Chapter Eight

 

Confident that, at Betti's, he would find a friend to share his meal, Eustace had made no luncheon engagement.  Unwisely, as he now realized on entering the restaurant.  For Mario De Lellis was swallowed up in the midst of a large convivial party, and could only wave a distant greeting.  And Mopsa's father, solemn old Schottelius, was pontificating about world politics to two other Germans.  And as for Tom Pewsey, he was lunching so intimately with such an extraordinarily handsome young Nordic that he failed to notice the entry of his oldest friend.

      Seated at the table assigned to him, Eustace was preparing, rather mournfully, to eat a solitary meal, when he became aware, over the top of his menu, of an intruding presence.  Raising his head, he saw a slender young man looking down at him with all the focused intentness of two very bright brown eyes and the fixedly staring nostrils of a tilted and inquisitive nose.

      'I don't suppose you remember me,' said the stranger.

      It was a New England voice; and its intonations curiously combined a native eagerness with a studiedly academic flatness, deliberation and monotony.

      Eustace shook his head.

      'No, I'm afraid I don't,' he admitted.

      'I had the pleasure of being introduced to you in Paris last January.  At Mrs Gamble's.'

      'Oh, you're Mr De Jong.'

      'De Vries,' the young man emended.  'Paul De Vries.'

      'I know all about you,' said Eustace.  'You talk to my mother-in-law about Einstein.'

      Very brightly, as though he were deliberately turning on a light, the young man smiled.

      'Could any subject be more exciting?'

      'None - unless it's the subject of lunch when the clock says half-past one.  Will you join me in discussing that?'

      The young man had evidently been hoping for just such an invitation.

      'Thank you so much,' he said; and, putting down the two thick volumes he was carrying, he seated himself, planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward towards his new companion.

      'Everyone ought to know something about Einstein,' he began.

      'One moment,' said Eustace.  'Let's start by deciding what we're going to eat.'

      'Yes, yes, that's very important,' the other agreed, but with an obvious lack of all conviction.  'The stomach has its reasons, as Pascal would say.'  He laughed perfunctorily, and picked up the bill-of-fare.  When the waiter had taken the orders, he planted his elbows as before, and began again.

      'As I was saying, Mr Barnack, everyone ought to know something of Einstein.'

      'Even those who can't understand what he's talking about?'

      'But they can,' the other protested.  'It's only the mathematical techniques that are difficult.  The principle is simple - and, after all, it's the understanding of the principle that affects values and conduct.'

      Eustace laughed aloud.

      'I can just see my mother-in-law changing her values and conduct to fit the principles of relativity!'

      'Well, of course she is rather elderly,' the other admitted.  'I was thinking more of people who are young enough to be flexible.  For example, that lady who acts as Mrs Gamble's companion ...'

      Ah, so that was why he had been so assiduous in his attentions to the Queen Mother!  But in that case the picture of the magnetized eye was perhaps not only a parable but a piece of history.

      '... Mathematically speaking, almost illiterate,' the young man was saying.  'But that doesn't prevent her from realizing the scope and significance of the Einsteinian revolution.'

      And what a revolution, he went on with mounting enthusiasm.  Incomparably more important than anything that had happened in Russia or Italy.  For this was the revolution that had changed the whole course of scientific thinking, brought back idealism, integrated mind into the fabric of Nature, put an end forever to the Victorians' nightmare universe of infinitesimal billiard balls.

      'Too bad,' said Eustace in parenthesis.  'I really loved those little billiard balls.'

      He addressed himself to the plate of ribbon-like lasagne verdi which the waiter had set before him.

      'First-rate,' he said appreciatively with his mouth full.  'Almost as good as at the Pappagallo in Bologna.  Do you know Bologna?' he added, hoping to divert the conversation to more congenial themes.

      But Paul De Vries knew Bologna only too well.  Had spent a week there the previous autumn, having talks with all the most interesting people at the university.

      'The university?' Eustace repeated incredulously.

      The young man nodded and, putting down his fork, explained that, during the last two years, he had been making a tour of all the leading universities of Europe and Asia.  Getting in touch with the really significant people working in each.  Trying to enlist their co-operation in the great project - the setting up of an international clearing house of ideas, the creation of a general staff of scientific-religious-philosophic synthesis for the entire planet.

      'With yourself as the commander-in-chief?' Eustace couldn't help putting in.

      'No, no,' the other protested.  'Only the liaison officer and interpreter.  Only the bridge-building engineer.'

