I Hear Voices (19 page)

“You’re advancing, younger brother,” he says thoughtfully. “There’s something stronger, at least less docile—ductile—I don’t know—”

But then he hears the routine sounds of his domain acting in the vicinity and my feeble, temporary authority loses its hold. He smiles, however, gaily, rather drunkenly and looks with perhaps slightly increased detachment at his dry papers and machines and waves me out of the office.

I go out cheerfully enough and for the first time that day I feel genuinely calm.

“You look fairly calm,” suggests Miss Carpet whom, quite by chance, I pass when my idle footsteps bear me into the park.

“Yes, I am,” I agree. “I’m very calm this morning.”

She does not say any more, but she smiles and writes my name down in her social engagements book, doubtless feeling that it will be pleasant to have a record of someone who is genuinely calm to invite amongst the agitated people she
normally
consorts with.

I am, however, rather dismayed when, having left the park
and walking down a side street lined with tempting
commodities,
I pass Gore, still amiably seeking pleasure, and he remarks:

“You look anything but calm, today.”

“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” I begin, still cheerfully enough. “I am calm, today. I’ve reached a new understanding with Arthur.”

“Arthur!” he asks quickly, looking up from an exquisite thing he is examining. “Do you know Arthur?”

“Rather well,” I say, not without irony.

“Rather well?” he echoes. He darts me a sharp glance of refreshed interest. “And do you find Arthur conducive to calm?”

“Not particularly,” I admit. “Not just as he is—no.”

“And yet, having just reached some sort of agreement with him, presumably necessitating direct contact, even negotiation, with the brute, you feel calm?”

“Yes,” I affirm.

“I’m glad you feel calm,” he remarks, and his tone seems to be genuinely solicitous. “I never feel calm. The words stick in my throat, like lumps of brute clay—and then there’s this pleasure—this imbecile pleasure—and crime—”

“Crime?” I ask, surprised at the juxtaposition. “Crime,” he repeats. “It’s part of pleasure, but in a complicated, slow and basically fraudulent way. Look, I was on my way to consult the Commissioner. Do you want to come? He’ll tell you if you’re really calm.”

We reach Commissioner Brangwill who has the reputation of being a man at the very center of affairs.

“As a man living in a crystal,” he modifies, when I have explained that I am familiar with this aspect of his reputation. “It’s the same thing. But never mind, the crystal is transparent, nebulous, mental. It won’t topple. It won’t hinder your closer
approach. Well—you’d better get used to the atmosphere or you’ll be lost in it. I suppose it’s not every day that you find yourself at the center of affairs?”

“He knows Arthur,” explains Gore, who has seated himself on a little chair, charmingly carved in the shape of a cherry pip.

“Yes, he knows Arthur,” agrees the Commissioner coldly.

“One might fancy,” I remark, since neither of the other two seem disposed to open a discussion, “that this were a rural cottage, and not the center of affairs. You’ve had these chairs carved like cherry pips and eggs.”

Neither of the other two say anything. Gore takes some newly acquired filigree from his pocket and inspects it for flaws.

“It doesn’t really feel like the center of affairs,” I say again, but somewhat uncomfortably, feeling that there may be
something
in the aspect or atmosphere of the place that betrays it as being unmistakably the center of affairs and that the other two are silently and contemptuously deriding my ignorance.

