After the Fireworks

by Aldous Huxley

  The second of the two monsignori moved away; Fanning stepped into his place. The barmaid handed him his hot dilute sulphate of soda. He deposited fifty centesimi as a largesse and walked off, meditatively sipping. But returning to the place from which he had come, he found their chairs occupied by a pair of obese Milanese business-men. Pamela had gone. He explored the Alma Tadema background; but there was no sign of her. She had evidently gone back to the hotel. Fanning, who still had five more glasses of water to get through, took his place among the monsters around the band-stand.

  In her room at the hotel Pamela was writing up her diary. “September 20th. Montecatini seems a beastly sort of hole, particularly if you come to a wretched little hotel like this, which M. insisted on doing, because he knows the proprietor, who is an old drunkard and also cooks the meals, and M. has long talks with him and says he’s like a character in Shakespeare, which is all very well, but I’d prefer better food and a room with a bath, not to mention the awfulness of the other people in the hotel, one of whom is the chief undertaker in Florence, who’s always boasting to the other people at meal times about his business and what a fine motor hearse with gilded angels he’s got and the number of counts and dukes he’s buried. M. had a long conversation with him and the old drunkard after dinner yesterday evening about how you preserve corpses on ice and the way to make money by buying up the best sites at the cemetery and holding them till you could ask five times as much as you paid, and it was the first time I’d seen him looking cheerful and amused since his illness and even for some time before, but I was so horrified that I went off to bed. This morning at eight to the pumproom, where M. has to drink eight glasses of different kinds of water before breakfast and there are hundreds of hideous people all carrying mugs, and huge fountains of purgatives, and a band playing the “Geisha,” so I came away after half an hour, leaving M. to his waters, because I really can’t be expected to watch him drinking, and it appears there are six hundred W.C.’s.”

  She laid down her pen and, turning round in her chair, sat for some time pensively staring at her own reflection in the wardrobe mirror. “If you look long enough,” (she heard Clare’s voice, she saw Clare, inwardly, sitting at her dressingtable), “you begin to wonder if it isn’t somebody else. And perhaps, after all, one is somebody else, all the time.” Somebody else, Pamela repeated to herself, somebody else. But was that a spot on her cheek, or a mosquito bite? A mosquito, thank goodness. “Oh God,” she said aloud, and in the looking-glass somebody else moved her lips, “if only I knew what to do! If only I were dead!” She touched wood hastily. Stupid to say such things. But if only one knew, one were certain! All at once she gave a little stiff sharp shudder of disgust, she grimaced as though she had bitten on something sour. Oh, oh! she groaned; for she had suddenly seen herself in the act of dressing, there, in that moon-flecked darkness, among the bushes, that hateful night just before Miles fell ill. Furious because he’d humiliated her, hating him; she hadn’t wanted to and he’d made her. Somebody else had enjoyed beyond the limits of enjoyment, had suffered a pleasure transmuted into its opposite. Or rather she had done the suffering. And then that further humiliation of having to ask him to help her look for her suspender belt! And there were leaves in her hair. And when she got back to the hotel, she found a spider squashed against her skin under the chemise. Yes, she had found the spider, not somebody else.

  BETWEEN THE BRACKISH SIPS FANNING WAS READING in his pocket edition of the Paradiso. “L’acqua che prendo giammai non si corse,*” he murmured;

  Minerva spira e conducemi Apollo,

  e nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse.†

  He closed his eyes. “E nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse.” What a marvel! “And the nine Muses point me to the Bears.” Even translated the spell did not entirely lose its potency. “How glad I shall be,” he thought, “to be able to do a little work again.”

  “Il caffè?” said a voice at his elbow. “Non lo bevo mai, mai. Per il fegato, sa, è pessimo. Si dice anche che per gl’intestini. . . .”§ The voice receded out of hearing.

  Fanning took another gulp of salt water and resumed his reading.

  Voi altri pochi che drizzante il collo

  per tempo al pan degli angeli, del quale

  vivesi qui ma non sen vien satollo . . .*

  The voice had returned. “Pesce bollito, carne ai ferri o arrostita, patate lesse. . . .”†

  He shut his ears and continued. But when he came to:—

  la concreata e perpetua sete

  del deiforme regno,‡

  he had to stop again. This craning for angels’ bread, this thirsting for the god-like kingdom . . . The words reverberated questioningly in his mind. After all, why not? Particularly when man’s bread made you sick (he thought with horror of that dreadful vomiting of bile), when it was a case of pesce Bollito§ and you weren’t allowed to thirst for anything more palatable than this stuff. (He swigged again.) These were the circumstances when Christianity became appropriate. Christians, according to Pascal, ought to live like sick men; conversely, sick men can hardly escape being Christians. How pleased Colin Judd would be! But the thought of Colin was depressing, if only all Christians were like Dante! But in that case, what a frightful world it would be! Frightful.

