Darkness fell while we were on the road; the familiar daylight forms receded and melted slowly away into the tenebrous hinterlands around us. We put on coats and scarves and settled into our seats, glad of the warmly lighted bus which we could feel burrowing its way through the darkness towards Syracuse. Mario played his chuckling horn, sometimes it seemed for pure pleasure as there was hardly any traffic on the road. It was a horn on two notes, like a magpie’s rattling call. In silent villages he let out this pretty call sign to register our presence. Answer came there none. Then as we climbed a hillock and took a smooth curve Roberto announced that we had reached Augusta and this was well worth sitting up for.
It was of an extraordinary beauty, this little oil port. A thousand tulips of light and colored smoke played about its derricks and towers and drums — a forest of refineries whose beauty was made quite sinister by the fact that the whole was deserted. There was not a soul in the whole place, not a dog, nor a cat: there wasn’t even a guard post. Yet the light played about in it, the smoke gushed and spat, as if it were the very forge of the Titans, and a thousand invisible trolls were hard at work in it. Its beauty was quite breathtaking. I watched it in diminishing perspective, reflected in the windows of the bus, and it seemed like a thousand wax lights afloat on the waters of chaos. Two days later we were to pass it in daylight and to have our ardor quenched by its hideous ugliness, its ungainly spider-like instruments. But indeed it was an important guarantee of Sicily’s economic progress. No more would she be a poor relation of the north. Roberto spared us statistics tonight out of sheer tact, and because he knew that in two days’ time he could spout them all out by daylight. “Augusta,” said Deeds shaking his head. “All through the damn war we tried to shell it, with never a single hit. How could it have escaped? But it did.” I thought I knew the answer. “Every time the Fleet Air Arm tried to bomb Augusta or even Catania the Italians came back and knocked a piece off my balcony in Alexandria. Finally there was no balcony left.” The little spots of light receded into the rolling hills, until Augusta looked like a small forest fire, or the brindles on a tiger’s hide. It hung for a while like a sinking constellation and then extinguished itself while ahead of us, more warming but less spectacular, glowed the lights of Syracuse. We had begun to feel hungry and watched with a certain envy the Americans who poured out coffee from a vacuum flask and ate a sandwich in a lingering way. I thought that, after all, I would sleep like a lead soldier tonight once I had had dinner and a drink.
Marble Stele: Syracuse
One day she dies and there with splendor
On all sides of her, for miles and miles,
Stretches reality in all its rich ubiquity,
The whole of science, magic, total time.
The hanging gardens of folly, the aloof sublime,
Just as far as thinking reaches,
Though lost now the nightingale’s corroboration
Of spring in meadows of dew uprising.
Only the avid silence preaches.
“Whence came we, blind one?” asks the nursery rhyme,
“And whither going, say?” The cherub questions us
“In the dark of his unknowing clad
He charms eternity, makes all process glad.”
Time has made way at last, the dream is ended
Least said is soonest mended.
Hear old Empedocles as calmly wise
As only more than mortal man can be
Who stands no nonsense from eternity.
“The royal mind of God in all
Its imperturbable extravagance,
Admits no gossip. All is poetry.
There is no which, nor why, nor whence.”
3: Syracuse
THE TOWN SEEMED quiet and with little movement despite the earliness of the hour; there was a trifling contretemps at the hotel, where we found that the porters were on strike for the day. We had to hump our suitcases for the night.
This would not have been a very serious matter had the lift not been so cramped, and had the French diplomatic couple learned the elementary art of packing. There seemed to be something absolutely necessary to their peace of mind in each of half a dozen suitcases — so the poor husband had to make several trips. Both Deeds and I could afford to be smug, having put our night clobber in one small case, which enabled us to forget the rest. But even this small suitcase became a problem when one found oneself in the lift with the Frenchman who was humping two large ones and a dozen assorted paper bags. We collided repeatedly and at several angles, bumping first our heads (in a convulsion of reciprocal politeness) and then our booming bags. It was hard to get in and hard to get out; the doors closed automatically if one did not keep them open with one’s foot. Getting out we collided once more in the corridor, when in a sort of hissing anguish my companion said, “Cher maître, excuse me.”
My heart sank, for I had been recognized; due perhaps to too many television appearances in Paris. But he went on, “Be assured. Your anonymity is safe with me and with my wife. Nobody shall ever know that Lawrence Durrell is with us.” It was like Stendhal meeting Rossini in the lift. He almost genuflected; I suppose that I swelled up with pride like a toad. He walked away backwards down the corridor to his room — like one does for Royalty or the Pope. I went pensively to mine to unpack. Deeds came in with a hip flask and offered me an aperitif before we went down to the cold collation which had been prepared for us in the dining room of the hotel. He approved of my neat packing, and showed quite a streak of psychological insight, for when I said: “I suppose you detect the signs of old maidishness in this mania for tidiness?” he replied, “On the contrary, I detect a camper and a small boat owner. You simply have to be tidy if you are either; since you weren’t in the army I mean.”
After dinner we smoked a cigar in the garden of the hotel and I tried to divine the nature of the town by sniffing the night air — which was pure and scentless. We were on a pleasant but suburban street, made somehow agreeable by flowering oleander which reminded me of Rhodes in a way, modern Rhodes whose towns are made beautiful by this graceful and tough bush which can feast on the bare rock or the crumbling shale of a deserted riverbed — as it does in Cyprus and Sicily alike. The night was still, and balmy. As we walked to and fro the Frenchman came out and spotting us came over with his visiting card in his hand. “As an ancien préfet de Paris,” he said, “allow me to make myself known. Count Petremand at your service.” His manners were delightful and innocent of guile. Then he added, “I had the great honor once to help your friend Henry Miller, and he was grateful enough to immortalize me in a short story under my own name — imagine how that pleased me. He had been picked up by the police for not having a residence permit — after two years, mind you. Luckily I was at the Prefecture and … well, fixed him up.” I vaguely remembered him now. “But Miller was totally unknown then,” I said, “and he had published nothing.” Count Petremand held up his hand and smiled. “He was an artist,” he said, “and that was enough for us.” It wouldn’t, I thought, be enough for the competent authorities anywhere else — except perhaps Greece. He joined us in a cigar and the three of us took a turn up and down the warm still garden. “I was touched by your mention of my incognito,” I said with feeling. “I have never had any trouble with it before. Once or twice I have nearly been declared persona non grata but that is all. In fact the only cross I have to bear is that everywhere I go I am asked to sign one of my brother’s books. It is invariable.” I must have sounded rather vehement for Deeds looked at me in some surprise and said, “It hasn’t happened yet.” “It will, Deeds. It will.” (Two days later it did. As usual I obliged, signing the book Marcel Proust, with the appropriate flourish.)