It was funny all right, but also vaguely disquieting. He put his head on one side and winked with his right eye. He stood up and joined his fingers to say, with a seraphic sadness: “One day I had to face reality. It was quite unexpected. I pulled out me squiffer when all of a sudden it abrogated by a simple reticulation of the tickler. I was aghast! I went to see the doctor and he says to me: ‘Look here Sipple, I must be frank with you. As man to man your sperm count is low and the motility of your product nil.’ I reeled. There I had been, so young, so gay, so misinformed. ‘Sipple’ went on the doc ‘it’s all in your childhood. I bet you never noozled the nipple properly. You never had seconds I’ll avow.’ And he was right; but then what little nipper knows how to tease the tit properly and avoid abrogation in later life when he needs all the reticulation he can get, just tell me that?” He wiped away an invisible tear and stood all comico-pathetico before an invisible medico. “You have all my sympathy” said Caradoc, drunk and indeed a little moved. He swallowed heavily. Sipple went on, his voice rising to higher more plaintive register: “But that was not all, Carry. The doctor had drained away my self-confidence with his blasted medical diagmatic. Yet there was a crueller blow to come, ‘Sipple’ he said to me ‘there is no way out of your dilemma. You are utterly lacking in PELVIC THRUST.’”
“How unfair” cried Caradoc with burning sympathy.
“And thank God untrue” squawked Sipple. “Under the proper stage management it is a wanton lie.”
“Good.”
“I have shown you haven’t I?”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll show you again tonight. Where is Henniker?”
“I’ll take your word for it, Sippy.”
Sipple poured himself out a massive drink and warmed to his tale, secure now in his hold over his audience. He must have been a very great clown once, for he combined the farcical and the sinister within one range of expression. “Some day I shall write the story of my love-life from my own point of view. Starting with the dawn of realisation. One day the scales dropped from my eyes. I saw love as only a clown could: what struck me was this: the position, first of all, is ridiculous. No-one with a sense of the absurd could look at it frankly without wanting to laugh. Who invented it? If you had seen Mrs. Arthur Sipple lying there, all reliability, and fingering her ringlets impatiently, you’d have felt your risibility rise I bet. It was too much for me, I couldn’t master myself, I laughed in her face. Well, not exactly her face. She was too heavy to turn over, you’d need a spade. It was only when her night-dress took fire that she realised that all was over. I couldn’t help laughing, and that made her cry. ‘Farewell forever Beatrice’ I said turning on my heel. I sailed away and for many a month I wallowed in the dark night of the soul. I reflected. Gradually my ideas clarified, became more theatrical. I had found a way through.
“So I went back to the doctor, all fulfilment, to tell him about my new methods. He jumped and said I was a caution. A caution! ‘It’s very very unBritish, you know’ he said. I hadn’t thought of that. I thought he’d be so pleased with me. He said I was a traitor to the unborn race. He said he wanted to write a paper on me, me Sipple. I grew a trifle preremptory with him, I’ll allow. But I hadn’t come all the way back to Cockfosters to be insulted. He called me an anomaly and it was the last straw. I struck him and broke his spectacles.” Sipple gave a brief sketch of this blow and sank back on to the sofa. “And so” he went on slowly “I came here to Athens to try and find peace of mind; and I won’t say I didn’t. I’m assuaged now, thanks to Mrs. Henniker’s girls and their broomsticks. No more abrogation of the tickler.”
Caradoc was having one of his brief attacks of buoyancy; drink seemed to have a curious intermittent effect upon him, making him tipsy in little patches. But these were passing clouds of fancy merely from which he appeared to be able to recover by an act of will. “Once,” he was saying dreamily “once the firm sent me to build a king a palace in Burma and there I found the menfolk had little bells sewn into their season tickets—believe me bells. Every movement accompanied by a soft and silver tinkle. Suggestive, melodious and poetical it was to hear them chiming along the dark jungle roads. I almost went out and ordered a carillon for myself….
Come join the wanton music where it swells,
Order yourself a whopping set of bells.
But nothing came of it. I was withdrawn too soon.”
