The bath-water was black. He must have been absolutely filthy. His hair had been a tangled, matted wilderness. He decided to have a second bath; this time the water ran cold, but no matter. He blackened the water again. Only after a third bathful did he declare himself clean. When he emerged, Ignatius Gribb was waiting with a selection of clothes laid out on the bed. Flapping Eagle chose a modest dark suit and tie; they fitted tolerably well. He refused a hat: —I hope I didn’t use too much water, he said.
—-Nonsense, nonsense, said Gribb. We have a large tank on the roof. Now come and display your shining self to Elfrida. She’ll be transfixed.
They went out of the bedroom into a perfectly neat chamber. Elfrida lay with her petit-point on a chaise-longue. As they entered, she sat up and clapped.
—My, my, she said, now we see you in your true colours, Mr Eagle.
—Thanks to you, Madame, he said and bowed.
She allowed a touch of crimson pleasure to creep into her cheeks. —Off with you both now, she said. I’m awfully busy.
There was an old, even antique, wind-up phonograph by her side; and she placed the needle on a record. Music played. Music, which Flapping Eagle had not heard in an age. Flutes and violins: an interlude of almost forgotten peace. He stumbled upon a lump in his throat.
—My study, Mr Eagle, said Ignatius Gribb. Will you join me for a drink?
Tearing his eyes with difficulty from the enchanted scene, Flapping Eagle followed the small, bright, wrinkled man.
—You are evidently a man of much worldly experience, Mr Eagle, said Ignatius Gribb. It sings from your every action.
—Your home reminds me constantly of the past, said Flapping Eagle. Of its sweetest moments. This sherry, for instance. I have not tasted sherry in over a century.
—Elfrida, among her many virtues, is a prudent woman, said Gribb. When we decided to make the journey to Calf Island, she insisted that every perquisite of a civilized household should accompany us. So we have a small cellar, you understand, for use on occasions as rare as this is. For the most part we drink the local wine. A bit underweight, perhaps, but better so than obese.
Flapping Eagle choked back his laugh: Mr Gribb was looking delighted with his critique.
—As I was saying, the philosopher continued, I have found it possible to determine the extent and nature of a man’s experience from his eyes. A man whom life has beaten will have narrow slits of eyes; his opposite, the conquering hero, perhaps, will hold his eyes wide and proud. I am pleased to see your eyes so wide, Mr Eagle. It means we may be friends.
In confusion, Flapping Eagle stammered a word of thanks. To himself, he thought: the man’s a fool, and dogmatic with it; but no doubt that would prove tolerable in return for the unstinted hospitality.
Mr Gribb was just getting into his stride, and when Flapping Eagle asked, —To what school of philosophy do you belong, sir?
Gribb needed no further encouragement.
—Many years ago, he said, I became engrossed in the notion of race-memory: the sediment of highly-concentrated knowledge that passes down the ages, constantly being added to and subtracted from. It struck me that the source-material of this body of knowledge must be the stuff itself of philosophy. In a word, sir, I have achieved the ultimate harmony: the combination of the most profound thoughts of the race, tested by time, and the cadences that give those thoughts coherence and, even more important, popularity. I am taking the intellect back to the people.
—I don’t quite … began Flapping Eagle.
—But don’t you see, my dear fellow? The cadence, the structure, the style: it’s all there to use, in old wives’ tales, in tall stories, and most of all … (he flourished his right hand dramatically and raised a manuscript aloft from his desk) … in the cliché!
O my God, thought Flapping Eagle.
—This, said Gribb, jabbing a finger at the pages, is my great endeavour. The All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy. A quote for all seasons to make life both supportable and comprehensible. A framework of phrases to live within, pregnant with a truly universal meaning. As for instance, my very first entry, perhaps the most perfectly all-purpose quote of all:
The sands of time are steeped in new
Beginnings.
—That’s incredible, said Flapping Eagle.
