The Rebel Angels tct-1

by Robertson Davies

  “If Maria wrote to me like that, I’d believe her.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she knows. She has extraordinary intuition about people.”

  “Do you think so? She sent me a very queer fish, and he’s certainly an oddity in Sheldonian terms, so I’ve put him on the bucket. An interesting contributor, but only about once a week.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Now Simon, you know I couldn’t tell you his name. Not ethical at all. Sometimes we talk about doubt. He’s a great doubter. Used to be a monk. The interesting thing about him is his Sheldonian type. Very rare; a 376. You follow? Very intellectual and nervy, but a fantastic physique. A dangerous man, I’d say, with a makeup like that. Could get very rough. He’s abused his body just about every way that’s possible and from the whiff of his buckets I think he’s well into drugs right now, but although he’s on the small side he’s fantastically muscular and strong. He wants the money, but he isn’t a big producer. Plugged. That’s drugs. I don’t like him, but he’s a rarity, so I put up with him.”

  “For Maria’s sake?”

  “No. For my sake. Listen, you don’t think I’m soft about Maria, do you? She’s a nice girl right enough, but that’s all.”

  “Not an interesting type?”

  “Not from my point of view. Too well balanced.”

  “No chance she might turn out to be a Pyknic Practical Joke?”

  “Never. She’ll age well. Be a fine woman. Slumped, probably; that’s inherent in the female build. But she’ll be sturdy, right up to the end.”

  “Ozy, about these Sheldonian types; are they irrevocable?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Last time I talked to you, you were very frank about me, and my tendency towards fat. Do you remember?”

  “Yes; that was the first time Maria came here. What I said about you wasn’t the result of an examination, of course. Just a guess. But I’d put you down as a 425—soft, chunky, abundant energy. Big gut.”

  “The literary gut, I think you said.”

  “Lots of literary people have it. You can have a big gut without being literary, of course.”

  “Don’t rob me of the one consolation you offered! But what I want to know is this: couldn’t somebody of that type moderate his physique, by the right kind of diet and exercise, and general care?”

  “To some extent. Not without more trouble than it would probably be worth. That’s what’s wrong with all these diets and body-building courses and so forth. You can go against your type, and probably achieve a good deal as long as you keep at it. Look at these Hollywood stars—they starve themselves and get surgeons to carve them into better shapes and all that because it’s their livelihood. Every now and then one of them can’t stand it any more, then it’s the overdose. The body is the inescapable factor, you see. You can keep in good shape for what you are, but radical change is impossible. Health isn’t making everybody into a Greek ideal; it’s living out the destiny of the body. If you’re thinking about yourself, I guess you could knock off twenty-five pounds to advantage, but that wouldn’t make you a thin man; it’d make you a neater fat man. What the cost would be to your nerves, I couldn’t even guess.”

  “In short, be not another if thou canst be thyself.”

  “What’s that?”

  “More Paracelsus.”

  “He’s dead right. But it isn’t simple, being yourself. You have to know yourself physiologically and people don’t want to believe the truth about themselves. They get some mental picture of themselves and then they devil the poor old body, trying to make it like the picture. When it won’t obey—can’t obey, of course—they are mad at it, and live in it as if it were an unsatisfactory house they were hoping to move out of. A lot of illness comes from that.”

  “You make it sound like physiological predestination.”

  “Don’t quote me on that. Not my field at all. I have my problem and it’s all I can take care of.”

  “Discovering the value that lies in what is despised and rejected.”

  “That’s what Maria says. But wouldn’t I look stupid if I announced that as the theme of my Kober Lecture?”

  “ ‘This is the stone which was set at naught of your builders, which is become the head of the corner.’ “

  “You don’t talk that way to scientists, Simon.”

  “Then tell them it is the lapis exilis, the Philosopher’s Stone of their spiritual ancestors, the alchemists.”

  “Oh, get away, get away, get away!”

  Laughing, I got away.

