The Alexandria Quartet Read Online Free PDF

or women with money, assume with the obviously indigent: ‘What did you mean by your remark about the antinomian nature of irony?’ — or some such sally which I have forgotten.
    Unable to disentangle myself from Italy I looked up boorishly and saw her leaning down at me from the mirrors on three sides of the room, her dark thrilling face full of a troubled, arrogant reserve. I had of course forgotten what I had said about irony or anything else for that matter, and I told her so with an indifference that was not assumed. She heaved a short sigh, as if of natural relief, and sitting down opposite me lit a French caporal and with short decisive inspirations blew thin streamers of blue smoke up into the harsh light. She looked to me a trifle unbalanced, as she watched me with a candour I found embarrassing — it was as if she were trying to decide to what use I could be put. ‘I liked’ she said ‘the way you quoted his lines about the city. Your Greek is good. Doubtless you are a writer.’ I said: ‘Doubtless.’ Not to be known always wounds. There seemed no point in pursuing all this. I have always hated literary conversation. I offered her an olive which she ate swiftly, spitting the pit into her gloved hand like a cat where she held it absently, saying: ‘I want to take you to Nessim, my husband. Will you come?’
    A policeman had appeared in the doorway, obviously troubled about the abandoned car. That was the first time I saw the great house of Nessim with its statues and palm loggias, its Courbets and Bonnards — and so on. It was both beautiful and horrible. Justine hurried up the great staircase, pausing only to transfer her olive-pit from the pocket of her coat to a Chinese vase, calling all the time to Nessim. We went from room to room, fracturing the silences. He answered at last from the great studio on the roof and racing to him like a gun-dog she metaphorically dropped me at his feet and stood back, wagging her tail. She had achieved me.
    Nessim was sitting on the top of a ladder reading, and he came slowly down to us, looking first at one and then at the other. His shyness could not get any purchase of my shabbiness, damp hair, tin of olives, and for my part I could offer no explanation of my presence, since I did not know for what purpose I had been brought here.
    I took pity on him and offered him an olive; and sitting down together we finished the tin, while Justine foraged for drinks, talking, if I remember, of Orvieto where neither of us had been. It is such a solace to think back to that first meeting. Never have I been closer to them both — closer, I mean, to their marriage; they seemed to me then to be the magnificent two-headed animal a marriage could be. Watching the benign warmth of the light in his eye I realized, as I recalled all the scandalous rumours about Justine, that whatever she had done had been done in a sense for him — even what was evil or harmful in the eyes of the world. Her love was like a skin in which he lay sewn like the infant Heracles; and her efforts to achieve herself had led her always towards, and not away from him. The world has no use for this sort of paradox I know; but it seemed to me then that Nessim knew and accepted her in a way impossible to explain to someone for whom love is still entangled with the qualities of possessiveness. Once, much later, he told me: ‘What was I to do? Justine was too strong for me in too many ways. I could only out-love her — that was my long suit. I went ahead of her — I anticipated every lapse; she found me already there, at every point where she fell down, ready to help her to her feet and show that it did not matter. After all she compromised the least part of me — my reputation.’
    This was much later: before the unlucky complex of misfortunes had engulfed us we did not know each other well enough to talk as freely as this. I also remember him saying,