      That was the full extent of his ambition: to be a humble bridge-builder, a pontifex.  Not maximus, he added with another of his bright deliberate smiles.  Pontifex minimus.  And he had good hopes of succeeding.  People had been extraordinarily kind and helpful and interested.  And meanwhile he could assure Eustace that Bologna was living up to her ancient reputation.  They were doing the most exciting work in crystallography; and in his latest lectures on Aesthetics, Bonomelli was using all the resources of modern psycho-physiology and the mathematics of many directions.  Nothing quite like Bonomelli's Aesthetics had ever been seen before.

      Eustace wiped his mouth and drank some Chianti.

      'I wish one could say the same thing of contemporary Italian art,' he remarked, as he refilled his glass from the big-bellied flask in its swinging cradle.

      Yes, the other admitted judicially, it was quite true that easel paintings didn't amount to much in modern Italy.  But he had seen the most remarkable specimens of socialized and civic art.  Classico-functional post offices, giant football stadiums, heroic murals.  And, after all, that was going to be the art of the future.

      'God,' said Eustace, 'I hope I shan't live to see it!'

      Paul De Vries signed to the waiter to remove his almost untouched plate of lasagne, hungrily lighted a cigarette and continued:

      'You're a specimen, if I may say so, of Individualistic Man.  But Individualistic Man is rapidly giving place to Social Man.'

      'I knew it,' said Eustace.  'Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.'

      The young man protested.  He wasn't talking about regimentation, but integration.  And in a properly integrated society a new kind of cultural field would arise, with new kinds of aesthetic values coming into existence within it.

      'Aesthetic values!' Eustace repeated impatiently.  'That's the sort of phrase that fills me with the profoundest mistrust.'

      'What makes you say that?'

      Eustace answered with another question.

      'What's the colour of your wallpaper in your bedroom at the hotel?' he asked.

      'The colour of the wallpaper?' the young man echoed in a tone of astonishment.  'I haven't the faintest idea.'

      'No, I thought not,' said Eustace.  'And that's why I mistrust aesthetic values so much.'

      The waiter brought the creamed breasts of turkey and he lapsed into silence.  Paul De Vries crushed out his cigarette and took two or three mouthfuls, chewing with extraordinary rapidity, like a rabbit.  Then he wiped his lips, lighted another cigarette and fixed Eustace with his bright eyes and staring nostrils.

      'You're right,' he said, 'you're certainly right.  My mind is so busy thinking about values that I don't have time to experience them.'

      The admission was made with such ingenious humility that Eustace was touched.

      'Let's go round the Ufizi one day,' he said.  'I'll tell you what I think about the paintings and you shall tell me what I ought to know about their metaphysical and historical and social implications.'

      The young man nodded delightedly.

      'A synthesis!' he cried.  'The organismic viewpoint.'

      Organismic ... The blessed word released him out of cramping actuality into the wide open spaces of the uncontaminated idea.  He began to talk about Professor Whitehead, and how there was no such thing as Simple Location, only location within a field.  And the more one considered the idea of the organized and organizing field, the more significant it seemed, the more richly exciting.  It was one of the great bridge-ideas connection one universe of discourse with another.  You had the electro-magnetic field in physics, the individuation field in embryology and general biology, the social field among insects and human beings....

      'And don't forget the sexual field.'

      Paul De Vries looked questioningly at the interrupter.

      'It's something that even you must have noticed,' Eustace continued.  'When you come into the neighbourhood of certain young ladies.  Like Faraday's tubes of force.  And you don't need a galvanometer to detect it,' he concluded with a chuckle.

      'Tubes of force,' the young man repeated slowly.  'Tubes of force.'

      The words seemed to have made a deep impression on him.  He frowned to himself.

      'And yet of course,' he went on after a little pause, 'sex has its values - though I know you dislike the word.'

      'But not the thing,' said Eustace jovially.

      It can be refined and sublimated; it can be given wider reference.'

      He made a gesture with his cigarette to indicate the wideness.

      Eustace shook his head.

      'Personally,' he said, 'I prefer it raw and narrow.'

      There was a silence.  Then Eustace opened his mouth to remark that little Mrs Thwale had a pretty powerful field around her, but before the words were out he had shut it again.  No point in making trouble for oneself or other people.  Besides, the oblique attack was generally the more effective; and since the Queen Mother had come to stay for a month, he would have all the time in the world to satisfy his curiosity.

      Pensively, Paul De Vries began to talk about celibacy.  People had come to mistrust the idea of vows and orders; but, after all, they provided a simple and effective mechanism for delivering the dedicated intellectual from emotional entanglements and the distracting responsibilities of family life.  Though of course, he added, certain values had to be sacrificed....