A large scale diversionary activity was now taking place somewhere among the curtains; Pulley appeared looking sheepish and incoherent, followed by Mrs. Henniker who was greeted with a cry from Sipple. “What about it, Mrs. H?” he cried. “I told you I wanted to be tortured tonight in front of my friends here.” Mrs. Henniker clucked and responded imperturbably that there had been a little delay, but that the “torture-room” was being prepared and the girls dressed up. The clown then excused himself with aplomb, saying that he had to get ready for his act but that he would not be long. “Don’t let him fall asleep” he added pointing to the yawning Pulley. “I need an audience or it falls flat.”
Nor did it take very long to set the theatrical scene. Mrs. Henniker reappeared with clasped hands and bade us follow her once more down into the same gaunt kitchen where the shadows still bobbed and slithered—but a different set of them; moreover the dungeon now was full of the melancholy clanking of chains. More lights had been introduced—and there in the middle of things was Sipple naked. They had just finished chaining him to a truckle bed of medieval ugliness. He paid no attention to anyone. He appeared deeply preoccupied. He was wearing the awkward oldfashioned leg-irons of the cripple. But most bizarre of all were the party whips, so to speak. The three girls who had been delegated to “torture” him wore mortar-boards and university gowns with dingy fur tippets. The contrast with their baggy Turkish trousers was delightful. They each held a long broom switch—the sort one could buy for a few drachmae and which tavern keepers use for sweeping out the mud-floored taverns. As we entered they all advanced purposefully upon Sipple with their weapons at the ready while he, appearing to catch sight of them for the first time, gave a start and sank kneeling to the floor.
He began to tremble and sweat, his eyeballs hung out as he gazed around him for some method of escape. He shrank back with dismal clankings. I had to remind myself that he was acting—but indeed was he acting? It was impossible to say how true or false this traumatic behaviour was. Mrs. Henniker folded her arms and looked on with a proud smile. The three doctors of divinity now proclaimed in very broken English, “Arthur, you have been naughty again. You must be punish!” Sipple cringed. “Nao!” he cried in anguish. “Don’t ’urt me. I swear I never.”
The girls, too, acted their parts very well, frowning, knitting black brows, gritting white teeth. Their English was full of charm—such broken crockery, and so various as to accent—craggy Cretan, singsong Ionian. “Confess” they cried, and Sipple began to sob. “Forward!” said Mrs. Henniker now, under her breath in Greek, adding the further adornment of a thick Russian intonation. “Forward my children, my partridges.”
They bowed implacably over Sipple now and shouted in ragged unison, “You have again wetted your bed.” And before he could protest any further they fell upon him roundly with their broom switches and began to fustigate the fool unmercifully crying “Dirty. Dirty.”
“Ah” cried Sipple at the stinging pleasure of the first assault. “Ah.” He writhed, twisted and pleaded to be sure; he even made a few desultory movements which suggested that he was going to fight back. But this was only to provoke a harsher attack. Anyway he would have stood little chance against this band of peasant Amazons. He clanked, scraped and squeaked. The noise grew somewhat loud, and Mrs. Henniker slipped into the corner to put on a disc of the Blue Danube in order to mitigate it. Bits of broom flew off in every direction. Caradoc watched this scene with the reflective gravity of one watching a bullfight. I felt astonishment mixed with misgiving. But meanwhile Sipple, oblivious to us all, was taking his medicine l
ike a clown—nay, lapping it up.
He had sunk under the sharpened onslaught, begun to disintegrate, deliquesce. His pale arms and legs looked like those of a small octopus writhing in the throes of death. In between his cries and sobs for mercy his breath came faster and faster, he gasped and gulped with a perverted pleasure. At last he gave a final squeak and lay spread-eagled on the stone flags. They went on beating him until they saw no further sign of life and then, panting, desisted and burst into peals of hysterical laughter. The corpse of Sipple was unchained, disentangled and hoisted lovingly on to the truckle bed. “Well done” said Mrs. Henniker. “Now he will sleep.” Indeed Sipple had already fallen into a deep infantile slumber. He had his thumb in his mouth and sucked softly and rhythmically on it.
