“Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!”
she recited, thrillingly, and talked about what a glorious thing youth was, and how swift its passing, and the terrible sadness of life which pressed on and on, without anybody being able to halt it, and how wise Omar was to urge us to get on with enjoyment when we could. This was all wonderful to me, for I was new to poetry and had just begun reading some because Professor Schwarz said it was his great alternative to chemistry. If a professor of chemistry thought well of poetry, it must be something better than the stuff we worked through so patiently in Eng. Lit. at school. I had just begun to see that poetry was about life, and not ordinary life but the essence and miraculous underside of life. What a leap my understanding took when I heard Myrrha reciting in her beautiful voice; she was near to tears, and so was I. She mastered herself, and with obvious effort not to break down she continued—
“Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!”
I could not speak, nor could Myrrha. She rose and left me to myself, and I was full of surging thoughts, recognition of the evanescence of life, and wonder that this glorious understanding woman should have stirred my mind and spirit so profoundly.
I do not know how much time passed until I heard her voice from another room, calling me. She has been crying, I thought, and wants me to comfort her. And so I should. I must try to tell her how tremendous she is, and how she has opened up a new world to me, and perhaps hint that I know something about the disappointment with Martindale. I went through a little passage into what proved to be her bedroom, very pretty and full of nice things and filled with the smell of really good perfume.
Myrrha came in from the bathroom, wearing what it is a joke to call a diaphanous garment, but I don’t know how else to name it. I mean, as she stood against the light, you could see she had nothing under it, and its fullness and the way it swished around only made it seem thinner. I suppose I gaped, for she really was beautiful.
“Come here, angel,” she said, “and give me a very big kiss.”
I did, without an instant of hesitation. I knew a good deal about kissing, and I took her in my arms and kissed her tenderly and long. But I had never kissed a woman in a diaphanous garment before, and it was like Winston Churchill’s brandy. I savoured it in the same way.
“Wouldn’t you like to take off all those stupid clothes?” she said, and gave me a start by loosening my tie. It is at this point I cease to understand my own actions. I really didn’t know where this was going to lead and had no time for thought, because life seemed to be moving so fast, and taking me with it. But I was delighted to be, so to speak, under this life-enlarging authority. I got out of my clothes quickly, dropping them to the floor and kicking them out of the way.
There is a point in a man’s undressing when he looks stupid, and nothing in the world can make him into a romantic figure. It is at the moment when he stands in his underwear and socks. I suppose a very calculating man would keep his shirt on to the last, getting rid of his socks and shorts as fast as possible, and then cast off the shirt, revealing himself as an Adonis. But I was a schoolboy undresser, and had never stripped to enchant. When I was in the socks-shorts moment, Myrrha laughed. I whipped off the socks, hurling them toward the dressing-table, and trampled the shorts beneath my feet. I seized her, held her firmly, and kissed her again.
“Darling,” she said, breaking away, “not like a cannibal. Come and lie down with me. Now, there’s no hurry whatever. So let us just do nice things for a while, shall we, and see what comes of it.”
So we did that. But I was a virgin bursting with partly gratified desire for Judy Wolff, and had no notion of preliminaries; nor, in spite of her words, did Myrrha seem greatly interested in them. I was full of poetry and power.
Now is she in the very lists of love,
Her champion mounted for the hot encounter—
thought I when, after some discreet stage-management by Myrrha, I was properly placed and out of danger of committing an unnatural act. It was male vanity. I was seventeen, and it was the first time I had done this; it would have been clear to anyone but me that I was not leading the band. Very quickly it was over, and I was lying by Myrrha, pleased as Punch.
So we did more nice things, and after a while I was conscious that Myrrha was nudging and manoeuvring me back into the position of advantage. Good God! I thought; do people do it twice at a time? Well, I was ready to learn, and well prepared for my lesson. Myrrha rather firmly gave the time for this movement of the symphony, and it was a finely rhythmic andante, as opposed to the lively vivace I had set before. She seemed to like it better, and I began to understand that there was more to this business than I had supposed. It seemed to improve her looks, though it had not occurred to me that they needed improvement. She looked younger, dewier, gentler. I had done that. I was pleased with myself in quite a new way.
More nice things. Quite a lot of talk, this time, and some scraps of Omar from Myrrha, who must have had him by heart. Then again the astonishing act, which took much longer, and this time it was Myrrha who decided that the third movement should be a scherzo. When it was over, I was ready for more talk. I liked the talking almost as much as the doing, and I was surprised when Myrrha showed a tendency to fall asleep. I don’t know how long she slept, but I may have dozed a little myself. Anyhow, I was in a deep reverie about the strangeness of life in general, when I felt her hand on my thigh. Again? I felt like Casanova, but as I had never read Casanova, and haven’t to this day, I suppose I should say I felt as a schoolboy might suppose Casanova to feel. But I was perfectly willing to oblige and soon ready. I have read since that the male creature is at the pinnacle of his sexual power at seventeen, and I was a well-set-up lad in excellent health.
