CHAPTER TWO
AH,
the monotonous thrill that comes of walking the streets on a winter’s morn,
when iron girders are frozen to the ground and the milk in the bottle rises
like the stem of a mushroom. A
septentrional day, let us say, when the most stupid animal would not dare poke
a nose out of his hole. To accost a
stranger on such a day and ask him for alms would be unthinkable. In that biting, gnawing cold, the icy wind
whistling through the glum, canyoned streets, no one in his right mind would
stop long enough to reach into his pocket in search of a coin. On a morning like this, which a comfortable
banker would described as “clear and brisk”, a beggar has no right to be hungry
or in need of carfare. Beggars are for
warm, sunny days, when even the sadist at heart stops to throw crumbs to the
birds.
It was on
a day such a this that I would deliberately gather together a batch of samples
in order to sally forth and call on one of my father’s customers, knowing in
advance that I would get no order but driven by an all-consuming hunger for
conversation.
There was
one individual in particular I always elected to visit on such occasions,
because with him the day might end, and usually did end, in most unexpected
fashion. It was seldom, I should add,
that this individual ever ordered a suit of clothes, and when he did it took
him years to settle the bill. Still, he
was a customer. To the old man I used to
pretend that I was calling on John Stymer in order to make him buy the full
dress suit which we always assumed he would eventually need. (He was forever telling us that he would
become a judge one day, this Stymer.)
What I
never divulged to the old man was the nature of the un-sartorial conversations
I usually had with the man.
“Hello! What do you want to see me for?”
That’s how
he usually greeted me.
“You must
be mad if you think I need more clothes.
I haven’t paid you for the last suit I bought, have I? When was that – five years ago?”
He had
barely lifted his head from the mass of papers in which his nose was
buried. A foul smell pervaded the
office, due to his inveterate habit of farting – even in the presence of his
stenographer. He was always picking his
nose too. Otherwise – outwardly, I mean
– he might pass for Mr. Anybody. A lawyer, like any other lawyer.
His head
still buried in a maze of legal documents, he chirps: “What are you reading
these days?” Before I can reply he adds:
“Could you wait outside a few minutes?
I’m in a tangle. But don’t run
away…. I want to have a chat with you.”
So saying he dives in his pocket and pulls out a dollar bill. “Here, get yourself a coffee while you
wait. And come back in an hour or so …
we’ll have lunch together, what!”
In the
ante-room a half-dozen clients are waiting to get his ear. He begs each one to wait just a little
longer. Sometimes they sit there all
day.
On the way
to the cafeteria I break the bill to buy a paper. Scanning the news always gives me that
extra-sensory feeling of belonging to another planet. Besides, I need to get screwed up in order to
grapple with John Stymer.
Scanning
the paper I get to reflecting on Stymer’s great problem. Masturbation. For
years now he’s been trying to break the vicious habit. Scraps of our last conversation come to
mind. I recall how I recommended his trying
a good whorehouse – and the wry face he made when I voiced the suggestion. “What!
Me, a married man, take up
with a bunch of filthy whores?” And all
I could think to say was: “They’re not all filthy!”
But what was pathetic, now that I mention the
matter, was the earnest, imploring way he begged me, on parting, to let him
know if I thought of anything that would help … anything at all. “Cut it
off!” I wanted to say.
An hour
rolled away. To him an hour was like
five minutes. Finally I got up and made
for the door. It was that icy outdoors I
wanted to gallop.
To my
surprise he was waiting for me. There he
sat with clasped hands resting on the desk top, his eyes fixed on some pinpoint
in eternity. The package of samples
which I had left on his desk was open.
He had decided to order a suit, he informed me.
“I’m in no
hurry for it,” he said. “I don’t need any
new clothes.”
“Don’t buy
one, then. You know I didn’t come here
to sell you a suit.”
“You
know,” he said, “you’re about the only person I ever manage to have a real
conversation with. Every time I see you
I expand….What have you got to recommend this
time? I mean in the way of
literature. That last one, Oblomov, was it? didn’t
make much of an impression on me.”
