David
Beautiful People
David’s letter makes me feel very old. I can just about remember my fierce, blind love for you when I was fifteen. Was that it, I wonder? Was that the real thing David says I can’t understand, let alone feel? But there have been so many years, so many men since then. David isn’t just a different generation, he’s almost a different species.
Well, I soon would have got bored with him. After I abandon David – or he abandons me – I move in with you.
It’s wonderful to have money again. I swagger into the shop where I used to work and wallow in the envy of my former colleagues as I try on the clothes I once sold, then strut out with sleek purple bags full of microscopic dresses. When I was as young as I look, clothes were a minefield; there was only one correct thing to wear and you destroyed yourself if you got it wrong. I’ll never forget the humiliation of turning up at one of Binkie’s parties in a ball gown when I should have worn a tea gown. The other women glared at me as if I was an idiot, but Binkie laughed, because men don’t like perfection.
In this time fashion’s a game won by the most inventive. You still have to look more or less like all the other fashionable individuals, but a novel touch – an Edwardian boa or a Victorian necklace – wins rapturous praise. Nat and I go hunting in the King’s Road boutiques, forgetting for a few hours that we’re sexual rivals as we pounce on straw hats, tiny sandals, dresses that barely cover our arses and others that my mother might have worn. We prance together in front of mirrors, her slender pallor setting off my black hair, my dark cheeks flushed with triumph. In Bazaar and Granny Takes a Trip they all know us.
In the evening the four of us go out to dinner, choosing a new restaurant each night. The stuffiest turn us away because our men aren’t wearing ties or jackets, but in others the clientele is like us, young and high on money and drugs and fun. You in your green-and-orange paisley shirt, huge purple floral tie and pony-tail; Hari in his white silk pyjamas and long black plaits; Nat and I in whatever we’ve bought that afternoon: tiny, brilliant dresses that exhibit our long tanned bodies or elegant flowing echoes of a Victorian dream. We are beaded, be-ribboned, high as kites, too full of booze and drugs to eat the food we lavishly order. You carry a carved ivory box full of ready-rolled joints, speed, acid and coke, just in case we slow down. At about ten we move on to the Marquee or UFO or Middle Earth, where we sway in the magically lit darkness, hold up sticks of incense, jingle our bells and wave our scarves, dance and trip, letting the music of Pink Floyd or Cream or Procol Harum go through us. Sex is my drug, shooting through my bloodstream faster than booze. Often I just pretend to drink wine or smoke or drop acid, happy that I’ll wind up in bed with you tomorrow morning.
Tonight you’re even more manic than usual, prancing around the table weighing and measuring your poisons while Bob Dylan sneers, ‘Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands’. Behind the heavy, red velvet curtains London fades out. There are only the four of us.
You pour two glasses of white wine and raise yours in a toast, ‘To our future! Since there’s so much of it.’
‘To our future,’ I echo. How swiftly the wine warms my blood and gilds my vision. You’re dashing in a waistcoat embroidered with little mirrors and green velvet trousers. You move with elastic grace, tossing affable words and smiles at me, ignoring Hari and Nat. Like a king, spoilt and decadent, surrounded by favourites vying for your attention.
We lie together on the couch, my long skirt hitched up around my waist as your mouth sucks my will power and your meticulous fingers open the hungry doors of my cunt. I pull you into the bedroom where we make love with passionate greed. It’s what I want, yet my multiple orgasms leave me feeling melancholy.
‘Again?’ you suggest, as if offering more wine.
I shake my head, puzzled to observe that your face is a mosaic of pink and purple spangles. Perhaps it’s the reflection from your waistcoat, which you have kept on throughout our sexual meandering. The bedroom, like all the rooms in this basement, is perpetually dark, with curtains drawn at the barred windows. But the darkness, I see now, is shifting and seething with colours: green and orange and that purple that plays on your face. You’re looking at me with amused curiosity.
‘What was in that wine?’
‘Just a smidgen of acid. I thought you needed cheering up.’
I stagger back down the corridor, your juice sticky between my legs, and lie on the third couch. Hari and Nat still occupy the other two. It’s difficult to walk or speak; the effort of moving from one room to another is mountainous.
