by Paul Ableman
13
I AM A DISINHERITED magic monarch.
An artist in this nuthouse century is like a man running an obstacle race fitted out with all the gadgets of our riotous technology. He gets blown a mile into the air on a jet of liquid helium, shuttles about on little rocket tubes, plunges into the deeps of the ocean, shoots out again a hundred miles into space while lurid sights and sounds shred his senses. Every year, every month, another ‘panoptic’ work appears and warps his consciousness into a new shape. Knowledge itself is in a molten, a plasmatic, state and what titanic electromagnetic grip of intellect would be required to lock it solid long enough to reach artistic fusion point? The damned language becomes obsolete as it clatters from the typewriter.
I am a disinherited magic monarch.
Get Univac to write your books!
14
THERE WAS NO doubt about Jason’s capacity for aggression. He proclaimed it himself:
— My dear fellow, I have tremendous aggressions!
For a few days I heard him thundering about above my head and then he stamped up to my office door:
— Would you be so good as to scrub my stairs?
I indicated mildly that, since I merely rented premises in the building as he did, I felt under no obligation to scrub his stairs. He leered at me in faint anguish, wondering how to unmask me as the caretaker he was convinced I was.
— You’re not in charge?
— No.
— I see.
Baffled, he returned to the task of applying plastic covers to his modest but choice collection of books. The knowledge that I too was concerned with books seeped up to him and before long he was drinking coffee in my little office and sounding me out on Bloomsbury. I expressed the opinion that Virginia Woolf, like most non-Lesbian lady writers, was deficient in much:
— That perspective, derived I suppose fundamentally from masculine sexual posture, is no less indispensable for literary than scientific originality. Well yes—Madame Curie—yes—
I made a gesture that expressed the hopelessness of seeking universally valid critical laws and inadvertently knocked Jason’s painting out of the window. He exclaimed:
— My God, that’s the second time!
And shot away down four flights into the slimy area to retrieve it.
Before consigning this book to publisher and printer I will carefully substitute a fictitious name for everyone, including myself, that appears in it. The purpose of this is to render impenetrable its relationship with reality. When that editorial phase arrives I will be spared the task of fictionalizing the name of Jason’s painter friend:
— I think we’re about to see something. I think he’s going abstract.
Because I either never knew it or have since forgotten it. A series of postcards came from the North, confirming the affinity that the orphan had long suspected. I see fish drying on pebbled beaches. Behind the fish is Norwegian clarity, in postcard white and blue, or berg and sea. The continuous narrative on the cards described response to Northern light and form.
— I wouldn’t be surprised if he weren’t going abstract.
Light from the North is sinister to a Jew. I wondered a trifle guardedly why the boy who had known no other parent-age than an institution should have invented a Norwegian for a father.
— We may be about to see something. He may be going abstract.
The painting that the artist had given Jason was a tiny landscape on board, already semi-abstract, in black, blue and green. It was a pleasant painting and, in addition to its aesthetic qualities, possessed great reserves of physical strength. It hurtled repeatedly from Jason’s window.
I returned from lunch to meet Jason clattering grimly down the stairs, cold pipe clenched between his teeth.
— Painting’s fallen out again!
I urged him to locate it elsewhere in his curious, shabby-exact flat but he obstinately replaced it against the broken-hinged window and seemed angrily pained when it again took the plunge.
— My dear fellow, I have tremendous aggressions!
Jason apparently saw himself as the last of a line of scholar-eccentrics. His tremendous aggressions were required to defend this stance when, as he fumed up Webster Street one afternoon muttering about moral decline, a little man was injudicious enough to comment:
— Blinking nut.
Jason instantly seized the impertinent one, whirled him into the hall of our building and issued a ferocious ultimatum:
— You will apologize! You will not depart until you apologize. It is intolerable that a man’s privacy should be infringed.
I subsequently pointed out that the infringement had been reciprocal and that if he had the right to inflict his mutterings on passers-by they surely had the right to retaliate in kind. With a rueful smile, Jason admitted some justice to this.
— Did he apologize?
— Oh yes. Finally.
Jason blazed off to the government department that employed him and rushed through the offices of colleagues, knocking pin-ups off their walls. He then composed and despatched a twelve-page memo to the director, stating that it was imperative to combat moral decline and giving detailed suggestions for reforming the organization. He was, of course, instantly sacked. Jim marvelled:
— He has no sense of reality whatsoever.
God’s pickets encompassed Jason. His father coached black bishops. His uncle carried Christ to the Amazon. Brothers and cousins spouted the divine message. His hereditary wake seethed with parsons and psalmists. Jason toiled through literary bohemia under this oppressive heritage.
We were friends for some years.
Jason came to dinner. We discussed books seriously and sex facetiously. He asked:
— Then you really support contemporary sexual licence?
— Good heavens no! It doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Jason knelt down and collaborated with my perfectionist little son in the production of motor crashes. Between courses he leaned towards the nearest book-case and ran speculative eyes along the titles. After coffee, he smiled owlishly and said:
— Extraordinarily lavish. Quite remarkable hospitality. Allow me to congratulate you both on the excellence of the kew-zeen.
