I Hear Voices

by Paul Ableman

  “Do you read books?” he asks me.

  And I can only hang my head in shame. I’ve seen books of course and I begged them to install a bookcase. I’ve held books too, but I always obscure them.

  “They were always muddy,” I explain. “They were’t properly developed or focused. These aren’t just excuses. I know the world.”

  “Here’s a book,” he announces, producing a small tablet that looks like a lottery-book or a receipt-book. “It says, ‘Supply one to bearer.’ Do you like that?”

  “Do you know,” I say, a suitable reply coming to me, “I think I prefer nature to books. That pond down there.”

  I look anxiously at the gleaming example, unsure, in fact, whether it may not be shining metal or some liquified abstraction. Certainly it holds no ducks. No reeds sway above it. However, my companion is absorbed in contemplation and does not notice.

  “How about this?” he asks. “Lime is used.’ Do you like that?”

  “Yes,” I assure him, trusting to my ability to simulate genuine appreciation to magnify the faint sting of pleasure that is all I really feel. “There’s truth there. And a sort of grandeur. But there’s more to it than that.”

  “That’s what I always feel,” he agrees, shutting the book and replacing it in his trouser pocket. “There’s always more to it than that. One chap writes, ‘All is dark. All is desolate.’ That’s very true. Another writes, ‘All is wings. The sun shineth.’ Well, we know that too. We know both those things and there’s more to it than both of them.”

  He looks down at Flower-Pot who, although a modern woman and, if overfed, elegant, now wallows in her seat like something mindless and new-risen from steaming seas. “I’ll tell you something. I know what’s wrong with all books. And there’s no way it can be helped.” He looks at me in the cool manner of a man about to reveal something and then says: “They take time to read. Did you ever think of that? They can’t be read instantaneously! That’s the root of it. That’s the heart of it and it can’t be helped that I can see. What do you think?”

  It is a difficult question and I don’t feel confident that the discussion is getting anywhere. Nevertheless, I feel well-disposed towards this conductor who has clearly done his best to make my journey pleasant.

  “Do you mean school-books?” I ask cautiously.

  “I could write those,” he admits. “Adventure books, love books—all kinds, but the thing that’s always stopped me is what I’ve been telling you. They’d take time to read and who knows what would happen during that time? Things wouldn’t stop. Children would fidget, spheres would turn—things would clash and interact as they always have done. And if the book took time to read, how could it influence them? Do you see my problem? There’d be no point of application. That’s why I’m here, jingling my change and cornering passengers. How can one write—a thunderbolt?”

  And now, as the skies darken, a distinct moaning and sobbing comes from the she-whale on the further seat. She rises, a carton of flesh and lubricant, and rolls towards us. She has the pretty face of a model or actress.

  “This is my stop,” she says. “Feel the soft, warm rain moistening the putrescence of my bed. I shall gobble and sprawl and giggle to myself for days. Come and lie with me.”

  And arm-like excrescences ooze towards us. I shrink back into my seat and the conductor rings furiously at the bell. The vehicle comes ponderously to rest.

  “Out then,” he snaps. ‘Quick, or we’ll be off and you’ll have missed it.”

  And now, mooing and crooning, seeming ready to dissolve into thick, organic juices, she casts a last, languishing look upon us. “No sweets?” she asks. “Nothing for Flower-Pot at all?” And still yearning hungrily back towards us, she wobbles heavily down the steps and away.

  “Is she really gone?” I ask fearfully.

  “Yes, she’s gone. Though I’ll meet her again. She often rides this way. Her swamp’s just over there.”

  And now I see that the wonderful colored banks have begun on either side of us. “Oh,” I exclaim, “how fine, we’ve reached the bowers at last.”

  The conductor nods cheerfully.

  “These are lovely bowers. These bowers have been provided by some benevolence. We never stop in these bowers.”

  “Still, just to look at them—”

  They are like roses, like sunset-cloud and dream.

  “What could one do in such bowers?” I ask.

  “Only bask.”

