The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

CONTENTS

Title Page

Introduction

Preface

JUSTINE: a novel

Note

Epigraph

Dedication

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Workpoints

Notes in the Text

BALTHAZAR: a novel

Dedication

Epigraph

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Consequential Data

Scobie’s Common Usage

Workpoints

Note in the Text

MOUNTOLIVE: a novel

Dedication

Note

Epigraph

CLEA: a novel

Dedication

Epigraph

Workpoints

Some Notes for Clea (by  Pursewarden)

Notes in the Text

About the Author

Copyright

JUSTINE

NOTE

The characters in this story, the first of a group, are all inventions together with the personality of the narrator, and bear no resemblance to living persons. Only the city is real.

I amaccustoming myself to the ideaof regarding every sexual act as a process in which four persons are involved. We shall have a lot to discuss about that.

S. FREUD: Letters

There are two positions available to us – either crime which renders us happy, or the noose, which prevents us from being unhappy. I ask whether there can be any hesitation, lovely Therese, and where will your little mind find an argument able to combat that one?

D. A. F. DE SADE: Justine

To

EVE

these memorials of her native city

PART I

The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes….

I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child — Melissa’s child. I do not know why I use the word ‘escape’. The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would choose such a remote place to rebuild. Well, then, I have come here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way….

At night when the wind roars and the child sleeps quietly in its wooden cot by the echoing chimney-piece I light a lamp and walk about, thinking of my friends — of Justine and Nessim, of Melissa and Balthazar. I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we inhabited so briefly together: the city which used us as its flora — precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: beloved Alexandria!