Alexandria, maintaining its tenuous grasp on one’s affections through memories which are already refunding themselves slowly into forgetfulness; memory of friends, of incidents long past. The slow unreality of time begins to grip them, blurring the outlines — so that sometimes I wonder whether these pages record the actions of real human beings; or whether this is not simply the story of a few inanimate objects which precipitated drama around them — I mean a black patch, a watch-key and a couple of dispossessed wedding-rings….
Soon it will be evening and the clear night sky will be dusted thickly with summer stars. I shall be here, as always, smoking by the water. I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter unanswered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything* depend on our interpretation of the silence around us? So that….
WORKPOINTS
Landscape-tones: steep skylines, low cloud, pearl ground with shadows in oyster and violet. Accidie. On the lake gunmetal and lemon. Summer: sand lilac sky. Autumn: swollen bruise greys. Winter: freezing white sand, clear skies, magnificent starscapes.
* * *
CHARACTER-SQUEEZES
Sveva Magnani: pertness, malcontent.
Gaston Pombal: honey-bear, fleshly opiates.
Teresa di Petromonti: farded Berenice.
Ptolomeo Dandolo: astronomer, astrologer, Zen.
Fuad El Said: black moon-pearl.
Josh Scobie: piracy.
Justine Hosnani: arrow in darkness.
Clea Montis: still waters of pain.
Gaston Phipps: nose like a sock, black hat.
Ahmed Zananiri: pole-star criminal.
Nessim Hosnani: smooth gloves, face frosted glass.
Melissa Artemis: patron of sorrow.
S. Balthazar: fables, work, unknowing.
* * *
Pombal asleep in full evening dress. Beside him on the bed a chamberpot full of banknotes he had won at the Casino.
* * *
Da Capo: ‘To bake in sensuality like an apple in its jacket.’
* * *
Spoken impromptu by Gaston Phipps:
‘The lover like a cat with fish
Longs to be off and will not share his dish.’
* * *
Accident or attempted murder? Justine racing along the desert road to Cairo in the Rolls when suddenly the lights give out. Sightless, the great car swarms off the road and whistling like an arrow buries itself in a sand-dune. It looked as if the wires had been filed down to a thread. Nessim reached her within half an hour. They embrace in tears.
* * *
Balthazar on Justine: ‘You will find that her formidable manner is constructed on a shaky edifice of childish timidities.’
* * *
Clea always has a horoscope cast before any decision reached.
* * *
Clea’s account of the horrible party; driving with Justine they had seen a brown cardboard box by the road. They were late so they put it in the back and did not open it until they reached the garage. Inside was dead baby wrapped in newspaper. What to do with this wizened homunculus? Perfectly formed organs. Guests were due to arrive, they had to rush. Justine slipped it into drawer of the hall desk. Party a great success.
* * *
Pursewarden on the ‘n-dimensional novel’ trilogy: ‘The narrative momentum forward is counter-sprung by references backwards in time, giving the impression of a book which is not travelling from a to b but standing above time and turning slowly on its own axis to comprehend the whole pattern. Things do not all lead forward to other things: some lead backwards to things which have passed. A marriage of past and present with the flying multiplicity of the future racing towards one. Anyway, that was my idea.’ …
* * *
‘Then how long will it last, this love?’ (in jest).
‘I don’t know.’
‘Three weeks, three years, three decades…?’
‘You are like all the others … trying to shorten eternity with numbers,’ spoken quietly, but with intense feeling.
* * *
Conundrum: a peacock’s eye. Kisses so amateurish they resembled an early form of printing.
* * *
Of poems: ‘I like the soft thudding of Alexandrines’ (Nessim).
* * *
Clea and her old father whom she worships. White haired, erect, with a sort of haunted pity in his eyes for the young unmarried goddess he has fathered. Once a year on New Year’s Eve they dance at the Cecil, stately, urbanely. He waltzes like a clockwork man.
* * *
Pombal’s love for Sveva: based on one gay message which took his fancy. When he awoke she’d gone, but she had neatly tied his dress tie to his John Thomas, a perfect bow. This message so captivated him that he at once dressed and went round to propose marriage to her because of her sense of humour.
* * *
Pombal was at his most touching with his little car which he loved devotedly. I remember him washing it by moonlight very patiently.
* * *
Justine: ‘Always astonished by the force of my own emotions — tearing the heart out of a book with my fingers like a fresh loaf.’
* * *
Places: street with arcade: awnings: silverware and doves for sale. Pursewarden fell over a basket and filled the street with apples.
* * *
Message on the corner of a newspaper. Afterwards the closed cab, warm bodies, night, volume of jasmine.
* * *
A basket of quail burst open in the bazaar. They did not try to escape but spread out slowly like spilt honey. Easily recaptured.
* * *
Postcard from Balthazar: ‘Scobie’s death was the greatest fun. How he must have enjoyed it. His pockets were full of love-letters to his aide Hassan, and the whole vice squad turned out to sob at his grave. All these black gorillas crying like babies. A very Alexandrian demonstration of affection. Of course the grave was too small for the coffin. The grave-diggers had knocked off for lunch, so a scratch team of policemen was brought into action. Usual