  La concreata e perpetua sete

  del deiforme regno cen portava

  Veloci, quasi come il ciel vedete.

  Beatrice in suso ed io in lei guardava. . . . *

  He thought of Pamela at the fireworks. On that pedestal. Ben son, ben son Beatrice† on that pedestal. He remembered what he had said beneath the blossoming of the rockets; and also what he had meant to say about those legs which the pedestal made it so easy for the worshipper to pinch. Those legs how remote now, how utterly irrelevant! He finished off his third glass of Torretta and, rising, made his way to the bar for his first of Regina. Yes, how utterly irrelevant! he thought. A complete solution of continuity. You were on the leg level, then you vomited bile and as soon as you were able to think of anything but vomiting, you found yourself on the Dante level. He handed his mug to the barmaid. She rolled black eyes at him as she filled it. Some liverish gentlemen, it seemed, could still feel amorous. Or perhaps it was only the obese ones. Fanning deposited his offering and retired. Irrelevant, irrelevant. It seemed, now, the unlikeliest story. And yet there it was, a fact. And Pamela was solid, too solid.

  Phrases floated up, neat and ready-made, to the surface of his mind.

  “What does he see in her? What on earth can she see in him?”

  “But it’s not a question of sight, it’s a question of touch.”

  And he remembered—sentiments-centimètres*—that French pun about love, so appallingly cynical, so humiliatingly true. “But only humiliating,” he assured himself, “because we choose to think it so, arbitrarily, only cynical because Beatrice in suso ed io in lei guardava†; only appalling because we’re creatures who sometimes vomit bile and because, even without vomiting, we sometimes feel ourselves naturally Christians.” But in any case, nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse.‡ Meanwhile, however. . . . He tilted another gill of water down his throat. And when he was well enough to work, wouldn’t he also be well enough to thirst again for that other god-like kingdom, with its different ecstasies, its other peace beyond all understanding? But tant mieux, tant mieux,§ so long as the Bears remained unmoved and the Muses went on pointing.

  PAMELA WAS LOOKING THROUGH HER DIARY. “JUNE 24th,” she read. “Spent the evening with M. and afterwards he said how lucky it was for me that I’d been seduced by him, which hurt my feelings (that word, I mean) and also rather annoyed me, so I said he certainly hadn’t seduced me, and he said, all right, if I liked to say that I’d seduced him, he didn’t mind, but anyhow it was lucky because almost anybody else wouldn’t have been such a good psychologist as he, not to mention physiologist, and I should have hated it. But I said, how could he say such things? because it wasn’t that at all and I was happy because I loved him, but M.
laughed and said, you don’t, and I said, I do, and he said, you don’t, but if it gives you any pleasure to imagine you do, imagine, which upset me still more, his not believing, which is due to his not wanting to love himself, because I do love . . .”

  Pamela quickly turned the page. She couldn’t read that sort of thing now.

  “JUNE 25TH. WENT TO THE VATICAN WHERE M. . . .” SHE skipped nearly a page of Miles’s remarks on classical art and the significance of orgies in the ancient religions; on the duty of being happy and having the sun inside you, like a bunch of ripe grapes; on making the world appear infinite and holy by an improvement of sensual enjoyment; on taking things untragically, unponderously.

  “M. dined out and I spent the evening with Guy, the first time since the night of the fireworks, and he asked me what I’d been doing all this time, so I said, nothing in particular, but I felt myself blushing, and he said, anyhow you look extraordinarily well and happy and pretty, which also made me rather uncomfortable, because of what M. said the other day about murder will out, but then I laughed, because it was the only thing to do, and Guy asked what I was laughing about, so I said, nothing, but I could see by the way he looked at me that he was rather thrilled, which pleased me, and we had a very nice dinner and he told me about a girl he’d been in love with in Ireland and it seems they went camping together for a week, but he was never her lover because she had a kind of terror of being touched, but afterwards she went to America and got married. Later on, in the taxi, he took my hand and even tried to kiss me, but I laughed, because it was somehow very funny, I don’t know why, but afterwards, when he persisted, I got angry with him.

