A Visit to Priapus and Other Stories (19 page)

For the formula of almost all our lives now is this: individual excitement is prized more highly than anything, yet is shamefaced finally; and the collectivity is regarded as rather remote and beneath contempt, yet is most fascinating, casts the final spell. We mean to act individualistically, selfishly, but we cannot keep it up. In the time of crisis we lose interest in ourselves. We suddenly see ourselves as playing a part before an audience, which confuses us. It is hard to think what we ought to do; it is too hard; it is impossible. We can no longer do just what we feel like doing; so fascinated are we by what we think that others are thinking. Of two minds— mind inactive, introspective, and mind as it were stage-struck and stage-frightened—very often at last our action is accidental. We intend to leap; at least that is our hypothesis or threat. Suddenly we change our minds, but it is too late. Therefore we
fall.

Now in fact I myself have never stood vacillating like this fellow, hour after hour without a will, between life and death. My youthful threats of an attempt at suicide were only hysteria, easy to thwart, and not habit-forming. I believe that the state of this young man’s mind must not have been hysteria, but only a kind of extreme inability to think of himself, for himself: a daze, a weariness, a paralysis, a daydream. Possibly hysterical self-indulgence caused it, in the way that other excesses result at last in other impotencies. Or perhaps disgraceful behavior served as a kind of stimulant or counterirritant to prevent, that is, to postpone it. Both might be true. In any case, the care and cure and handling of it by the family and psychiatrists and upon occasion the police and even acquaintances and bystanders—especially the control of it as innocently, dreamily, gradually, it comes about in one’s self—must fail unless it is understood to be different from hysteria. “Scenes,” delusion and unreasonableness and evil temper are activities. It is in a passive state, unselfishly, perhaps virtuously, that one dies.

Obviously this is an unscientific distinction, loose opinion. I can vouch for it only in the vain way of the poet or novelist or dramatist—by avowal of psychic adventure and infirmity of my own. Little inward suicide of my own, a bit at a time, the while I have gone on rather enviably and not undignifiedly living … Not madness at all, but only careless ways of thinking and feeling and talking by which I have driven myself and others almost “mad.” Not evil, but gradual, mechanical forfeitures of the opinion of those whose enthusiasm about me I most require. Not vice, but various debauch and despoiling of my talent: literary imagination let go in a sort of onanism, revery, riddle; the will to write depressed and dismembered; book after book aborted, and so forth. All of this perfectly undramatic, all harmless, and all petty, not worth committing suicide about—yet, I dare say relevant. For little by little it might have brought me to a point of modesty and mediocrity at which it would have been a good idea to kill myself, the thing to do next, the suitable dramatic gesture. I suppose it may still. In any case it seems that my type of unhappiness and unsuccessfulness is to be thought of with reference to the jumper’s type of suicide, and vice versa. The one is metaphorical of the other. Also, certain inferences may be made from this, as to the general course of modern morality, the will of millions, the fate of nations… .

When I was a child someone taught us to hypnotize a hen. We drew a chalk line on a porch floor or a sidewalk, and put her down, outstretched on it: her claws close together, her bill pointed along it, and her small stupid, semi-precious eyes looking down her bill. Then, softly, we took our hands off her. She lay there a long time— until something happened to move somewhere within her line of vision, and distracted her.

It is in the inaction, not the action, that the subtlest danger lies; and in the maze of good intentions rather than in evil impulse; and in excesses of patience and passivity rather than in hysterics. What though it be amid an overt brawling aggressive trouble or misbehavior that—like the still small voice of the god Jehovah in the midst of storm—the mind first hears its murmuring to itself. Then it may be late, perhaps too late; for some still small troublesome idea, mere petty detail, is the god, the working of whose will the trouble is. Usually we are deaf to ourselves, deaf as posts. And early every morning we start rocking ourselves to sleep lest we do something unreasonable, disgraceful during the day. We bankrupt ourselves day by day, by behaving in minor matters better than we can afford. Or we go on dreaming of behaving well until, when we must awake, we are exhausted; accident and shame suddenly take charge of us; self-consciousness is all we know; and what it is possible of us to do has ceased to seem a reality to us, has become a drama.

