SUNDAY
19th SEPTEMBER
As usual the local café
was fairly crowded when I pushed open its rickety glass door earlier this
morning. The owner depends almost
entirely on weekend custom, whereas during the week things simmer down to a
virtual standstill. Apart from the odd
occasion, I am his only customer between
If it wasn't for the fact that he's a Cypriot
(Greek, so far as I can tell), I might be able to strike up the rudiments of a
decent conversation with him.
Unfortunately, however, his knowledge of English is somewhat too
rudimentary, being confined to words like 'coffee', 'tea', 'burger', 'egg',
'milk', and 'chips' (which he pronounces 'cheeps'), so that anything beyond the
rather narrow confines of his business needs would hardly be accessible to
conversation, even supposing you could overcome his thick accent and faulty
pronunciation which, when combined, render him virtually unintelligible. I still haven't got around to finding out his
name, though I suppose that is neither here nor there, so far as our worldly
relations are concerned. To him, I am
just a regular customer who happens to order the same food every morning and,
to me, he is just the anonymous old guy who happens to fry it. In the interests of efficiency and inter-ethnic
harmony, things are better left as they are.
Anyway, to return to what I was first saying, whenever I drift
in here during the week he is usually looking at his paper or smoking a
cigarette and gazing through his plate-glass window out onto the street, gazing
with semi-hypnotized eyes at a milk float, a parked car, a dog cocking its hind
leg against the nearest lamppost, an overcast sky, a mother dutifully wheeling
her pram past, the few shops across the road, etc., and, after offering him a
friendly glance, I am compelled to bury my rebellious head in one of the pop
stations blaring from his radio at the rear of the premises. But all this changes at the weekend,
especially on Sunday mornings. For he
looks like a man run off his feet, the sweat glistens on his deeply furrowed
brow, and his assistants - either his two daughters or his eldest daughter and
somebody else (usually a dark-complexioned young man or, occasionally, a rather
plump and sad-eyed fellow with a limp) - look pretty much as run off their feet
as him.
Today the eldest daughter is assisted by the dark-complexioned
young man. There are only twelve tables
for them to wait on but, to judge from the noise and general hustle-and-bustle, you'd think there were at least fifty. One of the reasons for this is that the
owner, who also happens to be the chief cook, can only attend to one customer
at a time on his small stove, so that he is always obliged to limit his service
to methodically working through each of the twelve or more other customers,
which, fortunately for us, he does as quickly as possible, albeit occasionally
dropping or smashing something in the rush.
Instead of looking forward to Sunday as a day of rest, this man must
condition himself to working doubly hard!
Only after he has closed the café and switched off its neon lights at
Fortunately, there are only a couple of customers ahead of me in
the frying queue today, so I won't have to wait too long. Since I am sitting near the rear of the
premises I can see most of what goes on in here, though, naturally, there isn't
much worth seeing. Things come and go
more or less according to plan.
That daughter of his worries me slightly; she looks so sad most
of the time. In actual fact, I'm a bit
uncertain whether there isn't something wrong or whether that is her natural
appearance, though it wouldn't surprise me if there was more to it than met the
eye ... like she lacked access to a regular lay or something. Even so, working flat-out in a steamy café
all Sunday isn't exactly a thing to be overjoyed about, is it? A girl of her age ought to be released from
such obligations now and then. She can't
have anything much to look forward to at the weekends.
Yes, but there is something more to it as well. I think she suffers a lot on account of her
face, which is tarnished by a mass of sores, spots, and boils. Every time she serves me I notice the same
thing, and it appears to be getting worse.
It would be enough to give me an insuperable inferiority complex, having
to contend with a burden like that every day!
Yet for an adolescent female it must be especially burdensome, what with
so many young men to wait on all day. If
I were in her shoes, I don't think I'd have the nerve to appear in public, let
alone work in a café!
Whether it's wholly attributable to her youth, to blood trouble
and pubic upheavals, I don't pretend to know.
But, whatever the case, she evidently eats a lot of fried stuff, and
that can't help. Why, there is hardly
anything on the menu that isn't fried.
You have to have chips with everything: egg and chips, bacon and chips,
pie and chips, sausage and chips, spam and chips.... Indeed, it is pretty much
the same story, or menu, in most cafés; their customers eat nothing which
hasn't been liberally soaked in grease!
