Great Circle: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  —Sorry. Go ahead. I’ll just put this paper over my eyes.

  —It’s funny—I get soberer and soberer, the more I drink. What’s that—tolerance? Clear as a bell. And all the agonies in rows, as separate and distinct as sea shells in a glass case. Were we talking about that before somewhere? Seems to me we were. Where was it. Let me think. Those wet ashes remind me of something—there’s a puddle on the hearth, too—what is it they remind me of. Not Bertha, no. Not that camp in Maine, no. Not Jaffrey, or Jackson Falls, no. But what. Was it the Madison Hut at sunrise—no. But it was Bertha somewhere, yes it was Bertha, much younger, before she’d got such a belly, and begun to shave her legs with pumice. Yes. Did she shave—did you know she shaved her legs with pumice so that the hairs wouldn’t come sparkling through her stockings, Bill. Did you know that. Must be painful, I wonder. Before the bath or in the bath. Did you know there was a barber in Washington Street where women used to go and get shaved all over, or depiled, or whatever the word is. Can’t be depiled, can it. Did you know that. You don’t know anything. You’re snoring again. But this has been a wonderful nonstop talk, hasn’t it, you didn’t know I had it in me, did you. And now as you see, I’m all at peace with myself—like hell I am—with all the little separate agonies in rows like sea shells, the ones I was telling you about.

  —Oh, sure.

  —Yes. Did you know that.

  —Oh, sure.

  —If you can’t say anything but Oh, sure, go to sleep. You’re no use to me.

  —I think I will if you don’t mind. Here. And when you get tired of addressing yourself you can have my bed.

