I had been in their silly world of sense a million years or so ago, when I was Peter Pendragon.
But why recall the painful past? Of course, one doesn’t come to one’s full strength in a minute. Take the case of an eagle. What is it as long as it’s in the egg? Nothing but an egg with possibilities. And the first day it’s hatched you don’t expect it to fly to Neptune and back. Certainly not!
But every day, in every way, it gets better and better. And if I was ever tempted to flop and remember my base origin as a forked radish, why all I needed was a kiss from Lou, or a sniff of cocaine to put me back in Paradise.
I can’t tell you about those next twenty-four hours. Suffice it to say that all world’s records were broken and broken again. And we were simply panting like two hungry wolves when Feccles turned up with the disguises and the guns!
He repeated those instructions, and added one word of almost paternal counsel in a very confidential tone.
“You’ll excuse me, I know; I’m not suggesting for a moment you’re not perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but you haven’t been in these parts before, and you must never forget the quick, violent tempers of these Southern Italians. It’s like one of these sudden gusts that the fishermen are so afraid of. It doesn’t mean anything in particular; but it’s often ugly enough at the moment, and what you have to do is to keep out of any kind of a row. There may be a lot of drunken ruffians in the Fauno Ebbrio. Sit near the door; and if anybody starts scrapping, slip out quietly and walk up and down till it’s over. You don’t want to get mixed up with a fuss.”
I could see the wisdom of his remarks, although, on the other hand, I was personally spoiling for a fight. The one fly in the apothecary’s ointment of the honeymoon, though I didn’t notice it, was that something in me missed the excitement of the daily gambling with death to which the war had accustomed me.
The slightest reminder of the wilder passions – a couple of boatmen quarrelling, or even a tourist protesting about some trifle, sent the blood to my head. I only wanted a legitimate excuse for killing a few hundred people.
But nature is wise and kind, and I was always able to take it out of Lou. The passions of murder and love are inseparably connected in our ancestry. All civilisation has done is to teach us to pretend to idealise them.
The programme went off without the slightest hitch. Our room opened on to a terrace in deep shadow. At this time of year there was hardly any one in the hotel, of course. A little flight of steps at the side of the terrace took us under an arch of twisted vines into the barely more than mule-path that does duty for a road in Capri.
No one took any notice of us. There were only strolling lovers, parties of peasants singing as they walked to the guitar, and two or three tired happy fishermen strolling home from the wine-shop.
We found the motor-boat at the quay, and lay lapsed in delight. It seemed hardly a minute later when we found ourselves in Sorrento couched in a huge roadster. Without a word spoken, we were off at top speed.
The beauty of the drive is notorious; and yet:
“We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.”
The world had been created afresh for our sakes. It was an ever-changing phantasmagoria of rapturous sounds and sights and scents; and it all seemed a mere ornamentation for our love, the setting for the jewel of our sparkling passion.
Even the last few miles into Naples, where the road runs through tedious commercialised suburbs, took on a new aspect. The houses were a mere irregular skyline. Somehow they suggested the jagged contour of a score of Debussy.
But all this, exquisite as it was, gripping as it was, was in a way superficial. At the bottom of our hearts there seethed and surged a white hot volcanic lake of molten, of infernal, metal.
We did not know what hideous, what monstrous abominations were in store for us at the Gatto Fritto.
I have set down how the action of the drugs had partially stripped off the recent layers of memory. It had achieved a parallel result much more efficiently on the moral plane. The toil of countless generations of evolution had been undone in a month. We still preserved, to a certain extent, the conventions of decency; but we knew that we did so only from ape-like cunning.
We had reverted to the gorilla. No action of violence and lust but seemed a necessary outlet for our energies!
We said nothing to each other about this. It was, in fact, deeper and darker than could be conveyed by articulate speech.
Man differs from the lower animals indeed, first of all, in this matter of language. The use of language compels one to measure one’s thoughts. That is why the great philosophers and mystics, who are dealing with ideas that cannot be expressed in such terms, are constantly compelled to use negative adjectives, or to rebuke the mind by formulating their thoughts in a series of contradictory statements. That is the explanation of the Athanasian Creed. Its clauses puzzle the plain man.
One must oneself be divine to comprehend divinity,
The converse proposition is equally true. The passions of the pit find outlet only in bestial noises.
The automobile stopped at the end of the dirty little street where the Fauno Ebbrio lurks. The motorman pointed to the zig-zag streak of light that issued from it, and cast a sinister gleam on the opposite wall.
A bold, black-haired, short-skirted girl with a gaudy shawl and huge gold ear-rings was standing in the door. What with the long journey and the drugs and other things, we were a little drunk – just enough to realise that it was part of our policy to pretend to be a little more drunk than we were.
We let our heads roll from side to side as we staggered to the door. We sat down at a little table and called for drink. They served us one of those foul Italian imitations of liqueurs that taste like hair-wash.