He paused,
not to hear what I might have to say in reply, but to gather momentum.
“Since you
were here last I’ve been having an affair. Does that surprise you? Yes, a young girl, very young, and a
nymphomaniac to boot. Drains
me dry. But that isn’t what
bothers me – it’s my wife. It’s
excruciating the way she works over me.
I want to jump out of my skin.”
Observing
the grin on me face he adds: “It’s not a bit funny, let me tell you.”
The
telephone rang. He listens
attentively. Then, having said nothing
but Yes, No, I think so, he suddenly shouts into the mouthpiece: “I want none
of your filthy money. Let him get
someone else to defend him.”
“Imagine
trying to bribe me,” he say, slamming up the
receiver. “And a
judge, no less. A big shot,
too.” He blew his nose vigorously. “Well, where were we?” He rose.
“What about a bite to eat? Could
talk better over food and wine, don’t you think?”
We hailed
a taxi and made for an Italian joint he frequented. It was a cosy place, smelling strongly of
wine, sawdust and cheese. Virtually deserted too.
After we
had ordered he said: “You don’t mind if I talk about myself, do you? That’s my weakness, I guess. Even when I’m reading, even if it’s a good
book, I can’t help but think about myself, my problems. Not that I think I’m so important, you
understand. Obsessed, that’s all.
“You’re
obsessed too,” he continued, “but in a healthier way. You see, I’m engrossed with myself and I hate
myself. A real
loathing, mind you. I couldn’t
possibly feel that way about another human being. I know myself through and through, and the
thought of what I am, what I must look like to others, appals me. I’ve got only one good quality: I’m
honest. I take no credit for it either …
it’s a purely instinctive trait. Yes,
I’m honest with my clients – and I’m honest with myself.”
I broke
in. “You may be honest with yourself, as
you say, but it would be better for you if you were more generous. I mean, with
yourself.
If you can’t treat yourself decently, how do you expect others to?”
“It’s not
in my nature to think such thoughts,” he answered promptly. “I’m a Puritan from way back. A degenerate one, to be
sure. The trouble is, I’m not degenerate enough.
You remember asking me once if I had ever read the Marquis de Sade? Well, I tried,
but he bores me stiff. Maybe he’s too
French for my taste. I don’t know why
they call him the divine Marquis, do
you?”
By now we
had sampled the Chianti and were up to our ears in spaghetti. The wine had a limbering effect. He could drink a lot without losing his head. In fact, that was another one of his troubles
– his inability to lose himself, even under the influence of drink.
As if he
had divined my thoughts, he began by remarking that he was an out and out
mentalist. “A
mentalist who can even make his prick think. You’re laughing again. But it’s tragic. The young girl I spoke of – she thinks I’m a
grand fucker. I’m not. But she
is. She’s a real fuckaree. Me, I fuck with my brain. It’s like I was conducting a
cross-examination, only with my prick instead of my mind. Sounds screwy, doesn’t it? It is too.
Because the more I fuck the more I concentrate on myself. Now and then – with her, that is – I sort of come to and ask myself who’s on the
other end. Must be a
hang-over from the masturbating business. You follow me, don’t you? Instead of doing it to myself someone does it
for me. It’s better than masturbating,
because you become even more detached.
The girl, of course, has a grand time.
She can do anything she likes with me.
That’s what tickles her … excites her.
What she doesn’t know – maybe it would frighten her if I told her – is
that I’m not there. You know the
expression – to be all ears. Well, I’m
all mind. A
mind with a prick attached to it, if you can put it that way…. By the way,
sometimes I want to ask you about yourself.
How you feel when you do it … your reactions … and all that. Not that it would help much. Just curious.”
Suddenly
he switched. Wanted to
know if I had done any writing yet.
When I said no, he replied: “You’re writing right now, only you’re not
aware of it. You’re writing all the time,
don’t you realize that?”
Astonished
by this strange observation, I exclaimed:
“You mean me – or everybody?”