I think that even the outrageous end of a man like the one at the hotel, even clownishly clambering out on a skyscraper-ledge over New York, is essentially only an effort to wake up, to snap out of it. He needed to frighten himself a little; he frightened others as well, and thrilled them, and angered them; and he stayed spellbound by this all day long. The term “flight from reality”—which is, roughly speaking, the key to current psychiatry, and must be ordinarily applicable and useful—is misleading in such a case. Having fled from reality again and again, perhaps habitually, suddenly such a man comes face to face with some little bit of it; and it startles him out of his wits, immobilizes him, hypnotizes him. Once this dumbfounding, this nonplussing, has taken place, it is the real, not the unreal, that is dangerous. A suitable lie or a sentimental reminder or a symbolic gesture, a gift of money, a new acquaintance, a night in a brothel, might have saved him. His relatives, loving or otherwise, and the horde of New Yorkers waiting to learn who he really was, what he really wanted, what he would actually do at last, and the might of the municipality in its great stupid good will aroused by him and outwitted by him—that must have been too real to be borne.

For the real at a given instant may well be on the side of death. In reality, a good deal of the time, there are a good many things that cannot be helped. Upon occasion there may be quite good enough reasons to kill oneself or to do various other violence. They need not be great or romantic or dramatic reasons. Poor wretches like this one happen to see them suddenly, expire of amazement, stumble to death. Obviously they should have been wearing intellectual eyeglasses of suitable focus for some time; modern education as a rule fails to provide any. In the hour of their emergency, the hour of blinding light, nothing will do except a blindfold. Apparently no one at his seventeenth-story deathbed thought of that.

How rare it is after all for a man to come to his bad end conspicuously! But there are a great number of us who, perfectly familiar with sufficient reasons to kill ourselves, will not. Nor will we allow ourselves to have hysterics every time we feel like it; nor do harm willingly; nor go raving mad even temporarily, if we can help it.

Think of what is well known now about the suffering of the psyche, and how it adjusts itself or fails to adjust itself. Neglect of some childish sensuality, or a supposed triumph over an essential temptation, or it may be fear, or shame, or refusal to remember whatever has been most shockingly shameful, causes the kind of distress and failure that is customarily called neurosis. (Balzac and Dostoevsky each called it something else.) Well, for some people, for me, and perhaps you, and you, refusal to indulge oneself in this primary distress, refusal to lie and quarrel and have hysterics, refusal to die, refusal to kill, may bring about another bad psychic condition, “neurosis” of another sort. To behave well, with respect to this or that mishap, in this or that lifelong predicament, may weaken you and disgrace you on the whole. The best things in life in the long run probably cost less than the worst; they are not free. The wages of virtue must be paid, as well as those of sin. Humanity has all at last to be accounted in the same currency. Suppose you give in about something, as you must or as you should; you renounce a particular desire or hope. Alas, you may find yourself in consequence of this, “relaxed” in every other way as well. A peculiar languor, a seemingly strong hesitation, may result simply from forgiveness. Desperate lethargy may be a substitute for hysterics. Suicide may be, or at least seem, the only alternative to murder. The more complex the type of person you are, the more painful and mysterious your problem… . Even great love as the years pass generates a certain vengefulness. See how the lovers with might and main, in order that love shall last, strive to prevent this or some other venomous byproduct of love from taking effect. But the striving, the strife, cannot be prevented. How disgraceful; what a waste of time and energy! Yet, if they are too proud to fight quietly, secretly, as long as they live, they are more than likely to come to the divorce court.

So it goes, this way, that way, up and down the scale of human purpose, up and down the price range of morality. The poor young man’s position from start to finish must have been fairly far down. Probably his life could have served no purpose at all if it had not happened by its finale to entertain and inspire and appall thousands of New Yorkers all one afternoon.

About six o’clock when the friend with whom I live came home, he reported that the terrible youth was still perched. The crowd had distinguished somewhat: dinnertime. The spirit of the thing, I gathered, had settled to a sadder, more boring, perhaps morbid level.

