by David Lodge
It was some time before Persse became sufficiently calm to attend to what Angelica was saying.
“Jacques Derrida has coined the term ‘invagination’ to describe the complex relationship between inside and outside in discursive practises. What we think of as the meaning or ‘inside’ of a text is in fact nothing more than its externality folded in to create a pocket which is both secret and therefore desired and at the same time empty and therefore impossible to possess. I want to appropriate this term and apply it, in a very specific sense of my own, to romance. If epic is a phallic genre, which can hardly be denied, and tragedy the genre of castration (we are none of us, I suppose, deceived by the self-blinding of Oedipus as to the true nature of the wound he is impelled to inflict upon himself, or likely to overlook the symbolic equivalence between eyeballs and testicles) then surely there is no doubt that romance is a supremely invaginated mode of narrative.
“Roland Barthes has taught us the close connection between narrative and sexuality, between the pleasure of the body and the ‘pleasure of the text,’ but in spite of his own sexual ambivalence, he developed this analogy in an overly masculine fashion. The pleasure of the classic text, in Barthes’ system, is all foreplay. It consists in the constant titillation and deferred satisfaction of the reader’s curiosity and desire—desire for the solution of enigma, the completion of an action, the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice. The paradox of our pleasure in narrative, according to this model, is that while the need to ‘know’ is what impels us through a narrative, the satisfaction of that need brings pleasure to an end, just as in psychosexual life the possession of the Other kills Desire. Epic and tragedy move inexorably to what we call, and by no accident, a ‘climax’—and it is, in terms of the sexual metaphor, an essentially male climax—a single, explosive discharge of accumulated tension.
“Romance, in contrast, is not structured in this way. It has not one climax but many, the pleasure of this text comes and comes and comes again. No sooner is one crisis in the fortunes of the hero averted than a new one presents itself; no sooner has one mystery been solved than another is raised; no sooner has one adventure been concluded than another begins. The narrative questions open and close, open and close, like the contractions of the vaginal muscles in intercourse, and this process is in principle endless. The greatest and most characteristic romances are often unfinished—they end only with the author’s exhaustion, as a woman’s capacity for orgasm is limited only by her physical stamina. Romance is a multiple orgasm.”
Persse listened to this stream of filth flowing from between Angelica’s exquisite lips and pearly teeth with growing astonishment and burning cheeks, but no one else in the audience seemed to find anything remarkable or disturbing about her presentation. The young men seated at the table beside her nodded thoughtfully, and fiddled with their pipes, and made little notes on their scratchpads. One of them, wearing a sports jacket of Donegal tweed, and with a soft voice that seemed to match it, thanked Angelica for her talk and asked if there were any questions.
“Most impressive, didn’t you think?” whispered a female voice into Persse’s ear. He turned to find a familiar white-coiffed figure beside him.
“Miss Maiden! Fancy meeting you here!”
“You know I can’t resist conferences, young man. But wasn’t that a brilliant performance? If only Jessie Weston could have heard it.”
“I can understand that it would appeal to you,” said Persse. “It was a bit too near the knuckle for my taste.” Somebody in the audience was asking Angelica if she would agree that the novel, as a distinct genre, was born when the epic, as it were, fucked the romance. She gave the suggestion careful consideration. “You know who she is, don’t you?” he whispered to Miss Maiden.
“Of course I know, she’s Miss Pabst, your young lady.”
“No, I mean who she was. As a baby.”
“As a baby?” Miss Maiden looked at him with a queer expression, at once fearful and expectant. One of the young men at the table said, if the organ of epic was the phallus, of tragedy the testicles, and of romance the vagina, what was the organ of comedy? Oh, the anus, Angelica replied instantly, with a bright smile. Think of Rabelais…
“You remember those twin girls, six weeks old, who were found in an airplane in 1954?” Persse hissed.
“Why should I remember them?”
“Because you found them, Miss Maiden.” He took from his wallet a folded photocopy of a newspaper cutting sent to him by Hermann Pabst. “Look, ‘Twin girls found in KLM Stratocruiser’—and here’s your name: ‘discovered in the plane’s toilet by Miss Sybil Maiden of Girton College.’ You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw that.”
The cutting seemed to have the same effect on Miss Maiden, for she toppled off her chair in a dead faint. Persse caught her just before she hit the ground. “Help!” he cried. People hurried to his assistance. By the time Miss Maiden had recovered, Angelica had disappeared.
…
Persse ran distractedly through the Hilton lobby, took the slow and express lifts at random to various floors, prowled along carpeted corridors, searched the bars and restaurants and shops. After nearly an hour, he found her, changed into a flowing dress of red silk, with her hair, freshly washed, all loose and shining about her shoulders. She was about to step into an elevator on the seventeenth floor as its doors slid open to let him out.
This time there was no hesitation in his actions. This time she would not escape. Without a word, he took her in his arms and kissed her long and passionately. For a moment she stiffened and resisted, but then she suddenly relaxed and yielded to his fierce embrace. He felt the long, soft line of her body from bosom to thigh moulding itself to his. They seemed to melt and fuse together. Time held its breath. He was dimly aware of the lift doors opening and closing again, of people stepping in and out. Then, when the landing was empty and silent once more, he drew his lips away from hers.