“No, it doesn’t really,” agrees, to my relief, the
Commissioner
at last. “It’s one of my great banes. I often arrive here in the morning, after having been driven here slowly through the foam, and, as I enter, not this little, quaint retreat, but the hive above, with its frieze of guards, with its important
elements
in continual flux, a troubling, mischievous voice says: ‘Do you really believe this to be the center of affairs? This?’ I round on it sharply. ‘Certainly,’ I say, in my official tones which are still rich and resonant enough to accommodate far more than conventional ranges of feeling. ‘Certainly,’ I say. ‘I’m convinced of it. Oh, I realize full well, malicious voice, the sort of doubts you’re striving to ignite. Presumption, arrogance—you’re playing on the built-in regulator. I have one, too,
naturally
, but still I think that this is definitely the center of affairs and I also think it is the crest of the wave. This room, for
example, carved like eggs and cherries. Less visibly, there are meters and dials and these romp away to any picnic so that I can feel the floating moment anywhere. This must be the very center of affairs. ‘Carved like this?’ asks the voice. ‘Like eggs and cherry pips?’ I can then, of course, afford to smile. ‘You betray yourself,’ I deride the voice. ‘You reveal how sentimental and superficial your standards are. You think the center of affairs should have some special, perhaps noble, imposing,
exalted,
physical appearance? Why
not
cherry pips and eggs? The center of affairs is not in them, any more than it would be in the pavilions, towers and marble halls if I had ostentatiously elected to have those. No the center of affairs is—’ But at that point I always break down, even as my finger rises to indicate my temple, and at that point the voice disappears and leaves me to ponder. This all takes place, you realize, in the few steps between nodding an absent salute to the guard and being hailed by the first subordinate with despatches a distance of some twenty feet, three or four seconds, and then I
am,
beyond controversy, at some sort of center, maneuvering, thinking, assured of my key position by the lock that surrounds me. It is only at moments like these, when there is a lull and a visitor like you comes in and raises the matter, that I revert to my morning problem. What do I want to do with that finger? Point to my forehead and say ‘there, there’s the real center of affairs.’ I feel grave doubts about that.”

Just then, news comes that the whole pot has toppled.

“We’re still putting the report together,” announces the crisp young subordinate, “correlating it, but there can be little doubt of its authenticity.”

After he has left, the Commissioner reassures us.

“A false report. The pot has not toppled. It’s toppling, of course, but then it always is. That was Badger, who’s an excellent man but inexperienced: I know that the pot hasn’t toppled.”

It turns out, however, that the pot has toppled and Badger assumes new and more elevated office. Brangwill is hoisted from the center of affairs and relegated to a dust trap. Gore is enormously amused by the whole thing but also bitter and
contemptuous.

“Come on,” he mutters fiercely. “I’ll take you to some of the resultant scenes. These scenes are all connected with what has occurred.”

Later, however, I can not help feeling that Gore’s basic
desires,
which are for voluptuous and literary pleasure, have, perhaps without his conscious consent or even knowledge,
triumphed
over his averred intention, for the first scene he shows me does not seem to be in any way connected with what
recently
took place at the center of affairs.

“Here we are,” he says. “Velvet. Keep a sharp eye out. I’ll do some epigrams in a minute. Fine place, what?”

The fragrant grasses send up a steam of rich narcotic fumes. The lovely girls, courtesans of all races, feed the drugged flames with grasses from their meager apparel. Thus, as the narcotic vapors coil more densely through the turret, the frustrated eye finds more, but in increasingly obscure and infrequent glimpses, of the persons of these lovely girls available for
inspection.

“Lovely place,” enthuses Gore. “Compare this with the
thin-lipped
rewards of other places. First epigram. Compare it with anything. Second. Nothing like it.”

“But,” I begin, rather apologetically, “I thought these scenes—”

“So they are,” snaps Gore irritably. “Connected. Loosely connected. You’ll see how in a little while and anyway we won’t be here long and then we’ll go on to other, and perhaps more directly connected scenes— mass rejoicing, re-deployment,
despair
and so forth. One at a time.”

I realize now that much of Gore’s hatred for his uncle is
really converted admiration. I explain this mechanism to Gore and he is hugely diverted. Then he frowns.

“The trouble is,” he protests, “if I dissipate that, won’t some new mechanism start up? I mean, do you think one can manage without mechanisms?”

I try to continue the discussion but Gore is by now too intent on the voluptuous rites that are taking place to do other than murmur a dismissive “yes, yes” as I elaborate the argument. A little later, during a lull, he does look at me on the thrust of a recollection and says “poor old uncle,” doubtless having
suddenly
glimpsed the burdened Commissioner in some simple
human
situation, forgotten until that instant, in a garden or room. Later, however, he gets terribly embarrassed and insists that we leave as rapidly and inconspicuously as possible.

