The Revolt of Aphrodite: Tunc and Nunquam

  Well, the bedroom door was ajar and pushing it softly open I entered, to stand upon the threshold and contemplate the new Benedicta in her latest yet oldest role. I vaguely surmised that her period had surprised her, that was all. But everything was quite different. She was standing on the bed naked, her arms raised in rapture, her face burning with gratitude and adoration; it was clear that the ceiling had burst open to reveal the heavens, clouded and starry, with its vast frieze of angels and demons—figures of some great Renaissance Annunciation. The ceiling had withdrawn, had become the inverted bowl of the heavens. She was talking to the figures—at least her lips were moving. In the heavy pelt of the bed you could not discern the torn foot. She was surrounded by an absolute snowdrift of paper, torn up very small. Most of it was my transcripts I suppose—I recognised the paper I use for dactyl. But there were other things, letters on lined paper. Cupboards hung open with clothes pouring from them. Her dressing table was cluttered with fallen cosmetics. The elegant little leather boxes with trees—her postiche and wig boxes—lay about poking their tongue out at us. It was memorably silent. The trance could have been indefinitely prolonged, one felt; the figures in the frieze held up their hands to bless, or to point to breasts, or crowns of thorns. But they were benign, they were on her side, and her tears flowed down her cheeks in gratitude. In the bubble of this enormous concentration there was simply no room for me, nor for my preoccupations. I stood gaping at this tableau until she caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye and turned slowly in a puzzled way—the wonder widening in concentric rings upon her white face, as if I had thrown a stone into a pool. I suppose I must have stammered out something for she stared keenly at me and then put a finger to her lips. A look of sudden panic intervened now with astonishing rapidity and clutching her ears she screamed one: “I’ve gone deaf.” Then just as suddenly dropped her hands, calmed and smiled wickedly.

  This called for restraint of some sort, though nothing could be more angelic than the cool sweet smile of the demon. Underneath it, too, far down below the surface one recognised the look of a wounded animal, say a cat which tries to say: “I have a thorn in my foot. Please help.” Borne on a clumsy tide of scattered and conflicting emotions I surged awkwardly forward, mumbling, arms outspread in the travesty of an embrace, unsure what the contents of my gesture might be—to embrace, to restrain, to comfort? All three, I suppose. In the corner there was a telephone torn out of the wall which hinted at strength which that slender body did not appear to own. “You see how it is?” she whispered, and slipped from the bed to elude my arms. The operation was more delicate and awkward than I had supposed; like when a swallow flies into a room and one tries to expel it without damaging or frightening the creature. Well, so we walked round, full of an awkward stateliness. Once or twice I almost caught up with her; her attention jumped for a moment from me to other objects in the room. But it was never absent for long, and she continued to elude me in a deft unhurrying fashion. And so out on the landing, with only a pause to topple a small statuette; and down the long staircase, saturated in the loneliness of this dreadful situation. Where the devil was everyone? Normally the house was full of servants. She slipped through doors, shutting them behind her to delay me; as I entered I would see her leaving the room from the far end, still looking at me over her shoulder to make sure I followed, expressionlessly seductive. She was heading steadily across the mansion towards the eastern side—towards, in fact, the old gunroom with its glass cases stocked with weapons. My concern deepened, my pace increased, but she held her distance. Then, as she disappeared into the gunroom she managed to find a key to turn. I was locked out. Under the noise of my impotent banging and cajoling I could hear the sliding doors of the glass cases being opened; then a crackle of paper and carton which instantly translated itself into a vision of Benedicta stripping a cartouche of shells. There were several drawers full of them. I began to sweat; then I remembered that there was a second door, a mere hatch, which led into a tiny bar built into the corner of the room. This was a swing-door, and I rushed for it; but the delay had given her just enough time, and when I barged through it was to see her quietly slipping out from the further end of the room with a gun under her arm.

