Mantissa

by John Fowles

  There is a silence.

  “Oh you darling, you darling…”

  Another silence.

  “You’re such a monster, I love it when you…”

  Another silence. And now something else strange begins to happen, although the pair on the old rose carpet are too self-occupied to notice it. A stealthy opacity begins to suffuse the grey and quilted walls. It soon becomes apparent that they are rapidly and quite unaccountably losing texture and substance, all solidity. Instead of cloth and padding they become, as it were, a fog at dusk; and in, or through, this mist there now appear surreal shapes, movements, like shadows seen through heavily frosted glass; or like the murky oceanic depths, through the porthole of a bathysphere.

  “Oh that’s so nice. Do it again.”

  Another silence.

  “Oh Miles, I think I’m going to die.”

  Another, and very brief, silence.

  “No don’t stop, don’t stop…”

  If their eyes had only been open, they would have seen that the treacherous walls, in what seems a crescendo timed to their actions, have changed even further, into a now quite transparent plate glass, which bars nothing but sound. And horror of horrors, on all sides of this room become glass box, or oblong greenhouse, there now appear, in a night denied only by the dim light from within the room, broken phalanxes of the sick and their tenders: patients in dressing-gowns, nurses male and female, cleaners, porters, doctors, specialists, staff of all kinds: who on all but one side edge closer, until their first ranks press, ghostly faces outside an aquarium, against the transparent wall. And there they watch, with a sad and silent concupiscence, as the dispossessed contemplate the possessed; or the starving, at a restaurant window, the fed and feeding. The only thing private, still left sacrosanct, is the word. Not that words are now being sounded inside that room, but only broken fragments of alphabet.

  Outside, a yard from where the door has been, stands the implacable and formidable figure of the bespectacled staff sister, on whose face appears neither hunger nor concupiscence, but merely some psychological corollary of the starch in her uniform. On every side the serried faces; but around her, an emptiness, as a drop of antiseptic in a culture dish will distance an otherwise spreading bacillus. No eyes seem more magnetized by what is being enacted. They watch with an intensity that glistens. Only once do they shift their gaze, to deliver malign and lightning glances at the walls of mute faces to left and right and opposite. So might an avaricious theatre manager size his house, or a brothel madam her night’s clientele. She sees, as she threatened; but inside a mind that can only see, and never feel.

  It is done; and now the oblivious pair lie slumped, in an unconscious reprise of their position after the first and clinical coupling; the patient on his back, his doctor lying half across him, her head couched on his shoulder; but on this occasion with their hands affectionately clasped, the fingers interlaced. The silent audience watch a few moments more, but then suddenly, as if bored by this immobility, this cessation of action, turn shufflingly away and recede into the limboic shadows. Only the sister stands firm. She folds her plump arms and remains staring, as if weaker souls may fade away, but she, she shall never fail in her duty to snoop, to judge, to hate and reprehend the flesh.

  Too much, even for walls. With a hundred times the speed with which they have become clear, a reverse metamorphosis takes place. The sister is caught by surprise, stumbles forward, is glimpsed for a moment with her outraged, thwarted face and hands pressed against the clouding glass, as if she will break through rather than be thus balked of her prey. In vain: in barely ten seconds the grey quilting, the warm walls of protective, if somewhat monotonously uniform, schoolgirl breasts have returned, after their temporary aberration, to their original state. All external is once again excluded.

  IV

  Deux beaux yeux n’ont qu’à parler.

  – Marivaux, La Colonie

  “By God she can do the talking. She has seen more of the world than you and me, of course, that’s the secret of it.”

  – Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (slightly adapted)

  MILES Green opens his eyes and stares up at the domed and cerebral ceiling, thinking not, if the truth be known and some shred of plausible male psychology preserved, of the eternally beautiful, passionate, granting and granted young Greek goddess he holds in his arms, but whether, if one was doing the unthinkable and trying to describe the ceiling of pendent grey breastlets in words, accuracy could justify the use of the distinctly rare word mocarabesque; which leads him to think of the Alhambra, and thence of Islam. He kisses the hair of the houri beside him.

  “Darling, well done. That was interesting.”

  She kisses his shoulder. “For me too, darling.”

  “Perhaps not quite the most interesting yet, but…”

  She kisses his shoulder again. “Definite possibilities.”

  “You were really super today in some of the rallies.”

  “So were you, darling.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Your new backhand smash about paying me a fee.”

  “Pure reflex.”

  “It was sweet.” She kisses his shoulder. “I adored it. I could have killed you on the spot.”

  He smiles, staring at the ceiling, and draws her a shade closer.

  “Clever Dr. Delfie.”

  “Clever Miles Green.”

  “It was your idea.”

  “I could never have brought it off alone, darling. I’ve been waiting all my life for someone like you.”

  He kisses her hair. “I still remember that evening so vividly. When you first came.”

  “Do you, darling?”

  “There I was, tapping away on that ridiculous typewriter.”

  “Crossing out nine words in every ten.”

  “Stuck with that wretched heroine.”

  “Darling, she just wasn’t me. I was only being cruel to be kind.”

