The Dark Labyrinth by Lawrence Durrell Read Free Book Online Page B

and even she felt an incurable staleness creeping into her work. They did not seem to have advanced a step towards their objectives. T. S. Eliot was not yet overthrown, and, try as she might, Alice found it impossible to make much headway. As the young man in the Oxhead Gallery said to her: “Frankly, you know, dash it all, taken by and large, as it were, everyone’s gone non-representative now. I mean to say, in England, mind you, a lot have even gone heterosexual in a desire to keep up, as it were.” It was a true if sad proposition. If it hadn’t been for the Burlington Magazine Alice would have utterly lost faith in herself. Specially as John was so gloomy and sat about all day by the river, tearing up his manuscript and repeating in hollow accents, “What the hell is the meaning of it all, anyway?” His father had given him the Parmenides for a birthday present.
    They travelled briefly in France and Spain, and the sun woke them up a bit. Everywhere they moved along the charming and romantic landscapes with the sense of having found at last their proper environment. They thought of taking a house in Venice, but gave the idea up as expensive and impracticable. The little English cottage cost a lot to keep up. In Madrid they had, enjoyably enough, a terrific quarrel—the first they had ever had. Alice had some trouble over her period and imagined that she was going to have a baby. Instead of being pleased for the sake of her unawakened subconscience, its very idea threw her into a panic. Now it seemed to her that a baby would threaten not only her art but her freedom too—the self-indulgent effortless years of conversation, travel and friendship which lay ahead. Though she still wanted the child the thought of losing both freedom and figure at one blow was too much. She became rather hysterical and, of course, John was to blame; he, for his part, found her rather tiresome as a travelling companion. After a brief passage-at-arms in which Alice broke a plate over his head, he retired to sulk in a nearby hotel until she should come to her senses.
    They had both of them been staying in a villa belonging to Coréze, the little South American Jew whose brief run of glory many will remember, and whose acrobatic leaps from style to style had amazed and delighted Alice. “Bounding vitality”, she had told John, “written over every canvas.” It was written all over Coréze’s little Semitic face too. Coréze was for some time a fiery little pace-maker for the Cubists, and had impressed them both with his tales of the great men he knew. His impersonation of James Joyce writing in chalk on a blackboard was impressive to a degree. He even gave the impression that parts of Ulysses would never have been written if he, Coréze … The story of Picasso and the Pernod, too, never failed to bring the house down. His imitation of the way the Master had put the glass down and said: “Tiens—un Pernod quoi?” was funnier and more expressive than Fernandel.
    When John walked out of the house, after carefully leaving the name of his hotel (so that Alice could go round and apologize), Coréze was full of sympathy and sadness. He had been flattering Alice a good deal, and had even bought a couple of her line-drawings to hang on his walls. He had prophesied great things for her. It was only natural that what had begun as a flirtation of minds should now go a step forward—at least so thought Coréze. Alice was not unwilling to bring John to heel, and what could be simpler than to pretend that she was falling in love with Coréze? As a matter of fact she was not quite sure at this stage what she felt about anything. Coréze was charming, so considerate and gentle. He took her in his arms as she was doing a pencil sketch of him and said: “Don’t let me fall in love with you, please don’t let me. It hurts too much.” There were tears in his eyes. It