The God of the Labyrinth

  It was Angela’s turn next; she pulled me over to the rug, in front of the fire, and flung herself down, her knees bent. With her, I made a new discovery. It was as exciting as after the visit to the Dunkelmans. Obviously, there was something about her, or about the psychic-chemical combination of the two of us, that made us curiously well adapted for producing the maximum pleasure in one another. This is a factor that has seldom been observed by writers on sex, who seem to feel that the difference between one act of intercourse and another is purely a matter of the meanings one chooses to project into it. It was so delightful with Angela that I was tempted to relax my control and cease to withhold my tribute, if only as a matter of common politeness. Five minutes would have been enough for recovery. But this was not part of Esmond’s purpose; he seemed to be determined to continue the exhibition, for reasons of his own. I began to feel like the engine of a powerful car that reaches the temperature of perfect performance. There was no fatigue; my body seemed to hurtle forward at eighty miles an hour, the movements of my hips taking on a strangely weighted quality, almost resembling a pendulum. I increased speed to bring Angela to her climax, crushed her against me until her violence had spent itself, then moved on to the woman who was already waiting on the other side of me. Something was happening to me, a sense of dissocia­tion from my body, almost as if my mind had separated from it, and hung above us. When I thought back on my ordinary sex life, it seemed an undisciplined waste. Each time a man moves into a girl, a god awakens in him, a god who is dissatisfied with the dreary, beetle existence we lead; who knows that man was made for vast horizons, for infinite conquest, for a superb purity of will. And as flesh encounters alien flesh, his brain is gripped by a sharp clarity of purpose that refuses to tolerate the normal fuzziness and heaviness of the flesh. Like a superb officer, it can make this squad of sloppy recruits we call the body drill like a crack regiment. Then the orgasm passes; the officer is forgotten, the sloppiness is back.

  Esmond was not doing this for fun. On one level, this was a demonstration. Without words, he was telling us that the real objection to Casanova, Don Juan, Frank Harris and the rest, is that their seductions were oases of purpose in a desert of un­discipline; they soared for a second like eagles, then plunged back into the swamp. Esmond was telling me that the aim is to stay in the air. What would we say of a general who drove out a horde of invaders, then retreated from the captured territory and allowed them to return immediately? But this is what has happened to human beings; and they take it so much for granted that the invaders plod in directly behind the retreating rearguard, with no attempt at concealment. Esmond wanted to demonstrate that sexual intensity offers an insight as valid as mystical vision, and far easier to induce; but if it is to be effective, it must be disciplined with a passion equal to that of the yogi or ascetic.

  After the fifth woman, the sex ceased to interest me; I was dazzled by the truth that had stared me in the face all my life. Every time we are deeply happy we know that there is only one good: strength of will; and only one evil: to abnegate the will. If life is as good as we know it to be in our moments of delight, then all obstacles should be regarded as molehills; man should be undefeatable. As I looked around this room of naked goddesses, a deep joy rose in me. These were the mothers, the procreators of the race, whom men have always enslaved and degraded. I worshipped them as divinities. Their loins are man’s entrance to the world of dreams, of greatness, of the primeval purpose that lies behind matter. I saw no distinction between them, between the young and pretty and the tense middle-aged. The desire to serve them all was impersonal and free of lust. I stood up, and took the hand of a thin, neurotic-looking girl who had been waiting; we moved over to the corner of the room. A part of my being stood behind an altar draped in red velvet, in a temple of carved sandstone; I wore a mask in the shape of the head of a great bird. Forty naked women stood in a row before the con­gregation; their bodies shone with oil, and each held in her hand a phial in which glowed a green, effervescent liquid whose nature I suddenly understood.