My friend, a lordly kind of man, impetuous, with a sharp simplicity of speech, expressed mingled scorn and skepticism and indignation. “What nonsense!” he said. “This man is nothing but a fool, or else a fraud, or else a lunatic. The traffic policemen are the ones to be pitied. And the passion of the mob, how silly, sinister! Surely they could lasso the poor wretch, or something, if they tried hard, if they wanted to. Anyway, surely, finally, he’ll give up and come in. America will give him its hero worship for a few days. He’ll be able to make personal appearances in movie theaters for a few weeks… .” I was sorry that I could not share my friend’s optimism; and his sensitive cynicism displeased me.

My evening paper reported that a slight quarrel with the two sisters who were at the Gotham with the man had provoked his terrible resolution, irresolution. So those were the women I had seen leaning out of the window, pleading with him. One reporter heard one of them call out to him, “All right, John. I admit that you have more character than I have.” So that was what it was all about. It did not surprise me. Lack of character is one of the classic themes of fatal argument. So now it was up to little brother to prove that he had at least enough character to die. If he could overcome his evident repugnance to death, he would prove it, and in spectacular fashion. Hour after hour of repugnance and burden of proof! Manifesto: the secret of most suicides; the strange mania of the entire human species when hurt, and, let us not forget, the basis of the new disastrous aspect of world politics, the new diplomacy… . I wished the young man well, and suddenly and strangely realized at this point that, practically speaking, it amounted to wishing him dead.

I was reminded of an anecdote of the childhood of Louis XV, King of France. Old Cardinal Fleury, his tutor, scornfully remarked that indeed he could not be expected to act against his own affection or inclination, because, alas, he lacked will-power. What a poor prospect for his kingdom! At the time there was only one thing in the world for which the child-king felt any affection: a little pet deer. So he ordered that brought to him, and shot it. Perhaps tears dimmed his eyes, or his hand shook; he only wounded it with his first shot but he resolutely took aim again. I have always thought that this may have had something to do with his indifference and insensibility throughout his life, alas for France. His heart may have been all scar-tissue.

I was also reminded of the death of Bramwell Bronte. In that family of burning sentiment and iron resolve Bramwell was the characterless one; a creature of procrastination and prevarication, of vice and whim, good for nothing. His relatives despaired of him, pitied him. When he fell ill he announced that it was his intention to die standing up. He might not have another chance to prove himself as resolute as the rest of us. And, while the terrible sisters knelt around, weeping, praying, he did manage to stay on his feet until his heart stopped, until his corpse fell.

On the midsummer night of the trial of our New York Bronte’s character, several friends of ours attended the dancing on the Mall in Central Park and paid us a call after that, about midnight. They brought the news that—because he was tired out, because he had drunk water that his sisters handed out to him all afternoon, or, perhaps, because by that time he really had considered everything and come to a conclusion—he had fallen from his high place. Down from the seventeenth-story ledge like a falling star in a quick whitish streak he had slipped, or, possibly, leapt. Down into West Fifty-fifth Street, paved, like hell, with good intentions. Mincemeat on the doorstep of the deluxe hotel… .

By that time, we were told, there were three hundred policemen on duty, and ten thousand spectators. Only by courtesy indeed could many of them be called spectators. They were herded together away down the avenue and in the side-street, far from the terrible view, the fatal pavement. Those who could not see must have come, that is, must have stayed, simply for the pleasure of herding; the improvised friendships, anonymous affections; the long irresponsible caresses from head to foot as they pushed or fidgeted or bided the time; the multitudinous body-odor, like cypress and like ambergris; the intense wrath of conjoined soul as well as assembled body. And no doubt they admired the three hundred uniforms, the radio-cars and ambulance, the thousand-dollar cameras, the splendid cheerful floodlights: ideal modernity of which New Yorkers hear so much and see so little. Even the very short ones and young ones down under the elbows and amid the warm hearts and upset stomachs of the tall majority, heard the strange collective choral groan with which the poor man was saluted at last. Even the heartless, the unimaginative, must have experienced to some extent, by vibration, contagion, the gooseflesh of their fellowmen. Most of them, I think, by remembrance of and comparison with weak moments of their own in the past, must have understood almost all that was going on in the wretched hero’s mind as he nodded and swayed, high and mighty in his way there in the electrified night. I suppose they were too humble and too uncultured to try to do that.