Yet when I consider how circumscribed most people's diets must be in
here, I feel like getting up. It seems a
plausible enough reason why they always look so washed-out and discontented
most of the time.
In a minute the eldest daughter will hand me the menu and I, for
my part, will pretend not to notice or be offended by her facial
condition. I won't bother to look at the
menu either, because I know in advance what to order. Then she will give me two sugar cubes or,
more precisely, four sugar cubes wrapped in two pieces of red paper which,
because I never take sugar with tea, will remain on the edge of my saucer. It has been going on like this for at least
three months now, but, no matter who is serving, I still get the superfluous
cubes, even though I occasionally draw attention to my abstemious
predilection. Still, there is always the
possibility that I will change my mind one day and ... ah! here
she comes now.
"Yes?"
"Er,
egg-bacon-chips-beans and a tea, please."
"Right."
God, she's so thin! In
fact, I was going to mention that earlier but, what with her facial problems, I
completely overlooked it. If she gets
any thinner she will turn into a living skeleton. Why, her waist is almost as thin as her
neck! It must be difficult for her to
find skirts that fit tightly enough.
How-on-earth she manages to carry such heavy plates all day, I can't
even begin to imagine ...
"The way they were playin'
yesterday, mate, they don't stand a fuckin' chance of
winning the championship. It's a drag to
waste yer fuckin' money on
that sort of bleedin' game, I can tell yer."
"They 'ad 'alf the fuckin' team injured anyway."
"I don't know what-the-fuck was the matter with 'em, but if I have to watch any more of that sort of crap,
I'm going to demand a refund from the fuckin' cunt at the gate."
"Look at this bastard 'ere."
I have neither the courage nor the desire to turn around, since I
can hear all I need to without moving my head.
The three of them were seated there when I arrived here earlier this
morning. They weren't there last week,
but they were certainly there the week before!
As it happens, the most I can hope for will be a little silence while
they stuff their big dirty mouths with chips and cynically browse through the
tabloids, where the 'bastard' is evidently to be found. Unfortunately, the more querulous one is
highly predictable - he never talks, he shouts, and in the most blatantly
expletive sort of way. Of course, I can
always take refuge from them in the radio, but I don't feel particularly
enthusiastic about what it is playing at the moment. It doesn't sound too ennobling, either.
When I got here yesterday morning, I managed to find a seat
behind the fridge over to my right.
There are usually a few tabloids lying on top of it and, if the mood
takes me, I occasionally fish one of them off and begin wearily and somewhat
tentatively to glance through its photo-rich pages. Well, the only offering there yesterday
morning was The
Sun, and, as I never read that, I couldn't force myself to pick it up. I wanted to escape from the radio at the time
but, there you are, I was left pretty defenceless; I couldn't force myself to
stretch out a hand and take what is, after all, a relatively harmless item
between my fingers, even though there were only about half-a-dozen other
customers in the café and they all seemed perfectly unassuming. I was simply trapped in my habits. Indeed, I was almost afraid of feeling
uncomfortable about it, afraid that somebody would notice my embarrassment or
that the chef would suddenly come to a halt in front of me with his fat mouth
hanging open and his dark eyes well-nigh popping out of his somnambulistic
head, as though I had just committed a social indiscretion - pulled down my
jeans, say, and started to masturbate into a tabloid or something. Now some people might think it snobbish that
I should display such intellectual fastidiousness with regard to so trivial an
item, but I don't pride myself on being a snob.
In fact, I can't see that snobbery really has anything to do with
it. On the contrary, it was more a question
of taste. For when it comes to matters
of taste, I know perfectly well how to differentiate between what strikes me as
congenial and what doesn't, and no fool on earth could convince me
otherwise! That paper simply wasn't for
me. Yet my immobility before it struck
me as highly significant at the time; I was made freshly conscious of my
limits.