  She had chosen the second ballroom—the huge gilt one—now polished like a skull and empty of everything but its mirror and grand piano. She was standing in the centre of it, waiting for me to appear in the doorway, quite calm and composed. A few streaks of blood only—toes are relatively bloodless—marked her progress across the polished floor. But there she lounged, as if waiting for the machine to flick clay pigeons into the sky. It was no use calling her name. Inevitably, too, I feared at that instant that her target would be myself, framed by the gilt doorway in all my ineffectualness. But if by any chance the idea had not entered her head, I did not wish to provoke it by a sudden move. I stood rooted, expecting to receive the twelve-bore charge in the stomach; but she swung up and away and round, confronting the long chain of mirrors which lined the sombre room. As she let fly she began to recite the Lord’s Prayer in a shaky broken voice—a small thread of sound among the explosions. “Our Father which art” (bang) “in heaven hallowed” (bang) “be thy name” (bang). And so forth. She had picked upon a repeating pump-gun, a six-shot. The noise of the smokeless shots was deafening, wit-scattering. I felt dizzy and faint, all my impressions fused together in a dazzle; and yet with the part of one’s mind which remains attentive and critical I could not help noticing the voluptuous thwack with which the charge bust into the mirrors, embedding itself deep in the reality of the non-mirror world, shattering her image. A plump sound like someone beating up a swansdown pillow.

  The rest doesn’t translate so very well. I had picked up, I don’t know how or where, a short ashplant—perhaps with some vague instinct of self-defence. I suppose I rushed at her—but it must have been with the toppling sliding motions of someone on ice, for the floor was glossy. Vaguely something in the nature of a football-tackle. I locked my arms round the defiant nakedness and together we stumbled and fell to the ground, the gun pressed between us. Indeed, the last discharge went off as we were falling and its hot breath burned my forehead; the barrel was fiendish hot too. So we rolled over and over until she released it and sent it skittering across the floor. Then to my surprise I began to beat her with my own weapon, but beat her precious hard across the back and buttocks. A sort of voluptuous rage must have possessed me—I was beating Julian, I suppose. And for her part she lay, pale and with an expression of content almost, eyes shut, lips moving in prayer—like someone accepting a well-merited punishment. It was frightening, also sexually exciting in a dim sort of way. But an end was soon put to this disgraceful scene, for by now the room was filling up with people.

  The two governesses were upon us, witch-like and purposeful in their rusty black clothes; they hardly spoke as they set about separating and shackling us. Then frightened supers like Baynes, gobbling and swallowing. And lastly fussy Nash with his calamitous concern.

  I was sick and feverish and upset—and now very much out of place in all this babble. Nor was the solace of strong drink very much in keeping with so hysterical a mood. I could not sleep in spite of it. I lay awake most of the night, listening to the faint sounds which betokened more purposeful activities than my own in other parts of the house; the telephone ringing, the voice of Nash. “Yes, he’s here. I’ve put him to bed.” I laughed grimly to myself and shook my fist at the ceiling. It did not need much imagination to translate the keening of rubber tyres on gravel in the first dawn-light; that would be the limousine with the drawn blinds. Soon Benedicta would be beginning that eternally repeated journey back to the land of the archetypes. “Our Father which art in heaven”. By craning my head out of the window I could verify these hypotheses. The child would be in front with the harpies. Benedicta would be carried, heavily veiled, like a statue of the Virgin Mary. I don’t say it wasn’t all for the best. I don’t say it wasn’t all for the best. Om.
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  VI

