CHAPTER EIGHT
'What a
sleep!' thought Michael, emerging from the nocturnal depths of image-bloated subconsciousness. 'Did I dream all those dreams or do I imagine
I did? There were horsemen, I
remember. Yes, horsemen wearing top hats
and riding through a deserted town. But
then everything goes blank. I don't even
know what they were doing there or where they were going. They disappeared too quickly. Then there was that woman, probably Julie, my
usual temptress, scheming in the background.
But I think that was another dream, possibly the one before, because she
certainly didn't have anything to do with top hats and horses! Anyway, she didn't run away from me as on
previous occasions, though I have no clear recollection, at present, of exactly
what she did do.
'We must have had sex anyway, because I can
distinctly recall being shown a pair of black suspenders before her flesh
well-nigh smothered me. At least that's
how it appears now, though I don't dream sex all that often, alas, and I can't
will myself to either, because dreams have a life of their own and only show
one what they want to, irrespective of one's
personal wishes. Since I haven't
so much as kissed a woman in over five years, my dreams tend to be a bit
unromantic, if not downright dismissive of women generally!
'Perhaps I ought to return to Ireland, even
though, not having brought myself over here, I don't remember anything about
it, profess disbelief in Christianity, speak with a suburban Surrey accent, and
intend to work as a free-thinking author?
I don't seem to have much romance living in
Desiring to break away from these
troublesome thoughts, Michael Savage turned over in his bed and began listening
to the continuous clumping of high heels across the floor of the room
above. It was both annoying and puzzling
to him that the tenant there couldn't arrange to wear something quieter
indoors, like a pair of slippers or sneakers, instead of always making so much
damn noise. Such an arrangement would doubtless
have been more considerate of her, and would have prevented Michael from
assuming that she did it just to annoy him, since he had never taken any real
sexual interest in her. Yes, there were
always women who turned spiteful or vindictive when they realized that you had
no romantic designs on them, probably because the ultimate decision as to with
whom one had sex for whatever purposes was fundamentally a female's affair
which didn't warrant male objections!
However, before long, Michael's thoughts
began to get the better of him again and, after a further dose of resentful
subjectivity centred on personal truth, they shifted up a gear, so to speak, to
a more objective realm of mental inquiry.
'You stare manifestations of truth in the
face when you realize that, against their innermost desires, many young people
are obliged to sleep on their own every night; that evil is as ubiquitous as
good and that, in theological terms, the God who apparently made you also made
the people, animals, insects, etc. which regularly torment you; that before He
made man His speciality was reptiles, including dinosaurs; that a priest who
involves himself in politics is betraying the cause of religion to the same
extent as a politician involved in religion betrays his political
responsibilities; that inequality between people is not a social anomaly but a
fact of life; that many people pass through life without ever having
experienced genuine love or friendship; that the subconscious mind plays a
greater role in determining consciousness than might at first appear. Indeed, now that I come to think of it, some
author I was reading recently was of the opinion that we haven't got a
subconscious, that the subconscious is basically just a myth, and consequently
something to which we oughtn't to attach any great importance. As if a person thinking "1066, Battle of
'Goodness me, haven't we learnt better by
now? Or is it that we're simply decadent
and don't take ourselves seriously enough these days? That we're too often conscious of living a
lie which we can't do anything about, which only psychologically cripples and
humiliates us, transforming our thoughts into inarticulate bubbles that
well-up, like pieces of flotsam, to wash against the shores of our
consciousness where, confronted by twentieth-century life, they burst and
fester? Well, what would be the point of
writing a serious thesis on behalf of those who find conventional religion an
embarrassment if nobody could learn anything from it? Or if it could be discarded as a source of
idiotic self-deception, a blatant example of free thought which, coming from a
contemporary intellectual, is all very well in its place, but nothing to be
taken too seriously because it takes all types to make a world and, besides,
someone else is bound to come-up with an alternative view before long, so what
matter? Reminds me of that dubious notion
we have concerning sunset and sunrise, the going down and coming up of the Sun,
as though the Earth stayed perfectly still while the bloody Sun danced around
it! Seems more accurate to think in
terms of, say, "earthrise" and "earthset";
though I doubt that a majority of people could be re-educated on that score overnight! After all, delusions, deceptions, illogicalities, absurdities, etc., are pretty much an
integral part of the crazy world we inhabit.'
