I came out of my trance. I looked at the stuff with what I imagine to have been a dull, glazed eye. Then my old training came to my rescue.
It was a white powder with a tendency to form little lumps rather like chalk. I rubbed it between my finger and thumb. I smelt it. That told me nothing. I tasted it. That told me nothing, either, because the nerves of my tongue were entirely anaesthetised by the cocaine.
But the investigation was a mere formality. I know now why I made it. It was the mere gesture of the male. I wanted to show off to Lou. I wished to impress upon her my importance as a man of science; and all the time I knew, without being told, what it was.
So did she. The longer I have known Lou, the more impressed I am with the extent and variety of her knowledge.
“Oh, Gretel is too sweet,” she chirped. “She guessed we might get tired of coco, ‘grateful and comforting’ as it is. So the dear old thing sent us some heroin. And there are still some people who tell us that life is not worth living!”
“Ever try it?” I asked, and delayed the answer with a kiss.
When the worst was over, she told me that she had only taken it once, and then, in a very minute dose, which had had no effect on her as far as she knew.
“That’s all right,” I said, from the height of my superior knowledge. “It’s all a question of estimating the physiological dose. It’s very fine indeed. The stimulation is very much better than that of morphine. One gets the same intense beatific calm, but without the languor. Why, Lou, darling, you’ve read De Quincey and all those people about opium, haven’t you? Opium’s a mixture, you know – something like twenty different alkaloids in it. Laudanum: Coleridge took it, and Clive – all sorts of important people. It’s a solution of opium in alcohol. But morphia, is the most active and important of the principles in opium. You could take it in all sorts of ways. Injection gives the best results; but it’s rather a nuisance, and there’s always danger of getting dirt in. You have to look out for blood-poisoning all the time. It stimulates the imagination marvellously. It kills all pain and worry like a charm. But at the very moment when you have the most gorgeous ideas, when you build golden palaces of what you are going to do, you have a feeling at the same time that nothing is really worth doing, and that itself gives you a feeling of terrific superiority to everything else in the world. And so, from the objective point of view, it comes to nothing. But heroin does all that morphia does. It’s a derivative of morphia, you know – Diacetyl–Morphine is the technical name. Only instead of bathing you in philosophical inertia, you are as keen as mustard on carrying out your ideas. I’ve never taken any myself. I suppose we might as well start now.”
I had a vision of myself as a peacock strutting and preening. Lou, her mouth half open, was gazing at me fascinated with enormous eyes; the pupils dilated by cocaine. It was just the male bird showing off to his mate. I wanted her to adore me for my little scraps of knowledge; the fragments I had picked up in my abandoned education.
Lou is always practical; and she puts something of the priestess into everything she does. There was a certain solemnity in the way in which she took up the heroin on the blade of a knife and put it on to the back of her hand.
“My Knight,” she said, with flashing eyes, “our Lady arms you for the fight.”
And she held out her fist to my nostrils. I snuffed up the heroin with a sort of ritualistic reverence. I can’t imagine where the instinct came from. Is it the sparkle of cocaine that excites one to take it greedily, and the dullness of the heroin which makes it seem a much more serious business?
I felt as if I were going through some very important ceremony. When I had finished, Lou measured a dose for herself. She took it with a deep, grave interest.
I was reminded of the manner of my old professor at U.C.H. when he came to inspect a new case; a case mysterious but evidently critical. The excitement of the cocaine had somehow solidified. Our minds had stopped still. And yet their arrest was as intense as their previous motion.
We found ourselves looking into each other’s eyes with no less ardour than before; but somehow it was a different kind of ardour. It was as if we had been released from the necessity of existence in the ordinary sense of the word. We were both wondering who we were and what we were and what was going to happen; and, at the same time, we had a positive certainty that nothing could possibly happen.
It was a most extraordinary feeling. It was of a kind quite unimaginable by any ordinary minds. I will go a bit further than that. I don’t believe the greatest artist in the world could invent what we felt, and if he could he couldn’t describe it.