  Only bask? Is he really honest with me, this conductor?

  “You’re very plausible,” I say coldly and I see him stiffen slightly. His hand moves towards the bell.

  “This is your stop,” he says. “There can be nothing more between us.”

  And with an awful heaviness, I descend, plod wearily up the barren street and resume my egg.

  Our house is a small house. It is half a house and half the lives of our neighbors streams through its walls. I have not taken much interest in it lately. Breakfast is the meal I remember best. How old am I? You must count the vibrations and these are numerous. I tend to get out of touch with things. They never bring me newspapers. True, they never ask my opinion of the news but that doesn’t seem satisfactory either.

  I lie back and close my eyes. Is this my dark world? How deep shall I find it? How deep dare I descend? Whose hand waves in those dark mists? Is this my dark world? Is this my destiny?

  “Ah, younger brother, brave wanderer in dread regions.”

  “Arthur? Arthur, are you here too?”

  “In a sense, old son, in a sense I’m still beside you. You didn’t dream old Arthur got down here, did you? Old Arthur, you thought, blunt, sceptical old Arthur, he has no suspicion of my journeyings and explorations. Why, if I took old Arthur back a branch of the tree of night, he’s say it grew in old Groggin’s garden. But here I am, old son, groping beside you.”

  “Arthur,” I begin, and my heart is so full that I can hardly bring the words to my lips, “Arthur, I think I had rather you were here beside me than we were both careless in the bowers. But, Arthur—Arthur, what shall we do?”

  “Life tells you, old son. It always tells you, because you see, there is always only one thing to be done. We must plunge deeper yet.”

  “We will still be moving, then?”

  “Still moving, old son.”

  “I do hear you, Arthur. I’m paying close attention.”

  I strain to see him but see only a subterfuge. No one whistles, and then, tinkling through this dark world, comes a tin kicked in the street and restores my mortality.

  Arthur is not with me. Once I will not be deceived but it will be enough. It will be everything. Meanwhile it is a tissue. And this is my normal mood, the sort of mood they continually interrupt as I pursue it. I call it the indivisible. I see myself, broached in some corner and you would never guess the speed of my immobility. It takes that form. I must stay ever stiller to accelerate until—until—but this is my log—

  “Have you been good?”

  A relative has appeared in the doorway. For some time I do not answer, maintaining my glance on a blue resemblance. This makes her fearful and why should she not be fearful? Then I relent and allow her access to my glance. But it appears that she is not in the least fearful for she rummages furiously through my possessions.

  “Jane,” I cry, “Jane, what are you doing?”

  “Cousin Susan says, have you finished your egg?”

  “Has she got someone there? Did you look?”

  But the child only sits on the end of my bed looking a little cautious.

  “Jane, did you hear anything this morning?” I ask, trying to get to the bottom of this sprouting relative. “Don’t you respect me?”

  But she only mumbles incoherently and, before I can decide how to proceed, someone, probably Cousin Susan, calls out her name and she patters away.

  I had better escape from here soon. I fancy some of them are imposters. They set me out too early. They also tried to bewilder m
e. I look down at the egg and try to distract myself with the yolk. Again, my thoughts flash to the brooding hen, the little bit of dust, the storm-torn sea, the hard rocks and the soft inter-streaming rocks—

  Oh stop, I plead, stop, a moment, grant me one moment to recollect myself.

  The prayer works. Wonderingly I touch the white sheet and thin ridges of my breast. I am here. This is No. 75, Walpole Avenue and my name is—this is No. 75, Walpole—and I am certainly here—no dates, I don’t really need them even at moments like these—but this is my real home and Arthur and Cousin Susan and the rest are about. I won’t have to work today. Of course, I haven’t worked for a long time. Firmly, I resist a fleeting impulse to brood on this matter. And then, to improve the morning, I lay back my coverings, turn myself out of bed and pad, the surface rather waxy and disagreeable admittedly, to the windows. I draw back half the curtains and look out into Cabbage—no into Walpole Street.