“Of course
I don’t mean everybody! I mean you,
you.” His voice grew shrill and
petulant. “You told me once that you
would like to write. Well, when do you
expect to begin?” He paused to take a
heaping mouthful of food. Still gulping,
he continued: “Why do you think I talk to you the way I do? Because you’re a good
listener? Not at all! I can blab my heart out to you because I know
that you’re vitally dis-interested It’s not me, John Stymer, that interests you,
it’s what I tell you, or the way I tell it to you. But I
am interested in you,
definitely. Quite a
difference.”
He
masticated in silence for a moment.
“You’re
almost as complicated as I am,” he went on.
“You know that, don’t you? I’m
curious to know what makes people tick, especially a type like you. Don’t worry, I’ll
never probe you because I know in advance you won’t give me the right
answers. You’re a shadow-boxer. And me, I’m a lawyer. It’s my business to handle cases. But you,
I can’t imagine what you deal in, unless it’s air.”
Here he
closed up like a clam, content to swallow and chew for a while. Presently he said: “I’ve a good mind to
invite you to come along with me this afternoon. I’m not going back to the office. I’m going to see this gal I’ve been telling
you about. Why don’t you come along? She’s easy to look at, easy to talk to. I’d like to observe your reactions.” He paused a moment to see how I might take
the proposal, then added: “She lives out on
I
agreed. We walked to the garage where he
kept his car. It took a while to defrost
it. We had only gone a little ways when
one thing after another gave out. With
the stops we made at garages and repair shops it must have taken almost three
hours to get out of the city limits. By
that time we were thoroughly frozen. We
had a run of sixty miles to make and it was already dark as pitch.
Once on
the highway we made several stops to warm up.
He seemed to be known everywhere he stopped, and was always treated with
deference. He explained, as we drove
along, how he had befriended this one and that.
“I never take a case,” he said, “unless I’m sure I can win.”
I tried to
draw him out about the girl, but his mind was on other things. Curiously, the subject uppermost in his mind
at present was immortality. What was the
sense in a hereafter, he wanted to know, if one lost his personality at
death? He was convinced that a single
lifetime was too short a period in which to solve one’s problems. “I haven’t started living my own life,” he
said, “and I’m already nearing fifty.
One should live to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred, then one might get somewhere. The real problems don’t commence until you’ve
done with sex and all material difficulties.
At twenty-five I thought I knew all the answers. Now I feel that I know nothing about
anything. Here we are, going to meet a
young nymphomaniac. What sense does it
make?” He lit a cigarette, took a puff or
two, then threw it away. The next moment he extracted a fat cigar from
his breast pocket.
“You’d
like to know something about her. I’ll
tell you this first off – if only I had the necessary courage I’d snatch her up
and head for
He
travelled on in this vein for some time.
He certainly loved to run himself down.
I sat back and drank it in.
Now it was
a new tack. “Do you know why I never
became a writer?”
“No,” I
replied, amazed that he had ever entertained the thought.
“Because I
found out almost immediately that I had nothing to say. I’ve never lived, that’s the long and short
of it. Risk nothing, gain nothing. What’s that Oriental saying? ‘To fear is not
to sow because of the birds.’ That says
it. Those crazy Russians you give me to
read, that all had experience of life, even if they never budged from the spot
they were born in. For things to happen
there must be a suitable climate. And if
the climate is lacking, you create one. That is, if you have genius. I never created a thing. I play the game, and I play it according to
the rules. The answer to that, in case
you don’t know it, is death. Yep, I’m as
good as dead already. But crack this
now: it’s when I’m deadest that I fuck the best. Figure it out, if you can! The last time I slept with her, just to give
you an illustration, I didn’t bother to take my clothes off. I climbed in – coats, shoes, and all. It seemed perfectly natural, considering the
state of mind I was in. Nor did it
bother her in the least. As I say, I
climbed into bed with her fully dressed and I said: ‘Why don’t we just lie here
and fuck ourselves to death?’ A strange
idea, what? Especially
coming from a respected lawyer with a family and all that. Anyway, the words had hardly left my mouth
when I said to myself: ‘You dope! You’re
dead already. Why pretend? How do
you like that? With that I gave
myself up to it … to the fucking, I mean.”
