Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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‘The incandescent copulations of gods,’ Sebastian said to himself as he gazed enchanted at the picture. Other phrases began to come to him. ‘Bright with divine lust.’ ‘The pure lascivious innocence of heaven.’ But what made this particular incandescence so delightful was the fact that it was rendered with a touch of irony, a hint (subtly conveyed by the two white rabbits in the left-foreground, the bullfinch among the oak-leaves overhead, the three pelicans and the centaur on the distant beach) that it was all a tiny bit absurd.
‘Real love-making,’ Eustace remarked, ’is seldom quite so pretty as Piero di Cosimo’s idea of it.’ He turned away and began to unwrap the drawings he had bought that morning at Weyl’s. ‘It’s a good deal more like Degas.’ He handed Sebastian the sketch of the woman drying the back of her neck.
‘When you’re seduced,’ he said, ‘it’ll probably be by someone like this rather than like that.’ He jerked his head in the direction of Piero’s Venus.
From within his private universe of champagne Sebastian answered with a giggle.
‘Or perhaps you have been seduced already?’ Eustace’s tone was jocular. ‘But of course it’s none of my business,’ he added, as Sebastian giggled again and blushed. ‘Three words of advice, however. Remember that your talent is more important than your amusement. Also that a woman’s amusement may sometimes be incompatible not only with your talent, but even with your fun. Also that, if this should happen, flight is your only strategy.’
He poured out some brandy into the two enormous glasses that had been brought in, sugared one of the cups of coffee, and, settling heavily into the sofa, beckoned to the boy to sit down beside him.
Professionally, Sebastian twirled the liquor in his glass and sipped. It tasted like the smell of methylated spirits. He dipped a piece of sugar in his coffee and nibbled at it, as he would have done after a dose of ammoniated quinine. Then he looked again at the drawing.
‘What’s its equivalent in poetry?’ he said reflectively. ‘Villon?’ He shook his head. ‘No. This isn’t tragic. Donne’s a little more like it — except that he’s a satirist, and this man isn’t.’
‘And Swift,’ put in Eustace, ‘doesn’t know how to convey the beauty of his victims. The fascinating contours of the dowager’s hind-quarters, the delicious greens and magentas in a schoolgirl’s complexion — he doesn’t even see these things, much less make us see them.’
They laughed together. Then Eustace gulped down what remained of his brandy and helped himself to some more.
‘What about Chaucer?’ said Sebastian, looking up from another examination of the drawing.
‘You’re right!’ Eustace cried delightedly. ‘You’re absolutely right. He and Degas — they knew the same secret: the beauty of ugliness, the comedy of holiness. Now, suppose you were given the choice,’ he went on. ‘The Divine Comedy or The Canterbury Tales — which would you rather have written?’ And without leaving Sebastian time to answer, ‘I’d choose The Canterbury Tales,’ he said. ‘Oh, without hesitation! And as a man — how infinitely one would prefer to be Chaucer! Living through the forty disastrous years after the Black Death with only one reference to the troubles in the whole of his writings — and that a comic reference! Being an administrator and a diplomat, and not regarding the fact as having sufficient importance to require even a single mention! Whereas Dante has to rush into party politics; and, when he backs the wrong horse, he spends the rest of his life in rage and self-pity. Revenging himself on his political opponents by putting them into hell, and rewarding his friends by promoting them to purgatory and paradise. What could be sillier or more squalid? And of course, if he didn’t happen to be the second greatest virtuoso of language that ever lived, there’d be nobody to say a good word for him.’
Sebastian laughed and nodded his agreement. The alcohol and the fact that his uncle was taking him seriously, was listening to his opinions with respect, made him feel very happy. He drank some more brandy, and as he munched on the sugar with which he took the taste of it away, he looked again at the drawing of the woman with the towel. Elation quickened his faculties, and almost in a flash he had a quatrain. Pulling out his pencil and his scribbling pad, he started to write.
‘What are you up to?’