  I woke up with the sunlight on my face, and with a surprising feeling of well-being. My muscles ached, but my body tingled with suppressed energy. I looked at the girl beside me—a girl whose name was unknown to me—and felt a surge of pity. Oddly enough, she had been a virgin. She had accepted me as a husband; but I was Diana’s husband and Mopsy’s father. I have not men­tioned Diana much in the course of this narrative; but I had phoned her every day, and thought about her whenever I had time to relax and think. Unlike Esmond, I am a home lover; now I wanted to get back to it.

  I slipped gently out of bed, and made my way back to my own room. I took a cotton dressing-gown out of my case and a towel from the rack, and went downstairs. The morning was delicious, full of the smells of April grass. I made my way to the stream, which was on the other side of a row of fuchsia bushes at the edge of the lawn. A surprised rabbit hurried off into the undergrowth, without haste. The stream was shallow, but near the weir it was waist deep. It was so cold that I had to take my feet out after a few moments, and allow the ache to subside. Then I lowered myself in, and squeezed water over my chest and back with a sponge. I stayed in until I began to feel cold, then spread the towel on the dewy lawn, and stretched out in the sun. In ten minutes, I was dry.

  I knew I had to leave here before the others were awake. If I stayed, there would be personal involvements with too many people. Every woman I had made love to would feel that it was her right to take away a small part of my life. My only objection to this was that there were too many. I would have enjoyed getting involved with every one of them; but there was only one of me.

  Back in the house, I woke up Angela—and told her I wanted to leave. She was asleep in her own room, and she yawned, smiled, and opened her arms. I kissed her and shook my head.

  ‘Not now.’ ‘You must be tired.’ She reached down, and slid her hand into my dressing-gown. ‘Good heavens.’ Her tongue went into my mouth. I tossed the clothes off the bed, and moved on top of her. She was still sleepy. It was warm and pleasant, but not explosive. I tried to withdraw for my orgasm, but she shook her head, and held me tight. After this, I covered her up again. ‘Can I take your car?’ ‘Of course, but you don’t have to go.’ I took her car key from her handbag, and the front-door key of the flat. I said: ‘Apologise to Körner, and tell him he can reach me at the flat any time today. He’ll understand.’

  Ten minutes later I was driving towards London, suddenly intensely happy, my brain seething with insights and ideas.

  What interested me most, of course, was the question of Esmond. My studies in psychology and occultism (of which I have written a history) had convinced me that two personalities may exist in the same body. The strange case of ‘the three faces of Eve’ is a classic of psychology that no one has tried to explain: the quiet, well-behaved housewife who would suddenly turn into a fun-loving tart. The strangest feature of this case, reported by Thigpen and Cleckley,‡ is that while the housewife was com­pletely ignorant of what happened when the good-time girl took over her body, the good-time girl was conversant with all her alter-ego’s activities. And Diana told me of a case that she actually witnessed as a teenager. One of her uncles went moun­tain climbing in Switzerland; one day, his sister-in-law—with whom Diana was staying—began talking in her uncle’s voice, using his vocal inflections and tone of voice (although, of course, her voice remained feminine). This continued for three days until her uncle’s body was found in a crevasse, then stopped.

  ‡ The Three Faces of Eve, by Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley. London, Secker and Warburg, 1957. The ‘third face’ was the cured and integrated Eve.

  We have no explanation for such things, and it would not matter greatly if we had; it would probably be the wrong one. All that interested me was that, in some sense, Esmond was not dead. This was the only outstanding and important fact.

  There were other problems. What had Esmond
said that pro­duced such a startling effect on Körner? What did Körner know about Esmond, and how did he find out?

  But this was only a small part of what occupied my mind as I drove back to London. What was really important was what I had learned last night. Esmond had found some way of sustain­ing the orgasm, keeping it burning for hours. This meant that he had taken a step beyond any human being who had so far existed. What fascinated me was the thought of the vistas of will and consciousness that had been opened up. Already, my will felt stronger, my consciousness somehow broader, deeper. All my life, I have obscurely felt myself in the grip of powers beyond myself, that are somehow manipulating me by remote control. If I am tired, and my brain feels dull, I am easily discouraged, and become a bad instrument of these powers. On the other hand, if I keep faith, and drive myself hard, and keep up a high level of optimism by sheer will and imagination, I have a sense of being used for a purpose that goes beyond my own, and seems to endow me with new powers. There is a sense of inevitability and ease, and I feel mildly surprised, like a sparrow that suddenly finds itself flying at the speed of a jet aeroplane.