Here I
threw in a teaser. Had he ever pictured
himself, I asked, possessing a prick … and
using it! … in the hereafter?
“Have I?”
he exclaimed. “That’s just what bothers me, that very thought.
An immoral life with an extension prick hooked to my brain is something
I don’t fancy in the least. Not that I
want to lead the life of an angel either.
I want to be myself, John Stymer, with all the bloody problems that are
mine. I want time to think things out …
a thousand years or more. Sounds goofy,
doesn’t it? But that’s how I’m
built. The Marquis de Sade, he had loads
of time on his hands. He thought out a
lot of things, I must admit, but I can’t agree with his conclusions. Anyway, what I want to say is – it’s not so
terrible to spend your life in prison … if
you have an active mind. What is terrible is to make a prisoner of yourself. And that’s
what most of us are – self-made prisoners.
There are scarcely a dozen men in a generation who break out. Once you see life with a clear eye it’s all a
farce. A grand farce. Imagine a man wasting his life defending or
convicting others! The business of law
is thoroughly insane. Nobody is a whit
better off because we have laws. No,
it’s a fool’s game, dignified by giving it a pompous name. Tomorrow I may find myself sitting on the
bench. A judge, no
less. Will I think any more of
myself because I’m called a judge? Will
I be able to change anything? Not on
your life. I’ll play the game again …
the judges’ game. That’s why I say we’re
licked from the start. I’m aware of the
fact that we all have a part to play and that all anyone can do, supposedly, is
to play his part to the best of his ability.
Well, I don’t like my part. The
idea of playing a part doesn’t appeal to me.
Not even if the parts be interchangeable. You get me?
I believe it’s time we had a new deal, a new set-up. The courts have to go, the laws have to go,
the police have to go, the prisons have to go.
It’s insane, the whole business.
That’s why I fuck my head off.
You would too, if you could see it as I do.” He broke off, sputtering like a firecracker.
After a
brief silence he informed me that we were soon there. “Remember, make yourself at home. Do anything, say anything you please. Nobody will stop you. If you want to take a crack at her, it’s OK
with me. Only don’t make a habit of it!”
The house
was shrouded in darkness as we pulled into the driveway. A note was pinned to the dining-room
table. From Belle, the
great fuckaree. She had grown
tired of waiting for us, didn’t believe we would make it, and so on.
“Where is
she then?” I asked.
“Probably gone to the city to stay the night with a friend.”
He didn’t
seem greatly upset, I must say. After a
few grunts … “the bitch this” and “the bitch that” … he went to the
refrigerator to see what there was in the way of leftovers.
“We might
as well stay the night here,” he said.
“She’s left us some baked beans and cold ham, I see. Will that hold you?”
As we were
polishing off the remnants he informed me that there was a comfortable room
upstairs with twin beds. “Now we can have
a good talk,” he said.
I was
ready enough for bed but not for a heart to heart talk. As for Stymer, nothing seemed capable of
slowing down the machinery of his mind, neither frost nor drink
nor fatigue itself.
I would
have dropped off immediately on hitting the pillow had Stymer not opened fire
in the way he did. Suddenly I was as
wide awake as if I had taken a double dose of Benzedrine. His first words, delivered in a steady, even
tone, electrified me.
“There’s
nothing surprising you very much, I notice.
Well, get a load of this….”
That’s how
he began.
“One of
the reasons I’m such a good lawyer is because I’m also something of a
criminal. You’d hardly think me capable
of plotting another person’s death, would you?
Well, I am. I’ve decided to do
away with my wife. Just how, I don’t
know yet. It’s not because of Belle,
either. It’s just that she bores me to
death. I can’t stand it any longer. For twenty years now I haven’t had an
intelligent word from her. She’s driven
me to the last ditch, and she knows it.