If I am to keep up the similitude of the symphony, this movement was an allegro con spirito. Myrrha was a little rough, and I wondered who was the cannibal now? I was even slightly alarmed, because she seemed unaware of my presence just when I was most poignantly aware of being myself, and made noises that I thought out of character. She puffed. She grunted. Once or twice I swear she roared. We brought the symphony to a fine Beethovenian finish with a series of crashing chords. Then Myrrha went to sleep again.
So did I. But not before she did, and I was lost in wonderment.
I do not know how long it was until Myrrha woke, snapped on her bedside light, and said, “Good God, sweetie, it’s time you went home.” It was in that instant of sudden light that I saw her differently. I had not observed that her skin did not fit quite so tightly as it once had done, and there were some little puckers at the armpits and between the breasts. When she lay on her side her stomach hung down, slightly but perceptibly. And under the light of the lamp, which was so close, her hair had a metallic sheen. As she turned to kiss me, she drew one of her legs across mine, and it was like a rasp. I knew women shaved their legs, for I had seen Carol do it, but I did not know that this sandpaper effect was the result. I kissed her, but without making a big thing of it, dressed myself, and prepared to leave. What was I to say?
“Thanks for a wonderful evening, and everything,” I said.
“Bless you, darling,” said she, laughing. “Will you turn out the lights in the sitting-room as you go?” and with that she turned over, dragging most of the bed-clothes with her, and prepared to sleep again.
It was not a great distance back to the Ritz, and I walked through the snowy night, thinking deeply. So that was what sex was! I dropped into a little all-night place and had two bacon-and-egg sandwiches, two slices of their hot mince pie, and two cups of chocolate with whipped cream, for I found I was very hungry.
DR VON HALLER: When did you realize that this ceremony of initiation was arranged between your father and Mrs Martindale?
MYSELF: Father told me as we went back to Toronto in the train; but I didn’t realize it until I had a terrible row with Knopwood. What I mean is, Father didn’t say in so many words that it was an arranged thing, but I suppose he was proud of what he had done for me, and he gave some broad hints that I was too stupid to take. He said what a wonderful woman she was and what an accomplished amorist—that was a new word to me—and that if there were such a thing as a female swordsman, certainly Myrrha Martindale was one.
DR VON HALLER: How did he bring up the subject?
MYSELF: He remarked that I was looking very pleased with myself, and that I must have enjoyed my evening with Myrrha. Well, I knew that you aren’t supposed to blab about these things, and anyhow she was Father’s friend and perhaps he felt tenderly toward her and might be hurt if he discovered she had fallen for me so quickly. So I simply said I had, and he said she could teach me a great deal, and I said yes, she was very well read, and he laughed and said that she could teach me a good deal that wasn’t to be found in books. Things that would be very helpful to me with my little Jewish piece. I was shocked to hear Judy called a “piece” because it isn’t a word you use about anybody you love or respect, and I tried to set him right about Judy and how marvellous she was and what very nice people her family were. It was then he became serious about never marrying a girl you met when you were very young. “If you want fruit, take all you want, but don’t buy the tree,” he said. It hurt me to hear him talk that way when Judy was obviously in his mind, and then when he went on to talk about swordsmen I began to wonder for the first time if I knew everything there was to know about that word.
DR VON HALLER: But did he say outright that he had arranged your adventure?
MYSELF: Never flatly. Never in so many words. But he talked about the wounding experiences young men often had learning about sex from prostitutes or getting mixed up with virgins, and said that the only good way was with an experienced older woman, and that I would bless Myrrha as long as I lived, and be grateful it had been managed so intelligently and pleasantly. That’s the way the French do it, he said.
DR VON HALLER: Was Myrrha Martindale his mistress?
MYSELF: Oh, I don’t imagine so for a minute. Though he did leave some money for her in his will, and I know from things that came out later that he helped her with money from time to time. But if he ever had an affair with her, I’m sure it was because he loved her. It couldn’t have been a money thing.
DR VON HALLER: Why not?
MYSELF: It would be sordid, and Father always had such style.
DR VON HALLER: Have you ever read Voltaire’s Candide?
MYSELF: That was what Knopwood asked me. I hadn’t, and he explained that Candide was a simpleton who believed everything he was told. Knopwood was furious with Father. But he didn’t know Father, you see.
DR VON HALLER: And you did?
MYSELF: I sometimes think I knew him better than anyone. Do you suggest I didn’t?
DR VON HALLER: That is one of the things we are working to find out. Tell me about your row with Father Knopwood.
I suppose I brought it on because I went to see Knopwood a few days after returning to Toronto. I was in a confused state of mind. I didn’t regret anything about Myrrha; I was grateful to her, just as Father had said, though I thought I had noticed one or two things about her that had escaped him, or that he didn’t care about. Really they only meant that she wasn’t as young as Judy. But I was worried about my feelings toward Judy. I had gone to see her as soon as I could after returning from Montreal; she was ill—bad headache or something—and her father asked me to chat for a while. He was kind, but he was direct. Said he thought Judy and I should stop seeing each other so much, because we weren’t children any longer, and we might become involved in a way we would regret. I knew he meant he was afraid I might seduce her, so I told him I loved her, and would never do anything to hurt her, and respected her too much to get her into any kind of mess. Yes, he said, but there are times when good resolutions weaken, and there are also hurts that are not hurts of the flesh. Then he said something I could hardly believe; he said that he was not sure Judy might not weaken at some time when I was also weak, and then what would our compounded weakness lead to? I had assumed the man always led in these things, and when I said that to Dr Wolff he smiled in what I can only describe as a Viennese way.