  Human attention is fragile and finite; won’t be mastered; can’t be bribed; is always changing…. Ah, for one moment of that total vision which might reorder the whole field and make it significant. I suppose from the outside it must have seemed like a progressive melancholia—I mean, resigning from the firm (no reaction to this) and locking myself up in the country in a desperate attempt to abdicate, along the lines suggested by Julian. Not to invent any more. Somehow one day one must try and stop being one’s own little hero—eh Charlock? You can do it for a year or two at most without faltering. It’s all very well, solitude and misanthropy. The beard I grew was patched with white; it gave me a startled look. I had to buy heavier lenses for my glasses. I was drinking a good deal and smoking too much. But it was a pleasure to let my appearance run to seed, to wear torn pullovers and knee-bulged grey bags. Nor was I completely cut off, except from Julian; he was biding his time, I supposed. I spoke to others on the phone, long conversations full of non sequiturs, yes, and common-room pleasantries. And all the time, unknown to my conscious me, that bloody old mass of wires I have called Abel was maturing. A certain resignation set in, too, walking about in the snow, hammering out Bach, skating in a deep muse upon the frozen waters of the lake. Well, so be it; if I must occupy myself, what better way? Besides, who would ever understand poor Abel, his foggy calculus of human potentials based upon the first cave-man chirp of the human voice? I was also preparing my revenge on Julian.

  You may say that such an instrument could not possibly predict; but the future is only the memory of the past extended into the future. The backside of the moon of memory, if you like. The prediction of stars in the sky as yet undiscovered by the lens—that is a fair analogy. From the birth-cry to the death-rattle most lives can be plotted. I shall spare myself the eight lines of maths which resume this statement—crisp pothooks, shell of the cosmic egg. How little one needs to divine the human potentials in a single given life; translate through vibrations back to memory and thence to situation. Something the pundits of the firm will not fathom. When they take Abel apart they will be left with a mute collection of wires, like a human skeleton. Where is the soul of the machine? they will cry. Ah me! An invention as singular, original and definitive as the telescope. E pur si muovi‚ and so on.

  The proof was in the pudding; and I had a pitifully small abacus to work with—just the people who had collided with me like rogue stars: just their sayings, visions, and the few facts I knew about them. I took over the big musicians’ gallery for my keyboard, mounting the long and complicated panel of my fascia in the manner of some huge cinema organ; behind it was the library with its transmuting system. What is better than reading the stars? Why, listening to them in their transports of love and pain, music of the spheres echoed by diluted animals. It all grew out of my little magnetic boxes—a lot of it scratchy as hell. Sitting there in the tremendous loneliness of the silent house (I had sent most of the servants away) I sat, a lean and bearded man, switching from life to life. It took ages, of course; more than three years before I managed to obtain the first coherent response to my data. In this way I hoped to prosecute the opening moves of my war upon Julian—my persecution of this hidden man. I had thought of other things, but they were schoolboy pranks—messages in invisible ink slowly printing themselves on astonished blotters. But Abel was better. With him I could scry and scan. Much of it was not very palatable—but is truth ever palatable? I discovered much too about myself, about my inadequacy with women. O it was terrible to see the real truth about Benedicta; she was to be pitied, not to be hated. And the quiet Iolanthe’s death-bed cry: “How little I have managed to live, and that always in hotels. There never seemed to be enough time, and now….” I should have carried off these women in my teeth to devour them at leisure on a piece of waste ground. But then women cannot help being predatory—to take up with one is to inherit a mink farm.

