A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy

by Charlotte Greig

  After a while the joss sticks started to make me feel sick, and Rob got fed up with the Indian music tape, which was beginning to wear out and make those sliding sounds, so we went over to the union bar. It was completely different in there: noisy, with chart music blaring out of the jukebox and everyone shouting over it. By now it was late afternoon and we were starving, so we filled up on beer and crisps and cheese sandwiches. After we'd eaten, we stopped trying to talk and just sat there watching the alcoholics playing on the fruit machines. Then the rugby club came in from a match and started getting rowdy. Not long after, a bunch of feminists arrived looking for them, and they all started yelling insults at each other. Everyone in the bar started cheering as the row escalated, and we joined in. The next thing was, chairs were being hurled around and Rob and I were laughing and holding on to each other and ducking out of the way. In the end the barman got fed up and chucked us all out, even though most of us were only in there trying to have a quiet drink.

  Outside in the rain I said, “I think I'd better be getting back now.”

  Rob said, “OK. I've got to meet someone later, so I'm staying on campus.”

  There was a pause. I wondered who he had to meet.

  “See you around.”

  “See you around.”

  He hesitated. Then, just as I was turning to go, he said, “Are you going to the gig tomorrow night?”

  “What gig?”

  “John Martyn. He's playing here on campus.”

  I thought about it. I'd never heard of John Martyn, but I wasn't going to say so. “I might,” I said. “Depends what I'm doing.”

  “OK. See you there then. If you come.”

  “OK. If I do.”

  Then I turned round and walked off quickly, heading back to the station.

  chapter 2

  WHEN I GOT IN, THERE WAS still no sign of Jason. The flat was exactly as I had left it in the morning, the washing-up in the sink and bed unmade. I thought, he probably phoned when I was out and he'll call again this evening. Nothing to worry about.

  I put the kettle on, did the washing-up, and made the bed. Then I sat down with a cup of tea, took out Human, All Too Human, switched on a lamp, and began to read.

  The book wasn't anything like The Birth of Tragedy. It wasn't as confident, or as entertaining. It seemed to have no structure to it, and the writing was jerky, muddled, at times almost insane, as though Nietzsche was having a brainstorm, or a nervous breakdown. Even so, there were moments when I recognized what he was talking about, though I wished I didn't.

  Loneliness surrounds him, curls round him, ever more threatening, strangling, heart-constricting …

  I looked up. The room seemed to have grown very dark and quiet. This wasn't the kind of stuff you wanted to read on your own, I thought, waiting for someone to come home. I should have got something else out. But I carried on, although it was heavy going, until I came to the bit about the great separation that had freaked Dennis out so much.

  … the great separation comes suddenly, like the shock of an earthquake: all at once, the young soul is devastated, torn loose, torn out—it itself does not know what is happening …

  I sighed, stuck a pencil in the book as a marker, and put it down beside the lamp on the table. I couldn't concentrate, not at the moment anyway. I'd have to try again tomorrow, during daylight hours. Maybe it would make more sense then.

  I glanced up at the phone, expecting it to ring, but it didn't. It was one of those old black bakelite phones with a big silver dial and a twisted cord like you'd see in a forties' film. Jason had found it in a house clearance and got it done up so it worked. Everything in the room was like that. The lamp was one of those art deco jobs with a dancing nymph holding the light in her hands. The chair was a battered leather one with little brass studs in lines round the edge, only some of them had fallen out. And there were quirky things on the wall, like a row of forties' plaster women with red lips and wavy black hair wearing coquettish little hats.

  When I'd first seen the room I'd thought it was gorgeous, but being there alone now I realized I didn't like it. It didn't seem homely. It looked like a museum. When I'd started living with Jason, I'd realized that this stuff came and went all the time. One week a particular lamp would be there, the next Jason would have sold it to somebody and there'd be a different one. If you looked up on the shelves, you could see about ten of the nymphs dancing about in various stages of decay, waiting to be done up and sold. When you first came in you looked at all these lovely things and thought what a beautiful room, but when you got to know it you realized it was just a warehouse.