“You and Judy have something that is charming and beautiful,” he said, “and I advise you to cherish it as it is, for then it will always be a delight to you. But if you go on, we shall all change our roles; I shall have to be unpleasant to you, which I have no wish to do, and you will begin to hate me, which would be a pity, and perhaps you and Judy will decide that in order to preserve your self-respect you must deceive me and Judy’s mother. That would be painful to us, and I assure you it would also be dangerous to you.”
Then he did an extraordinary thing. He quoted Burns to me! Nobody had ever done that except my Cruikshank grandfather, down by the crick in Deptford, and I had always assumed that Burns was a sort of crick person’s poet. But here was this Viennese Jew, saying,
“The sacred lowe of weel-placed love,
Luxuriously indulge it;
But never tempt th’ illicit rove
Tho’ naething should divulge it;
I waive the quantum of the sin
The hazard of concealing;
But, och! it hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling.
“You are a particularly gentle boy,” he said (and I was startled and resented it); “it would not take many bad experiences to scar your feelings over and make you much less than the man you may otherwise become. If you seduced my daughter, I should be very angry and might hate you; the physical injury is really not very much, if indeed it is anything at all, but the psychological injury—you see I am too much caught up in the modern way of speaking to be quite able to say the spiritual injury—could be serious if we all parted bad friends. There are people, of course, to whom such things are not important, and I fear you have had a bad example, but you and Judy are not such people. So be warned, David, and be our friend always; but you will never be my daughter’s husband, and you must understand that now.”
“Why are you so determined I should never be Judy’s husband?” I asked.
“I am not determined alone,” said he. “There are many hundreds of determining factors on both sides. They are called ancestors, and there are some things in which we are wise not to defy them.”
“You mean, I’m not a Jew,” I said.
“I had begun to wonder if you would get to it,” said Dr Wolff.
“But does that matter in this day and age?” I said.
“You were born in 1928, when it began to matter terribly, and not for the first time in history,” said Dr Wolff. “But set that aside. There is another way it matters which I do not like to mention because I do not want to hurt you and I like you very much. It is a question of pride.”
We talked further, but I knew the conversation was over. They were planning to send Judy to school abroad in the spring. They would be happy to see me from time to time until then. But I must understand that the Wolffs had talked to Judy, and though Judy felt very badly, she had seen the point. And that was that.
It was that night I went to Knopwood. I was working up a rage against the Wolffs. A question of pride! Did that mean I wasn’t good enough for Judy? And what did all this stuff about being Jews mean from people who gave no obvious external evidence of their Jewishness? If they were such great Jews, where were their side-curls and their funny underwear and their queer food? I had heard of these things as belonging to the bearded Jews in velours hats who lived down behind the Art Gallery. I had assumed the Wolffs and the Schwarzes were trying to be like us; instead I had been told I wasn’t good enough for them! Affronted Chris
tianity boiled up inside me. Christ had died for me, I was certain, but I wouldn’t take any bets on His having died for the Wolffs and the Schwarzes! Off to Knopwood! He would know.
I was with him all evening, and in the course of an involved conversation everything came out. To my astonishment he sided with Louis Wolff. But worst of all, he attacked Father in terms I had never heard from him, and he was amused, and contemptuous and angry about Myrrha.
“You triple-turned jackass!” he said, “couldn’t you see it was an arranged thing? And you thought it was your own attraction that got you into bed with such a scarred old veteran! I don’t blame you for going to bed with her; show an ass a peck of oats and he’ll eat it, even if the oats is musty. But it is the provincial vulgarity of the whole thing that turns my stomach—the winesmanship and the tatty gallantries and the candlelit frumpery of it! The ‘good talk,’ the imitations of Churchill by your father, the quotations from The Rubaiyat. If I could have my way I’d call in every copy of that twenty-fourth-rate rhymed gospel of hedonism and burn it! How it goes to the hearts of trashy people! So Myrrha matched verses with you, did she? Well, did the literary strumpet quote this—
“ ‘Well,’ murmured one, ‘Let whoso make or buy,
My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry:
But fill me with the old familiar Juice
Methinks I might recover by and by.’
Did she whisper that in your ear as Absalom went in unto his father’s concubine?”
“You don’t understand,” I said; “this is a thing French families do to see that their sons learn about sex in the right way.”
“Yes, I have heard that, but I didn’t know they put their cast mistresses to the work, the way you put a child rider on your safe old mare.”
“That’s enough, Knoppy,” I said; “you know a lot about the Church and religion, but I don’t think that qualifies you to talk about what it is to be a swordsman.”
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