The Revolt of Aphrodite (70 page)

And then all the shaggier motives which wake and howl like
ravening
mastiffs after dark. Through them I could align my faecal image of the ideal Aphrodite with everything that woke and stirred in the bestiaries of necrophilia, in the huge syllabaries of vampirism. Sliding, sliding the good ship Venus through the conundrum of the
anus
mundi‚
plop into the ocean where time has run wild: to circle the huge constipated Sargasso of the reason and melt at last into the
symbolon
tes
gennesiois‚
the symbol of rebirth which Plato knew was the sea, cloaca of the archetypal heart. (“The grave so longed for is really the mother’s bed.” “All right, Nash, I take your point.”)

And then of course a natural and completely ineradicable sadism is always inflamed by the thought of communion with a dead body—partly because of the helplessness of the latter; it cannot defend itself: “lie down, dead dolly, and come across”: and also partly, but much more important is the idea (so firmly implanted) that the dead
mistress cannot be wearied by excessive caresses. In death there is no satiety. Yet beyond the foetal pose and the faecal death the mystery of decomposition offers the promise of renewal, of a new life for dolly. Grave Aphrodite, formed from the manure out of which we are all constructed, has coaxed the gift of fertility—for manure also nourishes; death is defied by a change of code, of form. The smoking midden is also of this world, of this culture, of our time—indeed of all time. The compost generates another life, another echo, to defy with its heat the fateful laws of decomposition, of
dissolution
.

“You groaned, my darling, in your sleep.”

“A nightmare; I dreamed we were at the World’s Fair and I bought you a pretty sugar doll. And you ate it, crunch, and the paint ran all over your tongue, turning it scarlet. And when we kissed my lips grew bloody too.”

Somewhere a dog barked, and the wind lightly shuffled the
sleeping
trees; listening hard I thought I could perhaps discern the sound of the sea. I rose mechanically and lit a candle under one of the little ikons in the niche; other eyes in other corners woke and winked. Then I got back into bed and took her in my arms. The pretty seizures of the love act brought us once more to comfort, to
wholeness
and at last to sleep—a sleep so innocent that it seemed we had invented it for ourselves, as the only fitting form of self-expression.

Tomorrow would be Turkey. Tomorrow would be Turkey.

* * * * *

S
o we embarked on the next long leg of our journey, skimming over the taut and toothy ranges of the northern chain of mountains—much higher now, and a good deal snowier; although we in our heated cabin were blissfully warm and were made welcome by
innocent
morning clouds, soft cirrus. No boundaries to this airy world save the very last peaks stretching out their necks like upward flying geese. Then at long last, clearing them, we moved down once more to a lower octave over an evening sea which played quietly, half asleep. Water and sky here divided the lavender dusk, parted and shared its clouds, and presaged a spring nightfall.

Here somewhereabouts scouts came out of the sky to salute us—grim visages staring out of the fighter-planes like Mongolian
dummies;
faces like medieval armoured knights’ of the Japanese Middle Ages. Yes, but they were all smiling and beckoning, and they wished us softly down until we landed in a dense whacking of waves and great spools of white foam, almost under the heroic bridge itself. Through this thick water we taxied like mad, hunting for a windless lea which might let us moor safely.

We had taken it all in, however: there had been time and light enough: the huge thickets of spars moving in soft unison, the
beetle-grooves
carved by the tankers and small brigantines upon the blue skin of the gulf. It was sunset, too, and blowing fresh and keen from Marmara. And my goodness, how sinister it all felt to me as I sat smoking and gazing down upon the long walls once more—the long irregular buckler of hide or mud-daubed osier such as savages might run up about a stockade. From a great height they looked absurdly flimsy but as we scaled down out of the sky the whole mass began to take up a denser stance, obdurate and threatening: and softly the tulips rose like the horns of shy snails, to take the colours of the sinking sun upon their pale skins. Benedicta, leaning at my side,
stared down with me; her nostrils dilated a little, and with an
expression
of mingled horror and anticipation, of nostalgia and regret, upon her pale face. We were swimming together once more into the great tapestry of Polis—and at a certain moment, quite precisely, everything spun round as if on a jeweller’s turntable, to present its profile: fused into the single dimension of an old shadow-play
manipulated
by the fingers of some great invisible shadow-master.