—You think so, you think so? Yes, yes, yes: consider this. An old aunt at a wedding seeks a phrase to put it into perspective. She would use this phrase and the ceremony would gain a new and deeper context. The same woman cooks a disastrous meal; she uses—with stoic fortitude—the same quote and immediately she has linked two quite disparate events. In this way the all-purpose quote increases our awareness of the interrelations of life. It shows us precisely how a wedding is like having to cook a second meal. Thus illuminating both events.
—Remarkable, said Flapping Eagle.
—Dear, dear, dear, said Ignatius Gribb. I can tell we shall be the best of friends. Cherkassov will like you, be in no doubt of that. I shall instruct him that he must.
—There may be some trouble, said Flapping Eagle, over my choice of prime interest.
—Pooh, said Gribb. Tchah. Cherkassov’s never turned one down yet.
—It created quite a stir at the Elbaroom when I mentioned it.
Gribb grunted dismissively. —Well, well, well, what is this dangerous interest of yours, eh, eh?
—Grimus, said Flapping Eagle. Ignatius Gribb sat down and was silent. A grandfather clock ticked off the pause. A fly buzzed in conspicuous intrusion.
—Elfrida mentioned something of the sort, said Gribb. Nevertheless. Don’t you fret yourself. And he nodded his head as if to reassure. Flapping Eagle didn’t feel entirely calmed.
Elfrida sat on the chaise-longue; Ignatius was beside her; the petit-point lay carelessly on the ground, the one jarring note of untidiness in the meticulous room. The phonograph played an old, old song.
It was afternoon and the mist had turned from the morning’s gold to the post-meridian yellow. Yellow for life, remembered Flapping Eagle, sitting opposite them in a rather-too-upright wicker chair. A slow haze lay over the room. Time is passing more slowly now, thought Flapping Eagle, and felt very nearly happy. To be in K was to return to a consciousness of history, of good times, even of nationhood: O’Toole, Cherkassov … like them or not, the names conjured a past world back to life. Here in the womb of the Gribb drawing-room he felt—and found—comfort.
Here, the trappings of the past were jealously guarded. It made a big difference to the home-seeking man.
He watched Elfrida as with downcast eyes she listened to her husband’s voice. That was a further source of pleasure. Her long fingers wound a piece of thread slowly and elaborately in and out between themselves. It was a hypnotic sight.
Ignatius was saying:
—The one aspect of K I love above all else is the absence of scientists. I always found it shameful that mere technologists should have arrogated to themselves the right to be called that, scientists, men of knowledge. In their absence, science is returned to its true guardians; scholars, thinkers, abstract theoreticians like myself.
However, the absence of the technocrat does not mean a relapse into superstition, my dear Flapping Eagle; on the contrary, it places upon us an even greater duty to be rational. The world is as we see it, you know; no more, no less. Empirical data are the only true grounds for philosophy. I am no reactionary; in my childhood I would have laughed at the idea of immortality, but now that I know it can be bestowed I accept it. For that at least I thank the technologists; credit where it is due. To have eternity to study one’s subject is a grace and a blessing; to have the sure environment of this town about one is what I would call a miracle if I were a superstitious man. Here one may indulge one’s prime interest and want for nothing; one has a home, and food and company. With that and the eternal interplay of thesis and antithesis a man must be happy. I am a happy man, Mr Eagle; and do you know why? Permit me to tell you in a roundabout way.
/> We, too, are relatively recent arrivals, you see, Mr Eagle; I say relatively, for it is a matter of some centuries now. When I arrived I found a certain number of unfortunate myths in the process of forming; myths which I have made it my business to expunge from the minds of the townspeople. It is, incidentally, an interesting corollary study to my work on race-memory: the growth of a mythology in a single, long-lived generation. At any rate, Mr Eagle, I do not know what line you propose to take in your chosen field; may I simply hope you will do nothing to perpetuate that particular myth?
Flapping Eagle suddenly felt on very thin ice.
—Are you saying sir, he asked, that Grimus does not exist?
Ignatius Gribb looked annoyed.