Now when I pushed open the café door, a short while ago, I had
just escaped from similar reflections concerning my relationship to the
upstairs tenant. That, too, was
essentially a question of limits, and one which has added yet another link to
the chain of constraints made from a consciousness of how much my freedom as an
individual is hemmed-in by limitations either imposed upon me by society or by
myself in relation to that which is other than me. In fact, I'm fast beginning to wonder how
many more such links I can add to the chain before it begins to weigh too
heavily upon me, and I feel morosely imprisoned beneath a crippling weight of
these limits. If I'm not completely
free, if I choose to impose certain restrictions upon myself, it must be
because I have gradually come to the conclusion that, beyond a certain point,
freedom isn't good for me; that too great an emphasis on it would only lead to
my being exposed to further constraints of a more burdensome or onerous nature. Obviously, I don't want to become the slave
of freedom. If I am relatively free,
then it must be on my own terms. Thus
these limits can be seen as a guideline to that restricted freedom, in which
case I shouldn't allow them to become too cumbersome. Yet I can't permit myself to become overly
complacent about them either, to treat them matter-of-factly, because they
occasionally burst out of their chain and present or represent themselves for
trial, obliging me to formulate fresh convictions about them.
That affair with the boot, for example, may have been relatively
insignificant in itself, but it somehow threw the entire justification for such
a retaliatory procedure into question last night, when the upstairs tenant
began to make a lot of additional noise after I had gone to bed. I couldn't have been in bed longer than five
minutes when she, and possibly her masochistic boyfriend as well, began
dropping things on the floor, shoving their armchair about, opening and slamming
cupboard doors, and generally making a hell of a noise. For the life of me, I couldn't understand
exactly why this was going on since, as far as I could tell, I had done nothing
to particularly arouse their hostility during the evening.
To be sure, I didn't want to get worked-up into a rage just
then; for I am only too aware that rages are disagreeable impositions which one
is generally much better off without.
But after about fifteen minutes of these continual disturbances I felt
anything but complacent and perceived, clearly enough, that
I was steadily expanding with negative energy: anger, hate, resentment, and the
urge to retaliate. Unable to restrain
myself any longer, I sprang out of bed, fumbled around in the dark for my
monkey boots and, on locating them, flung each one as vehemently as I could
against the ceiling, while subconsciously hoping that I wouldn't smash the
light bulb or damage them in the process.
Unfortunately for me, the boots made more noise when they fell to the
floor, sole downwards, but in the moral blindness of my fury it didn't occur to
me that the downstairs neighbours would be disturbed. I was infuriated to the point of oblivion,
and when, after the first assault on the ceiling, I flung my boots up two,
three, four more times, scrambling around for them as before, I was shaking in
the agony of my rage. I didn't feel like
going upstairs and making a verbal scene as well, because I was in the nude
and, under the circumstances, dressing would have proved too difficult. Besides, I was virtually speechless. But it seemed that my aggression had left its
mark, for the house quickly fell into a sullen silence.
Switching on the light, however, I discovered, to my utmost
dismay, that the ceiling was now scarred by a mass of ugly black streaks where
the boot polish had come off, as well as more seriously disfigured by one or
two additional indentations. It was
evident that I would subsequently have the unenviable task of attempting to
scrub it clean and patch-up, as best I could, the more damaging effects of my
anger. When I finished the job, early
this morning, I realized that the ceiling would henceforth be coated in dull
grey patches, as though suffering from the effects of damp rot, and this fact
really chastened me. Such 'retaliatory'
measures as I had rashly seen fit to indulge in, during the night, are clearly
impracticable. I had acquired a new
limit.
There is a middle-aged couple seated at the table to my right
who come in here from time to time and occasionally cast furtive glances in my
direction. I can hardly ever make out
what they are saying, because they almost invariably speak in Greek. But every ten minutes or so the woman throws
a kind of nervous fit which temporarily interrupts their conversation. I don't know whether she has just thrown the fit,
because I have been unduly preoccupied with my thoughts. But I am half-expecting it to happen any
moment now, since I can see them quite well out of the corner of my right
eye. When the woman involuntarily nods
her head, says nothing, stops eating, and looks abstracted, you can bet your
life it is about to happen. At present,
this affliction is welling-up in her, she is entirely
defenceless against it, though the man, presumably her long-suffering husband,
is still talking away in his usual restless manner. I can feel a kind of restlessness growing in
myself too, a distinct feeling of tense expectancy, but I have no wish to
appear intrusive or overly curious.