The journey had been tiring; everyone had been grumpy, out of sorts, in some way or another. Vibart buried himself in his papers, was off-hand with me and non-committal. I had the feeling that he was angry with himself for confessing as much as he had to me on the day before—I know not why. Caradoc too was in a scolding mood, and only the promise of a glass of authentic
raki
or
mastika
seemed to give him a hope. I think in a way all our thoughts had begun to turn one way, to quest out towards that long bare headland where, among the jumble of forts and kiosks and shattered palaces—the fabled Avalon of old Merlin’s dream—somewhere out there Jocas, the brother, was waiting for us. I suppose that Benedicta must have read my thoughts for she said softly, echoing in a strange way the recent thoughts of Ariadne: “We tend to forget it, but people do have this awful tendency to die.”

“Come. Come” said Caradoc peevishly. “You will never console me in this way. Cut out all this nonsense.”

It was natural that in this developing gloom, this heavy
preoccupation
with what waited for us, I should take refuge in Baum: for he had business of his own, he was not heading for Avalon as the rest of us were. The town itself was his objective. Yet even he was
depressed
in a smaller way, though of course his behaviour was
exemplary.
I was soon to learn the reason. It was our good friend Banubula who was causing him anguish. “You see,” he said “I am disquieted because the Count has begun to hunger for the power to initiate. So long as he was quietly working for the firm his role was a fulfilling and useful one. But now … you see Mr. Marchant has played this dirty trick on him and he has taken it seriously. And the awful thing is that it has
become
serious. The thing is launched. You must never joke in the hearing of the firm, Mr. Felix, because the firm takes everything deadly seriously.”

“What dirty joke, Baum?”

“Fresh sperm” said Baum moodily, poking his ear with a long spatulate fingernail, as if to clear it. “Fresh sperm!”

“What is that all about?” I asked, perplexed.

“Mr. Marchant was very drunk and he said that the latest findings of the chemical section showed quite clearly that the only really nourishing skin-tonic for women was fresh male sperm. This is all very well, Mr. Felix, but he went on to add that there was really nothing to stop the firm marketing the stuff if only it could be collected on a large enough scale; and of course if one paid for it well enough one would be able to get as much as one wanted from private producers—just like any other commodity in our modern
civilisation.
From donor to factory, at controlled temperatures, presented (according to Mr. Marchant) hardly more complicated a problem than picking lavender and taking it to the perfumery. This was very wicked of him; he should have known how gullible the Count is. But he should also have known that the firm takes everything very seriously indeed. Just what Mr. Marchant envisaged I have no idea—I suspect he had none himself when he made the joke; it was simply to tease his friend. On the face of it the idea is mad—thousands upon thousands of people making this sort of contribution to a
factory
which fills up phials with it and markets the product. On the other hand, as Marchant said, conserved sperm was already used in artificial insemination, why not in skin-food? I was of course
horrified
when Count Banubula told me this; but what is worse the whole thing was set out as a memorandum and discussed by the chemistry board, and
passed.
I could hardly believe my ears when I heard. Not only that, a subsidiary called Lovecraft Products had been set up, and a subscription list for willing donors has been opened. Moreover it shows every sign of sweeping the continent. Can you imagine it, hundreds of thousands of males all over the world selling their … product? And yet the chemical group say that they can sort and grade it, keep it in a temperate emulsion form, and distribute it to all who seek beauty through skin-tonics. I must admit I was sharp with the Count when I saw what had happened. But he
produced
a number of disingenuous arguments in which is immediately recognised the drunken hand of Mr. Marchant. Why, he said, was it
any worse than the sale of Chinese or Malayan hair by the women of underprivileged nations? Why should the overprivileged nations be denied the right to part with their surplus—assuming it was a
surplus?
At any rate, whatever my own reservations, the scheme has gone ahead so fast that I fear it will get out of hand; so many donors have joined that new factories have been opened and the whole project has had to be twice re-financed by the Germans and Americans. Meanwhile, too, all the letterpress and the advertising devised by the Count and Lord Lambitus I find distasteful to a degree. Look.”

He whipped out his briefcase and groped about in it, to extract at last a thick batch of letterpress which bore the unmistakable imprint of Banubula’s innocent genius. I was surprised that Marchant was the author of the jest which the firm had so swiftly turned to profit. It was the sort of thing Caradoc might have done, but not Marchant. Yet here it was.

Nor was it hard to see and to sympathise with poor Baum’s
misgivings,
for he was in the advertising and promotion department, charged to dish out all these pamphlets and advertisements to a weary world. They were designed both to attract new donors (“Why not give your all for Lovecraft and be in the swim? You can make a fortune if you work at it. Study our bonus scheme. Moreover it’s work you can do at home in your own time. Why not have fun with the firm? Take life in hand and double your income” etc. etc.); and also to appeal to a gullible beautician’s market (“The safest natural skin-food, so kind to the thirsty pores”) … but why go on? I could see that Banubula’s literary side had been quite carried away by the whole scheme.

