CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

                                                     If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought,

                                                     Thy nature is not therefore less divine;

                                                     Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;

                                                     And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

                                                     God being with thee when we know it not.

 

'And very nice too,' Jeremy said aloud.  Transparent was the word, he reflected.  The meaning was there like a fly in amber.  Or, rather, there was no fly; there was only the amber; and the amber was the meaning.  He looked at his watch.  Three minutes to midnight.  He closed his Wordsworth - and to think, he went on bitterly to remind himself, to think that he might have been refreshing his memory of Félicia! - laid the volume down on the table beside his bed and took off his glasses.  Deprived of their six and a half diopters of correction, his eyes were instantly reduced to a state of physiological despair.  Curved crystal had become their element; unspectacled, they were like a pair of jellied sea-creatures suddenly taken out of water.  Then the light went out; and it was as though the poor things had been mercifully dropped, for safe keeping, into an aquarium.

      Jeremy stretched under the bedclothes and yawned.  What a day!  But now, thank God, the paradise of bed.  The Blessed Damozel leaned out from the gold bed of heaven.  But these sheets were cotton ones, not linen; which was really a bit discreditable in a house like this!  A house full of Rubenses and Grecos - and your sheets were cotton!  But that 'Crucifixion of St Peter' - what a really staggering machine!  At least as good as the 'Assumption' at Toledo.  Which had probably been blown up by this time, incidentally.  Just to demonstrate what happened when people took things too seriously.  Not but that, he went on to reflect, there wasn't something rather impressive about that old Propter-Object.  (For that was what he had decided to call the man in his own mind and when he wrote to his mother: the Propter-Object.)  A bit of an Ancient Mariner, perhaps.  The wedding guest, he beat his breast on occasions; ought perhaps to have beaten it more often than he had done, seeing what a frightful subversion of all the common decencies and, a fortioro, the common indecencies (such as Félicia, such as every other Friday afternoon in Maida Vale) the creature was inculcating.  Not without a considerable persuasiveness, damn his glittering eyes!  For this particular Mariner not only held you with that eye of his; he was also and simultaneously the loud bassoon you wanted to hear.  One listened without reluctance - though, of course, one had no intention of permitting one's own particular little structures of decencies and indecencies to be subverted.  One was not going to allow religion (of all things!) to invade the sanctities of private life.  An Englishman's home is his castle; and, curiously enough, an American's castle, as he had discovered after the first shock began to wear off, was turning out to be this particular Englishman's home.  His spiritual home.  Because it was the embodiment of an imbecile's no-track mind.  Because there were no issues and nothing led anywhere and the dilemmas had an infinity of horns and you went round and round, like Fabre's caterpillars, in a closed universe of utter cosiness - round and round among the Hauberk Papers, from St Peter to La Petite Morphil to Giambologna to the gilded Bodhisattvas in the cellar to the baboons to the Marquis de Sade to St François de Sales to Félicia and round again in due course to St Peter.  Round and round, like caterpillars inside the mind of an imbecile; round and round in an infinite cosiness of issueless thoughts and feelings and actions, of hermetically bottled art and learning, of culture for its own sake, of self-sufficient little decencies and indecencies, of impassable dilemmas and moral questions sufficiently answered by the circumambient idiocy.

      Round and round, round and round, from Peter's feet to Morphil's little buttocks to the baboon's, from the beautiful Chinese spiral of the folds in the Buddha's robe to the humming-bird drinking in mid-air to Peter's feet again with the nails in them ... His drowsiness darkened into sleep.

