The Magus

Julie, Nick, and Conchis dine together, Julie rubbing her foot against Nick’s under the table, in a suddenly bold manner. Conchis picks up his life’s story from a few months before De Deukans’s death in 1922, when he travelled to the Arctic to study birds, landing in the village of Seidvarre in Norway, where he met a visually impaired “madman” called Henrik Nygaard. It soon became clear that the nature of Henrik’s “madness” was religious: For 12 years he had sequestered himself in an isolated hut close to his brother Gustav’s farm, waiting to meet God.

The height of Henrik’s religious ecstasy occurred when one night he walked to a nearby river shore and had a conversation with God; Conchis could tell Henrik was in the presence of something real, his “pillar of fire” (314), a reference to the Old Testament, in which God often reveals himself as a pillar of fire and cloud. This is when Conchis knew that people were mistaken in thinking Henrik spent his days waiting for God; the truth was Henrik had been meeting God all along. The experience with Henrik made Conchis reconsider his belief that all phenomena were scientific and explainable.

On Conchis’s return to France, he learnt about the fire at De Deukans’s chateau. Eerily, the fire took place at exactly the same time as Conchis’s sighting of Henrik’s ecstasy.

Nick and Julie fall silent, contemplating Conchis’s story. Julie retires for the night, but not before giving Nick a conspiratorial smile. Nick excuses himself for a stroll on the beach, assuming Julie will have snuck out to meet him. Julie arrives an hour later and kisses Nick passionately. Something about her manner makes Nick think she is another person. He seizes her wrist and sees it has no scar, implying this is June.

When Nick calls her ruse, June admits she is Julie’s twin. She tells Nick that Conchis’s story about Julie’s “madness” is untrue. A troubled Nick tells her that since she lied to him at dinner, he cannot decide who to trust. June implores him to believe her; she does not want to see Julie get hurt, as her sister is truly falling in love with Nick.

June’s earnestness softens Nick. He also finds himself entertaining fantasies of making love to both Julie and June. Suddenly, June tells Nick to leave as their “beloved watchdog” (325) is spying on her. Nick looks ahead and sees a tall, Black man, whom he recognizes as the wearer of the jackal mask. Though Nick tries to push away the man, he easily overpowers Nick and leaves with June. Nick feels his virility as a white man has been destroyed by the Black man, and then feels ashamed of his racist thinking.

The next morning, Nick is surprised to see both Julie and June waiting for him, dressed identically in pretty summer dresses. The sisters tell Nick they’re there together to show Nick that Conchis’s story of Julie’s mental illness is a lie. As June takes her leave, Julie shows Nick letters, photos, and other evidence to establish that the twins are indeed Julie and June Holmes of England, amateur actresses at a company called the Tavistock Rep.

According to Julie, Conchis hired the twins to star in a movie which was to be filmed in Greece this summer. However, when Julie and June landed in Phraxos, they soon realized they were part of a psychological experiment which Conchis refused to explain. Before Nick’s arrival, Conchis had told Julie and June he wanted to create a love triangle with Nick at the center, as in a story called The Three Hearts. Conchis keeps a close eye on Julie and June through Joe, the man in the jackal mask, making it difficult for the sisters to leave Phraxos. Finally feeling he can trust Julie, Nick kisses her, till they are both called to lunch.

After lunch, Nick, Julie, and June go to the nearby village of Moutsa, where the women swim in bikinis. When June takes off her top while sunbathing, a shocked Nick refuses to look at her. June teases Nick for being a prude, offending him. Nick and Julie leave June on the beach to visit a nearby chapel. In the empty chapel, Nick embraces Julie and begins making love to her. Though Julie is bashful, she soon returns Nick’s ardor. They are alerted by a noise. They open an adjoining door to see Joe. Nick and Julie storm out of the chapel in anger.

The group return to Bourani. At five o’clock, a yacht arrives to take June and Julie away for the night, accompanied by Joe. Waving goodbye to the young women from the beach, Nick feels “sexually and socially deprived” (364). At the house, he learns from Maria that he, too, has to leave, implying Conchis knows about his trip to Moutsa and recent intimacy with Julie. Packing his stuff, Nick feels even more dejected.

Back at the school, Nick spends Sunday evening writing letters to the Tavistock Rep and Julie’s former school and college to ascertain if she and June were telling the truth. He also writes to Leverrier, explaining his peculiar situation and asking him for guidance.

Later, he mulls over the day’s sudden events. He is sure Conchis has spies working for him in the school. That night, a boy brings Nick an obscure book called The Three Hearts by Theodoridis on the instructions of the deputy headmaster. The bizarre coincidence leaves Nick stunned. On Tuesday evening, as per his usual practice, Nick walks to the crest from where Bourani can be seen, and is astonished to see the Arethusa, Conchis’s yacht returning to the shore.

Nick rushes to Bourani and meets Julie, who tells him she is there with Conchis’s knowledge. Conchis now knows and accepts the truth that she and Nick are truly in love. According to Conchis, their “play” is soon to take a new turn, with more actors joining their crew. Nick is too happy to be with Julie to care about this information. He and Julie share confidences, with Julie telling Nick she has been with only a couple of men before Nick. They get into the sea and kiss, a newly emboldened Julie making Nick orgasm with her hands. After she leaves, Nick strolls happily on the beach.

