Demanding words iii
The sun had climbed into a heaven without once shining directly upon the water. Through a cloud-surface it allowed its beams to diffuse them-selves over everything with a dense coppery hue, turning the water to lead beneath us. It increased our range of sight, how-ever, and with it our speed.
From where he sat at the tiller the captain made a chopping motion with his hand to indicate, in Greek fashion, the fact that we were making better time. The boy came aft and sat for a while to make conversation. Points of water glistened in his beard and hair. 'Patmos' he said, 'you will like it. All foreigners like it. They have good fruit and water.' Then raising himself the better to cup his hands about a box of English matches as he lit a cigar-ette he added, with a touch of medieval wonder: 'And there is a telephone. The Abbot speaks to it every day.'
'Have you ever used it?' I asked him.
'I? What for?'
Lawrence Durrell
Reflections on a Marine Venus
Faber & Faber, Ltd, 1953©
i, ii: by land by air by sea
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there is little use for one-really-after having one for all my years I can easily say that. the world is infinitesimal- and most of the time mine is a broad as I want it to be-there are times however traveling- by land by air by sea is a good thing. Luckily WHIT knows best.
ReplyDeleteHello, PGT, I think you'll be delighted to learn, as I was, that the waving youth was exclaiming, "Listen to the silence!" That will be one gentleman who knows how to use a telephone. :)
ReplyDeleteTrue, deep silence
ReplyDeleteHeard very seldom now.
And once in durrell's Greece , on a lttle islanda storm kicked up and blew out all
The phone lines.
One could neither return to London
Nor telephone London.
And silence reigned supreme.
thank you very warmly for these words, the space they restore, these feelings
ReplyDeleteL / C