  In Fifine at the Fair, Browning argues that man is like a swimmer, floating on his back in a calm sea. He cannot fly like a butterfly; if he tries to raise his shoulders too far out of the water, the rest of his body sinks. And if his head goes under the water, he drowns. That, says Browning, is the position of the artist; only his head can emerge from life, and discover freedom in a world of imagination; the rest of him is doomed to remain in the water, subject to the law of floating bodies. As an evolu­tionary existentialist, I have never accepted this stoical view. I am certain that these powers of imagination and ecstasy developed by the romantics presage a new stage in human development. In Fifine (which is about Don Juan), Browning accepts that man is inconstant, that his sexual desires give him glimpses of some alluring reality, which vanishes and leaves him bewildered and empty-handed. What I had always suspected is that this need not be so. We possess powers we are hardly aware of in the dull round of everyday life, to make the spirit rage like a tempest or sink into a breathless calm verging on ecstasy. In order to discover these, we must push ourselves to new limits. The man who sticks to everyday habit catches no startling glimpses of self-discovery. But exploration of the physical universe offers no possibility of new revelations. We have to master the strange trick of allowing the body to remain quiescent, while pushing the mind to explore interior savannahs and mountain ranges.

  And quite clearly, Esmond, with the aid of sex, had taken a huge step in that direction. No wonder he was able to make use of my body and brain. We had both devoted our life to the pursuit of the same idea. Across two centuries, our minds reached like outstretched hands, and clasped. There were many respects in which I had advanced further than had been possible for Esmond, for I had experienced another hundred and fifty years of European culture. But his will had reached further and deeper than mine. What might not be possible for our minds in com­bination?

  It was shortly after ten when I got back to the flat. I was raven­ously hungry. I found some good gammon in the refrigerator, and cooked half a dozen slices of it with three eggs. After eating that, with toast, marmalade, apple juice and coffee, I felt better. The feeling of well-being, of expanded awareness, continued. It struck me that the chief problem with human consciousness is that it is focused upon the present most of the time. Only in moments of relaxation—holiday moments—do we achieve a state where it is at once fully awake and yet unfocused. It is a trick; to overcome the old habit of allowing consciousness to become relaxed when it is unfocused. Here was I, full of a sense of strange potentiality, my mind completely alert, and yet not focused on anything in particular. The consequence was that almost anything I looked at or thought about filled me with excitement and elusive insights.

  Alastair had a rather fine edition of the poems of Chatterton on his shelf. I had never read the Rowley forgeries; yet as I looked at them, I had a sense of knowledge, of familiarity. I took them off the shelf and looked at Chatterton’s dates: 1752-1770. He was four years Esmond’s junior, and apparently in London for the last four months of his life—before he took a dose of arsenic. Esmond could have met him. I sat in the chair by the window, the book open on my knee, and emptied my mind. Instantly, I was Esmond; he appeared like an old friend, behind my eyes, looking at the book. I knew the answer to my question. He had never met Chatterton—he had been in Göttingen when Chatterton was in London; but he had spoken to Walpole about Chatterton the previous Christmas. Walpole had been furious because the boy had sent him verses that purported to be by a certain Abbot John; Walpole had been taken in until the poet Gray declared them forgeries. He wrote to Chatterton, gently hinting that he should use his talents to better purpose, and received in reply what he described as ‘an abusive screed’. In telling Esmond this story, Walpole had omitted to mention that Gray had discovered the forgery; he took the credit himself.