Having thought which, Michael stretched out
his hand to pick up the battered old alarm clock which had lain face-down by
the side of his bed all night and, noting the time, dropped it back down on the
floor, before continuing: 'It's 8.00am, so I've been awake nearly half-an-hour. Half-an-hour too long,
since I resent waking up when what I was dreaming promised to enthral me. Usually end up either thinking or fantasizing
too much. Then, in the latter event,
getting up with a hard-on and not being able to use it because there's no woman
around is a pretty frustrating experience.
A regular affair in my life, though.
Like what I was thinking the day before yesterday about bumping into old
acquaintances in the street, particularly those females who were potential
girlfriends, and being asked how you're doing, etc., and, to minimize
embarrassment, you reply "fine", considering they probably don't
really give a toss about you anyway and, having had the misfortune to bump into
you, are only too eager to get away again, to escape from the unpleasant
connotations or feelings you awake in them in consequence of the recollection
that they were already happily attached to some other male when you'd had the
nerve or audacity to proposition them in the first place, and therefore had no
real alternative but to reject you, while you're simultaneously annoyed with
yourself for allowing them to get away with a lie from your mouth, even though
you're well aware that it probably wouldn't have served your purpose to let
them know how you're really doing, in view of the largely paradoxical nature of
modern life, with its social hostilities, fears, suspicions, prejudices, and
hypocrisies lurking dangerously close to the fragile surface of its ostensibly
promiscuous standards.
'Indeed, the notion of a promiscuous
society seems to me more like a myth than a reality, something that has no real
applicability to the world a majority of people are accustomed to living in
these days. Unless, however, my
upbringing was so strict that I now suffer from the delusion of taking what I project
of myself into the world for the world itself? Anyway, you'd expect certain persons and
categories of people to be promiscuous in any age, regardless of the prevailing
Zeitgeist. Take students, for example. These days it appears that, having plenty of
time on their hands and a fair number of attractive members of the opposite sex
to choose from, most of them can usually have their sexual desires satisfied
more easily, not to say frequently, than other people. For college should be an ideal mating-ground,
especially when there's a fairly even distribution of the sexes there.
'That student upstairs, for instance: no
sex starvation in her life! She certainly knows what's good for her, if
the noise I'm put through every night is any indication! She should get an honours degree if she stays
the course and doesn't lose her current lover in the meantime. Though I don't think there's much chance of that happening. Why, she's too accommodating! Keeps him satisfied. A morale booster, if ever there was one!'
For a moment he had to smile, in spite of
the relatively cynical nature of his thoughts, which were all-too-symptomatic
of his self-image as an outsider, a man who had no real choice but to live on
his own in view of the absence of alternative solutions.
'I wonder, though, whether life wouldn't be
a bit harder for her if she lacked a man, if she hadn't been so much as kissed
by a man in several years,' he went on, turning onto his other side. 'Indeed, she might require a little extra
coaxing out-of-bed in the mornings, perhaps a little extra incentive to stir
herself, because it certainly isn't a good thing to be continuously cut-off
from congenial company, to be on your own every night. You get some nasty thoughts that way, some
nasty feelings inside, particularly when you're all the time surrounded by
neighbours whose lifestyles are so alien to your own that you have no
alternative but to keep to yourself in the evenings. You could soon become neurotic if you weren't
careful, swamped by incertitude and guilt, the incertitude and guilt of a man
who fancies himself to be in the way, living against the grain but unable to do
anything about it because he is what he is and they are just as surely what
they are, and no compromise seems possible.
I wonder how she would feel with no-one to visit her apart from the
landlord once a month, with no-one to keep her company in the evenings, to
flatter her vanity and explore her flesh.
She'd probably wind-up frightened of going mad. Wind-up like Sartre's leading character
Antoine Roquentin in Nausea: too
conscious of the fact that she exists because she hasn't got anyone to help her
be instead.
'Well, at least I have the consolation of
knowing that I can sleep much better now than I did during the first year or
two of my enforced exile in London. No
wonder I became so hopelessly neurotic then.