  4

  I set to work to become a neater fat man, as that seemed to be the best I could hope for, and sank rapidly into the ill-nature that overcomes me when I deny myself a reasonable amount of rich food and creamy desserts. I thought sourly of Ozy, and great man though he might be, I reflected that I could give a better Kober Lecture than he, fattening out my scientific information with plums from Paracelsus and giving it a persuasive humanistic gloss that would wake up the audience from the puritan stupor of their scientific attitude. Whereupon I immediately reproached myself for vanity. What did I know about Ozy’s work? What was I but a silly fat ass whose pudgy body was the conning-tower from which a thin and acerbic soul peered out at the world? No: that wouldn’t do either. I wasn’t as fat as that suggested, nor was my spirit really sour when I allowed myself enough to eat. I wasted a lot of time in this sort of foolish inner wrangling, and the measure of my abjection is that once or twice—besotted lover as I was—I wondered if Maria were really worth all this trouble.

  One of Parlabane’s tedious whims was that he liked to take baths in my bathroom; he said that the arrangements at his boarding-house were primitive. He was a luxurious bather and a great man for parading about naked, which was not unselfconsciousness but calculated display. He was vain of his body, as well he might be, for at the same age as myself he was firm and muscular, had slim ankles and that impressive contour of belly in which the rectus muscles may be seen, like Roman armour. It was surely unjust that a man who had drugged and boozed for twenty years and who was, by Ozy’s account, decidedly constipated, should look so well in the buff. His face, of course, was a mess, and he could not see very much without his glasses, but even so he was an impressive and striking contrast to the man who removed my old suit and some lamentable underclothes. Clothed he looked shabby and sinister; naked he looked disturbingly like Satan in a drawing by Blake. Not at all a man with whom one would want to get into a fight.

  “I wish I were in as good shape as you are,” said I, on one of these occasions.

  “Don’t wish it if you hope to be remembered as a theologian,” said he; “they are all bonies or fatties. Not one like me in the lot. Put on another forty pounds, Simon, and you’ll be about the size of Aquinas when he confuted the Manichees. You know he got so fat they had to make him a special altar with a half-moon carved out of it to accommodate his turn? You have a long way to go yet.”

  “I have it on the assurance of Ozy Froats, now distinguished and justified as the latest recipient of the Kober Medal, that I am of the literary sort of physique,” said I. “I have what Ozy calls the literary gut. Perhaps if you had a gently swelling belly like mine, instead of that fine washboard of muscles that I envy, your novel might read more easily.”

  “I’d gladly take on the burden of your paunch if I could get a decisive answer from a publisher.”

  “Nothing doing yet?”

  “Four rejections.”

  “That seems decisive, so far as it goes.” He sank into one of my armchairs, naked as he was, and though he was clearly much dejected, his muscles held firm, and he looked rather splendid (except for his thick specs), like a figure of a defeated author by Rodin.

  “No. The only decisive answer that I will recognize is an acceptance of the book, on my terms, for publication as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, come; I didn’t mean to be discouraging. But—four rejections! It’s nothing at all. Yo
u must simply hang on and keep pestering publishers. Lots of authors have gone on doing that for years.”

  “I know, but I won’t. I feel at the end of my tether.”

  “It’s Lent, as I don’t have to remind you. The most discouraging season of the year.”

  “Do you do much about Lent, Simon?”

  “I’m eating less, but that’s incidental. What I usually do is take on a programme of introspection and self-examination—try to tidy myself up a bit. Do you?”

  “I’m coming unstuck, Simon. It’s the book. I can’t get anybody to take it seriously, and it’s killing me. It’s my life, far more than I had suspected.”

  “Your autobiography, you mean?”

  “Hell, no! I’ve told you it isn’t meanly autobiographical. But it’s the best of me, and if it’s ignored, what of me will survive? You’re too fat to have any idea what an obsession is.”

  “I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean to be flippant.”

  “It’s what I’ve salvaged from a not very square deal in this miserable hole of a world. It’s all of me—root and crown. You don’t know what I would do to get it published.”