I’m trying to describe it myself, and I feel that I’m not making out very well. Come to think of it, the English language has its limitations. When mathematicians and men of science want to exchange thoughts, English isn’t much good. They’ve had to invent new words, new symbols. Look at Einstein’s equations.
I knew a man once that knew James Hinton, who invented the fourth dimension. Pretty bright chap, he was, but Hinton thought, on the most ordinary subjects, at least six times as fast as he did, and when it came to Hinton’s explaining himself, he simply couldn’t do it.
That’s the great trouble when a new thinker comes along. They all moan that they can’t understand him; the fact annoys them very much; and ten to one they persecute him and call him an Atheist or a Degenerate or a Pro-German or a Bolshevik, or whatever the favourite term of abuse happens to be at the time.
Wells told us a bit about this in that book of his about giants, and so does Bernard Shaw in his Back to Methuselah. It’s nobody’s fault in particular, but there it is, and you can’t get over it.
And here was I, a perfectly ordinary man, with just about the average allowance of brains, suddenly finding myself cut off from the world, in a class by myself – I felt that I had something perfectly tremendous to tell, but I couldn’t tell even myself what it was.
And there was Lou standing right opposite, and I recognised instinctively, by sympathy, that she was just in the same place.
We had no need of communicating with each other by means of articulate speech. We understood perfectly; we expressed the fact in every subtle harmony of glance and gesture.
The world had stopped suddenly still. We were alone in the night and the silence of things. We belonged to eternity in some indefinable way; and that infinite silence blossoms inscrutably into embrace.
The heroin had begun to take hold. We felt ourselves crowned with colossal calm. We were masters; we had budded from nothingness into existence! And now, existence slowly compelled us to action. There was a necessity in our own natures which demanded expression and after the first intense inter-penetration of our individualities, we had reached the resultant of all the forces that composed us.
In one sense, it was that our happiness was so huge that we could not bear it; and we slid imperceptibly into conceding that the ineffable mysteries must be expressed by means of sacramental action.
But all this took place at an immense distance from reality. A concealed chain of interpretation linked the truth with the obvious commonplace fact that this was a good time to go across to Montmartre and make a night of it.
We dressed to go out with, I imagine, the very sort of feeling as a newly made bishop would have the first time he puts on his vestments.
But none of this would have been intelligible to, or suspected by, anybody who had seen us. We laughed and sang and interchanged gay nothings while we dressed.
When we went downstairs, we felt like gods descending upon earth, immeasurably beyond mortality.
With the cocaine, we had noticed that people smiled rather strangely. Our enthusiasm was observed. We even felt a little touch of annoyance at everybody not going at the same pace; but this was perfectly different. The sense of our superiority to mankind was constantly present. We were dignified beyond all words to express. Our own
voices sounded far, far off. We were perfectly convinced that the hotel porter realised that he was receiving the orders of Jupiter and Juno to get a taxi.
We never doubted that the chauffeur knew himself to be the charioteer of the sun.
“This is perfectly wonderful stuff,” I said to Lou as we passed the Arc de Triomphe. “I don’t know what you meant by saying the stuff didn’t have any special effect upon you. Why, you’re perfectly gorgeous.”
“You bet I am,” laughed Lou. “The king’s daughter is all-glorious within; her raiment is of wrought gold, and she thrusts her face out to be kissed, like a comet pushing its way to the sun. Didn’t you know I was the king’s daughter?” She smiled, with such seductive sublimity that something in me nearly fainted with delight.
“Hold up, Cockie,” she chirped. “It’s all right. You’re it, and I’m it, and I’m your little wife.”
I could have torn the upholstery out of the taxi. I felt myself a giant. Gargantua was a pigmy. I felt the need of smashing something into matchwood, and I was all messed up about it because it was Lou that I wanted to smash, and at the same time she was the most precious and delicate piece of porcelain that ever came out of the Ming dynasty or whatever the beastly period is.