      In another room on the same floor of the donjon Pete Boone was not even trying to get to sleep; he was trying, on the contrary, to figure things out.  To figure out Virginia and anti-fascism.  It wasn't easy.  Because, if Mr Propter was right, then you'd have to start thinking quite differently about almost everything.  'Disinterested quest for truth' - that was what you said (if you were ever forced to say anything so embarrassing about why you were a biologist).  And in the case of socialism it was 'humanity,' it was 'progress' - and, of course, that linked up with biology again: happiness and progress through science as well as socialism.  And while happiness and progress were on the way there was loyalty to the cause.  He remembered a piece about loyalty by Josiah Royce, a piece he had had to read in his sophomore year at college.  Something about all loyal people grasping in their own way some form of religious truth - winning some kind of genuine religious insight.  It had made a big impression on him at the time.  He had just lost his faith in that Blood-of-the-Lamb business he'd been brought up in, and this had come as a kind of reassurance, had made him feel that, after all, he was religious even if he didn't go to church any more - religious because he was loyal.  Loyal to causes, loyal to friends.  He had been religious, it had always seemed to him, over there in Spain.  Religious, again, when he felt that way about Virginia.  And yet, if Mr Propter was right, old Royce's ideas about loyalty were all wrong.  Being loyal didn't of itself give you religious insight.  On the contrary, it might prevent you from having insight - indeed, was absolutely certain to prevent you, if you gave your loyalty to anything less than the highest cause of all; and the highest cause of all (if Mr Propter was right) was almost terrible in its fairness and strangeness.  Almost terrible; and yet the more he thought about it, the more dubious he felt about everything else.  Perhaps it really was the highest.  But if it was, then socialism wasn't enough, because humanity wasn't enough.  Because the greatest happiness didn't happen to be in the place where people had thought it was, because you couldn't make it come by doing things in the sort of fields you worked in if you were a social reformer.  The best you could do in those fields was to make it easier for people to go on to where the greatest happiness could be had.  And, of course, what applied to socialism would apply to biology or any other science, if you thought of it as a means to progress. Because, if Mr Propter was right, then what people called progress wasn't it progress.  That is, it wouldn't be progress unless it had made it easier for people to go on to where the greatest happiness actually was.  Easier, in other words, to be loyal to the highest cause of all.  And, obviously, if that was your standard, you had to think twice about using progress as a justification for science.  And then there was that disinterested quest for truth.  But again, if Mr Propter was right, biology and the rest were the disinterested quest for only one aspect of truth.  But a half-truth was a falsehood, and it remained a falsehood even when you'd told it in the belief that it was the whole truth.  So it looked as though that justification wouldn't do either - or at any rate as though it wouldn't do unless you were at the same time disinterestedly trying to discover the other aspect of truth, the aspect you were looking for when you gave your loyalty to the highest cause of all.  And meanwhile what about Virginia, he asked himself in mounting anguish, what about Virginia?  For, if Mr Propter were right, then even Virginia wasn't enough, even Virginia might actually be an obstacle to prevent him from giving his loyalty to the highest cause of all.  Even those eyes and her innocence and that utterly adorable mouth; even what he felt about her; even love itself, even the best kind of love (for he could honestly say that he hated the other kind - that dreadful brothel in Barcelona, for example, and here, at home, those huggings after the third or fourth cocktail, those gropings by the roadside in a parked car) - yes, even the best kind of love might be inadequate, might actually be worse than inadequate.  'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not something or other more.'  Hitherto, something or other had been his biology, his socialism.  But now these had turned out to be inadequate, or even, taken as ends in themselves, worse than inadequate.  No loyalty was good in itself, or brought religious insight except loyalty to the highest cause of all.  'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not the highest cause all the more.'  But the question, the agonizing question, was this: Could you love the highest cause at all and go on feeling as you did about Virginia?  The worst love was obviously incompatible with loyalty to the highest cause of all.  Obviously so: because the worst love was just being loyal to your own physiology, whereas, if Mr Propter was right, you couldn't be loyal to the highest cause of all without denying such loyalties to yourself.  But was the best love so fundamentally different, after all, from the worst?  The worst was being loyal to your physiology.  It was hateful to admit it; but so too was the best: being loyal to your physiology and at the same time (which was its distinguishing mark) loyal also to your higher feelings - to that empty ache of longing, to that infinity of tenderness, to that adoration, that happiness, those pains, that sense of solitude, that longing for identity.  You were loyal to these, and being loyal to these was the definition of the best kind of love, of what people called romance and praised as the most wonderful thing in life.  But being loyal to these was being loyal to yourself; and you couldn't be loyal to yourself and loyal at the same time to the highest cause of all.  The practical conclusion was obvious.  But Pete refused to draw it.  Those eyes were blue and limpid, that mouth adorable in its innocence.  And then, how sweet she was, how beautifully thoughtful!  He remembered the conversation they had had on the way into dinner.  He had asked her how her headache was.  'Don't talk about it,' she had whispered; 'it might upset Uncle Jo.  Doc's been going over him with his stethoscope; doesn't think he's so good this evening.  I don't want to have him worrying about me.  And anyhow, what is a headache?'  Not only beautiful, not only innocent and sweet, but brave too, and unselfish.  And how adorable she had been to him all the evening, asking him about his work, telling him about her home in Oregon, making him talk about his home down in El Paso.  In the end, Mr Stoyte had come and sat down beside them - in silence, and his face black as thunder.  Pete had glanced enquiringly at Virginia, and she had given him a look that said, 'Please go,' and another when he rose to say goodnight, so pleasingly apologetic, so full of gratitude, so understanding, so sweet and affectionate, that the recollection of it was enough to bring the tears into his eyes.  Lying there in the darkness, he cried with happiness.