Too much consciousness is the ultimate torture, akin in Lawrentian parlance to being at "a perpetual
funeral", bearing in mind the gravity of the matter. For you need to black out every night in
order to effect a partial rejuvenation of the organism and be resurrected, as
it were, the following morning. Still, I
needn't get unduly intellectual at present, because it isn't particularly
dignified lying here with the smelly sheets all rucked
up and the quilt smeared with sweat from past abuses.... Now my temples are
throbbing from the pressure of so many thoughts! Perhaps I had better fantasize instead,
although it's always unnerving to fantasize in this state-of-mind, afraid of
bursting a blood vessel or concussing myself.
Imagine myself dying from a cerebral haemorrhage or partly concussed and
crawling out into the entrance hall for some meddlesome person, like old Miss
Bass in the front room, to phone for an ambulance and have me carted away on a
stretcher. And what would I say to the
hospital staff, assuming I wasn't dead on arrival? "I had just got my imaginary tongue
between her imaginary labia when, to my utmost surprise, I experienced a mental
ejaculation which knocked me out." Case of another over-idealistic paddy biting the realistic dust? Or just another victim of
unrequited love? Probably better
off dead than alive anyway.'
At which point Michael gave way to another
smile that seemed to assail him from beyond the focal-point of his conscious
mind, as though in response to an interested spectator of the principal
proceedings which now, as on other occasions, were overly cerebral.
'I remember having a favourite fantasy that
involved a pretty dark-haired nurse,' he resumed thinking, 'who would take my
temperature in the orthodox fashion, thermometer to mouth, and then allow me to
take hers by inserting the instrument into her vagina, until I was sufficiently
satisfied with the ensuing reading and could thereby verify the continuation of
her habitually good health. "And
how many times have you been fucked, Nurse White?
Thirty-five times by the age of twenty-two? But I would have thought at least five
hundred!"
'Yes, how the mind functions! One minute I'm deadly serious, the next
minute I'm able to joke. To be sure, it
would be an incredibly weird experience writing all these thoughts down on
paper without any punctuation, the way Joyce did for Molly Bloom in Ulysses, to draw
attention to how the mind gets carried away with itself in a torrent of verbal
excitement. That would be even weirder
than ... ah! That reminds me. I mustn't
forget to post that short story to Gerald today, the one I told him about in
the restaurant yesterday. It will give
him a surprise. He probably thought I
was just bluffing him, considering I didn't really relate to him and, if the
truth were known, had no real sympathy for his problems, what with him being so
effeminate and all that.
'In fact, I'm more than a little relieved to
have finally got away from him and, no less significantly, from that music
firm, what with all the strange people who worked there! For instance, little Ernie
Brock. Reading
in the street every lunch time.
Why-the-devil he couldn't take a walk without reading, I'll never
know! He was lucky not to get pushed off
the pavement and run over, the way he walked about virtually oblivious of
everyone and everything except the book he happened to have his nose stuck into
at the time. And while he held a book in
one hand his other hand held an apple, which he would nibble at from time to
time in positively Adamic fashion. In fact, it seemed to rank fairly highly in
his hierarchy of daily priorities, including, in addition to sustained silence,
a regular perusal of the Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, which he
appeared to know back-to-front and right-to-left. Though that didn't prevent him from
re-reading them or induce him to boast of his knowledge. Oh, no!
He was far too knowing to fall for that crass
shortcoming! An authentic Christian if
ever there was one, an earnest crusader for the dissemination of Christ's
message, and a classical scholar, to boot.
'He apparently knew a little Greek, because
it's the done thing in the clergy and he intended to become a clergyman one
day. You wouldn't hear him comment on it
though, not him! Wouldn't
comment on accidents, either.
Some over-weight fellow at the office got himself knocked down by a car
on his way to work one morning and all little Ernie Brock could manage to say,
when the chief clerk informed him of it, was: "Oh, I see". She never got another word out of him, not
even some simple curiosity! In fact, I
can't pretend that I reacted very concernedly to the news myself. But at least I endeavoured to show some interest, because
things like that didn't happen very often and it provided one with a pretext
for dropping work a few minutes.
'Still, Ernie might have shown some
concern, even if the fellow who had to stay off work all week with severe bruising
to his buttocks did happen to be a self-professed atheist! But I suppose, not being particularly
accident-prone himself, it didn't really occur to him, bearing in mind the
extensive nature of his perambulatory reading habits. Never in the wrong place at
the right time. Too absorbed in his reading to have any time to worry about the
possible consequences of being pushed off the path or failing to spot the curb. Didn't give a damn about the world, but kept
himself to himself most of the time.
