Exquisite Corpse

by Robert Irwin

  I also sketched out a series of possible strategies in preparation for my return to England. By ‘sketched’ I mean to say that, since I had so little skill in putting my thoughts into words, I used to visualise them instead and I drew the key scenes on my sketch-pad; me on my knees before Caroline, Pamela and I walking past Caroline and pretending to ignore her, Clive and I fighting for Caroline’s favours, me raping Caroline … In the end I had almost thirty sketches of alternative scenarios, and I kept leafing through them and shuffling them about.

  I now look back on those weeks spent on the strands of the Wannsee as a period of Sitzkrieg, or Phoney War. I had the faint hope that my extended absence would make Caroline realise that she could not live without me. In the meantime I was doing everything I could think of to build up my psychic strength. I spent much of the day sunbathing and watching the phosphene image of the sun on my eyelids slowly transform itself into hypnagogic imagery, which I then blindly attempted to record on my sketchpad. Later I would scrutinise the images I had drawn, looking for omens of my future fortune. But when I sought to study the people in the hypnagogic landscape more closely and find in them guidance as to what I should do about Caroline, they fled away and transformed themselves into rocks, trees and animals. I suppose that to them I was like a distant and inefficient God who had difficulty in understanding his own creation. The strain of these trance-like states was considerable and I emerged from them shaking and gasping for breath.

  Of course, I also went swimming. I have already observed, I believe, that it is impossible for someone steeped in Freud not to think, as he plunges into the water, of that act as anything but a sort of practical metaphor for the submerging of oneself in the depths of the unconscious. But now, under the surface of the Wannsee, surrounded by so many earnest German swimmers, as I forced myself deep into the muddy depths of the lake, I felt myself to be swimming among shadowy thought-shapes which were quite new to me. The Nazi and the Surrealist have both plunged deep into the dark lake of European myth and, though they have re-emerged from those depths with very different trophies, nevertheless these heroic swimmers are half-brothers, engaged in a mad struggle against reason and logic.

  In the evenings I persevered with my exercises in mesmerism. I concentrated first on building up the power of my will and then on projecting it out through the eyes. Since my room in the hotel had no mirror, I actually had to go into Potsdam and buy one. The mirror was a necessary piece of equipment, but an exasperating one, for mirrors are so restrictive in what they allow you to see. In that respect they are a little like hypnagogic imagery, for when I am in one of my hypnagogic states I can only look forwards. I am unable to rotate my gaze 180 degrees and look and see what is going on in the back of my head. The Belgian painter, René Magritte, has done a painting of the millionaire, Edward James, in which the subject looks into a mirror and sees reflected there the back of his own head. I think that a mirror which could perform such a service would be of real use.

  I also continued with my lip-reading exercises, conscientiously mouthing sentences into the mirror. In addition, I went to one of the cinemas in Wannsee or Potsdam almost every day and I would sit with wax pellets stopping up my ears and study the lips of the actors on the screen. I saw an enormous number of films in this way – old classics like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu and The Blue Angel, yes, but also a vast mass of more recent films produced under the patronage of Dr Goebbels. A few were out and out propaganda exercises, like Hitlerjunge Quex, but more commonly Wannsee’s holidaymakers were offered mountain adventure films and frothy light musicals. Films in English with German subtitles were particularly useful for practice in lip-reading and so it was that one evening I found myself watching Mystery of the Wax Museum. It was not until half way through the film when Fay Wray reappeared as the waxen image of Marie Antoinette that I realised that my shirt-front was wet with tears.

  Finally, after some nine weeks of swimming and exercising my eyes and my mind, I realised that I was ready to carry out my thought-experiment. The following morning I went down to a secluded section of the beach and, stretching myself out on my towel, I entered the hypnagogic state. On this occasion the after-image of the sun lingered for a while as a brilliant zig-zag of purple phosphene fringed with yellow which floated in a hardly less brilliantly glowing green space. I waited and watched until the zig-zag faded and the green space began to model itself in light and dark, slowly transforming itself into a shady, leafy forest in bright summer. I was not alone in this forest, for soon I saw that a steady stream of hikers, tennis players, cyclists and anglers were passing among the trees on their way to their healthy recreations. I watched these folk for a long time before pouncing on and detaining one of them. She was a young woman. Her frizzy blonde hair was held in check by an Alice-band. She wore tennis gear and her racket was clasped anxiously across her breasts.

  ‘What must I do to regain the love of Caroline?’ I demanded of her.

  She would have liked to escape. If she could have, she would have transformed her eyes into pebbles and her body into a bush, rather than be caught, immobilised and interrogated by me. The unconscious, for which she was going to speak, never yields up its secrets willingly, but the power of my mesmeric gaze had trapped her. Having thus trapped Trilby – as a temporary figment of the unconscious mind, she had no name, of course, but I thought of her as Trilby – having thus trapped her, I sent her into as deep a hypnotic trance as I dared. Then I tested the strength of her trance by using one of the standard hypnotist’s tests, the postural swaying test, in which I had her lean forward against my hands, my phantom hypnagogic hands, until her body was rigid at an angle of 45 degrees to the ground.