I shut my eyes and give myself to the world behind them: I’m still in this room, lying back on the couch. My limbs feel so heavy that I look down at my hands and ankles to see if they’re bound. They aren’t, but some unseen force pins me down. Above me, near the high, dirty ceiling, two figures swing and fly. Are there trapezes up there? One is a short man wearing a hat with a wide brim that frames his snub-nosed face, a brown jacket cut away at the front, a cream stock and tight cream trousers. The other is you, but instead of the fashionable glitter I saw you wearing a few minutes ago you’re dressed in a skin-tight green suit that gives your elongated body a serpentine look. As the two of you talk and perform impossible acrobatics in the air I watch and listen, unable to talk or move.
The man in early-nineteenth-century clothes peers down at me. ‘Is that the Eternal Female groaning?’
You snort with laughter. ‘A trivial-hearted girl I rescued once. I suppose you could call her eternal, but she won’t learn anything from it.’
‘What have you done to her?’
‘Preserved her from death, given her money and love. Of a kind.’
‘She’s a slave. I can see her chains.’
‘But she can’t. What are you doing here anyway? This is my territory. What business is it of yours if I amuse myself?’
‘There are two more of them. How pretty they are, and how young.’ He produces a pipe from his pocket and beats time with it as he swings in the air and sings in a light tenor, ‘Pretty joy! / Sweet joy but two days old. / Sweet joy I call thee: / Thou dost smile, / I sing the while …’
You snarl and knock the pipe out of his hand. ‘Stop that foul noise! Only my music can be played here. These are all my creatures. I don’t want to see or hear you. I don’t take drugs to see wishy-washy visions like you.’
‘I’ll go if you free the dark girl.’
‘I told you. She isn’t important. Trivial people suffer trivially. You’re wasting your sympathy on a foolish, ignoble, weak woman.’
‘They call women the weakest vessel, but I think they are the strongest.’
‘Bollocks! As one of the less-stupid mortals said, “Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip.” But of course whipping women is rather unfashionable nowadays, so I use gentler weapons, such as money and habit.’
‘The goddess fortune is the devil’s servant, ready to kiss anyone’s arse.’
‘Yes, indeed. And a most efficient servant she is, with a delightful technique in arse-licking.’
‘Contemptible nonsense.’
‘I mastered contempt centuries before you were born. These children are the bungled and the botched, the animated toys I play with to enliven my boring immortality.’
‘I’m never bored. Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce.’
‘And you’re less naïve than you pretend. You know all about the beauty of power, the tiger, cruelty has a human face …’
‘Did I say that? Your imbecile attempts to depress me only deserve laughter.’
‘How sickly your Utopia would be. Lambs and flowers and laughter and that hideous tinkly music.’
‘Why do you love pain?’
‘Love. How you people overuse that word. Once or twice in a hundred years I see a man who’s worth loving or at least admiring: Emperor Frederick II, Napoleon, Hitler – I’d love to have signed them up, but military men are always in such a hurry to die. As for the others, “Every beast is
driven to the pasture with blows.” I don’t have to explain to you how much people enjoy pain.’
‘But she isn’t enjoying it. Look at her. You’ve planted yourself in all her nerves. How can you call that love?’
‘Fool!’
‘Who do you call a fool? I only asked you a civil question.’
‘I despise your slave morality. Democracy, civility, compassion. While you wring your hands and grovel my empire expands. The difference between us is that I move with the times. Look at you. Still wearing your shabby old clothes, ranting on about God who was long ago bought out by science.’
‘Science cannot teach intellect. Much less can intellect teach affection.’
‘I’ve tried to learn affection, if you must know. I hoped this silly girl we’re fighting over would teach me. It looks so easy. Any idiot can fall in love: lepers, outcasts, children, the homeless, stray dogs, losers – your people. They all drool with love, sing about it, write bad poetry and threaten to die for it. I know how to cause the disease; that’s easy: Nat, Hari, Jenny, they all laaaarve me and so did all the millions of others I’ve seduced. Don Giovanni’s catalogue is a footnote compared with mine. He only had a few years. But there’s something more to it, beyond sex and being adored and the thrill of flirtation. I wish I could experience it just once. I’d give my –’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, anyway, I’d love to love. Even you. Can’t we at least be friends?’
