Great Circle: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  —Yes, I did. But it came too vaguely, and then too suddenly——

  —He swept you off your feet.

  —Oh, for the love of mud, Andy!

  Tom stood up, very straight and angry.

  —I wonder if you quite realize your own part in this situation, Andy. For six months you’ve left me practically alone. You’ve been drunk night after night. If Tom behaved decently to me, did a little something to make things happier for me—if I could get a little enjoyment out of life——

  —I see. Yes, indeed. Tom as the good Samaritan. The neglected wife. But I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that it was partly just because I saw this business beginning that I withdrew myself?

  —Oh, no! You can’t get away with that. Oh, no. It had begun before that, and you know it.

  Silence. This wasn’t right at all. He stared at the carpet. He felt their eyes fixed upon him, and for the moment wasn’t quite sure that he could look at them. A deep pain opened somewhere within him, a deep sadness, an enormous sense of lostness and futility. It was all no use. Impossible to explain. What on earth could one do with words? Memories? Ideas? A trifling little barter of facts? He walked to the table, refilled his glass, went to the window beside the couch and looked out, looked down into the rain-dark street, where the twin lights of Shepard Hall entrance illuminated the boardwalk, sodden with water. Perhaps it was himself, after all, who was wrong. Was it wholly impossible? Ten years. The dance of places, the dance of rooms, the dance of houses. Bertha plus one, Bertha plus two, Bertha plus three, Bertha plus four. Bertha at the Coffee Party, at the skating rink, on the toboggan at Oakley, on the river at Concord, the Sudbury, the Assabet, walking in spring along the granite lip of the Frog Pond—and now Bertha here, Bertha belonging no longer only to himself, if indeed she belonged at all. Where was it all gone? Where was it now? It was nowhere. It was gone forever. Nothing could now ever be the same in the world, never again. This was no longer his Berty, that was not Tom—two new persons sat in the room with him, two strangers who looked at him with hostility and misunderstanding, whose minds and memories were now allied against his own. He was outnumbered, outmaneuvred, outwitted. What was the use. Better get completely drunk, and let it all go to hell. Speak out his bitterness and be damned to them. Yes. Be damned to them. Let them go to hell and stay there.

  —All right, Tom, I suppose you’re right—you’d better go home and leave this to Berty and me. Go on, get out. Put on your damned little galoshes and gloves and carry your pretty little malacca. But first I’d just like to call you, to your white face, a worm: a curious and very handsome worm. Don’t you think so?

  He lifted his glass in a toast and drank it off. He had come quite close to Tom, and they were looking with an extraordinary amiability into each other’s eyes. Protractedly. Exchanging what? He felt his gaze move subtly from one to the other of Tom’s two eyes, was for a moment conscious of Tom’s ancient embarrassment at having to look at a glass eye, and felt it now as a peculiar but too fortuitous advantage. He was pleased at the thought.

  —Good night, Bertha, Tom said.

  —Wait a minute. There’s one more thing. I suppose you’ll want to marry her, and make an honest women of her? It’ll be a divorce, of course?

  —Andy! Is that quite necessary?

  Bertha flung the words at him crookedly as she flung off the black velvet band from her hair, which she tossed angrily to the right.

  —Perhaps not—perhaps not.… Go on, Tom—get out.

  From the doorway, he watched Tom pulling on the galoshes, straining and flushing. This was fun. Awkward moment for Tom.

  —Sorry your hat and stick are on the floor.

  —It doesn’t matter, old man.

  —I suppose you’ll be going to Sanders on Thursday?

  —Probably.

  —Well, sleep well!

  —Good night, Andy. Come in and see me when you feel like talking about it.

  —Yes, indeed!

  He patted Tom delightfully on the shoulder of his raincoat, smiled, and softly shut the door. A beautifully managed exit. Couldn’t have been better. And the idea of Tom’s sleeping. Good God. Who would sleep after this? Who? Himself only, for only himself would have the sense to get thoroughly and completely and obliviously drunk. Yes. Drunk. He was drunk already. He was beginning to feel gay. Rubbed his hands on his forehead and then together and stepped quite nimbly into the sitting room, where Bertha, her back turned, was looking at the books on the mantelpiece.