  The phone went on not ringing. I started looking around me, thinking about the objects in the room in a way that I never did when Jason was there. The more I looked at them, the more I realized I couldn't stand them. The plaster women with their cupid mouths looked ugly and stupid. The nymphs were silly and sentimental. The leather chair was uncomfortable, with a spring that poked into your bottom unless you sat in a certain position. There was nothing in that room I could ever get attached to. It was all just stuff to be bought and sold. And it was all Jason's, not mine.

  I hated staying in on my own in the evening. That time when the night starts coming down and it gets blacker and blacker outside till you can see nothing when you look out of the window except your own reflection looking back at you. I wondered what Rob was doing. It had been nice being with him during the day. I didn't have his phone number, but I thought, he's bound to be in the Unity. Maybe I should go over there and see if I can find him. The trouble was, the Unity was over the other side of town. I couldn't be bothered to take a bus. And not only that, it wasn't a good place to go on your own, looking for somebody. It was one of those little pubs with only one door on to the street. When you went in, everyone looked up, and then if you couldn't see anyone you knew, you had to turn round and come back out the same way. By that time, everyone knew you were on your own. And didn't have any friends. So it was no good going to the Unity unless you definitely knew the person you were going to meet would be there. It was too embarrassing otherwise.

  Then I had an idea. I thought, I know, I'll go over to the Brunswick. The Brunswick had two doors, so you could go in one, pass through both bars looking around you, and then get out the other. That way, you could look as though you had just left one bar and were on your way somewhere else, instead of feeling like an idiot who had just been stood up. And they also did food in the Brunswick, so there were usually a lot of people milling about queuing up and not paying attention to who was coming in the door next. That was a big advantage. There were always students in there—the pub was right next to Brunswick House, an old hotel donated to the university to house students because it was a fire risk.

  On the way up there, I started feeling really hungry. I thought, I'll get one of those dishes where you can load up on potato salad at the counter. By the time I arrived, my mouth was watering. I took a deep breath and walked in, looking around but trying not to look as though I was. Nobody in the first bar. In the second, there was a big group of students at a table in the corner, smoking and laughing, but when I passed I couldn't see anyone I knew. Damn. Now I wouldn't be able to eat. No potato salad.

  Outside in the street, I stood around for a bit wondering what to do. None of the shops were open. On the way home, I passed by Brunswick House in case anybody I knew was on their way out. I didn't want to go inside. It was too depressing. All dirty kitchens with people drinking cup-a-soup and writing their name on their eggs before they put them in the fridge and arguing about the washing-up.

  Nobody came out of Brunswick House, so I carried on to the square. There was nothing else to do but go back home. I felt pathetic. When I got back in, I thought, well, Jason might have rung while I was out. He might have just missed me. If I hadn't gone out I would know he hadn't rung, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. The thought cheered me up, so I heated up a can of beans and made a couple of pieces of toast for my supper.
Then I lay on the floor and looked up at the ceiling and smoked a cigarette.

  In all evening, on my own. It had been quite a long time since this had happened to me. I wondered what people normally did in this situation. Watched TV. Well, that was out, because we didn't have one. The only time I ever watched TV was in one of the student houses, usually after closing time, when people would turn the lights out and cram themselves into rows and switch on Outer Limits. Everyone would stop talking and we'd sit there in the dark watching the screen. I'd try to take an interest because all the others did—well, the blokes anyway—but to tell the truth I couldn't see the point of it. One minute we were all talking and laughing and having a good time, and the next we were all sitting there silently in the dark watching some nonsense about flying saucers. It didn't make sense to me.

  Reading a book was another possibility. But I'd tried that already, and I couldn't. Not with the phone sitting there silently watching me in the corner. There was only one other alternative. Listen to some music.