      The niche in the wall between the windows in Virginia's bedroom had been intended, no doubt, for a bookshelf.  But Virginia was not very keen on books; the recess had been fitted up, instead, as a little shrine.  You drew back a pair of short white velvet curtains (everything in the room was white), and there, in a bower of artificial flowers, dressed in real silk clothes, with the cutest little gold crown on her head and six strings of seed pearls round her neck, stood Our Lady, brilliantly illuminated by an ingenious system of concealed electric bulbs.  Barefooted and in white satin pyjamas, Virginia was kneeling before this sacred doll's house, saying her evening prayers.  Our Lady, it seemed to her, was looking particularly sweet and kind tonight.  Tomorrow, she decided, while her lips pronounced the formulas of praise and supplications, tomorrow morning, first thing, she'd go right down to the sewing-room and get one of the girls to help her make a new mantle for Our Lady out of that lovely piece of blue brocade she had bought last week at the junk shop in Glendale.  A blue brocade mantle, fastened in front with a gold button - or, better still, with a little gold cord that you could tie in a bow, with the ends hanging down, almost to Our Lady's feet.  Oh, that would be just gorgeous!  She wished it were morning so that she could start right away.

      The last prayer had been said; Virginia crossed herself and rose from her knees.  Happening to look down as she did so, she saw to her horror that some of the cyclamen-coloured varnish had scaled off the nails of the second and third toes of her left foot.  A minute later she was squatting on the floor beside the bed, the right leg outstretched, the other foot drawn across it, making ready to repair the damage.  An open bottle stood beside her; she held a small paintbrush in her hand, and a horribly industrial aura of acetone had enveloped the Schiaparelli 'Shocking' with which her body was impregnated.  She started to work, and as she bent forward, two strands of auburn hair broke loose from their curly pattern and fell across her forehead.  Under frowning brows, the large blue eyes intently stared.  To aid concentration, the tip of a pink tongue was held between the teeth.  'Hell!' she suddenly said aloud, as the little brush made a false stroke.  Then, immediately, the teeth clamped down again.

