflected. “Nothing very special” he said, “No need for dramatic imaginings. Hippolyta says she was told that he was an expert on precious stones; that would give him a connection with Merlin all right. Then someone else said he was retained by the Government to supply political intelligence. There again … much can be learned in the brothels of Athens. Politicians build up dossiers about each other’s weaknesses and there is hardly one who hasn’t some pretty little perversion up his sleeve which could lay him open to political pressure, or even blackmail. Graphos makes them dress up and whips them mildly, so they say; others have more elaborate needs. Pangarides insists on the ‘chariot’….”

“What is the chariot?”

“It’s really a Turkish invention I suppose. A sort of
en
brochette
effect. I’ve never tried. It’s having a small boy while the small boy himself is having a girl. With clever timing it is supposed to…. But heavens, why am I telling you all this? I am usually so discreet.”

He sighed heavily. I could see that he was possessed by a heavy sense of regret that he should soon be called upon to resume the trappings of respectability in Athens. “Why don’t you stay here, and live in a bagnio?” I asked and he sighed. Then his expression changed: “And the Countess, my wife? How could I?” Affection for her flooded into him; tears came to his eyes. “She is devoted to me” he said under his breath. “And I have nobody else in the world.” His tone touched me.

“Well. Goodnight, then” I said, and he shook my hand warmly.

Next morning I slept late, and when at last I came downstairs I found that the Count had left for Galata; he had favoured me with a last communication in the form of a visiting card with a crown below the name Count Horatio Banubula and a few words pencilled on it. “Above all be discreet” he had written. But what the devil had I to reveal—and to whom?

Sacrapant was not due to appear before dusk so I lazed away the heat of the day in the garden under the shining limes watching the shifting hazes of the skyline condense and recondense as the sun reached its meridian. As it overpassed and began to decline the army of domes and steeples began to clarify once more, to set like jelly.
Light sea airs from the Bosphorus were invading the Horn now, driving the damp atmosphere upwards into the town. It must have been some sort of festival day, too, for the sky was alive with
long-tailed
kaleidoscopic box-kites—and by the time we reached the water under the Galata Bridge to pick up the steam pinnace which had been sent for me, I could look back and upwards at a skyline prepared as if for some mad children’s carnival. In such light, and at such a time of day, the darkness hides the squalor and ugliness of the capital, leaving exposed only the pencilled shapes of its domes and walls against the approaching night; and moreover if one embarks on water at such an hour one instantly experiences a lift of the senses. The sea-damp vanishes. God, how beautiful it is. Light winds pucker the gold-green waters of Bosphorus; the gorgeous melancholy of the Seraglio glows like a rotting fish among its arbours and severe groves. Edging away from the land and turning in a slow half-arc towards Bosphorus I allowed Mr. Sacrapant to point out for me features like the seamark known as Leander’s tower, and a skilfully sited
belvedere
in a palace wall whence one of the late Sultans enjoyed picking off his subjects with a crossbow as they entered his field of vision. Such were the amenities of palace life in far-off times. But now our wake had thickened and spread like butter under a knife, and
Sacrapant
had to hold on to his panama hat as we sped along, curving under the great placid foreheads and wide eyes of two American liners which were idling up the sound. It grew mildly choppy too as we rounded the cliff heads and turned into the Bosphorus. The light was fading, and one of the typical sunsets of Stamboul was in full
conflagration
; the city looked as if it were burning up the night, using the approaching darkness as fuel. Sacrapant waved his arm at it and gave a small incoherent cry of pleasure—as if he had momentarily forgotten the text of the caption which should go with such a picture. But we were near in to the nether shore now and travelling fast; stone quays and villages of painted wooden houses rolled up in
scroll-fashion
and slipped away behind us. Here, rising out of a dense greenery, one caught glimpses of walled gardens, profiles of kiosks smothered in amazed passion flowers, marble balconies, gardens starred with white lilies. Then higher up again small meadows shaded by giant plane-trees, leading to softly contoured hilltops
marked with umbrella pine or the slim pin of a cypress, eye-alerting as a cedilla in some forgotten tongue. Thickets of small shipping passed us, plodding industriously into the eye of the sunset, heading for Galata. Somewhere hereabouts, in one of the small sandy coves with high cliffs, would be the wooden landing stage which marked the entry to that kingdom Merlin had called “Avalon”. Sacrapant explained that it was a ruin when Merlin bought it—part Byzantine fortress and part ruined Seraglio which had belonged to a rich
Ottoman
family that had fallen into disgrace. “The sultan expunged them all” said Sacrapant with a kind of sad relish. “It was named thus by Mr. Merlin himself.” He made a motion with his slender hand.

