CHAPTER XI
My attempt, then, to plunge into the vortex of Moribundian intellectual life turned out a complete failure. There was no whirlpool—merely a placid lake of unanimity.
It was at this point, I think, that a feeling of dejection began to spread over me which never thereafter left me, which grew deeper, in fact, every day I stayed in this ideal world, in spite of all I did to combat it.
The earthly reader may not find it easy to comprehend the insidious sort of despair which creeps over one in a world from which all conflict has been removed. Profoundly comfortable as one appears to be, physically and spiritually, under conditions in which there are no money problems, no labour problems, no political or religious problems, one yet finds oneself becoming each day more disquieted in the roots of one’s being. I can only describe the feeling as that of being half-dead.
After about three weeks of life at the Club, it occurred to me that my growing wretchedness might conceivably be attributable to physical illness. Though normally I am one of the healthiest persons alive, I realized that the conditions in Moribundia were not the same as on earth. In Moribundia there was, all the time, a terrible lot of illness about. There was particularly a countless multitude of illnesses of a minor and irritating nature. One had only to read off the balloons about one to realize this.
An interesting medical problem is raised by this. In an ideal world one should not expect illness of any kind. I can only imagine that this at one time was so, and that in consequence the people, having lost—or never having had—a normal resistance to ailments such as we acquire on earth, have no strength to throw off these minor afflictions. On the other hand, matters are arranged on a just and perfect basis even here, for it can truly be said that if anyone is ill in Moribundia, or remains ill, it is due to his own folly. For every one of these thousand and one plagues ‘modern science’ has found a specific remedy furnishing an immediate cure. There are also several remedies and tonics curing all afflictions at the same time.
I know now, of course, that my real trouble was psychological; but at the time I suspected that I might, like the clerk at the hotel, be suffering from something I had not suspected, and at last I confided in Anne.
She took the warmest and most charming interest in the matter, having had much illness herself, and, in searching for a satisfactory diagnosis, questioned me closely.
“Do you feel tired?” she said, “sluggish, ‘out of sorts’? Do you feel that ‘everything is too much bother’—that ‘nothing is worth while’?”
I had to admit that this was vaguely the sensation, and she went on eagerly:
“Do you sometimes feel yourself ‘slipping,’ that you ‘can’t go on’?” she continued, putting all these mental states into inverted commas, as though she was quoting, and working herself up into what might almost be called a poetic or prophetic frenzy of description. “Do you get that ‘full’ feeling after meals? Do you feel ‘snappy,’ ‘listless,’ ‘irritable,’ ‘unable to concentrate’?”28
I replied that this seemed to fit the case and, hardly pausing for breath, she went on:
“Do you suffer,” she said, “from any or all of the following complaints—exhaustion, sleeplessness, nerves, indigestion, loss of appetite, constipation, giddiness, debility, acidity, arthritis, neuritis, lumbago, rheumatism, gout, sciatica, colds, influenza, catarrh, biliousness, headaches, mental fatigue, depression, disordered liver, kidney trouble, sore throat, eczema, baldness, hysteria, ear-ache, toothache, eye-strain, coughing, bad breath, asthma, fainting attacks, shooting pains, palpitation, breathlessness, anæmia, poor circulation, bad legs, hardened arteries, varicose veins, pimples, boils, spots, etc.? If so,” she wound up, “you may be certain of a speedy cure.”
Although I had none of these diseases, I did not like to damp her enthusiasm by telling her so, and as the earlier symptoms she had mentioned seemed to resemble mine, I asked her to tell me of the cure. This turned out to be a wonderful discovery known as ‘Kewrall,’ which I could get in tablets. These tablets, she said, contained ‘all the natural curative ingredients in concentrated form.’ I noticed, by the way, that in Moribundia the greatest store was set by the arrangement of ingredients in concentrated form—it seemed, in fact, the basis of their therapeutics. Why these ingredients were supposed to gain all their effectiveness from being in this form, rather than in their natural form, remained a puzzle to me—as I should have thought the exact reverse would have been the case.
