Pascali's Island

'Five hundred and fifty?' Mister Bowles reflected for a moment or two. Izzet saved what dignity he could by refraining from looking at the Englishman's face, or at mine. 'Very well,' Mister Bowles said. 'I will accept that. It isn't enough, really, but I don't want to haggle.'

'He agrees,' I said. I did not translate the final remarks out of pity for Izzet.

'The money will be ready this evening,' Izzet said.

'Shall we say seven o'clock, then? Good.'

'The effendi will have the documents?'

'Oh yes,' Mister Bowles said. 'I'll have the documents all right.'

'Until this evening then.' Izzet departed, beneath the lofty gaze of the Prussian whoremaster.

'This calls for a drink,' Mister Bowles said. He gave his slow smile, and his eyes widened, in that attractive combination of effects that was becoming familiar to me.

It was not a smile of triumph. There was nothing gloating about it. It seemed rather to express a kind of calm vindication, as if Mister Bowles had made a bold stand for truth and right, and been justified.

'One would almost say,' I said, 'that you had been through this kind of thing before.'

He did not stop smiling, but he looked at me with a more particular attention. 'Good heavens, no,' he said. 'Hardly the kind of thing… Why do you say that?'

'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'The way you handled it. What about the soldiers?'

'Albanians, by the look of them. They are bivouacked up there, overlooking the site. They didn't lose much time, did they?' He paused. His face had suddenly assumed a look of indignation and contempt. 'They're terrified in case I'm going to cart the stuff off,' he said.

'You wouldn't do that,' I said.

'No, of course not. But you know what these people are like. How about a drink?'

I chose aniseed brandy again, again because of the mezedes. Mister Bowles asked for white wine.

'I am grateful to you for your help,' he said. His eyes looked into mine directly, candidly. 'When things are finally settled,' he said, 'I will see that you are not the loser by it.'

The moment had come. We were sitting opposite each other, with only the narrow table between us. There were other people in the room now, but no one within earshot. Still I hesitated. I was afraid of him, physically afraid. Besides that, in a curious way I was in awe of him, because of his monumental hypocrisy. When people transgress violently against one's conception of them, Excellency, they assert themselves with peculiar vividness, they oblige us to look at them with washed eyes, so to speak. He was so far not what I had thought him that he awed me. Other pictures, former impressions, still clung to him, confusing my mind: the tall stranger momentarily bareheaded among the haggling Greeks; the amphibious lover; the conjuror with the Gladstone bag. His ma

I am aware that I am about to incriminate myself in your eyes. I should have reported Mister Bowles already. He has changed me. Today, Kourban Bayram, in the year of the Prophet 1286, sitting opposite Mister Bowles the trickster, aware of the commerce of the town proceeding outside, noting with approval that Biron has brought bread with the squid, I knew that this was a turning point in my life. My poor stratagems of the past paled before this one. And it was this knowledge that kept me still silent. I remarked on the heat. I mopped with monogrammed handkerchief the sides of my neck. I drank some of the water that had been brought with my aniseed brandy.

'These people,' Mister Bowles said, and the contempt was back on his face and in his voice. 'They are so absolutely, totally mercenary. There is no spark of… Well, I know it's an old-fashioned word these days, but there doesn't seem to be any concept of honour, among them. It's no wonder the Ottoman Empire is breaking up, if what I've just seen is an example?

It was this piece of insolence that emboldened me, Excellency, drove me to speech. He was taking me for as great a fool as the others.

'That head,' I said. 'You brought it with you.'

'I beg your pardon?'

I speared another pink crisp sliver of squid on my fork. My hands were unsteady. I am the most pacific of mortals, and Mister Bowles is a man acquainted with violence. 'You brought it with you,' I said. 'You didn't find it here.'

Our eyes met now, really I think for the first time fully, my solipsistic brown ones, his enterprising blue. Across the narrow table, across chasms of difference, I saw my image. Then with sudden shyness I glanced away. 'You needn't keep up this pretence with me,' I said.

'Pretence?' he said. 'What are you talking about?' He had paled, or so I thought, under the tan, and I saw his chest move with the deep intake of his breath.

'That head,' I said, 'the head you produced from your bag, with the air of a conjuror if I may say so, that self-same head was in your possession when you set foot on this island, and so by inference were all the other objects which you laid on Mahmoud Pasha's desk.'

I put down the fork and clasped my hands together under the table, in an effort to control their trembling. I kept my eyes away from Mister Bowles, I think out of some kind of tact – I was allowing him time to find a suitable face. When I did look his way again I found him regarding me closely.

'You must have a reason for saying this,' he said.

I told him how I had found the head in his room that evening. Naturally I did not mention the revolver or notebook.

'What were you looking for?' he asked. 'Are you a police agent?'

'I am nothing to do with the police.'

'Some kind of informer, anyway,' he said, with the same contempt.

I felt the blood rush to my face. It was not shame, Excellency – I am proud of my calling. It was partly that even now, perhaps particularly now, I wanted him to like me, to think well of me, and so I was wounded by his disparaging tone. But it was more than this. In those moments, as I paused before replying, all my frustration, all the pain of unjust neglect, rose up in me, led me to betray myself. In a voice I could barely control, I said, 'No, not some kind – the best kind, I am the best kind.'

'An informer,' he said again.

'And you are a swindler,' I said, trying to master my agitation, 'and the laws against that kind of thing are severe in the domains of the Sultan, not to say savage. As in all societies where malpractices are rife. Not to mention the fact that a word from me would certainly be sufficient to spoil your game here, and lose you the money.'

'Swindler?' he said. 'You understand nothing about it. They have impeded my research.'

It was astonishing, even in the rush of my feelings I was checked – he was the same, Excellency: the angry candour of those blue eyes, as if at some impatience with the world for failing to be adequate to his conception; honesty like a sort of suppressed rage in him; the halting yet curiously eloquent ma

'You understand nothing,' he repeated. 'I am simply an instrument.'

I did not pay much attention to this remark at the time, being too eager to drive home my advantage. But I remembered it afterwards, and his face saying it.

'At the moment,' I went on, 'time is working in your favour. Time and their greed and what they think of as your stupidity. They are obliged to gamble on your honesty – which I have helped you to establish. Any doubt of this and your scheme falls flat. And so do you. I want two hundred liras.'

He was silent for a full minute. He looked briefly round the room, then his eyes returned to my face, steadied there, as if he was aiming. I did riot like this look of his.