  —Well, darling, now we can discuss this quite amicably and privately. Isn’t it nice? Now we can really go into it, without self-consciousness.

  —I think you’re behaving revoltingly.

  —Revoltingly! What the hell do you mean. I’m behaving like a perfect gentleman.

  —You know what I mean.

  —I’m damned if I do. But I’ll be delighted to hear. Have a drink?

  —I think you might at least have kept sober, and not introduced, or tried to introduce, this element of disgusting farce.

  —God, you make me laugh. Your usual total lack of perception. Blind as a bat. I suppose I ought to have sent some flowers first, in a taxi, with a little message? Congratulations and facilitations. The bridal chamber was decorated with roses and syringes. Typical of you not to see that the only way, the only way, of handling such a scene is humorously! Good jumping Jesus. It’s that, among other things, that’s always been wrong with us. Your heavy-handedness: this fatuous Brattle Street dignity: all these Goddamned poetic hypocrisies. I suppose we ought to be tragic about it, and behave like people in a novel, or an Ibsen play. Ought I to have apologized for having come into my own flat and then cried about it? Tragic! Who’s it tragic for, if not for me, supposing I wanted to give in to it? What the hell have I come back to? To a stinking void. To a part of myself that’s dead. Well, all right. That’s my funeral. Not yours, and not Tom’s. If I want to make a joke of it, for the moment, so as to avoid cheap sentimental dramatics, the sort you act in at Brattle Hall, you might at least have the intelligence to see why I do it, and that it’s my own business. I get drunk because I don’t want to be wholly conscious. Because, I admit it, I’m partly a coward, and don’t want to know, or to have you and Tom know, exactly how many volts of pain I’m carrying. Do you want me to cry? Do you want me to comfort you? Or do you expect just a calm rational discussion of the ethics and esthetics of sexual fidelity?

  —There’s no use discussing anything, if you’re going to be merely abusive.

  —There you go. If I state facts, I’m abusive.

  —I think you might at least have tried to see my point of view. I’ve been starved——

  —Yes, for Christ’s sake drag that up again, starved for love! You don’t know what love is. You’re a thirteen-year-old romantic, a bleached little Cantabrigian Madame Bovary. I want love, she cries, and pulls on a pair of tarpaulin knickers.

  —Shut up!

  She turned suddenly and glared at him, her mouth dreadfully relaxed, the tears starting quickly from her eyes. He was looking at her quite coldly, with the familiar hatred, the familiar deep ferocity and need to injure. She was beginning to suffer. Pursue the advantage. Grind it in, beat her down. Give her the works. Analyze the whole marriage, drag it all up by the roots, reveal her to herself for once and all, all the piecemeal horrors laid out like entrails on a bloody platter. Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad, bumwad. The whole prolonged obscene and fecal grapple in steadily deepening darkness, year after year of it, the burden upon his consciousness becoming hourly more foul and more frightful. The history of a bathroom. Dirty water. Dirty clothes. Dirty habits. The upright soul indifferent to filth. Jesus, angel of grief, come down to me: give us a speech as pure as ocean. A tumbler of neat gin, fiery strangulation, a cough, tears on his marble eye which might be misinterpreted, a sudden impulse to make them real. The awful contraction of the belly which precedes weeping. A new red edge provided for anger.

  —All right—I’ll pla
y the piano.… No, I won’t, either.

  He played two bars of a Bach gavotte, then stopped.

  —Isn’t it ridiculous. Why do we make such a fuss about it? Especially as we all flatter ourselves that we saw it coming. Or did we? I must confess though——

  —What.

  Bertha’s face was averted, her voice flat.

  —I hadn’t really expected you to go through with it. I thought Brattle Street would be too much for you.

  —I see. You thought as usual that I wasn’t quite human.

  —Not at all. Don’t be in a hurry. I thought you were too damned moral. Or loyal.

  —Loyal to what, exactly? I’d like to know.

  —Oh, me, for instance.

  —Yes! After you’d flaunted Molly——

  —Don’t be more of a fool than you have to be.

