Self Condemned

by Lewis, Wyndham

  “What I would like to know is the degree in which these are war conditions. In peace time is there this perpetual drunkenness and fighting?”

  “Yes and no,” Jim answered. “Everything is worse today. But the Canadian is at all times an ugly man when he is full of liquor.”

  Jim Greevy now enquired whether the kick on the left arm had broken anything: and whether the bandage round the head signified anything serious.

  René reassured him. He told him his arm was dislocated merely: it was painful, but would be all right soon. Shortly after that Greevy left.

  “Well, that was from the horse’s mouth. We were imprudent, even at six o’clock, not to quieten down our voices.”

  There was a bloodcurdling shriek from the end of the passage. It continued solidly for three or four minutes.

  “I wish someone would empty some beer over that woman,” Hester smiled mirthlessly. “But she ‘makes a noise like a Canadian,’ so that is all right I suppose.”

  XVII

  VOWS OF HARDSHIP

  Blizzards blew from the Pole downwards, though they were abominably vacillating, and this was a severe one. Hester had gone to the groceteria about noon: it was no farther than the other end of the block, but you faced north to go to it from the hotel. Hester had to move doubled up, and to stop a half-dozen times, and stand with her back to the ice- blast, which whirled around her as soon as she turned, so that she stood in a whirlpool of snow. Each time she stopped she was very quickly forced around again in order to escape the whirlpool: and at intervals this mannerism was repeated again and again. Her hair was full of frozen snow and her lips froze against her teeth when she reached the groceteria: she went up to the glass case, and stared through at the items for sale, odds and ends of butchery. These showcases were such as are used in museums for the display of antiquities, and to begin with this method of exhibiting meat is displeasing to English people. She selected four kidneys as a treat for René, for the evening meal, and two Idaho potatoes — or if not Idahoes they were almost as large.

  This was Christmas-type eating, a foretaste of what it would be incumbent on them to do in the way of extravagance in four days’ time. But they would not have the money to have much of a Christmas dinner: so why not spread the Christmas dinner out? Christmas had made everything worse, and Hester had privately reached a state of mind where she would whisper to herself, “To hell with economics!” as she pointed to a packet of frozen peaches in the ice chest. Why did they not go to the British High Commissioner, say they had no money, and ask to be shipped home? They had known another Englishman who had done that: there was no difficulty about it. They could not travel together, but what of that if they got back to England. It was also in this spirit that, before she left the groceteria, she added half a pound of mushrooms to her other purchases. Fortified by the heat in the shop, she then went back into the storm, ploughing through the snow in her overshoes. Her stockings were wet above the knee, and the whirling snow drove down inside her overshoes.

  When Hester reached the hotel, she was breathless and uncomfortably hot. She collapsed upon a seat near the front door, tearing her ulster open to ventilate the burning interior. At last she was able to move through the hotel, and then, her heart still thumping, stumble up the annex stairs. She burst into the Room with a protesting “Oh,” and sank on the settee, struggling to recover her breath. She did not indulge in speech for a while: then she said, to the amused René,“Never, but never, have I encountered such a beast of a blizzard! It is like a million dervishes whirling around one.” — But when the contents of the shopping bag was revealed to René he was less amused.

  “Mushrooms! Idahoes! What does all this signify? Is this Christmas?”

  “I am sorry.” She exhibited contrition. “I was demoralized. Very demoralized. Please put it all down to the blizzard: I lost all sense of time and space.”

  These luxurious purchases, this succulent raw material spread out upon the table, obviously produced acute dejection in René, and filled him with the darkest forebodings. The fact that his left arm was out of action had made it much more difficult for him to work. To be behind-hand with his work raised up the spectre of insolvency, and Furber, that was worst of all — and then par dessus le marché, Christmas!