I bought a box at once, and was much interested in a statement I found therein, giving the different uses to which the tablets might be put, and the precise time, in each case, in which a complete cure might be confidently awaited. It began something like this:
Pneumonia 4 tablets 2½ hours
General paralysis 3 „ 2 „
Scarlet fever 2 „ 1 „
Consumption 4 „ 20 minutes
Cancer 2 „ 15 „
Smallpox 1 „ 5 „
Bronchitis 1 „ 2 „
and so on.
“You will notice the difference after the first dose,” Anne said to me, when I told her I had taken her advice and bought a box.
The reader will be struck by the remarkable fervour, combined with a passion for formal and precise scientific statement, which characterized this girl’s speech when it came to advising me on medical matters. I myself was no longer struck by it, because I was already used to it. The truth was that Anne was the most frightful ‘lecturer’ when any matter of health was brought up, and I simply had to put up with it.
I do not mean that she was any different or worse in this respect than any other Moribundian pretty girl. In fact, the lovelier they were, the more seemingly created for frivolous pleasures alone, the more austere, admonitory, and pedantically accurate they insisted on being in all matters of this kind.
I did not actually take those tablets, because, according to my habit, I completely forgot to do so in the first few days after buying them, and, before I had a chance to remedy the matter, Anne was seized by another idea, which arose from an offer I made her.
It must be understood that (during the periods when she was not lecturing me) I was deeply in love with Anne, and I had begun to wonder whether some form of sexual repression was at the root of my trouble.
Marriage, of course, was out of the question, in view of my impending return and of the circumstances generally: and I still did not know in what way she would respond to any other suggestion. At last, however, I summoned up the courage (having taken the precaution of presenting her with a large box of ‘Siljoy’ stockings beforehand) to tell her that I was ill with longing for her and to ask her point-blank whether she would go away with me somewhere—to the seaside, perhaps, where no one would know anything about it.
Her reception of this offer was decidedly curious. She completely ignored the moral in favour of the medical aspect of the question. She said that I had reminded her of a fact which had completely eluded her, and which would completely account for my condition—in other words, she began lecturing me again.
“Of course!” she said. “Why did I not think of it before? There comes a time in everyone’s life when the doctor can help us no more, when mere ‘medicine’ is of no avail. We are thoroughly ‘run down’ and the only remedy open to us is a complete change—an entire novelty of atmosphere in entirely new surroundings. We have become ‘stale’ in every way, and only the stimulus of new scenery and new people will ‘put us to rights.’ Relaxation and rest is what we require, and ‘Dame Nature’ will do the rest.”
This, so far, was hopeful but non-committal, and I waited eagerly for what she was going to say next.
“For this purpose,” she went on, “what more ideal spot could be found than warm, sunny Seabrightstone? There, if you wish to be utterly idle, you may lounge, full-length, upon the golden, gleaming sands all day, building ‘castles in the air’ with no one to say nay. Seabrightstone boasts some of the finest hotels in the country, and a
ll doctors are agreed that its climate is unrivalled anywhere. Come to sunny Seabrightstone, and know what it is to feel ‘on top of the world’ again!”
Her use of the word ‘come’ instead of the word ‘go’ at the end of this odd speech enabled me to take the whole as warm acquiescence in my proposal. I embraced her rapturously and asked her how soon she would be ready to begin the journey.
She said that she could manage it in a day or two, and seemed quite unaware of the thrilling implications of her acceptance. But, actually, it was I who did not know what I was letting myself in for, as we shall see.
We set off together three days later, taking a train which brought us into Seabrightstone in three hours. My spirits had risen temporarily and I enjoyed the journey down a great deal.
Seabrightstone was all that Anne had prophesied, and we put up at a hotel (quite as fine as the ‘Moribundian’) as man and wife.
At this stage, with apparently everything I could ask for on Moribundia, my cure should have been complete: but that is not what happened.
