The Revolt of Aphrodite (55 page)

But now I was musing, staring at the ground, seeing in my mind’s eye the sweating Marchant taking down Abel, probably with
earphones
like the people who de-fuse mines (after all the staked shot gun must have worried them); calling back in his firm but squeaky voice the name of every nut and bolt he touched. So they had stolen Abel’s memory, a thing still so terribly imperfect of execution. (I have had since a number of new notions about how to extend it.) Here they were clearly thinking about a mnemonic contrivance which acted directly on the musculature—a walking memory: what else is man, pray? It was breath-taking as an idea, and also monstrous. “Yes” said Julian, as if he were thought-reading. “It’s monstrous all right, but only from one point of view.”

“Who would have thought it, Julian?” I said. “Iolanthe as the witch-fulfilment, the which fulfilment—how do you prefer it? How did you reduce it all to size to fit it into the confines of the human skull?”

“We can do almost anything with matter, in the field of imitation; all we can’t do is
create
it.” He said it with such bitterness that I felt at once that he was thinking of his own castration. And then I looked past him up the hill and saw this other blonde monster Benedicta leaning against a tree and smoking quietly, with her blue eyes raised towards the sunlight which had begun to weaken now, to send blue shadows racing down to the bluer roots of the snowpeaks—and I thought grimly of the long desolating periods of impotent fury I had had to live through because of this man: of the fears and illnesses of Benedicta herself: of a life half lived or at least ill lived (always some cylinders not firing): and thinking the whole damned cartoon-strip through from the beginning I felt a sudden surge of weakness, a lassitude of limb and mind. I took a good swig from the gin bottle and set it carefully back in its place. “So you want me to join forces on the science friction, Julian? I’ll have to think it over, you know.” But he was already smiling at me in a curiously knowing way, as if he realised how deeply his arguments had pierced my armour, my self-esteem; and also how enticing was the prospect he had sketched in for me. I also had the uncomfortable feeling that he had really gone out of his mind in a queer sort of way. I wanted to say “You are schizoid my lad, that’s what you are. But with patience and rest and sedation …” but I said nothing. On the other hand, in a confused sort of way I began to wish I had never heard of this toy of his. But here he was, still smiling at me with a funny hangdog
tenderness,
quite impenitent over the past and still hungry about the future.

“I have good hopes of you” he said softly. “I will ring you up in a day or two. I am making arrangements to take Rackstraw back to England. He has moments, you know, when he becomes quite lucid and recalls quite a lot. I have spared no research into Iolanthe, you know—into her character and her habits. Almost everyone who knew her has had something to tell us, and we’ve built up a huge library on her, crumb by crumb, to feed into the Abel nervous system, if I can put it like that. I think the elegance of Marchant’s adaptation of Abel will please you very much—all sorts of new materials are to hand these days for modelling. My dear Felix, I can’t believe you’ll refuse me. It would be the crown of your life’s work I believe to
help me make her so perfectly that nobody would ever believe it wasn’t her.”

“Why Rackstraw?”

“He was her lover. I want to suck him dry.”

“What can he tell you?”

He gave a small impatient gesture.

“The least thing is important for her. Nothing is too trifling to be overlooked.” He said this with such childish impish seriousness that I was tempted to laugh. Quite insane! All this would end in catatonia, some delicious twilight-state which would make the doctors croon with joy. O boredom, boredom. Mother of the Arts! But if I didn’t do this, what else could I do to escape from it? I was a compulsive inventor, nothing else fulfilled me. I had an irrational rush of hunger and love for this new Benedicta staring into the clouds up there—perhaps she could save me from myself? No. I looked at Julian, and I realised with full force for the first time in my life what the theologians must mean when they speak of being tempted by the devil. The
hubris,
the insolence, to arrogate to oneself the power of the Gods! Vaulting ambition etc. I suddenly wanted to do a pee and be alone with myself for a second. I retired behind the hut for a moment while Julian sat motionless, waiting for me to come back. I did, and sat down. “You are insatiable” I said and he nodded in a thirsty sort of way. The inside of his mouth was very pink, very red, so that in some of his expressions one might descry a touch of vampire. “Iolanthe” he said in a low voice as if she explained
everything,
the whole earth and the heavens above. “I saw her, you missed her. Now the firm must recreate her. It
must,
do you understand? and you
must
help
it
.”