“At last I’ve found you!” he panted.
“So it seems,” she gasped.
“I love you!” he cried. “I need you! I want you!”
“Okay!” she laughed. “All right! Your room or mine?”
“I haven’t got a room,” he said.
Angelica hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the outside of the door before locking and chaining it from inside. It was now late afternoon and already dark. She switched on a single, heavily-shaded table lamp which shed a soft golden glow on the bed, and drew the curtains across the window. Her dress sank with a whisper to the floor. She stepped out of it, and put her hands behind her back to release the catch of her brassiere. Her breasts poured out like honey. They swung and trembled as she stooped to strip off tights and briefs. The beauty of her bosom moved him almost to tears; the bold bush of black hair at her crotch startled and roused him. He turned away modestly to take off his own clothes, but she came up behind him and ran her cool soft fingers down his chest and belly, brushing his rigid, rampant sex. “Don’t, for the love of God,” he groaned, “or I won’t answer for the consequences.” She chuckled, and led him by the hand to the bed. She lay down on her back, with her knees slightly raised, and smiled at him with her dark, peat-pool eyes. He parted her thighs like the leaves of a book, and stared into the crack, the crevice, the deep romantic chasm that was the ultimate goal of his quest.
Like most young men’s first experience of sexual intercourse, Persse’s was as short as it was sweet. As soon as he was invaginated, he came, tumultuously. With Angelica’s assistance and encouragement, however, he came twice more in the hours that followed, less precipitately, and in two quite different attitudes; and when he could come no more, when he was only a dry, straining erection, with no seed to expel, Angelica impaled herself upon him and came again and again and again, until she toppled off, exhausted. They lay sprawled across the bed, sweating and panting.
Persse felt ten years older, and wiser. He had fed on honey-dew and drunk the milk of paradise. Nothing could be the
same again. Was it possible that in due course they could put on their clothes and go out of the room and behave like ordinary people again, after what had passed between them? It must always be so between lovers, he concluded: their knowledge of each other’s nightside was a secret bond between them. “You’ll have to marry me now, Angelica,” he said.
“I’m not Angelica, I’m Lily,” murmured the girl beside him.
He whipped over on to all fours, crouched above her, stared into her face. “You’re joking. Don’t joke with me, Angelica.”
She shook her head. “No joke.”
“You’re Angelica.”
“Lily.”
He stared at her until his eyes bulged. The dreadful fact was that he had no idea whether she was Angelica lying or Lily telling the truth.
“There’s only one way to tell the difference between us,” she said. “We both have a birth mark on the thigh, like an inverted comma. Angie’s is on the left thigh, mine on the right.” She turned on to her side to point out the small blemish, pale against her tan, on her right thigh. “When we stand hip to hip in our bikinis, it looks like we’re inside quotation marks. Have you seen Angelica’s birthmark?”
“No,” he said bitterly. “But I’ve heard about it.” He felt suddenly ashamed of his nakedness, rolled off the bed, and hurriedly put on his underpants and trousers. “Why?” he said. “Why did you deceive me?”
“I never could resist a guy who was really hungry for it,” said Lily.
“You mean, if any total stranger comes up and kisses you, you immediately drop everything and jump into bed with him?”
“Probably. But I figured who you were. Angie has talked to me about you. Why do you feel so sore about it, anyway? We made it together beautifully.”
“I thought you were the girl I love,” said Persse. “I wouldn’t have made love to you otherwise.”
“You mean, you were saving yourself for Angie?”
“If you like. You stole something that didn’t belong to you.”
“You’re wasting your time, Persse, Angie is the archetypal pricktease.”
“That’s a despicable thing to say about your sister!”
“Oh, she admits it. Just like I admit I’m a slut at heart.”
“That I won’t attempt to deny,” he said sarcastically.
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really. The things you did.”
“You seemed to dig them.”
“I should have realized. No decent girl would have even conceived of them.”
“Oh Persse—don’t say that!” she suddenly cried, in a tone of real dismay.
“Why?” He went hot and cold.
“Because I am joking. I am Angelica!”
He flew to the bed. “Darling, I didn’t mean it! It was beautiful, what we did, I—” He broke off. “What are you grinning at?”
“What about the birthmark? You forgot the birthmark.” She twitched her right hip cheekily.
“You mean, you are Lily after all?”
“What do you think, Persse?”
He sank down on to a seat and covered his face with his hands. “I think you’re trying to drive me mad, whoever you are.”
He was aware of the girl pulling a coverlet from the bed and wrapping herself in it. She shuffled over and put a bare arm round his shoulder. “Persse, I’m trying to tell you that you’re not really in love with Angelica. If you can’t be sure whether the girl you just screwed is Angelica or not, how can you be in love with her? You were in love with a dream.”
“Why do you want to tell me that?” he mumbled.
“Because Angie loves somebody else,” she said.