      'Not if the vows are judiciously tempered with a little fornication.'

      Eustace beamed at him over the top of his wine-glass.  But the young man's expression remained obstinately serious.

      'Perhaps,' he said, 'there might be a modified form of celibacy.  Not excluding romantic love and the higher forms of sex, but only barring marriage.'

      Eustace burst out laughing.

      'But after all,' the other protested, 'it's not love that's incompatible with the life of a dedicated intellectual; it's the whole-time job of wife and family.'

      'And you expect the ladies to share your views?'

      'Why not - if they were dedicated to the same kind of life?'

      'You mean, the intellectuals would only sleep with female mathematicians?'

      'Why only mathematicians?  Poetesses, women scientists and musicians and painters.'

      'In a word, every girl who can pass an examination or strum the piano.  Or even turn out a drawing,' he added as an afterthought.  'You modified celibates ought to have some fun!'

      But what an ass! Eustace thought, as he went on eating.  And how pathetically transparent!  Caught between his ideals and his desires, and trying to rationalize his way out of that absurdly commonplace situation by talking nonsense about values and dedicated intellectuals and modified celibacy.  It was really pathetic.

      'Well, now that we've dealt with the sexual field,' he said aloud, 'let's go on to the others.'

      Paul De Vries looked at him for a moment without speaking, then turned on one of his bright smiles and nodded his head.

      'Let's go on to the others,' he repeated.

      Pushing aside his half-eaten turkey, he planted his elbows on the table and in a moment was off once more into the open.

      Take the case, for example, of psychic fields, and even spiritual fields.  For if one looked into the matter open-mindedly and without preconceived ideas, one simply had to accept such things as facts - didn't one?

      Did one?  Eustace shrugged his shoulders.

      But the evidence was overwhelmingly strong.  If you read the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, you couldn't fail to be convinced.  Which was why most philosophers so scrupulously refrained from reading them.  That was what came of having to do your work within the old-fashioned academic field.  You couldn't think honestly about certain things, even if you wanted to.  And, of course, if the field was a strong one, you wouldn't want to.

      'You should talk to my mother-in-law about ghosts,' said Eustace.

      The advice was unnecessary.  Paul De Vries had already sat in at a number of the old lady's séances.  Bridging the gap between the phenomena of spiritualism and the phenomena of psychology and physics was one of his jobs as pontifex minimus.  An uncommonly difficult job, incidentally, since nobody had yet formulated a hypothesis in terms of which you could think coherently of the two sets of facts.  For the present the best one could do was just to skip from one world to the other - hoping, meanwhile, that some day one might get a hunch, an illuminating intuition of the greater synthesis.  For a synthesis there undoubtedly must be, a thought-bridge that would permit the mind to march discursively and logically from telepathy to the four-dimensional continuum, from poltergeists and departed spirits to the physiology of the nervous system.  And beyond the happenings of the séance room there were the events of the oratory and the meditation hall.  There was the ultimate all-embracing field - the Brahma of Sankara, the One of Plotinus, the Ground of Eckhart and Boehme, the ...

      'The Gaseous Vertebrate of Haeckel,' Eustace interjected.

      And within that ultimate field, the young man hurried on, determined not to be interrupted, there were subordinate fields - such as that which the Christians called the Communion of Saints and the Buddhists ...

      But Eustace would not leave him in peace.

      'Why stop there?' he broke in sarcastically, as he selected a cigar and prepared to light it.  'Why not the Immaculate Conception and the Infallibility of the Pope?'

      He sucked at the burning match, and the smoke gushed from his nostrils.

      'You remind me,' he said, 'of the Young Man of Cape Cod, who applied Quantum Theory to God ...'

      And nipping in the bud the other's effort to start again, he went on to recite a selection from what he called his New World Suite - the Young Girl of Spokane, the Young Man of Peoria, the Two Young Girls of Cheyenne.  Paul De Vries's laughter, he noticed, was a bit forced and perfunctory; but he went on all the same - on principle; for one really couldn't allow the fellow to get away with his pretensions.  Implicitly claiming to be religious just because he could talk a lot of high-class baloney about religion.  A little honest dirt would clear the air of philosophic cant and bring the philosopher down to the good old human barnyard, where he still belonged.  That ram-faced boy at Bruno's might be absurd, and Bruno himself an amiable but misguided imbecile; but at least they were pretentious; they practised what they preached and, what was almost more remarkable, refrained from preaching what they practised.  Whereas young pontifex minimus here ...

      Eustace took the cigar from between his lips, blew out a cloud of smoke and, lowering his voice a little, recited his limerick about the Bishop of Wichita Falls.