Sebastian made no answer in words, but tore off the page and handed it to his uncle. Eustace put up his monocle and read aloud:
To make a picture, others need
All Ovid and the Nicene Creed;
Degas succeeds with one tin tub,
Two buttocks and a pendulous bub.
He clapped Sebastian on the knee.
‘Bravo,’ he cried, ‘bravo!’
He repeated the last line, and laughed until he coughed.
‘We’ll make an exchange,’ he said, when the fit was over and he had drunk another cup of coffee and some more brandy. ‘I’ll keep the poem, and you shall have the drawing.’
‘Me?’
Eustace nodded. It was really a pleasure to do things for somebody who responded with such whole-hearted and unfeigned delight.
‘You shall have it when you go up to Oxford. A drawing by Degas over the mantelpiece — it’ll give you almost as much prestige as rowing in your college eight. Besides,’ he added, ‘I know you’ll love the thing for its own sake.’
Which was a great deal more, it suddenly struck him, than could be said of his stepdaughter. He himself had only a life-interest; after his death, everything would go to Daisy Ockham. Not merely the stocks and shares, but this house and all that was in it, the furniture, the carpets, the china — yes, even the pictures. His absurd little St. Sebastian, his two delicious Guardis, his Magnasco, his Seurat, his Venus and Adonis — which Daisy would certainly consider too indecent to hang up in her drawing-room, in case her Girl Guides, or whatever they were, should see it and get ideas into their heads. And perhaps she’d bring the creatures out here, to the villa. Swarms of female puberties, pasty-faced and pimpled, wandering through his house and giggling in barbarous incomprehension at everything they saw. The very thought of it was sickening. But, after all, Eustace reminded himself, he wouldn’t be there to care. And being sickened in advance, with no immediate reason for one’s feelings, were merely silly. No less silly was thinking about death. So long as one was alive, death didn’t exist, except for other people. And when one was dead, nothing existed, not even death. So why bother? Particularly as he was taking very good care to postpone the event. Smoking only one of these heavenly Romeo and Juliets, drinking only one glass of brandy after dinner … But no; he’d already drunk two. This one that he was just raising to his lips was the third. Well, never mind; he’d see that it didn’t happen again. Tonight he was celebrating Sebastian’s arrival. It wasn’t every day that one welcomed an infant prodigy. He took a sip, and rolled the spirit round his mouth; on tongue and palate it consummated the happiest of marriages with the clinging aroma of his cigar.
He turned to Sebastian.
‘A penny for your thoughts.’
The other laughed with a touch of embarrassment and answered that they weren’t worth it. But Eustace insisted.
‘Well, to begin with,’ said Sebastian, ‘I was thinking … well, I was thinking how extraordinarily decent you’d been to me.’ It wasn’t quite true; for his fancy had been busy with the gifts, not with the giver. ‘And then,’ he continued rather hurriedly; for he realized, too late as usual, that this perfunctory tribute didn’t sound very convincing, ‘I was thinking of the things I’d do when I had some evening clothes.’
‘Such as taking the entire Gaiety chorus out to supper at Ciro’s?’
Caught in the discreditable act of day-dreaming, Sebastian blushed. He had been imagining himself at the Savoy, not indeed with the whole Gaiety chorus, but very definitely with the two girls who were going to be at Tom Boveney’s party. And then one of the girls had turned into Mrs. Thwale.
‘Am I right?’
‘Well … not exactly,’ Sebastian answered.
‘Not exactly,’ Eustace repeated with benevolent irony. ‘Of course, you realize,’ he added, ‘that you’ll always be disappointed?’
‘With what?’
‘With girls, with parties, with experience in general. Nobody who has any kind of creative imagination can possibly be anything but disappointed with real life. When I was young, I used to be miserable because I hadn’t any talents — nothing but a little taste and cleverness. But now I’m not sure one isn’t happier that way. People like you aren’t really commensurable with the world they live in. Whereas people like me are completely adapted to it.’ He removed the teat from between his large damp lips to take another sip of brandy.