She knows all about Belle; there’s never been any secret about
that. All she cares about is that it
shouldn’t leak out. It’s my wife, God
damn her! who turned me into a masturbator. I was that sick of her, almost from the beginning, that the thought of sleeping with her made me
ill. True, we might have arranged a
divorce. But why support a lump of clay
for the rest of my life? Since I fell in
with Belle I’ve had a chance to do a little thinking and planning. My one aim is to get out of the country, far
away, and start all over again. At what I don’t know.
Not the law, certainly. I want
isolation and I want to do as little work as possible.”
He took a
breath. I made no comments. He expected none.
“To be
frank with you, I was wondering if I could tempt you to join me. I’d take care of you as long as the money
held out, that’s understood. I was
thinking of it as we drove here. That
note from Belle – I dictated the message.
I had no thought of switching things when we started, please believe
me. But the more we talked the more I
felt that you were just the person I’d like to have around, if I made the
jump.”
He
hesitated a second, then added: “I had to tell you about my wife because …
because to live in close quarters with someone and keep a secret of that sort
would be too much of a strain.”
“But I’ve
got a wife too!” I found myself exclaiming.
“Though I haven’t much use for her, I don’t see myself doing her in just
to run off somewhere with you.”
“I
understand,” said Stymer calmly. “I’ve
given thought to that too.”
“So?”
“I could
get you a divorce easily enough and see to it that you don’t have to pay
alimony. What do you say to that?”
“Not
interested,” I replied. “Not even if you
could provide another woman for me. I
have my own plans.”
“You don’t
think I’m a queer, do you?”
“No, not at all.
You’re queer, all right, but not in that way. To be honest with you, you’re not the sort of
person I’d want to be around for long.
Besides, it’s all too damned vague.
It’s more like a bad dream.”
He took
this with his habitual unruffled calm.
Whereupon, impelled to say something more, I demanded to know what it
was that he expected of me, what did he hope to obtain from such a
relationship?
I hadn’t
the slightest fear of being tempted into such a crazy adventure, naturally, but
I thought it only decent to pretend to draw him out. Besides, I was curious as to what he thought my role might be.
“It’s hard
to know where to begin,” he drawled. “Supposing
… just suppose, I say … that we found a good place to hide away. A place like
He was
about to pause again. “Go on,” I said,
“it sounds interesting.”
“Well,” he
resumed, “whether you know it or not, there is no longer anything left in the
world that might be called soul. Which partly explains why you find it so hard to get started, as a
writer. How can one write about people
who have no souls? I can, however. I’ve been
living with just such people, working for them, studying them, analysing
them. I don’t mean my clients
alone. It’s easy enough to look upon
criminals as soulless. But what if I
tell you that there are nothing but criminals
everywhere, no matter where you look?
One doesn’t have to be guilty of a crime to be a criminal. But anyway, here’s what I had in mind … I
know you can write. Furthermore, I don’t
mind in the least if someone else writes my books. For you to come by the material that I’ve
accumulated would take several lifetimes.
Why waste more time? Oh yes,
there’s something I forgot to mention … it may frighten you off. It’s this … whether the books are ever
published or not is all one to me. I
want to get them out of my system, nothing more. Ideas are universal: I don’t consider them my
property….”
He took a
drink of ice water from the jug beside the bed.
“All this
probably strikes you as fantastic. Don’t
try to come to a decision immediately.
Think it over! Look at it from
every angle. I wouldn’t want you to
accept and then get cold feet in a month or two. But let me call your attention to
something. If you continue in the same
groove much longer you’ll never have the courage to make the break. You have no excuse for prolonging your
present way of life. You’re obeying the
law of inertia, nothing more.”
He cleared
his throat, as if embarrassed by his own remarks. Then clearly and swiftly he proceeded.
“I’m not
the ideal companion for you, agreed. I
have every fault imaginable and I’m thoroughly self-centred, as I’ve said many
times. But I’m not envious or jealous,
or even ambitious, in the usual sense.