The most fragile, exquisite beauty! To touch her was to profane her. I had a sudden nauseating sense of the bestiality of marriage.
I had no idea at the time that this sudden revulsion of feeling was due to a mysterious premonition of the physiological effects of heroin in destroying love. Definitely stimulating things like alcohol, hashish and cocaine give free range to Cupid. Their destructive effect on him is simply due to the reaction. One is in debt, so to speak, because one has outrun the constable.
But what I may call the philosophical types of dope, of which morphine and heroin are the principal examples, are directly inimical to active emotion and emotional action. The normal human feelings are transmuted into what seem on the surface their spiritual equivalents. Ordinary good feeling becomes universal benevolence; a philanthropy which is infinitely tolerant because the moral code has become meaningless for it. A more than Satanic pride swells in one’s soul. As Baudelaire says: “Hast thou not sovereign contempt, which makes the soul so kind?”
As we drove up the Butte Montmartre towards the Sacré Coeur, we remained completely silent, lost in our calm beatitude. You must understand that we were already excited to the highest point. The effect of the heroin had been to steady us in that state.
Instead of beating passionately up the sky with flaming wings, we were poised aloft in the illimitable ether. We took fresh doses of the dull soft powder now and again. We did so without greed, hurry or even desire. The sensation was of infinite power which could afford infinite deliberation. Will itself seemed to have been abolished. We were going nowhere in particular, simply because it was our nature so to do. Our beatitude became more absolute every moment.
With cocaine, one is indeed master of everything; but everything matters intensely.
With heroin, the feeling of mastery increases to such a point that nothing matters at all. There is not even the disinclination to do what one happens to be doing which keeps the opium smoker inactive. The body is left to itself so perfectly that one is not worried by its natural activities.
Again, despite our consciousness of infinity, we maintained, concurrently, a perfect sense of proportion in respect of ordinary matters.
Chapter V
A Heroin Heroine
I stopped the taxi in the Place du Tertre. We wanted to walk along the edge of the Butte and let our gaze wander over Paris.
The night was delicious. Nowhere but in Paris does one experience that soft suave hush; the heat is dry, the air is light, it is quite unlike anything one ever gets in England.
A very gentle breeze, to which our fancy attributed the redolence of the South, streamed up from the Seine. Paris itself was a blur of misty blue; the Pantheon and the Eiffel Tower leapt from its folds. They seemed like symbols of the history of mankind; the noble, solid past and the mechanical efficient future.
I leant upon the parapet entranced. Lou’s arm was around my neck. We were so still that I could feel her pulses softly beating.
“Great Scott, Pendragon!”
For all its suggestion of surprise, the voice was low and winsome. I looked around.
Had I been asked, I should have said, no doubt, that I should have resented any disturbance; and here was a sudden, violent, unpleasant disturbance; and it did not disturb me. There was a somewhat tentative smile on the face of the man who had spoken. I recognised him instantly, though I had not seen him since we were at school together. The man’s name was Elgin Feccles. He had been in the mathematical sixth when I was in the lower school.
In my third term he had become head prefect; he had won a scholarship at Oxford – one of the best things going. Then, without a moment’s warning, he had disappeared from the school. Very few people knew why, and those who did pretended not to. But he never went to Oxford.
I had only heard of the man once since. It was in the club. His name came up in connection with some vague gossip about some crooked financial affair. I had it in my mind, vaguely enough, that that must have had something to do with the trouble at school. He was not the sort of boy to be expelled for any of the ordinary reasons. It was certainly something to do with the subtlety of his intellect. To tell you the truth, he had been a sort of hero of mine at school. He possessed all the qualities I most admired – and lacked – in their fullest expansion.
I had known him very slightly; but his disappearance had been a great shock. It had stuck in my mind when many more important things had left no trace.