  —Greater love hath no man than this. But I would feel guilty. But you’re already snoring again. But I’m alone again, alone as always, alone as you are in your subterranean world of sleep, you with your middle-aged and far too fat hands crossed on your breathing and automatic belly. Good god what a thing it is—and the snow too—all night a night of snow—covering the college yard so innocently, so that all the sad traces are obliterated—even the President’s footsteps gone, and the little privet bushes mantled, and the neat little vomit by Appleton Chapel covered over, and the little trefoil bird tracks filled in, and the dog-stale and cat-stale gone. How many times have we crossed it? How many times our footsteps lie there, Bill, immortal but invisible, on the way from Heeney’s Palace of Pleasure to Seaver, from the Union to University 4, from the Bursar’s Office to the Coop, from x to y. Do you see them all, sleeping Bill. That network. Do you see them all, Mike old boy. You with your Homeric curls. Shall I tell you a dream while I walk up and down with this drink in my hand. Shall I. Yes I will, thank you. I will start with the simple premise of the actual and delicious dream, that one, the one of the crucified pig, my old friend the bleeding pig, Andrew Pigsnout Cather, the winged pig, whose wings were bitten off in childhood. It was like this, or like that, but you won’t mind if I just change it a little as I go along, will you, and touch it up like a photographer; you know, just to make it brighter. Shall I do that. Oh, Christ. I don’t care. It comes out like a ribbon and lies flat on the brush. Listen Bill, listen you prostrate and sleeping guts—it was like this. I was in the Swiss Navy at the time. I was in Gibraltar, with my Spanish grammar in my hand. I was on my way to my castle in Spain, the ideal, the everlasting, the infinite, the beautiful. Do you hear—all those lovely words, all the evanescent ones, the pale plasma of sublimation. Alloplastic, autoplastic. Have you ever ridden in an autoplastic? Bores me. And it was in the spring, it was when birds fly north, and I too was flying north, and I sent Tom a wire to say that I would meet him and the two other fellows at that little place in the mountains, way off there, at that high altitude, in that remote village, and in that familiar and dearly-beloved little inn, where we knew all the people, and had gone so many times—you know the place. I wired him, and took a train and rode all night. Who were the other fellows. I didn’t know, but one of them was a Spaniard. I rode all night in the train, and got to the mountain village before sunrise. And walked in the twilight up the muddy road, for it had been raining in the night, and I knew my way perfectly to the little inn, with its yellow plaster walls and the purple clematis growing on the trellis, and I went in and turned to the left, into the little breakfast room where I knew they would all be sitting and having their morning tea, and sure enough there they were—Tom, burly and athletic, damn his athletic eyes, in his rough tweed jacket with shapeless pockets full of books and his English pipe stinking the room out, already in possession, and the Spanish fellow, and the other fellow, whose name I never knew—there they all were, their breakfast finished, the tea cold, the dishes dirty, the early gray light coming in on to the soiled red tablecloth, and as soon as I had come in they all got up and said they must be going. Yes, they must be going. They must be in time to see the waterfall, the famous waterfall, which was the show piece of the village, by sunrise: for that, ladies and gentlemen, was the Thing to Do. Oh, yes. You always had to go and see the waterfall in the glen by sunrise. And would they wait for Andrew? No, indeed. Out they went, taking alpenstocks with them, just like God-damned mountaineers, and Tom rang the bell to tell the landlady that Mr. Cather would now have his tea, and they would go ahead, and Mr. Cather having had his tea would follow them to the waterfall. Do you hear me in your sleep, Bill. Do I influence your dreams. Do you hear the waterfall, is it rushing down in a shapeless pour past your subconscious ear. Do you feel in your pancreas the sunrise light that never was on land or sea. Do you feel the cold peaks of the Cantabrigian mountains, the sunrise clouds, towering above you there on your putrid sleep-ridden couch, you with your hands on your belly, which is full of Liebfraumilch. Do I draw you forth into that realm. Are you climbing goatlike among those wet crags of slate and gravel. Are you stumbling or slipping there, your feet wet and cold. Oh, Christ. So I had my tea and followed them, but they were already out of sight, they had gone down into the glen. And as I went down the muddy road to the village I knew that I didn’t quite remember where the path was, the little field path, that led from the road across the fields to the glen. And I stood there by a stone wall and wondered, and a peasant with a bicycle stopped and pointed out the path to me, but said that it was almost impassable with mud, as I could see. We leaned over the wall, and I saw that what he said was true. The mud was knee-deep. It was like soup. But he added that if I walked further down the road to the next farm I would come to a barn, and if I went into the barn, and through it, and out at the back, I would find another and better path which would lead me safely down to the glen, from which I would easily enough find my way to the waterfall. So I did it. I went to the barn, which was on the right hand side of the road. But this was the appalling thing, Bill, you must dream vividly about this. I’m telling you about it. This was the appalling thing, for as I entered the gloom of the barn, in the morning twilight, I heard, from somewhere near me, the most dreadful and heart-rending screams, animal screams, animal agony, and I stopped, terrified, and looked about me to see where the screams came from. And in a dark corner, then, under some cobwebbed stairs, in a sort of pen, so dark that at first I could hardly make it out——

  Christ, Bill, it was the pig, the crucified pig. You won’t believe it when I tell you about it. Nor you, Mike, you won’t believe it. It was the huge naked pig—supported upright, with arms outspread, as on a cross, by a devilish machine, an affair of slowly revolving wheels and pullies, with an endless belt which was attached by steel claws to the flesh of the pig. But my God there was practically no flesh left on the pig; none, except on the breast over the heart; the belt had torn the rest away, and as I went a little closer, appalled by the screams of the pig—whose head was flung back in a final ecstasy of anguish, turned to one side, the mouth wide open—as I went a little closer, and watched the endless belt slowly moving down the red breast of the carcass, between the ribs of which I could see the entrails, the steel claws fetched away the last strip of flesh, the pig was automatically released, and with a final sc
ream of pain rushed out of the pen. It was nothing but a skeleton full of guts, but it was alive and sentient. Sentient. It whirled madly about the floor of the barn, driven by such a demon of suffering as compelled it to translate the consciousness of pain into the wildest energy—and this was only last night, are you listening, Bill—and I was frightened of what it might do, and ran out into the street again and climbed with incredible speed up a waterpipe on the wall of the house opposite, and managed to hang there, out of reach. And sure enough the pig came rushing out, as if it were going to destroy the whole world. But at this very minute the miracle happened, Bill. I saw in the road a little scaffold hung with gay cloths, like the ones mountebanks use at country fairs, and on this a monk, in a gray gown, with a rope tied round his middle, stood and rang a brass bell. And he began announcing, as the pig galloped up the stairs and stood upright beside him—Ladies and gentlemen, you will now witness the farewell performance of the dying pig. The pig will first give you an example of his acrobatic prowess, on the parallel bars, the trapeze, and also without the use of any implements whatever.