Aside from working hours – and I don’t intend to run myself into the
ground – you’d be alone most of the time, free to do as you please. With me you’d be alone, even if we shared the
same room. I don’t care where we live,
so long as it’s in a foreign land. From
now on it’s the moon for me. I’m
divorcing myself from my fellow-man.
Nothing could possibly tempt me to participate in the game. Nothing of value, in my eyes at least, can
possibly be accomplished at present. I
may not accomplish anything either, to be truthful. But at least I’ll have the satisfaction of
doing what I believe in….Look, maybe
I haven’t expressed too clearly what I mean by this Dostoievsky business. It’s worth going into a little farther, if
you can bear with me. As I see it, with
Dostoievsky’s death the world entered upon a complete new phase of existence. Dostoievsky summed up the modern age much as
Dante did the Middle Ages. The modern age – a misnomer, by the way – was
just a transition period, a breathing spell, in which man could adjust himself
to the death of the soul. Already we’re
leading a sort of grotesque lunar life.
The beliefs, hopes, principles, convictions that sustained our
civilization are gone. And they won’t be
resuscitated. Take that on faith for the
time being. No, henceforth and for a
long time to come we’re going to live in the mind. That means destruction …
self-destruction. If
you ask why I can only say – because Man was meant to live with his whole
being. But the nature of this
being is lost, forgotten, buried. The
purpose of life on earth is to discover one’s true being – and to live up to
it! But we won’t go into that.
That’s for the distant future.
The problem is – meanwhile. And that’s where I come in. Let me put it to you as briefly as possible….
All that we have stifled, you, me, all of us, ever since civilization began,
has got to be lived out. We’ve got to
recognize ourselves for what we are. And
what are we but the end product of a tree that is no longer capable of bearing
fruit. We’ve got to go underground,
therefore, like seed, so that something new, something different, may come
forth. It isn’t time that’s required, it’s a new way of looking at things. A new appetite for life, in
other words. As it is, we have
but a semblance of life. We’re alive
only in dreams. It’s the mind in us that
refuses to be killed off. The mind is
tough – and far more mysterious than the wildest dream of theologians. It may well be that there is nothing but mind
… not the little mind we know, to be sure, but the great Mind in which we swim,
the Mind which permeates the whole universe.
Dostoievsky, let me remind you, had amazing
insight not only into the soul of man but into the mind and spirit of the
universe. That’s why it’s impossible to
shake him off, even though, as I said, what he represents is done for.”
Here I had
to interrupt. “Excuse me,” I said, “but
what did Dostoievsky represent, in
your opinion?”
“I can’t
answer that in a few words. Nobody
can. He gave us a revelation, and it’s
up to each one of us to make what we can of it.
Some lose themselves in Christ.
One can lose himself in Dostoievsky too.
He takes you to the end of the road…. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yes and
no.”
“To me,”
said Stymer, “it means that there are no possibilities today such as men
imagine. It means that we are thoroughly
deluded – about everything. Dostoievsky
explored the field in advance, and he found the road blocked at every
turn. He was a frontier man, in the
profound sense of the word. He took up
one position after enough, at every dangerous, promising point, and he found
that there was no issue for us, such as we are.
He took refuge finally in the Supreme Being.”
“That
doesn’t sound exactly like the Dostoievsky I know,” said I. “It has a hopeless ring to it.”
“No, it’s
not hopeless at all. It’s realistic – in
a superhuman sense. The last thing
Dostoievsky could possibly have believed in is a hereafter such as the clergy
give us. All religions give us a
sugar-coated pill to swallow. They want
us to swallow what we never can or will swallow – death. Man will never accept
the idea of death, never reconcile himself to it…. But
I’m getting off the track. You speak of
man’s fate. Better than anyone,
Dostoievsky understood that man will never accept life unquestioningly until he
is threatened with extinction. It was
his belief, his deep conviction, I would say, that man may have everlasting
life if he desires it with his whole heart and being. There is no reason to die, none
whatever. We die because we lack faith
in life, because we refuse to surrender to life completely…. And that brings me
to the present, to life as we know it today.