Jason’s upper class drawl indulged remarkable mispronunciations.
— My dear fellow, I have tremendous aggressions!
These culminated, as far as I was concerned, in his despatch of a disagreeable letter which contained references to the police and the possibility of physical violence.
I hadn’t actually tried to rape Louise while driving her to the station as one version of the tale subsequently maintained. Apart from the extreme impracticality of such an undertaking, I had never tried to rape anybody. I had, however, escorted her back to my room, shared several marijuana cigarettes with her and then pursued my advances to the point where Louise elected to walk out of the room, flat and house. Then, dimly alarmed at the fate of a girl groggy with weed and wandering aimlessly, I had chased after her and driven her to the tube station. Louise had, in fact, proved more resistant to the hemp than I was and, after a final drink with me at The Bullfinch, tripped competently away to the tube.
— I’ll say when we go to bed.
I had first taken Louise out a year before. It was shortly after you and I parted.
— I’ll say when we go to bed.
Louise and I sat amongst lounging suburbans in the rose-garden of The Nag’s Head. The night was purple. Green exploded in the flare of headlights. Persecuted birds shrieked from a cage at the end of the garden. Louise and I talked candidly across a chord of the round iron tabletop. Louise said she had been delighted with the results of early experiments in masturbation.
— Very rewarding indeed.
Mountains loomed over an antipodean suburb. Each sun-drenched house was nested in vivid blooms. On a narrow bed lay an adolescent girl. Downstairs her father was feebly elucidating the Freudian basis of his latest infidelity to her sceptical mother.
From the tarred street came the emotional shouts of sturdy children. Louise fingered herself methodically until a gasp and convulsive thrust of her narrow thighs expressed her first orgasm.
Years later a strong man strode down from the hills, married her, wrote a book about animals he’d met and returned to the wilderness. When he next hit town he was famous and Louise encountered her husband lurching out of bars with women hanging from him. When he’d converted the last of his royalties into raves he returned briefly to Louise, refertilized her and disappeared again into the bush. Before he could emerge once more, she took the children under her arms and embarked for London. There she obtained tranquil work and devoted her spare time to seducing every single heterosexual member of a school of poets.
— Shall we go now?
— Yes. Get a half bottle of whisky.
I wondered about Louise’s poise. She sat beside me in the car with a faint smile. Was she really so composed? She sat in the unkempt flat with the same smile. Did the candour and sophistication mask something vulnerable? I moved up behind her and stroked her neck. She shrugged me off fiercely.
— I’ll say when we go to bed.
So I sat on the rumpled divan and gazed at the forlorn room. We sipped whisky. Slowly a friendly conversation matured. Which cloud is a camouflaged spaceship? Yes, Heine wrote that platoon of books. Courage is the fuel of sanity. A hotel is an obsequious prison.
— Right, bring the whisky.
I rose docilely and followed Louise into the tousled bedroom. I placed the whisky beside the bed, undressed quickly and then lay on the bed and watched her undress. Animals in clothes, seeking the animal. Off came the dense, green dress. Light from the street-lamp, organized by the windows, cast warped rectangles into the room. Louise hovered, hands plucking behind her at the clasp that secured her black brassiere. Then her breasts shone in the lamplight. Lactation. She urged down her black pants, hopping slowly out of them. She advanced to the bed. I checked her gently and gazed at the scar-furrows that dented and warped her abdomen. Parturition. She stirred unhappily beneath the inspection.
— It’s horrid.
— No.
I pulled her down beside me.
An orgasm later, I gazed up at Louise, writhing slowly on me like an eel on coral. One leg of the impaled girl eased up my thigh and then languidly extended itself again. Her shoulder dipped voluptuously. Her face, melted into soft abandon, drooped past my arm on to the pillow. Inside Louise, millions of coded cells thrashed towards the rubber seal that barred them from the soft caves of generation. My hands lay lightly on her stirring buttocks. Male and female, citizens with distinct personalities, flesh inwraught in flesh.
15
I SWUNG SEATED THROUGH canals of velocity. I thought: our world is veined with causality. An impulse of love could retrieve our culture. The universe is more like a poem than an equation.
Mettlesome cars, ruled by wisps of complex flesh, charged through the night. The trees glowed white with erotic promise. The wreck of a mongrel dragged its shattered hind legs to the curb.
I entered the Vesuvius Club.
A massive brute, swathed in red fuzz, snored against the wall. A girl vibrated on a bar-stool. I fed disks of stamped silver into a costive iron paymaster.
Could she be alone?
The night, wearing flashy clothes, strolled past the door. The red brute slobbered in his sleep. But no husband or boy-friend lunged in to rape my carnal ambition.
— Like a drink?
— Thank you.
She turned with an instant smile. We were not total strangers. For the past few minutes the mirrors had bounced our eyes about the room and several times they had met. She wailed:
— It’s so quiet this evening!