  He grew more and more miserable, but did not lose his sense of self-preservation, because before he left he had touched me for two more shirts and some socks and another hundred dollars, which was all I had in my desk. I hate to seem mean-spirited, but I was growing tired of listening to the romantic agonies of his spirit, while forking out to sustain the wants of his flesh.

  He earned money. Not much, but enough to keep him. What did he spend my money, and Maria’s money, and Hollier’s money on?

  Could it really be drugs? He looked too well. Drink? He drank a good deal when he could sponge on somebody, but he didn’t have any sign of being a drunkard. Where did the money go? I didn’t know but I resented being continually asked for contributions.

  5

  Lent, proper season for self-examination, perhaps for self-mortification, but never, so far as I know, a season for love. Nevertheless, love was my daily companion, my penance, my hair shirt. Something had to be done about it, but what? Face the facts, Simon; how does a clergyman of forty-five manoeuvre himself into a position where he can tell a young woman of twenty-three that he loves her, and what does she think about that? What might she be expected to think? Face facts, fool.

  But can one, in the grip of an obsession, face facts or even judge what facts are relevant?

  I worked out several scenarios and planned a number of eminently reasonable but warmly worded speeches; then, as often happens, it all came about suddenly and, considering everything, easily. As Hollier’s research assistant, Maria had the privilege of eating with the dons in Spook’s Hall at dinner, and one night in late March I met her just after the Rector had said the grace that ended the meal, as we were moving towards coffee in the Senior Common Room. Or rather, I was heading towards coffee and asked her if I could bring some to her. No, she said, Spook coffee wasn’t what she wanted at the moment. I saw an opening, and snatched it.

  “If you would like to walk over to my rooms in Ploughwright, I’ll make you some really good coffee. I could also give you cognac, if you’d like that.”

  “I’d love it.”

  Five minutes later she was helping me—watching me, really—as I set my little Viennese coffee-maker on the electric element. Fifteen minutes later I had told her that I loved her and, rather more coherently than I had ever expected, I told her about the notion of Sophia (with which she was acquainted from her medieval studies) and that she was Sophia to me. She sat silent for what seemed a long time.

  “I’ve never been so flattered in my life,” she said at last.

  “Then the idea doesn’t seem totally ridiculous to you.”

  “Certainly not ridiculous. How could you think of yourself as ridiculous?”

  “A man of my age, in love with a woman of your age, could certainly seem ridiculous.”

  “But you’re not just any man of your age. You are a beautiful man. I’ve admired you ever since the first class where I met you.”

  “Maria, don’t tease me. I know what I am. I’m middle-aged and not at all good-looking.”

  “Oh, that! I meant beautiful because of your wonderful spirit, and the marvellous love you bring to your scholarship. Why would anybody care what you look like?—Oh, that sounds terrible; you look just right for what you are. But looks don’t really matter, do they?”

  “How can you say that? You, who are so beautiful yourself?”

  “If your looks attracted as much attention as mine do, and made people think so many stupid things about you, you’d see it all differently.”

  “Does what I’ve told you I think about you seem stupid?”

  “No, no; I didn’t mean that. What you’ve said, coming from you, is the most wonderful compliment I’ve ever had.”

  “So what do we do about it? Dare I ask if you love me.”

  “Yes, most certainly I do love you. But I don’t think it’s the kind of love you mean when you tell me you love me.”

  “Then—?”

  “I must think very carefully about what I say. I love you, but I’ve never even called you Simon. I love you because of your power to lead me to understand things I didn’t understand before, or understand in the same way. I love you because you have made your learning the chief nourisher of your life, and it has made you a special sort of man. You are like a fire: you warm me.”

  “So what are we to do about it?”

  “Must we do something about it? Aren’t we doing something about it already? If I am Sophia to you, what do you suppose you are to me?”

  “I’m not sure I understand. You say you love me, and I am something great to you. So are we to become lovers?”

  “I think we already are lovers.”

  “I mean differently. Completely.”

  “You mean a love affair? Going to bed and all that?”

  “Is it out of the question?”

  “No, but I think it would be a great mistake.”

  “Oh, Maria, can you be sure? Look, you know what I am; I’m a clergyman. I’m not asking you to be my mistress. I think that would be shabby.”