      Interrupting her work to allow the first coat of varnish to dry, she shifted her scrutiny from the toes to the calf and shin of her left leg.  The hairs were beginning to grow again, she noticed with annoyance; it would soon be time for another of those wax treatments.  Still pensively caressing the leg, she let her mind travel back over the events of the day.  The memory of that close call with Uncle Jo still gave her shivers of apprehensive excitement.  Then she thought of Sig with his stethoscope, and the upper lip lifted ravishingly in a smile of amusement.  And then there was that book, which it served Uncle Jo right that she should have had Sig read to her.  And Sig getting fresh with her between the chapters and making passes: that also served Uncle Jo right for trying to spy on her.  She remembered how mad she had got at Sig.  Not so much for what he actually did; for besides serving Uncle Jo right (of course it was only afterwards that she discovered quite how right it served him), what he actually did had been rather thrilling than otherwise; because, after all, Sig was terribly attractive and in those ways Uncle Jo didn't hardly count - in fact, you might almost say that he counted the other way; in the red, so to speak; counted less than nobody, so that anybody else who was attractive seemed still more attractive when Uncle Jo had been around.  No, it wasn't what he actually did that had made her mad at him.  It was the way he did it.  Laughing at her, like that.  She didn't mind a bit of kidding at ordinary times.  But kidding while he was actually making passes - that was treating her like she was a tart on Main Street.  No romance, or anything; just that sniggering sort of laugh and a lot of dirty cracks.  Maybe it was sophisticated; but she didn't like it.  And didn't he see that it was just plain dumb to act that way?  Because, after all, when you'd been reading that book with someone so attractive as Sig - well, you felt you'd like a bit of romance.  Real romance, like in the pictures, with moonlight, and swing music, or perhaps a torch singer (because it was nice to feel sad when you were happy), and a boy saying lovely things to you, and a lot of kissing, and at the end of it, almost without your knowing it, almost as if it weren't happening to you, so that you never felt there was anything wrong, anything that Our Lady would really mind ... Virginia sighed deeply and shut her eyes; her face took on an expression of seraphic tranquillity.  Then she sighed again, shook her head and frowned.  Instead of that, she was thinking angrily, instead of that, Sig had to go and spoil it all by acting hard-boiled and sophisticated.  It just shot all the romance to pieces and made you feel mad at him.  And what was the sense in that? Virginia concluded resentfully.  What was the sense in that, either from his point of view or from hers?

      The first coat of varnish seemed to be dry.  Bending over her foot, she blew on her toes for a little, then started to apply the second coat.  Behind her, all of a sudden, the door of the bedroom was opened and as gently closed again.

      'Uncle Jo?' she said enquiringly and with a note of surprise in her voice, but without looking up from her enamelling.

      There was no answer, only the sound of an approach across the room.

      'Uncle Jo?' she repeated and, this time, interrupted the painting of her toes to turn around.

      Dr Obispo was standing over her.  'Sig!'  Her voice dropped to a whisper.  'What are you doing?'

      Dr Obispo smiled his smile of ironic admiration, of intense and at the same time amused and mocking concupiscence.  'I thought we might go on with our French lesson,' he said.

      'You're crazy!'  She looked apprehensively towards the door.  'He's just across the hall.  He might come in....'

      Dr Obispo's smile broadened to a grin.  'Don't worry about Uncle Jo,' he said.

      'He'd kill you if he found you here.'

      'He won't find me here,' Dr Obispo answered.  'I gave him a capsule of Nembutal before he went to bed.  He'll sleep through the Last Trump.'

      'I think you're awful!' said Virginia emphatically; but she couldn't help laughing, partly out of relief and partly because it really was rather funny to think of Uncle Jo snoring away next door while Sig read her that stuff.

      Dr Obispo pulled the Book of Common Prayer out of his pocket..  'Don't let me interrupt your labours,' he said with the parody of chivalrous politeness.  '"A woman's work is never done."  Just go on as though I weren't there.  I'll find the place and start reading.'  Smiling at her with imperturbable impudence, he sat down on the edge of the rococo bed and turned over the pages of the book.

      Virginia opened her mouth to speak; then, catching hold of her left foot, closed it again under the compulsion of a need even more urgent than that of telling him exactly where he got off.  The varnish was drying in lumps; her toes would look just awful if she didn't go on with them at once.  Hastily dipping her little brush in the bottle of acetone enamel, she started painting again with the focused intensity of a Van Eyck at work on the microscopic details of the 'Adoration of the Lamb.'

      Dr Obispo looked up from the book.  'I admired the way you acted with Pete this evening,' he said.  'Flirting with him all through dinner, so that you got the old man hopping jealous of him.  That was masterly.  Or should one say mistressly?'

      Virginia released her tongue to say emphatically, 'Pete's a nice boy.'

      'But dumb,' Dr Obispo qualified, as he sprawled with conscious elegance and a maddening insolent assumption of being at home across the bed.