  —Besides, if you admit withdrawing from me, what difference does it make. You know our marriage hasn’t been a marriage for almost a year——

  Of course. There was that. There was that, which he had forgotten. But how explain it to her? There was no explaining it. The problem of rhythm: the inevitable succession of approaches and retreats: love, indifference, hate—then over again, love, indifference, hate. Disgust, then renewed curiosity. Exploration, then renewed retreat. Soiled clothes, then sunlight, a concert, a few drinks, an evening of witty conversation, psychological discussion—and all of a sudden the divine recapitulation. Would this have occurred again? Had he really wanted it, or hoped for it, to occur again? Or had he at the bottom of his heart desired this precise consummation, this disaster? The sacrifice of everything. And in that case, why make a fuss about it: how could it hurt him? How, indeed. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the unwoundable pig.

  —Oh, God, what’s the use.

  —I meant to tell you that I thought I was falling in love with him. And that he was in love with me. He meant to tell you too.

  —How long have these discussions been going on?

  —I meant to tell you before anything happened. But you see——

  —I suppose you want me to believe that tonight is the first time?

  —No.

  Well, by God, that opens up a nice vista into the past, doesn’t it.

  To ask or not to ask. To pry or not to pry. He stared at the carpet, pushed a cigarette end with the toe of his muddy shoe, felt the blind agony beginning to contract his whole body. One night, or two. One week, or three. Before he left for New York, or after. In Tom’s flat, or here. To think this was sickness, madness, disruption. Drunken and maudlin disruption. What was Bertha, then, that even now he should suffer? This pale oval of female face, with the speckled gray eyes and the always too-innocent mouth? A mere face. A mere idea. A mere history, now finished. Or was it finished?

  He picked up his glass and crossed to the table. Bewilderment. The empty glass in his right hand meaningless.

  —Yes, a lovely little vista into the past. The past suddenly becomes the present, doesn’t it? And a damned pretty future.

  —Well, you’ve always preached psychological freedom and honesty——

  —Christ!

  —Why not practice it?

  —I can safely leave that to you!

  —That’s not fair!

  —That’s the coolest defense of whoredom——

  A curious singing began in his right ear. He put down his glass very hard on the red table, which was unexpectedly near, then walked quickly, with Bertha’s glare still fixed upon him, across the corridor to the bathroom. The door closed, he stared at his reflection in the greenish mirror. White as a sheet. First stage of drunkenness. Boy, you ain’t seen the half of it. This is going to be a souse in a million. He watched himself swaying, rested his hands on the marble basin, and saw his face beginning to cry. The mouth curled itself grotesquely, like a child’s, like the wound in a tragic mask, his eyes closed themselves to slits, the white face began absurdly jiggling up and down, in time with the rapid soundless convulsions of his chest. He turned on the two taps in the basin, to drown out the extraordinary noise Andrew Cather had begun to make. A sound like a swift departure of wings, pigeon’s wings, whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe—then a shudder of breath quickly indrawn, and another hissing flight of wingbeats, and a long oooooooooooooo—subsiding to caught calm, as the tears fell into the steaming water. Grates me. Is this the face that launched a thousand quips? Is that you, One-eye Cather? Wash your bloody, driveling little map. If, the last time your mother spanked you, when you were seven, you refused to cry, why cry now? What is there to cry about? Is it manly to cry? Disgusting. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the weeping pig: the pig with wings, the pig with a glass eye. Look at the little red veins in his nose, heritage of six months’ drunkenness, the whiteness of the white of his left eye, the redness of the white of the right. Wash your face with cold water, as you have often seen Bertha do after a midnight quarrel. Observe yourself from a great distance, as if you were an ant crawling over the toe of your shoe. Isn’t he a funny little thing? Does he know where he’s going? Has he a god? Does he distinguish right from wrong? Has he sexual appetites, loves, hates, despairs? Has he an ideal? A secret richness of soul, tenderness of heart, susceptibility to injury? Have you lost your wife, your friend, or is it only an egg? Tu pupila es azul; y quando lloras—the world is a lost egg. A mislaid egg. It will hatch, out of season, in a universe of intemperate weather, an absolute zero, and the god it contains will be born dead.

  You are not angry: you don’t want to be angry: you are hurt.

