I said I would break into the closet where his father kept the port if he did not start reading. He said, “At once then! But before I read let me give you a title for Bell’s letter, a title which is not her own but which will prepare you for the breadth, depth and height of what her letter encompasses. I call it MAKING A CONSCIENCE. Listen.”
He cleared his throat and read with a distinct tone and grave elation I thought theatrical. Later his delivery was interrupted by a few heartfelt sobs he tried, and failed, to contain. The following letter is given, not as Bella spelled it, but as Baxter recited it.
14
Glasgow to Odessa: The Gamblers
Dear God,
I had no peace to write before
we are afloat upon this blue blue sea.
Wedder is snug in bunk and glad at last
not to be do do doing all the time—
the silly chap has done some silly things.
How Auld Lang Syne seems that soft warm bright night
when I bade you good-bye, chloroformed Candle,
then skipped down ladder into Wedder’s arms.
Swift as the wind we sped in cab to train
and curtained carriage where we wed wed wed,
went wedding all the way to London town
and booked into Saint Pancras’s Hotel.
And yet poor Duncan wanted marriage too!
He did not get it. Please tell Candle so.
You never wedded, God, so may not know
eight hours of it takes much more out of men
than they can give without a lot of rest.
Next day was all my own. I saw some sights,
then waked my Wedder with a good high tea.
“Where have you been?”
I told.
“Who did you meet?”
“No one.” “Do you expect me to believe
you walked all day and never saw a man?”
“No—I saw crowds of men but spoke to none,
except a policeman in Regent’s Park
from whom I asked the way to Drury Lane.”
“Of course!” he said. “It would be the police!
They’re very tall and handsome are they not?
Guards officers are strong and handsome too.
They prowl the parks for girls who won’t say no.
Perhaps your policeman was in the Guards.
The uniforms are very similar.”
“Have you gone daft?” I asked him. “What is wrong?”
“I’m not the only man you ever loved—
admit you have had hundreds before me!”
“Not hundreds—no. I never counted them,
but half a hundred might be about right.”
He gasped, gaped, groaned, writhed, sobbed
and tore his hair
then asked for details. That is how I learned
he did not think that kissing hands is love.
Love (Wedder thinks) only deserves the name
when men insert their middle footless leg.
“If that is so Dear Wedder, rest assured
you are the only man I ever loved.”
“Liar cheat whore!” he screamed. “I am no fool!
You are no virgin! Who deflowered you first?”
It took a while to find out what he meant.
It seems that women who have not been wed
by wedders like my Wedder all possess
a slip of skin across the loving groove
where Wedderburns poke their peninsula.
This slip of skin he never found on me.
“And how do you explain the scar?” he asked,
referring to a thin white line which starts
among the curls above my loving groove
and, like the Greenwich line of longitude,
divides in two the belly Solomon
has somewhere likened to a heap of wheat.
“Surely all women’s stomachs have that line.”
“No no!” says Wedder. “Only pregnant ones
who’ve been cut open to let babies out.”
“That must have been B.C.B.K.,” I said,
“the time Before they Cracked poor Bella’s Knob.”
I let him feel that crack which rings my skull
just underneath the hair. He sighed and said,
“I told you everything—my inmost thoughts,
childhood and darkest deeds. Why did you not
speak of your past? Or rather, lack of past.”
“You never gave me time before tonight
to tell you anything, you talked so much.
I thought you did not want to know my past,
my thoughts and hopes and anything of me
not obviously useful when we wed.”
“You’re right—I am a fiend! I ought to die!”
he yelled, then punched his head, burst into tears,
pulled off his trousers, wed me very quick.
I soothed him, babied him (he is a baby)
and got him wedding at a proper speed.
Yes, wed he can and does, but little Candle,
if you are reading this do not feel sad.
Women need Wedderburns but love much more
their faithful kindly man who waits at home.
I had a baby once. God, is that true?
If it is true what has become of her?
For I am somehow sure she is a girl.
This is a thought too big for Bell to think.
I must grow into it by slow degrees.
God, do you read the change there is in me?
I am not quite as selfish as I was.
I felt for Candle though he is not here
and tried to comfort him. I start to fear
the feeling that will grow if I think much
about the little daughter I have lost.
Strange how the baby-minded Wedderburn
has taught this cracked and empty-headed Bell
to be more feelingful for other folk.
He managed it by making me his nurse
when we reached Switzerland. I’ll tell you how.
The jealousy which he had shown in London
did not depart when we reached Amsterdam.
The only time we were not arm-in-arm
was when he left me in a waiting-room
to see a doctor for his lethargy—
that’s what he called the tiredness that he felt,
which was quite natural. We all need rest,
and time to sit and look and dream and think.