“And when you have built your Adam and Eve, what then? Will you ask Whipsnade to find a corner for them?”

“I am not going to speak to you as yet about that” he said in a sharp martinet’s tone, a soft peremptory flash of fire. “We will face that when and if we succeed in doing what I want done.”

“We’ll ask Caradoc to build them a pretty little Parthenon to live in I suppose; dependants of the firm with a firmly guaranteed
pension
scheme and health insurance….” I badly felt the need to insult him, I loved him so much. Badly. He sat quite still and calm
but said nothing. I went on truculently, irrationally, “I shall be forced to regard you as a case of intellectual Koro, artificially induced. A
retractio
ad
absurdum.”
He writhed and gritted his teeth with fury but said nothing, always nothing. It would have been pleasant to hit him with something but there was nothing to hand. Such weakness is despicable.

“I think you will” he said at last. “I don’t really see what else you can do now you know about it.” And all of a sudden he expelled his breath with relief and shrunk down to half his size, as if from
exhaustion.
He became so pale I thought he would probably faint; he seemed to suddenly feel the cold, his teeth chattered. Then after a minute or so his breathing steadied again and he regained his posture, his norm. He became once more the pleasant conversational man. “As for Caradoc,” he said “as you know he is back and
en
disponibi
lité
until the firm finds something worthy of his genius. But even a genius has a few intellectual holes in him and he is no exception; the sense of symbolic logic in architecture escapes him completely. He finds no significance for example in the fact that the diameter of the outer stone circle of Stonehenge is some 100 feet which is about the diameter of the dome of St Paul’s.”

He stood up again and turned away to stare at the snowrange intently. Then he said, but in a whisper and as if to himself: “One dares not neglect symbolism in either life or art. It is perilous. I threw a lighted torch into Iolanthe’s grave!” I was in the presence of someone who had suffered the full onslaught of the European
disease,
poxier than pox ever was—Love! But of course allied as always to matter for he added in the same breath, “I own all her films now. I play them over and over to myself, in order to regale myself with all that she wanted to be, all that she could not realise of herself. My God, Felix, you must see them.”

“So you bought her out at last!” I simply could not resist the bitter note in my voice. He nodded with set jaw. How I hated this mechanical vulture!

“I finally forced her to abdicate” he said, but sadly now, as if the victory were a hollow one. “She abdicated only after her death; and I could do nothing about her life or about mine. Fixed stars!” In a long sad pause he repeated the phrase like an incantation. “Fixed stars!”

Poor Julian! Rich Julian! Vega and Altair!

“Now I must leave you,” he said “and find my way down to the bottom of this damned mountain.” He gloved his precise small hand and stood up. Together we walked across the snow to where Benedicta was. She watched us quietly advancing towards her, unsmiling, calm.
“Eh
bien”
she said at last on a note of interrogation, but there was not much more to be said.

Julian took her hands in his in a somewhat ceremonial fashion. “B., you betrayed us over Count Böcklin, didn’t you? Quite
deliberately
.” But there was no rancour in his tone, perhaps just a touch of regret. Benedicta nodded in perfectly composed fashion and kissed him in sisterly wise on the cheek. “I wanted to show myself that I was finally free, Julian.” Julian nodded. “That word again” he said reprovingly. “It has a dying fall.” B. put her arm through mine. “All too frequently” she agreed. “But not any more, at least for me. You know, if Felix hadn’t disappeared and left me alone I would have refused the task when you put it to me. But I was scared, I was scared to death of you.” Julian started to put on his skis, tenderly latching up the thongs and testing them with
precision
on one leg and then the other. “And now you can only pity me I suppose. Don’t Benedicta. That might make me turn dangerous again.” Strange, agonisingly shy man!

“No” she said. “You are de-fused for us, Julian.”

He looked from one to the other for a long moment; then he gave a little nod as if of approval at what he saw. “I shall order you some happiness for a change now that we have crossed the big divide in ourselves. You might even come to love
me
one day, both of you. I doubt, though. Yet the road has opened in front of us. But there is still quite a lot to be done in order to earn it. Felix, I shall ring you up in a couple of days when you have had a chance to reflect.”