  He gave up his afternoon rest, for he felt that the mushrooms and the Idahoes pointed to the necessity of making up for the time lost resulting from the brawl of six days before. When tea time came he showed great appreciation of the Salada and of some stale cookies, which had been rejected as compromisingly old when they were entertaining Mr. Starr. He appeared to be in an exceptionally good mood, so Hester thought she would speak to him of her growing unwillingness to prolong the occupation of the Room, and of her longing to shake the dust of this country off her thrice-patched shoes.

  “Just look at that blizzard,” she exclaimed, waving her hand towards the window. “While I was sweating and freezing, gasping for breath, and trying to prevent my heart from beating a hole in my side, when I got back to the hotel this morning, I said to myself, ‘Hester, you have been in this country long enough.’”

  René ho-ho-ho’ed. He did not suspect the existence of any purpose behind this boutade.

  “We are great friends, aren’t we, René, as well as lovers?” she said softly.

  René was thinking of the work he had to do after tea: he did not take this in for a few moments: they were not accustomed to say things of that kind to one another. But then he turned squarely towards her, reached over and planted his hand on hers.

  “The greatest pals in the world, Ess. I don’t believe there ever have been such pals.”

  “I don’t believe there have been either, René.” He had taken his hand away and passed it through his hair, and frowned, as if confronted with some difficult problem. He stared at her intently. She became self-conscious at this scrutiny; she felt like some wild animal not accustomed to be looked at. We take our being for granted, our physical presence comes to enjoy the anonymity of furniture. What was he searching for, what information that he did not possess already?

  “I see, I see,” he almost hissed, “a stranger who has become a sister.” And it flashed through his mind how his belief in blood, in the Family, had taken him, in the crisis of his life, to a lot of strangers beginning with his mother.

  There was only Helen, and that was not because she was a sister. But here, all the time, was the person he should have gone to. “Hardship! I am beginning to love hardship. It sharpens the sight. When I look, I see. I see what a grand woman you are. I used to think that you were scheming and frivolous — I am afraid that you must have seen that I thought that.”

  “I sometimes feared you thought that,” she agreed. She saw her chances of an opening slipping away. She had trembled when he spoke so favourably of hardship.

  “I, no more than you, would seek hardship,” he said, and she started, for it was as though he had been listening in to her thoughts. “But honestly, being imprisoned, as we have been, here, has its compensations. This barren life has dried out of me a great deal that should not have been there. And you have become integrated in me. This tête-a-tête of ours over three years has made us as one person. And this has made me understand you — for most people I should hate to be integrated with. It is only when years of misery have caused you to grow into another person in this way that you can really know them.” He waited a moment and then went on, “In the other world, Hester, I treated you as you did not at all deserve. I cut a poor figure as I look back at myself.”

  “There is no need to say this. I don’t know why you are saying it.”

  “But it is no use talking in this uncomfortable way about ourselves, as if I were I, and you were you. I am talking to myself and we are one. Is it necessary to say that I would sacrifice for you any miserable thing I had — well, as I would for myself?”

  So the appeal she had proposed to make must be indefinitely postponed; she left her chair, and putting her arms aro
und his neck kissed him very tenderly. “My darling, we have been hammered together as you say by a very ugly fate, but we would have been together without that. You attribute too much to fate. But there is this, my darling, that I would do anything you asked me to do, and go wherever you wished. I did not know that I would do that once. But I know now.”

  “What a grand woman you are. And this tête-a-tête of over three years has made us one person, Ess. I treated you awfully badly.”

  René was so moved that tears flooded his eyes, as he held her as well as he could. She had intended to say that she would, as she had said, literally go anywhere, although secretly she would pray that it might be a less hideous spot — she had intended at least to put in this mild reminder; but instead she found that she was crying too, and they remained for a long time clasped together in something like a religious embrace. René was thinking this being and he were vowed to one another, in a sacrament of which good fortune and good times had no knowledge, and she was thinking how she loved René, and how wonderful it was after all to be loved and she would not pester him about leaving this awful place if he did not want to, and the war must end some day, some day, and then they would return to England, and leave this hideous icebox behind!