  “Well, I certainly couldn’t marry you!”

  “You mean it’s utterly out of the question?”

  “Utterly.”

  “Ah. But I can’t make dishonourable proposals to you. don’t think it’s just prudery—”

  “No, no; I really do understand. ‘You could not love me, dear, so much/Loved you not honour more.’ “

  “Not just honour. You can put it like that, but it’s something weightier than honour. I am a priest forever, after the order of Melchisedek; it binds me to live by certain inflexible rules. If I take you without giving you an oath before an altar it wouldn’t be long before I was something you would hate; I would be a renegade priest. Not a drunkard, or a lecher, or anything comparatively simple and perhaps forgivable, but an oath-breaker. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes, I can understand it perfectly. You would have broken an oath to God.”

  “Yes. You do understand it. Thank you, Maria.”

  “I’m sure you will admit I’d cut a strange figure as the wife of a clergyman. And—forgive me for saying this—I don’t think it’s really a wife you want, Simon. You want someone to love. Can’t you love me without bringing in all these side-issues about marriage and going to bed and things that I don’t really think have any bearing on what we are talking about?”

  “You certainly ask a lot! Don’t you know anything about men?”

  “Not a great deal. But I think I know quite a lot about you.”

  As soon as I had said it I wished it unsaid, but the jealous spirit was too quick for me. “You don’t know as much about me as you do about Hollier!”

  She turned pale, which made her skin an olive shade. “Who told you about that? I don’t suppose I need to ask; he must have told you.”

  “Maria! Maria, you must understand�
��it wasn’t like that! He wasn’t boasting or stupid; he was wretched and he told me because I am a priest, and I should never have given you a hint!”

  “Is that true?”

  “I swear it is true.”

  “Then listen to me, because this is true. I love Hollier. I love him the way I love you—for the splendid thing you are, in your own world of splendid things. Like a fool I wanted him the way you are talking about, and whether it was because I wanted him or he wanted me I don’t know and never shall know, but it was a very great mistake. Because of that stupidity, which didn’t amount to a damn as an experience, I think I have put something between us that has almost lost him to me. Do you think I want to do that with you? Are all men such greedy fools that they think love only comes with that special favour?”

  “The world thinks of it as the completion of love.”

  “Then the world still has something important to learn. Simon, you called me Sophia: the Divine Wisdom, God’s partner and playmate in Creation. Now perhaps I am going to surprise you: I agree that I am Sophia to you, and I can be that for as long as you wish, but I must be my own human Maria-self as well, and if we go to bed it may be Sophia who lies down but it will certainly be Maria—and not the best of her—who gets up, and Sophia will be gone forever. And you, Simon dear, would come into bed as my Rebel Angel, but very soon you would be a stoutish Anglican parson, and a Rebel Angel no more.”

  “A Rebel Angel?”

  “You don’t mean to tell me that I can teach you something, after the very non-academic talk we have had? Oh, Simon, you must remember the Rebel Angels? They were real angels, Samahazai and Azazel, and they betrayed the secrets of Heaven to King Solomon, and God threw them out of Heaven. And did they mope and plot vengeance? Not they! They weren’t sore-headed egotists like Lucifer. Instead they gave mankind another push up the ladder, they came to earth and taught tongues, and healing and laws and hygiene—taught everything—and they were often special successes with ‘the daughters of men’. It’s a marvellous piece of apocrypha, and I would have expected you to know it, because surely it is the explanation of the origin of universities! God doesn’t come out of some of these stories in a very good light, does He? Job had to tell Him a few home truths about His injustice and caprice; the Rebel Angels showed Him that hiding all knowledge and wisdom and keeping it for Himself was dog-in-the-manger behaviour. I’ve taken it as proof that we’ll civilize God yet. So don’t, Simon dear, don’t rob me of my Rebel Angel by wanting to be an ordinary human lover, and I won’t rob you of Sophia. You and Hollier are my Rebel Angels, but as you are the first to be told, you may choose which one you will be: Samahazai or Azazel?”