But instead of nauseating us, it exalted us; we enjoyed it as part of the game. Dressed as low-class Neapolitans, we threw ourselves heartily into the part.
We threw the fiery filth down our throats as if it had been Courvoisier ’65. The drink took effect on us with surprising alacrity. It seemed to let loose those swarming caravans of driver ants that eat their way through the jungle of life like a splash of sulphuric acid flung in a woman’s face.
There was no clock in the den, and of course we had left our watches at home. We got a little impatient. We couldn’t remember whether Feccles had or had not told us how long he was likely to be. The air of the room was stifling. The lowest vagabonds of Naples crowded the place. Some were jabbering like apes; some singing drunkenly to themselves; some shamelessly caressing; some sunk in bestial stupor.
Among the last was a burly brute who somehow fascinated our attention.
We thought ourselves quite safe in speaking English; and for all I know we were talking at the top of our voices. Lou maintained that this particular man was English himself.
He was apparently asleep; but presently he lifted his head from the table, stretched his great arms, and called for a drink, in Italian.
He drained his glass at a gulp, and then came suddenly over to our table and addressed us in English.
We could tell at once from his accent that the man had originally been more or less of a gentleman, but his face and his tone told their own story. He must have been going downhill for many years – reached the bottom long ago, and found it the easiest place to live.
He was aggressively friendly in a brutal way, and warned us that our disguises might be a source of danger; any one could see through them, and the fact of our having adopted them might arouse the quick suspicion of the Neapolitan mind.
He called for drinks, and toasted King and Country with a sort of surly pride in his origin. He reminded me of Kipling’s broken-down Englishman.
“Don’t you be afraid,” he said to Lou. “I won’t let you come to any harm. A little peach like you? No blooming fear!”
&
nbsp; I resented the remark with almost insane intensity, To hell with the fellow!
He noticed it at once, and leered with a horrible chuckle.
“All right, mister,” he said. “No offence meant,” and he threw an arm round Lou’s neck, and made a movement to kiss her.
I was on my feet in a second, and swung my right to his jaw. It knocked him off the bench, and he lay flat.
In a moment the uproar began. All my old fighting instincts flashed to the surface. I realised instantly that we were in for the very row that Feccles had so wisely warned us to avoid.
The whole crowd – men and women – were on their feet. They were rushing at us like stampeding cattle. I whipped out my revolver. The wave surged back as a breaker does when it hits a rock.
“Guard my back!” I cried to Lou.
She hardly needed telling. The spirit of the true Englishwoman in a crisis was aflame in her.
Fixing the crowd with my eyes and my barrel, we edged our way to the door. One man took up a glass to throw; but the Padrone had slipped out from behind the bar, and knocked his arm down.
The glass smashed to the floor. The attack on us degenerated into a volley of oaths and shrieks. We found ourselves in the fresh air – and also in the arms of half a dozen police who had run up from both ends of the street.
Two of them strode into the wine-shop. The uproar ceased as if by magic.
And then we found that we were under arrest. We were being questioned in voluble, excited Italian. Neither Lou nor I understood a word that was said to us.
The sergeant came out of the dive. He seemed an intelligent man. He understood at once that we were English.
“Inglese?” he asked. “Inglese?” and I forcibly echoed “Inglese, Signore Inglese,” as if that settled the whole matter.
English people on the Continent have an illusion that the mere fact of their nationality permits them to do anything soever. And there is a great deal of truth in this, after all, because the inhabitants of Europe have a settled conviction that we are all harmless lunatics. So we are allowed to act in all sorts of ways which they would not tolerate for a moment in any supposedly rational person.
In the present instance, I have little doubt that, if we had been dressed as ourselves, we should have been politely conducted to our hotel or put into an automobile, without any more fuss, perhaps, than a few perfunctory questions intended to impress the sergeant’s men with his importance.
But as it was, he shook his head doubtfully.
“Arme vietate,” he said solemnly, pointing to the revolvers which were still in our hands.
I tried to explain the affair in broken Italian. Lou did what was really a much more sensible thing by taking the affair as a stupendous joke, and going off into shrieks of hysterical laughter.
But as for me, my blood was up. I wasn’t going to stand any nonsense from these damned Italians. Despite the Roman blood that is legitimately the supreme pride of our oldest families, we always somehow instinctively think of the Italian as a nigger.
We don’t call them “dagos” and “wops”, as they do in the United States, with the invariable epithet of “dirty”; but we have the same feeling.
I began to take the high hand with the sergeant and that, of course, was quite sufficient to turn the balance against us.
We found ourselves pinioned. He said in a very short tone that we should have to go to the Commissario.
I had two conflicting impulses. One to shoot the dogs down and get away; the other to wish, like a lost child, that Feccles would turn up and get us out of the mess.
Unfortunately for either, I had been very capably disarmed, and there was no sign of Feccles.
We were marched to the police station and thrown into separate rooms.