Of course, in a Moribundian seaside town the sun never ceases shining, and we bathed and lounged on the sands as we had planned. But instead of revelling in all this, my perverse worldly spirit, a thing which apparently can only take its pleasures relatively, which cannot understand freedom save as something identical with necessity itself, began again to rebel against these perfect conditions. I found myself yearning for a grey day and a fall of rain such as we have in England, and which I knew would never come.
But this was only part of my trouble. My relationship with Anne (sweet as she was attempting to be) grew more and more strained, and at last became intolerable.
As she was now freed from any of the exigencies of town life, it seemed that she had absolutely nothing else to think about but problems of physical health and beauty, and she was lecturing me every minute of the day. I simply could not stop her. Whatever we saw, whatever we did, wherever we went, she used as an occasion for delivering a sermon of some sort.
I had, for instance, only to say it was getting a little colder, and suggest I should fetch her coat, for her to begin: ‘To stand up against the weather is not to go about loaded with mackintosh, coat, and umbrella—it is rather to be warmed, protected, invigorated from within. For this purpose Flakewheat contains all those body-building and nutritive properties which are absorbed so rapidly into the system that…, etc., etc.’ I never listened to the end of these talks.
Or, if I quite casually remarked that a light under which we were sitting was a little too strong, I would get: ‘Yes, under the merciless glare of modern lighting conditions, which shows up every flaw of the skin, a girl’s choice of make-up becomes a matter of paramount importance. Intensive research in the Laboratories extending over twelve years has now shown that “Powdrall” alone contains the properties necessary…, etc., etc.’
Or, if I happened to call her attention to a little boy on the beach who had dirtied himself by falling into a puddle, I would get: ‘Yes—but it would be hardly human to scold the energetic little chappy. No doubt, even at that age, his mother has inculcated in him the healthful “Savelife Soap”29 habit, which he will keep to the end of his days. Let him play as he wishes. His mother knows that all danger of germs and dirt contamination is…, etc., etc.’
Even if I asked her to pass the mustard at a meal, she would reply: ‘Certainly, in addition to setting the salivary juices in action at once, and so stimulating the primary stages of digestion, mustard, by breaking down rich, indigestible fats, and breaking up the long fibres of lean, makes the task of assimilation…, etc., etc.’
But this sort of thing was only a part of what I had to suffer. It must be understood that Anne prided herself upon being a ‘modern’ or ‘up-to-date’ Moribundian woman, and no one on earth could realize what this entails for anyone living on intimate terms with one of them.
“In the rush and general ‘tempo’ of modern life,” Anne once said to me, “no woman, if she requires to be smart, can possibly afford to neglect the smallest detail which will help to further beautify her, or give her that added appearance of ‘chic’.”
To give a detailed description of what the adherence to these principles involved in, say, the simple act of going to bed and to sleep alone, is a task almost beyond me.
That she should have washed or had a bath, cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair, and applied some cream to her face, would have been nothing more than I could have expected. Nor did she disappoint me in these respects. Unfortunately, however, ‘no modern woman could possibly risk personal freshness and daintiness’ by neglecting the practice of daily dipping her underclothes in a certain preparation, and she was quite ten minutes in the bathroom doing this. I would keep on calling to her, and she would at last come out, only to retire a moment later, with an eye-bath. “Every modern woman,” she said, “knows the value of clean, sparkling eyes, and the extreme danger of neglecting them.”
I did not believe that she could take more than five minutes bathing her eyes, and so, after she had been in there for at least half an hour, I would call out to her again in exasperation. She would reply, in a preoccupied way, that ‘nothing was so disfiguring as unsightly superfluous hair,’ and that as ‘scientific research had at last found a method which would, by a little daily attention, painlessly remove even the most stubborn growth,’ that was what she was doing now.
Finally she would come out, and I would foolishly delude myself by thinking that she was at last coming to bed. Instead of this, however, there would be a lecture on the value ‘for health and beauty alike’ of ‘scrupulous inner cleanliness,’ and she would begin taking laxatives and salts.