Neither do I wish to burst out laughing at the sudden thought of waiting
for something pathetic to happen. They
... ah! suddenly her head swivels sharply to the right, her right elbow juts
out and wobbles backwards and forwards a few times, her mouth opens into a wide
yawn, her neck cranks violently upwards, her torso is thrown forwards against
the table, and ... just as suddenly it is all over and she resumes her former
posture to both her own and her husband's gratified relief. Even I am released from my pent-up expectancy
into a sort of mild catharsis.
"There you are, dear."
"Ah, thanks!"
Now I am free to eat my breakfast with a modicum of complacency.
SUNDAY
EVENING
This has proved to be
an unusually productive Sunday. When I
consider the number of words written yesterday and the no-less impressive
number written today, I wonder whether I haven't gone mad or something. And I wonder what kind of cerebral
repercussions lie in store for me, if I can manage to
produce somewhere in the region of twenty pages a day! If last week was a case of verbal
constipation, this week is certainly shaping up to being a classic case of
verbal diarrhoea!
But to return to the facts. As it started raining again this afternoon I
didn't take my customary Sunday stroll but remained indoors. There wasn't anything of particular interest
in the paper and, for once, I decided to abstain from reading literature or
philosophy. So with little else to do, I
sought refuge in the idea of revising the one-scene playlet
I had been working on earlier in the year.
Here, then, is the result. It is
almost
Now if someone were to inquire of me why I then had to
transcribe it to this journal, I would reply: "Because it ties-up with
what has been going on today and prevents me from doing anything
worse." I should imagine that that
would be a sufficiently cogent answer!
The small surgery of Dr
Martin Stanmore, the supreme exponent of 'Emotional Hypnosis', where a young and
semi-delirious victim of unrequited love, a Mr James Hamilton, is endeavouring
to explain certain aspects of his crisis to both the doctor and the doctor's
female assistant, Nurse Pamela Barnes.
He is seated in front of Dr Stanmore's paper-strewn desk, while the good
doctor himself - a tall, dark-bearded man - is slowly pacing the floor
backwards and forwards behind him. Nurse
Barnes, who is seated immediately to Mr Hamilton's left, is clasping a large
surgical casebook in which she has been taking particulars and recording
general impressions with regard to the clinical nature of the patient's
psychological condition. The scene opens
towards the climax of Mr Hamilton's confessions.
MR HAMILTON: (In a state of
nervous excitement) I'll buy five minutes of her time, four minutes, two minutes! Just a
glance then, a touch, a word! I'll
follow her everywhere, anywhere, what matter!
I have only to set eyes on her for a second and my heart beats like a
drum, my Adam's apple rises up to choke me, and my concentration goes
positively haywire! I can't even eat
without thinking about her. I get
indigestion every time anyone mentions her goddamned name, that terribly
beautiful name which haunts me all through the night. Her gestures, voice, smile, hair, eyes,
limbs, buttocks, breasts, clothes, scents, opinions - everything about her
completely enslaves me! For two pins I'd
get down on my knees and start worshipping her.
What else can I do? She has only
to appear in my presence for a few seconds and I'm a nervous wreck.
DR STANMORE: (Aside to
Nurse Barnes) He needs immediate attention.
Grade A. This case is already
serious. His state-of-mind may deteriorate
still further unless we apply the emergency antidote at once. We'll have to put him under for several
hours.
MR HAMILTON: (Jumps to
conclusions) You're not intending to interfere with
the workings of my brain, are you? I'd
rather not experience anything more painful than what I'm already suffering
from, if you don't mind. A sedative is
all very well, but if it's only the start of a process that
...
NURSE BARNES: (Her hand on
the patient's nearest arm) Now don't be afraid, James! You won't feel a thing. We've treated literally hundreds of young
people, both male and female, since this clinic first opened, and the vast
majority of them have profited enormously from our service, as can be verified
by the many letters of thanks and acknowledgement in the cabinet to your right.
