He had finished, was watching me.
“You make words seem shabby things.”
“Bach does.”
“And you.”
He grimaced, but I could see he was not unpleased, though he tried to hide it by marching me off to give his vegetables their evening watering.
An hour later I was in the little bedroom again. I saw that I had new books by my bedside. There was first a very thin volume in French, a bound pamphlet, anonymous and privately printed, Paris, 1932; it was entitled De la communication intermondiale. I guessed the author easily enough. Then there was a folio: Wild Life in Scandinavia. As with The Beauties of Nature of the week before, the “wild life” turned out to be all female—various Nordic-looking women lying, standing, running, embracing among the fir forests and fjords. There were lesbian nuances I didn’t much like; perhaps because I was beginning to take against the facet in Conchis’s polyhedral character that obviously enjoyed “curious” objects and literature. Of course I was not—at least I told myself I was not—a puritan. I was too young to know that the having to tell myself gave the game away; and that to be uninhibited about one’s own sexual activities is not the same as being unshockable. I was English; ergo, puritan. I went twice through the pictures; they clashed unpleasantly with the still-echoing Bach.
Finally there was another book in French—a sumptuously produced limited edition: Le Masque Français au Dixhuitième Siècle. This had a little white marker in. Remembering the anthology on the beach, I turned to the page, where there was a passage bracketed. It read:
“Aux visiteurs qui pénétraient dans l’enceinte des murs altiers de Saint-Martin s’offrait la vue delectable des bergers et bergères qui, sur les verts gazons et parmi las bosquets, dansaient et chantaient entourés de leurs blancs troupeaux. Ils n’étaient pas toujours habillés des costumes de l’époqua. Quelquefois us étaient vétus a la romaine ou a la grecque, at ainsi réalisait-on des odes de Théocrite, des bucoliques de Virgile. On parlait méme d’évocations plus scandaleuses, de charmantes nymphes qui las nuits d’été fuyaient au clair de lune d’étranges silhouettes, moitié homme, moitié chèvre…” [1]
At last it began to seem plain. All that happened at Bourani was in the nature of a private masque; and no doubt the passage was a hint to me that I should, both out of politeness and for my own pleasure, not poke my nose behind the scenes. I felt ashamed of the questions I had asked at Agia Varvara.
I washed and, in deference to the slight formality Conchis apparently liked in the evenings, changed into a white shirt and a summer suit. When I came out of my room to go downstairs the door of his bedroom was open. He called me in.
“We will have our ouzo up here this evening.”
He was sitting at his desk, reading a letter he had just written. I waited behind him a moment, looking at the Bonnards again while he addressed the envelope. The door of the little room at the end was ajar. I had a glimpse of clothes, of a press. It was simply a dressing room. By the open doors, Lily’s photograph stared at me from its table.
We went out onto the terrace. There were two tables there, one with the ouzo and glasses on, the other with the dinner things. I saw at once that there were three chairs at the dinner table; and Conchis saw me see.
“We shall have a visitor after dinner.”
“From the village?” But I was smiling, and he was too when he shook his head. It was a magnificent evening, one of those gigantic Greek spans of sky and world fluxed in declining light. The mountains were the gray of a Persian cat’s fur, and the sky like a vast, unfaceted primrose diamond. I remembered noticing, one similar sunset in the village, how every man outside every taverna had turned to face the west, as if they were in a cinema, with the eloquent all-saying sky their screen.
“I read the passage you marked in Le Masque Français.”
“It is only a metaphor. But it may help.”
He handed me an ouzo. We raised glasses.
Coffee was brought and poured, and the lamp moved to the table behind me, so that it shone on Conchis’s face. We were both waiting.
“I hope I shan’t have to forego the rest of your adventures.”
He raised his head, in the Greek way, meaning no. He seemed a little tense, and looked past me at the bedroom door; and I was reminded of that first day. I turned, but there was no one there.
He spoke. “You know who it will be?”
“I didn’t know if I was meant to come in last week or not.”
“You are meant to do as you choose.”
“Except ask questions.”
“Except ask questions.” A thin smile. “Did you read my little pamphlet?”
“Not yet.”
“Read it carefully.”
“Of course. I look forward to it.”
“Then tomorrow night perhaps we can perform an experiment.”
“On communicating with other worlds?” I didn’t bother to keep a certain scepticism out of my voice.
“Yes. Up there.” The star-heavy sky. “Or across there.” I saw him look down, making the visual analogy, to the black line of mountains to the west.
I risked facetiousness. “Up there—do they speak Greek or English?”
He didn’t answer for nearly fifteen seconds; didn’t smile.
“They speak emotions.”
“Not a very precise language.”
“On the contrary. The most precise. If one can learn it.” He turned to look at me. “Precision of the kind you mean is important in science. It is unimportant in—”
But I never found out what it was unimportant in.
We both heard the footsteps, those same light footsteps I had heard before, on the gravel below, coming as if up from the sea. Conchis looked at me quickly.
“You must not ask questions. That is most important.”
I smiled. “As you wish.”
“Treat her as you would treat an amnesiac.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never met an amnesiac.”
“She lives in the present. She does not remember her personal past—she has no past. If you question her about the past, you will only disturb her. She is very sensitive. She would not want to see you again.”
I wanted to say, I like your masque, I shan’t spoil it. I said, “If I don’t understand why, I begin to understand how.”
He shook his head. “You are beginning to understand why. Not how.”
His eyes lingered on me, burning the sentence in; looked aside, at the doors. I turned.
I realized then that the lamp had been put behind me so that it would light her entrance; and it was an entrance to take the breath away.
1
“Visitors who went behind the high walls of Saint-Martin had the pleasure of seeing, across the green lawns and among the groves, shepherds and shepherdesses who danced and sang, surrounded by their white flocks. They were not always dressed in eighteenth-century clothes. Sometimes they wore costumes in the Roman and Greek styles; and in this way the odes of Theocritus and the bucolics of Virgil were brought to life. It was even said that there were more scandalous scenes—charming nymphs who on summer nights fled in the moonlight from strange dark shapes, half man, half goat…”