The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

But the dark figure gave a bray of laughter.

‘Master and servant’ he cried contemptuously. ‘Yes, Nessim. We shall see. And now—’ He leaned over the rail and in the darkness Nessim heard the great whip slither along the dry boards like a cobra and then lick the still twilight air of the courtyard. There was a crack and a snap like a giant mousetrap closing, and the bundle of papers in his arm was flicked out peremptorily and scattered over the cobbles. Narouz laughed again, on a more hysterical note. Nessim felt the heat of the whipstroke on his hand though the lash had not touched him.

‘Now go’ cried Narouz, and once more the whip hissed in the air to explode menacingly behind the buttocks of his horse. Nessim rose in his stirrups and shaking his fist once more at his brother, cried ‘We shall see!’

But his voice sounded thin, choked by the imprecations which filled his mind. He drove his heels in the horse’s flanks and twisted suddenly about to gallop abruptly out of the courtyard throwing up sparks from the stone threshold, bending low in the saddle. He rode back to the ford now, where the car awaited, like a madman his face distorted with rage; but as he rode his pulse slowed and his anger emptied itself into the loathsome disgust which flooded up into his mind in slow coils, like some venomous snake. Unexpected waves of remorse, too, began to invade him, for something had now been irreparably damaged, irreparably broken, in the iron ceinture of the family relation. Dispossessed of the authority vested in the elder son by the feudal pattern of life, he felt all at once a prodigal, almost an orphan. In the heart of his rage there was also guilt; he felt unclean, as if he had debauched himself in this unexpected battle with one of his own kin. He drove slowly back to the city, feeling the luxurious tears of a new exhaustion, a new self-pity, rolling down his cheeks.

How strange it was that he had somehow, inexplicably, foreseen this irreparable break with his brother — from the first discreet phrases of Serapamoun he had divined it and feared it. It raised once more the spectre of duties and responsibilities to causes which he himself had initiated and must now serve. Ideally, then, he should be prepared in such a crisis to disown Narouz, to depose Narouz, even if necessary to … him! (He slammed on the brakes of the car, brought it to a standstill, and sat muttering. He had censored the thought in his mind, for the hundredth time. But the nature of the undertaking should be clear enough to anyone in a similar situation. He had never understood Narouz, he thought wistfully. But then, you do not have to understand someone in order to love them. His hold had not really been deep, founded in understanding: it had been conferred by the family conventions to which both belonged. And now the tie had suddenly snapped.) He struck the wheel of the car with aching palms and cried ‘I shall never harm him.’

He threw in the clutch, repeating ‘Never’ over and over again in his mind. Yet he knew this decision to be another weakness, for in it his love traduced his own ideal of duty. But here his alter ego came to his rescue with soothing formulations such as: ‘It is really not so serious. We shall, of course, have to disband the movement temporarily. Later I shall ask Serapamoun to start something similar. We can isolate and expel this … fanatic’ He had never fully realized before how much he loved this hated brother whose mind had now become distended by dreams whose religious poetry conferred upon their Egypt a new, an ideal future. ‘We must seek to embody the frame of the eternal in nature here upon earth, in our hearts, in this very Egypt of ours.’ That is what Narouz had said, among so many other things which filled the fragmentary transcription which Serapamoun had ordered to be made. ‘We must wrestle here on earth against the secular injustice, and in our hearts against the injustice of a divinity which respects only man’s struggle to possess his own soul.’ Were these simply the ravings of Taor, or were they part of a shared dream of which the ignorant fanatic had spoken? Other phrases, barbed with the magnificence of poetry, came into his mind. ‘To rule is to be ruled; but ruler and ruled must have a divine consciousness of their role, of their inheritance in the Divine. The mud of Egypt rises to choke our lungs, the lungs with which we cry to living God.’

He had a sudden picture of that contorted face, the little gasping voice in which Narouz had, that first day of his possession, invoked the divine spirit to visit him with a declared truth. ‘Meded! Meded! ’ He shuddered. And then it slowly came upon him that in a paradoxical sort of way Narouz was right in his desire to inflame the sleeping will — for he saw the world, not so much as a political chessboard but as a pulse beating within a greater will which only the poetry of the psalms could invoke and body forth. To awaken not merely the impulses of the forebrain with its limited formulations, but the sleeping beauty underneath — the poetic consciousness which lay, coiled like a spring, in the heart of everyone. This thought frightened him not a little; for he suddenly saw that his brother might be a religious leader, but for the prevailing circumstances of time and place — these, at least, Nessim could judge. He was a prodigy of nature but his powers were to be deployed in a barren field which could never nourish them, which indeed would stifle them forever.

