It was like the first day. The being uninvited, unsure; the going through the gate, approaching the house in its silent sunlit mystery, going round the colonnade; and there too it was the same, the tea table covered in muslin. No one present. The sea and the heat through the arches, the tiled floor, the silence, the waiting.

And although I was nervous for different reasons, even that was the same. I put my duffiebag on the cane settee and went into the music room. A figure stood up from behind the harpsichord. He had evidently been sitting on the music stool, reading a book, which he put down as soon as I appeared.

“Nicholas.”

“Hello, Mr. Conchis.” My voice was neutral.

He came and shook my hand, gave me a scrutiny; the characteristic rapid movement of his head.

“I am invited?”

“Of course. Did I not say?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“You are well?”

“Slightly bruised.” I raised my hand, which was scarred and still red from the daubings of Mercurochrome the school nurse had put on it.

“How did you do that?” He asked the question with a perfect effrontery.

“I tripped over something as I was running.”

He took me to the door, insisted on examining the hand.

“You must be careful. There is always the danger of tetanus.”

“I intend to be.”

He examined my bleak smile rather as he had looked at the hand. With the minutest of shrugs, which might or might not have been apologetic, he took my arm and led me out towards the tea table; then went to the corner.

“Maria!”

He came back to the table, and whisked the muslin away. We sat down.

“How was Geneva?”

“Dull.” He offered me a sandwich. “I foolishly entered a financing consortium two years ago. Can you imagine Versailles with not one Roi Soleil, but seven of them?”

“Financing what?”

“Many things.” Marie appeared with the tray. “But tell me what you have been doing.”

“Nothing.” I returned his oblique smile. “Waiting.”

He took the compliment with a little bow; and turned to the tea things.

I said, “I met Barba Dimitraki the other day. By chance.” He poured the tea into the cups, so unsurprised that I suspected he already knew. But the keen, bright look he gave me as he handed me my cup appeared to convey a certain admiration; as if he might have underestimated me.

“And what did he tell you?”

“Very little. But I understand that I have more fellow victims than I thought.”

“Victims?”

“A victim is someone who has something inflicted on him without being given any real choice.”

He sipped his tea. “That sounds an excellent definition of man.”

“I should like an excellent definition of God.”

“Yes. Of course.” He put his cup down and folded his arms; he seemed in an excellent humor, at his most Picasso-like and dangerous. “I was going to wait until tomorrow. But no matter.” He glanced at my hand but he seemed to hint at something other. At Julie? The smile lingered in his face, lingered and threatened, and then he said, “Well. What do you think I am doing?”

“Preparing to make a fool of me again?”

He smiled almost benignly at me, as if that afternoon I was constantly surprising him, and shook his head. “Now you have met Barba Dimitraki…” He left one of his characteristic long pauses, then went on. “Before the war we used to amuse ourselves with my private theatre here. And during the war, when I had a great deal of time to think, and no friends to amuse me, no theatre, I conceived a new kind of drama. One in which the conventional relations between audience and actors were forgotten. In which the conventional scenic geography, the notions of proscenium, stage, auditorium, were completely discarded. In which continuity of performance, either in time or place, was ignored. And in which the action, the narrative was fluid, with only a point of departure and a fixed point of conclusion.” His mesmeric eyes pinned mine. “You will find that Artaud and Pirandello and Brecht were all thinking, in their different ways, along similar lines. But they had neither the money nor the will—and perhaps not the time—to think as far as I did. The element that they could never bring themselves to discard was the audience.” He spread his arms. “Here we are all actors. None of us are as we really are.” He raised his hand quickly. “Yes, I know. You think you are not acting. Just pretending a little. But you have much to learn about yourself. You are as far from your true self as that Egyptian mask Our American friend wears is from his true face.”

I gave him a warning look. “He’s not my American friend.”

“If you had seen him play Othello, you would not say that. He is a very fine young actor.”

“He must be. I thought he was meant to be a mute.”

His smile was almost mischievous. “Then I have proved my praise.”

“Rather a waste of a very fine young actor.”

“His part is not ended yet.”

He sat watching me; the old humorlessly amused look.

“And you are the producer?”

“No. This year the director is a very old friend of mine. He used to come here before the war.”

“Shall I meet him?”

“That depends on him. But I think not.”

“Why on him?”

“Because I am an actor too, Nicholas, in this strange new metatheatre. That is why I say things both of us know cannot be true. Why I am permitted to lie. And why I do not want to know everything. I also wish to be surprised.”

I remembered something Julie had said: He wants us to be mysteries to him as well. But it was obviously a very limited freedom and mystery he wanted in us; however large an aviary the fancier builds, the aviary’s purpose is still to imprison.

“Your bank balance must get some surprises, too.”

“My dear Nicholas, the tragedy of being very rich is that one’s bank balance is incapable of giving one surprises. Pleasant or otherwise. But I confess that this is the most ambitious of our creations. That is partly because you have played your part so well.”

I smiled; lit a cigarette. “I feel I should ask for a salary.”

“You will receive the highest salary of all.”

Julie: a present, a surprise for you. An unexpected possibility shot through me, which I smothered; but I heard an unintended note of deference in my voice.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Perhaps you will never know it.” He added drily, “I am not talking of money. And it is also the most ambitious of our creations for the very simple reason that for me there may never be another year.”

“Your heart?”

“My heart.”

But he looked immortally tanned and fit; in any case, distanced any sympathy.

A silence came between us. I said, “Lily?”

“You will see Lily later.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Before you tell me what you do mean, let me assure you that after this weekend you will never see her again. In your life. That is the fixed point of conclusion this summer.”

This was the “last trick” of Julie’s letter. I guessed it; to make me think I had lost everything, then to give it to me. I gave him a cool look.

“'In my life' is a long time.”

“Nevertheless, the comedy is nearly over.”

“But I intend to see the actress home afterwards.”

“She has promised that, no doubt.”

“No doubt.”

He stood up. “Her promises are worth nothing. When you see her tomorrow to say goodbye, ask her to repeat to you the poem of Catullus that begins Nulli se dicit mulier mea.”

“Which you’ve taught her?”

“No. Lily is an excellent classical scholar, and she has an excellent memory.”

He remained staring rather fiercely down at me. I stood as well; but I was enjoying it, the bluffing.

“Of course you can prevent me seeing her again here. But what happens when we leave the island is really… with respect… our business. Not yours.”

“I am trying to warn you. As you say, I cannot stop you meeting away from the island. So you must draw your own conclusions. You may think you arrived here for our first tea together by pure hazard. You did not. If you had not come here that day, partly of your own free will, we should have ensured that you were definitely here by the next weekend. Similarly we have our fixed point of conclusion. You will be foolish to fight it.”