by Nigel Dennis
‘Is his mother an Amazon?’
‘Oh, my dear, yes! In her prime she’s been something – sacrificed and eaten most of her children, castrated Herakles, netted and boiled four husbands. The chorus sings a complete account of her career while she has her ear to the keyhole. But I see it’s all far above your head. You don’t grasp it at all. Not that I do, myself. I would much rather not write the play at all.’
‘Then why not drop it?’
‘How can I, dear? Don’t be too obtuse. I must know who I am, mustn’t I?’
‘Surely your own play isn’t going to tell you?’
‘Of course not, dear; it’s the critics who’ll tell me. At the moment I don’t exist; I don’t even know what to become. But once my play’s done, I’ll know. One critic will say: “Harold Snatogen reveals himself as an embodiment of the fashionable anti-Moon Goddess revival.” Another will say: “In Snatogen we see what Hegel called …” and then he’ll tell what Hegel called. After that it will be quite simple: I shall become the most flattering definition. You see, nowadays you can’t hope to do everything yourself. You produce the little boys, as it were, and the critics tell you what you’re made of. Once you’ve been told, you just sail ahead, being yourself. It’s the first little boy that matters.’
‘So you are another who insists on being defined,’ I said angrily. ‘I seem to be the last of the liberal humanists. You are nothing but an inverted Philistine.’
‘Not really?’ he exclaimed excitedly, seizing my hands. ‘Oh, if only you were an expert in such matters! If only I could trust your judgement! But I need a more authoritative definition than yours. And it has to be printed. Speech is useless.’
We sat in silence, he sadly stroking away his wrinkles, I plucking ridges in my combies. The gap that separates defined men and women is as nothing to that which stands between two inhabitants of the demimonde who are not agreed on a common centre. I felt that no matter how long we sat there – talking, sympathizing, exchanging views – we would never be anything but strangers, sharing nothing but a common twilight. It was a relief to both of us, I think, to hear Violet’s boots clumping up the stairs and the crash of her hips against the banisters.
‘I thought,’ she said, ‘I told you to let nobody in.’
Harold did not wait. With a burst, he shot under her arm and vanished down the stairs.
‘Don’t blame me,’ I replied hotly. ‘What about that girl who has a key? Look what she’s done to me.’
Violet stepped forward. She looked at the scratches on my face. She ran her eyes down my combinations. She looked at the ripped taffeta on the carpet. Then she drew back her left fist and smote me.
*
I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I know I dreamt that I was the king in Harold’s play and that when my mother bared her breast, I said: ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, mum, but Athens simply must come first.’ My father, who was present, said later: ‘Of course, dear, you were quite right. And anyway, she was rather a nuisance, wasn’t she?’ But he spoke in Harold’s squeaky voice and wore a taffeta evening-dress, whereas my mother was laid out for burial in the costume of a Tyrolean mountaineer, with hairy knees. Dr Shubunkin says that one would hardly expect anything else: he interprets my mother’s knees as a protest against Violet’s father’s beard and the Tyrolean costume as a snub to Violet’s ascent of Everest.
I had been moved to the bedroom. A party was going on in the room where I’d been hit. Violet was talking to a friend: she said: ‘Come and see him if you are curious. He’s a dear little thing. If he turns out well, I’m going to have nothing but ones like him in future.’ The other woman answered: ‘Are you going to have him doctored?’ ‘Probably not,’ said Violet reflectively, ‘I always think a lobotomy is better for excitable types of either sex. The trouble is that nowadays one can never quite be sure what one really wants. I think it would be a greater triumph to keep him exactly as he is – but much more modern, of course, to do as you suggest. To tell the truth, when he’s properly dressed I don’t think it will make a hap’orth of difference either way.’
‘He is a he, then, is he?’
‘He, she, or it.’