      'Otherwise he wouldn't be in love with you the way he is.'  He uttered a snort of laughter.  'The poor chump thinks you're an angel, a heavenly little angel, complete with wings, harp and genuine eighteen-carat, fully jewelled, Swiss-made virginity.  Well, if that isn't being dumb ...'

      'You just wait till I get time for you,' said Virginia menacingly, but without looking up; for she had reached a critical phase in the execution of her work of art.

      Dr Obispo ignored the remark.  'I used to underestimate the value of an education in the humanities,' he said after a little silence.  'Now, I make that mistake no longer.'  In a tone of deep solemnity, a tone, one might imagine, like Whittier's in a reading from his own works.  'The lessons of great literature!' he went on.  'The deep truths!  The gems of wisdom!'

      'Oh, shut up!' said Virginia.

      'When I think what I owe Dante and Goethe,' said Dr Obispo in the same prophetic style.  'Take the case of Paolo reading aloud to Francesca.  With the most fruitful results, if you remember.  "Noi leggevamo un giorno, per diletto, di Lancilotto, come amor lo strinse.  Soli eravamo e senz' alcun sospetto.  Senz' alcun sospetto,"' Dr Obispo repeated with emphasis, looking, as he did so, at one of the engravings in the Cent-Vingt Jours.  'Not the smallest suspicion, mark you, of what was going to happen.'

      'Hell!' said Virginia, who had made another slip.

      'No, not even a suspicion of hell,' Dr Obispo insisted.  'Though, of course, they ought to have been on the look-out for it.  They ought to have had the elementary prudence to guard against being sent there by the accident of sudden death.  A few simple precautions, and they could have made the best of  both worlds.  Could have had their fun while the brother was out of the way and, when the time for having fun was over, could have repented and died in the odour of sanctity.  But then it must be admitted that they hadn't the advantage of reading Goethe's Faust.  They hadn't learnt that inconvenient relatives could be given sleeping-draughts.  And even if they had learnt, they wouldn't have been able to go to the drugstore and buy a bottle of Nembutal.  Which shows that education in the humanities isn't enough; there must also be education in science.  Dante and Goethe to teach you what to do.  And the professor of pharmacology to show you how to put the old buzzard into a coma with a pinch of barbiturate.'

      The toes were finished.  Still holding her left foot, so as to keep it from any damaging contact until the varnish should be entirely dry, Virginia turned on her visitor.  'I won't have you calling him an old buzzard,' she said hotly.

      'Well, shall we say "bastard"? Dr Obispo suggested.

      'He's a better man than you'll ever be!' Virginia cried; and her voice had the ring of sincerity.  'I think he's wonderful.'

      'You think he's wonderful,' Dr Obispo repeated.  'But all the same, in about fifteen minutes you'll be sleeping with me.'  He laughed as he spoke and, leaning forward from his place on the bed, caught her two arms from behind, a little below the shoulders.  'Look out for your toes,' he said, as Virginia cried out and tried to wrench herself away from him.

      The fear of ruining her masterpiece made her check the movement before it was more than barely initiated.  Dr Obispo took advantage of her hesitation to stoop down, through the aura of acetone towards the nape of that delicious neck, towards the perfume of 'Shocking,' towards a firm warmth against the mouth, a touch of hair like silk upon the cheeks.  Swearing, Virginia furiously jerked her head away.  But a fine tingling of agreeable sensation was running parallel, so to speak, with her indignation, was incorporating itself in it.

      This time, Dr Obispo kissed her behind the ear.  'Shall I tell you,' he whispered, 'what I'm going to do to you?'  She answered by calling him a lousy ape-man.  But he told her all the same, in considerable detail.

      Less than fifteen minutes had elapsed when Virginia opened her eyes and, across the now darkened room, caught sight of Our Lady smiling benignantly from among the flowers of her illuminated doll's house.  With a cry of dismay she jumped up and, without waiting to put on any clothes, ran to the shrine and drew the curtains.  The light went out automatically.  Stretching out her hands in the thick darkness, she groped her way cautiously back to bed.