(She vaguely points in the aforesaid direction)
We have every confidence that your welfare will be safeguarded with the
utmost care, and that you'll be successfully returned to the pre-love condition
without experiencing any psychical or physical repercussions whatsoever. Indeed, we even undertake to offer you a
six-month's guarantee which ensures you free service, should today's
application of hypnotic expertise by one of the world's top emotional
hypnotists prove insufficiently therapeutic; though we've had few complaints or
rejections, I can assure you. This
emotional insanity from which you're currently suffering ... is injurious both
to yourself, as victim, and to the community at large, which is to say, to
those whom you infect throughout the course of your daily routine - people who
inevitably become victimized and, to a certain extent, influenced by your
reduced efficiency, intermittent emotional aberrations, intellectual
instability, and general melancholia.
MR HAMILTON: (On the
defensive) But I didn't mean to fall in love, honest! I couldn't help it. Her continuous presence gradually overwhelmed
me, despite the fact that she was attached to somebody else at the time and
wouldn't have anything to do with me sexually.
By the time I sought to evade her, it was too damned late. I had succumbed to the malady.
DR STANMORE: (Extends a
reassuring hand to the patient's right shoulder) Nobody
can help falling in love, my friend. It's beyond our control, since ordained by
nature. If it happens it happens, and
you must suffer the consequences, whether positively or, as in your case,
negatively. If she refused you, then she
is to blame. You have every right to the
woman of your choice. If she was
otherwise engaged, I rather doubt that she told you all that much about it,
not, at any rate, unless you pressed her to, since the object of this
engagement would then have constituted a reason for her excluding you which,
regardless of human convention, isn't in accordance with nature's will.
MR HAMILTON: As a matter of
fact, she claimed to be engaged with church activities every night.
DR STANMORE: (Raises his
brows in surprise) Then you're very unfortunate, my young friend. For the Church is usually in opposition to
nature. You've suffered,
it seems to me, on account of someone's habitual bigotry. But don't worry! The new administration is seeing to the
removal of outmoded institutions and we, for our part, will certainly do what
we can to prevent this misfortune from incapacitating you further. It remains to be said, however, that the
final solution rests with you personally.
So you must be determined!
MR HAMILTON: (Frowns) But
even if you do hypnotize me, or put me under, I'll still be in love, won't
I? I mean, you can't cold turkey my
emotions.
NURSE BARNES: (Slightly
irritated, in spite of her show of good humour) We
have absolutely no intention of "cold turkeying"
you, James. We can only hypnotize you
into forgetting her.
DR STANMORE: (Sits at his
desk and then leans forward with fingers crossed, his demeanour stern) Some people call it brainwashing. They believe it to be an outrage against
nature, another very conspicuous example of the inhumanity of modern science, a
ruse they're constantly exploiting as a means to furthering their own ends
which, as we've already seen, are more often against nature. Now some individuals even go so far as to
assert that the interruption and subsequent termination of this pestiferous
ailment actually robs its victim of a meaningful and emotionally enriching
experience. As though such
a condition as unrequited love were more of a pleasure than a pain, and
therefore shouldn't be tampered with in the name of science! They fail to establish the difference between
the requited and unrequited kinds of love, thereby regarding them as equal
when, as anyone saddled with the latter will know, they're virtually as far
apart as heaven and hell! Indeed, I
should be most surprised to discover a person whose love had been requited duly
applying for immediate hypnotic alleviation.
As a rule, such a person is perfectly at one with himself.
MR HAMILTON: (Still feels
sceptical) But will I really forget all about my emotional attachment to
her? I mean, isn't that a trifle
farfetched?
NURSE BARNES: (Unable to
restrain her impatience) Mr Hamilton, you are a difficult man to convince! Anyone would think you didn't want to be
cured, that you'd rather remain in the painful clutches of a disease which has
virtually deranged your mind!
Why-on-earth did you come along here in the first place, if you only
wanted to persist in playing hard to get?
Admittedly, many things appear a trifle farfetched to begin with, but
that's certainly no reason why they should be thought impossible. Whoever would have supposed man capable of
travelling to the moon, let alone flying to
MR HAMILTON: Yes, but what
if, in leaving here, I encounter her within the next few days - as I'm almost
bound to do - and subsequently run the risk of falling in love with her all
over again? Surely I won't be immune
from that?
