But apart from Clea’s own painting, I should not forget to mention the work she does for Balthazar. She is the clinic painter. For some reason or other my friend is not content with the normal slipshod method of recording medical anomalies by photographs. He is pursuing some private theory which makes him attach importance to the pigmentation of the skin in certain stages of his pet diseases. The ravages of syphilis, for example, in every degree of anomaly, Clea has recorded for him in large coloured drawings of terrifying lucidity and tenderness. In a sense these are truly works of art; the purely utilitarian object has freed the painter from any compulsion towards self-expression; she has set herself to record; and these tortured and benighted human members which Balthazar picks out daily from the long sad queue in the outpatients’ ward (like a man picking rotten apples from a barrel) have all the values of depicted human faces — abdomens blown like fuses, skin surfaces shrunken and peeling like plaster, carcinomata bursting through the rubber membranes which retain them…. I remember the first time I saw her at work; I had called on Balthazar at the clinic to collect a certificate for some routine matter in connection with the school at which I worked. Through the glass doors of the surgery I caught a glimpse of Clea, whom I did not then know, sitting under the withered pear-tree in the shabby garden. She was dressed in a white medical smock, and her colours were laid out methodically beside her on a slab of fallen marble. Before her, seated half-crouching upon a wicker chair, was a big-breasted sphinx-faced fellah girl, with her skirt drawn up above her waist to expose some choice object of my friend’s study. It was a brilliant spring day, and in the distance one could hear the scampering of the sea. Clea’s capable and innocent fingers moved back and forth upon the white surface of the paper, surely, deftly, with wise premeditation. Her face showed the rapt and concentrated pleasure of a specialist touching in the colours of some rare tulip.
When Melissa was dying it was for Clea that she asked; and it was Clea who spent whole nights at her bedside telling her stories and tending her. As for Scobie — I do not dare to say that their inversion constituted a hidden bond — sunk like a submarine cable linking two continents — for that might do an injustice to both. Certainly the old man is unaware of any such matter; and she for her part is restrained by her perfect tact from showing him how hollow are his boasts of love-making. They are perfectly matched, and perfectly happy in their relationship, like a father and daughter. On the only occasion when I heard him rally her upon not being married Clea’s lovely face became round and smooth as that of a schoolgirl, and from the depths of an assumed seriousness which completely disguised the twinkle of the imp in her grey eyes, she replied that she was waiting for the right man to come along: at which Scobie nodded profoundly, and agreed that this was the right line of conduct.
It was from a litter of dusty canvases in one corner of her studio that I unearthed a head of Justine one day — a half profile, touched in impressionistically and obviously not finished. Clea caught her breath and gazed at it with all the compassion a mother might show for a child which she recognized as ugly, but which was none the less beautiful for her. ‘It is ages old’ she said; and after much reflection gave it to me for my birthday. It stands now on the old arched mantelshelf to remind me of the breathless, incisive beauty of that dark and beloved head. She has just taken a cigarette from between her lips, and she is about to say something which her mind has already formulated but which has so far only reached the eyes. The lips are parted, ready to utter it in words.
* * * * *
A mania for self-justification is common both to those whose consciences are uneasy and to those who seek a philosophic rationale for their actions: but in either case it leads to strange forms of thinking. The idea is not spontaneous, but voulue. In the case of Justine this mania led to a perpetual flow of ideas, speculations on past and present actions, which pressed upon her mind with the weight of a massive current pressing upon the walls of a dam. And for all the wretched expenditure of energy in this direction, for all the passionate contrivance in her self-examination, one could not help distrusting her conclusions, since they were always changing, were never at rest. She shed theories about herself like so many petals. ‘Do you not believe that love consists wholly of paradoxes?’ she once asked Arnauti. I remember her asking me much the same question in that turbid voice of hers which somehow gave the question tenderness as well as a sort of menace. ‘Supposing I were to tell you that I only allowed myself to approach you to save myself from the danger and ignominy of falling deeply in love with you? I felt I was saving Nessim with every kiss I gave you.’ How could this, for example, have constituted the true motive for that extraordinary scene on the beach? No rest from doubt, no rest from doubt. On another occasion she dealt with the problem from another angle, not perhaps less truthfully: ‘The moral is — what is the moral? We were not simply gluttons, were we? And how completely this love-affair has repaid all the promises it held out for us — at least for me. We met and the worst befell us, but the best part of us, our lovers. Oh! please do not laugh at me.’
For my part I remained always stupefied and mumchance at all the avenues opened up by these thoughts; and afraid, so strange did it seem to talk about what we were actually experiencing in such obituary terms. At times I was almost provoked like Arnauti, on a similar occasion, to shout: ‘For the love of God, stop this mania for unhappiness or it will bring us to disaster. You are exhausting our lives before we have a chance to live them.’ I knew of course the uselessness of such an exhortation. There are some characters in this world who are marked down for self-destruction, and to these no amount of rational argument can appeal. For my part Justine always reminded me of a somnambulist discovered treading the perilous leads of a high tower; any attempt to wake her with a shout might lead to disaster. One could only follow her silently in the hope of guiding her gradually away from the great shadowy drops which loomed up on every side.
But by some curious paradox it was these very defects of character — these vulgarities of the psyche — which constituted for me the greatest attraction of this weird kinetic personage. I suppose in some way they corresponded to weaknesses in my own character which I was lucky to be able to master more thoroughly than she could. I know that for us love-making was only a small part of the total picture projected by a mental intimacy which proliferated and ramified daily around us. How we talked! Night after night in shabby sea-front cafés (trying ineffectually to conceal from Nessim and other common friends an attachment for which we felt guilty). As we talked we insensibly drew nearer and nearer to each other until we were holding hands, or all but in each other’s arms: not from the customary sensuality which afflicts lovers but as if the physical contact could ease the pain of self-exploration.
Of course this is the unhappiest love-relationship of which a human being is capable — weighed down by something as heartbreaking as the post-coital sadness which clings to every endearment, which lingers like a sediment in the clear waters of a kiss. ‘It is easy to write of kisses’ says Arnauti, ‘but where passion should have been full of clues and keys it served only to slake our thoughts. It did not convey information as it usually does. There was so much else going on.’ And indeed in making love to her I too began to understand fully what he meant in describing the Check as ‘the parching sense of lying with some lovely statue which was unable to return the kisses of the common flesh which it touches. There was something exhausting and perverting about loving so well and yet loving so little.’