  Before he had finished speaking, the pig began performing at lightning speed—standing somersaults, running and double somersaults. Catherine wheels, handsprings, chinned himself rapidly innumerable times on the trapeze, whirled to and fro over the parallel bars, and finished with a series of giant swings so swift that I could hardly follow them. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the dying pig will now play the Chinese whole-tone scale on an arrangement of coins, with his hoof. And instantly on a table, where the monk had flung down a haphazard handful of gold and silver coins, the pig tapped out rapidly with his hoof the Chinese whole-tone scale. I could see that the pig was dying. But the monk rang the bell again and said—ladies and gentlemen, the dying pig will now give you a demonstration of the fact that the death-agony can be transmuted into pure genius of consciousness. Without previous knowledge of Sanskrit, Hebrew, or Greek he will translate passages from those languages as I read them aloud. He will first translate a passage from the Sanskrit Upanishads, which, as you know, represent the earliest attempt of the Hindu mind to understand the nature and reality of existence. The monk read aloud, and the pig translated. The bell clanged again, the pig translated a passage from the Hebrew version of the Book of Genesis, at the end of which the monk said that the pig had corrected several inaccuracies in the King James Version. The bell rang again, the pig was about to translate from the Greek, but suddenly——

  Are you dreaming about this, Bill. Am I making you suffer. Are you and Michelangelo listening to this. As you should by God. But at this minute I couldn’t stand it any longer. I didn’t want to see the pig die—perhaps not unnaturally, for I know as well as you do—damn you—that the pig was myself. Oh, yes indeed. Step up, ladies and gents—so I slid down from my waterpipe and went hurrying up the road again toward the path that led to the waterfall, leaving that scene behind me to finish itself as it would. I went toward the path, and I thought—Tom is here by this time, he and the others, they have seen the beautiful waterfall in the sunrise. Christ yes—they’ve seen the ideal, which I have missed. While they have been looking at the ideal, I’ve been seeing the real. Shall I go and join them—is it too late—will I be in time to see the ideal. Do I want to see the ideal. Or is it—tell me Bill—is it enough to have seen the real. Is it enough? Can you tell me that, you with your outer eyes shut. You with your two eyes. Can you tell me that. Does it tell you everything or doesn’t it. And don’t feel that you must wake up like Lazarus and explain it to me. Oh, no. You go on sleeping, you go on rotting there in that deep mulch of the underworld, where good and evil meet. While I drink and walk up and down here on this dirty carpet and spit into your dirty fireplace. Yes, you go on. While I unwarrantably despise you merely because I’m more conscious than you are. Or am I. And put my hand on your arm to see if you react. And you don’t do a thing or say a thing, you’re to all intents dead. Christ, what a dream. Did he die, will he die. Performing. Turning his very death into an entertainment. Turning his pain into perception. Christ, what a dream. And where do we go from here. Is this the turning point, do we turn back from the underworld, do we move to the bloody little sunrise now—the little Christmas card sunrise—is that where we’ve got to go. Do we go back to the sea from here, Michelangelo, as we said before—is it there—is what we want there—shall we burrow back to the sea, while Bill sleeps with his hand over his eyes to keep out the light—instinct again—do we feel sorry for Bill—have we been mean to Bill—must we give Bill a present to make it up to him—what shall we give him. A dozen bottles of Liebfraumilch. An Australian wimpus. A fountainpen filler. An old shoe. Shall we cry on the floor beside him, lie down and cry, so quietly that he won’t wake. Shall we walk out into the storm with the glass in our hand, walk all the way to Fresh Pond, meet the ghost of Bertha, salute her among the algae, how-do-you-do, madam, and have you slept well. Or else. What. What else. Fatigue again, the feet are slow and uncertain. The feet are reluctant. They do not miss the legs of chairs or stems of ash trays. No. The feet and hands are detached. But shall we continue to say all this aloud or merely think it. It is becoming—a little—false. Unconvincing. Parepractical. Without a listener, why does one become dramatic. Or so much more dramatic. Alloplastic and autoplastic. And all these books here, these masses of words—must we swallow them only to spit them out. Bill, there is a fly walking on the back of your hand, and you don’t know it. You don’t even hear me tell you about it. He doesn’t know that I am thinking about the Gurnett again, walking along the beach again. Brant Rock. He doesn’t know how heavy the sand is, how it pulls at your feet, as if you were falling asleep. How it seems, as you drag slow footsteps, even to come up over your eyes, over your brain. He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t hear the nymphae singing as we slowly divellicate the waves of sluggish foam. How could he know that. Have we translated the book of nosogenesis, or done our dream work. Can we unravel the perception material on our feet, walking slowly, walking slowly, from one bipolarity to another. Have we devoured the id, or seen the dead ids lying on the beach and stinking in the east wind. Am I going toward the bedroom or first to the bathroom. Bedroom. Put the glass down you fool. Are we inclining toward, swooping toward, the streaming horizontal. Christ, to sleep—to sleep now—and without a single dream—not even those lumps, those clots, those whirls—not even those sickly lights—that fringe of lanterns under the eyelid, that fringe of slatterns—nor the mounting of lattices—textures of bedspread under the hand—the threads, the thralls, the threshes—must the leaning of the chin lead us into the southwest inevitably—into the dull darkness of whiteness with the room in the other light still on—forgot it—or this edge under the cheek—this cold edge of sheet—must we go downward there, leaning downward, and all for a last long slow deluding and terrible curve O God—is it there we go with a last little spinal effort——