DR STANMORE: (Exercises his
customary aplomb and paternal encouragement) Oh yes you will! For we assure you, during the course of your
treatment, that she'll have absolutely no further emotional hold over you until
such time as, given a change of circumstances, you may specifically request
otherwise. If you shortly encounter her
again, there'll be absolutely no possibility of unrequited love. You'll be completely free of her. However, should she subsequently become
accessible to your attentions through either a change in her romantic or possibly
even ideological circumstances, then you'll be perfectly free to become
re-acquainted with her without running any risk of falling in love. You may even decide to return to us in order
to be re-hypnotized into falling in
love with her again; though such a decision will be entirely up to you, and
obviously subject to the precondition that a mutually satisfactory arrangement
can be reached next time.
NURSE BARNES: Unrequited
love is a thing of the past, a kind of virulent psychic disease, or insanity of
the soul, from which your parents' generation and all the generations prior to
them constantly suffered. They had
absolutely no protection against it, and consequently succumbed in their
millions. Now if venereal disease was
the chief physical manifestation of sexual hardship, then unrequited love was
its chief psychical manifestation, against which it was extremely difficult to
prevail. Clinics for alleviating the
directly physical aspects of the problem were established quite some time
before medical experts and politicians got round to taking its psychical
aspects more seriously, and this traditional disequilibrium of attention - so
often resulting in more cases of rape, juvenile delinquency, neurosis, severe
depression, chronic perversion, and sexual hatred, i.e. the so-called 'war of
the sexes' - was partly a consequence of the political establishment's
inability and/or disinclination to link such social transgressions with sexual
repressions, and partly a consequence of the prevailing misconception with
regard to the nature of a healthy soul, the principal criterion for assessing
the health of which should have been its social wellbeing and emotional
integrity, rather than the psychological shackles with which the antinatural morality of the state metaphysics chose to
enslave it! However, the recent
enlightenment schemes and re-education programmes which the new authorities
have introduced, including a much wider and more liberal sex-education scheme;
the possibility of regular sex in one of the many aesthetically-advanced 'Sex
Centres', where one can privately, comfortably, and economically enjoy access
to the most advanced films and sex gadgets/dolls; the widespread recognition of
manic depression as the punishment inflicted by nature upon those who, whether
through force of circumstances or in consequence of arbitrary decisions, have
deviated from it to any appreciable extent, and the concomitant acceptance of
the organic necessity of some form of regular sex; the systematic elimination
of certain superstitions and anachronisms, and the establishment of the league
against sexual puritanism, etc., coupled to the
remarkable advances in modern technology - about which, incidentally, I need
say no more - have entirely revolutionized the situation. And not only by the legitimatization of
various theoretical antidotes to the old way of life but, more
importantly, by the legitimatization of a variety of practical antidotes to it which are far superior to any old women's formulae or
imaginable drugs, and certainly much less harmful. We no longer suffer from so many physical
diseases, so why should we suffer from mental or emotional ones instead? What would it gain you to remain perpetually
melancholic?
DR STANMORE: (Ironically) You're not a writer, by any chance, are you?
MR HAMILTON: (Without
really appreciating the doctor's subtle irony) No, I'm not actually.
DR STANMORE: Well then,
what have you got to lose, apart from a humiliating obsession which you're
unable to control, a situation which is driving you crazy, a gratuitous
attachment? The days of emotional
slavery are over! There is absolutely no
need for you to follow this young woman, this epitome of physical vanity, around
on an imaginary lead, as though you were a craven dog whose very survival
depended on it! Renounce this
servility! Have done with her! Embrace your independence!
MR HAMILTON: (Smiles for
the first time) Maybe I'll be luckier next time, assuming there'll be a next
time?
DR STANMORE: (In a
conciliatory and overly reassuring tone-of-voice) Of course there'll be a next
time! A handsome and
smartly-dressed young chap like you?
Don't underestimate yourself! Why
waste precious time worrying yourself sick over some young prude who foolishly
ignores you, when you can walk out of here, later today, and approach the first
attractive girl your eyes light upon?
Now don't take me literally, but that's the possibility. Too many young men waste months and even
years in consequence of unrequited love when, given the right opportunity, plenty
of other pretty females would ordinarily attract them.
NURSE BARNES: And that's
precisely why we're here, complete with soft lighting.
MR HAMILTON: (Blushes
slightly) Then please get to work on me, people. I have to walk out of here a new man!