He had hardly changed from when I had last seen him. Of middle height, he had a long and rather narrow face. There was a touch of the ecclesiastic in his expression. His eyes were small and grey; he had a trick of blinking. The nose was long and beaked like Wellington’s; the mouth was thin and tense; the skin was fresh and rosy. He had not developed even the tiniest wrinkle.
He kept the old uneasy nervous movement which had been so singular in him as a boy. One would have said that he was constantly on the alert, expecting something to happen, and yet the last thing that any one could have said about him was that he was ill at ease. He possessed superb confidence.
Before I had finished recognising him, he had shaken hands with me and was prattling about the old days.
“I hear you’re Sir Peter now, by the way,” he said. “Good for you. I always picked you for a winner.”
“I think I’ve met you,” interrupted Lou. “Surely, it’s Mr. Feccles.”
“Oh, yes, I remember you quite well. Miss Laleham, isn’t it?”
“Please let’s forget the past,” smiled Lou, taking my arm.
I don’t know why I should have felt embarrassed at explaining that we were married.
Feccles rattled off a string of congratulations.
“May I introduce Mademoiselle Haidé Lamoureux?”
The girl beside him smiled and bowed.
Haidé Lamoureux was a brilliant brunette with a flashing smile and eyes with pupils like pin-points. She was a mass of charming contradictions. The nose and mouth suggested more than a trace of Semitic blood, but the wedge-shaped contour of the face betokened some very opposite strain. Her cheeks were hollow, and crows’ feet marred the corners of her eyes. Dark purple rims suggested sensual indulgence pushed to the point of weariness. Though her hair was luxuriant, the eyebrows were almost non-existent. She had pencilled fine black arches above them. She was heavily and clumsily painted. She wore a loose and rather daring evening dress of blue with silver sequins, and a yellow sash spotted with black. Over this she had thrown a cloak of black lace garnished with vermilion tassels. Her hands were deathly thin. There was something obscene in the crookedness of her fingers, which were covered with enormous rings of s
apphires and diamonds.
Her manner was one of vivid languor. It seemed as if she always had to be startled into action, and that the instant the first stimulus had passed she relapsed into her own deep thoughts.
Her cordiality was an obvious affectation; but both Lou and myself, as we shook hands, were aware of a subtle and mysterious sympathy which left behind it a stain of inexpressible evil.
I also felt sure that Feccles understood this unspoken communion, and that for some reason or other it pleased him immensely. His manner changed to one of peculiarly insinuating deference, and I felt that he was somehow taking command of the party when he said –
“May I venture to suggest that you and Lady Pendragon take supper with us at the Petit Savoyard?”
Haidé slipped her arm into mine, and Lou led the way with Feccles.
“We were going there ourselves,” she told him, “and it will be perfectly delightful to be with friends. I see you’re quite an old friend of my husband’s.”
He began to tell her of the old school. As if by accident, he gave an account of the circumstances which had led to his leaving.
“My old man was in the city, you know,” I heard him say, “and he dropped his pile ‘somewhere in Lombard Street’” (he gave a false little laugh), “where he couldn’t pick it up, so that was the end of my academic career. He persuaded old Rosenbaum, the banker, that I had a certain talent for finance, and got me a job as private secretary. I really did take to it like a duck to water, and things have gone very well for me ever since. But London isn’t the place for men with real ambition. It doesn’t afford the scope. It’s either Paris or New York for yours sincerely, Elgin Feccles.”
I don’t know why I didn’t believe a word of the tale; but I didn’t. The heroin was working beautifully. I hadn’t the slightest inclination to talk to Haidé.
In the same way she took no notice of me. She never uttered a word.
Lou was in the same condition. She was apparently listening to what Feccles was saying; but she made no remark, and preserved a total detachment. The whole scene had not taken three minutes. We reached the Petit Savoyard and took our seats.
Diary of a Drug Fiend Page 7