Neither he nor Mahmoud Pasha said anything for some time, but I saw almost at once that Mister Bowles had been right: they were not suspicious, they were merely, out of long habit, pretending to consider. Two hundred liras for a short lease on a few hectares of steep and stony ground, no doubt acquired only incidentally in the first place! No, they were not suspicious. I had done my preliminary work almost too well. The Englishman, they had decided, was in earnest, was a fool, was rich. The combination had gone to their heads. Their attempts at judiciousness, at the appearance of a bargaining stance, would not have deceived a child.
It deceived Mister Bowles, however, apparently, because he said suddenly, 'I could perhaps improve on that.'
'No, no,' I said hastily. 'No, they will accept.'
I saw them glance at each other. Then Izzet turned to me and said, 'Tamam. The Vali accepts the offer.'
The Pasha leaned forward again. 'As a gesture,' he said in his rasping voice, 'of friendship -' This speech was never finished, because at this moment a servant entered, a civilian in red headcloth and entari, and spoke some words very softly, leaning close to the Pasha. Listening hard, I thought I heard the name of Gesing, the commercial agent. At once Mahmoud Pasha addressed himself to the business of rising. Finally on his feet before us, he uttered excuses, something required his attention, he would return.
He did not return, however, and the rest of our business was conducted with Izzet alone. Not that much was left to do. I told Izzet that Mister Bowles would require a form of contract.
'Is that really necessary?' he said. 'The Pasha has given his word.'
I did not dare to laugh, though I was inclined to. 'He asks if the contract is necessary,' I said to Mister Bowles. He nodded vigorously. 'Absolutely,' he said. He stood up and smiled at us both. I do not think I had seem him smile before. Not counting polite stretchings of the lips. It was a gradual smile, deepening slowly, as if backed up by afterthoughts; and as he smiled his eyes widened slightly, in a way that was unusual and very engaging. 'Making out a contract is the proper thing to do,' he said. 'It serves as mutual protection.'
'He says he must have one,' I said.
'Olur,' Izzet said, with resignation. It was clear that he did not at all like the idea of the contract, though I find it difficult to see why.
'When will it be ready?' I said.
'In some days. When can he pay the money?'
'I can pay a deposit,' Mister Bowles said. 'Say five per cent of the total. When the contract is signed, that is. The balance may take a few days longer. I shall have to effect a transfer from my bank in London through the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople and then to the bank's agent on the island.' He hesitated for a moment, then said, 'I did not expect to need so much money here.'
Was it the pause, the addition, that made me doubt him? He was not given to explaining himself. Surely, if he were writing a book, as he says, he must have anticipated some such expenditure. Perhaps, of course, he did not realise that the ruins were so extensive.
Izzet did not look very happy, either, when I translated. Still, five per cent is not bad, considering the exorbitant price of the lease. If Izzet was thinking of delaying the contract till the balance arrived, Mister Bowles's next words put an end to such hopes. 'The contract must be ready for tomorrow,' he said, 'so that I can get started. I have no intention of arranging for the transfer until the contract is signed.'
'Very well.' Izzet shrugged his thin shoulders. 'You will call for the contract at my office,' he said to me. 'Shall we say at five?'
Izzet accompanied us to the foot of the steps, past the silent soldier in his box. There we shook hands and left him.
In the fiacre, on the way home, Mister Bowles and I sat as before, side by side, but I felt a difference. What had happened in the room behind us had made us, in a way I found difficult to define, accomplices.
I think it was Gesing's name I heard, Excellency. I am almost sure of it. He must be important in some way: Mahmoud Pasha rose almost with alacrity at those few whispered words.
The curiosity about the message remains with me. As does that faint suspicion of Mister Bowles – not suspicion exactly, but a feeling of complicity, of being leagued with him in some enterprise the nature of which I have not yet fully understood. That day in Lydia 's studio I felt something of this. A kind of acknowledgement. From the very first day, the day of his arrival, I felt included in his purposes.
The Greeks do not speak to me, Excellency. They do not look at me. In their minds they have written finis to me. I trail silence with me wherever I go. I am insubstantial to myself. Only here, in this room, where the silence is of my own contriving, only here do I assume my gravity of flesh. Only when writing am I real to myself, and only then is my death completely real to me. It is here I experience my worst fear of death. I look at my hands, so cunning, feel my weight on the chair. My mind orders the words… I will insist on coherence up to the moment of my death. My only courage not to gibber.
Sometimes I dream of getting off the island, getting to Constantinople, finding out what has happened to my reports. I would dedicate it to you, Excellency. My book. There is material for several volumes. I have not yet decided on a title. When I think of this possibility, this crowning of all my life's work, my heart expands with delight. Everything, then, would have been worth it, poverty, loneliness, my narrow life. But it will not happen.
Meanwhile the days succeed one another, days of summer. Hazy mornings, glittering noons, velvet evenings. I wake with the light and seat myself here early, while the mist still lies along the join between the nearer islands and the sea, and along the distant promontories of Asia. I sit here watching this beautiful inter-action, this complicity – that word again – between sea and sky, the way hazes soften the complicated folds and recesses of land-as if these wilful masses needed protecting, the sharp promontories needed sheathing.
The sea is always present to me, whether within sight or not; there on the limits of my existence, glimmering in delicate perspectives or standing brilliant and vertical on the same plane as the sky; there as an element in the light, imparting its own quality of radiance. This pervasiveness of the sea, common to all small islands, gives a provisional quality to life. Exquisite matings of earth, water and air gave us our being here, and still they live in ménage à trois, without those désillusions said to be inevitable. If there is ever a real quarrel we shall be engulfed. Meanwhile the dalliance continues, a game of creation in which islands on the horizon and islands in the sky are glimpsed, surmised, lost again, and shapes of land lodge, swim, dissolve. Out there, far away, on the furthest verge of vision and beyond, other beings inhabit those fleeting shapes, and from their stillness-which seems like motion to me- they are watching with wonder the short-lived shape on which I count for permanency.
It is no wonder, Excellency, that so many philosophers have come from this world – Ionia or the nearer islands. I mean the artist-philosophers who tried to interpret the universe. Not riddling, posturing Socrates, stroking his beard and asking for definitions. Detestable man. No, I mean those who came before that. Faced with the manifold illusion of the senses, the paradox of permanence and change, in this light at once clear and deceiving, they sought always for an extreme explanation, a principle of unity. What a leap of the mind that was, Excellency. What a giant stride. They freed us from matter, to which, of course, with modern science, we are again subjected. Those who talk of the Greek sense of balance, of the Golden Mean, forget these holy extremists. It is in extremes that the true Greek spirit lies. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Herodotus, Anaximander – the very names have a delightful cadence. I see them standing on these shores seeking to reconcile all apparent contradictions in a single dazzling formula. Parmenides is perhaps the one who best suits our condition, yours and mine, Excellency, as he suits all who fear dissolution. He says that motion itself is an illusion. The lunge of the knife, the revolts of subject states, illusory.