  He had just said, “Let’s have another cup of tea, my sweet,” and she had picked up the heavy teapot, when a tap came at the door. They heard Affie’s voice through the door. “Come in, Affie!” he shouted, and like a mischievous black-suited spectre she remained fluid for some moments, half-in and half-out of the apartment.

  “Come in. Don’t hover,” René commanded.

  “I’m not interrupting?” Affie asked.

  Both of them thought,“Ah, she’s been listening,” and laughed.

  She came in, smiling down at them, pleased at being privy to all that went on in the house. She was not by nature a keyhole-queen. She was more like an aged messenger of Aphrodite, with a supernatural passe-partout, bringing for preference aphrodisiacs from Aphrodite, and possessing supernatural access to everything in the hotel. She had no need to squint through keyholes, as Bess always accused her of doing, though she may have done that, it is true, to annoy Bess.

  “When I have swallowed this, come and vaticinate in my teacup, Affie darling,” René invited.

  “I will see if there is anything I think you ought to know,” answered Affie professionally, deeply inhaling her cigarette smoke. Affie sat huddled up, as though in prophetic concentration with herself. Her childish affectation of solemn preparation for a scrutiny of their fate always pleased them.

  This was a recognized method of minor-moneymaking in Momaco. Many tea rooms advertised in their windows that fortune-telling teacup-readers were within.

  When Hester and René had finished their tea, they whirled their cups round three times, which was the routine procedure. The tea leaves duly plastered upon the insides of the cups, Affie drew near, crouched over the cups, and gazed first at one and then at the other for several minutes.

  Then she said to René, “Someone loves you very much, … very much.” She gave a sidelong glance of fun at Hester, and then straightened her face abruptly. She twisted René’s cup completely round several times. “You are going on a long journey. The man you are going to see is dark … with horn-rimmed spectacles; tall, fattish with a flattened nose, young.”

  René and Hester exchanged a glance of high amusement. Several photographs of the gentleman in question had arrived in a registered envelope two weeks earlier. Affie continued to brood over the cups. She approached her face to one of the cups, rather quickly, and raising one eyebrow. “You must be very careful about this dark man,” she said. “You will be crossing water…. It might be as well if you did not cross water.”

  “I do not agree,” Hester remarked.

  “How do you mean?” Affie frowned.

  “It is my view that he should cross water,” Hester insisted.

  “Cross a lot of water.”

  Affie looked relieved. “I only meant a small stretch of water.”

  “Yes, it is after all only to Victoria Island!” René laughed — Affie showed no sign of recognition, when he said Victoria Island. She transformed her scrutiny to Hester’s cup. “You have many friends,” Affie told her. “You will receive a letter from one … very shortly…. It will contain good news.” She tipped the cup sideways. “You have a boot in your cup.” She looked up with a smile. “It is very lucky. A boot … is exceptionally lucky.”

  When, a few months earlier, Bess had been away for a week, a woman who had formerly worked there took her place. She had been an Englishwoman once, many years before. She was quite uninhibited, and the reputations of one or two of the members of the staff, past and present, suffered quite a lot in the course of her incumbency. She was especially dangerous for Affie. Among other things she informed them that Affie steamed open letters, and glued them up afterwards: this occurring in the kitchen, where the postmen left the mail for the entire hotel. This piece of information threw considerable light on Affie’s uncanny skill of divination in teacup reading.There was especially one instance they recalled when Affie had foretold the arrival of “a letter … with a funny sort of stamp … Indian I think.” Four days later a stamped letter arrived from Colombo. After that, it had become a sport, one of the favourite sports of the Room, tracing Affie’s revelations to a letter steamed open in the kitchen. The “crossing water” business at the present seance, and the insistence on the amount of water being inconsiderable, was easily traceable to a dozen or more letters which had recently come from someone in Vancouver, who urged René to come out there. He backed up this request with glittering promises, assuring René that the local university would immediately offer him a chair. Where Victoria Island came in was that the correspondent invited them to stay with him at his “properties,” while arrangements were being made with the university authorities. This man’s father was said to be on the board of the university and a very influential man.