  As a rule, I didn't have anything to do with the record player. Jason had a quadraphonic stereo, which was his pride and joy. I wasn't allowed to touch it. I wasn't even allowed to touch any of the records in case I did something to them that would upset the stereo. Every time he put a record on, he would dust everything with a little brush, and then he would have to sit in exactly the right place between the four speakers to listen to the music. I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. After all, I thought, you've only got two ears, what do you need four speakers for. But I didn't say anything. It didn't seem worth arguing about, and after all, it was his flat. He could do what he liked in it.

  He played records all the time when he was in. He liked jazz mostly, stuff like Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. His taste in music went well with the flat, and I liked it, but to be honest I'd never taken the slightest interest in it. It was just there, like the plaster women and the nymphs.

  I went over to his record collection and flicked through the LPs. There was only one I recognized, a boxed set of Grover Washington albums, which he'd given me for my birthday. I'd never listened to it. Or perhaps I had. He might have put it on one night after dinner, I couldn't remember. Anyway, there was nothing there that meant anything to me. Then, towards the back, I noticed a name that rang a bell. John Martyn. The guy Rob had mentioned. The one who was playing on campus tomorrow night.

  I walked over to the stereo. I put the record on and twiddled a few knobs until the sound came through. It didn't seem all that difficult. Then I took my boots off, lay down on the floor again, and listened.

  At first I thought the record was on at the wrong speed, because his voice sounded all low and mumbly, but then I realized it was supposed to be like that. You had to concentrate to make out the words, and they kind of wove in and out between the instruments, which wove in and out between each other. The music wasn't like anything else I'd ever heard. It was slow and spacey and it drew you in. It sounded like a person starting to fall asleep, where everything starts going a bit weird and distorted, but at the same time you're being wrapped up in a delicious, warm haze so you want to stay there and start to dream.

  I listened to the whole of the “A” side lying there on the floor. I didn't move until the needle started bumping round at the end. Then I got up, put the sofa cushions on the floor and dragged some bedding on top of them. I turned the record over, switched off the lamp and lay down again under the covers. It was so comfortable I decided to stay there for the night so after a while, when I'd warmed up, I took off my sweater and jeans and threw them out on the floor.

  After that, I lay there for ages looking up at the darkness, with John Martyn singing to me. Sometimes tears welled up in my eyes when he sang words like Curl around me like a fern in the spring, which reminded me that Jason wasn't here alongside me, and in a way, never would be. But most of the time I felt comforted and I didn't mind so much about being alone.

  By the time the needle got to the end and started bumping again, I was too tired to do anything about it. The last thing I heard as I fell asleep was the sound of it going round and round.

  chapter 3

  NEXT DAY, I HUNG AROUND the flat but I still didn't hear from Jason. By now, I was getting worried. I felt sick and I couldn't eat anything, which was just as well because there was nothing in the flat anyway, and it saved me going out to the shops and having to talk to people about the weather, which I couldn't do in this kind of mood. So I stayed in all day and drank cups of tea and smoked cigarettes. And waited.

  It wasn't that I thought something bad had happened to Jason. He didn't seem to be the sort of person that would have a terrible car accident or a sudden heart attack or be robbed or get stuck in a lift. He seemed to go through life without any worries about that kind of thing. And as a result, nothing bad ever seemed to happen to him. That was the trick, you had to ignore the possibility of things going wrong. Then nothing did. It was a trick I hadn't mastered yet.

  No, the problem wasn't Jason. It was me. I couldn't stand being all on my own here in his flat, surrounded by the nymphs and the plaster faces, thinking and waiting and worrying. What if he didn't come back? What if he'd left me and gone off with someone else? What would become of me? Where would I live? I'd have to face the fact that I was just another student. I'd have to get a room on campus, and hang around with those girls who were Christians and drank cocoa in the evenings, and had pillow fights, and put stuffed animals on their beds. Or I'd be one of those lonely, weird people like Dennis that everybody laughed about behind their back. I'd wake up screaming every morning, with the rest of my life yawning ahead of me. On my own.