Suddenly, Nick finds himself encircled by World War II German soldiers who drag him to a spot. Nick understands that these are the crew members whom Conchis said would be joining their play. As it dawns on Nick that the actors are performing the scene in which Conchis resisted the German army, he tries to joke with the “soldiers” about the verisimilitude of their performance. Without breaking character, the men pretend to brutalize “victims” as Nick watches, and then roughly tie him up, leaving him alone on the beach.

An angry, scared Nick frees himself, telling himself Conchis has gone too far this time. Nevertheless, he also knows his curiosity will force him to play his part in the drama till the very end.

Back in school, Nick gets a note from Conchis, in which the older man writes that he is disappointed in Nick, and Nick’s further visits to Bourani will be in vain. Humiliated, Nick decides to go to Bourani over the weekend, but finds Conchis’s villa deserted.

On his way back, Nick meets an older man called Barba Dimitraki who tells him Conchis has been holding grand spectacles in Bourani since the 1930s.

The next Thursday, Nick receives two letters, one from a London address, and the other from Greece. He opens the letter with the Greek postmark first and discovers it is from Julie. Julie writes that everything that has been happening—Conchis’s disappointment with Nick and Julie’s absence—is part of Conchis’s script. Conchis will soon call Nick back to Bourani to tell him the last chapter of his life. Mollified and angry in equal parts, Nick settles down for a nap.

When Nick wakes up, he opens the letter from England, and learns from Ann Taylor, Maggie’s roommate, that a heartbroken Alison died by suicide in London. She left Nick an envelope, which Ann has enclosed with the letter. Inside the envelope are dried violets, which Alison must have collected from Parnassus.

Shocked and grieved, Nick begins to cry. Alison had often mentioned contemplating death by suicide, but Nick always put it down to histrionics. Now Nick is left only with sorrow and guilt. In this new reality, Julie becomes all the more important, as Nick must earn Julie’s forgiveness to be able to live with himself.

On Saturday, Nick receives an answer to one of his inquiries about Julie, confirming her identity. He feels relief, and his guilt over Alison’s death also abates a little.

He heads over to Bourani to tell Julie the truth about Alison’s importance in his life and her subsequent death. Nick runs into Conchis, who seems to be expecting him, as if Nick’s visit was his design. When Nick asks Conchis about Barba Dimitraki’s claim of masques being held at Bourani for decades, Conchis tells him that he conceived of a new kind of theater during the war, one which breaks the fourth wall. Experimental dramatists like Pirandello and Brecht had tried something similar, but even they could not eliminate the separation between actors and audience. Conchis conquered that frontier since in his masques everyone, including the audience and Conchis himself, is an actor.

However, Nick failed his role in this year’s masque by falling in love with Julie. Therefore, his part must end soon; Nick will never see Julie again. As Nick sits in silence, Conchis asks Joe to bring out a projector and screen. He wants to show Nick a film about war which will make Nick understand why his visits to Bourani must end.

Conchis begins the final part of his life’s story, from 1941, when Germany invaded Greece. As a battalion of German soldiers took over Phraxos, Conchis became friends with Anton Kluber, the music-loving young German officer commanding the troops at the island. While Anton was a gentle soul, his senior, Colonel Wimmel, was a sadist. Conchis intersperses his narration with references to the film Joe is playing, which contains acted-out bits juxtaposed against actual war footage. Conchis points out “Anton” and “Wimmel” in the film, whom Nick can recognize as actors from the beach masque.

In 1943, a group of resistance fighters killed three German soldiers. Wimmel commanded Anton to take 80 of the village’s men, including Conchis, hostage, and keep them in the same school where Nick now teaches. The rest of the villagers were tasked with finding the resistance fighters in exchange for the release of the men. Soon, the Germans received intel that the leader—the kapetan—of the guerillas was hiding at the house of his cousins. The cousins—two young women—were tortured and killed, and the leader and other fighters seized.

Conchis was taken to a room where the fighters were being held, so he could act as a translator between the kapetan and the Germans. Conchis almost fainted when he saw that the kapetan’s genitals had been hacked off by garden shears. Conchis begged the kapetan to reveal information so the kapetan’s life would be saved, but the man resisted, only uttering the word “eleutheria,” or freedom.

The next morning, Wimmel asked Conchis to shoot the kapetan if he wanted the hostages to live. Conchis tried to make himself pull the trigger but could not. As he dropped the gun and stepped next to the kapetan, the Nazis opened fire on the villagers.

Conchis survived the shooting. Anton died by suicide a few days later; Wimmel was tried for war crimes, but managed to evade charges, and now lives in South America. A monument was erected for the slain resistance fighters in the village cemetery.

Conchis shows Nick the report Anton left before dying by suicide, in which he described the slaughter of the villagers. According to Anton, he condemned himself to death because he did not intervene to save the innocent villagers. Nick calls Anton “a good German” (451), but Conchis is more circumspect, since he believes death by suicide is never a good action. Conchis bids Nick good night, reminding him that their masque has ended.