Pascali's Island

The cicadas shrilled with what seemed increasing volume all round him, but not, somehow, he said, in the hollow itself, once he began the descent – they seemed to stop on the edge of the slope, so that the afternoon was both loud and silent. He looked around a bit down there, saw nothing of interest, and was about to leave when, again on impulse, pure impulse – he stressed this, Excellency – he had walked over and forced a way through the tangle of scrub that grew against the foot of the slope. Nothing there but the same reddish earth and grey limestone -or such at least was his first impression-and he was in the act of turning away, when something glimpsed there, some intimation only half-conscious, registered as it were on the retinue of the mind, caused him to look again, more closely.

Then he saw what he had seen before, but now with full awareness.

It was at first like a curiously curved spur of rock embedded in the hillside, outer edge of some much greater mass. He might have assumed it to be no more that this. He said, 'I might have left it, even then,' and his eyes were stark at the thought of that appalling possibility. However, something more than accidental about that curving line had come home to him – it was, after all, what had made him look again: the impossibility of the shape being a merely random formation. 'There was something necessary about it,' he said. He looked at me anxiously, for understanding, for the charity of understanding. 'In the last analysis,' he said, 'there is no resemblance between the forms in nature and the human form, none at all.' I mentioned the gnarled shapes olive trees sometimes assume, the way the sea will sculpt human-seeming reclinations in the rocks of the shore. 'No, no,' he said impatiently. 'There is no necessity about any of these things. That is my whole point. That is what I saw. Those other things you mention, rocks and trees and so forth, they are… obedient. What I saw in that line was something urgent. It is quite different, you see.' He was excited at the force of the distinction he was making. He did not want me to discuss it with him, only to understand his feelings, see the wonder.

So he had stepped closer, taking care not to damage the screening bushes – you see, he was already thinking of concealment, Excellency. He looked closely at it, touched it: it was rounded, smooth beneath the flaking clay. It came to him then that this was a human arm.

He shivered, he told me, in spite of the heat in that enclosure. There was something deeply disturbing, u

After a while he stood back. He was looking at the shape of a naked human forearm, life-size, fashioned in metal-bronze it could only be. From the angle of this, he judged that the body to which it was attached was half-turned inward, into the hillside.

'Amazing,' Mister Bowles said. 'You have no idea how strange it was, seeing it there like that. It was as if it was struggling, itself, to get out.'

He had been obliged to leave it at this point, though he did not say why. He could not stay any longer, he said – there was no time. He had made no attempt to conceal things. In any case, he said, it was not visible, so far at least, from the floor of the hollow. Only someone who did as he had done, forced through the scrub, would have been able to see it. 'That's the whole point, you see,' he said. 'No one would normally… I myself… I was led to it.' So he had left it and clambered up again, out of that charmed place.

He had been surprised, he said, momentarily, when he got out into the open and could see the sea again, to find that everything looked unchanged. 'I tell you,' he said, 'I expected the sea or the hills or something in the landscape to be different, changed, after that. You probably think that's fu

'No,' I said, 'I understand it very well.'

'It was such a wonderful experience, you see. The way I was directed to it, you know. I haven't been able to describe it properly. I went back again today – you saw me there. But it is slow work. I am afraid of damaging him.'

'So you knew,' I said, 'that same evening – when you sent the note?'

'Oh, yes. That's why I mentioned the soldiers. They were there, you know, two of them, actually on the site, just a bit higher up from the villa.'

'Well, they are still not very far away,' I said. 'You didn't think they would remove them altogether, did you?'

'There are two more, lower down,' he said, 'but it doesn't really matter. All I need is a bit more time. And that's where you come in.'

'How is that?' I said. I got up, for no particular reason, and walked a few paces across the floor. The movement brought me a view of the sky through Mister Bowles's window, and I saw the full moon hanging there, improbably large, dilated-looking as if resting on liquid.

'If you would go back to them,' he said, 'ask them for just a day or two more. Until the day after tomorrow. That's all the time I need. That would give me a chance to clean it up, have a good look at it. Have some sketches made, you know.'

' Lydia would be able to do that,' I said. 'Have you told her about the statue?'

'No, not yet. I'd rather you didn't say anything to her about it just yet.'

Excellency, I do not believe him. I think Lydia is in love with him, or at least that he has succeeded in making his life and purpose vitally important to her – which amounts to the same thing. I think she has been acting as intermediary for him with Mister Smith. Inconceivable that she should have remained in ignorance about the existence of the statue, when it was taking up so much of his time and attention. Why does he lie to me? Is it because he and Lydia are pla

'So that is your proposition,' I said. 'I am to go to Mahmoud Pasha and Izzet and ask them to wait until the day after tomorrow. Then presumably you will hand back the lease agreement?'

'Exactly,' he said. 'And then we shall get our money.'

'What makes you think they'll wait?' I said. Actually, I was myself puzzled, as I had been puzzled for some time, by the most uncharacteristic patience being displayed by Mahmoud.

The Pasha is afraid of something, Excellency. Something is holding him back – something more than respect for a lease or the rights of a British subject.

'Oh, they'll wait,' Mister Bowles said now, with full confidence – it is obvious that he at least believes in these. 'When we have got our money,' he said, 'I shall report my discovery to the authorities in Constantinople. The statue will be recovered, it will be taken to Gulhane, where it will be exhibited to the public as one of the new museum's most prized possessions. I will request that a small plaque be placed beside it, giving my name and the circumstances of the finding.'

'And that would be enough for you?' I asked.

'It would be there, you see,' he said. 'My name, I mean. There for all to read.'

'What about me?' I said. 'Mahmoud Pasha will be furious. He will have no time to explore the site. Officials from the mainland will be here as soon as you report the matter.'

'True,' he said. 'That is quite true, old chap, but you will have the money, won't you? I mean to say, if Mahmoud had paid up and then found nothing, your position would have been just as difficult.'