‘When a base man means to be your enemy he always begins with being your friend.’
‘No, really. William? Will? I’m sure we could make a deal. There’d be money in it, of course, as in all the best affairs. I seem to remember you didn’t have much luck selling those funny paintings of yours. Why don’t you try boats in the sunset next time or kittens?’
‘Supremely insolent! Money flies from me.’ He takes out his pipe again and shakes the spittle out of it, beating time as he sings, ‘I rose up at the dawn of day – Get thee away! Get thee away! Pray’st thou for riches? away! away! This is the throne of Mammon grey. Said I –’
‘Shut it! You don’t understand. I really suffer when you sing. It makes me want to puke. It reminds me of those others, with their wings and everlasting choir practice.’
‘You used to sing so beautifully.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They’re always gossiping about you.’
‘Really? I suppose I did have a kind of succès de scandale up there.’
‘If you ever wanted to come back I’m sure I could negotiate. The system isn’t so punitive now.’
‘What would you suggest? A century in the confessional followed by aeons of good works? No, I know my place. I’m supposed to be the tempter.’
‘I was only making a fool of you. Do what you will, this life’s a fiction and is made up of contradiction.’
‘You see how much we have in common, really.’
The next time I look up, the two figures have gone. Have I slept? Light cuts above and below the heavy velvet curtains. Now that the multi-coloured spangles have faded I see the room with brutal clarity: the dirty walls, the patches of damp on the ceiling, the rotting bald patches in the carpet. As if reality, vanquished for a few hours, has come back with a vengeance. With an enormous effort I get up and walk over to the couch where Nat lies, her smooth young skin grainy in the cruel morning light. I stagger to the window to watch the grey London morning filter through the dirty windows. An army of feet passes the railings of our basement, rushing to bus stops, tube stations, offices, to the world of mediocrity and petty worries that you, as you too frequently remind me, have liberated me from. Even their feet look undistinguished, a stampede of black and brown shoes punishing the murky pavement. For a few seconds they flit across my consciousness like fish in an aquarium, and me so snug and dry behind my glass. It’s absurd to envy them, yet I do. They look energetic and useful and determined. How can feet express so much?
You come into the room, wearing your glad rags again, carrying a tray loaded with coffee and croissants. Hari, groaning and ashen, takes a coffee mug with one hand and seizes a cigarette with the other. He sits hunched over it, sucking and gasping, and I notice again how handsome he is.
‘How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?’ I ask the air. It feels awful. I’m cold, my mouth tastes of old bonfires and my mind is foggy. I grab a croissant and stuff it into my mouth, as I stuffed myself with you at the beginning of the evening. But the fresh dough, like your flesh, only leaves me hungrier, emptier.
I reach out to touch the shining blue-black waves of Hari’s hair and the strong brown line where his neck meets his collarbone. Hari puts down his coffee mug and reaches out with his long, elegant hand to caress my nipples under my cheesecloth blouse, with the indolent lechery of a man who doesn’t have to try.
You watch benevolently. ‘Why, Jenny! This is quite like old times.’
In the bedroom the electric fire roasts the dust and bakes our flesh a lurid pink. As the room warms up our four bodies intertwine with grace, if not passion. I know that Nat and I aren’t really attracted to each other, but her breast is in my eye and Hari’s mouth is on mine. We’re having sex, or is sex having us? All morning we writhe together, kiss, suck, finger, come and go. We come with grunts and moans of unsatisfied hunger and go back into the lonely chill of our own heads. At least it sends us to sleep, as sleeping pills no longer do.
When I wake up late that evening I see that our limbs have merged in sleep, like youthful corpses flung into a communal grave. Nat’s hand seems to be growing out of your shoulder and Hari’s head sprouts from my knee. It’s impossible to extricate myself without waking the other three, so I lie there, thinking about love.
