‘Deceit, Ludmilla, is a wincing word. I was a general in spirit, always. If I was not in fact, it was due to misfortune, and the superior connections of my subordinate officers. But how I have lived, in spirit. Such bugles!’
There was no further note in the Hôtel du Midi. It was quite still. How long this might continue seemed to Theodora to depend on Sokolnikov and the furniture.
‘In time it will be time for lunch,’ he sighed, examining the envelope as if he doubted the address.
‘I do not expect to be here for lunch,’ Theodora said. ‘I am going out. I am going to put on my hat.’
‘Why?’ asked Sokolnikov, ‘why put on your hat if your haste is so indecent?’
‘Alyosha Sergei,’ Theodora said, ‘you do not know.’
So that the windows quivered, and a grey cloud, blowing out of Corsica.
‘Oh, but I do,’ said Alyosha Sergei.
He sat in a deflated heap.
‘They have taken the coast road,’ he said. ‘They are walking towards the tower which has some connection with Napoleon. He has taken her hand because she expects him to. And although his hand is dead, she is moved, because the music is still moving in her own. It does not much matter whether it is he. Because she has chosen. She has chosen this as the moment of experience. And experience has a glaze. It has not yet cracked,’ the General almost shouted.
Theodora Goodman began to circumnavigate the furniture.
‘At least my feet can move,’ Theodora said.
‘Yes,’ said Sokolnikov. ‘And I do not wish to deter you. You can also create the illusion of other people, but once created, they choose their own realities.’
All that afternoon Theodora Goodman, walking hatless between houses, past trees, near the fragments of stone walls from which lizards looked, heard the words of Sokolnikov. Like rubber they departed and returned. Now her motives were equally elastic, because Sokolnikov had made her doubt. So she could not take the direct road. Roads did not lead through the infinite landscape in which she hesitated, least of all the obvious red coast road. As the town thinned out into advertisements and tins, she wandered higher, where the needle turrets of signorial villas were strangled by roses, and the night club still wore its daylight tarnish. She walked on the edge of the lavender hills.
Here the air had begun to rub. Mist strayed along the skin, dissolved the substance of rock and tree, and confused the intentions still further. Many little anxious paths dispersed through the stiff heather. Goats sprang, scattering their dung. If I were to cross this ridge, she said, suddenly abrupt with purpose in the afternoon, I shall see the stone tower, if this also has not dispersed.
From the pink house beside the poplars the woman in the periwinkle dress watched some Anglaise making a walk without a hat. Outside the house the rosemary bushes were spread with shirts. The woman in the periwinkle dress had come outside to inspect her washing. Now she felt it carefully for damp. She twitched a sheet that twigs had made mountainous.
Was it this way to the tower? Theodora asked.
She stood by the gate of the pink house. She waited to hear words. The woman’s arms were white with flour. Theodora waited for one word, out of a lost epoch, shaped and baked in kitchens.
Yes, said the periwinkle woman, it was this way to the tower, it was past the olive field and the well, though it was the habit of people to make this walk by road.
The woman pointed with her white arm. There was no doubt that the strayed Anglaise would find the tower. But strange, the strange Anglaise. The woman gathered up her washing. She carried the armful of stiff white sheets into her square pink house, out of the mist.
Theodora walked straight. A smell of soap and baking had lessened the influence of Sokolnikov. She would hedge the olive field, as the woman had advised. She walked almost joyfully. Beside the field she heard the great, sounding depth of the open well, of which the stone lip had sucked moisture from the air. The tower too would have filled with mist, and the intolerable, pervasive smell of crushed nettles.
From the spine of the hill Theodora saw the tower. It was strong and solitary and white. But whether its thick walls enclosed, in addition to damp, the smell of nettles, and possibly a dead bird, some personal exaltation or despair, was as obscure as the alleged moment in which Napoleon split the historical darkness of that part of the coast.
But I have come here for a purpose, Theodora said, if only to be confronted with my own inadequacy. At a distance her mouth contracted under the coldly sensual lips of stone. She began to go down.
She went quickly, quicker, now that she saw. She saw the solitary figure, moving among rocks, away from the tower, out of her line of vision. She could not identify, but she could hope, but she could run. A bird whirred out of the heather. She was hardly conscious of the intervening stones, or the ankles in which she trusted, though these were thick as sticks. Some animal, rabbit or hare, cowered and leapt away in terror hearing her torn breath.
Then she began to call with what was left.
‘Katina! Katina! Katina Pavlou!’ Theodora called.
Out of the blur of wind and running, on the now settled shoulder of the hill, the face of Katina Pavlou turned.
‘Why, Miss Goodman, it is you,’ Katina Pavlou said.
Touching with her feet the obvious red coast road, Theodora Goodman gathered her awkwardness.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I came.’
‘How funny you look. And without a hat,’ Katina Pavlou said.
Her voice was cold. Her voice was as cold as stone.
‘I left on the spur of the moment. And I walked farther than I thought. Now I am out of breath,’ Theodora Goodman said.
They began to walk along the coast road which would lead eventually to houses.
‘The mist is unexpected, I believe,’ Theodora said, ‘for this time of year.’
‘The mist?’ said Katina Pavlou coldly.
Her head was turned, so that she was looking at the sea. Her hair hung, in some fresh way it had been done, Theodora Goodman saw, for some purpose. The hair, the body of Katina Pavlou, were conscious and intent.
‘Oh, let us walk. Let us get it over quickly,’ Katina Pavlou said. ‘This is a hateful road.’
She walked quicker. She walked too quickly. Katina Pavlou was going over, Theodora saw, she was going over all the time on the new high heels that she had begun to wear.
‘Katina dear,’ Theodora Goodman said.
She took the cold, dead hand, that she would begin to warm. Her face began to fumble with words, and a rather stupid kind of happiness, that was also painful.
‘Yes, Katina,’ she said, ‘this is always a long and intolerable stretch of road, but it is not interminable.’
I am quite, quite stupid, Theodora felt, I can feel it on my face.
But Katina Pavlou looked at the sea. And along the red coast road the enclosed automobiles pressed towards expensive pleasures. Faces eyed for a moment people who walk.
‘Have you ever been inside the tower, Miss Goodman?’ Katina Pavlou asked.
And now Theodora felt inside her hand the hand coming alive. She felt the impervious lips of stone forming cold words. She dreaded, in anticipation, the scream of nettles.
‘No,’ said Theodora, ‘I have not been inside the tower. I imagine there is very little to see.’
‘There is nothing, nothing,’ Katina said. ‘There is a smell of rot and emptiness.’
But no less painful in its emptiness, Theodora felt.
‘Still, I am glad,’ said Katina Pavlou, speaking through her white face. ‘You know, Miss Goodman, when one is glad for something that has happened, something nauseating and painful, that one did not suspect. It is better finally to know.’