They came into the bedroom. I kept my eyes closed in the most natural way. I felt myself prodded and pinched: my upper lip was raised and my teeth examined. ‘Well,’ said the woman after a few minutes, ‘You’ve certainly got something. Just what is another matter.’ They both laughed. ‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ said the woman, ‘but personally I do like to know what’s what. I don’t look forward to hybrid love-affairs: I like my girls to be girls.’ ‘Then you’ll soon find yourself hopelessly left behind,’ said Violet: ‘we are getting closer to sexual chaos every day and I don’t intend to be left at the bottom of the heap. Answer me frankly, now: is there anything about this little thing here that remotely resembles what we mean when we say a man?’ I admit,’ replied the other, ‘that it is a dual-purpose creature. But I feel it should be in a museum.’ ‘I can always put it in the Victoria and Albert when I’m tired of it,’ replied Violet: ‘meanwhile I see it as a sort of investment.’ ‘What will you dress it in?’ asked the other. ‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Violet slowly, ‘but my plan at the moment is to keep it in the house for a few weeks as a playmate. It can wear a neutral blouse and slacks. After that, I shall dress it like a sort of man and marry it to one of my old girls. Little Hilda, for instance, would adore a small husband. I’ll make them live close by and then I’ll be able to use both of them. I could put them in a cottage and go and share them at weekends.’
After a while the other woman said: ‘You know, Violet, all this doubling is going to be the ruin of you. Eventually you’re going to forget your own sex and become a hybrid of hybrids yourself. Why not stop while you still know?’
‘I can’t stop,’ said Violet in a strong voice. ‘Even if it leads to nonentity, I must go on. I won’t be happy till all the men are girls and all the girls are men – and then I won’t be happy until I’ve changed them all back again. I won’t be happy until no one knows a he from a she. I want to be able to tell them which they are – which will be what I want them to be at any particular moment. I want them to be infinitely exchangeable and alterable. I want to see doctors advertising rebored, resleeved, reconditioned sexual engines, guaranteed to fit any body. I want utterly to erase the memory of centuries of sexual discrimination by making every human creature a sexual melting-pot. I am going to be sex’s first great Nihilist. I know that men, in the past, experimented with being all things to all men and women, but I’m going to go one better: I’m going to make all the men and women be all things to me. When absolute sexual nonentity has been reached, the female principle may be permitted to wither away. Men themselves are already absolutely negligible, but the idea of manliness has still to be rooted out. At the same time, people must have a feeling of security in their lives; someone has to rule the roost. It can never be the men again, their moral cowardice and terror where women are concerned has undone them permanently. On the other hand, the women are so utterly conventional that even the ones who use their men like doormats like to pretend that at heart they are gentle, sensitive little things forever in search of a manly bully. So we are in what is always called a transitional period – and nothing disgusts me more than the transitional. It is a world of disguises and fabrications; every he in the book is acted-out in order to hide the truth … Oh, well … It’s a long story and this little mannikin here is nothing but a tiny episode in it – a little pimple on the face of progress. If I thought there was real stuff in him, I’d turn him over to Sven Ormerod, the plastic surgeon, and have him really done-up. He’d make a handsome woman.’
I must have turned pale as I listened to this terrible recital. I could hear my heart racing; I trembled all over; and yet, even in this state of panic, my mind remained normal enough for me to think with amazement of the innocence of my dear father and mother. Like harmless missionaries they had set up their littl
e camp, dogs and all, on the verge of a forest inhabited entirely by wild and savage creatures; daily they had preached their little doctrine, thinking it something tender and new, while only a few yards away the forest was alive with monsters practising it. I am sorry to say that at that moment a trace of cynicism entered my heart and remains there to this day.
I heard a voice say: ‘Violet, the policemen are here,’ and Violet answer: ‘I’m coming. I hope they’re bigger than the last two.’ ‘Absolutely enormous, darling,’ was the reply; and then they all moved out and I was alone again. Once more, the key turned in the lock.
I opened my eyes and looked wildly round the room. The only route of escape was through the window, which I raised silently. It opened on a nice flat piece of leaded roof – which, alas, led nowhere. There was the conventional drainpipe, of course, leading down into black nothingness; but not even my dread of falling into the hands of Professor Ormerod could make me trust myself to it. There was always the other conventional way, of knotting sheets together; but one is not tempted to such a course with war-time sheets. No, if I were to escape I must somehow open that locked door, make my way unseen through the crowded living-room and walk away down the stairs.