—Yes,yes,yes,yes,yes, he said. Naturally that is what I say. And nor do his precious machine, nor his supposed dimensions, nor any of it. It’s all the babbling of an idiot like Jones; sound and fury, signifying nothing.
—I am astonished, Mr Gribb, said Flapping Eagle; and I can’t agree.
—You’ve spent too long with that trickster … that charlatan. He has no place in this town. Gribb was now definitely angry. A red dwarf.
—Darling, said Elfrida, I’m sure it might be interesting for you to have a man of Mr Eagle’s undoubted experience investigate the matter.
Gribb collected himself. —Yes, of course, he said. Dear, dear, dear. It would be … most amusing.
Flapping Eagle was thinking hard: certainly it seemed no-one in K ever succumbed to dimension-fever; and since his own experience of it, the dimensions no longer intruded into his own consciousness. And he had been ill in Virgil’s company. He wished passionately that he knew more about Virgil.
He was now sure of one thing: he intended, if permitted, to find out as much as possible about Grimus, whether he was fact or fiction. It was the only way to understand what had happened to him.
And where was Virgil Jones now?
To Mr Gribb, he said formally: —Please rest assured, sir, that I shall be the soul of impartiality in my studies. It is a debt of honour to you for housing me. Scholasticism breeds a scholarly attitude.
—Well,well,well,well,well, said Mr Gribb, mollified.
—Heavens, said Elfrida, if we are indeed dining with the Cherkassovs, I must fly and dress.
XXXVII
A BRUISED MAN in a torn suit knocks at the door of a brothel, seven times. Exactly on the seventh stroke, the door flies open. A hollow noise as it strikes against a darkened wall. Candlelight: a woman in a long lace nightgown, her dark hair a cascade upon her shoulders, her face glowing. The man stumbles inside; the door closes. There is no wilderness without an oasis.
The man lies in the lap of a lady with a lamp, sleeping as she sings. Behind her stands a girl, naked and motionless; at their feet the woman in the long lace nightgown lies watching. These are some of the words of the song:
And shall ye attempt to climb
The inaccessible mountain of Kâf?
It bruises all men in its time
It shatters the strongest staff
It brings an end to all rhyme
And crushes the lightest laugh
O do not attempt then to climb
The inaccessible mountain of Kâf.
In time all must climb it, in time.
Awaking, the man asks for refuge; and since a brothel is a place of refuge, asylum is given. And food and new clothing.
—Your namesake Chanakya, whispered Kamala Sutra to Virgil Jones, could place his right hand upon a brazier of coals and his left hand upon the cool breast of a young girl, feeling neither the pain of the fire nor the pleasure of her skin. Ask yourself if it is your luck or your misfortune that you could feel both. And now that the fires have scalded you, allow the woman to heal you.
She lay beside him; from her throat came low clucking noises. She drew her hands over her eyes to close them and held them, fingers spread, at the corners of the sloe-shaped lids. When Virgil made no move, she took his hand in hers and put it on her breast. Slowly, it began to move.
—Be comforted, she said.
And he was.
—If you fix your eyes upon a black dot at the centre of a sheet of white paper, said Lee Kok Fook, it will either disappear or grow until it gives the illusion of filling the page. In the ancient symbol of yin and yang, the yin hemisphere contains a yang dot, and the yang hemisphere a yin dot, to show how each half contains the seeds of its opposite. If you fix your eyes upon the dot, it will grow into a cloud, and create an imbalance in the mind, such as the desolation you feel now. I will help you to avert your eyes from the cloud; by our love-making the harmony can perhaps be restored.
She wound around him like a snake, her legs and arms seemingly spiralling around his, until they were irretrievably interlocked; and he could do nothing but respond.
That night, Florence Nightingale sang him to sleep once more; and again the naked Media stood behind them silently while Madame Jocasta reclined at their feet. It was a rippling song, full of clear waters and quickly-running streams, fresh and soothing. He slept better.
