The Alexandria Quartet (36 page)

Pombal walking in stately fashion down Rue Fuad, dead drunk at ten in the morning, clad in full evening dress, cloak and opera hat — but bearing on his shirt-front, written in lipstick, the words ‘Torche-cul des républicains.'

(Museum)

Alexander wearing the horns of Ammon (Nessim's madness). He identified himself with A because of the horns?

Justine reflecting sadly on the statue of Berenice mourning her little daughter whom the Priests deified: ‘Did that assuage her grief I wonder? Or did it make it more permanent?'

Tombstone of Apollodorus giving his child a toy. ‘Could bring tears to one's eyes.' (Pursewarden) ‘They are all dead. Nothing to show for it.'

Aurelia beseeching Petesouchos the crocodile god . . Narouz.

Lioness Holding a Golden flower…

Ushabti… little serving figures which are supposed to work for the mummy in the underworld.

Somehow even Scobie's death did not disturb our picture of him. I had already seen him long before in Paradise — the soft conklin-coloured yams like the haunches of newly cooked babies: the night falling with its deep-breathing blue slur over Tobago, softer than parrot-plumage. Paper flamingoes touched with gold-leaf, rising and falling on the sky, touched by the keening of the bruise-dark water-bamboos. His little hut of reeds with the cane bed, beside which still stands the honoured cake-stand of his earthly life. Clea once asked him: ‘Do you not miss the sea, Scobie?' and the old man replied simply, without hesitation, ‘Every night I put to sea in my dreams.'

I copied out and gave her the two translations from Cavafy which had pleased her though they were by no means literal. By now the Cavafy canon has been established by the fine thoughtful translations of Mavrogordato and in a sense the poet has been freed for other poets to experiment with; I have tried to transplant rather than translate — with what success I cannot say.

THE CITY

You tell yourself: I'll be gone

To some other land, some other sea,

To a city lovelier far than this

Could ever have been or hoped to be —

Where every step now tightens the noose:

A heart in a body buried and out of use:

How long, how long must I be here

Confined among these dreary purlieus

Of the common mind? Wherever now I look

Black ruins of my life rise into view.

So many years have I been here

Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.

There's no new land, my friend, no

New sea; for the city will follow you,

In the same streets you'll wander endlessly,

The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,

In the same house go white at last —

The city is a cage.

No other places, always this

Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists

To take you from yourself. Ah! don't you see

Just as you've ruined your life in this

One plot of ground you've ruined its worth

Everywhere now — over the whole earth?

THE GOD ABANDONS ANTONY

When suddenly at darkest midnight heard,

The invisible company passing, the clear voices,

Ravishing music of invisible choirs —

Your fortunes having failed you now,

Hopes gone aground, a lifetime of desires

Turned into smoke. Ah! do not agonize

At what is past deceiving

But like a man long since prepared

With courage say your last good-byes

To Alexandria as she is leaving.

Do not be tricked and never say

It was a dream or that your ears misled,

Leave cowards their entreaties and complaints,

Let all such useless hopes as these be shed,

And like a man long since prepared,

Deliberately, with pride, with resignation

Befitting you and worthy of such a city

Turn to the open window and look down

To drink past all deceiving

Your last dark rapture from the mystical throng

And say farewell, farewell to Alexandria leaving.

NOTES IN THE TEXT

Page 18. ‘The Poet of the city.' C. P. Cavafy.

Page 18. ‘The old man.' C. P. Cavafy.

Page 39. Caballi. The astral bodies of men who died a premature death ‘They imagine to perform bodily actions while in fact they have no physical bodies but act in their thoughts.'
Paracelsus
.

Page 39. ‘Held the Gnostic doctrine that creation is a mistake.… He imagines a primal God, the centre of a divine harmony, who sent out manifestations of himself in pairs of male and female. Each pair was inferior to its predecessor and Sophia (“wisdom”) the female of the thirtieth pair, least perfect of all. She showed her imperfection not, like Lucifer, by rebelling from God, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him. She fell through love.' E. M. Forster,
Alexandria
.

Page 40. Quotation from Paracelsus.

Page 51. Taphia, Egyptian ‘Red Biddy.'

Page 53. Greek text.
.