Constance:or Solitary Practices (Avignon Quintet, Book 3)
Lawrence Durrell
Language: English
Pages: 356
ISBN: 0670239097
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
With the Second World War in full fury, Constance must explore the psyche of a mad world in order to save herself and those closest to her in the third volume of the Avignon Quintet
Durrell's beautiful Avignon Quintet continues with this harrowing, tumultuous installment. Here the protagonist is Constance, a psychoanalyst and mystic struggling for clarity in a world on fire with war, hatred, and inexplicable brutality. Her quest for sanity takes her through the deserts of Egypt (and into the arms of the leader of a suicide cult), through war-ravaged Poland, and finally into ancient Avignon. In the fields of southern France, Constance sees a religious historical drama come to a close—a mysterious narrative that began with the Knights Templar and ends with Hitler's mad grab for power.
see him feign a coldness he did not feel now, imagining heaven knows what about this portly and unimaginative figure who was all too anxious to relinquish her and head for home. She thanked him suitably, promised to keep in touch about their joint return to duty, and turned to follow Affad who already had her affairs in hand. His private car, an old American sedan, stood at the side of the road, and they piled into its warmth with gratitude. As he started the motor he said, “Look at me,
Affad dismally. “Again!” “I had formed him just as one forms a renal calculus – or a teratoma, or the shadowy figure of one’s twin which must be thrown by the ever-present witness of birth, the placenta. To hell with all this verbiage! The creature is alive, he is coming to lunch, he will even get an O.B.E. in a while for his services to the Crown. O God, Sebastian, I wish you were staying; I have learned so much from you!” Still his friend said nothing but simply stood looking down at him
and grinding landing rounded off this disagreeable journey; a chalky greasy dawn was coming up as the office car rounded the last headland by the dunes and entered the sleeping town with its soft whirling klaxon pleading with strings of early camels plodding to market with vegetables. “I shall say no more – except tell me as soon as you can what they say,” said the Prince and his companion nodded, smiling wanly. “It’s impossible to foresee their judgement,” he said, “because it has never happened
words just sounds to be filled in and colours!” She was speaking of reality, he quite understood. It made him feel helpless and morbidly sad. “O God, why can’t you remember? Can’t you remember when you dropped the basket and all the eggs were broken – every last one?” She gave a cry of amazement, youthful and lyrical, her face cast up to the sky as she pronounced the word, the elusive word: “Sebastian! At last I have got it. O my darling! How could I?” And now she was really crying and in his
finger softly on his nose, chin, forehead. But always he went the full length, crying until he was completely exhausted, worn out, hypotonic. Gradually, too, as she advanced tiptoe into this uncharted territory, it seemed that she could “read” the infantile dilemma which had stunted the psychic growth of the child. What was also new was the feeling that now he was cooperating unconsciously with her. His muscle schemes were relaxing, he was drawing strength from her, and from the admission of his