The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [24]
It has since occurred to me that the art of physical love is in the keeping of women, and depends to a considerable extent on the position of women in society. As this position improves, so the art of love declines. Woman becomes neither server nor served; and with this emancipation prudery, the fear of the erotic, the fear of fear, has to be restated. The absurd view is promoted that sex is neither vice nor mystery. So we arrive at slot-machine or peasant sex; and the praise of profane love gives way to the farmyard lyricism about pregnancies and lyings-in. But enough of this. It was my intention to say no more than that, in this matter of sex, Sandra and myself were well matched; and to register my wonder at the frequency with which, in our imperfect world, through every type of accident and arbitrary decision, like noses out like.
We were married at the Willesden registry office. We travelled there on a number eight bus with our two witnesses, fellow students. The details of the absurd ceremony are too well known to be recounted here. The registrar, I remember, was concerned about Sandra. He warned her that in certain countries women could be divorced just like that; with his own hand he wrote out the address of an association which offered information and protection to British women overseas. To me he offered neither advice nor consolation – his manner, in fact, was one of controlled reproof; and in that largish room, full of empty folding chairs, the awful deed was done. Now I was truly appalled. I wished to get away at once, to reflect, to be alone again. But I was detained by one of our witnesses: the poet, philosopher, politician, now, as I suspected, sunk without trace in the society he was so mad to master, and even then, with his tweed jacket and the beard he was beginning to grow, getting near to the schoolmaster he has no doubt become. ‘Well done, old boy. I say, I know it’s a hard thing to put to a chap on his wedding day. But you couldn’t advance me a fiver?’ I thought that both his language and the sum he had mentioned had come to him from a literary source and that both exceeded his requirements. I gave him ten shillings. I cut short his delighted acknowledgments and, telling Sandra in a garbled, wild way that I had something to do in the centre, ran after a number eight bus, caught it and allowed myself to be taken in a state of near stupefaction to Holborn where, habit reasserting itself, I got off and went into a public house, already, though only a husband of some minutes, feeling like the cartoon man who knows that the storm will presently break over his head for some dereliction of marital duty.
The dark romance of a mixed marriage I Think of me sitting in the Holborn bar, drinking Guinness for strength, holding an evening paper for the ordinariness it suggested – cheatingly, the greyhound edition, it being too early for the others – and being really very frightened. So at the time I thought of myself. I stood away from the pensive figure and considered him and his recent, terrible adventure. Quantum mutatus ab illo! The words ran through my head until they were meaningless, until they became the emotion of loss and sadness and sweetness and apprehension. So nemesis came to the dandy, the creation of London, the haunter of British Council halls, art galleries and excursion trains. Quantum mutatus ab illo!
I have spoken of the mood of celebration