They surrounded his bed filled with a kind of commiserating admiration and wonder. On slept Sipple, oblivious. I noticed the markings on his arms and legs—no larger than blackheads in a greasy skin: but unmistakably the punctures of a syringe. The shadows swayed about us. One of the lamps had begun to smoke. And now, in the middle of everything, there came a sharp hammering on a door somewhere and Mrs. Henniker jumped as if stung by a wasp and dashed away down the corridor. Everyone waited in tableau grouped about the truckle bed until she should reappear—which she did a moment later at full gallop crying: “Quick, the police.”
An indescribable confusion now reigned. In pure panic the girls scattered like rabbits to a gunshot. Windows were thrown open, doors unbolted, sleepers were warned to hurry up. The house disgorged its inhabitants in ragged fashion. I found myself running along the dunes with Pulley and Caradoc in the frail starshine. Our car had disappeared, though there seemed to be another on the road with only its dim sidelights on. Having put a good distance between ourselves and the house we lay in a ditch panting to await developments. Later the whole thing turned out to have been a misunderstanding; it was simply two sailors who had come to claim their recumbent friend. But now we felt like frightened schoolboys. Concern for the sleeping clown played some part in Caradoc’s meditations as we lay among the squills, listening to the sighing sea. Then the tension ebbed, and turning on his back the Cham’s thoughts changed direction. Presumably Hippolyta’s chauffeur had beaten a retreat in order not to compromise her reputation by any brush with the law. He would be back, of that my companions were sure. I chewed grass, yawning. Caradoc’s meditations turned upon other subjects, though only he and Pulley were au courant. Out of this only vague sketches swam before me. Something about Hippolyta having ruined her life by a long-standing attachment, a lifelong infatuation with Graphos. “And what the devil can she think we will achieve by my giving a Sermon on the Mount on the blasted Acropolis?” Nobody cared what savants thought. Graphos might save the day, but his career was at its lowest ebb. He had had several nervous breakdowns and was virtually unable to lead his party even if the government fell, as they thought it would this winter. And all because he was going deaf.
I perked up. “Can you imagine a worse fate for a politician raised in a tradition of public rhetoric? No wonder he’s finished.”
“Did you say deaf?” I said.
“Deaf!” I had become very fond of the word and repeated it softly to myself. It had become a very beautiful word to me.
“And I have to sermonise on the Mount” repeated Caradoc with disgust. “Something to give ears to the deaf, something full of arse-felt greetings and blubberly love. I ask you. As if it could avert the worst.”
“What worst?” I asked; it seemed to me that for days now I had done nothing but ask questions to which nobody could or would provide an answer. Caradoc shook himself and said: “How should I know? I am only an architect.”
Lights were coming down the road. It was Hippolyta’s car. We signalled and galloped towards it.
* * * * *
Somewhere here the continuity becomes impacted again, or dispersed. “I was the fruit of a mixed mirage” said Caradoc, dining Chez Vivi with a group of money-loving boors with polish. Laughing until his buttonhole tumbled into his wineglass. “We must work for the greatest happiness of the highest few.” I had by then confided my orient pearls to the care of Hippolyta for Graphos. A queer sort of prosopography reigns over this section of time. Arriving too early, for example, I waited in the rosegarden while she saw Graphos to his car. I had only seen his picture in the paper, or seen him sitting in the back of a silver car, waving to crowds. I had missed the club foot; now as they came down the path arm in arm I heard the shuffling syncopated walk, and I realised that he had greater burdens to carry than merely his increasing deafness. His silver hair and narrow wood-beetle’s head with those melancholy incurious eyes—they were set off by the silver ties he wore, imported from Germany. Somewhere in spite of the cunning he gave off all the lethargy of riches. I came upon exactly the quality of the infatuation he had engendered in an ancient Greek poem about a male lover.
He reeks with many charms,
His walk is a whole hip dance,
His excrement is sesame seed-cake
His very spittle is apples.
Insight is definitely a handicap when it comes to loving. (His rival shot him stone dead with a longbow.) On the lavatory wall someone had marked the three stages of man after the classical formula.
satiety
hubris
ate
“The danger for Graphos is that he has begun to think of himself in the third person singular” she said sadly, but much later. All this data vibrates on now across the screens of the ordering condensers in Abel, to emerge at the requisite angle of inclination.
