Great Circle: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  —You’ve said it.

  —What do you know about it, you’re not married.

  —I don’t need to be.

  —How many times have you told me that if you hadn’t been analyzed, you couldn’t know anything about analysis. Woops, my dear. I’ve been hit with a hammer. My head’s ringing.

  —Go on with this idea—this might be helpful.

  —Ask me an easier one, old chap. Would you like to see my spleen? It’s a nice little spleen, never yet broken, either. Bertha never understood that. No. Nor cleanliness either. The strange things she did. I read a short story once about this. Yes. Very good. A husband who had left his wife and his best friend fell in love with her. You see. They were quite amiable about it, they were still good friends, and the other fellow decided to marry her. You see. But he was damned inquisitive about the husband’s reasons, and one night when they’d dined together, he asked him, point blank, why it was. The husband merely said that it was something absolutely unmentionable, that it would be a terrible injustice to his wife to speak of it. Result—can you guess it? The friend went off by himself to Bermuda, and the wife was left high and dry.… Zingoids! I’ve got rings like Saturn. Can you see them.

  —Not from here.

  —Oh, yes, that lovely story of the idiot. What, from here? Ha, ha, ha.

  —But those things can always be managed with a little understanding and patience. No need to get excited about them. And what about the pot and the kettle? Are you so damned immaculate yourself? I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts you sometimes don’t change your socks often enough, or let your toenails grow too long, or forget to shave, or smell of good honest male sweat. What about it. And Bertha probably never said a word of it, did she.

  —Of course not. Why the hell should she. Women don’t feel the same way about the physical aspect of a man as he does about the woman. No. No. You know that, what’s the use arguing about it.

  —The hell she doesn’t.

  —The hell she does. She even likes a little uncouthness—a rough chin, a careless shirt or tie—dirty fingernails—you know damned well she does, Bill, so there’s no use trying to kid me. But Bertha is careless. She is unfeminine. Good Lord, you ought to see some of the underclothes she wears. They look as if they were made of cardboard, or sheet iron or something. Or cut out of circus tents. What the hell. Doesn’t a woman know any better than that?

  —I suspect this is just a cover.

  —Cover!… What next. You make me laugh. I don’t say there aren’t other things, too, but that isn’t saying that this business didn’t hit me pretty hard. It would have hit anyone. You wait! Tom will get it. I’ll bet he’s got a surprise already.… Jesus. Jesus! I see disasters and I bring them back. Fecal madness. I didn’t want to think of it. I didn’t want to think of it. It’s like a sword, a red hot sword. When I think of it I go mad—I see it in every detail. What time did he get there. Did they have dinner together. When was the first time. Where. In what order did they go to the bedroom. She first? Both together? Oh, God, Bill. Isn’t it funny how, when a thought is too painful, you give way to definite physical impulses—find yourself actually averting your face, looking out of a window, making a gesture of erasure with your hand, as if at a child’s blackboard—making speeches too to yourself, words that have no sense in them, just to divert the current of your madness. The moon, Andrew, what price the raucous moon. Third alive, third rail alive. Why did you speak to me like that you pimply pimpernel. Or you address a picture on the wall, or a candlestick on the mantel, you pace up and down and fling words at it over your shoulder, madder and madder words, you swear at it, you call it a merd, a pimp, a slut, a whore, you take the candlestick and wring its neck, shouting, then smash it on the floor—and then you turn away from it ashamed, as if it were watching you, for you know that if you don’t turn away you’re going to cry abominably, you already feel the contraction in the throat, a rigidity in your eyes, a stare of blindness that begets tears. No. I won’t look at it. I won’t remember it. I won’t think of their going along the hall together, or to the bathroom. O God, O God, O God. Why did she do it. Why did she do it. Why the hell did she do it, Bill, how could she do it. If she’d come to me and confessed that she was falling in love with him, that would have been bad enough, would almost have killed me, but to wait like this till I was in New York——

  —How do you know she did? What makes you think there was anything planned or deliberate in it? My impression, as a matter of fact, is that the whole thing was accident, an impulse.

  —Don’t fool yourself. Fred says he’s suspected it for a week, and that Tom’s been going there every night during that time.

  —That’s got nothing to do with it. I think it came by accident.

  —I don’t believe you.

  —You wouldn’t.

