Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman

  As it was, the bus took me right into the city where we were staying. My poor wife was very nearly in hysterics, when I greeted her. Indeed, for a moment she had actually taken me for a ghost. I deeply regret to say that, in my view, her final descent began at that point.

  The next morning, I revisited the tourist office to enquire and expostulate. I thought it best to speak to the same man, even though it involved me in a particularly lengthy queue.

  All he had to say was (or at least this is the effect of it): “I advised you to go elsewhere. From the Villa A—, they never come back.”

  With a large group of eager, middle-aged Canadians immediately behind me, I could think of no way to pursue the matter.

  A DISCIPLE OF PLATO

  THE LIGHT was fading on an exquisitely uneventful November day as the philosopher’s miraculous memory arrived on the only really exceptional woman he could remember having met. The gloom precluded further writing. After sixty-five, one remembers one’s eyes. Perhaps it was the gloom which had led the philosopher to omit the incident from an otherwise remarkably inclusive document.

  It was not a very important incident in any case. After sixty-five one concentrates on the highlights; the man who is wise remembers what his public wants. He thinks of posterity; he must be consistent with his legend.

  There was a knock at the door. A dirty little fellow in boots was come to announce supper. The philosopher was hungry. He had always eaten abundantly. In those days they dined later in the country than in towns.

  The exceptional lady was forgotten.

  •

  It was very early in the morning thirty years before. The philosopher was not always an early riser, though his subconscious mind had the happy capacity of varying the depth of his slumber according to the period his conscious mind could allow for that overrated form of refreshment.

  He had noticed that grief and worry tended to make sleep more lasting; the most uncomfortable, not to say most lonely, bed, comparatively the sweeter. At the moment he was on top of his destiny. There was nothing he had ever desired to which he had not at this moment superabundant access. To waste the hours in sleep! Life should be regulated according to the way of the northern sun. When the flowers are out, nature can do without sleep. When there are fogs and movement is difficult, continuous night alone preserves the will to live, for the inconveniences of life are lost in dreams.

  At that time of the year the citizen could wander without much danger of returning with malaria. There was no lazier city in the world than Rome, and malaria was the reason. Malaria broke the power of the Caesars. By the eighteenth century, in which this incident took place, it had made the Roman a reasonably pleasant fellow. But our hero came from Northern Italy, and even his infallible constitution found the later hours of the morning so increasingly smelly as to make the streets less and less of a pleasure to the promenader. Besides, he had an engagement with the Pope. Carlo Rezzonico, Pope Clement XIII was a fellow citizen of his—a Venetian, an exile from the only city in Italy, after which our philosopher, though all too well aware of the peculiar depravity which was, alas, the distinctive mark of the contemporary subject of the Doge, felt a persistent nostalgia. Perhaps Clement would assist him to surmount the absurd and unjust veto the queen of the Adriatic had imposed against the return of her most distinguished son. Already he felt that Clement was the most pleasant pope he had yet encountered.

  At the moment, however, his interests were mainly aesthetic. He regretted that his destiny allowed him so little time in which to serve what was, after all, the most essential part of his personality—his intellect.

  Life was so short that before one had fulfilled one’s duties to oneself, the capacity for mere pleasure had disappeared. Pleasure was the subtle use of the mind. There lived in after years a distinguished man of letters whose capacity for pleasure, whose creative genius, was more and more overlaid by the necessity for money. There is no record that this poor fellow found any satisfaction in his riches. Money in heaps was to his soul a simple necessity like air to his lungs or food to his dog. So it was with our philosopher. Through all the years of his life, and even subsequently in the years which come between life and death, he was enslaved by a similar craving, by an inborn need of his soul. He was hardly abroad ere he was impelled by an inflexible inward necessity back to his bed. He was just thinking how well the castle of St. Angelo looked when its shadow fell in the opposite direction to that which he was accustomed, (many Romans of that period had not seen the castle by any sort of daylight, since their childhood); and how ill his own shadow, emaciated by the early sun and troubled by the shiftings of the early wind in his garments, reflected the majesty of his figure and the noble prosperity of his mien, when he observed the approach of a grey, unattractively dressed figure from the direction of the Vatican.

  The philosopher’s soul was not interested: it was adequately occupied, for the time being, in a number of other quarters. For an hour or two, its victim was free to please himself. The grey figure was just a grey figure to him. Naturally he liked grey, but he was always repelled by such ugly feet.

  The figure, however, appeared to be interested in him. The feet advanced resolutely towards him; the grey lost its charm now that it was seen in shadow.

  “Pardon, Monsieur—”

  There could not have been a more unfortunate opening. It was the beginning of the end. The soul was already displacing the intellect. The feet which had formed the last barrier against the soul, were concealed. The mischief was done. There was hardly one of his many accomplishments on which the philosopher prided himself more than on his command of the French language. The conceit, like all conceits, was justified. The figure would not at that hour have found a single other person in Rome who could speak French at all. They were all already in their beds. At no time would there be a talent comparable to the philosopher’s at paying compliments in the early morning in the most difficult of European dialects.

