by Conrad Aiken
He groaned, and heaved himself off the bed, and went to the window, which was six inches open at the bottom—that must have been done by Bill. A soft current of rainwashed air flowed in coolly over the sill, it was raining a little, and when he looked down at the street lamps and the College Yard he saw that most of the snow was gone. The slope of the hill towards the Union was white, but a white soddened and darkened; the street was cleared; only at the sides were the piled and hardened drifts. And the sound of the snow shovels, scraping the rain-loosened snow—the raucous scraping and chopping, the ringing of steel on stone——
The face that looked back at him, from the lamplit bathroom mirror, was pale, the cheeks pale and a little sunken, but it faced him steadily and calmly, and the eye was not as bloodshot as he might have expected. Nor did the hands, which supported him on the cold marble, tremble, though he felt weak. You, Andrew Cather—old One-eye Cather. You in the flesh again, redivivus; you emaciated and with a hangover; but with that soft-clear sort of hangover which a fried egg and a stiff whisky would put right. Clear-headed, amused, detached—and with a queer deep historical sense. Wash your face in cold water. Dip your face in the cold green basin of water. Your hair too. The time-worn temples. And the three-days’ growth of brown stubble, so long as to be getting soft. And shave, with Bill’s dirty little brush and rusty safety razor. The little ridged clots of soaped hair, floating testimonially in the water, the dirt-streaked water. And a borrowed collar from Bill’s bureau.
But where was it all gone, where was all the tumult gone? Into what remote sunset sound, what slow and distant and delicious thunder of crumbling, as of a world lost in entire peacefulness?
He switched on the light in the silent study, and found that the chaos had been once more reduced to order; the empty bottles had been removed; a new fire of white birch logs had been laid neatly in the brown brick fireplace; the cigarette ends were gone from the ashes and the ash stand. A fresh bottle of whisky stood on the brass tray, and on the table was a folded note, over which lay a small key and a pink ticket. Sanders Theater. Of course, the symphony concert tonight. From Bill. And the small bright key. “Andy. Going to Portland for a few days. Use the ticket if you like. Also my car, at the Church Street garage. Why not go off and think it over quietly, if you can—first telling Bertha, please! Not a bad idea. I suggest Duxbury. Were you saying something about a pig when I fell asleep. Bill.”
The crucified pig, of course! He touched his smoothed chin and smiled, recollecting; feeling again the drunken glass in his hand, the precise torrent of eloquence in his mouth, the spate of ideas and images. Had it been absurd. Had it been as logical as it had seemed. Had he been as wonderfully in control of it as he had thought. He went to the window and looked across at the lights in the Widener Library and Boylston Hall, watched the dark figures going and coming through the gate to the Yard, figures in raincoats, figures hurrying in the soft rain. All the Smiths and Joneses of the world, accumulating knowledge, the ransackers of others’ words, the compilers and digesters. Those who knew nothing, and those who knew a little, and those to whom life would painfully teach more. Were they jealous. Did they betray, or had they been betrayed. Were they sex-ridden, was sex a monster for them, a nightmare, was all this busy come-and-go a mere flight, a disguise, a pretense, a raincoat surface which concealed——
Concealed what.
The slow pang, recapitulative, rose in the darkness of his thought, lazily, languidly, as with the perishing last little energy of an exploding rocket, undecided at the last whether it should be propelled further or fall in a broken and slow dishevelment of fire-streaked pain. Bertha. Bertha and Tom. Yes. This deep violation, which was now past, this blood which was now shed and lost. This wound which was now beginning to be a scar. The inevitable, and God-to-be-thanked-for, cicatrix; the acceptance—but was it cowardly or was it merely wisdom—the acceptance of all of life as a scar. The pig, not crucified, perhaps, after all, but merely cicatrized. Circumscribed. But we mustn’t be misunderstood—! Like that unfortunate fellow in the hospital; who said—“circumcised—that’s what I meant!”