Isn’t it obvious that our whole way of life is a dedication to
death? In our desperate efforts to
preserve ourselves, preserve what we have created, we bring about our own
death. We do not surrender to life, we
struggle to avoid dying. Which means not that we have lost faith in God but that we have
lost faith in life itself. To live dangerously, as Nietzsche put it, is
to live naked and unashamed. It means putting
one’s trust in the life force and ceasing to battle with a phantom called
death, a phantom called disease, a phantom called sin, a phantom called fear,
and so on. The phantom world! That’s
the world we have created for ourselves.
Think of the military, with their perpetual talk of the enemy. Think of the clergy, with their perpetual
talk of sin and damnation. Think of the
legal fraternity, with their perpetual talk of fine and imprisonment. Think of the medical profession, with their
perpetual talk of disease and death. And
our educators, the greatest fools ever, with their parrotlike rote and their
innate inability to accept any idea unless it be a
hundred or a thousand years old. As for
those who govern the world, there you have the most dishonest, the most
hypocritical, the most deluded and the most unimaginative beings
imaginable. You pretend to be concerned
about man’s fate. The miracle is that
man has sustained even the illusion of freedom.
No, the road is blocked, whichever way you turn. Every wall, every barrier, every obstacle
that hems us in is our own doing. No
need to drag in God, the Devil or Chance.
The Lord of all Creation is taking a catnap while we work out the
puzzle. He’s permitted us to deprive
ourselves of everything but mind. It’s
in the mind that the life force has taken refuge. Everything has been analysed to the point of
nullity. Perhaps now the very emptiness
of life will take on meaning, will provide the clue.”
He came to
a dead stop, remained absolutely immobile for a space, then
raised himself on one elbow.
“The criminal aspect of the
mind! I don’t know how or
where I got hold of that phrase, but it enthrals me absolutely. It might well be the overall title of the
books I have in mind to write. The very word criminal shakes me to the
foundations. It’s such a meaningless
word today, yet it’s the most – what shall I say? – the
most serious word in man’s
vocabulary. The very notion of crime is
an awesome one. It has such deep,
tangled roots. Once
the great word, for me, was rebel.
When I say criminal, however, I find myself utterly baffled. Sometimes, I confess, I don’t know what the
word means. Or, if I think I do, then I am forced to look upon the whole human race as one
indescribable hydra-headed monster whose name is CRIMINAL. I sometimes put it another way to myself – man his own
criminal. Which is
almost meaningless. What I’m
trying to say, though perhaps it’s trite, banal, over-simplified, is this … if
there is such a thing as a criminal, then the whole race is tainted. You can’t remove the criminal element in man
by performing a surgical operation on society.
What’s criminal is cancerous, and what’s cancerous is unclean. Crime isn’t merely coeval with law and order,
crime is pre-natal, so to speak. It’s in
the very consciousness of man, and it won’t be dislodged, it won’t be
extirpated, until a new consciousness is born.
Do I make it clear? The question
I ask myself over and over is – how did man ever come to look upon himself or
his fellow-man, as a criminal? What
caused him to harbour guilt feelings? To
make even the animals feel guilty? How
did he ever come to poison life at the source, in other words? It’s very convenient to blame it on the
priesthood. But I can’t credit them with
having that much power over us. If we
are victims, they are too. But what are we the victims of? What is it that tortures us, young and
old alike, the wise as well as the innocent?
It’s my belief that that is what we are going to discover, now that we’ve
been driven underground. Rendered naked
and destitute, we will be able to give ourselves up to the grand problem
unhindered. For an eternity, if need be. Nothing else is of importance, don’t you
see? Maybe you don’t. Maybe I see it so clearly that I can’t
express it adequately in words. Anyway,
that’s our world perspective….”
At this
point he got out of bed to fix himself a drink, asking as he did so if I could
stand any more of his drivel. I nodded
affirmatively.