  “JUNE 27TH. WENT TO LOOK AT MOSAICS TO-DAY, rather fine, but what a pity they’re all in churches and always pictures of Jesus and sheep and apostles and so forth. On the way home we passed a wine shop and M. went in and ordered a dozen bottles of champagne, because he said that love can exist without passion, or understanding, or respect, but not without champagne. So I asked him if he really loved me, and he said, Je t’adore, in French, but I said, no, do you really love me? But he said, silence is golden and it’s better to use one’s mouth for kissing and drinking champagne and eating caviar, because he’d also bought some caviar; and if you start talking about love and thinking about love, you get everything wrong, because it’s not meant to be talked about, but acted, and if people want to talk and think, they’d better talk about mosaics and that sort of thing. But I still went on asking him if he loved me. . . .”

  “Fool, fool!” said Pamela aloud. She was ashamed of herself. Dithering on like that! At any rate Miles had been honest; she had to admit that. He’d taken care to keep the thing on the champagne level. And he’d always told her that she was imagining it all. Which had been intolerable, of course; he’d been wrong to be so right. She remembered how she had cried when he refused to answer her insistent question; had cried and afterwards allowed herself to be consoled. They went back to his house for supper; he opened a bottle of champagne, they ate the caviar. Next day he sent her that poem. It had arrived at the same time as some flowers from Guy. She reopened her notebook. Here it was.

  At the red fountain’s core the thud of drums

  Quickens; for hairy-footed moths explore

  This aviary of nerves; the woken birds

  Flutter and cry in the branched blood; a bee

  Hums with his million-times-repeated stroke

  On lips your breast promotes geometers

  To measure curves, to take the height of mountains,

  The depth and silken slant of dells unseen.

  I read your youth, as the blind student spells

  With finger-tips the song from Cymbeline.

  Caressing and caressed, my hands perceive

  (In lieu of eyes) old Titian’s paradise

  With Eve unaproned; and the Maja dressed

  Whisks off her muslins, that my skin may know

  The blind night’s beauty of brooding heat and cool,

  Of silk and fibre, of molten-moist and dry,

  Resistance and resilience.

  But the drum

  Throbs with yet faster beat, the wild birds go

  Through their red liquid sky with wings yet more

  Frantic and yet more desperate crying. Come!

  The magical door its soft and breathing valves

  Has set ajar. Beyond the threshold lie

  Worlds after worlds receding into light,

  As rare old wines on the ravished tongue renew

  A miracle that deepens, that expands,

  Blossoms, and changes hue, and chimes, and shines.

  Birds in the blood and doubled drums incite

  Us to the conquest of these new, strange lands

  Beyond the threshold, where all common times,

  Things, places, thoughts, events expire, and life

  Enters eternity.

  The darkness stirs, the trees are wet with rain;

  Knock and it shall be opened, oh, again,

  Again! The child is eager for its dam

  And I the mother am of thirsty lips,

  Oh, knock again!

  Wild darkness wets this sound of strings.

  How smooth it slides among the clarinets,

  How easily slips through the trumpetings!

  Sound glides through sound and lo! the apocalypse,

  The burst of wings above a sunlit sea.

  Must this eternal music make an end?

  Prolong, prolong these all but final chords!

  Oh, wounded sevenths, breathlessly suspend

  Our fear of dying, our desire to know

  The song’s last words!

  Almost Bethesda sleeps, uneasily.

  A bubble domes the flatness; gyre on gyre,

  The waves expand, expire, as in the deeps

  The woken spring subsides

  Play, music, play!

  Reckless of death, a singing giant rides

  His storm of music, rides; and suddenly

  The tremulous mirror of the moon is broken;

  On the farthest beaches of our soul, our flesh,

  The tides of pleasure foaming into pain

  Mount, hugely mount; break; and retire again.

  The final word is sung, the last word spoken.

  “Do I like it, or do I rather hate it? I don’t know.”

  “JUNE 28TH. WHEN I SAW M. AT LUNCH TO-DAY, I TOLD him I didn’t really know if I liked his poem, I mean apart from literature, and he said, yes, perhaps the young are more romantic than they think, which rather annoyed me, because I believe he imagined I was shocked, which is too ridiculous. All the same, I don’t like it.”