He poured himself a whisky, smiling, measuring the quantity idly by the deepening of the color in the green glass, held it, looking at the picture of Michelangelo, and walked to and fro slowly, before the hearth, as if for the pleasure of repeating, or re-enacting, a lost attitude. Here’s to you, Mike, old boy. The insufferable vanity of the human being, who identifies himself with everything that’s greater than himself! I identified myself with Michelangelo. With Shakespeare. With Melville. I was their grandchild. And why not, after all. I inherit them. They produced me, I couldn’t escape them. They taught me how to suffer. They taught me how to know, how to realize, gave me the words by which I could speak my pain. They gave me the pain by giving me the words. Gave my pain its precise shape, as they gave me their consciousness. As I shall give my pain, my consciousness, to others. Did I say this to Bill.
He drank the whisky at a gulp, shuddered, set down the glass. The warmth in his belly crawled slowly about, like a crimson rambler and he smiled, putting a cool hand against his forehead. It had been a good show, it had been funny; and it was strange, it was disconcerting, to think that an agony could take such a shape—it made one distrust the nature of agony—was it possible, as this suggested, that all sincerities, even the sincerity of agony, were only sincerities of the moment? Only true in the instant? Relative? And for the rest insincere and unreal? Had it all been a fake? And had Bill seen through it? Absurd. In that case, the present calm was just as unreal, just as insincere, just as much an affair of the precise point in the sequence of cause and effect. How do you know your calmness is real, old crab. Do you really dare to think back, to feel back, into the yesterday which has now made itself into today? Are you really calm, or is it a mask which you have put on in your sleep. Have you changed—have you, have you, have you. Shall we look at the face in the mirror again, to see if it is calm. Look at the hand, to see if it shakes. Take the Binet test, to see if you are intelligent. Could you cry, now, although you think you feel like laughing. And how much part in all this has been played by alcohol. At what point in your spirited dramatization of yourself did the drama become drama for the sake of drama, and cease to be even so justifiable as a dramatic “projection” can be? Ah—ah—and is it true—can it possibly be true—that sudden and terrible idea——
He returned to the window, to gaze downward at the dark wetness of Massachusetts Avenue; emphasized, by the arc lights, between the piled snow; and found himself staring at the idea. Could it be true—and if it was, what a relief! what an escape!—that consciousness itself was a kind of dishonesty? A false simplification of animal existence? A voluntary-involuntary distortion, precisely analogous to the falsification that occurs when consciousness, in turn, tries to express itself in speech? As the animate, then, must be a natural distortion of the inanimate. Each step a new kind of dishonesty; a dishonesty inherent in evolution. Each translation involving a shedding, a partial shedding or abandonment, and an invention of a something new which was only disguisedly true to its origins, only obviously true to itself. But in that case, what was truth. Was truth the suffering, or the calm that succeeds the suffering. Or the comprehensive awareness of both, the embracing concept. Was suffering, as it were, merely an unsuccessful attempt at translation, in this progress from one state to another? An inability to feel what one is, to say what one feels, to do what one wills? A failure, simply, to know? A failure of the historical sense?
He lost himself in the succession of half-thoughts, a genial dissipation of ideas, of which he troubled only to feel the weights and vague directions; feeling that he could, had he wished, have followed each divergent and vanishing fin gleam or tail gleam to its psychological or physiological or metaphysical covert; but that to do so would add nothing to what already he deeply and animally and usefully knew. Bores me, the sum. If it was a fake, all that dramatized and projected agony, it was a genuine fake
: suffering, even if it is only a transition, is genuine. Speech, even if it must be only incompletely loyal to its subject, incapable of saying all, is genuine. The fluidity of life, as long as it is life, can never have the immobile integrity of the rock from which it came. It will only be honest rock again when it is dead. And in the meantime, if it suffers, if it is aware that it suffers, if it says that it is aware that it suffers, and if it is aware that it cannot say completely why it suffers, or in severance from what, that’s all you can ask of it. In sum—idiot!—it is only unhappy because it is no longer, for the moment, rock.