“I’m
thoroughly wound up, as you see,” he continued.
“As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to see it all so clearly again, now
that I’ve unlimbered to you, that I almost feel I
could write the books myself. If I
haven’t lived for myself I certainly have lived other people’s lives. Perhaps I’ll begin to live my own when I
begin writing. You know, I already feel
kindlier towards the world, just getting this much of my chest. Maybe you were right about being more
generous with myself.
It’s certainly a relaxing thought.
Inside I’m all steel girders.
I’ve got to melt, grow fibre, cartilage, lymph and muscle. To think that anyone could let himself grow
so rigid … ridiculous, what! That’s what
comes from battling all one’s life.”
He paused
long enough to take a good slug, then raced on.
“You know,
there isn’t a thing in the world worth fighting for except peace of mind. The more you triumph in this world the more
you defeat yourself. Jesus was right. One has to triumph over the world. ‘Overcome the world,’ I think was the
expression. To do that, of course, means
acquiring a new consciousness, a new view of things. And that’s the only meaning one can put on
freedom. No man can attain freedom who is of the world.
Die to the world and you find life everlasting. You know, I suppose,
that the advent of Christ was of the greatest importance to Dostoievsky. Dostoievsky only succeeded in embracing the
idea of God through conceiving of a man-god.
He humanized the conception of God, brought Him nearer to us, made Him
more comprehensible, and finally, strange as it may sound, even more God-like….
Once again I must come back to the criminal.
The only sin, or crime, that man could commit, in the eyes of Jesus, was
to sin against the Holy Ghost. To deny the spirit, or the life force, if you will. Christ recognized no such thing as a
criminal. He ignored all this nonsense,
this confusion, this rank superstition with which man has saddled himself for
millennia. ‘He who is without sin, let
him cast the first stone!’ Which doesn’t mean that Christ regarded all men as sinners. No, but that we are all imbued, dyed, tainted
with the notion of sin. As I understand
his words, it is out of a sense of guilt that we created sin and evil. Not that sin and evil have any reality of
their own. Which brings me back again to
the present impasse. Despite all the
truths that Christ enunciated, the world is now riddled and saturated with
sinfulness. Everyone behaves like a criminal
towards his fellow-man. And so, unless
we set about killing one another off – worldwide massacre – we’ve got to come
to grips with the demonic power which rules us.
We’ve got to convert it into a healthy, dynamic force which will
liberate not us alone – we are not so
important! – but the life force which is damned up in
us. Only then will we begin to
live. And to live means eternal life,
nothing less. It was man who created
death, not God. Death is the sign of our
vulnerability, nothing more.”
He went on
and on and on. I didn’t get a wink of
sleep until near dawn. When I awoke he
was gone. On the table I found a five
dollar bill and a brief note saying that I should forget everything we had
talked about, that it was of no importance.
“I’m ordering a new suit just the same,” he added. “You can choose the material for me.”
Naturally
I couldn’t forget it, as he suggested.
In fact, I couldn’t think of anything else for weeks but “man the
criminal”, or, as Stymer had put it, “man his own criminal”.
One of the
many expressions he had dropped plagued me interminably, the one about “man
taking refuge in the mind”. It was the
first time, I do believe, that I ever questioned the existence of mind as
something apart. The thought that
possibly all was mind fascinated me. It
sounded more revolutionary than anything I had heard hitherto.
It was
certainly curious, to say the least, that a man of Stymer’s calibre should have
been obsessed by this idea of going underground, of taking refuge in the
mind. The more I thought about the
subject the more I felt that he as trying to make of the cosmos one grand,
stupefying rat-trap. When, a few months
later, upon sending him a notice to call for a fitting, I learned that he had
died of a haemorrhage of the brain, I wasn’t in the least surprised. His mind had evidently rejected the conclusions
he had imposed upon it. He had mentally
masturbated himself to death. With that
I stopped worrying about the mind as a refuge.
Mind is all. God is all. So what?