  —Resistance, I suppose. Oh, damn you amateur analysts and all your pitiful dirty abstract jargon. Why can’t you say what you mean. Why can’t you call a spade a spade. What the hell’s the difference between the soul and the subconscious and the unconscious and the will. Or between castration complex and inferiority complex and Oedipus complex. Words. Evasions. Vanities, on the part of the respective respectable analysts. Nicht wahr. For the love of mud, define any one of them for me, so that I’ll know absolutely what they mean. Or tell me where they reside in the brain. Have you ever looked at a map of the brain? It’s like those imaginary maps of Mars. Full of Arabia Desertas. Canals, seas, mountains, glaciers, extinct volcanoes, or ulcers. The pock-marked moonface of the mind. And all that strange congregation of scars, that record of wounds and fissures, is what speaks and acts. I speak with it, you listen with it. What the hell. What have I got to do with it? Nothing. Something hurts me, and I act. Something else hurts me, and I speak. If I could act, I wouldn’t speak. Voilà. All your bloody psychology in a nutshell. For which reason, Bill, Cambridge, Mass., is the city of free speech. The women talk freely, the men sometimes act, but more often die. Isn’t it funny? The colossal humbug of it. But it’s changing, just the same, it’s changing. And that’s funnier still. All the gentle dodos going down Brattle Street in their rubbers to lecture on Grimm’s law or the finals in syphilis or the abrogation of the electron, and their fiendish hatchetfaced wives going to mothers’ meetings, where they discuss the psychology of the child, without knowing to begin with what the devil a human animal is, and meanwhile their adolescent sons and daughters are dancing naked on Belmont Hill or going on moonlit bathing parties au naturel at Gloucester, or simply getting quietly and lubriciously drunk together in Prescott Street or where have you. And the secret little affairs that go on. Good God! How the old dodos would faint if they knew about it. Just cast your eye over the list of our acquaintances. How many happy married couples? Eh? You could count them on your nostrils. X flirting openly with the wife of Y, while his wife, talking about it frankly everywhere, sets her cap at Z, and tells you at tea about the roses he sent her. If he does it, she said to me, why shouldn’t I? Where do the children come in. Then look at Ann. Did I tell you about my little flurry with Ann. No. It didn’t amount to much, but it was significant. Is that the word.… I feel funny. Rarefied. Is there any oxygen in here.

  —Help yourself.

  —I thought you’d gone.

  —Oh, no. I’m waiting for Ann. Who is Ann. I never heard of her.

  —Ah, Ann. Neither had I. That’s part of the joke. A total stranger, but not teetotal.

  —Yes, yes.

  —Yes. It was when I went once, a month ago, to call on Tom, you know, in Montrose Hall. I was a little tight, as usual. Just a little. Vague. You know, I have a key to Tom’s apartment—I used to use it to work in, or play the piano. Oh, yes, many’s the time I’ve played the “Liebestod” there. But that’s not the point. What’s the point … I feel floooey.

  —Ann.

  —Ann. Yes. Was I talking about Ann? But I never told you about Ann, did I. No.

  —No. Go ahead.

  —Well
, it was funny about Ann.… Hell, I feel drunk. Wait a minute. I’ll eat some crackers again. Perhaps if I stand up. Can I put some water on the fire. It’s much too hot in here. Much too hot. Can I.

  —Sure, go ahead.

  —Look at the steam.

  —This amuses me.

  —What’s this mean. A symbol. Symbolical Bill the sailor.

  —All right, it’s out. Don’t pour any more in, it will make a mess.

  —Ha, ha, you’re afraid of messes, aren’t you? Why is that?

  —Why are you afraid of fires. I’ve seen you do this before.

  —The hell you have. You know too much. Anybody’d think you spent your time shadowing me. Good God, Bill, a fire in a steamheated apartment is an affectation anyway. But to go back to the key——

  —Yes, the key. You’ve been stalling long enough.

  —Oh, go crawl up a gum tree. The key—yes, the key. Let me see. Just how did it happen. I can’t seem to remember. Oh, yes, oh, yes. Now I remember. You see, I was a little tight, just a little vague, you know, and I got out of the elevator at the wrong floor. The floor above. And they all look just alike. And so I went to the door of Tom’s flat and opened it and walked in: and what do you think. It wasn’t Tom’s flat at all. No. It was a different one, or else everything in it had been changed. Very puzzling. I stood there and stared at it, there was a picture of a clipper ship right opposite the door, where it had never been before, and a banjo clock beside it and an umbrella stand with a red umbrella in it. You can imagine my surprise. I stood and goggled at them. Funny—I thought—what the hell has Tom been doing. Then I walked into the sitting room, and the piano was gone, everything else was changed, and where the table ought to be was a terrible green plush sofa, under the window, and on the green plush sofa was Ann. And I stood there with the key in my hand—you see, the key had fitted the lock—and stared at Ann, and Ann stared at me. You can imagine my surprise. And Ann said, “Well, who let you in.” And I said, “My little key let me in. Isn’t it funny? What floor is this, anyway?” And Ann said, the sixth, and began to laugh at me. So I laughed too, just to be agreeable, and we laughed together, and then she said that as I was already in, I might as well stay, so I stayed. In no time at all we were talking about God and life and death and love and marriage and babies and birth control and the morals of the new generation and the difference between the East and the West and the difference between the sexes and whether pure friendship is possible between them and what a young girl should do in a big city if she’s a stranger there and what drinks we liked and whether it was better to marry or not and at what age and if one didn’t marry whether one should remain a virgin (you see, she meant herself) and if you didn’t remain a virgin whether you should tell your husband when you did marry. Just like that. Bang, bang, bang. Everything opened with a zipper. We had some drinks, and then we made some coffee, and she played the phonograph, a lot of jazz, and we had some more drinks, and we told the stories of our lives, every damned detail, and she cried and said she was terribly lonely in Cambridge, where she didn’t know a soul, and she was bored with the art school and hated everybody there, they were all so cold and superior and so unlike the Westerners and she couldn’t make friends of them. It was terribly sad, terribly. You have no idea. I was overcome. I told her I would give her a good time, take her to dances, dinners, shows, prize fights, introduce her to lots of people, and she cried some more and kissed me very, very nicely. About three o’clock, when I suggested that we go to bed, why not, she looked archly at me and said, “Be yourself!” That was her favorite remark: be yourself. She must have learned it from Socrates. So we talked some more, and kissed some more. Now and then she would draw back very coyly and bat her long golden eyelashes at me and tidy her beyootiful curls and say, “Too much kissing spoils a friendship!” Isn’t that wonderful? By gosh, Bill, isn’t it wonderful? Too much kissing spoils a friendship. A whole new philosophy of life, presumably from the Middle West. What a light it sheds. What a light. I gather that in the Middle West, where the heart beats warmer and there aren’t all these God-damned Eastern superiorities and conventions, everybody kisses everybody. I could hear Ann saying it to countless men, old and young, in back seats, at movies, at dances, in canoes, on beaches, at Sunday-school picnics and bean suppers and burgoos and corn-huskings—No, too much kissing spoils a friendship. Be yourself!… I learned a lot.