  Pamela sighed and shut her eyes, so as to be able to think more privately, without distractions. From this distance of time she could see all that had happened in perspective, as it were, and as a whole. It was her pride, she could see, her fear of looking ridiculously romantic that had changed the quality of her feelings towards Miles—a pride and a fear on which he had played, deliberately. She had given herself with passion and desperately, tragically, as she imagined that Joan would have desperately given herself, at first sight, to a reluctant Walter. But the love he had offered her in return was a thing of laughter and frank, admitted sensuality, was a gay and easy companionship enriched, but uncomplicated, by pleasure. From the first, he had refused to come up to her emotional level. From the first, he had taken it for granted—and his taking it for granted was in itself an act of moral compulsion—that she should descend to his. And she had descended—reluctantly at first, but afterwards without a struggle. For she came to realize, almost suddenly, that after all she didn’t really love him in the tragically passionate way she had supposed she loved him. In a propitious emotional climate her belief that she was a despairing Joan might perhaps have survived, at any rate for a time. But it was a hot-house growth of the imagination; in the cool dry air of his laughter and cheerfully cynical frankness it had withered. And all at once she had fou
nd herself, not satisfied, indeed, with what he offered, but superficially content. She returned him what he gave. Less even than he gave. For soon it became apparent to her that their rôles were being reversed, that the desperate one was no longer herself, but Miles. For “desperate”—that was the only word to describe the quality of his desires. From light and gay—and perhaps, she thought, the lightness had been forced, the gaiety fabricated for the occasion as a defence against the tragical vehemence of her attack and of his own desires—his sensuality had become heavy, serious, intense. She had found herself the object of a kind of focussed rage. It had been frightening sometimes, frightening and rather humiliating; for she had often felt that, so far as he was concerned, she wasn’t there at all; that the body between those strong, those ruthless and yet delicate, erudite, subtly intelligent hands of his, that were like a surgeon’s or a sculptor’s hands, was not her body, was no one’s body, indeed, but a kind of abstraction, tangible, yes, desperately tangible, but still an abstraction. She would have liked to rebel; but the surgeon was a master of his craft, the sculptor’s fingers were delicately learned and intelligent. He had the art to overcome her reluctances, to infect her with some of his strange, concentrated seriousness. Against her will. In the intervals he resumed his old manner; but the laughter was apt to be bitter and spiteful, there was a mocking brutality in the frankness.

  Pamela squeezed her eyes more tightly shut and shook her head, frowning at her memories. For distraction she turned back to her diary.

  “JUNE 30TH. LUNCHED WITH GUY, WHO WAS REALLY rather tiresome, because what is more boring than somebody being in love with you, when you’re not in love with them? Which I told him quite frankly, and I could see he was dreadfully upset, but what was I to do?”

  Poor Guy! she thought, and she was indignant, not with herself, but with Fanning. She turned over several pages. It was July now and they were at Ostia for the bathing. It was at Ostia that that desperate seriousness had come into his desire. The long hot hours of the siesta were propitious to his earnest madness. Propitious also to his talents, for he worked well in the heat. Behind her lowered eyelids Pamela had a vision of him sitting at his table, stripped to a pair of shorts, sitting there, pen in hand, in the next room and with an open door between them, but somehow at an infinite distance. Terrifyingly remote, a stranger more foreign for being known so well, the inhabitant of other worlds to which she had no access. They were worlds which she was already beginning to hate. His books were splendid of course; still, it wasn’t much fun being with a man who, for half the time, wasn’t there at all. She saw him sitting there, a beautiful naked stranger, brown and wiry, with a face like brown marble, stonily focussed on his paper. And then suddenly this stranger rose and came towards her through the door, across the room. “Well?” she heard herself saying. But the stranger did not answer. Sitting down on the edge of her bed, he took the sewing out of her hands and threw it aside on to the dressing table. She tried to protest, but he laid a hand on her mouth. Wordlessly he shook his head, Then uncovering her mouth, he kissed her. Under his surgeon’s, his sculptor’s hands, her body was moulded to a symbol of pleasure. His face was focussed and intent, but not on her, on something else, and serious, serious, like a martyr’s, like a mathematician’s, like a criminal’s. An hour later, he was back at his table in the next room, in the next world, remote, a stranger once again—but he had never ceased to be a stranger.