He put his hand out of the window to feel the soft rain, as if in demonstration of the smaller uses of feeling; the minor advantages of the temporary emancipation from rock; the pleasures of dishonesty, or treason, to which evolution has led us. Item: rock suffering rain. Rock enduring infidelity. Rock conceiving a philosophical synthesis which explains, if it does not actually diminish, the pain involved in being not-rock. And assures the not-rock that it has, in a sense, a kind of reality. Andrew Cather has really suffered, but his suffering has no importance, except to himself, and only to himself insofar as he fails to realize—what? That rock, sundered from rock, does not cry.
The clock on the mantel struck the half hour, with a single surprising stroke, and he was interested to notice that the clock itself went on ticking, as if in no astonishment at that sudden comment on division of time. Half past seven! The clock was fast. The concert would be at eight. If a little walk, to the river and back, perhaps along Memorial Drive, and then a newspaper and quick supper at the Waldorf, the stock market and sports column surveyed over the fried eggs—if this interval, in which to accept more rationally what in fact he had already accepted, the idea of meeting Bertha at the concert—and perhaps Tom as well—the idea which had been fully formed as soon as he had seen the pink ticket on the table, and so exactly as Bill had foreseen——
And the little key. Duxbury. Had Bill foreseen that too.
When he emerged into the street, and drew a long breath of rain-soft air, abruptly throwing back his shoulders in the gesture he had learned from Tom, he stared at the dull piles of snow and said aloud—Duxbury. Of course. What could be simpler. All that wild magnificent farrago of nonsense had been leading back to Duxbury—or had it been Bill who had been leading back to it. And all the drunken fantasies and fandangos—it was too absurd. It was too obvious. All this mother-fixation business, as if everything in the soul could be charted like a sea! No, Andy, no. Be honest, on this rainy night in February. Walk honestly down Linden Street. Cross Mount Auburn Street honestly; and proceed as honestly toward the Charles River as you would proceed to death. It is not Bill who has given you this idea—not Bill, not Tom, not Bertha, nor any combination of these, nor any disaster to you, any accident; it is yourself; it is your own little worm-curve; the twist that is your own life; the small spiral of light that answers to the name of Andrew Cather; the little rock-pain which chooses this particular fashion of saying that it is tired of being not-rock and would like again to be rock. Touch your hand against the wet wall beside you, the dripping icicle on the wall, which breaks away so softly and falls soundlessly into the snow—feel the wet coldness, the moist surface which will again soon be glazed with ice—know these things, as you know the wet and slippery bricks beneath your feet—the river toward which you walk—they are not more real, more solid, more permanent, than the past Andrew Cather, who has now suddenly and painfully told the present Andrew that there is also a future Andrew. Murder him, if you like, but he is yours.
Would Tom be there; or would Bertha be alone.
He ran quickly across the lamp-reflecting river of Memorial Drive, dodged the twin headlamps of an approaching car, which funneled bright swarms of raindrops out of the night, and on arrival at the other side, suddenly slipped and sat down hard on the half-frozen gravel path, striking his left knee. The pain sickened him, he hugged the lifted knee derisively, sat still for a moment, laughing silently, then rose and limped forward, looking over his shoulder to see if he had been observed. And what sort of pain was this, was this not-rock too. Was it real or unreal. Less real, or more, than the pain of separation. Ridiculous! Tuberculosis, intervening, will arrest the progress of dementia praecox. Good God. If everything was as relative as this—if a sudden physical pain could thus completely shut off a psychological pain, and make the return to it seem forced and deliberate and false—a mere self-indulgence——
Boylston Street, a lighted garage, another garage, the bookshop sign swinging and dripping in the narrow dark street, Erasmus, the lights in the gymnasium. Rodman had said that he must have the completed text in two weeks; and here a week was almost gone—twenty more translation exercises to be compiled and written out—but that would be easy. That Ronda poem. That absurd guidebook. Correct the errors in the following. And at least two of the exercises devoted to the corrida—a novel idea to introduce the bullfight into Spanish grammar. With perhaps a spirited photo or two. Sol y sombra. And what about a quotation from the Spanish translation of “The Waste Land,” Tierra Baldia, by Angel Flores. Abril es el mes más cruel; engendra—Lilas de la tierra muerta, mezcla—And the guidebook, Guia de Ronda. “Ronda is an intricated old Moorish town. Being highly salubrious the longevity of the place is proverbial.” And the “polite youngs.” Translate these passages into what you think might have been the Spanish original. Or something from Toreros y Toros.
