I watched him for some time longer, in fascination. Then I began to think about getting away. It struck me as distinctly unwise to announce myself there and then, even dangerous. I thought it best to steal away and deliberate on how best to use the knowledge thus unexpectedly gained. However, dis aliter visum. Along the crest of the slope where I was lying the earth was loose and friable. In shifting my position preparatory to retreat, I dislodged several small stones and one or two larger ones, which slid a few yards down the slope behind me until caught in the scrub. Unfortunately for me, Mister Bowles was not singing just at this moment, and he heard it. He turned at once and very quickly. I ducked down below the crest. There was silence for some moments and I was beginning to breathe again when I heard his voice, in quite distinct and passable Turkish – ah, le perfide! – saying, 'Come down here at once.' I heard sounds which indicated that he had changed position. I thought of flight, but Mister Bowles is fitter and faster. Besides, there was the revolver.
I raised my head and looked down. I was filled with apprehension. He was at the foot of the slope, on my side, just beyond the bushes. He was holding the revolver. 'It is I,' I said. 'Pascali.' Grammatical, in spite of my fear, Excellency.
'Come down here,' he said again, this time in English.
I did so, with what alacrity you can imagine. He stood there waiting. Naked, glistening red, that instrument of death steady in his hand. When we were face to face, I saw a look in his eyes that I recognised – I had seen it the day before in Izzet's: not fury, not dislike, a steady look of murder.
When he spoke, however, his tone was almost equable. 'What the devil are you doing here?' he said. He had a heavy, sweetish smell about him, mingled sweat and oil – he had oiled himself against the sun.
In fear I told him. I had been curious, I said, and being curious had made my way up here. Curiosity, I said, was a primal instinct in homo sapiens, and I had my fair share of it. Besides, there had been particularly strong cause for curiosity in this case, because I had wanted to see what a man would risk losing so much money for, not only his own share, but mine. And more than money was at risk, perhaps he did not realise that our lives were in danger. I told him of the meeting with Izzet, how they had waited for me. Talking thus volubly, I saw the look of death leave his face.
All the same he had not really listened. 'Professional curiosity,' he said, when I had rather breathlessly come to a stop. 'Once an informer, always an informer, I suppose.' There was something of a sneer on his face.
'Indeed yes,' I said, in haste to agree. I was beginning to feel a certain elation, now that he looked saner. I knew the existence of something he had wanted to keep secret. That he could have hoped to keep it secret for long was a sign of his less than total grasp of reality, his belief in the shaping force of his own desire. With troops on the ground, Mahmoud and Izzet intent on recovering the lease, and half the town no doubt aware by now of his interest in this place among the hills, it can only be a matter of time before his trouvaille is common knowledge. Perhaps even now there are others who know, others who have watched…
He went over to where his clothes were lying, bent down. When he returned his hands were empty. He turned to indicate the form in the hillside. 'Isn't it marvellous?' he said, and in those blurted syllables there was a kind of confiding enthusiasm. I think he was glad, now that the murderous desire to preserve his secret had passed, to have found someone with whom he could share the experience. 'Too early yet, of course, to identify the period,' he said, with an attempt at scholarly dispassion. I was reminded of his manner on producing the articles from the Gladstone bag, the way he had lectured us. His pale eyes in the sun-darkened face looked hallucinated almost.
'By God, yes,' I said, taking some steps nearer to it. In fact, the figure gave me feelings of dread, Excellency; or rather, it renewed that dread I had felt some time before, trapped in the gully. It was life-size as far as I could tell, reddish clay-coloured, the colour of the earth that still largely contained it and into which it was half-facing. The contours of left shoulder and upper arm were all that had been so far uncovered completely, the features and head still partially obscured by encrustations of earth; and it was this masking accretion that disturbed me, as I went closer. With the beauty of the shoulder and arm revealed and evident, and head and face bemonstered still by those gouts of clay, there was a sense of affliction and stillness in the form, as of some creature arrested by the gods, punished with partial metamorphosis, flesh into earth.
'Bronze,' Mister Bowles said. 'It is bronze, you know, not stone.'
'Male or female?'
'Oh, male,' he said at once. 'Look at that arm.'
It was extremely hot in this hollow. My feeling of oppression increased. It was due, I think, not merely to the heat, or the ambivalence of the figure in the hillside, but to what I felt as the intensities of feeling expended and retained in this enclosed place. Secrecy, aspiration, fanaticism-I know not what to call it. It was in the red earth and pale rock and the bushes and the liturgies of the bees among the thyme. It was in Mister Bowles's face. Savage was the word that came to my mind. I am sensitive to atmosphere, as I have told you before, Excellency. All good informers are.
I could feel sweat trickling slowly down my left side. 'Beautiful,' I said, vaguely.
'Isn't he?' he eagerly and instantly agreed.
'I think I must leave now,' I said. 'I find it very hot down here. A regular suntrap,' I added, attempting a laughing tone.
He paused, looking at me as if considering. 'Yes,' he said. 'It does get hot down here. I'll stay a little while longer. The work is just getting to an exciting stage, you know.'
'Quite so,' I said.
'Then I've got to clean up a bit before I leave. Fortunately there is water here.'
'Yes,' I said.
Mister Bowles hesitated again, then he said; 'I've got a proposition you might be interested in. Will you come over to my room at the hotel for a drink this evening? I'd like to talk to you. I'd like to explain all this.'
'Very well,' I said.
'About nine? In the meantime, keep this to yourself.'
'Of course,' I said.
'You'll be the loser if you don't.' Mister Bowles nodded significantly and looked intently at me from under the brim of his hat. 'You'll lose everything.' he said.
It was with these words echoing in my mind that I turned away from him, started scrambling up out of the hollow. They are in my mind now. How long I have been sitting here, writing to your Excellency, I don't know. I lose count of time here at my table. Time, in any case, is running out for me, as it is for Mister Bowles, and you too, Excellency, I think. I will never get the money now, never get off this island. I must write everything down before it is too late. Already I know with sadness that things have been missed and lost, impressions, complexities of meaning, significant facts even, that will never now find their way into this report. Inevitable, I suppose. Now all my waking thoughts are devoted to this work of mine. Even when I am with others I am formulating phrases, looking for the significant detail with which to enlighten Your Excellency.