  He pats her back. “Then there you were, in the flesh, sitting on the edge of my desk.”

  “While you almost fell off your chair in surprise.”

  “Who wouldn’t. When a dazzling creature like you drops out of thin air. And then says she’s come to make a proposition.”

  She leans up on an elbow, grinning down at him.

  “To which you said, Who the devil do you think you are?”

  “I was a bit taken aback.”

  “And when I told you, you said, Don’t be absurd, I’ve never seen you before in my life.” She stoops and brushes the tip of his nose with her mouth. “You were so funny.”

  “I honestly couldn’t believe it. Until you said you were sick to death of hiding behind imaginary women. Then I did begin to realize we were on the same wave-length.”

  “Because you were equally sick of imagining them.”

  He smiles up at her. “You still do that bit beautifully. Great conviction.”

  “It comes from the heart.”

  He kisses the inside of her wrist. “It was so marvelous to find someone who understood at last.”

  She looks demurely down. “Darling, who else, if not me?”

  “How sick one gets of writing – and even sicker of being forced to publish it.”

  She smiles tenderly at him, and prompts. “And so…?”

  “If we could only find some absolutely impossible…”

  “Unwritable…”

  “Unfinishable…”

  “Unimaginable…”

  “Endlessly revisable…”

  “Text without words…”

  “We could both be our real selves at last.”

  She bends and kisses him. “And finally?”

  He stares at the ceiling, as if the splendid moment of ultimate discovery is present again.

  “The curse of fiction.”

  “Which is?”

  “All those boring stretches between the sexy bits.” He looks into her eyes. “That was the clincher for me. I knew we were made for each ot
her then.”

  She sinks against his shoulder again. “I’ve forgotten what I did next.”

  “You said, My God, then why are we waiting?”

  “Oh Miles, I wasn’t as shameless as that.”

  “You jolly well were.”

  “Darling, I hadn’t been had as my real self for almost seventeen centuries. Ever since those beastly Christians. All those other writers I dragged in just now – they never got within a mile of the real me. You are truly the first since… I can’t even remember his name. I just couldn’t wait a minute more.” She sighs. “Have you had that poor little ottoman mended?”

  “I’ve kept it broken-legged as a memento.”

  “Darling, how sweet of you.”

  “The least I could do.”

  She kisses his shoulder. For a moment or two they lie in the closest silence, on the old rose carpet. Then he touches down the smooth-skinned back, warm ivory, to her waist and pulls her a little closer.

  “I bet they did really.”

  She shakes her head. “I was always hiding behind someone else.”

  “Like the Dark Lady.” He kisses her hair. “You never mentioned that before.”

  “It wasn’t a very happy relationship, actually.”

  “Be a sport. Give.”

  She breathes out, half amused, half embarrassed.

  “Miles, it’s rather personal.”

  “I’d never tell a soul.”

  She hesitates a moment. “Well… I can tell you one thing. Whatever else he was, he was never the Swan of Avon.”

  He turns in excited surprise. “You don’t mean he was Bacon, after all?”

  “No, darling. I mean that the one remembrance of things past he never managed to summon up in his sessions of sweet silent thought was anything so elementary as a bath. That’s why I came out of it seeming so stand-offish. I frankly found it about all I could face to be within shouting distance. I remember meeting him one day, he was wandering down Old Cheapside, slapping his bald head and saying the same line over and over again… he couldn’t think of one to follow it with. I jolly well yelled across the street, I was standing beside a lavender-girl for self-protection, and told him.”

  “Which line was that?”

  “ ‘I grant I never saw a goddess go.’ ”

  “And what did you shout?”

  “ ‘The reason being, you have B.O.’ Or Elizabethan words to that effect.”

  He grins at the ceiling. “You’re impossible.”

  “They were all the same. If literary historians weren’t so po-faced, they’d have long ago realized I had a very bad patch between the fall of the Roman Empire and the invention of internal plumbing.”

  He leaves a little silence.

  “If only I’d known from the beginning that the real you takes nothing seriously.”

  Her hand slides down his stomach. “Nothing?”

  “Apart from that.”

  She pinches the lip of his navel.

  “I’m only being what you want me to be.”

  “Then not your real self.”

  “That is my real self.”

  “Then you can tell me the truth about the Dark Lady.”

  “Darling, you wouldn’t have fancied her one bit. She was just like Nurse Cory.”

  “Not literally – physically like Nurse Cory?”

  “The spitting image. By a strange coincidence.”

  Again he turns in acute surprise.

  “Erato, you’re not… you’re not having me on?”

  “Of course not, Miles.” She raises her eyes to meet his. “I wish I was.”

  He lets his head fall back and stares at the ceiling. “My God. Black.”

  “I thought we’d decided on a rich brown, darling.”

  “And you didn’t mind?”

  She sighs. “Darling, of course I was joking just now. About being in Old Cheapside. I was only something in his mind. It’s just that the something in his mind is remarkably like a something in yours. The difference is that you won’t leave it there – I don’t mean you in particular, but everyone these days. Everything must be ‘real,’ or it doesn’t exist. You know perfectly well the real ‘real me’ is imaginary. I’m only being real in your sense because you want me to be. That’s what I meant a moment ago.”

