'You mean telling lies,' Mister Bowles said instantly. The man is a pure Manichean. He sees everything in terms of moral opposites. Every conversation with him leads to head-on confrontations between darkness and light, good and evil.
Telling lies?' I said. 'No.' Though half-smiling still, I felt myself becoming angry. 'How have you arrived at this confident knowledge of what is lies and what is truth? I envy it.'
'Kandinsky says colour will express everything,' Lydia said. 'How do we know what colours are expressing?'
'Exactly,' Mister Bowles said. 'I mean to say, we know what a hay-wain is, don't we?'
'I think Expressionism is dangerous,' Lydia said. 'I think it is a retrograde step. It simply encourages the irrational.'
It was now that feeling betrayed me into indiscretion. I freely admit it, Excellency. The fact is that in all this talk of respect for reality, I began to smell again the swamp steam of your Empire, began to feel again that horror of immobility. 'Not so dangerous,' I said, 'as trying to petrify things, even if you do it out of love. Not so violent as the means we use to contain the irrational, as you call it. Your paintings are violent, Lydia.'
As soon as I had said this, I regretted it. I could see from Lydia 's face that she was hurt – the severity of its repose once broken, her face has no guard against feeling. Besides this, I was weakening, faltering. My poor burst of fervour was over.
'That is absolute poppycock,' Mister Bowles said. 'Anyone with half an eye -'
Fortunately, at this point there was a brisk double-knock on the living-room door. Lydia left us and returned a moment later with Doctor Hogan. He had an arm over her shoulder. 'Hello, Basil my boy,' he said, in his breezy way. 'How's the old stomachi?'
'Fine,' I said. 'As an organ that is, not as an object of view.' Some months ago I had persistent stomach pains, quite disabling. I thought at first they were due to dietary deficiencies consequent upon my poverty, but they turned out to be neurasthenic, the result of long hours of creative tension at my table here. The doctor provided me with a sedative syrup and I have been quite free of the pains since then.
'This is Mister Anthony Bowles,' Lydia said. 'Doctor Michael Hogan. Our beloved physician. Mister Bowles is a recent arrival on the island.'
'I hope you enjoy your stay here.' The doctor detached himself from Lydia to shake hands. I have described him before to Your Excellency's officials. He stood now just inside the studio, bulky, untidy-looking, grey hair slightly dishevelled, as always, small blue eyes full of a cheerful guile.
'You are an old resident here, I take it,' Mister Bowles said, his blurting habit of speech more noticeable now that he was addressing a stranger.
'Been here thirty years,' the doctor said.
'He came here first on a cruise, didn't you, Michael?' Lydia said. 'He liked it so much he decided to stay.' She said this with evident pleasure and affection, making Mister Bowles a gift of it.
'That is about the sum of it,' the doctor said.
Mister Bowles nodded, without much expression. It was not clear how he regarded this distant impulse of the doctor's.
'He had a practice in Dublin,' Lydia said. 'He went home, sold his practice, then came back here. Didn't you, Michael?'
'I've been here ever since,' the doctor said.
It was at this point that I got up to go. Rather to my surprise, Mister Bowles offered to accompany me. Now, of course, I know why.
Mister Bowles's reference to lying annoyed me at the time, because I suspected him of turning the conversation, with whatever it contained of interest or truth, into an occasion for establishing moral superiority. I still do suspect him of this, but I cannot yet decide whether it is the result of policy on his part, or personal need. Even after this morning's visit to the Pasha, I cannot decide.
I was feeling rather spruce, in my linen suit, with a clean white shirt buttoned up to the neck, my hair parted carefully with a wet comb, my monogrammed handkerchief and my ruby ring. Not having a watch now, I was afraid of being late. There is a clock in the shipping office of Gavros et Fils and that is the one I invariably go by, not because it keeps good time – in fact it doesn't – but because I prefer not to be confused by different versions. I glanced at this clock as I passed by, saw that I had time to spare and decided to walk the longer way, by the road. Plaints of sheep loud on the hillside. I saw the Petroulis boy herding sheep on the slope between the road and the shore. He will be bringing them into town today, to sell for the Sacrifice Bayram. He is about fourteen now, and good-looking.
I was on time at the Metropole and found Mister Bowles waiting in the lounge, sitting upright in a rattan chair. On the wall beyond him Zeus in the guise of a somewhat puny swan was descending on a Leda who looked quite capable of strangling him with one hand.
I could see that Mister Bowles too had taken extra care with his appearance this morning. He was wearing a grey suit of thin flannel, with rounded lapels in the English style. His collar was high and firm, and his dark green necktie carefully knotted. As he rose he took up a polished black cane from the floor beside his chair.
We walked across the square together, to where the fiacre drivers wait, in the shade of the municipal acacia trees. Costas Gavroulis was at the head of the line. I was afraid he would refuse me as a passenger, but he agreed at once to take us, though his manner was surly. We climbed into the creaking carriage, settled our backs against the seamed brown leather; the driver whipped up his stringy chestnut mare, and we moved sedately off. The smell of the dying acacia blossom was heavy in the air, morning sunshine fell through the thin leaves on to the buckles of the harness, the marigolds twisted in the bridle, and on to Mister Bowles and me sitting side by side.
We kept to the lower road, which follows the line of the bay, for some time, in the direction away from the promontory, away from the ruins that Mister Bowles is interested in, before turning inland. On our right the long fluid line of Mt Laris, and on the other side the blue water of the bay.
We did not talk much on the way. The Pasha's house is on the northern side of the island, where the hills come in nearer to the shore, dip towards the sea in long slopes that have been terraced for vines and olives. In the narrow fertile strip between hills and shore, maize and vegetables grow well, and there are extensive orange groves. All this land, whether tended by Greek or Turk, belongs to the Pasha. After a mile or so, the road begins to climb and curve inland, into the foothills. The Pasha's house and the garrison barracks are on the landward side, soon after this curve begins. The house is set well back from the road, its white walls only partially visible beyond clumps of umbrella pines.
The driver set us down on the road – he was unwilling to turn into the drive. We asked him to wait, and passed through the wrought iron gates, open and unguarded. The driveway is short. It opens directly on to the house, which is wide-fronted, Italianate in style, with steps going up to a colonnaded entrance. To the right, separated by a sparse shrubbery, the dusty desolate expanse of the parade ground with the barracks and outbuildings beyond.
At the foot of the steps a soldier with a slung rifle emerged from a sentry-box and barred our way. He said nothing, asked us no questions, simply stood silently in front of us, effectively barring all further progress. Young, not more than twenty I should think, with a flat, expressionless Anatolian face. After a moment or two of impassive scrutiny, he unslung the rifle and held it loosely before him, pointing somewhere between Mister Bowles and me.
'We have an appointment to see the Commandant,' I said to him in Turkish, taking care to stand quite still – I had not at all liked his gesture with the rifle. The garrison troops are ill-trained, Excellency, and they are unhappy, for the most part, on this western island, far from the plateaus of home. They do not like the people here, least of all foreigners. And the recent ambushes, the deaths of their comrades, have unsettled them even further. It seemed to me within the bounds of possibility for this savage to shoot us. Mister Bowles, however, obviously not thinking along the same lines as myself, took an impatient step forward. The rifle swung upwards. It was now pointing at Mister Bowles's chest.