  How we have caked the earth. How our deposits mar its surface. A number of us live in Walpole Street, brains working the whole time. Ivy Calverson who married an Italian lives here. Lots of others—Groggins—we keep them apart—Just now, at this early hour, the street is not very blue. It is not convulsed. A neighbor issues from his doorway, hesitates, and then makes a gesture at a flower or possibly at some parasite to which the flower is host. Then he looks sad for some time and then he looks at his watch. The street roars violently with engines. Cables lash above the street and above the world and a glare—

  No, a glass of beetroot. A glass of sage-dust and a little ear thing. It does not appear to be a school day. I detect no scholars. I do not hear their sad music for lately they have revived the old custom of assembling scholars into enormous choirs to chant sad hymns of endurance—they also crash—they have spirit, the scholars of today.

  But now I turn my attention once more to Corcoran Street and I notice that it is running slightly, as if there were a permanent drain of its substance. I also see a woman peering at me. I see a dog, of the kind that once hunted chores in the Lebanon and I can see little other life. There is little of it left these days. Hunter, I think it was, planted an apple pip recently but I don’t think anything came of it. Anyway, it is hardly lilac time. It is a curious time this morning. Things I had assumed to be parallel really form intersections. There is no postman, nor teeming couriers. There is no oak-heart. Now some bits of metal are empanoplied, empaneled—now some cores have begun emitting—I wonder briefly about the Central Focus but am distracted by Hunter climbing into his old van.

  I think they are setting up a hammer further on to pound down obsolete houses. They have started chasing people with metal claws and they are rolling huge steel balls down the side streets. These are all recent developments but they contribute to the general unrest.

  People are restless. You can tell by the way they move about. You can tell from the rigid bony structure. Governments are powerless to control it. They have not enough delegates. To keep the situation really in hand you need one for every handful of people. You need spies. You need tailors and the best carved goblets. There’s no government in the world has these resources. Sometimes they strike a new mine or dig up hosts of treasure that may, incidentally, provide illumination on other ages. Government had the same problems then. They kept changing. Parts of government would slide back into populace. Populace would rear up a crest of authority and become government. Who were the spies? Who really gave their attention to it? Not King Bohad of the emergent tribes. History states plainly that his main concern was wheedling. Not the High Minister of the Apennines. He got lost one afternoon and the sceptre slipped from his grasp. Did the Chamber, the Duma, the Pinnace or the Pentacle? Men frowning at each other, wondering about the milk situation or placating Baron Grüber. Deep are the roots of history. Subtle, profound and ineluctable are the forces that drive Mavis into Woolworth’s for green silk knickers. Did he who painted those knickers, paint the leaves? Did he who wove their fabric, weave the plots of dynasty and conquest? Did he chase the scaly fishes from the sea? Did he hurl the darting lizard through the sky? Did he refine the coarse visage of the ape until—until—

  I turn my head slightly. Susan stands in the doorway, spying on me. I do not reveal my anger. One must be very cunning, very cautious and plan each gesture, each word and movement in advance or they will scoop you out from little signs.

  “I finished my egg,” I say casually, but then, although realizing that I am vitiating the effect by unconvincing elaboration, I find myself continuing, “Was it from Farmer Brown? I particularly noticed the grain. In any case, Cousin Susan, it was very thoughtful of you to cook it like that, knowing I can’t eat my eggs any other way. I thought I’d have a rest.”

  I move casually towards the bed, having planned to get in and then burrow beneath the covers but, with sinking heart, notice that Cousin Susan is laying out my suit. Now genuine revolt stirs in me and I march to the wall beside the bed and gaze at the toffee-colored paper.

  They make a great stir and chattering behind me.

  “Oof—” says little Jane.

  “What does it matter?” shrills Maria. “I did phone the laundry. Well —”

  “Is that a pie collar? Is it?”

  “Be quiet, Jane. Well, he’ll have to wear the blue one.”

  “You didn’t draw the curtains,” I reproach her, thinking this may shame her sufficiently to win me a short reprieve. “I say you didn’t draw the curtains, either of you. You don’t know what I may have missed.” They go on squabbling over the clothes. “I’m not going out,” I urge flatly.