  The telephone rang; I assumed it would be Körner or Angela. But when the heavy German voice asked ‘Is Mr Sorme there?’, I knew I had made a mistake to answer. I said ‘Speaking’ with forced briskness.

  ‘Ah, thank heavens. This is Annaliese Dunkelman. I have been trying to contact you all weekend. How are you?’

  We exchanged polite courtesies for a moment; then she said: ‘Listen, it is important that I see you. Can you come over here?’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, but that’s impossible. I’m leaving for Ireland this afternoon . . .’

  While I talked to her, I felt a curious tingling of the loins, and the thought of her open thighs and the genitals under rose-coloured silk suddenly came back to me with great clarity. It struck me that Esmond would understand this, but it was too difficult to try to make my mind a blank as she talked. Suddenly, the line went dead. I assumed we had been cut off, and hung up. It struck me this might be a good moment to ring Diana in Moycullen—so that if Anna Dunkelman rang back she’d find the line engaged. I dialled the operator, and a few minutes later was talking to Mopsy, who told me that Mummy was in the greenhouse. A few minutes later Diana came on the line, and told me she had been trying to get me since yesterday; Fleisher had managed to get a film offer for his Donelly materials, and wanted an immediate reply. The sum was very large indeed. But Fleisher proposed to take fifty per cent, which struck me as excessive. We talked for nearly twenty minutes; I told her I hoped to be back within a couple of days, and to do nothing about the telegram. Then the doorbell rang. I said goodbye quickly, and went to glance out of the window. Anna Dunkel­man stood on the front step.

  I was tempted not to answer it, but this seemed cowardly; besides, she had probably heard my voice on the telephone—I had opened the window. I went and let her in.

  She smiled at me in an exuberant, possessive manner.

  ‘Ah, my dear Gerard, it is good to see you again.’ She seized both my hands, and pressed against me affectionately for a moment. I found myself wondering if she was wearing the gauze panties, and felt a twinge in my loins.

  The astonishing thing was that she was the sort of person I would normally have found downright repellent. She wasn’t bad-looking and her figure was good—if hefty—but I found her basically masculine. In some odd way, this seemed to increase her attraction by dissolving the normal male-female barrier, and substituting a comradely frankness. I had to admit, she had the charm and plausibility of the devil.

  She even had the subtlety not to refer to her attempts to con­tact me; that would have implied reproach. She was all warmth; we were old friends who had come together, and were delighted to see one another.

  She asked me where my friends were. I said they were out for the day. I thought I detected a flicker of self-congratulation. She said: ‘A pity. I wanted to meet this young man. He sounds intelligent.’

  She unbuttoned her coat and I helped her off with it. She was wearing a dress of soft brown material, and her large breasts
made it strain outwards. It was very short.

  She sat down on the settee—rather demurely, with her knees together, turned sideways; but the shortness of her dress made it inevitable that she showed the tops of her stockings, and an area of thigh. I offered her coffee. She said:

  ‘No thank you. I want to talk to you about many things. To begin with, if you are in Ireland, you need a literary helper, yes?’

  I said perhaps, very cautiously; but I must admit that I was beginning to wonder whether Körner had not been exaggerating about the Dunkelmans. She radiated warmth, and a kindly vitality.

  ‘Good. I have just the person. There is a young girl called Clara Viebig, a Swiss. When I told her I have met you, she can hardly believe it. She has all your books, and a great scrapbook full of Press cuttings of you.’ She smiled confidentially. ‘Of course, this is the kind of infatuation that happens to young girls—she has only just left college. She says she has written to you twice but had no reply.’ (This could have been true; I reply to letters only when I have no other writing to do.) ‘Now this girl has a lot of free time—her father makes her a good allowance and she does some studies at London University. As soon as I told her about your work on Donelly, she has offered to be your literary correspondent in London. She wants nothing for this. She only wants to work with you . . .’