  Mark came, my son—how strange the word sounds! But he sheered away from me, sneaking round corners to avoid encounters. I saw him, a pale thin little creature with sticking-out ears, walking solemnly to church between those two black harpies, as if between warders. It was clear that they had had their instructions. The boy was doing some sort of preparatory work for an entrance exam though still barely out of kindergarten. I could pick him up on Abel, but dimly. I saw him, heard him, sitting at my desk in Merlin’s—a pale small-boned young man with a widow’s peak. But that lay far ahead as yet, after my own … disappearance. This was foggy, with more than a hint of suicide about it. But talking of suicide, since the word has cropped up, I remember Mark’s own little effort. I was working very early one morning when I happened to glance out of a window in time to see him walking down towards the lake. The earliness of the hour struck me—it was barely light. He had a slice of bread in his hand and was apparently about to feed the swans. I was about to turn away when something about his walk aroused my curiosity; it was so stiff and stilted, as if he were forcing himself to advance by sheer will-power. A moment later and he has walked right into the icy water, wading slowly outwards. Heavy sleet was falling. I shouted twice but he did not turn. Suddenly the comprehension of what he was doing dawned upon me and I raced for the door. The cold struck one amidships. He was moving steadily into the deeper reaches, already almost up to his neck. In spite of the blazing freeze I plunged after him, gasping with pain. I just reached his head as the water rose to his mouth, and grabbed him. He was blue and contorted with cold, crying and snickering. I half pushed the little creature into my shirt and crawled laboriously back to land with him, myself half fainting from the cold. Through his little blue prawn lips he was saying “They are trying to keep me away from you.” Over and over again. I plunged for the downstairs bathroom with its hot taps, in a delirium of cold and anguish; plunging him into the hot water to soothe his numbed limbs. Then I slumped down on the bidet opposite him and wept; I wept my way right back to my solitary childhood, back to the breast, back into the very womb which is the only memory we know about. He wept too, but commiseratingly; and presently I felt his small pale hand touching my head, patting me, consoling me. I did not need to ask who or what was trying to keep him from me. So we sat for an age, staring at each other. Then I towelled his pink frail body back to life, alarmed at his slenderness, his shallow lungs. Our clothes fumed upon the radiators. Waiting for them to dry I said “Would you like to work with me on Abel?” and his eye lit with a frail gleam. He sighed: “They wouldn’t let me.” “Then they mustn’t know, Mark, that is all. You must find times like this, too early or too late for them.”

  And so it was, he became my famulus, sneaking down before first light to spend two engrossing hours among my lights and wires. It was difficult at first to teach him the first principles of the thing; but later he mastered the whole system and crawled about my organ-loft like a powder-monkey.

  “What is Abel really?”

  “Well, one day you will want to know about us all, about your past and mine, about your future.”

  “Will I?”

  “Almost certainly. Everyone does. Here look at the programme manual—do you see the different bays marked ‘When’ ‘Who’ ‘Why’ ‘Where’ and ‘If’.”

  “If?” he said with surprise. “Why If?”

  “It’s the most important question of all in a way—it can change all the others: just one tiny grain of If.”

  It was a pleasure too to have someone to talk to; and as we worked I gave him the whole pedigree of Abel, starting with the Theaetetus and its block of wax in the human soul eager to imprint itself with every perception, thought, emotion; the whole theory of Platonic memory and all that blubber to which the child listened with wonder and a certain understanding. The only thing was that I had to warn him against the Julian dossier—how to be careful; because when I had finished with Julian I knew he would walk into my trap and come down to find out what there was to know about himself. What man could resist reading a se
cret report on himself? It was the second panel on the left with an inviting red button. I pushed it open for Mark—in order to make certain that he understood—and together we stared into the barrels of the loaded twelve-bore I had lashed to a stand and wired for action. I would leave this behind me when I left. Mark gazed at it wonderingly, and then at me, his small blue eyes narrowed as he tried to assess the meaning of this present. But he said nothing. “You won’t give me away?” I said, feeling so sure of his love for me. He shook his head proudly.

  So we opened up several of the channels and completed the elaborate programmes which would bring them to life—if that is the scientific word. I don’t know when I have been so happy. Nor was the business kept a secret; Nash came and had it all explained to him. He looked very strange, declared that he understood, and tiptoed away again. If he did not tap his head significantly before my eyes he perhaps did it before the eyes of others. Marchant also came—but he turned pale and gnawed his lip, whether from jealousy or contempt I do not know. Yes I do, though. I had pitifully little on him and I hadn’t really assorted the field with any thoroughness but up in the predicter came the word “plagiarism”. I wanted all this guff to filter back slowly to Julian, and it did. But that was only the beginning.

  Then unluckily Mark was caught; one of the harpies in a wizard’s dressing-gown stood sibilating in the doorway of the gallery. “Mark, you have been told over and over again.” She reached out a hand like a spade. I watched with a sort of recondite insolence, tipping the bottle of lemonade to my lips. Mark allowed himself to be led tamely away, head high, lips white, ears pink—the captive rabbit. It seemed useless to protest, so I did nothing, secure in his confidence. He stepped high and proud, and did not turn his head to say goodbye.