Poor Things

by Alasdair Gray

  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.”