At the bright door to the Waldorf, beside the subway entrance, three cents for The Boston Evening Transcript; and then the ticket, accepted from the ticket machine, with a slow clink; and the fried eggs, fresh country eggs, and bacon. Old Turgenev at the desk, with his beautiful white tobacco-stained beard. Eddie, the Negro taxi-driver, sprawling in his usual chair beside the door, reading a paper, his taxi drawn up at the curb outside, in readiness for undergraduates bent on pleasure. And the marble clock with black hands.
Was suffering one’s nearest approach to an acute realization of life? Of existence? And therefore desirable?
—All I can say is, he’s a stinker. It ought to have been a D.
—Why don’t you go and see him.
—The squash courts——
—Sure. Five o’clock.
—And a side order of bacon. Three to come. Blue plate.
—Oh, gosh, it was good. It was the cat’s pyjamas. It was the bee’s knees.
—No, it was Crab that seconded him. Not me.
Complete Wall Street And Boston Stocks Closing Prices Heiress Fights to Keep Her Baby Child Flogged Boy Is Black and Blue Boston Stage Star Dead Famous Singer Began Career With Medicine Show at Age of Ten Years.
But where was it all gone, where was all the tumult gone, into what remote and dwindling sunset sound? And as Bill had said, Bertha must be suffering too. Walking to and fro with a soaked handkerchief in her hand. Unable to sit down, to rest, to think. Unable to sleep. Telephoning to all her friends. What had she said. Had she told them that he had left her. Or what. How had she explained it. Had she told them that she and Tom——
He crumbled the paper napkin, as if to crush once again the recapitulative pang, pushed back his chair. What dress would she be wearing—as if it mattered, by God. The blue velvet opera cloak. And all their friends, all the wives of faculty members, to see them when they met. Look, there is Andrew Cather, he’s talking with Bertha, do you see them, in the back row, you know what they say about them don’t you, they say—and do you suppose Tom Crapo is here tonight—can you imagine——
In Bill’s room again, without turning on the light, he poured himself a whisky, drank it straight, resumed the automatic buzz of phrases. Was there no way to stop it. Was it wise to go to the concert at all. Should he go to see Molly, invite her to come to Duxbury with him, simply to have some one to talk to. The light from Massachusetts Avenue filled the room with imitation moonlight, sharply angled, ghostly; Michelangelo gazed down somberly through a diagonal shadow. Telephone to Molly now, or later p
erhaps. Go to Shepard Hall while Bertha was still at the concert, to have a look around, get the mail, put on a clean shirt. And telephone to Molly from there. Hello Molly, this is your old friend Andy, I wondered if you would like—I wondered if we might—what do you say to a little elopement—expedition—would you like to drive me down to Duxbury tonight—all expenses paid—what ho, Molly, how about a little spree to Montreal. Dance at the Lido first if you like. Or stay in your flat and drive down early in the morning. It’s all over but the laughing.
He chose a book at random from the shelf by the fireplace, turned on the light and began to read, standing with his back to the hearth.
“Man is pre-eminently distinguished from the lower animals by the enormous development of his libido … he loves a great deal more than is necessary.”
He loves a great deal more than is necessary. Christ!
The impulse to fling the book down violently was translated quietly into a precise reinsertion of it in its place on the shelf. These psychologists. These fellows who become psychologists because they understand neither themselves nor any one else. These phrase-makers—man with his enormous libido, man with his persistent libido, man pre-eminently distinguished from the lower animals because his love is not confined to the rutting season! Pre-eminently distinguished from the birds by his lack of wings. Look at the poor devil, staggering through the world under his enormous burden of libido. I forgive you, Bertha, for now I realize that the burden of libido which you carry everywhere with you is far too much for you. Yes. Let us share it with you. Hand it about to the audience at Sanders Theater—God knows they could stand a little more. And if they and Tom don’t want it all—if there is something left over—a quantum, a surd, one tiny flame-plume—one eyelash-flicker of a loving look——