I don’t know what I thought. I thought, Mr. Van Eck for some reason (perhaps he is a secret agent) “makes up.” Could he rub in or put on that scar? Well, perhaps it wasn’t Mr. Van Eck who “made up” as a secret agent; perhaps the secret agent made up as Mr. Van Eck.
No, I did not know this, think all of this out, at that exact moment, in February. Yes, it was February. It was not yet March; February is Aquarius, the house of friends. .
March 13
The Professor said he was curious to see how the story would proceed, now we had the frame.
I too was curious. If the Professor could not solve my problem, no one could. I told him how the first evening out I was very upset as I had on my left a deaf old Canadian lady who was on her way to Athens to visit a niece who had married a Greek lawyer. I am particularly unhappy when I have to raise my voice in speaking and I visualized having to carry on polite table talk in this strained and unnatural manner, the whole voyage out. Even so, it would not have mattered so much if the whole table had not appeared to stop their buzz of conversation every time I lifted my voice to make some inane remark or in politeness tried my best to answer noncommittally when the old lady asked me about my plans and why was I on this boat and how had I managed to get on it?
I had not then distinguished the Alexandrian family, or I did not know that they were on the way to Alexandria — “Alex” the big boy called it. It was “Alex” and “Gib” too, with the engineer and a missionary (I later gathered) who sat within, as it were, hailing distance. But neither the missionary nor the Alexandrian tobacco merchant (as I afterwards found he was) nor the engineer bound for Euboea helped me in the least in my predicament.
It seemed a miracle, after two nights in this anguish, to find I had another companion.
It was Mr. Van Eck. I don’t know how he got there. The old lady, it is true, had retired to her cabin for the rest of the trip. I suppose seasoned travelers, as all these seemed to be, know how to arrange these things. To me it was little less than a miracle to find, the third day, instead of the deaf old lady, a sympathetic, slightly middle-aged man-of-the-world, easy and affable, making witty remarks sotto voce about our fellow passengers.
I was fascinated with Peter Van Eck. He had traveled widely, had lived in Greece for some time, had worked on excavations in Crete, was an architect by profession and he said an artist by choice but he had had little choice in the matter. He had been in Egypt at one time, helping to restore some Caliph’s or Khedive’s shrine or tomb. These words were new to me. He said something was “Khedival” to Bryher across the table; I don’t remember what. I only remember hearing the word for the first time.
But I had my reservations. An asbestos curtain had dropped between me and my past, my not-so-far-past bitter severance from love and friendship.
I repeated, “We were three weeks on the way.” The Professor said, “So-o slow?”
We ran away from Dr. Ellis at Algeciras and went with Mr. Van Eck for a walk through a cork forest; the ground was starry with February narcissus. This was Mr. Van Eck, it was not the Man on the boat, but I had then neither the wit, the temerity, nor the courage to work this all out. If Mr. Van Eck was the Man on the boat, then I lost something. If Mr. Van Eck was not the Man on the boat, then I lost something. I don’t know why, but at Malta I told Bryher that I did not want the four of us to drive out to the old town as Mr. Van Eck suggested. I think I wanted to be alone with Bryher, to think out something that I did not question, or that I did not put into a question. To answer the question meant loss of one or the other, Mr. Van Eck or the Man on the boat.
Sometimes Mr. Van Eck was the Man on the boat but he was not the Man on the boat that I met the first time in the Bay. I should have known. I did know, though I could not yet admit it, that not only were the dolphins unconvincing but the sea itself was impossible. That is, it was all right at the time but you do not have a quiet sea and a boat moving with no tremor, with no quiver or pulse of engine, on a sea that is level yet broken in a thousand perfectly peaked wavelets like the waves in the background of a Botticelli. No, it was all wrong.
Yet it was so supremely natural that I turned to Mr. Van Eck, at the table. “It was beautiful watching the dolphins,” I said. “If only Bryher had been with us.” Bryher said, I thought a little sullenly, “Where were you anyway?” I said, “I was on deck. I dashed up for a breath of air and to see the sunset. I was on deck watching the dolphins with Mr. Van Eck.” I turned to Mr. Van Eck for confirmation.
He smiled at Bryher across the table. He had an engaging manner. The captain said, “Dolphins? The wireless-operator is our dolphin expert. He reported no dolphins.” “But there were dolphins.” I turned to Mr. Van Eck again for confirmation. “Which way were they swimming?” said the captain. I indicated above the table the direction of the frieze of flying dolphins. “They were swimming this way,” I said, indicating a line “forward,” past Mr. Van Eck down the table. “That’s right,” said the captain, “that’s how they would be swimming. They swim with the wind. I must ask the wireless-operator.”
But now I said to the Professor, “Where was I, if Bryher couldn’t find me?”
Perhaps this is an old conundrum. Perhaps there is no answer to it or it may be dangerous to ask it, for the wrong answer (as with the Sphinx in Egypt) may bring death. At least, I could record the details of my experience, could note them down, could weave and re-weave the threads, the tapestry on this frame. It did not really matter where I was. Perhaps it was a story like the erlking. Perhaps, as is more likely, it was a story like Algernon Blackwood’s Centaur.
I had read The Centaur a number of times, first in America. There was that same theme, that same absolute and exact minute when everything changed on a small passenger boat (as I remember) on the way to Greece. At an exact moment, the boat slipped into enchantment. So here, at an exact moment, by clock time, on an exact map, on the way to the Pillars of Hercules, on a boat that was bound for the port of Athens, there was a “crossing the line.” I think in The Centaur, the narrator or hero knew the minute, the second that the line was crossed. I, the narrator of this story, did not know I had crossed the line.
When I did realize it, it was too late, I could not approach Mr. Van Eck. He was on his way to Delhi.
Delhi, Delphi?
They arrange things that way, I suppose. If I had realized the story at the time of our parting in Athens, perhaps there would have been no parting. In which case, I would have lost the story.
At that table in the long salon, names were batted about to and fro, up and down, like old-fashioned table-tennis balls. London, Gibraltar, Algeciras, Malta, Athens, Delhi, Alexandria, Cairo. . I said to Mr. Van Eck that last morning at breakfast, “I suppose I’ll run across you in one of the capitals of Europe.” I did not want to make any definite arrangement for meeting him in Athens. “I’ll meet you in the Propylae,” he said.
Bryher and I met him in the Propylae with Dr. Ellis. But he let us go on alone through the gates, to the Parthenon.
8 P.M.
I feel limp and frustrated. I was annoyed at the end of my session as Yofi would wander about and I felt that the Professor was more interested in Yofi than he was in my story. I was annoyed because I heard someone laughing outside the door. I seldom hear or register what is going on in the waiting room or the hall. The Professor said, “So the memories are faded?” Perhaps he felt that I was really trying too hard to make a dramatic sequence of this story that was all “an atmosphere. . ”