Seemed to carry the Gospels around on his conscience, as though
intuitively aware that he was constantly under strict surveillance from the
Omniscient, the justification for his priestly etiquette, and therefore under
binding obligation to behave in a thoroughly moral manner. That could be the reason why he often
reiterated childish banalities under his breath whenever experiencing what I
can only suppose to have been a premonition of anger, as though to shield his
thoughts from the possibility of cursing or swearing, and thereby protect his
claim to an afterlife of eternal bliss.
Perhaps afraid that such sinful aberrations could leave a rather
conspicuous moral stain on an otherwise exemplary record?
'It must be terribly frustrating for a
person to develop that kind of neurosis, though. More frustrating, still, if
you're a Catholic who goes to confession every week. You could end-up wondering whether you hadn't
forgotten to mention something, whether you oughtn't to make a note of all your
sins, or potential sins, as they happened in case, either by forgetting or
overlooking some of them, your omissions subsequently went against you, come
Judgement Day. But, then, if you failed
to understand exactly what constituted a sin in the first place, as so many
people ...'
Michael Savage drew a halt to his thinking at
this point, since the clumping of high heels across the floor above him
momentarily arrested his attention. He
still couldn't prevent himself from imagining it was all done on purpose as a
kind of punishment for his sexual reticence, his self-containment, his
disinclination to get into conversation with the woman. Although, in another and more rational part
of his mind, a little voice was telling him that, like so many of her kind, she
probably suffered from an inability to remain still.
However, it didn't occur to him that she
might be totally unaware of the extent of the noise she was unwittingly
inflicting upon him, as he went on: 'I wonder who it was once informed me that
the Church always "comes out" in times of persecution? Naturally, he wasn't lying to me, because
you'd ordinarily expect people who were being persecuted to stand up for
themselves, whatever their beliefs. I
mean, most people would probably retaliate if provoked strongly enough, not
just stand put and bless their enemies, like a bunch of cowardly
masochists! He was more than likely
seeking an ulterior motive to justify the Church's "coming out", to
enable him to puff it up a bit with otherworldly connotations. After all, it would be too down-to-earth
without the Creator's backing, that ultimate authority which men like Moses
wielded so successfully not only against his Egyptian oppressors but against
virtually every other godforsaken people either audacious or stupid enough to get
in his way as well! Indeed, I can well
remember having sat behind a row of nuns at a cinema showing Moses, or some
such religious epic, in all its martial ferocity and blood lust, with people
succumbing to a violent death every-other-second, especially among the Hebrews'
enemies, while (to judge by their rapt attentiveness during the screening and
their excited chatter in the intermission) the nuns were positively lapping it
all up, taking it all for granted, never for a moment doubting that the "badies" didn't get what they deserved, that Jehovah's
ruthless retribution wasn't the sine qua non for one's optical acquiescence in
the slaughter, or that the "Chosen People" weren't perfectly
justified in driving other peoples from their "Promised Land".
'Now, much as I'm no anti-Semite, it seems
to me that there's little sense in endeavouring to argue with people like that:
minimum response! They'd probably
consider you mad. What would be the
point in arguing, anyway? I'd only
succeed in arousing their resentment. A waste of time bashing your head against such an impervious wall. You wouldn't alter it to any appreciable
extent; it's been there too long.
Besides, whoever heard of anyone, least of all a religious maniac,
relinquishing his habitual source of consolation in the face of opposition from
the first scoffer or cynic who happened to cross his path? You might as well expect people to renounce
religious faith altogether, if it was that vulnerable to attack! After all, it wouldn't really be a genuine faith
without some form of steadfast loyalty to the cause. Returning to what I was thinking yesterday,
they'd probably have some other faith or mania instead, something that would
adequately serve the purpose of an alternative delusion. Who knows the number of godforsaken beliefs
or manias one could alternatively succumb to, given an opportunity to begin
afresh? Even I acquiesce in a delusion
which a good many people, in their inability or unwillingness to draw simple
conclusions from it, would doubtless regard as an exceptionally unique species
of madness!'