  “Oh yes you are.” I hear the rough but somehow amiable voice of Maria, but I am cross with her too.

  “Is he going out?” asks the beastly, insensate sprout, glair dribble depending from her nose. “Is he going out? Is he going out?”

  Mechanically Cousin Susan threatens.

  “You’ll go out in a minute!”

  “You could stifle her,” I say, but this does not produce a happy effect. Little Jane looks frightened and grows silent, watching me and sucking her thumb. Cousin Susan begins, “We could stifle—” but something makes her reluctant to continue and she shoos Jane from the room and goes on sorting clothes. But I realize that she will be ashamed and unrelenting later on and I tap triumphantly on the parchment. Now that I have attained the upper hand I do not want to be too exacting. I turn round and study them closely.

  “I could escape at any moment,” I announce coolly. They affect not to hear me but my knowledge of psychology and acoustics brings an ironic smile to my lips. I go closer and snap Maria’s apron elastic, at which she whirls furiously, but I mimic consternation and draw back to the wall again. “I could give you meanings,” I boast, but the situation is already fading. “Maria? Would you like to sniff an ancient rose?”

  “I have work to do,” she replies but, although she is always busy and practical and quite immersed in the demands that daily living makes on capable females, she finds time to dart me a look of such intense longing that her face is twisted by it into an ugly and disquieting shape. Another challenge. I have no ancient roses nor can one ever breathe them. I have no hands for Maria. I do not know her bridge. I do not know where she came from, although there are rumors that she married an Italian. I do not know what happened to her husband nor to any children she may have borne him, nor to her hats and underwear. There were reports of war. There were far reports and others that leapt from brain to brain so that the sunset was pricked with doubt and signaled a spectrum of confused acknowledgement. There were men like moles whose antennae quivered. There were men like wheels and trumpets like men. They say one dropped in a wheatfield and others were dispersed amongst the million rays and vital nodes of things.

  “Have you finished?” I ask them. “Have you finished that futile business?”

  But they do not hear me. I might just as well be in bed dreaming of them or waiting for them to arrive.

  “You were in a desolate state,
” says Maria with sudden feeling. She leaves Cousin Susan and, her fingers still unraveling some tangled threads, moves towards me expectantly. “What was the nature of your depression?”

  “Well,” I begin and, anxious not to lose the opportunity, I try to find a simple and convincing explanation for her. “I had met with some reverses. You’ve heard Arthur speak of increments and annuities?”

  “I never listen to that slab,” she retorts scornfully and, although I am forced to condemn this disrespectful remark, I can not help feeling strangely cheered by her manner.

  “It’s not really germane in any case,” I point out. “Look, Maria, perhaps you’d care to accompany me? I have some calls to make and I could give you fuller details on the way.”

  Maria agrees. She goes away and puts on her best clothes and, a little later, we leave the house together, little troubled by Cousin Susan who, in any case, confines her reproaches to murmuring “you’ve really no business to” and ostentatiously continuing to sort clothes.

  “That was just a ruse, wasn’t it?” urges Maria as I hail a taxi and give the driver instructions.

  “Yes it was,” I smile. I find the situation very satisfying. Maria is proving to be a wittier, more graceful and in every way more attractive companion than the years of merely domestic contact could have led me to expect. I look out at the commodities lining the road. Frequently I instruct the driver to pull up and I get out and buy some of them for Maria. I bestow all sorts of improvements on her to make her life sweeter and more like life in the bowers.

  “What lovely treasures!” she exclaims, seated amidst the profusion of opulent gifts that I have selected for her. I show her what to do with them all, explain their mechanisms or construction.

  “This one is for your face,” I explain, showing her a little heart, cunningly fabricated to pump little draughts of sweetly-scented powder onto her cheeks. “And this one is in case you ever have charge of a large military establishment.”

  The parcels and decorated boxes rustle all around us as the taxi grinds on towards the first appointment.