This would be followed by a long ‘treatment’ to counteract what she called ‘the danger of excessive fat, imposing a terrible strain on the heart and other organs,’ and by another treatment morbidly undertaken to combat any tendency ‘to dandruff or falling hair,’ the lotion which she massaged into her head being, she told me, ‘the result of a wonderful piece of research by a famous bio-chemist, and recommended by hundreds of hair specialists all over Moribundia.’
Then there would be a sort of half-time interval in which she would stand in her underclothes gazing for hours (or it seemed hours to me) in an inquiring way at some undissolved soap in a tumblerful of water.
It goes without saying that Anne would not dream of retiring to bed without her nightly cup of ‘Nourishine,’ without which, she told me, her dietary would lack the essential mineral salts, vitamins, calcium and iron required to sustain and energize the whole nervous system. And, of course, every night she indulged in a facial massage, with a carefully-chosen preparation to ‘bring new life to the delicate tissues of the skin.’
This, of course, was not the only cream she was compelled to use. There were dozens. There was one specially created for ‘glamour,’ one to ‘counteract external acidity,’ one to ‘wake up the underpores,’ one to supply ‘the essential skin vitamins.’ And so on and so forth.
I have still said nothing of the eye-lash growers, the cuticle removers, the nail polishes, the deodorants, the powders, the scents, etc.—the regular daily use of all of which, every twenty-four hours, if she really considered her health and beauty, no Moribundian woman could possibly afford to neglect.
Some feeble idea will, I hope, by now have been given of the time it took Anne to get to bed, and it will be understood why, when at last she was ready, looking most repulsive in her sleeping helmet, her skin-softening gloves, her chin-moulder, her nose-corrector and shoulder support, I myself was bored to extinction by her and generally fast asleep. There can be no doubt that it was in view of these conditions and circumstances that she had so readily consented to come away with me in the first place.
Notes
28. All these words and phrases are, indeed, ‘quotations’ from well known advertisements of the period and beyond.
29. See Note 30.
CHAPTER XII
In additi
on to the general despondency and gloom which lay upon my spirit at this time, and which no form of Moribundian treatment could dispel, I was now visited by a fresh torment from quite a different quarter. It was undoubtedly at this period (and since my return I have checked the dates carefully) that Crowmarsh began to make certain minute adjustments to his machine, or, as I would say, he began fiddling about with it, in much the same way as an over-zealous owner of a wireless might lightly touch the knobs, in order to extract greater clarity or volume, in the middle of a concert from Queen’s Hall. No doubt this furnished him with various reassurances of a subtle technical nature, but to me the experience was utterly and stupendously terrifying.
The first time that this happened was one morning when Anne and I were lying on the beach at Seabrightstone. We had recently bathed, and were both lying flat looking up into the sky.
I do not know whether the reader has ever, at any time, suffered from what is with some people an avowed ailment, fear of heights. A lot of people will admit that in certain circumstances they have had intimations of this terror, while others will say that they are chronically afraid of heights of any sort. I have good reason, now, to believe that neither class has any notion of what it is talking about. For people to say that they are afraid of heights, and yet to lie, as they all do at the seaside, flat down on this little ball of ours, the Earth, and gaze coolly, impudently, one might say calculatingly, up into the infinite height of the sky above them, is to me the most absurd of contradictions. It is to me quite plain that one of the most remarkable attributes of the human organism as a whole is just this—that it is most miraculously constructed not to be afraid of heights—not even infinite ones.
I thought, however, as everyone else did until that day on the sands at Seabrightstone, when Crowmarsh began to play with his Asteradio. I was looking up into the blue sky, thinking of nothing in particular, when I slowly became conscious of a sort of whirring sound in my ears, combined with a sensation almost impossible to describe in words. It seemed that mentally I was drawn up to a fixed point, say, at a rough estimate, about seventy thousand billion billion miles away in the blue space above me, while my tiny body (tiny in comparison with the distance I had mentally travelled) remained most horribly where it was. Please remember, unmoved reader, perhaps at this very moment lying on the sands with this book, that there is an actually existing point about seventy thousand billion billion miles away from you in the space above you. Such a thing is not an imaginative fiction.
Impromptu in Moribundia Page 12