As it toppled towards me I caught the frail web of her personality. Brilliant smiles and tiny starts tapped out a message of extremes. She was slim, dark and febrile. Her short dress was white with brown stripes and she promised.
— When I’m drunk, I’ll do anything—strip off, anything—
Will you, Sonya? I had an idea you were one of the wild ones. I’m not opposed to getting you drunk. We’ve been to four pubs already, cunningly selected by me to minimize the chances of bumping into troops of your eager friends. What? Everyone knows you in Chelsea? Ah but I doubt if you’ll be recognized in this little backwater pub. It’s understandable, Sonya, that girls who’ll do anything are popular.
She tore off sheets of her life for my perusal. She had children. She had a husband who still visited her:
— He brings his girl-friends for me to meet. He likes to have lots of girl-friends.
She had a steady lover whose name was Fury. I’ve met girls like you before, Sonya. Spend the night, or a week of nights, with a chap and send your steady round with a blade if the chap falls for you. Honest, Sonya, I’d hate to get fond of you. I think you’re very attractive and gentle as a whip.
— When I’m drunk I’ll do anything—strip off—anything—
Are you approaching that desirable state? We are mounting the hill of dreams and death. A car went mad and hunted a dog to death. Actually I haven’t got a place. But I’m staying in a friend’s den. He’s gone away for a week.
Sonya, you—see how I drive, only one hand on the wheel? I know you didn’t come with me for love-making but leave my hand nesting there. It’s barely half-way up your leg. You see, Sonya—not drunk enough yet? Right, we’ll stop for another, a double. We’ll feast on whisky. Don’t look too closely, Sonya. You’ll see how ugly I am. She never did. There may be a thousand million inhabitable planets in our galaxy alone. Jim says we will never reach the stars. A little crest of mind on each planet waiting for the end of matter. Sonya—you will open your legs?
The saloon of The Tamberlaine was packed. Blond heads bobbed in the amber light. The whisky gleamed in gleaming glasses. There’s Ruth and Ian. Hope they don’t see us. Mean more delay.
— Finished?
The last lap. The faint nausea of anticipation tightening my stomach, I kicked my vulgar convertible down the hill. Swing left, pull up.
I preceded her down the short, steep flight of stone steps. We reached the reek of dustbins. I opened a scarlet door and turned on the light. I preceded her down the short corridor of peeling paper and frayed carpet. I opened the room door and switched on the light. The palace of convulsive joy: a small square chamber deep in soiled garments and crumpled papers. Beneath a vortex of grimy bedding sagged a bed with a broken back.
— There—sit down. I’ll put on the heater.
A broad jet of warm air began to gush from the electric box. I stood up and turned to her. She was furled in the armchair, gazing at me intently. I stumbled forward but as I dropped to my knees in front of her, she snapped upright and breathed:
— We’d be more comfortable on the bed.
Then the room became rich with flesh and fabric.
Now she was standing near the bed, the brown stripes of her dress gaping to reveal a cusp of flesh and lace. The room began to sing. Her dress leaped to a chair. Her stockings sloughed from her legs and a frail garment slithered down her thighs. I reached for a loop of air and dragged myself towards her. The assumption of her slip began but I gave a blasphemous growl and pinned it to her body again. Then I tapped peremptorily the column of silk-lined flesh. It fell back on the tousled bed, nesting itself in stained blankets. I battled for a moment with cavalry twill and linen and then, warm air coursing about my loins and legs, dipped voluptuously towards her. As her legs swung majestically apart and my lips sank swiftly to kiss her lower lips, in a faint, strained tone, but one still softened by a Donegal lilt, she invited:
— Do anything you want to me! Anything at all!
Soon her loins were jumping like a rodent and I could no longer keep my exciting tongue in place. So I surged up her body and slid my tool deep into her. Her motion barely changed and I found, in spite of the trail of numbing whisky behind us, sensation gathering at once. A half d
ozen, a dozen strokes and, as I registered the mounting squeals in my ear, I plunged down in ejaculation.
A little later she said:
— I want to come here and spend the weekend with you.
She said:
— I knew what you were after all right, when you picked me up. But I wondered: what’s in it for me?
She said:
— Drive me home now. I’ll meet you in the Vesuvius tomorrow night. I’ll spend the night here in this room with you.
But the wild ways claimed her again. The next night, in the Vesuvius Club, this time awash with the sons of booze, the eddies plucked her repeatedly from my side. I watched her drift further and further with the shouting tide until she came to rest against a great black mooring-post of a gipsy. And when I paddled up to her and suggested we leave she said:
— I’m crazy but I’m going with him for a smoke. I can’t help it. I have to do it.
And that was the last I saw of Sonya.
16
Mother and Whore
MOTHER COMFORTS EVERY way but sexually. Whore only sexually.
A man is basically passive in relation to mother, active in relation to whore.
The transaction with whore is momentary, providing release from the burden of manifesting personality.
Whore has thus no duration.
Therefore wife cannot be whore.