The doctor’s pills let him dispense with rest.
We rushed through racecourses and boxing-clubs,
cathedrals, café-dansants, music-halls.
His face was white, his eyes grew huge and shone.
“I am no weakling, Bell!” he cried. “On! On!”
Thank you, dear God, for teaching me to sleep
by simply sitting down and shutting eyes.
In omnibuses, trains, cabs, trams and boats
this came in handy, but was not enough—
I had to find some other way to sleep.
The second night abroad we went to see
an opera by Wagner. It was long,
and Wedder, every time I shut my eyes,
nudged me and hissed, “Wake up and concentrate!”
This taught me how to sleep with open eyes.
Soon I could also do it standing up
and rushing arm-in-arm from place to place.
I think I answered questions in my sleep—
the only answer he required was, “Yes dear.”
I always wakened up in our hotels,
offices where I sent you telegrams
(while Wedder telegrammed to his mama)
in restaurants, because I like my food,
but nowhere else except the Frankfort zoo
and German betting-shop I will describe.
I think it was the smell which wakened me.
&nbs
p; This place (just like the zoo) stank of despair,
and fearful hope, also of stale obsession
which seemed a mixture of the first two stinks.
My fancy nose perhaps exaggerated—
I opened eyes upon a brilliant room.
Do you remember taking me to see
the Glasgow Stock Exchange? It looked like that.15
Around me fluted columns, cream and gold,
held up a vaulted ceiling, blue and white,
from which hung shining crystal chandeliers
which lit up all the business underneath—
six tables where smart people played roulette.
Against the walls were sofas, scarlet plush,
where more smart people sat, and one was me.
And Wedderburn was standing by my side,
and gazing at the table nearest us,
and muttering, “I see. I see. I see.”
I thought that he was talking in his sleep
with open eyes, as I had done. I said,
(gentle but firm) “Let’s go to our hotel,
dear Duncan. I will put you into bed.”
He stared at me, then slowly shook his head.
“Not yet. Not yet. I have a thing to do.
I know you inwardly despise my brain—
think it a mere appendage to my prick
and less efficient than my testicles.
I tell you Bella, that this brain now grasps
a mighty FACT which other men call CHANCE
because they cannot grasp it. Now I see
that GOD, FATE, DESTINY, like LUCK and
CHANCE
are noises glorifying IGNORANCE
under the label of a solemn name.
Up, woman, and attend me to the game!”
The people at the table turned to stare
as we approached. One offered him a chair.
He murmured thanks, and into it he slid.
I stood behind to watch, as he had bid.
Dear God I am tired. It is late. Writing like Shakespeare is hard work for a woman with a cracked head who cannot spell properly, though I notice my writing is getting smaller. Tomorrow we stop at Athens. Do you remember taking me there ages ago by way of Zagreb and Sarajevo? I hope they have mended the Parthenon. Now I will creep to Wedder’s side and say what led to his collapse another day, ending this entry with a line of stars.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
At dawn our ship, which is a Russian one,
left Constantinetcetera; now we steam
out of the Bosphorus toward Odessa.
The air is fresh and calm, the sky clear blue.
I wrapped my man up warm and made him sit
outside upon a deck-chair for an hour.
Had I not done it he’d have crouched below,
reading the Bible in his bunk all day.
Again he begged to be joined onto me
in “wholly wedlock”. Wholly wedlock! Ugh.
The joys of wedding cannot be locked up,
not even partly, nor can his nipple-noddle
remember I must marry someone else.
The mob who clustered round the roulette table
did not seem smart when we were part of it.
Of course some folk were rich or richly dressed
with fine silk waistcoats, officers’ tail coats
and obvious breasts in low-cut velvet gowns.
Others were wealthy in a middling way
like merchants, owners of small properties
or clergymen, all very neat and sober,
and some of them escorted by their wives.
At first I did not notice any poor
(the obviously poor were not let in)
but then I saw some clothes were not quite clean,
or fraying at the cuffs, or buttoned high
to hide the colour of the underwear.
The rich laid gold and notes upon the squares.
Middle folk bet with silver more than gold,
and thought a lot before they placed their bets.
The poorest people staked the smallest coins,
or stood and stared with faces white as Wedder’s.
Folk who moved money fast were rich or poor,
or turning quickly into rich or poor:
yet rich, poor, middling—frantic, stunned, amused—
young, in the prime of strength or elderly—
German, French, Spaniard, Russian or Swede—
even some English folk who seldom bid
but stared about as if superior—
had something wrong with them. I worked out what,
but not before the damage had been done.
The spinning wheel and little rattling ball
ground something down in those who bet and watched,
and they were pleased to feel it ground away
because it was so precious that they loathed it,
and loved to see others destroy it too.
