The London Venture

by Michael Arlen

  V

  It shames me a little to confess that I have always fitted in my friendsto suit my moods; for it may seem superior of me, as though I attachedas much importance to my moods as to my friends, and therefore too muchto the former; but it is really quite natural and human, for there is noman, be he ever so strong, who does not somehow sway to his moment'smood; as a great liner imperceptibly sways to the lulling roll of theseas--as compared to myself, a rickety, rakish-looking little craftwhich goes up to the skies and down into the trough to the great swingof those mocking waves--moods!

  But I, as I say, unlike that strong man who will pretend to crush hismood as some trifling temptation to relax his hold on life, I am sosociable a person that I must give my friends every side of myself andto each friend his particular side. And, though I do not wish to seemsuperior I have so far mastered the art of friendship, of which Whistlermade such a grievous mess, that that side of me which such and such afriend may like is the side which I happen to wish to show to him. Ikeep it for him, labelling it his; when I see him in the distance I say,"Dikran, up and away and be at him"; for I think it incumbent on peoplewho, like myself, are not really significant, to be at least significantin their relations with others, to stand out as something, even as abuffoon, among their acquaintances, and not be just part of the ruck. Myideal is, of course, that splendid person of Henry James', in "ThePrivate Life," who faded away, did not exist, when he was alone, but waswonderfully and variably present when even a chambermaid was watchinghim. That subtle, ironic creation of Henry James' is the veryincarnation of a Divine Sociability, but in actual life there is noartist perfect enough to give himself so wholly to others that heliterally does not exist to himself.

  I am not selfish, then, with my moods; with a little revision andpolishing I can make them presentable enough to give to my friends as,to say vulgarly, the real article, the real me. And of them all there isone special mood, a neutral-tinted, tired, sceptical thing, which I havecome to reserve exclusively for my friend Nikolay, who lives in a studioin Fitzroy Street, and faintly despises people for living anywhere else.

  When I had pressed his bell I had to step back and watch for his face atthe third-floor window, which, having emerged and grunted at me below,would dwindle into a hand from which would drop the latchkey into myupturned hat. Then very wearily--I had to live up to my mood, you see,else why visit Nikolay?--I would climb the stone steps to his studio.

  Once there, I resigned myself to a delicious and conscious indolence. Mythoughts drifted up with my cigarette smoke, and faded with it. Myspecial place was on the divan in the corner of the large room, under along shelf of neatly arranged first editions, from which I would now andagain pick one, finger it lazily, mutter just audibly that I had boughtthat same book half-a-crown cheaper, and relapse into silence. Ifuncongenial visitors dropped in, I would abuse Nikolay's hospitality byat once turning over on my left side and going to sleep until they hadgone. But generally no one came, and we were alone and silent.

  From the divan I would watch Nikolay at work at his long table in frontof the window, through which could be seen all the chimneys in FitzroyStreet, Charlotte Street, and Tottenham Court Road. How he could do anywork at all (and work of colour!) with the drab cosmopolitanism of thisview ever before his eyes, I do not know; myself would have to be verydrunk before I could ignore those uncongenial backs of houses andchimneys, stuck up in the air like the grimy paws of a gutter-brathumanity. For an hour on end, until he turned to me and said, "Tea,Dikran?" I would watch him through my smoke, as though fascinated by thebent, slight figure as it drew and painted, with so delicate a precisionof movement, those unreal and intangible illustrations, which tried atfirst to impress one by their drawing or colouring, but seemed to memainly expressions of the artist's grim and ironic detachment from othermen; a _macabre_ observer, as it were, of their passions, himselfpassionless, but widely, almost wickedly, tolerant. An erect satyr intopsy-turvydom.

  If it were any other man than Nikolay, I would know him well, for I haveseen much of him, but one knows men by their "points of view," and I amnot sure that Nikolay ever had one. He was, or rather he seemeddefinitely to be, curiously wise; one never put his wisdom to the test;one never heard him say an overpoweringly wise thing, but there was nodoubt that he was wise. People said he was wise. Women said it. Astrange man, indeed; queer, and a little sinister. Perhaps six hundredyears ago he might have been an alchemist living in a three-storiedhouse in Prague, exiled from his native land of Russia for criticisingtoo openly the size of the Czarina's ears; for Nikolay knows no fear, hecan be ruder than any man I know. I have heard him answer a woman thather new hat didn't suit her at all. "I think it is a rotten hat," hesaid, and the vanity of an admitted thirty years faded from her, she wasas a dejected _houri_ before the repelling eyes of a Salhadine.

  He had not always been so detached and passionless. Steps of folly mustsomehow have led up to that philosophic wisdom which so definitelyobtruded on the consciousness; so definitely, indeed, that I havewatched women, as we perhaps sat round the card-table in his studio, andseen them in their manner defer to him, as though he were a great man inthe eyes of the world, which he isn't. But to be treated as a great man,even by women, when you are not a great man, is indeed the essence ofgreatness! Bravo, Nikolay! I see you, not as I have always seen you, butin Paris, where rumour tells of you; in Paris, where your art was yourhobby and life your serious business, and a dress suit the essential ofyour visibility of an evening.