Persse dropped his hands from his face. “Who?”
“A guy called Peter, they’re getting married in the spring. He’s associate professor at Harvard, very bright according to Angie. They met at some conference in Hawaii. She’s hoping to get a college job in the Boston area, and Peter fixed it so she could give a paper at this convention to show off her paces. Angie heard that you were here looking for her, and she felt bad about it because she played some trick on you in England, right? She asked me to break it to you gently that she was already engaged. I did my best, Persse. Sorry if it lacked subtlety.”
Persse went to the window, pulled back the curtain, and stared down at the brightly lit avenue below, and the cars and buses stopping and starting and turning at the intersection with 54th Street. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass. He was silent for several minutes. Then he said: “I feel hungry.”
“That’s more like it,” said Lily. “I’ll call room service. What would you like to eat?”
Persse glanced at his watch. “I’m going to a party, I’ll get some grub there.”
“The penthouse party? I’ll see you there,” said Lily. “Peter is taking Angie and me. This is their room, actually. I was just using it to change in.”
Persse unchained the door of the room. “Does Peter know what you do for a living?” he asked. “I saw your photograph in Amsterdam once. Also in London.”
“I’ve retired from that,” she said. “I decided to go back to school, after all. Columbia. I live in New York, now.”
“When you used to work for Girls Unlimited,” said Persse, “did you come across a girl called Bernadette? Her professional name was Marlene.”
Lily reflected for a moment, then shook her head. “No. It was a big organization.”
“If you should ever come across her, tell her to get in touch with me.”
Persse took the elevator down to the ninth floor and found the door of room 956 open. Inside, Morris Zapp was sitting on the bed, eating nuts and drinking bourbon and watching television. “Hi, Percy, come in,” he said. “All ready for the party?”
“I could do with a shower,” said Persse. “Could I possibly use your bathroom?”
“Sure, but there’s somebody in there right now. Sit down and fix yourself a drink. That was a real curveball of a question you threw at us this afternoon.”
“I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you,” said Persse apologetically, helping himself to the bourbon. “I don’t know what came over me, to tell you the truth.”
“It didn’t make any difference. It was very obvious that Kingfisher wasn’t interested in what I was saying.”
“Are you disappointed?” Persse sat down on a chair from which he had an oblique view of the TV screen. A naked couple who might have been himself and Lily an hour earlier were twisting and writhing on a bed.
“Nuh, I think I finally kicked the ambition habit. Ever since I was kidnapped, just being alive has seemed enough.” Suddenly the screen went blank, and a legend appeared: “Dial 3 to order the movie of your choice.” Another film, this time about cowboys, commenced. “They give you five minutes of a movie for free, to get you interested,” Morris explained. “Then if you want to watch the whole thing, you call and have them pipe it to your room and charge it.”
“Everything on tap,” said Persse shaking his head. “Oh brave new world!”
“Right, you can get anything you want by telephone in this city: Chinese food, massage, yoga lessons, acupuncture. You can even call up girls who will talk dirty to you for so much a minute. You pay by credit card. But if you’re into deconstruction, you can just watch all these trailers in a row as if it was one, free, avant-garde movie. Mind you,” he added pensively, “I’ve rather lost faith in deconstruction. I guess it showed this afternoon.”
“You mean every decoding is not another encoding after all?”
“Oh it is, it is. But the deferral of meaning isn’t infinite as far as the individual is concerned.”
“I thought deconstructionists didn’t believe in the individual.”
“They don’t. But death is the one concept you can’t deconstruct. Work back from there and you end up with the old idea of an autonomous self. I can die, therefore I am. I realized that when those wop radicals threatened to deconstruct me.”
The bat
hroom door opened and out came a lady in a towelling bathrobe and a cloud of fragrant steam. “Oh!” she exclaimed, surprised at seeing Persse.
“Good evening, Mrs. Ringbaum,” he said, getting to his feet.
“Have we met before?”
“At a party on the Thames last spring. The Annabel Lee.”
“I don’t remember much about that party,” said Mrs. Ringbaum, “except that Howard got into a fight with Ronald Frobisher, and the boat started drifting down the river.”
“It was Ronald Frobisher who set it adrift, as a matter of fact,” said Persse.
“Was it? I’ll tackle him about that this evening.”
“Is Ronald Frobisher here—at the MLA?” exclaimed Persse.
“Everybody is at the MLA,” said Morris Zapp. “Everybody you ever knew.” He was now watching a film about boxing.
“Everybody except Howard,” said Thelma, with her head inside the wardrobe. “Howard is stuck in Illinois because he’s been barred for life by the airlines for soliciting sex in flight from a hostess.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Persse.
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Thelma with a chuckle. “I left that fink back in September, the best thing I ever did.” She shook out a black cocktail dress and held it up in front of herself, standing before a full-length mirror. “Shall I wear this tonight, honey?”
“Sure,” said Morris, without taking his eyes off the TV. “It looks great.”
“Shall I go to the bathroom to put it on, or is this young man going to do the decent thing and wait in the hall?”