He reached the house, abandoned the car at the gate, and raced up the staircase, taking the steps three at a time. He had been suddenly assailed by one of the customary attacks of diarrhoea and vomiting which had become all too frequent in recent weeks. He brushed past Justine who lay wide-eyed upon the bed with the reading-lamp on and the piano-score of a concerto spread upon her breast. She did not stir, but smoked thoughtfully, saying only, under her breath, ‘You are back so soon.’ Nessim rushed into the bathroom, turning on the taps of the washbasin and the shower at the same time to drown his retching. Then he stripped his clothes off with disgust, like dirty bandages, and climbed under the hail of boiling water to wash away all the indignities which flooded his thoughts. He knew she would be listening thoughtfully, smoking thoughtfully, her motions as regular as a pendulum, waiting for him to speak, lying at length under the shelf of books with the mask smiling down ironically at her from the wall. Then the water was turned off and she heard him scrubbing himself vigorously with a towel.

‘Nessim’ she called softly.

‘It was a failure’ he cried at once. ‘He is quite mad, Justine, I could get nothing out of him. It was ghastly.’

Justine continued to smoke on silently, with her eyes fixed upon the curtains. The room was full of the scent of the pastels burning in the great rose-bowl by the telephone. She placed her score beside the bed. ‘Nessim’ she said in the hoarse voice which he had come to love so much.

‘Yes.’

‘I am thinking.’

He came out at once, his hair wet and straggly, his feet bare, wearing the yellow silk dressing-gown, his hands thrust deep into the pockets, a lighted cigarette smouldering in the corner of his mouth. He walked slowly up and down at the foot of her bed. He said with an air of considered precision: ‘All this unease comes from my fear that we may have to do him harm. But, even if we are endangered by him, we must never harm him, never. I have told myself that. I have thought the whole thing out. It will seem a failure of duty, but we must be clear about it. Only then can I become calm again. Are you with me?’

He looked at her once more with longing, with the eyes of his imagination. She lay there, as if afloat upon the dark damascened bed-spread, her feet and hands crossed in the manner of an effigy, her dark eyes upon him. A lock of dark hair curled upon her forehead. She lay in the silence of a room which had housed (if walls have ears) their most secret deliberations, under a Tibetan mask with lighted eyeballs. Behind her gleamed the shelves of books which she had gathered though not all of which she had read. (She used their texts as omens for the future, riffling the pages to place her finger at hazard upon a quotation — ‘bibliomancy’ the art is called.) Schopenhauer, Hume, Spengler, and oddly enough some novels, including three of Pursewarden’s. Their polished bindings reflected the light of the candles. She cleared her throat, extinguished her cigarette, and said in a calm voice: ‘I can be resigned to whatever you say. At the moment, this weakness of yours is a danger to both of us. And besides, your health is troubling us all, Balthazar not least. Even unobservant people like Darley are beginning to notice. That is not good.’ Her voice was cold and toneless.

‘Justine’ his admiration overflowed. He came and sat down beside her on the bed, putting his arms around her to embrace her fiercely. His eyes glittered with a new elation, a new gratitude. ‘I am so weak’ he said.

He extended himself beside her, put his arms behind his head, and lay silent, thinking. For a long time now they lay thus, silently side by side. At last she said:

‘Darley came to dinner tonight and left just before you arrived. I heard from him that the Embassies will all be packing up next week to return to Cairo. Mountolive won’t get back to Alexandria much before Christmas. This is also our chance to take a rest and recuperate our forces. I’ve told Selim that we are going out to Abousir next week for a whole month. You must rest now, Nessim. We can swim and ride in the desert and think about nothing, do you hear? After a while I shall invite Darley to come and stay with us for a while so that you have someone to talk to apart from me. I know you like him and find him a pleasant companion. It will do us both good. From time to time I can come in here for a night and see what is happening … what do you say?’

Nessim groaned softly and turned his head. ‘Why?’ she whispered softly, her lips turned away from him. ‘Why