—There are some men, said Lee Kok Fook, whose curse it is to be different from the rest. Among thinkers, they see only a lack of practicality; among men of action, they mourn the absence of thought. When they are at one extreme, they yearn for the other side. Such men are habitually alone, unloved by most others, incapable of making a friend, since to make a friend would be to accept the other’s way of thinking. But perhaps it is not such a curse to be alone; wisdom is very rarely found in crowds. And then, she added, melting around him, there are always times when even such men are not wholly alone.
Madame Jocasta raised the flap of an observation-hole. Kamala Sutra was showing Virgil an exercise in yoga tantra. He sat naked and cross-legged on her bed; she sat on his lap, her legs locked about his waist, their sexes conjoined, their eyes closed. Jocasta nodded her head in satisfaction.
Virgil Jones lay peacefully on Florence Nightingale’s bed. On the bedside table stood a gleaming bronze pitcher of wine. Jocasta, Media, Kamala and Lee stood in a semicircle around the two people on the bed.
—Welcome home, Virgil, said Madame Jocasta.
—I propose a toast, said Virgil Jones, to the House of the Rising Son and its resident angels of mercy.
—And we shall drink to your renewed good spirits, said Jocasta.
Virgil drained his glass. Florence refilled it instantly.
—Shall I play, Madame Jocasta? she asked.
—Yes, please, said Virgil. Play and sing.
Florence picked up her lute and began to sing. Looking at her, Virgil remembered a verse from another poem:
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw
He watched the black-skinned Nightingale sing and forgot all other songs and poems.
She was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played
Singing of Mount A bora.
They lay in bed, Greek-named gravedigger and Greek-faced whore.
—At first, said Virgil, I was wounded by Flapping Eagle’s desertion. But now I really don’t care.
—You must stay, Virgil, said Jocasta. Stay with us and look after us. You’ve been wandering far too long, up and down this wretched mountain, and done quite enough. Nobody can carry the guilt for an entire island. It’s time you rested. Let your Flapping Eagle travel on if he must; you’ve taken him as far as you can.
—Or as far as I want to, said Virgil. At the moment his mind is full of settling down. Settling down! But who knows, perhaps that’s all there is to it, all there is to do, all there is to him. It’s just that I thought…
He fell silent.
—You thought he was the one to do what you can’t, said Jocasta. Virgil didn’t reply.
—Revenge isn’t a very worthy emotion, said Jocasta softly. You know as well as I do that nobody can touch Grimus now.
Virgil shrugged. —Probably, he said. Most probably not.
—What is it in Liv, asked Jocasta bitterly, that leaves such a cancer in people? You would never have hated Grimus if Liv hadn’t made you do so.
—Probably not, repeated Virgil.
—Liv, spat Jocasta. You’ll have to forget her, Virgil. Her, and Grimus, and Flapping Eagle. I can’t go to bed with your ghosts.
Virgil laughed.
—You’re a tolerant woman, Jocasta, he said. Give me some wine; there’s absolution in it. I’d love to stay.
—Jocasta?
She stirred in her sleep.
—Jocasta, listen.
Virgil was sitting bolt-upright in bed. He could see himself, blurrily, in the dark, reflected in the mirror on the far wall.
Jocasta raised herself on one elbow. —Whatever have you thought of now? she asked. For the last few nights, this had been a regular occurrence; Virgil would be brought abruptly awake by his dreams. —It takes longer to exorcise the unconscious, he had apologized.
—I’ve just remembered, he said. Night I came here. Do you recall… something happening? Something odd.
—Lord, she said, I forgot. The jolt.
—Yes. What the devil was it?
—It’s never happened before, she said.
Virgil stared out of the window at the dark bulk of Calf Mountain above them, clouds enveloping its summit.
—What the hell is that fool up to now? he said angrily.
—Perhaps he can’t control it, said Jocasta quietly.
—It was like … began Virgil, and stopped.
—Like a flash of death, finished Jocasta.
Neither of them slept again that night.
—On the way back here, said Virgil, I regained the gift, you know? And then I lost it again. Just once, I travelled.
—You shouldn’t have tried, said Jocasta. The rest of us are lucky; being immune, I mean.
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