A Smile in the Mind's Eye by Lawrence Durrell

they do in Provence. The lake came up, as if presented upon the palm of an invisible conjuror’s hand, and upon it the sacred island with its monastery and tall trees, all so toy-like and so calm and so small and homely in scale. The green lake edge was Irish green. As for Orta, Balzac described it once with a simile that I had thought suspect, as altogether too plump, ‘a pearl in a green jewel case’… Quite the contrary. It is not. He was stirred by the strange opalescent quality of the light and the translucent shifts of colour on the mountains which cradled and framed the island. This hazy misty feeling throws everything in and out of focus and gives a feeling of unreality, or iridescence, to the whole waterscape. Moreover, the whole thing is double for when the water is calm the mountains repeat themselves in it and one does not know which side up one is; you have the feeling sometimes of walking on the sky. No, Balzac’s image is very exact, and cannot be bettered.
    I rolled down these shadowy inclines, round a dozen curves, and came to rest in the tiny square with its two inns, its pleasant arcades and small cafes. The Dragon was a pleasant little auberge as well with its rooms opening on the lake. Vega was to lodge at the Catello opposite, twenty yards away. We would be able to wave from our respective balconies over the water! I would have liked to send flowers to her room but I did not have her name, like the fool I was. I went however and consulted the visitor’s book – a very vague document kept in pencil by a near-analphabetic – in the hope of discovering it, since she said she had booked there. I supposed that she was German by marriage though I knew her to be French by birth. Which name then? There was only one person expected for the next evening and she was called Chantal De Legume. My heart sank. Just the thought that she might be called Chantal De Legume made me burst into a sweat of apprehension. It would spoil everything – such a name comprised everything! I know it is irrational but I hoped desperately that she was not called Chantal De Legume. (She is not called Chantal De Legume!)
    I renounced the flowers, and took a boat to drift on that quiet water for an hour or so before dinner time, reflecting idly on that long-lost philosopher whose name nobody in Orta would know today – except perhaps the curé (and then only as an anti-Christ). The old man who rowed me was calm and polite but not voluble; his father would have been of an age to ferry Nietzsche and Lou out upon the waters of Orta, to take them to the island of San Julio; or perhaps his grandfather? But no, for Lou lived on until the beginning of the Nazi epoch in Germany. I could actually have met her. The water was so warm that I knew I should be tempted to take a silent night-swim in it later on. I had brought my own little Zodiac dinghy with its motor, but Orta is too small a lake to poison with outboard motors. It is made for the slow sweep of oars, the slow creak of wood not properly imbibed by a winter of submersion. The little awnings and the gay frills of the boat were rather dusty and damp. Summer was not yet here. High above me as I lay in the sheets of the boat rose the Monte Sacro – I could see St Francis hanging off a wooded balcony and waving to me. I waved back but I wanted to save him until Vega came. The twenty little chapels – each as big as a Swiss chalet – house twenty tableaux – scenes from the life of St Francis – enacted by life-size statues in gutta percha, appropriately dressed and painted, each different, and all grandiose. Vega was sure that Nietzsche, being a man, would have sought the aid of one such shrine when he proposed to Lou! (For a great man he was extraordinarily timid.) The problem was which one – she had come here to find that out. But I had other fish to fry – for I had been reading Nietzsche and discovering what had really