“All those stories about sinister hypnotists forcing—?”
“A hypnotist can make you do foolish and incongruous things. But he is powerless against the superego.”
We went through the gate. I let a few moments pass.
“You hypnotize Lily?”
“From time to time. For therapeutic reasons.”
He indicated the line we should take through the trees.
“It reduces her schizophrenia?”
“Precisely. It reduces her schizophrenia.” Again we walked some way before he spoke again; but this time it was with less asperity, as if the leaving Bourani had allowed him to recover his equanimity. “How did you find her just now?”
“Enigmatic.”
“Not to me.” He gave me a quick, burning look. “She is assuming her persecution role. I saw that at once.”
I grinned; he studiously avoided looking at me.
“I didn’t notice it.”
“She is deceitful.” Then he said, as if it followed, “She has spoken of you a great deal in our absence.”
“May I ask where you were?”
“We were in Beirut, Nicholas. And she talked about you in terms that suggested the possibility of a certain physical attraction. I say this merely to warn you. You must resist all her advances in that line. This will be difficult for you. She is a pretty girl. And very clever at getting what she wants.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I smiled at him again, to insure myself against seeming his fool. But once more he had neatly slashed off the cautious belief I was beginning to grow in Lily as a totally independent person, with independent motives. It was as if he could never let me rest too long on the pleasant side of the masque; always the black side had to be evoked. Always he had to suggest that Lily was simply the personification of his irony, his partner in making all declarations ambivalent. Every truth at Bourani was a sort of lie; and every lie there, a sort of truth.
I asked him what they had been doing in Beirut, and as we went down through the trees, he talked about the Lebanon, which had not been the subject of my question, but which I guessed was all the answer I should get to it. Later, when he pressed me to tell him about Alison, I paid him back in his own coin.
44
She came with her lovely swaling walk towards the lamplight, towards the table, in the corner of the terrace, in a white dress under a black evening cloak. It looked more an Empire than a First World War dress, but I assumed that it was in period. Conchis and I stood for her. She allowed him to take off her cloak, then bowed imperceptibly to me. We sat, Conchis poured her a cup of coffee.
“Nicholas and I have been discussing religion.”
It was true. He had brought a Bible to table, with two reference slips in it; and we had got on to God and no-God.
“Indeed.” She looked at me; almost with hostility, so formally, in role.
“Nicholas calls himself an agnostic. But then he went on to say that he did not care.”
She switched her eyes back to me.
“Why do you not care?”
We had returned to uncontracted forms.
“More important things.”
“Is anything more important?”
“Practically everything, I should have thought.”
She pressed her lips together, and stared down at the tablecloth without speaking.' Then she leant forward and picked up a box of matches I had left on the table. She took out a dozen matchsticks and began to build a house.
“Perhaps you are afraid to think about God.”
“One can’t think about what cannot be known.”
“You never think about what is not certain? About tomorrow? About next year?”
“Of course. I can make reasonable prophecies about them.”
She played with the matches, pushing them idly into patterns with her long fingers. I watched her beautiful mouth; wished I could end the cold dialogue.
“I can make reasonable prophecies about God.”
“Such as?”
“He is very intelligent.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I do not understand him. Why he is, who he is, or how he is. And Maurice tells me I am quite intelligent. I think God must be very intelligent to be so much more intelligent than I am. To give me no clues. No certainties. No sights. No reasons. No motives.” She stared up at me from her matches; her eyes had a kind of bright intensity that I recognized from Conchis. Things were not fortuitous; her entry was timed, the subject ensured, and now the double message.
“Very intelligent—or very unkind?” I looked at Conchis with a small smile, but she answered.
“Very wise. Do you know, Mr. Urfe, that I pray?”
“What for?”
“I ask God never to reveal himself to me. Because if he did I should know that he was not God. But a liar.” Now she looked at Conchis, who was facing expressionlessly out to sea; waiting for her, I thought, to finish her part of the act. Suddenly I saw Lily’s forefinger silently tap the table twice. Her eyes flicked sideways at Conchis and then back to me, and she gave the tiniest, least perceptible of nods. I looked down. She had laid two matches diagonally across each other and two others beside them: XII. She avoided my suddenly comprehending eyes; and then, pushing the matchsticks into a little heap, she leant back out of the pool of light from the lamp and turned to Conchis. “But Mr. Urfe wishes to listen to you.”
“I sympathize with you, Nicholas.” He smiled at me. “I felt very much as you do when I was older and more experienced than you are. Neither of us has the intuitive humanity of womankind, so we are not to blame.” He said it quite without gallantry, as a simple statement. Lily would not meet my eyes. Her face was in shadow. She wore no jewelry, no ornament; simply the white dress, like a figure in a tableau symbolizing Purity. “But then I had an experience that led me to understand what Lily was just said to you. Just then she paid us the compliment of making God male. But I think she knows, as all intelligent women do, that all profound definitions of God are essentially definitions of the mother. Of giving things. Sometimes the strangest gifts. Because the religious instinct is really the instinct to define whatever gives each situation.”
He settled back in his chair.
“I think I told you that when modern history—because that chauffeur stood for democracy, equality, progress—struck de Deukans down in 1922 I was abroad. I was in fact in the remote north of Norway, in pursuit of birds—or to be more exact, bird sounds. You know that countless rare birds breed up there on the Arctic tundra. I am lucky. I have perfect pitch. I had by that time published one or two papers on the problems of accurately notating bird’s cries and songs. I had even begun a small scientific correspondence with men like Dr. Van Oort of Leiden, the American A. A. Saunders. The Alexanders in England. So in the summer of 1922 I left Paris for three months in the Arctic.
“On my way north a professor at Oslo University told me of an educated farmer who lived in the heart of the vast fir forests that run from Norway and Finland into Russia. It seemed this man had some knowledge of birds. He sent migration records, things like that, to my professor, who had never actually met him. The fir forest had several rare species I wanted to hear, so I decided to visit this farmer. As soon as I had ornithologically exhausted the tundra of the extreme north I crossed the Varanger Fjord and went to the little town of Kirkenes. From there, armed with my letter of introduction, I set out for Seidevarre.
“It took me four days to cover ninety miles. There was a road through the forest for the first twenty, but after that I had to travel by rowing boat from isolated farm to farm along the river Pasvik. Endless forest. Huge, dark firs for mile after mile after mile. The river as broad and silent as a lake in a fairy tale. Like a mirror unlooked-in since time began.