  His face washed, the temples cold and transparent over the brain, he returned to the sitting-room. It was now Bertha’s turn to cry. She lay huddled at one end of the couch, her back turned, her cheek on a green pillow, a handkerchief held over her eyes. One of her pianissimos, a soft whispering sound, persistent, uninterruptible, the kind that could go on for hours, for all night. She looked small and pathetic, but also absurd. He felt a profound detachment and irony towards her, watched the slight shaking of her body, the irregular lift and fall of the blue mandarin jacket on her left shoulder, the movement of the blue elbow, noted the heaviness of the upper arm: she was getting old.

  —I’m not angry, Berty: I don’t want to be angry: I’m hurt.

  The rain answered him. Hurt? The word seemed singularly inadequate. But words in a scene were always inadequate: it was always like this: these midnight quarrels were always the same: ridiculous phrases followed by ridiculous silences, sudden shifts from fury to pathos, from the heroic to the absurd, and at last a bedside reconciliation dictated by sheer fatigue. But not tonight, not this time. No. Good God, no.

  —Are you going to say anything?

  No answer. His hands in his pockets, he walked into the kitchen, looked at the table, the empty tin, the tin opener, the half lemon, the sugar bowl, the spots of gin and water on the varnished wood. Still life. A cockroach signaled at him with alert antennae from the edge of the kitchen sink. The ice in the ice chest settled itself with a grating slump, metallic. Domestic interior: the persistent order that underlies all disorder, the useful tyranny of the inanimate. Say good-by to it, old fool—this is the beginning of the end. All is over. No more ice chests, shared cockroaches, fruit knives, gin rings to be mopped up with handkerchiefs. To hell with it. No more mosquitoes on the window screens in the summer evenings, to be squashed with one finger against rusty wire. The last day of the calendar, the calendar with the sacred cow. Out with it: this is the terminus. Let Rome in Tiber melt——

  —Perhaps you’re right. Yes, I believe you may be right. What’s the use? How can we summarize everything in a few well-chosen words. Your life, and my life, our life together. Non si puo.… Just the same, I don’t see what you’re crying about—you’ve got what you want, haven’t you?

  He looked at her quizzically: she was quieter, but he could still see her left shoulder now and then spasmodically lifted, hear the sharp intake of breath. He picked up the red Spanish grammar from the other end
of the couch, seated himself where the book had lain, being very careful not to touch the slippered feet which were so close to his knee.

  —Impossible to find the right words, isn’t it. Just as well read at random out of a book. For example. It is lightning, and I fear that it will rain. Is she unhappy? She appears to be so, but I cannot believe that she is so. He is sorry that he is ill, and I am sorry that he is ill. Use the subjunctive after expressions of doubting or fearing, joy or sorrow, or necessity. Mientras dure la vida—as long as life lasts. Ella está enamorada: y si lo está, que mal hay en ello? No harm at all.

  The rain answered him. No harm at all.

  —Or how about this. This seems to settle everything. It seems to me; it seems to you (fam. sing.); it seems to him; it seems to us; it seems to you (fam. pl.); it seems to them, I go to bed; you go to bed (fam. sing.); he goes to bed; we go to bed; you go to bed (fam. pl.); they go to bed. All life in a nutshell, by God. We hate each other; they (masc. and fem.) hate each other. We embrace and kiss each other.… Cardinals and ordinals. We shall reach the city of Waltham before night comes on. Let us take leave of the wounded man: he slept well yesterday, and he is not moaning tonight. This is a Spanish proverb: “Although the monkey dressed in silk, she remained a monkey!” It is snowing or raining all the time in this town: we hope that the weather is better in yours.…

  No answer to his lifted eyebrow: he began to feel angry again.

  —I like the “fam. sing.,” don’t you? He has a toothache, and is shedding a lot of tears. If you do not prefer to lend them the pens, do not lend them the pens.

  The sound of Bertha’s weeping became louder: she made a sudden convulsive gesture with her lifted elbow, turned her face farther away into the pillow, and said:

  —Will you stop it, please?

  —Certainly, if you like.

  —I believe you have—I believe you have—no heart at all.

  —Step right up, ladies and gents, and see the pig without a heart.… To drink is to live. An old Spanish proverb. Have a drink, Andy, old fellow. Yes, I will, thank you.