‘Your business isn’t doing things,’ he resumed. ‘It isn’t even living. It’s writing poetry. Vox et praeterea nihil, that’s what you are and what you ought to be. Or rather voces, not vox. All the voices in the world. Like Chaucer. Like Shakespeare. The Miller’s voice and the Parson’s voice, Desdemona’s and Caliban’s and Kent’s and Polonius’s. All of them, impartially.’
‘Impartially,’ Sebastian repeated, slowly.
Yes, that was good; that was exactly what he’d been trying to think about himself, but had never quite succeeded, because such thoughts didn’t fit into the ethical and philosophical patterns which he had been brought up to regard as axiomatic. Voices, all the voices impartially. He was delighted by the thought.
‘Of course,’ Eustace was saying, ‘you could always argue that you live more intensely in your mental world-substitute than we who only wallow in the real thing. And I’d be inclined to admit it. But the trouble is that you can’t be content to stick to your beautiful ersatz. You have to descend into evening clothes and Ciro’s and chorus girls — and perhaps even politics and committee meetings, God help us! With lamentable results. Because you’re not at home with these lumpy bits of matter. They depress you, they bewilder you, they shock you and sicken you and make a fool of you. And yet they still tempt you; and they’ll go on tempting you, all your life. Tempting you to embark on actions which you know in advance can only make you miserable and distract you from the one thing you can do properly, the one thing that people value you for.’
It was interesting to be talked about in this way; but the stimulative effects of the alcohol had worn off, and Sebastian felt himself almost suddenly invaded by a kind of stupor that obliterated all thoughts of poetry, voices, evening clothes. Surreptitiously he yawned. His uncle’s words came to him through a kind of fog that thickened and then thinned again, permitting the significance to shine through for a little, then rolled in once more, obscuring everything.
‘… Fascinatio nugacitatis,’ Eustace was saying. ‘It’s translated quite differently in the English version of the Apocrypha. But how wonderful in the Vulgate! The magic of triviality — the being spellbound by mere footling. How well I know the fascination! And how frightfully intense it is! Trifles for trifles’ sake. And yet, what’s the alternative? Behaving like the Old Man of Corsica, or some kind of horrible religious fanatic….’
Once again darkness invaded Sebastian’s mind, a stupor diversified only by quivering streaks of dizziness and a faint nausea. He yearned to be in bed. Very distinct and silvery, a clock struck the half-hour.
‘Half-past ten,’ Eustace proclaimed. ‘“Time, time and half a time. The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.”’ He gave vent to a belch. ‘That’s what I like about champagne — it makes one so poetical. All the lovely refuse of fifty years of indiscriminate reading comes floating to the surface. O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!’
O lente, lente … Funereally slow black horses moved through the fog. And suddenly Sebastian realized that his chin had dropped involuntarily on to his chest. He woke up with a start.
‘Faith,’ his uncle was saying, ‘they can never do without a faith. Always the need of some nonsensical ideal that blinds them to reality and makes them behave like lunatics. And look at the results in our history!’ He took another swig of brandy, then sucked voluptuously at his cigar. ‘First it’s God they believe in — not three Gaseous Vertebrates, but one Gaseous Vertebrate. And what happens? They get the Pope, they get the Holy Office, they get Calvin and John Knox and the wars of religion. Then they grow bored with God, and it’s war and massacre in the name of Humanity. Humanity and Progress, Progress and Humanity. Have you ever read Bouvard et Pécuchet, by the way?’
Rather belatedly, Sebastian started out of his coma and said no.
‘What a book!’ the other exclaimed. ‘Incomparably the finest thing Flaubert ever did. It’s one of the great philosophical poems of the world — and probably the last that will ever be written. For, of course, after Bouvard et Pécuchet there just isn’t anything more to say. Dante and Milton merely justify the ways of God. But Flaubert really goes down to the root of things. He justifies the ways of Fact. The ways of Fact as they affect, not only man, but God as well — and not only the Gaseous Vertebrate, but all the other fantastic products of human imbecility, including, of course, our dear old friend, Inevitable Progress. Inevitable Progress!’ he repeated. ‘Only one more indispensable massacre of Capitalists or Communists or Fascists or Christians or Heretics, and there we are — there we are in the Golden Future. But needless to say, in the very nature of things, the future can’t be golden. For the simple reason that nobody ever gets anything for nothing. Massacre always has to be paid for, and its price is a state of things that absolutely guarantees you against achieving the good which the massacre was intended to achieve. And the same is true even of bloodless revolutions. Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards. Backwards and downwards,’ he repeated; and, taking the cigar out of his mouth, he threw back his head and gave vent to a long peal of wheezy laughter. Then, all at once, he broke off, and his large face screwed itself up into a grimace of pain. He raised a hand to his chest.