  “But you were the one who came and really sat on my desk in the first place.”

  “Darling, I just wanted to see what being real was like. Naturally I had to choose someone to be real to. Equally naturally I chose you. That’s all there is to it. Really.”

  They lie in silence for a moment. Then he shifts slightly.

  “Shall we go and lie on the bed now?”

  “Of course, darling.”

  She stands and pulls him up. They embrace tenderly, mouth to mouth, then go hand in hand and install themselves on the bed, in the same position, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her shoulder, her right leg raised across his. He speaks again.

  “I’ve forgotten which unwritable variation that was.”

  “The twenty-ninth.”

  “I thought it was thirty.”

  “No, darling. It’s two after twenty-seven, and twenty-seven was the one when you made me…” She presses closer. “You know. You wicked thing.”

  “You mean when you made me make you…”

  “Shush.”

  She kisses his shoulder. The clock ticks, contentedly gestating its next cuckoo. The man on the bed speaks to the ceiling.

  “I’d never have believed it. The way we make it a little more impossible each time.”

  “I told you. Ye of little faith.”

  “I know you did, darling.” He slides a hand down the slim back and pats. “You and Nurse Cory.”

  She gently pinches his skin again. “As Nurse Cory.”

  “You do her so well now. I keep forgetting you’re the same person.” He kisses her hair beside him. “Ever since that time she, I mean you – fantastic. No wonder old William… when you go wild like that. And no wonder he went bald, if it was all going on in his head.”

  “It really was, darling.”

  He finds her right hand. They enlace fingers, and lie for a few moments in mute recollection. “It’s what seemed wrong today. I mean, only twice. We can’t count the interruptus.” She says nothing. “Our average is still three, isn’t it?”

  “Actually three point three recurring, darling.”

  “Two isn’t good enough.”

  “We can make up for it.”

  “It’s the literary stuff. Each time we go long on that, we somehow lose sight of the basics.”

  “Darling, I’m not disagreeing, but given who I am, I can’t drop that completely.”

  “My angel, I know you can’t. It’s just that…”

  “Just what, darling?”

  He strokes her back. “Actually I was thinking of one of your new variations today.” He pats. “Of course you did it very competently, as always. But I couldn’t help wondering if it was relevant.”

  “Which variation was that?”

  “When you pretended to be a psychoanalyst. All that nonsense about my being a voyeur and an exhibitionist. I frankly felt it was over the top. In the circumstances. And a wee bit below the belt. Especially the thing about mother-fixation.”

  She leans up on an elbow. “But Miles darling, who said only last time that he’d like to eat my breasts alive?”

  “We surely don’t have to draw farfetched conclusions just because as Nurse Cory you happen to have a smashing pair of tits.”

  “Only as Nurse Cory?”

  “Of course not.” He gives a quick touch to the pair beside him. “Both of you.”

  “Miles, I distinctly heard. You said ‘as Nurse Cory.’ ”

  “A slip of the tongue.”

  She looks down. “I honestly can’t see any difference at all.”

  “Sweetheart, there virtually isn’t.”

  She looks up. “What does ‘virtually’ mean?”


  “Only the tiniest nuance. And you can’t be jealous of yourself. Just because as her you are a suspicion prouder and bolder. Even more sweetly impudent and provocative than you already are.” He reaches and pats the objects under discussion again. “Yours are subtler. More delicate.” Once more she examines their delicate subtlety, but this time with a tinge of doubt. “Let me give them a little kiss.”

  She lies down in her previous position. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You are a vain thing.”

  “I wish now I’d never let you talk me into being a black girl.”

  “Darling, we agreed. I do need you in just one other shape – if only to remind myself how unconveyably heavenly you are in your own. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that, enjoyable though it may be to accuse me of incest and the rest, we surely have more important things to do. There were whole stretches today with hardly a whisper of sex. I sometimes feel we’re losing all sense of priorities. We need to get back to the spirit of that absolutely marvelous time – which was it? – when we hardly said a word throughout.”

  “Number eight.”

  “That was so superbly structured, all solid, serious, nonstop – you know. We can’t always rise to those heights, but even so.”

  “I seem to remember I spent as much time being Nurse Cory as myself in that one as well.”

  “Were you, darling? I’d completely forgotten.” He pats her back. “How strange. I could have sworn it was all you.”

  There is a silence. Erato lies against him. There is only one small change in her previous posture; now she lies with her eyes open. One might for a moment or two suspect that she is nursing a resentment. But that is soon proved illusory, because she turns her mouth once more and kisses the skin her head lies against.

  “Darling, you’re right. As always.”

  “Darling, don’t say that. Only sometimes.”

  “It’s just that I feel you’re becoming so much better at being impossible than I am.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It’s true. I don’t have your intuitive gift for ruining moods. It’s not easy, when you’ve spent the rest of your life trying to do the opposite.”

  “But you did marvelously today. You said things I thought I’d never forgive.”