Free A Smile in the Mind's Eye by Lawrence Durrell Page B

here that the thirty-year-old philosopher proposed to the eighteen-year-old girl, it was here that he outlined the whole scenario of Zarathustra! Once one has read of the notebooks in which they played question-and-answer games and riddles based on philosophic questions it seems quite possible that passages of the great classic could actually have been written by her. The idea, however far-fetched, intrigued me. And with this end in mind I obtained a commission from an American paper to write a vignette on the Borromean Islands which lay hard by on the the larger lake, Maggiori. ‘How odd!’ I said, and she echoed me, ‘Why odd?’ I said that I was doing the same sort of thing and added, ‘I am going down to Orta next Sunday for a week. I want to see the little lake where they were so happy when they were young. I have some notions about her making a contribution to Zarathustra – which I shall never be able to check because I have no German.’
    â€˜Orta?’ She was looking at me very strangely indeed; then she started to laugh. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I have just come from the station.’ And extracting from her bag a railway reservation she placed it before me on the table. I saw it was a return ticket to Stresa which I knew was, so to speak, the railhead for the lake of Orta. The date was for the following weekend! The coincidence was unbelievable and we both laughed.
    â€˜I want to visit the little sacred hill with all the chapels to try and see which was the one in which he proposed to her only to be rejected – quite properly; he was not fit to be married to a woman and she would have made a wretched wife, always on the move, always disappearing.’
    â€˜The Monte Sacro?’
    â€˜Yes. I have never been.’
    â€˜Nor have I.’
    I produced a travel brochure with some pictures of the lake, and she produced an identical one.
    â€˜But your ticket is a single – are you alone?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Then can we meet? Shall we meet?’
    â€˜Of course. I will bring the books I have.’
    â€˜Yes, so shall I.’
    It was one of these strange encounters which are all too rare in life and which make it echo. We shook hands rather awkwardly as we said goodbye; the blue regard set up a memory in me of some half-forgotten poem which mentioned the ‘vernal twinkling of butterflies’ in Coleridge – I had tried in vain to trace the quotation; nor could I now remember who had written the poem. All I remembered of the blonde girl now was the blue regard of a fixed star, staring down from mid-heaven upon the smooth lake. In my absent-minded way I had forgotten even to write down her name and phone number – in case of any change of plan. It was better perhaps. It gave her a kind of anonymity. I motored back to Provence during the night to collect my affairs and make my dispositions for Italy. I did not intend to rush it, and in my little camper I could easily make Novarra in one day; I would dawdle, I thought, round Maggiori and landfall at The Dragon in Orta well before Saturday. Then I would meet her train at Stresa – though she did not know this as yet!

5
    So it fell out. I crossed the wide plain of Novarra one late afternoon; all the corn had caught alight on both sides of the road and a racing fire seemed to stretch away to the horizon on either side of me. It was a dramatic vision of destruction! But it was so very hot that I did not linger but raced through, fearing an exploding petrol tank or some such mishap. After a very few more kilometres the green Alpine meadows and foothills started to rise ahead of me and suddenly it was there – a modest green signpost directing me to the tiny kidney-shaped lake I was hunting for: Nietzsche’s Orta. (‘Our Orta’ he had written in a love letter to Lou.) The approaches grew narrower, more sinuous, and densely wooded – nightingales sang everywhere, just as