  Only when I was satisfied in this way that I had her completely in my power, did I ask the question again,

  ‘What must I do to regain the love of Caroline?’

  Her answer, when it came, was of course silent, but it had been precisely for this moment that I had been training myself as a lip-reader. Trilby spoke distinctly and I had no difficulty in reading her lips. I only had difficulty in believing what she was saying.

  ‘You must love Clive. You must love Clive in the same way that Caroline loves him. Only by loving Clive in the same way that Caroline loves him, will you be able to see what she sees in him and only then will you be able to remake yourself in such a way that she will see the same thing in you. You must love Clive. You must love Clive in the same way she loves him.’

  ‘But that is impossible!’ I expostulated.

  ‘It is hard.’ Trilby seemed to breathe her reply. ‘It is very hard, but you must love Clive.’

  Then a group of Trilby’s sporting companions came up. They were determined to bring my dialogue with her to an end.

  ‘You must let her go,’ they said. ‘She has given you our answer. Now we want her for our game of tennis.’

  Well then, since I had had my reply, I released Trilby from her trance and allowed her to sink thankfully back into the shadows of the forest and I in turn returned to a normal state of consciousness on the shore of the Wannsee.

  I lay gazing up at the sun and, though it was hot, I found that I was shivering uncontrollably. So I must love Clive Jerkin. I must be able to run laughing into his arms. I must love his name, and his public school reminiscences and his humming of the old school song. I must love his bassoon-playing and must even love his cock in my mouth, while he continues to play the tune of his old school song on his bassoon. I must be tremulously eager for all that and then when that climax is over I must go off and darn the holes in his socks for him. And, of course I must love that baby of his whom Caroline may be carrying in her womb. I must love it as if it were my own child. What Trilby had commanded me to do seemed to me to be mystical in its self-abnegation and mortification. However, since Trilby was the oracle of the Forest of the Unconscious, I could not dream of disputing her pronouncement.

  I picked up my towel and my sketch-pad and walked back to the hotel.
At last I felt ready to return to England. You see, when I had flown out from Croydon Airport I had been in a terrible state, half mad and frightfully confused about what I should do next. Now I felt much better. I was rested. I had dived to the bottom of the lake and then returned to its surface spiritually regenerated. I now thought that I knew what I should do.

  For three months I had been on my own. I had had brief exchanges with hoteliers, waiters, ticket-collectors and people like that. Apart from such trivial encounters, I had spoken only to the invisible spirit of Caroline and of course to Trilby. In general though, I had found the unwonted solitude refreshing.

  Chapter Eleven

  I had hoped that there might be a letter from Caroline waiting for me when I returned to Cuba Street, but there was none. Towards the end of the following afternoon, I waited with a bunch of roses in my hand outside the office of the Anglo-Balkan Fur Company. Brenda and two of her colleagues emerged and walked off, then Jim the office boy and finally Mr Maitland who locked up. I had spent so many hours anticipating my reunion with Caroline and concentrating on what I should say. Now I was taken unawares. I was so astonished at not finding Caroline where I had expected her to be that I just watched her boss walk away.

  The next day however, when Brenda finished work, I was waiting for her.

  ‘Hello, Brenda. Remember me? I’m Caspar.’

  ‘Of course I remember you.’

  She sounded nervous and she started walking faster, but I easily matched my step to hers.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘No thank you. That’s awfully good of you, but I’ve got to get home. I’m in a bit of a hurry, I’m afraid. I’ve got someone waiting for me.’

  ‘Just give me five minutes of your time then,’ and I took her by the arm and spun her round, so that we were looking into each other’s eyes. Her lank brown hair framed a face that was pudgy and yet still quite attractive. Her eyes were full of dull resentment.

  ‘Where’s Caroline, Brenda? Why isn’t she at work?’

  Her reply contained a hint of tears.

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t turn up for work some time in July. She just left without giving any notice. I really don’t know. Stop looking at me like that. I’ve got to get on now.’

  Hearing her reply, I felt my stomach drop. But my grip on her elbow only tightened.

  ‘But you must know more. You must tell me.’

  By now she was slightly hysterical.

  ‘Let me go. You are horrible! She was my friend, but you and your lot spoilt her. If you want to know the truth I thought she must have gone off with you in a big, swank car.’

  She covered her face. At first I thought that she was trying to shield her eyes from mine, but then I saw that she was really crying. Finally, when she had calmed down, she looked back up at me with those big sullen eyes of hers.

  ‘You don’t like me do you? Well, I don’t like you either and, if you don’t let go of me now, I’m going to scream for the police. I hate you! I hate you!’

  Astonished by her display of schoolgirlish petulance, I let her go. Then, after only a few minutes of pacing about in the street, I came to a decision and I took a series of buses down to Putney. Although the day that Jorge, Oliver and I had picked her up from her parents’ house before motoring on down to Brighton was still vivid in my memory, it took me quite a while to find that house again and it was late at night when I rang the doorbell.

  Her father – I presume it was her father – came to the door.

  I raised my hat politely.

