The Magus - John Fowles [21]
without rhythm, without structure, their banalities of perception clumsily concealed under an impasto of lush rhetoric. In horror I turned to other poems I had written--at Oxford, in S----. They were no better; even worse. The truth rushed down on me like a burying avalanche. I was not a poet. I felt no consolation in this knowledge, but only a red anger that evolution could allow such sensitivity and such inadequacy to co-exist in the same mind. In one ego, my ego, screaming like a hare caught in a gin. Taking all the poems I had ever written, page by slow page, I tore each one into tiny fragments, till my fingers ached and the basket overflowed. Then I went for a walk in the hills, even though it was very cold and began to pour with rain. The whole world had finally declared itself against me. Here was something I could not shrug off, an absolute condemnation. One aspect of even my worst experiences had always been that they were fuel, ore; finally utilisable, not all waste and suffering. Poetry had always seemed something I could turn to in need; an emergency exit, a life buoy, as well as a justification. Now I was in the sea, and the life buoy had sunk, like lead. It was an effort not to cry tears of self-pity. My face set into a stiff fierce mask, like that of an acroterion. I walked for hours and I was in hell. One kind of person is engaged in society without realising it; another kind engages in society by controlling it. The one is a gear, a cog, and the other an engineer, a driver. But a person who has opted out has only his ability to express his disengagement between his existence and nothingness. Not _cogito_, but _scribo, pingo, ergo sum_. For days after I felt myself filled with nothingness; with something more than the old physical and social loneliness--a metaphysical sense of being marooned. It was something almost tangible, like cancer or tuberculosis. Then one day not a week later it was tangible. I woke up one morning and found I had two small sores. I had been half expecting them. In late February I had gone to Athens, and paid another visit to the house in Kephisia. I knew I had taken a risk. At the time it hadn't seemed to matter. For a day I was too shocked to act. There were two doctors in the village: one active, who had the school in his practice, and one, a taciturn old Rumanian, who though semi-retired still took a few patients. The school doctor was in and out of the common room continually. I couldn't go to him. So I went to see Dr. Patarescu. He looked at the sores, and then at me, and shrugged. "_F�citations_," he said. "_C'est..._" "_On va voir �a Ath�s. Je vous donnerai une adresse. C'est bien a Ath�s que vous l'avez attrape', oui?_" I nodded. "_Les poules i�as. Infectes. Seulement les fous qui s'y laissent prendre._" He had an old yellow face and pince-nez; a malicious smile. My questions amused him. The chances were I could be cured; I was not contagious but I must have no sex; he could have treated me if he had the right drug, benzathine penicillin, but he could not get it. He had heard one could get it at a certain private clinic in Athens, but I would have to pay through the nose; it would be eight weeks before we could be sure it had worked. He answered all my questions drily; all he could offer was the ancient arsenic and bismuth treatment, and I must in any case have a laboratory test first. He had long ago been drained of all sympathy for humanity, and he watched me with tortoise eyes as I put down the fee. I stood in his doorway, still foolishly trying for his sympathy. "_Je suis maudit_." He shrugged, and showed me out, totally indifferent, a sere notifier of what is. It was too horrible. There was still a week to the end of term, and I thought of leaving at once and going back to England. Yet I couldn't bear the idea of London, and there was a sort of anonymity in Greece, if not on the island. I didn't really trust Dr. Patarescu; one or two of the older masters were his cronies and I knew they often saw him for whist. I searched every smile, every word spoken to me, for a reference