  A photograph of his father was enclosed, and he certainly looked a very influential man. This correspondent had poured registered letters in at the rate of two a week: they had impressed Affie more than they had impressed the Hardings.

  They both of them felt quite certain that Affie would do nothing really dishonest. She steamed open letters to improve her sorcery and sharpen her prophetic insight. Also she was an inquisitive woman, and she would be amused to learn that No. 34 suffered from a venereal disease or No. 19A was, as she had suspected, homosexual. Knowing everyone’s secret gave her a sense of power. Once, when she had said, “Professor Harding, have you ever visited any of our universities? McGill for instance?” he was angry as long as it would take to pick up a pin. Then he said, “Where did you learn that I was Professor Harding?” “That is how your letters are addressed,” Affie answered. But René laughed and asked her, “What were the Christian names of my grandmother?” Affie only answered, “On the English side or on the French, Professor Harding?” At which they all three laughed a great deal.

  On the present occasion, after exhaustively analyzing the tea leaves, she rose to her full height, and bowed herself out, like a figure in a ballet. But at the door she turned, and clinging to the slightly swinging door, as if she had been posing for Andromeda, but had suddenly felt rather faint, she addressed Hester.

  “Wouldn’t you like a fur coat as a Christmas present, Mrs. Harding?”

  “Why?” Hester enquired, with the smile that she reserved, in this place, for this old woman clinging to the door.

  “Oh, don’t you like fur? Some people don’t. I have just bought a fur coat.”

  “How wonderful, Affie. You’ve made yourself a beautiful Christmas present, have you! Do show it to me!”

  Affie clung harder and harder, more and more archly, to the swaying door. “It’s a cherry fox,” she confided. Then with a croak she vanished. René went ho-ho-ho, gently combing his beard.They looked at one another in mutual relishment of Affie’s latest exhibition
of prophetic skill, but they were debarred from speaking, for she certainly was listening at the door. All that René said was, “Well, I am going on a long journey.” Hester responded, “But the water you will be crossing will be of insignificant span.” And René concluded with, “Yes, there is of course that.” And then they turned on the radio.

  The News was beginning. Richly and persuasively the preliminary sales talk rolled out. “Be the smart host,” it exhorted, “When you’re serving tall drinks!” After a final appeal, “So be the smart host,” came a cataract of bad news, though thousands of dead bodies of enemies made you feel the day had not been quite in vain. Before the news was over it was learned that President Roosevelt had accepted the rib of a Japanese Marine, mounted in gold, as a paperknife.

  “A nice Christmas present for the Great White Chief,” René observed.“They ought really to scalp their enemies. Sawing a rib out of the cadaver is decadent, I feel.”

  Hester seldom paid any attention to the roaring voices of “commentators.” They all had a vested interest in a long, long war. They would never be heard of again when it did end: they hoped that the ten million pounds a day (or was it a minute?) military budgeting would go on forever. Hester came to hate these brash voices, but after a time it was nothing but a troublesome noise. They might have been talking Chinese for all she knew about it. René followed the nightly outpourings with close attention, if for no other reason, because the Momaco Gazette-Herald bought political articles from him, and that was one of the ways he had found to make a living.

  The murder of all these millions of simple inoffensive people all over the world, whether civilians or uniformed herds, the enormous, irretrievable ruin being prepared for each and all of these countries, the certain slavery consequent upon unpayable mountains of debt, plunging all the combatants indiscriminately, whether “victors or vanquished,” into worse and worse inflations; all this burden of knowledge, and what was therefore for him a spectacle of ruin, for the first year or so had tormented him. Now, however, the torments had ceased, and his reactions at present amounted to an anarchic pessimism, destined to undermine his fierce puritanism, his “perfectionism?”, as it had been called.