The Avignon Quintet (39 page)

The thought brought with it no consolation but I set it down here for what it is worth. The act of sexual congress as the spirit-developer, the idea-hatcher is the source of all science, all art, all information which the spirit needs as its aliment. Psychic growth is nurtured by it. Purifier of mind, sharpener of intuition, procurer of the future. But to fulfil itself and do its job it must be part of a double act, a chiming act. It is strongest when practised by the beast with the two backs. I am not being waggish – look around you at the army of the sexually defeated. Look at Rob. We impotents are great collectors of
objets de vertu
, snuffboxes, musical boxes, knick-knacks. “There’s the rub!” as Hamlet says.

Then along comes Uncle Joy and tells me about the great separation from the teat and the mother which echoes on and on like sobbing in a darkened room. Poor Rob has become the champion of waiting on empty sidings, deserted railway-stations, bus-shelters in the rain, desolate cafés, midnight airports. … Waiting on in an agony of apathy and thinking that Trash with her skinny legs had the walk of a senior microbe.

The art of prose governed by syncopated thinking; for thoughts curdle in the heart if not expressed. An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.

They say that if you can get bored enough with calamity you can learn to laugh. Comedians are the nearest to suicide.

Grief clothed in days, in hours

In places things and situations

Grief thrown out of the trains

Or emptied from sturdy dustbins

Overboard from ships in sea-cremations

From eyes or lips or refuse-tips

Sliding like coals in chutes

Grief thrown into disuse by miner’s time

A dustbin full of memories’ old disputes

And then to see sorrow come with its

Stealthy foreclosing, final demands, the grave

While super-silence hovers like a nave.

On the dark lake a boat by moonlight with its load of shadows – mounds of black grapes a-glister. Somewhere from an alp, white with spring snow, the sound of a bugle. I thought of Pia’s piano teacher Mr. Valdegour, a Russian prince down on his luck. He made her play with him. He played the piano the while to allay suspicion. Later he said that it was like sinking into yielding masses of music heaped up like snow or water or cloud. Cancer of the prostate and so on … Suppose, Suppose,
Suppositoire
, eh doc?

“Life”, said the little tedious priest, “is always pointing in the right direction, it is always bliss-side up if only we know how to take it.” Perhaps. Perhaps. But to take it you must begin by giving, and this is hard to learn.

Ah the specialised kindness of taut Christian pharisees, les
pince-fesses
who fart like tent-pegs.

Pia, that last Christmas, the tree with its withered finery. Trash in her fur cape looked like the back legs of a pantomime bear, and Pia like a small lioness in spurs. That night a necro-spasm – a unique depression follows, based on reproof, rebuke, self-reproach. Yet when I was ill she looked after me like an investment. Tenderness of a gun-dog.

There is mystery in the fact that if you repeat something meaningless long enough it begins slowly to gather significance and meaning as a needle on the disc gathers fluff. It becomes a
mantram
.

I tell everyone that Bloshford was operated on for hernia by a French doctor who left a pair of gardening-gloves inside him – or at least that is how he looks. Alternatively in certain lights he looks like a stage policeman who has swallowed the pea in his whistle.

The long suit of literature? Think of the impact of Melville’s years of massive silence.

Bloshford does something quite hard to do – he trivialises reality. He does not feel the need for the monotony so essential to the creative spirit. I must be very jealous of him to go on like this. Bloshford! Gr … Gr … Woof! Woof!

In the Merchant Navy an expression signifying “to go mad” is wonderfully expressive. “Riding a corkscrew” it is called.

Tall and willowy, she was one of those pretty Swedish tubes into which one empties oneself in the desperate hope of getting a good night’s sleep. (Régine.)