  I feel riot and revelry somewhere in you, Nikolay; the dim green lightsof past experiences do very queerly mock the wisdom in yourcontemplative eye. I am to suppose, then, that you have seen otherthings than the rehearsals of a ballet, have marvelled at other thingsthan the architecture of Spanish-Gothic cathedrals? Ah, I have thesecret of you! You are a mediaeval, a knight of old exotic times, a SirLancelot without naivete. Now, as the years take you, it is only in yourdrawings that your mind runs cynically riot among the indiscretions ofliterature--what a sinister inner gleam I espied in you when you told methat you were going to illustrate the poems of Francois Villon! But inParis, long ago, I see you, Nikolay, standing in the curtained doorwayof a cushion-spread studio, where the lights shine faintly through thered arabesques patterned on the black lamp shades. I see you standingthere with a half-empty glass of Courvoisier in your hand, sipping, andwatching, and smiling.... And women, perhaps--nay! a princess for verycertain, it is said--running wild over the immobility of your face,immobile even through those first perfervid years.

  But it did not always happen that I found him working at his table bythe window. Sometimes he would be pacing restlessly up and down theroom, and round the cardtable in the centre (which was also a lunch,tea, and dinner table).

  "I have never before been four years in one place," he said. "I havenever been six months in one place." He related it as a possiblyinteresting fact, not as a cavil against circumstances. It shows whatlittle I knew of, or about, him, that I had never before heard of histravels.

  "But how have you ever done any work if you never stayed in one place,never settled down?"

  "Settled down!" He stopped in his walk and fixed on me with adisapproving eye. "That's a nasty bad word, Dikran. The being-at-homefeeling is a sedative to all art and progress. In the end it killsimagination. It is a soporific, a--what you call it?--a dope. There's afeeling of contentment in being at home, and you can't squeeze anycreation out of contentment.

  "Permanent homes," he said, "were invented because men wanted safety.The safety of expectation! Imagination is a curse to most men; they arenot comfortable with it; they think it is unsettling. Life is anexperiment until you have a home, and feel that it is a home. Men likethat. They like the idea of having a definite pillow on which to laytheir heads every night, of having a definite woman, called a wife,beside them.... Bah! Charity begins at home, and inertia stays there.Safety doesn't breed art or progress--and when it does, itmiscarries--th
e Royal Academy....

  "Men want homes," he said, "because they want wives. And they generallywant wives because they don't want to be worried by the sex-feeling anymore. They don't want women left to their own imagination any more. Theywant the thing over and done with for ever and ever. Safety! Men are notadventurous...."

  He turned to me sharply. "Look at you!" he said. "Have you doneanything? Since I have known you, you have done nothing but writeself-conscious essays which "The New Age" tolerates; you have playedabout with life as you have with literature, as though it were all aquestion of commas and semi-colons.... You have tried to idealiselove-affairs into a pretty phrase, and in your spare time you lie onthat divan and look up at the ceiling and dream of the luxurious vicesof Heliogabalus.... You are horribly lazy, not adventurous at all.What's it matter if your cuffs get dirty as long as your hands get holdof something?"

  "One can always change one's shirt, if that is what you suggest,Nikolay. But you are wrong about my not being adventurous--I shalladventure many things. But not sensationally, you know. I mean, I can'tlook at myself straight, I can only look at myself sideways; and thatperhaps is just as well for I overlook many things in myself which it isgood to overlook, and I can smile at things which James Joyce wouldwrite a book about. And when I write a novel--for of course I will writeone, since England expects every young man to write a novel--the qualityI shall desire in it will be, well, fastidiousness.... I come from theEast; I shall go to the East; I shall try to strike the literary meanbetween the East and the West in me--between my Eastern mind and Westernunderstanding. It will be a great adventure."

  "The East is a shambles," he said shortly. And in that sentence lay myown condemnation of my real self; if any hope of fame ever lay in me, Isuddenly realised, it was in that acquired self which had been to apublic school and thought it not well bred to have too aggressive apoint of view. Oh, but what nonsense it all was! I lazily thought--thisstriving after fame and notoriety in a despairing world.

  I looked at Nikolay, who had done all the talking he would do that day,and was now sitting in an arm-chair and staring thoughtfully at thefloor; thoughtfully, I say, but perhaps it was vacantly, for his facewas a mask, as weird, in its way, as those fiendish masks which hedelighted in making. And, as I watched him like this, I would say tomyself that, if I watched long enough, I would be sure to surprisesomething; but I never surprised anything at all, for he would surpriseme looking at him, and his sudden genial smile would bring him back intothe world of men, leaving me nothing but the skeleton of a guilty andludicrous fancy; and of my many ludicrous fancies about my friend thiswas indeed the most ludicrous, for I had caught myself thinking that hewas not really a man at all, but just part of a drawing by FelicienRops....

  _The London Venture_: VI