Nor was my experiment with Caradoc’s voice less successful; amongst the confusion and general blurr of conversation there was a brief passage extolling the charms of Fatma to which she listened with considerable amusement, and which I found centuries later among my baggage and fed to A. “She may not be a goddess to everyone” he begins a trifle defensively “though her lineaments reveal an ancient heritage. An early victim of ritual infibulation was she. Later Albanian doctors sewed up the hymen with number twelve pack thread so that she might contract an honourable union. No wonder her husband jumped off a cliff after so long and arduous a honeymoon. In their professional excitement the doctors had by mistake used the strings of a guitar. She gave out whole arpeggios like a musical box when she opened her legs. Her husband, once recovered, sent her back to her parents with a hole bored in her frock to show that she was no virgin. Litigation over the affair is doubtless still going on. But meanwhile what was Fatma to do? She took the priapic road like so many others. She walked in peace and brightness holding the leather phallus, the sacred olisbos in the processions of Mrs. Henniker. Nor must we forget that these parts were aidoion to the Greeks, ‘inspiring holy awe’. There is no special word for chastity in ancient Greek. It was the Church Fathers who, being troubled and a trifle perverted, invented agneia. But bless you, Fatma does not know that, to this very day. When she dies her likeness will be in all the taverns, her tomb at the Nube covered with votive laurels; she will have earned the noblissima meretrix of future ages. Biology will have to be nudged to make room for Fatma.”
But the rest scattered with the talk as gun-shy birds will at a clapping of hands. Something vague remains which might be guessed to concern the Piraeus brothel where many of the names live on from the catalogues of Athenaeus—like Damasandra which means, “the man-crusher”: and the little thin ones, all skin and bone and saucer eyes, are still “anchovies”. Superimposed somewhere in all this Iolanthe’s just-as-ancient moral world out of Greek time. Skins plastered with white lead to hide the chancres, jowls stained with mulberry juice, blown hair powdering to grey, underside of olives in wind but not half as venerable. The Lydians spayed their women and did their flogging to the sound of a flute. Depilatories of pitch-plaster battling desperately against the approach of old age…. The appropriate sounds of the fountain whispering and of a leather-covered bottle being decanted. Then amidst yawns C’s declamation of a p
oem called The Origen of Species
One god-distorted neophyte
Cut off his cods to see the light,
Now though the impulse does not die
He greets erections with a sigh.
Somewhere, too, room must be made for the scattered utterances of Koepgen—his notebooks were always to hand, not a drop was spilt. Records from some Plaka evening under a vine-tent, mewed at by mandolines. “First pick your wine: then bleed into it preciously, drop by drop, the living semen of the resin. Then pour out and drink to complete the ikonography of a mind at odds with itself here below the lid of sky. The differences can be reconciled for a while by these humble tin jars.” Singing has blurred the rest of it, but here and there, like the glint of mica in stone, the ear catches a solidified echo. “Have you noticed that at the moment of death a man breathes in through both nostrils?”
These simple indices of acute anxiety, racing pulse, incontinence, motor incoordination (wine jar spilt, flowers scattered, vase broken) involve the loss of reflexes acquired within the first year of infant life. Iolanthe cannot be to blame. She sleeps like a mouse-widow with her hair in her mouth, black fingernails extended on the pillow like grotesque fingerprints. Bodies smelling hot and rank.
Somewhere here also, among the shattered fragments recovered from old recordings, Abel has the germ plasm of Hippolyta’s voice, vivacious and halting, running on like a brook in a dry river-bed. The black of that perfumed hair when set seems to be charcoal, carved and buffed—or a Chinese ink which holds its sheen even in darkness. She walks naked, unselfconscious, to the balcony to find the car keys, and when he has driven off without a backward glance she goes barefoot down the garden path to the small Byzantine chapel at the end to consult the hovering Draconian eyes of the ikons, the reproachful smile of St. Barbara. Here to light the lamps and mutter the traditional prayers.