“No need” I said. “I am your man and you know it.”

“What luck,” he said in a low voice “what luck for me to have you at my side once more. And so farewell.”

He shuffled his way uphill until he gained the edge of the practice slope and then ebbed forward on his skis, propelling himself with his paddles; gathered momentum, curved up small, and glided away like a swallow into the valley. Suddenly with his going we felt that
the world had emptied itself; we felt the evening chill upon us as we returned to the hut to pack up and trudge back to the
tél
é
f
é
rique.

“You are signing on again” she said. “Darling, this time I think you should; now I am at your side and you at mine, armed. I’m holding my breath. Do you think some happi….?”

I kissed her breathless. “Not a word, not a single word. Just go on holding your breath and we’ll see what happens.”

Sinking down the mountain side in the dark purple cusp of evening was more beautiful than the morning ascent; a somewhat
inexplicable
sensation of delayed shock had seized me. I repeated in my own mind the words “Well, so Julian actually exists and I have met him in the flesh.” The phrase generated a perfectly irrational relief and—indeed why not?—happiness. Also physical relief: I felt done in, exhausted. Why? I don’t know. It was as if, during the meeting itself, my mind had been in such a daze that I couldn’t fully grasp the fact. I suppose ordinary people might experience this sort of grateful shock-anaesthesia on meeting an admired film-star
unexpectedly
in a grocer’s shop. It was clear for me at any rate. Julian had appeared like some figment of a lost dream flashed, so to speak, on the white screen of the snows. He had disappeared just as dramatically—a dwindling black spot turning back into tadpole and racing away into the huge blue perspectives of the valley. Gone!

Benedicta had burrowed her slender hand into my pocket and was softly pressing mine. “It is fatuous to feel so serene,” I said “and possibly dangerous too. Do you know what he is up to? Building a human being, if you please. Moreover one we know. God, I love you, Benedicta. Wait!”

I had a perfectly brilliant idea for a new sort of jump-circuit. It was so rich I feared it might disappear if I didn’t make a note of it; yes, but pencil and paper? Fortunately she had a very fine lipstick with her and in her methodical camper’s way she had brought a few sheets of toilet-paper against emergencies since she knew there was no lavatory at the huts. Saved! She looked over my shoulder as I blotted and blatched with this clumsy tool. I couldn’t stop to explain for fear that the idea might fade. It was my sort of poem to the blue evening, the sliding white mountains, the buzzing prismatic corolla of the sinking sun bouncing off the slopes, the trees, the world, to
Benedicta herself. And how patient she was; probably disappointed that it wasn’t a love letter but a set of silly pothooks, equations. (If it worked it might spell the death of the ordinary light-bulb as we know it.) “I love you” I said. “But don’t speak for a moment. O I love you desperately, but shut up please.”

Ouf! But I felt guilt when it was all duly noted down and stuffed into my pocket. So I wrote on the window a rebus based on the word TUNC with a heart in the middle instead of a you-know-what and the words
Felix
amat
Benedictam.
In fact such was my euphoria that I missed a step on the ramp and fell headlong into a snowdrift.

“That really is a sign of returning health” said Benedicta
approvingly
after her first concern about broken limbs was allayed. “With the return of absentmindedness on such a scale we can really
prog-nose
a total cure.” That is all very well, but in fact I was whacked; I had a bath, got my dressings changed, and was all ready for visiting her at the chalet, but instead I lay down on the bed for a few moments of repose and reflection and fell instantly asleep. It was early
morning
when I woke to find myself stiff as a lead soldier but
wonderfully
refreshed. Beside me, scribbled on the temperature chart, was a note from B. which said: “Alarmed, I came to find you. But I like you almost better asleep than awake. You look such a fool, such a contented fool. All the algebra has been drained from your body. You look how one ought to look when one is dead but alas we don’t. Anyway I have enjoyed sitting beside you watching you going up and down in a steady purposeful sort of way. In your Chinese book I read the following passage which pleased me. ‘Drunk, in a huge green garden, among flowering cherry trees, under a parasol, among diplomats, what a death, Tu Fu, poor poor dear.’ So goodnight. (P.S. I want to sleep with you.)”