It was still light when we came into the landing stage where the small group of servants awaited us, two of them with lanterns already lighted against the approaching night. They were supervised by a fat bald-headed capon of a man whom I had no hesitation in
identifying
as a eunuch. It was partly because of the unhealthy
lard-coloured
pallor of his skin: partly because of the querulous spinster’s voice which inhabited the fat body. He bowed in deeply submissive manner. Mr. Sacrapant waved him away with my suitcase as together we walked up a steep path into the garden of a small villa, with charming vine-trellises on three sides, and a fine balcony
overlooking
the sound. This was apparently where I was to stay, and here I found my case already lying on the bed open; two servants under the supervision of the bald majordomo were hanging up my clothes. Sacrapant had a good look round and satisfied himself that all was well with me before taking his leave. “I am going back with the boat” he said. “Now in half an hour a man with a lantern will come to lead you to the villa where Mr. Jocas will be waiting for you—both of them in fact.”

“Both brothers?”

“No. Miss Benedicta arrived last night. She is staying for a few days here in the other villa. You will meet her also.”

“I see. How long do I stay?”

Mr. Sacrapant looked startled. “As long as … I don’t know sir … as is necessary to conclude your business with Mr. Jocas. As soon as you see him all will become clear.”

“Have you ever heard the name Sipple?” I asked.

Sacrapant thought gravely and then shook his head. “Never to my knowledge” he said at last.

“I thought perhaps as you knew Count Banubula you might also know Sipple, an aquaintance of his.”

Sacrapant looked desolated, and then his face cleared. “Unless you mean Archdeacon Sipple. Of course! The Anglican clergyman.”

It did not seem a fruitful line of enquiry to pursue, and I let it slide out of the picture. I strolled back with him towards the landing stage, along the winding paths which smelt of some powerful scent—was it verbena? “One more thing” I said, in spite of myself. “Who was the young woman watching us as the launch pulled in? Up there among the trees. She turned back and slipped into that little copse there.”

“I saw no one” said Sacrapant. “But that is where Miss Benedicta’s villa is; but you know, Mr. Charlock, it might have been anyone from the harem. There are still quite a lot of old aunts and governesses living there. Mr. Merlin was very generous to both relations and servants. Why, it could have been her English or French teacher—both live there still.”

“She was youngish, handsome, dark.”

“Well it was not Miss Benedicta, then.”

He said goodbye with a shade of effusive reluctance; I felt that he would very much have liked to accept an invitation himself to the Pehlevi table. But it was not to be; he sighed twice, heavily, and once more took his place in the pinnace. The crew was Turkish, but the captain was Greek, for he spoke to Sacrapant in his mother tongue, saying something about the wind freshening. My friend answered impatiently, placing his hat safely beside him. He gave me a small genteel wave as the distance lengthened between us.

I stood for a moment or two watching the light dying out along the mauve hills and combs of the Asiatic shore. Then I walked back to the little villa. Someone had already lighted the petrol lamps and their white fizzing flame carved black shadows out of the rooms around them. I shaved my jumping reflection in the bathroom mirror and put on the only summer suit I had brought with me. I was sitting, at peace with the world, on the side terrace when I saw a lantern coming slowly down through the trees towards me. It was
held by the fat majordomo who had been present at the landing stage. He bowed, and without further words spoken I followed him slowly upwards through the gardens and copses towards where in some room (which I could not readily imagine) my host Jocas Pehlevi awaited to offer me dinner.

(If it gives me vague pleasure to recount all this, dactyl dear, it’s because it seems about 100 years ago.)

It was eerie as well as rather beautiful to pass in this fashion up the hill, guided only by the single cone of light which threw up
silhouettes
of buildings without substance or detail. Owls cried among the bushes, and in the heavy night air, the perfumes hung on, insisted. We crossed a ruined quadrangle of some sort, followed by a series of warrens which suggested kennels; ducked through an arch and walked along the side of a ruined turret on a broad flagged
staircase
. Now lights began and the bulk of the main house came into view. It suggested to me a huge Turkish khan built as such
caravanserais
were, around a central courtyard with a central fountain; I heard, or seemed to hear, the champing of mules or camels and the whine of mastiffs. Up through a central massive door and along a corridor lighted with rather splendid frail gas-mantles. Jocas was sitting at a long oak table, half turned sideways towards the door which admitted me, staring into my eyes.