‘Heartburn,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That’s the trouble with white wine. I’ve had to give up Hock and Riesling completely; and sometimes even champagne….’
Eustace made another grimace, and bit his lip. The pain subsided a little. With some difficulty he heaved himself up out of his deep seat.
‘Luckily,’ he added, with a smile, ‘there’s almost nothing that a little bicarbonate of soda won’t set right.’
He reinserted the teat and walked out of the drawing-room, across the hall and along the little passage that led to the downstairs lavatory.
Left to himself, Sebastian rose, uncorked the brandy and poured what remained in his glass back into the bottle. Then he drank some soda-water and felt distinctly better. Going to one of the windows, he pushed aside the curtain and looked out. A moon was shining. Against the sky, the cypresses were obelisks of solid darkness. At their feet stood the pale gesticulating statues, and behind and below, far off, were the lights of Florence. And doubtless there were slums down there, like the slums of Camden Town, and tarts in blue at the street corners, and all the stink and the stupidity, all the miseries and humiliations. But here was only order and intention, significance and beauty. Here was a fragment of the world in which human beings ought to be living.
Suddenly, in an act of pure intellectual apprehension, he was aware of the poem he was going to write about this garden. Not of its accidents — the metrical arrangements, the words and sentences — but of its essential form and animating spirit. The form and spirit of a long pensive lyric; of a poetical reflection intensified to the point of cry and song, and sustained in its intensity by a kind of enduring miracle. For a moment he knew it perfectly, his unwritten poem — and the knowledge filled him with an extraordinary happiness. Then it was gone.
He let the curtain drop, walked back to his chai
r and sat down to wrestle with the problems of composition. Two minutes later he was fast asleep.
There was an onyx ashtray on the lavatory window-sill. Very carefully, so as not to disturb its faultless combustion, Eustace put down his cigar, then turned and opened the door of the little medicine cupboard above the wash-basin. It was always kept well stocked, so that, if ever during the day he had any need of internal or external first aid, it would be unnecessary for him to go upstairs to his bathroom. In ten years, he liked to say, he had spared himself as much climbing as would have taken him to the top of Mount Everest.
From the row of medicaments on the upper shelf he selected the bicarbonate of soda, unscrewed the stopper and shook out into his left palm four of the white tablets. He was in the act of replacing the bottle, when another spasm of this strangely violent heartburn made him decide to double the dose. He filled a glass, and began to swallow the tablets one by one, with a sip of water after each. Two, three, four, five, six … And then suddenly the pain was like a red-hot poker boring through his chest. He felt dizzy, and a whirling blackness obscured the outside world. Groping blindly, his hands slid across the wall and found the smooth enamelled cistern of the toilet. He lowered himself unsteadily on to the seat and almost immediately felt a good deal better. ‘It must have been that bloody fish,’ he said to himself. The recipe called for a lot of cream, and he had taken two helpings. He swallowed the last two tablets, drank the rest of the water and, reaching out, set down the glass on the windowsill. Just as his arm was at full stretch the pain returned — but in a new form; for it had now become, in some indescribable way, obscene as well as agonizing. And all at once he found himself panting for breath and in the clutch of a terror more intense than any fear he had ever experienced before. It was terror, for a few seconds, absolutely pure and unmotivated. Then all at once the pain shot down his left arm — nauseating, disgusting, like being hit in the wind, like getting a blow in the genitals — and in a flash the causeless fear crystallized into a fear of heart failure, of death.