  —Well, and what was the upshot.

  —The voice of the scoptophile. Aren’t you ashamed? You want to know whether I slept with her.

  —Of course I do! Don’t be an idiot.

  —Well, I did. Innocently.

  —Says you?

  —Says me. At five o’clock we went to bed, worn out, and slept side by side with our clothes on, like babes in the wood. Pretty as a picture. When I came to, I didn’t know where the hell I was. There was Ann’s little white face, close beside me, one hand under her cheek, with the damp golden curls beside the temple, and her little poached knees drawn up and protruding charmingly from under her dress. The most innocent-looking thing you ever saw in your life. Yes.… But why did I start to tell you this.

  —I believe it was supposed to be significant of changing morals.

  —Oh, was it? Well, I guess it is.

  —Have you seen her since?

  —Oh, sure, several times. I like her. She’s a nice kid. Lots of fun. Absolutely direct and honest—no hesitations or ridiculous modesties—if she decided to make an affair of it—which she hasn’t yet done—she’d say so. Very generous, very simple. Absolutely lost here. Why don’t you go and see her. She’d do you good. She has a nice skin, too. When you put your hand under her dress, she smiles and says, “Why, no! That’s my naked skin!” and giggles, and waits for you to take the hand away, which you do.… Was that a pistol shot?

  —Backfire.

  —Backfire. In this street once, I ran up behind a taxi and put my chin over the back of it, it was an open one, and screamed. The two old ladies in it nearly died. It was after my initiation—Good God.

  —What.

  —How can you bear to sit there, Bill, and watch my entrails being wound out of me on a winch.

  —Oh, it’s lots of fun.

  —It would be. Damn all you intellectuals anyway, you cold fellows who—who——

  —Who what.

  —Live in your brains. I’m sick of it. I want to die.

  —Need for punishment.

  —Oh, sure. Nirvana principle and everything. I’m all for it. Step up, ladies and gents——

  —Why not try a different formula, in dramatizing yourself, for a change.

  —Are you trying to be nasty?

  —I am nasty.

  —So you are. And may you fry in hell for it. A lot of help you are! Why don’t you go to bed.

  —I’m seriously thinking of it. You seem to have come to a kind of stop. Unless you really want to get down to something——

  —Of course I do, dammit! I’m trying to. I want to. I stand here, perfectly still, don’t I, except that I rock a little—I stand here before you perfectly still—but inside I’m rushing from one end of the world to the other. Speed. I’m everywhere at once. There and back. Torrents of things rushing with me. All the dead men. All the living women. What stopping place is there—where can I rest for a moment and pick up one bright single detail and begin? I’m afraid, precisely because I can’t stop, because there’s no one thing that I want to hold on to more than anything else. Can I hold on to you? No. The truth is, there’s not a damned thing or person or idea in the world you can trust, not one. You’re alone. You run about falling in love with people, with things, with flowers, with surfaces, with weather, with ids and quods and quids, and what the blazes do you get in return? Nothing: or only a fleeting reflection of your own putrid little face flung back at you crookedly from a broken mirror. Isn’t that it? Have I lost my self-love? Has it been devoured by the totem-animal? I think I’ll be a pansexualist, and become a child aga
in.

  —You are one now.

  —Of course. To be sure. I’m clinging to my mother’s skirts again. I’m crying at the encroachment of the dark. I hear my father going to bed with my mother, hear them talking together tenderly, and in the horror of night I become once more a crawling little inspectionist. I creep to and fro, whimpering. What are they doing. What are they saying. Why have they hidden. Have I a right to know what they are doing or saying? Is it a real need or an imaginary one? But why do I want to know at all? Is it worth knowing? Or would knowing be any less painful than imagining? How can you decide not to know, or not to imagine? It can’t be done. If you don’t know, you imagine; and once you’ve imagined, you want to know. One of the penalties of consciousness.