  She was lost. Naturally, being English. Would Monsieur kindly direct her—?

  Monsieur would be more than delighted. But since the way ran through some of the less salubrious thoroughfares of the Eternal City, he prayed for the honour of seeing after Madame’s safety in person.

  Madame, though she was unable to remember any particularly insalubrious quarters on her outward voyage, was unable to escape. It must not be thought that English gentlewomen were then, as they became later, unable at once to fabricate a graceful release from even the smallest contretemps. It was simply that the lady in grey, though well enough born, had been educated, so far as polite usages went, like a peasant.

  They set out, the Eternal City becoming more eternal every moment, as the angle of the sun’s rays widened, preparatory to becoming too hot even for the rain-soaked element among the foreigners. When all work became impossible, Rome would wake up, hours earlier than most European cities outside America.

  Conversation soon became general. The philosopher had been a master at easing social strains since his childhood. It was fortunate that he had had the good fortune to be in Madame’s way. Had she gone further, she might have fared worse. No, beyond a few tags like that he knew no English. Yes, other Englishmen had spoken with the same enthusiasm; he hoped soon to see for himself. No, he was not a Frenchman, though (since he had yet to become acquainted with Madame’s country), there was no place he admired more than Paris. Of course, there was no need for her to learn Italian. No man of breeding had spoken Italian since the last Medici pope. Madame thought she would have to learn Italian all the same. Might he dare so far as to enquire—

  Then, at once, it came out with a gush like beer from a bottle. She had come to Rome to enter a convent. Santa Tomasina of the Sour Stomach. She was an indefensibly younger daughter of the oldest Catholic family in England. She had come to Rome with her brother, only to find Santa Tomasina wracked in all her members with a fever. The philosopher started. They had had to put up at the English Hotel. But she was expecting
to be admitted into Santa Thomasina’s bosom within a week. She hoped it would not be longer because her brother was an uncertain custodian of the limited funds which were all that a middle-class country household, mildly persecuted and vaguely distrusted on account of its Catholicism, and on account of a certain hereditary tiredness in its members, could afford. To be the oldest family in England, to bear arms which put to shame those of the King—the real King, not the imposter in possession, whose arms were reserved for his robust, Teutonic mistresses; to uphold the true faith against the heresy of Whigs and grocers; these were much, but each one of them had to be put to the debit, rather than to the credit, side of the account, when it came to immediate facts.

  These latter points the philosopher only afterwards learned. Nevertheless, the lady in grey was every moment expanding in the immemorial, exhausted warmth of the Roman sun, not to speak of the more vital and personally gratifying concern of her escort. Both the Roman sun and the philosopher had seen so much, and every new thing worse than that which had gone before.

  The philosopher enquired how she came to be at large at such an anomalous hour. He himself, of course, had yet to retire; on the other hand, he had heard of fellows who began to think of coming to life at about that time—scavengers, businessmen and the like, none of them persons with whom a lady would care to consort. The philosopher was not yet aware that he was interested in the lady. He was still acting on instinct. Instinct led him to put the question so that by phrase and inflection, as well as by a certain sympathetic sparkle in his magnificent eye, he conveyed that no matter in the world was of greater importance to him.

  Understanding that Santa Tomasina kept her devotees close, so close, in fact, that the outer walls of the establishment represented the ultimate of the world to all persons, save priests, once admitted within them, the lady in grey had taken the only opportunity she could be certain would come her way of examining the interior of St. Peter’s. She could not depend on her brother and warder being again so enraptured with the variety of the local vintages as to be put for a sufficient period beyond the possibility of asking inconvenient questions.

  The philosopher was seriously alarmed. The only time he had entered St. Peter’s in recent years, drawn there by the virtuous habits of the lady in whom his soul was particularly interested at that time, he, although a man of experience, had lost both his purse and a watch given him by a king, not to speak of two handkerchiefs and a locket containing a fragment of hair, the philosopher forgot whose.

  But there was no need for alarm. St. Peter’s had been found to be shut except during Stock Exchange hours, which, naturally, were not yet.

  There was only one way out of the dilemma. The philosopher gladly engaged himself to take a personal interest in the introduction of the inquisitive brother into the Roman scale of hospitality. The lady could leave it to him. Meanwhile, he feared that if she persisted in her intentions towards Santa Tomasina, she would indeed have to learn a little Italian. The ignorance of the orders of the church was, he assured her, a byword throughout the land.

  She replied with polite warmth that knowledge was not the province of the church, but was rather an impediment to the purpose for which the church existed.

  No place in the world, the philosopher hoped, could look more picturesque than Rome that morning. His personality, at all times compelling, either to admiration or to respectful distrust, became beyond measure irresistible, with the sensation of life. His being took on the vitality of a god.

  “I have always been of the opinion,” he said, “that the study of philosophy is, next to the service of God, the most becoming of human activities. Man rises above the animals by the faculty of thought; but he rises above himself when he contemplates that faculty directed not towards mere material rewards but towards its own observation.”

  “I too, have always applied such hours as I have stolen from religion and from housework, to the study of the philosophers,” she replied.