For a moment the sound of heavy footsteps
in the hallway, coinciding with the cessation of clumping noises across the
floor above, put a stop to his thoughts by indicating, to his great relief,
that the upstairs tenant had exited her room and was rapidly proceeding towards
the front door which, upon reaching, she would thoughtlessly open and, just as
thoughtlessly, slam shut with a firm grip of the door handle. That done, Michael Savage could relax back
into the grip of his thoughts again, without having to fear an immediate
resumption of her noise.
'As for my personal delusion, which seems
to have less hold on me these days than formerly, due in all probability to the
slow emergence of alternative delusions of a no-less personal nature, I shall
permit myself to expand on it a little more than yesterday, indicative of the
degree of spiritual emancipation to which I've recently attained, insofar as I
would previously have felt too constrained by the imaginary presence, as it
were, of my omniscient eavesdroppers to be able to reveal myself to them in
such an open fashion.
'Well, these psychic eavesdroppers may not
have been Gods the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost, but the impression I
frequently had of being listened-in to by extraneous beings undoubtedly
suggests something analogous to the sphere of orthodox religion. Yet if I confess to the fact that I suffered
unrequited love so intensely, for several years, that I was eventually
compelled to carry an image of both the form and spirit of my beloved around in
my head every day, then I'd probably be getting somewhere nearer the root of
the problem. For it was during this
period of intense emotional attachment to a particular woman that I experienced,
in addition to neurosis, a sort of Rimbaudian
derangement of the senses. I would have
been utterly incapable of transferring my love to anyone else, since my
devotion was so powerful that, even had I eventually succeeded in finding a
viable substitute, the very fact of her inherent otherness from the woman I was
in love with would ultimately have precluded me from taking her seriously. So I went solitary through the crowded
streets of
'But if Julie could invade my mental
privacy in this fantastic fashion, then what was there, by a cumulative effect,
to prevent her friends or acquaintances from doing so, too? And not only them but, by further extension
of the delusion, some of my acquaintances and former friends as well - for
instance, people at the office? A
regular retinue of omniscient eavesdroppers who come-and-go according to the
circumstances, the frame-of-mind you're in, who or what you're thinking about,
how busy you are, where you are, or what you're doing, because, no matter how
blatantly absurd it may seem, you do then have some kind of company, however
simulated, transient, indifferent, or even hostile, to put you on an imaginary
pedestal, to witness your daily joys and tribulations, failures and successes,
and, last but by no means least, to induce you to objectify your thoughts. You do then have people, however attenuated,
imaginary, or secretive, with whom to share your favourite rock albums, people
who'll comment from afar, as it were, on what you're playing, who'll
corroborate and stimulate your own opinion of a particular instrument,
musician, composition, tone, tempo, arrangement, melody, harmony, or anything
else notably pertinent to the album concerned.
As though you had established a private audience or loyal band of followers
with whom a psychic communion could be sustained by dint of whatever
connections you may formerly have had with them on the planes of friendship or
acquaintanceship. So maybe, in extending
the delusion into the realm of sentiment, Julie wants to be near you, wants to
know exactly what's going on in your little world but, because of various
social commitments, attachments, or misgivings, can only satisfy these wants
indirectly, discreetly, clandestinely, through the medium of a kind of
telepathic communication, with or without certain of her friends or
acquaintances being present while she listens-in to your thoughts.
'Yes, they speak of the insanity of love,
how a man would cross the globe ten-times-over if only to be near the one
person who truly pleases him; how entire armies are destroyed in the wake of
his frustrated desire for sexual fulfilment; how the temples of dedication
crumble to dust with the sacrifice of his beloved's lips; and how, in the
throes of some tortuously unrequited passion, the poison is imbibed, the noose
tightened, the bullet fired, or the water embraced. The ineluctable ferocity of love, slayer of a
thousand peoples, betrayer of a million secrets, ravisher of a billion hearts,
desecrater of a trillion truths!'
There suddenly ensued a tremendous
explosion of rattling keys or, rather, of key and keyhole in head-on
confrontation, as the old woman next door, having evidently exited her room,
grappled with the manifold complexities of her lock, preparatory to dropping
first keys and then handbag on the floor in consequence of a sum of
perplexities which the lock had unmercifully brought to a head! Eventually, after gathering both belongings
and composure together, Miss Bass went on to exit the house in her customary
discreet fashion.