I’ve since discussed this with a clever man
who says the precious thing has many names.
Poor people call it money; priests, the soul;
the Germans call it will and poets, love.
He called it freedom, for that makes men feel
to blame for what they do. Men hate that feeling,
so want it crushed and killed. I am no man.
To me the place stank like a Roman game
where tortured minds, not bodies were the show.
This crowd had come to see the human mind
whose thoughts can wander through eternity
pinned to a little accidental ball.
Poor Wedder, meanwhile, had begun to bet.
Most of the gamblers shifted bets about
from black squares onto red and back again.
Wedderburn bet upon a single square
marked zero, laying one gold coin on it.
He lost, bet two, lost those, then bet and lost
four, eight, sixteen, then laid down thirty-two.
A wooden-rake-man pushed back twelve of these—
twenty was highest bet the shop would take.
Wedderburn shrugged and let the twenty lie.
The ball was rattled round and Wedder won.
He won a lot. The little rolls of gold
were given him in small blue envelopes.
He turned and faced me with a happy smile,
the first I had from him since we eloped.
While pocketing the gold he murmured, “Well?
You did not know that I could do it, Bell!”
I felt such pity for his muddled head
I did not notice he was glad to think
he had done something to astonish me.
I should have said, “O Duncan you were grand!
I nearly fainted, I was so impressed—
now let us have a meal to celebrate.”
I should have said that. What I said was this.
“O Duncan please take me away from here!
Let us play billiards—billiards need some skill.
Come, let us set the perfect ivory globes
gliding and clicking on the smooth green cloth.”
His face, from white, went red. He frightened me.
“You hate to see me win? You hate roulette?”
he hissed. “Then woman, know I hate it too!
Hate and despise it! And to prove I do
will now AMAZE, APPAL AND PUT TO SHAME
THE CROUPIERS WHO CONTROL—
THE FOOLS WHO PLAY THIS GAME!”
He stood, strode past me to another table,
sat down and started playing as before.
I would have left and gone to our hotel
but did not know the way, nor yet the name.
That was what came of too much sleep-walking—
I’d ended up not knowing where I was.
I sat upon a sofa by the wall
while Wedder left each table
where he won
and shifted to the next. Folk followed him.
I heard much babble, voices shout “Bravo!”
then rumpus, stramash, pandemonium.
The other gamblers thought he was a hero.
Some praised his courage. Ladies in low-cut gowns
gave him glad looks, meaning “Come wed me quick.”
A Jewish broker, weeping like a fountain,
begged him to leave before his luck ran out.
He played until they shut shop for the night.
It took a while to pack his money up.
While this was done poor Wedderburn got wooed,
fawned on and flattered all he wished, though not
by me. I heard a cough and someone say,
“Madame, will you forgive if I intrude?”
and looking sideways ding ding whoopee God!
The dinner bell! I’m feeling ravenous—
hungry parched famished and athirst for bortsch,
a splendid beetroot soup, but still have time
to finish off this entry with a rhyme.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I will not write like Shakespeare any more. It slows me down, especially now I am trying to spell words in the long way most people do. Another warm Odessa day. The sky is a high sheet of perfectly smooth pale-grey cloud which does not even hide the horizon. I sit with my little writing-case open on my knees on the topmost step of a huge flight of steps descending to the harbour front. It is wide enough to march an army down, and very like the steps down to the West End Park near our house,16 God. All kinds of people promenade here too, but if I sat writing a letter on the Glasgow steps many would give me angry or astonished looks, and if I was poorly dressed the police would move me on. The Russians ignore me completely or smile in a friendly way. Of all the nations I have visited the U.S.A. and Russia suit me best. The people seem more ready to talk to strangers without being formal or disapproving. Is this because, like me, they have very little past? The friend I made in the betting-shop who talked to me about roulette and freedom and the soul is Russian. He said Russia is as young a country as the U.S.A. because a nation is only as old as its literature.
“Our literature began with Pushkin, a contemporary of your Walter Scott,” he told me. “Before Pushkin Russia was not a true nation, it was an administered region. Our aristocracy spoke French, our bureaucracy was Prussian, and the only true Russians—the peasants—were despised by rulers and bureaucracy alike. Then Pushkin learned the folk-tales from his nursemaid, a woman of the people. His novellas and poems made us proud of our language and aware of our tragic past—our peculiar present—our enigmatic future. He made Russia a state of mind—made it real. Since then we have had Gogol who was as great as your Dickens and Turgénieff who is greater than your George Eliot and Tolstoï who is as great as your Shakespeare. But you had Shakespeare centuries before Walter Scott.”
Poor Things Page 10
