She had changed into a long saffron chiton. It had a thin blood-red hem where it ended at the knees. On her feet were black buskins with silver greaves, which gave her a grim gladiatorial look, in strange contrast to her bare shoulders and arms. The skin was unnaturally white, the eyes elongated by black makeup, and her hair was also elongated backwards in a way that was classical yet sinister. Over her shoulders she had a quiver. In her left hand she held a long silver-painted bow. Something in her stance, as well as her distorting makeup, was genuinely frightening.
She stood, cold and outraged and ominous for a long second, and then she reached back with her free hand and with a venomous quickness pulled an arrow out of the quiver. But just as she began to fit it to the bow string, the beam tracked like lightning back to the arrested man. He was standing, darker-skinned, in a black chiton, spectacularly terrified, his arms flung back, and his head averted. It was a pose without realism, yet effectively theatrical. The beam swept back to the goddess. She had the bow at full stretch, the horn blew again, the arrow went. I saw it fly, but lost its flight in the abrupt darkness as the torch flicked off again. A moment later it shone on the man. He was clutching the arrow—or an arrow—in his heart. He fell slowly to his knees, swayed a second, then slumped sideways among the stones and thyme. The torch lingered a moment on him, then went out. Apollo stood impassively, surveying, a pale marmoreal shadow, like some divine umpire, president of the arena. The goddess began to walk, a striding huntress walk, towards him, her silver bow slung like a rifle over one shoulder. As she came near, into the diffuse beam of weak light, he held out his hand. They stood like that, facing me, hand in hand, Apollo and his sister, Artemis-Diana. The beam went out. I saw them retreat into the dark penumbra of the trees. Silence. Night. As if nothing had happened.
I looked back at Conchis. He had not moved. I tried to understand. I tried to think what connection there was between the elderly man on the road by the hotel, the “pre-haunting,” and this scene. During the telling I thought I had grasped the point of the caractêre of de Deukans; Conchis had been talking of himself and me; the parallels were too close for it to be anything else. And discouraged every kind of question… how unable I was to judge him… very few friends and no relations… but what had that to do with what had just happened?
Plainly it was meant to be mythical, but it had awakened in me vague memories of Oscar Wilde—the Wilde of Salomé—and of Maeterlinck; something Germanic, fin de siècle, had floated over it all. It was also an attempt at the sort of scandalous evocation mentioned in Le Masque Français.
There was some very nasty, some very perverse, drift in Conchis’s divertimenti. The naked man. What were they doing now, inside those trees? Because the girl acted one thing for an hour, there was no reason why she shouldn’t act something else, anything else, the next. I remembered wryly that she had said “I am called.” I had given it a spiritualistic significance; but it had a normal other meaning—for actresses.
I felt, irrationally, betrayed; and envious and jealous of those other mysterious young men who had appeared from nowhere to poach in “my” territory; and walked off with the prize. I tried to be objective, content to be a spectator, to let these weird incidents flow past me as one sits in a cinema and lets the film flow past. But even as I thought that, I knew it to be a bad analogy.
I went and stood behind her empty chair.
“Very strange.”
Conchis didn’t answer. I moved round the table, to where I could see his face. His eyes were open, but his stare to the south was fixed, and for a moment I was frightened. I said urgently, “Mr. Conchis?” and touched his shoulder. He looked up then, for all the world like a man coming out of a trance.
“Are you all right?”
“I fell asleep. I apologize.” He shook his head as if to wake himself up.
“But your eyes were open.”
“A kind of sleep.” He smiled at me, one of his smiles that was intended, flagrantly, to make me wonder what he really meant.
I smiled warily back. “Or a kind of mystification?”
He stood up and took my arm, then walked me silently to the western end of the terrace—probably, I guessed, to give the man with the arrow in his heart time to decamp. He breathed deeply for a moment, facing the distant mountains, his hand on my elbow. Then he said, “I am rich in many things, Nicholas. Richer even in some than I am in money.”
“I realize that.”
“Richer in forgotten powers. In strange desires.” He pressed my elbow lightly, then let go of it. His face was inscrutable, but his tone aroused old suspicions in me. Young men, young women. Perhaps I should soon find myself asked to take part in some kind of orgy, some sexual fantasy; and I knew that if I was faced with it, joining in or not, I might not know what to do—sexually or morally. A double lack of savoir vivre. I was out of my depth; I had a quick self-protective need to be debunking, English. I lit a cigarette; put on a smile and a light voice.
“I saw your ‘visitor’ meet her boyfriend over there.” There was a long pause; in the shadow his eyes were like black phosphorus. “An uncensored rendezvous with Apollo.” Still he forced me to go on. “I have no program, Mr. Conchis. I don’t know.” More silence. I said rather desperately, “I just feel I’d enjoy it more if I knew what it all meant.”
Then it was as if I had said something that really pleased him. He turned and gave me a smile, took my arm again. We strolled back to the table.
“My dear Nicholas, man has been saying what you have just said for the last ten thousand years. And the one common feature of all those gods he has said it to is that not one of them has ever returned an answer.”
“Gods don’t exist to answer. You do.”
“In this respect treat me as if I did not exist.”
I sneaked a look at his bald, saturnine profile.
I said quietly, “Why me?”
He stopped us. “Why anyone? Why anything?”
I gestured to the east. “All this… just to give me a lesson in theology?”
He was pointing to the sky. “I think we would both agree that any god who created all this just to give us a lesson in theology was gravely lacking in both humor and imagination.” We came to the table and sat down. He left a long pause. “You are perfectly free to return to your school if you wish. Perhaps it would be wiser.”
“And weaker.” I smiled at him. “Your rules.” He eyed me, as if he was half inclined to send me away. I reminded him that he had never finished his story.
“Very well. Let us have a little more brandy first.” I got up and fetched the bottle from beside the lamp and poured some. He sipped it, and then, after a gathering pause, went on.
“I was going to tell you more of him. But no matter now. Let us jump to the climax, To the moment when the gods lost patience with his hubris.