Meanwhile, Michael had turned onto his
opposite side and begun to reflect back on what he had been thinking in
relation to his ideal temptress, the one with the plaited hair. She had come to him in a dream, as on many
previous occasions, only this time she had been friendlier towards him, even to
the extent of abandoning herself to his caresses and promising to requite
him. That, to be sure, was a rather
novel experience in itself, one which he had no reason to suppose would ever
happen again.
'So I believed, albeit tactfully,
sparingly, intermittently, that Julie could penetrate my mind and thereupon
secure access to my thoughts,' he continued to muse afresh, encouraged by the
departure of yet another neighbour. 'I
even went so far as to dupe myself into assuming that one of her friends, an
impulsive young woman I had spoken to on more than a few occasions, could
succeed in winning me over and subsequently disentangling me from what had
gradually become a somewhat ambivalent predicament. That this friend, being no less seductive in
her own fashion, could provide an amorous diversion which would somehow
mitigate the hardship of my futile allegiance to Julie - something, alas, which
wasn't to be underestimated by such a naive presumption! But such is life, and since nothing can be
sold without a price, so I had to pay dearly, in my perverse imagination, for
the imaginary presence of my beloved.
And not just in a purely physical sense, but also with regard to those
shameful feelings of remorse which invariably descend, like famished vultures,
upon anyone who habitually disappoints his idol, who is acutely conscious of
every mortal mistake he makes and who, in the manner of a mortified penitent,
needs to apologize to this idol for having thought the wrong thoughts, done the
wrong deeds, and generally failed to live-up to the idealistic standards he had
formerly set himself. I even wrote a
short poem which went:-
The people who
listen-in to
His thoughts restrict him.
He is afraid to offend them.
Among their number might be
The woman he loves.
What if he were to think her
A ruthless
whore?
'Yes, that's it! A kind of lyric poem, to which I later added
a short prose poem of similarly paranoiac import which, if memory serves me well,
ran as follows:-
The thing that would
particularly make subservience to Christianity unattractive to me would be the
constraint of mind attendant upon acknowledging an ostensibly omnipotent and
omniscient Deity. The constraint of fearing
to let slip from one's thoughts anything which, to Him, might seem improper - a
tirade of self-abuse, an observance of religious doubt, a hatred of one's
fellows, the formulation of lewd or violent fantasies ... in short, anything
that could serve to render one guilty to such a Divine Witness, and thereby
necessitate the onerous obligation of regular confession accompanied by sincere
contrition. Too great a mental
constraint, conceived under duress of imagining oneself being listened-in to by
the Omniscient, would almost certainly lead, sooner or later, to a
hypersensitivity in the matter, a fear of sinning or losing track of one's
sins, and even, at a more advanced stage of the neurosis, to the possibility of
a full-fledged religious psychosis and the persecutory concomitants thereof of
eschatological paranoia.
'Yes, that was it! So even if I hadn't exactly fallen into the
religious trap, I had fallen into the unrequited trap and virtually elevated
the source of my distress to the status of a goddess. Even if I hadn't fallen into the traditional
delusive trap, the one I had fallen into was no less
exacting, encouraging though it was to know that my delusion precluded any
possibility of an imminent conversion to institutionalized madness. Fortunately, however, I had no reason to
split my mind into two or three parts, having absolutely no desire to play a
question-and-answer game with an imaginary interlocutor. The consciousness I frequently had of
imagining myself being listened-in to by a particular woman was sufficient to
enable me to sustain my thought patterns, to augment them, to coerce them into
supplying self-evident descriptive explanations of my varying circumstances, in
order to put her in the picture, as it were, and simultaneously justify my
actions.
'Thus if, during a day's clerical routine,
I paused to rest awhile, it was usually because I felt mentally fatigued. Now although it would have been perfectly
feasible to have thought "Jesus, I'm tired!" at such a moment, I
would have thought it largely on the understanding that Julie was listening-in
to me and consequently required to have the situation explained and even
justified. However, since I was
concerned to keep this delusion under tight control, and thus refrain from
allowing it to develop into a veritable madness, I kept a fairly constant check
on it and finally succeeded, after numerous frustrations and self-criticisms,
in keeping it down to a tolerable level, thereby acquiring the freedom to
observe my deceptions with more than a hint of ironic detachment.