  Rapidly, unconsciously, he advanced himself. She was the first woman with whom he could discuss the things of the mind, not as an adult exposes (if he is so foolish) intricacies of his watch to a child who likes to play at being a mechanic and hopes to impress, by its intelligence, but as with an intellectual equal. Men, he had found, either yawned, called for drinks at his expense, and escaped, or lectured at him with the merely accurate dreariness which is the professional’s only answer to the amateur. In discussing these things with a woman, there was also what a later writer so well described as “the subtle mental stimulus of sex.” Never before had he been so brilliant, never before had the lady in grey been brilliant at all. For the only opportunity of brilliance is the response of an intelligent auditor. Never before had she encountered an intelligent auditor, save her confessor, who was frightened to death by her. She had never realised that the response to her beauty might seem to be, might even intentionally disguise itself as, the response to her utterances.

  The man perceived that this was his element. He saw how he had wasted the years, taken from sex only those primitive elements which in a civilised age were but its by-products, neglected its unique capacity of irradiating the mind. He saw how the needs of his soul would lead him to repeat and continue the error for the rest of his days, so that when the death of the body at last followed the death of life, he would have done nothing. One of the greatest men who would ever live, would have done nothing but live. More than other men, who were, he had always known, in essence mediocre and easily content, he had felt through all his body and mind, the fact, the sole significance, the fulfilling urgency of sex. But he had missed the point of that urgency. The happier he had been, the less he had been true to his best possibilities. But now happiness and his best possibilities for one moment were found in the same place. To how few men did such a consummation ever occur.

  He must take steps not to let his fate slip from his hands.

  Tactfully he worked the conversation round to a point where, without having to begin after a pause which would give the lady an opportunity to suggest that they should again proceed towards her destination, he was able to suggest his wonder that, with her attitude to life, she should not revolt at the thought of a convent. They were seated on a bench set up by a centenarian prince of the Church, whose legs were no longer dependable after the first mile. The philosopher, who knew the ways of all his neighbours in the same station of society as himself, was aware that there was no risk of interruption by this gentleman, since he was already in bed. Besides, he naturally promenaded only in the evening, partly owing to doubts as to the impenetrability of his incognito.

  The lady had no doubts. Her only regret was that the convent was not formally sealed against any contact at all with the outer world. She pointed out that life was so short that, when time had been set aside for the service of religion and for domestic necessities, little enough was left even in a convent for the service of the mind. In the outer world a person of her tastes would be hopelessly lost, wholly at variance with her deepest needs. She was sure that Santa Tomasina would exact for religion no more of her time than her family way of life had done, and much less for household labours.

  The philosopher, remembering his own case, hinted gently at the mental stimulus of sex. Where, she replied, could that stimulus be found in a higher form than in a convent?

  Again and again she eluded him like that. In his present state of mind, he was reluctant to take the obvious course of bringing to bear his personal graces. He had never before wondered at the number of conquests he had made. They were part of him, no more remarkable than the gorgeous coat he wore, no more and no less to be considered as useful on the reverse. Now, however, he became conscious that he had a potent last resource, should his powers of purely intellectual persuasion fail to achieve his object.

  He agreed with her proposition that the intellect is debased when it stoops to persuasion or to argument with an object.

  He was also reluctant to use his last, strong resou
rce save as a last resource, because he feared lest he might finally alienate her. He understood that six days at the most would pass before he lost the easier possibility of winning her while she was still outside her convent. But the remembrance of what he had done in the past in six days, the instinct for what he could do now, cheered him. Once gain the lady’s gratitude by removing her clodhopping brother, and the path to success was clear. He wondered how much money the clodhopping brother had to lose. He hoped it was a large sum. A large sum would take longer in the winning. Besides, life for the rich and philosophic is always expensive.

  She told him useful details about the clodhopper; he told her the address of his own brother’s house, at which he was staying. The clodhopper aspired after the rank of man of the world; the philosopher’s brother was a painter of expensive portraits.

  They arranged it thus:

  If his strategy was successful, so that the clodhopper was still obviously to be occupied with his dreams until an advanced hour of the day, she was to send a bunch of red and white roses in equal numbers to the glory of Santa Monica Long-in-the-Tooth. It was customary, he explained, to offer Santa Monica not candles but flowers, which, in his opinion, indicated (though he trembled to suggest such a thing to a prospective servant of the Church), Santa Monica’s low origin. Clearly she had been some fertility goddess in the ancient times. At present, however, the philosopher liked this peculiarity of taste in the lady. Santa Monica was also approved for the proximity of her shrine to one of the (temporarily) most important houses in Rome.

  At what hour should the bouquet be sent? How would it be thinkable to send it at any other time than that at which the speaker had enjoyed the best offering Fortune had placed in his way for he would not dare to say how long? There was only one hour out of the usual number in which they would have the whole of Rome to themselves. Fortunately the Roman taste had so far degenerated that the citizen had taken to his bed before the sun, rising, gave the Roman day its climacteric, an air which to enjoy once was to remember as the only tolerable hour of the twenty-four.