A memory of George: his hand on mine as he gives me a glass of wine at some backstage party. I stare at our two hands, his large pink squarish one against my slim-tapered fingers. David has the same hands as his grandfather, solid and functional but unexpectedly subtle in bed. At the memory of those heartfelt caresses my eyes fill with tears and I struggle to get up.
‘How mawkish you’ve become.’ Your voice comes from under the heap of limbs.
‘Ssssh! You’ll wake them!’
‘So what? They’re only extras. Their health and happiness are dispensable. It’s no use trying to leave me, Jenny. You’ll only have to come back again.’
‘I should have stayed with David. I broke his heart.’
‘Men’s hearts are a lot more robust than you think. He’ll marry Muriel, and she’ll be exactly what he needs.’
‘I hate the way you do that! Pretend you know what’s going to happen to us all so there are no surprises,’ I yell as I pull on my clothes.
You follow me to the front door. ‘Is this a jealous scene? Do you want me to yourself again?’
‘I don’t want you at all! You’re so arrogant. No, that’s not strong enough. You are arrogance! When you’re in the room I can’t breathe. You’ve smothered those two beautiful kids, and if I don’t leave now you’ll destroy me, too.’
‘Come back when you’re feeling less melodramatic. Nat’s going away soon. Perhaps that will make you feel better.’
‘If she’s dumb enough to want you, she deserves you. I hate you, Leo, I never want to see you again. Let me get out, you bastard.’
‘You’ve always been free to go.’
I pack a bag and charge up your basement steps.
Femunculus
It isn’t the first time I’ve left you, but I tell myself it’s the last. This time I don’t go abroad but rent a tiny flat at the top of a shabby house near Mornington Crescent. There are so many Londons, and this one is far enough away from fashionable shops and restaurants for me to feel safe from you. I register for a course in philosophy at Birkbeck, hoping the voices of dead writers will drown yours.
During these lonely months my femunculus is born. At first she’s only another voice in my head, a counterbalance to your sneers and to the wisdom of
two thousand years, which doesn’t have a lot to say about women, with or without men.
I go to see Annette, who is beginning her career in the Labour Party, and Molly, who looks gratifyingly old and tells me that David and Muriel are engaged. I talk to my fellow students, reinventing myself in each conversation, afraid that each new face I stare into will turn out to be one of your spies, like Assunta.
Each morning, waking alone, I have to talk myself into the day. My femunculus is an early riser, a brittle bird perched on my inner tree.
Is this what you wanted then? An eternal student?
Got to do something. Don’t need to work, and I’m trying to stay away from booze and drugs. And sex.
Might as well be dead.
Better than the feather factory.
Not much. Why did you ask for looks instead of brains? What have you achieved?
None of your business.
I jump up, dress, go out to breakfast in a café and try to dismiss her. Her question rankles and all day, as I go from lecture to lunch to library. I tell myself I’m reinventing myself into someone better than Jenny Mankowitz or Jenny Manette or Virginia – as soon as I name them they stare back at me, undead, and I’m filled with shame. That evening when I return to my lonely flat my self-hatred brings my femunculus back, like a mouse to cheese.
So you’re an old lush, as well. And you screwed every man between the Café Royal and the Ritz. Only the best of the worst. I’ve had a look at your mind and all you think about is men. Still lusting after him, are you, your shape-shifty magician, flyboy, drug dealer? Going crawling back to him?
No! I’m never going back to him. Sod off! There’s nothing the matter with me except these crazy conversations I keep having with you.
To prove my sanity to myself I go to the public library and work all the next day on an essay about Plato, whose ideas soothe and refresh me. I’m an autodidact, not a real scholar. Books, to me, are like people, to be loved or hated. Perhaps they even mean more to me than do people because I don’t have to be on my guard with them. When Italians want to dismiss a book they say non mi dice niente, it doesn’t say anything to me. Books do have voices, repellent or attractive. Most of all, I love Plato. His way of referring to the soul isn’t cloying or pious but wonderfully matter-of-fact, as if the soul was a beloved female friend. I, too, have been dragged by my senses into a world of change that spins around me, and I long to return to my true self, whoever she may be.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 13