'Well, so much for all that! Whatever happens to me in future, I think I
ought to get up fairly soon because, quite apart from the lateness of the hour,
my empty stomach is beginning to protest in a rather disagreeable manner. I'll tidy up my room, find something to eat,
play a few tapes, take a short stroll around the neighbourhood, and just get
used to the idea of leading another life, a life different from the one to
which I've grown accustomed in recent years.'
Thus, with an ardent desire to enacting his
intentions, Michael Savage clambered out of bed and, after briefly scrutinizing
the weather, immediately set about the conquest of his various domestic
duties. He spent the rest of the morning
in a lighter mood in a brighter room, glad it was a warm, dry Saturday and that
he didn't have to worry about going to the office today. In fact, now that he no longer had an office
to go to anyway, he already felt himself to be a different person, no longer a
discontented clerk but, at the very least, an incipient writer and man of
destiny - someone, in short, who had just changed worlds. And, as though to underline this fact, he
read and posted to Gerald Matthews the short story he had promised him, which,
though still untitled, went as follows:-
I had just removed her
brassiere and was in the preliminary stages of fondling her quite copious
breasts when, to my profound consternation, the damn telephone rang. "Now who-the-devil can that be?" I
asked myself as, reluctantly extricating myself from Sharla's
grip, I hurried out into the hall, picked up the receiver, and straightaway
heard a gruff voice asking: "Hello, is my
daughter there?"
"She is indeed!" I impulsively replied.
"Ah, could I speak to her a moment?"
"Er, certainly. Just a sec." I turned towards the piano room, the door to
which was still slightly ajar. "Sharla!" I called.
"Yes?"
"Your, er, father wants to speak
to you."
"Oh, damn him!" she groaned,
automatically putting on her vest.
"What-on-earth can he want?"
It wasn't a question I could answer there and then, so I
patiently held the receiver against my chest until, arriving breathlessly in
the hall, she was able to take it from me and say: "Hi dad!"
Fearing that my presence beside her wouldn't help any, I ambled
back into the piano room, where her bag, coat, shoes, miniskirt and
underclothes lay strewn across the floor, and her perfume permeated the air
with its delightfully sweet scent.
Indeed, everything about her was delightfully sweet. Even the room itself, ordinarily so drab and
formal, seemed to have taken on a romantic dimension which lent the furniture a
mysterious poignancy, as though it had acquired the semblance of life and was
now a silent witness to this evening's amorous events. Fortunately for me, however, Sharla's high intelligence permitted her the equivalent of
two lessons in the space of one, so I never had to fear that her musical
education would lag behind or be seriously undermined in consequence of my
weekly devotions to her sexuality. In my
view, she was potentially a distinction candidate, the next and final
examination grade almost bound to lead her to studying piano at one of the
country's principal music colleges.
"Okay," her voice came from the hall, "but I
won't be late home, in any case. Yes,
thanks for letting me know. Okay, bye
then." She replaced the receiver
with a peremptory slam and swiftly tiptoed back to where I lay, ruminating on
the couch.
"Well, is anything amiss?" I tersely asked, while
fixing her with a searching look.
"He wanted to know if everything's okay,” she drawled,
still a little under the influence of our bottle of medium-sweet wine.
"What a silly question!" I asseverated, my hands
instinctively groping under her vest for the milk-laden globes which were now
generously advancing towards me, compliments of Sharla's
graceful return to the couch. "What
did he really say?"
Her long spidery fingers crawled nimbly over my stomach and up
and down my chest. "A friend of the
family has invited my parents over to dinner at the last moment, so they'll be
out when I get back.... Which means that my father has hidden
the front-door key in one of the two small lanterns affixed to the wall either
side of our front door."
"But don't you have a key of your own?" I asked,
astounded.
"They still won't entrust me with one," she sighed.
"How silly!" I
exclaimed. "Why, you're almost
eighteen."
"And old enough to be my piano teacher's favourite
pupil," she enthused.
I smiled impulsively, as much from relief as from genuine
amusement. "Yes, but at least I'm a
private teacher and not a schoolmaster."
"What difference does that make?" she cried.
"Less scandalous, of course."
"The hell it is!"
I had to smile in spite of my attempt at seriousness. "Look, this is a perfectly natural
state-of-affairs actually. Let's just
say that both of us are pupils in the art of making love."
"But you're always teaching me," Sharla
protested, clearly no easy girl to convince.