I cannot hope to depict the boiling rage which kept me awake all night. I resented ill-temperedly the attempts of the other men to be sympathetic. I think they recognised instinctively that I had got into trouble through no fault of my own, and were anxious to show kindness in their own rough way to the stranger.
The worst of the whole business was that they had searched us and removed our stand-by, the dear little gold-topped bottle! I might have got myself into a mood to laugh the whole thing off, as had so often happened before; and I realised for the first time the dreadful sinking of heart that comes from privation.
It was only a hint of the horror so far. I had enough of the stuff in me to carry me through for a bit. But, even as things were, it was bad enough.
I had a feeling of utter helplessness. I began to repent having repulsed the advances of my fellow prisoners. I approached them and explained that I was a “Signor Inglese” with “molto danaro”; and if any one could oblige me with a sniff of cocaine, as I explained by gesture, I should be practically grateful.
I was understood immediately. They laughed sympathetically with perfect comprehension of the case. But as it happened, nobody had managed to smuggle anything in. There was nothing for it but to wait for the morning. I lay down on a bench, and found myself the prey of increasingly acute irritation.
The hours passed like the procession of Banquo’s heirs before the eyes of Macbeth; and a voice in me kept saying, “Macbeth hath murdered sleep, Macbeth shall sleep no more!”
I had an appallingly disquieting sensation of being tracked down by some invisible foe. I was seized with a perfectly unreasonable irritation against Feccles, as if it were his fault, and not my own, that I was in this mess.
Strangely enough, you may think, I never gave a thought to Lou. It mattered nothing to me whether she were suffering or not. My own personal physiological sensations occupied the whole of my mind.
I was taken before the Commissario as soon as he arrived. They seemed to recognise that the case was important.
Lou was already in the office. The Commissario spoke no English, and no interpreter was immediately available. She looked absolutely wretched.
There had been no conveniences for toilet, and in the daylight the disguise was a ridiculous travesty.
Her hair was tousled and dirty; her complexion was sallow, mottled with touches of unwholesome red. Her eyes were bleared and bloodshot. Dark purple rims were round them.
I was extremely angry with her for her unprepossessing appearance. It then occurred to me for the first time that perhaps I myself was not looking like the Prince of Wales on Derby Day.
The commissary was a short, bull-necked individual, evidently sprung from the ranks of the people. He possessed a correspondingly exaggerated sense of his official importance.
He spoke almost without courtesy, and appeared to resent our incapacity to understand his language.
As for myself, the fighting spirit had gone out of me completely. All I could do was to give our names in the tone of voice of a schoolboy who has been summoned by the head master, and to appeal for the “Consule, Inglese”.
The commissary’s clerk seemed excited when he heard who we were, and spoke to his superior in a rapid undertone. We were asked to write our names.
I thought this was getting out of it rather nicely. I felt sure that the “Sir” would do the trick, and the “V-C., K.B.E.” could hardly fail to impress.
I’m not a bit of a snob; but I really was glad for once to be of some sort of importance.
The clerk ran out of the room with the paper. He came back in a moment, beaming all over, and called the attention of the commissary to one of the morning newspapers, running his finger along the lines with suppressed excitement.
My spirits rose. Evidently some social paragraph had identified us.
The commissary changed his manner at once. His new tone was not exactly sympathetic and friendly, but I put that down to the man’s plebeian origin.
He said something about “Consule”, and had us conducted to an outer room. The clerk indicated that we were to
wait there – no doubt, for the arrival of the consul.
It was not more than half an hour; but it seemed an eternity. Lou and I had nothing to say to each other. What we felt was a blind ache to get away from these wretched people; to get back to the Caligula; to have a bath and a meal; and above all, to ease our nerves with a good stiff dose of heroin and a few hearty sniffs of cocaine.
Chapter X
THE BUBBLE BURSTS
We felt that our troubles were over when a tall bronzed Englishman in flannels and a Panama sauntered into the room.
We sprang instinctively to our feet, but he took no notice beyond looking at us out of the tail of his eye, and twisting his mouth into a curious little compromise between a smile and a query.
The clerk bowed him at once into an inner room. We waited and waited. I couldn’t understand at all what they could have been talking about in there for so long.
But at last the soldier at the door beckoned us in. The vice-consul was sitting on a sofa in the background. With his head on one side, he shot a keen fixed glance out of his languid eyes, and bit his thumbnail persistently, as if in a state of extreme nervous perplexity.
I was swept by a feeling of complete humiliation. It was a transitory feverish flush; and it left me more exhausted than ever.
The commissario swung his chair around to our saviour, and said something which evidently meant, “Please open fire.”
“I’m the vice-consul here,” he said. “I understand that you claim to be Sir Peter and Lady Pendragon.”
“That’s who we are,” I replied, with a pitiful attempt at jauntiness.
“You’ll excuse me, I’m sure,” he said, “if I say that – to the eyes of the average Italian official – you don’t precisely look the part. Have you your passports?”
The mere presence of an English gentleman had a good effect in pulling me together.
Diary of a Drug Fiend Page 13