Baum had been scanning my face as I read in order to gloat
sympathetically
on my expressions of horror. “You see?” he said, as I handed back all the gaudy letterpress. I did. “Moreover” he went on “I have been sent out here to try to sound out the Turks, to get them interested in the scheme as possible donors. Of course
everything
has its market value, Mr. Felix—I would be the first to admit that. But there are dangers here, we might make a mistake. The Turks are Moslems and deeply religious—suppose we started a holy war without meaning to, eh? I prefer simpler, more material ideas; I like to know where I stand. Now when Lord Lambitus proposed
marketing whips in gold
lamé
I saw the possibilities instantly. But this could prove to be … well, grotesque! I am supposed to meet the religious leaders tomorrow to outline the scheme. I am much afraid of what might happen. How, for example, will all this stuff translate into Turkish, eh? One doesn’t know. I don’t want to die with a spear through me just for encouraging Turks to … well, market their product through Merlin’s. Yet on the other hand it’s my duty to obey orders.” He sighed heavily. I wondered whether he was wearing a bullet-proof waistcoat.

There was no time, however, for long-drawn-out commiserations for by now the officials had come aboard, clucking like hens, and stamped our passports. Long strings of coloured lights had
demarcated
the outlines of the bay; the nether sky was still molten but cooling fast, like the steel lid of a furnace. Out of the nearby darkness a large white pinnace whiffled once, and then, at a signal from a man in uniform, began to sidle towards us sideways—like a smart cat.

Our belongings sorted and our various destinations decided upon, we crawled aboard her—Benedicta, Caradoc and I. The others had other duties and would spend the damp Turkish night in the
magnolia
-scented gloom of the Pera. But Vibart? “I thought you were coming with us?” But he had made one of those inexplicable
volte-face.
“So did I” he said. “And now suddenly I’m not. I’m not even sure I shall come and see Jocas—I don’t seem to need to any more. It came over me just as we hit the water.” He looked suddenly elated, his smile had grown younger, more self-confident. “I shall walk about Polis tonight and think myself over” he said, and with a brief nod joined the others in the pilot’s launch. I was curious enough to want to question him further, but Benedicta pulled softly at my sleeve and I desisted.

The wind was fresh as we came out of the sea, but the sturdy little pinnace rode sharp at fifteen knots. In the comfortable little cabin with its smart leather-upholstered seats we found a small
insect-like
man dressed in white who turned out to be the doctor who was looking after Jocas. He spoke only French, and he smoked very slowly and thoughtfully as he spoke. He held the white bone cigarette holder in a tiny clawlike hand which suggested that of a mantis. But what he had to say to us disabused us immediately of any notions
we might have had about astrology and destiny and suchlike. Unless of course the progress chart could accurately trace the course of a long-drawn out metastasis. It was our old friend, the contemporary scourge. On the other hand he said: “He is weak, but in very good courage, in spite of knowing the truth. But the place is in an awful mess and needs clearing out. He has got rid of many of the servants and has more or less moved in with his birds.
C’est
gênant
from the medical point of view—washing him and so on.” We were silent now for the rest of the journey. B. looked at her fingers. Caradoc contented himself with a heavy sigh from time to time. The little doctor sat watching us and smoking and reflecting. The journey seemed to last an age. But finally our nose sank into still water, we throttled down and softly ebbed along a dark landing stage where a figure from the past—the old eunuch of my first visit—stood holding a lantern high above his head and giving the Islamic greeting to the darkness. Mouth, forehead and shoulder, mouth, forehead and shoulder. But even when we stepped ashore he gave no intimate signs of recognition—perhaps because Benedicta had her head done up in a scarf. He did not at any rate recognise me. We huddled ashore in the humid darkness to the slapping and slobbering of water along the wooden piers. A sense of desolation invaded me, I do not know exactly why. One felt that everything here had run down, gone to seed—but how one could feel such a thing when one was surrounded by darkness I really cannot imagine. Perhaps the little doctor’s few brief words had prepared us for such a thing. At any rate, leaving our baggage we followed the majordomo with his hissing white light, the doctor leading us. The paths had been marked out with little kerosene lamps which faltered here and there in the wind; but they gave hardly any light, and were simply markers upon which to orient ourselves. Uprooted trees and creepers and bushes lay about beside the path, and once a couple of
starved-looking
mongrels emerged from the dark to sniff at us and retire. I thought of the fine pack of hunting dogs with their lustrous fur which had been Jocas’ pride in the old days; they would have simply wolfed mongrels like these, or driven them into the sea.