Now, if there is one thing on which I pride myself it is my ability to recognize the central question in a given problem. In this case, the question was: What kind of protective coloration does one put on in order to pass unnoticed through a room containing twelve lesbians and two policemen? Like many questions facing us today, this is a difficult one to answer; indeed, it raises the more-important question of whether people are not too optimistic when they argue that it is questions, not answers, that are of primary importance. Be that as it may, I found an answer to my question almost immediately.
I was still wearing my combinations, a good foundation for the disguise I selected. I opened Violet’s wardrobe and with great coolness selected a shaggy pair of tweed trousers and heavy boots. Over all, I drew a heavy overcoat, which I buttoned to the chin. I selected the heaviest walking-stick and found to my delight, a large briar pipe. I put a deer-stalker on my head. Then came the boldest moment: I lifted the black beard from its peg and adjusted it to my chin.
When I looked in the glass I hardly knew myself. I looked so exactly like Violet’s father that for a moment I fell into a brown study and allowed my heart to range nostalgically through the century before my birth, when any doubt as to the nature of one’s sex was utterly dissipated by the unanswerable character of one’s visage. This led me to think of the many men who during and since the war have grown such immense moustaches: poor, simple souls! I thought – too late, too late! Your mettle will never rise to the ferocity of your hairs: face to face with the Violets of this world, your proud handlebars will melt into waxy pigtails, fit only for desiccated mandarins. Your courage, unequalled in battle with other men, has abandoned you in your domestic life. It has entered into your women, which is why I, at this moment of disguise, look every inch a Victorian man but feel myself every inch a modern woman!
I did not feel quite so resolute when I approached the locked door and heard the roar of the savages in the next room. Their hoarse exhortations and drunken cheers told me that Violet was starting her famous policeman trick, whatever that might be. If I were to escape, it must be at the moment when her every thought was centred upon her trick: that is to say, almost immediately.
I took an assegai from the wardrobe and inserted it carefully between the door and the jamb at the level of the keyhole. I heard Violet shout: ‘No bending, now, you buttered muffins! Stiff as lamp-posts or I’ll take a stick to you!’ I heard an answering giggle from what could only, in that room, be one of the policemen. Then, suddenly, absolute silence fell.
I waited a few seconds and then gave the assegai a powerful wrench. The door flew open: I marched straight out.
A most curious scene lay before me. I hardly know whether to describe it vertically or horizontally: on the whole, I think I had better begin at the bottom. This means Violet.
She was on all fours, naked save for a pair of orange shorts and a webbed bra. Her face (fortunately, as it turned out) was towards me, but it was only two feet from the floor, because her legs were straddled wide apart, the muscles bulging like parsnips. Over her shoulders was a small oak table, on which stood no less than four women of immense bulk. Rigid on the floor, on each side of the table, stood two large policemen. Violet, holding each one by the nearest ankle with her left and right hands, was at the moment of my entry beginning to rise to an erect position, taking with her this colossal human load. At the moment I strode in, the four nymphs were almost touching the ceiling and both policemen were some three feet above floor level.
The effect of my entry was, plainly, catastrophic. Violet, whose face had been rich purple and strained to bursting, let out a single scream of ‘Father!’ and crashed full length upon the floor. She was followed down by the table, the legs of which instantly snapped so that it lay across her back with the four enormous women sprawled on top of it. Both policemen fell inwards and joined the ladies. A howl of horror went up on either side.
I had no need even to raise my stick. With a hard, contemptuous expression on my bearded face I walked coolly round the central obstacle, opened the door, and descended the stairs. I reached the pavement without the least trouble – and there, pacing up and down with an anxious look, was none other than my good little Harold! The very sight of him was enough to break down my masculine pretence, and I called in a desperate, broken voice: ‘Oh, Harold, are you waiting for me? Take me home, take me somewhere, take me anywhere!’