  IV

  ———one thing and then another one thing and then another the fresh wind the thickness the fine webs tender about the extended fingertips the dust sifting on the point of the shoe the cart track the car track the long glong trail into the sunset west of mountains purple gashes and the sun gone gloom and walking there walking westward with the solitary ghost above my head is this the bad sort is this the good sort where are you going and what do you mean why do you float there flow there just above my head to the right of my face avoiding the edge of my felt hat what is your precise shape old fellow and are you harmful I will turn away down this little muddy path look those trees there I will go down there swiftly I will run am running but the solitary ghost is still there this must be a bad one a ghost a ghost one of the white kind the cold kind the penetrating kind the thin and snowy kind o god shall I wake up in time will he enfold me chill me kill me SCREAM

  one thing slower and then another thing slower it is a bulge a block a bulkhead a buttress of rock a wall there is a light there above it and a tree hang
ing over the light there was a face there but it is gone and I knew that face it was that girl no it was Susan no it was Doris no it was a Negress with gold hair no it was gold teeth grinning in the lamplight it is gone the wind comes evenly warmly slowly caressingly hums under the edge of my felt hat burns my left cheek and I am climbing among the sun-warmed rocks my hand is no warmer than these rocks is there a volcano under them will steam come out of the fissures will it all crumble and sink in it is crumbling and sinking crumbling and sinking and shaking my foot goes in my other foot I sink to my knees among warm disrupted rocks they are all falling apart and inward downward SCREAM

  first second third fifth first second third fifth it is the fifth of forth the forth the forth and in the bed on the wall in the bed on the edge of the wall beside the lilac hedge beside the path between the two strange houses in this strange place and evening too or is it early morning in the bed ill or half awake I am lying here at a loss I should not be here and look there are people coming out of the other house three people three women no a mother and her two daughters and the path brings them close to my exposed bed shall I pretend to be asleep

  But we don’t know the way to the beach

  Shall we ask someone mother

  But there is no one to ask

  We might inquire at that strange house

  Yes at that strange house what a queer house

  Did you ever see such a house it’s a ruin