  As the day wore on, I got more and more tense. I had to get out of the flat. I couldn't think of anything to do during the day, but I decided I would definitely go to the gig on campus in the evening. There was no point in staying here worrying, there was nothing I could do. It was no good phoning the police, Jason would have thought that was stupid, I knew he would. He'd be irritated with me and think I was a fool. No, it was best to leave him to his own devices. He'd never needed my help in the past, and I was pretty sure he didn't now. He wasn't the kind of person who needed anyone's help. He liked to do his own thing, and he didn't like people getting in his way or bossing him about. He'd come back sooner or later, but in the meanwhile he'd probably prefer it if I just got on with my life without him.

  To pass the time, I lay on my makeshift bed on the living-room floor, listening to John Martyn and reading Human, All Too Human. This time, in the gray light of a rainy day, it seemed to make more sense. Nietzsche seemed to be describing a terrible emotional crisis that had overtaken him, and that he was only just beginning to recover from.

  Another step onward in convalescence. The free spirit approaches life slowly, of course, recalcitrantly, almost suspiciously. It grows warmer around him, yellower as it were; feeling and fellow-feeling gain depth; mild breezes of all kinds pass over him …

  I kept going, and after a while, I began to get the hang of what he was saying. A lot of the book was taken up with little homilies, or aphorisms as he called them, giving nonsensical advice about this and that, as though he imagined himself to be a kindly uncle you might go to with your problems instead of a half-deranged hermit you'd steer well clear of if you had any sense; but towards the end, I realized he seemed to be describing something I recognized.

  If you were a free spirit, as Nietzsche called it, you went through a “great separation” when you suddenly became aware that everything—family, values, religion—meant nothing to you. It usually happened in adolescence or early adulthood, like it had with Dennis. At first, you'd almost lose your mind, but after that you'd somehow get used to the situation. After you'd been through the great separation, you knew you were always going to be lonely; that you were always going to suffer; that you were never going to feel secure about anything. But as time went on, you'd begin to realize you weren't mad; you were just outside the ordinary social
world, saddled with an inescapable task, a destiny, that you couldn't help following, even though you didn't understand what it was.

  The secret power and necessity of this task will hold sway within and among our various destinies like an unsuspected pregnancy, long before we have looked the task itself in the eye or know its name.

  Because of this task, you were going to have to go through life without getting too involved with anything, or anyone.

  He who has come in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel on earth otherwise than as a wanderer—though not as a traveler towards a final goal, for this does not exist. But he does want to observe, and keep his eyes open for everything that actually occurs in the world; therefore he must not attach his heart too firmly to any individual thing; there must be something wandering within him, which takes its joy in change and transitoriness.

  Perhaps that explained why I felt so weird, so disconnected, most of the time. Maybe I wasn't mad; maybe I was just a wanderer, like Nietzsche, Dennis, and countless others who had drifted their way through human history. Of course I was going to be lonely, and have nightmares, and wake up screaming, and feel I was going mad sometimes; but there would be glorious moments as well.

  To be sure, such a man will have bad nights … but then, as recompense, come the ecstatic mornings of other regions and days …

  I went on reading, and after a while I looked up. Outside the window, the sky was growing dark again. Almost a whole day had gone by, and I hadn't even noticed. Normally that would have made me feel weird, and embarrassed about myself, but somehow, as I finished the last page of Human, All Too Human, it didn't seem to matter. In fact, I felt elated. I may have spent the whole day lying on the floor half-dressed, reading Nietzsche and smoking and drinking cups of tea, but that didn't mean I was a dosser, or that my life was empty and isolated. It meant that I was a free spirit, and like the free spirits of the past, I had a secret destiny, a task to do. I just wasn't sure what it was yet.