  ‘Good evening, sir. Sorry to disturb you, but is Miss Begley in? I’d like a few words with her if I may.’

  The man’s face screwed up with distaste.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I’m not a door-to-door salesman, you know.’

  ‘I know who you are. Now just go away, or I’ll do something I won’t be responsible for.’

  The door slammed shut. I rang the bell again, but, though I could hear the father and mother arguing inside, the door did not reopen.

  I started shouting,

  ‘Caroline, darling, if you are inside come out to me. It’s Caspar! Caroline! Caroline! I’m sorry. Forgive me. Caroline, I want you …’

  After a bit though I gave up and I went and sat on a garden wall on the opposite side of the road for an hour or two, hoping to catch a glimpse of Caroline, even though part of me already knew that she was no longer living in Putney.

  The following day I wrote letters to Caroline and addressed them to her house and to the office for forwarding. Uncertain what to do next, I went round to see MacKellar. Since I had last visited him, he had acquired one of those large padded dentist’s chairs which, by pumping with one’s foot, one could make rise or sink. Books had been pulled off the walls to make space for skulls. One skull had had tiny little holes drilled into it and those holes filled up with paste jewellery. Another skull had had all its teeth removed and in their place two rows of tiny light bulbs glowed in the jaw. I did not like to examine the rest.

  MacKellar politely enquired about my time in Germany, but I did not tell him much. Then I asked him how Blind Pew Looks Back was getting on. When would I be seeing a text that I could illustrate?

  MacKellar sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to say it’s not going well. It’s not really going at all. I can’t get the pirates to walk on to the ship. I have to push them every step up the gang plank and then, since I can’t hear them talking, I have to do all their talking for them. If I put them in any particular situation, like, say, a storm at sea, they just stand around waiting for me to tell them what to do. I feel more like a solitary little girl holding an imaginary tea party with her dolls than I do a real writer.’

  MacKellar sighed again and continued,

  ‘Do you remember how Oliver was always saying that every writer has only a limited amount of emotional capital, amassed between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, from which he has to write for the rest of his life? Well, I’m afraid I’ve exhausted my capital.’

  ‘How is Oliver by the way?’

  ‘No one has heard anything. Ned’s extremely worried. The death toll among the volunteers in Spain is quite high, but we just haven’t heard anything about him. No, well anyway, the only thing that really interests me about my pirates is their teeth …’

  I let MacKellar run out of steam, talking about dental hygiene, the history of dentistry and how he would like to stop being a novelist and study for dental qualifications. Only he could not see how he could possibly raise the money. And then his publisher was still showing no interest in Dentist of the Old West …

  At last I was able to talk about what I wanted to talk about, Caroline, and I described the circumstances of her vanishing.

  MacKellar was sympathetic, but only up to a point.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry of course. She was charming and I did like her. Still, perhaps you are better off without her. She was a bit stupid. I remember once, when you were out of the room and the group was discussing you and her, Oliver quoted Baudelaire on the subject; “Stupidity is the adornment and preservative of beauty”.’

  I was surprised, though I suppose that I should not have been, to discover that our relationship had been discussed behind our backs. I was even more annoyed to hear Caroline dismissed as stupid.

  ‘Ned said to me that he thought that she was extremely intelligent.’

  ‘Yes, well he thinks that every woman he fancies is intelligent. He probably even thinks that Felix is intelligent. And you know, though Ned is probably cleverer than you and me put together, his judgement is extremely poor.’

  ‘So forget all that. Whether Caroline is a moron or a genius, I have to find her. What on earth should I do next?’

  ‘The answer is so obvious that I am surprised that you have had to come round here to hear me say it. Cherchez l’homme. Find this Clive Jerkin you have been talking about.’

  Yes, it was obvious. At least it was obvious on
ce MacKellar had said it. I had thought that I had been actively engaged in seeking out Caroline when the reverse was actually the truth. I had been doing everything I could to avoid thinking about the place where Caroline must be. Subconsciously I had wanted to delay the moment when I went looking for Clive. It was certain that I would find Caroline ensconced in his flat and when I did find her, then I had sworn myself to do as Trilby had instructed me. I was going to have to offer myself to them as their lover.

  I talked with MacKellar a little longer, but I was depressed and he was depressed and we were making each other more depressed. So, though Bryony, his wife, did offer me lunch, I soon left.

  It took me a day and a half to find Clive Jerkin. If it had not been for his slightly odd name, I doubt if I should ever have found him. I began my enquiries in the City, but I eventually located him in smart offices on the Brompton Road. I called on him towards the end of a morning. A receptionist sitting at a desk at the end of a marble-flagged hallway stopped me and asked if I had an appointment. I said no, but that my name was Caspar and that I had come about Caroline.

  Within a minute of the receptionist ringing through, Clive came hurrying out of his room. He offered me his hand and I reluctantly shook it.

  ‘So you are the Caspar I have been hearing so much about! How splendid! You sounded so extraordinary that I thought she might be making you up. Well, this is ripping! Look, I was about to call it a morning anyway and go off for lunch. There’s an Italian restaurant round the corner. My shout.’