He raised his head, took one look at my portentous form, and let out a squeal of terror. He then set off into the darkness as fast as he could run, his little round elbows working frantically up and down. I rushed after him crying, ‘Harold! Harold! It’s me! Don’t you know me, Harold?’, but as my heavy boots and the roaring of the wind in my Victorian passage began to gain on him, he started to scream desperately: ‘No, no! I couldn’t face it! Leave me alone, you awful man! You visitation, you judgement! I never asked for you!’ Panic gave strength to his little legs, but not enough: soon, they began to wobble and he fell in a heap. Tearing off my beard, I tore his fingers from his eyes and cried: ‘Look, Harold! I am not what you think. I am what I am.’ But it was not until I had forcibly pried his mauve eyelids apart that he glimpsed me from the corner of one skewed eyeball and lapsed into a brief faint of relief. I sat and chafed his little hands till he came round – and with what indignation did he at last purse his little mouth and flare his ivory nostrils! ‘You have frightened me totally out of my wits,’ he said angrily, his voice trembling: ‘words cannot express my mingled disappointment and horror. For the first time I knew what poor Io felt when she saw that abominable bull. What are you doing here? Why are you Walt Whitman? Where is Violet?’
‘She is under a table, topped by twelve Amazons and two bobbies,’ I replied.
‘My dear, what a tableau! Too raffish!’ He began to arrange his hair.
‘You were waiting for me, Harold?’ I asked.
‘In a sense, yes.’
By now, I was all woman – old fashioned, soft, weepy, infinitely grateful. I threw my arms about his neck and cried: ‘Oh, Harold! you have proved yourself the finest of men! Take me away somewhere! Protect and love me always, your meek, adoring wife!’
He gave a choked scream, and cried: ‘Really, this is too much! It is worse than the beard! Drop me immediately, you indescribable woman!’
I at once obeyed, and adopting as best I could a neuter tone, I said: ‘Harold, I promise not to lay a finger of either sex upon you. Only find me some place where I can hide from Violet. She was going to turn me over to a surgeon, Harold.’
‘So unnecessary,’ he answered, with a frown. ‘Well, come along then. I have a good place in mind. It was where I was waiting to take you when you first fell upon me.’
We got into a taxi and Harold gave the driver an
address, saying: ‘And drive like anything.’ He was quite perky by now and pleased with himself, and said at one point in our drive: ‘You know, this is going to make all the difference to my play. Until an hour ago I was merely toying with the fringes of reality, my dear, simply hovering on the extreme hem. When I have translated your disguise into terms of classical rape, there won’t be a house in London big enough to take in the flocks. And, my dear, the Lord Chamberlain!’
But I was too unstrung to discuss literature. The taxi drew up, I paid the driver with a half-sovereign from the greatcoat pocket, and Harold rang the bell. The door opened, a shaft of light fell upon me, and I swooned upon the doormat, the beard slipping from my fingers.
*
I awoke, dressed in silk pyjamas and with scent behind my ears, on a lovely painted sofa, set in a room that was filled with light, colour, and flowers. Harold was lying naked under a sun-lamp, rubbing cold-cream into his crow’s-feet and turning with his palms the pages of a pornographic volume. In a corner, deftly arranging Michaelmas daisies in a tall vase, stood a plump, well-dressed man. A Philippino manservant was dusting a figure of Adonis with a feather whisk – or so I thought until the figure said: ‘That’s quite enough, Carlo,’ and walked lightly from the room.
‘Yes,’ said the man with the flowers: ‘it will be a lesson to you, Harold. I have urged you a hundred times to bring a little daintiness and order into your life, and instead you have courted turmoil. I was patient when the bosun thrashed you; I hid you when you fled the large Jamaican; I interposed my own form when your devious camping turned the sun-porch to a jungle. As a result, you have come to believe that my affection for you will always be on top, my sword for ever unsheathed in your behalf. But this is not the case. What, pray, would you have done, if this bearded monster had proved real? How would you have emerged from such a test? Would you have emerged at all? Would you have wished to emerge? For that is really the main question. Each time I succour you, I have the feeling that I have let you down, disappointed you. It is no good your talking of Zeus in the guise of some predatory animal: what are you doing in the den at all? What have the classics to do with it? It seems to me you have got your identity confused: in the Greek world it is only heroes who go out in search of monsters, and there is no trace of the heroic in you. Instead, there is some nagging compulsion to wriggle yourself – for wriggle is the only word – into the very centre of a predicament in which you will be utterly defenceless when the moment comes to pay the piper.’
