The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [244]
‘ “As for Communism, I can see that is hopeless too; the analysis of man in terms of economic behaviourism takes all the fun out of living, and to divest him of a personal psyche is madness.” And so on. He has visited Russia for a month with a cultural delegation and did not like what he felt there; other boutades like “Sad Jews on whose faces one could see all the melancholia of a secret arithmetic; I asked an old man in Kiev if Russia was a happy place. He drew his breath sharply and after looking around him furtively said: ‘We say that once Lucifer had
good intentions, a change of heart. He decided to perform a good act for a change — just one. So hell was born on earth, and they named it Soviet Russia.’ ”
‘In all this, his sister played no part but sat in eloquent silence with her fingers softly touching the table, curling like tendrils of vine, smiling at his aphorisms as if at private wickednesses. Only once, when he had gone out for a second, she turned to me and said: “He shouldn’t concern himself with these matters really. His one job is to learn how to submit to despair.” I was very much struck by this oracular phrase which fell so naturally from her lips and did not know what to reply. When he returned he resumed his place and the conversation at one and the same time as if he had been dunking it over by himself. He said “No, they are a biological necessity, Kings. Perhaps they mirror the very constitution of the psyche? We have compromised so admirably with the question of their divinity that I should hate to see them replaced by a dictator or a Workers’ Council and a firing squad.” I had to protest at this preposterous view, but he was quite serious. “I assure you that this is the way the left-wing tends; its object is civil war, though it does not realize it — thanks to the cunning with which the sapless puritans like Shaw and company have presented their case. Marxism is the revenge of the Irish and the Jews!” I had to laugh at this, and so — to do him justice — did he. “But at least it will explain why I am mal vu” he said, “and why I am always glad to get out of England to countries where I feel no moral responsibility and no desire to work out such depressing formulations. After all, what the hell! I am a writer!”
‘By this time he had had several drinks and was quite at his ease. “Let us leave this barren field! Oh, how much I want to get away to the cities which were created by their women; a Paris or Rome built in response to the female lusts. I never see old Nelson’s soot-covered form in Trafalgar Square without thinking: poor Emma had to go all the way to Naples to assert the right to be pretty, feather-witted and d’ une splendeur in bed. What am I, Pursewarden, doing here among people who live in a frenzy of propriety? Let me wander where people have come to terms with their own human obscenity, safe in the poet’s cloak of invisibility. I want to learn to respect nothing while despising not hing —
crooked is the path of the initiate!”
‘ “My dear, you are tipsy!” cried Liza with delight.
‘ “Tipsy and sad. Sad and tipsy. But joyful, joyful!”
‘I must say this new and amusing vein in his character seemed to bring me much nearer to the man himself. “Why the stylized emotions? Why the fear and trembling? All those gloomy lavatories with mackintoshed policewomen waiting to see if one pees straight or not? Think of all the passionate adjustment of dress that goes on in the kingdom! the keeping off the grass: is it any wonder that I absent-mindedly take the entrance marked Aliens Only when-ever I return?”
‘ “You are tipsy” cried Liza again.
‘ “No. I am happy.” He said it seriously. “And happiness can’t be induced. You must wait and ambush it like a quail or a girl with tired wings. Between art and contrivance there is a gulf fixed!”
‘On he went in this new and headlong strain; and I must confess that I was much taken by the effortless play of a mind which was no longer conscious of