I sighed faintly and said: "Not as much as you may imagine,
sweetie."
"Well, that's not the impression I get," she
smilingly retorted.
"Frankly, you're a very precocious young lady who knows, as
well as anybody, that the recently-perfected transition from the keyboard to
the couch considerably enhances your enjoyment of these piano lessons," I
averred, "particularly when you can spend part of your fees on the quiet
and boast to various classmates at school of having intimate connections with a
handsome music teacher nearly ten years your senior."
"I don't boast!" Sharla
incredulously exclaimed. "Whoever
told you that?"
"Now, now, don't blush, baby!"
"I'm not b-blushing," she stammered. "I never tell other girls anything about
you."
"Ah, but they tell me," I smiled, teasing her.
"What d'you mean?" she cried. "No other girls ..."
"Alright, I was only joking," I admitted, the back of
my hand caressing her cheek in a pacificatory
manner. "But you do tell a few
friends."
She lowered her large plum-like eyes in apparent shame. "Okay, only my closest friends,"
she blushingly confessed.
I smiled but said nothing as we lay motionless together on the
couch, basking in the gentle warmth of each other's bodies. I ran a hand through her black, wiry hair and
then ever so tenderly kissed her on the lips a few times. Eventually she responded in kind and our
kissing became more intense.
"The time always goes too quickly when I come here,"
she at length sighed, coming-up for air.
"Indeed it does," I sympathetically agreed. "It's a pity you don't come here more
often."
"Humph! I might be
able to if you weren't always so busy giving piano lessons to other girls every
night," she complained. "Don't
you ever take an evening off?"
"I don't teach at the weekend," I obliquely replied.
"Then why can't we arrange to see each other on Saturdays
or Sundays as well?" she asked a touch petulantly.
"That might be possible," I conceded.
Smiling, she drew herself up closer to my face and brought her
big dark eyes directly into focus with mine, or so it appeared from the way I
saw her pupils contract so rapidly. "Do you have other girls like me?"
she asked with a directness that momentarily embarrassed me.
"Unfortunately not, Sharla,"
I confessed, in what was probably an overly frank sort of way. "The others are mostly too young, too
plain, or too thin. Besides, I couldn't
afford to let that many people keep a part of their piano fees as recompense,
since I'm not exactly rolling in money, you know."
"But you do have a girlfriend besides me, don't you?"
she asked in a tone of voice and with a facial expression which suggested she
already knew the answer. So, to save
myself extra complications, I gently replied in the affirmative. "And you see her at the weekends?"
she went on. Again I replied in the
affirmative. "Humph! That explains
it," she solemnly concluded.
"Explains what, Sharla?"
"Why you won't see me then."
"Not entirely," I responded half-smilingly.
"Then what?" - She seemed on
the verge of tears.
"Don't upset yourself," I
gently chided her and, sliding my hands down her back and over her rump,
proceeded to comfort her as best I could.
"What time is it?" she at length wanted to know,
looking a trifle concerned.
"My goodness, it's nearly 8.50!" I exclaimed, glancing
at the watch and scrambling to my feet.
"I've another pupil at nine."
"What a drag," she drawled.
"What, having another pupil?"
"No, getting dressed!"
I smiled as, reaching for our respective clothes, the pair of us
sought to cover our nakedness as quickly as possible.
That done, we briefly returned to the piano and to the Schumann
piece which still stood, as though to attention, on the stand where it had been
abandoned some time before. If it had
presented her with a few minor problems it was mainly because her legato
technique was still insufficiently pianistic,
depending too much on the sustain pedal.
I therefore suggested that she spend some of the following week
practising scales in order to make her fingers work harder, since they were
still rather too lazy and stiff for comfort (in marked contrast, I reflected,
to the way they behaved on the couch).
"In actual fact, it would be better if, for the time being, you
ignored the pedal markings altogether," I continued, growing in
confidence. "For the pedal is fast
becoming a crutch, and not exactly the most helpful
one either!"
Thus after a few amendments to her Schumann technique, a brief
display of scales, and a couple of aural tests, I set her free, saying:
"And don't be late next week!" as a final piece of advice which,
however innocently intended, was bound to sound ironic to Sharla.
"Oh, don't you worry about that!" she smilingly
retorted and, much to my delight, planted a firm farewell kiss on my lips
before regretfully taking her leave of me.