When we have turned a few corners, he tries to convince me that something relevant to the changeover at the center of affairs did take place and that I missed it.

“Anyway,” he goes on, “even if we admit that it was only inessential, even peripheral, nothing has been lost, for now is a better and riper time for the remainder of the consequential scenes we have to visit.”

He tells me what some of these scenes are to be, explaining their psychological and other forms of relevance, but, when we get to the next one, it is not easy to detect the elements he predicted. This scene is an old friend of his called Carl, blowing his nose near some railings. For a few moments, Carl, occupied with his handkerchief, can not reply to Gore’s gibes without risking a messy solecism. Nevertheless, he is apparently so incensed either by what Gore is saying or by some latent
aggravation
, that he does finally risk mucous disaster.

“The reason,” he bubbles indignantly, after Gore has
ironically
expressed surprise at finding him away from his quarters while suffering from a severe cold, “is your bloody
forgetfulness
.”

He hastily reapplies, having established this conversational foothold, the handkerchief to his nose, thoroughly, if rapidly, completes the sanitary operation and then resumes:

“You forgot to send me that—”

At this point a thundering object bears down on us and a rapid series of events, including a half-cry from a passing gypsy, some squealing and crashing and finally the feeling of heavy bodies having reached, from a state of violent, ungoverned
motion
, miraculous, renewed equilibrium, follows.

Carl, perhaps somewhat insulated by his cold from the full violence of life, is the first to recover.

“That missed everyone,” he announces, peering to see if, in fact, contours and bodies are still roughly the same. It now seems, however, that he has not substantially escaped being influenced by these kinetic events for he begins to ask
hysterically
what Gore has done about Dolly.

“Where’s Dolly?”

“What?” asks Gore absently, listening to the admonitions and inquiries that are beginning to break out. “They ought to—”

“Dolly—Dolly—”

“That gypsy woman’s hurt,” I point out.

“Dolly—” but now Carl sees the crumpled figure and at once says, “I know her.”

He moves a pace towards the woman, blows his nose, and then, obviously torn between claims of different sorts, turns back to Gore and says: “Just don’t forget to send me—”

But now some movement of the fallen woman, who is
intermittently
visible through a straggle of gatherers, claims his attention decisively. I see now that this woman is not a gypsy but a middle-class intellectual, with a very white face, bleeding to death. Carl moves over to her but the appropriate officials are already on the spot, and a doctor too. In a moment, Carl returns to us and informs us that the woman is his landlady,
that she has been “bloody helpful” and that he must go with her.

“That chap,” he says, nodding towards the doctor, “says she’s not too bad. God, she’s bleeding though.”

He looks once more, sharply, at Gore who is looking vacantly at some glowing words, trying, I can not help feeling, to read poetry into them. These words say “Dinners, Teas” and do not seem a very promising basis but, in my acquaintance with Gore, I have noticed that he often responds to violent intrusions by searching for some poetry and that he is apt to make the most, on these occasions, of whatever offers. Now he takes his eyes from the sign, looks at Carl and asks if there is anything he can do.

“Yes, just remember—” Carl begins, but then abandons whatever it was he intended. “Oh, it’s all right—”

And he returns to the scene of the accident. Gore and I depart and later Gore informs me:

“You’ve met Carl before,” and then explains, “I’ve known him on and off for years. You met him in the cavern.”

“And Dolly?” I ask.

But Gore shakes his head impatiently.

“We’d better hurry,” he urges, “the meeting starts in a few minutes.”

We sweep along, past icons, and at some time Gore, who must have been nagged by a reiteration of my last question, informs me that Dolly was “one of those damned women at that place.”

The damned woman has done this and that to his life and “not really,” snarls Gore, ostensibly to himself, and possibly actually to himself, but still with awareness of an audience registered in the modulation, “not really, my—métier—something—” We sweep along, past teeth and circuits,
nodding
at the condensers and amused by intrusive elements whose
modifications of existing patterns Gore makes clear to me.

At the meeting, Gore snarls viciously whenever a point is raised criticizing or attacking his Uncle Brangwill. These snarls are intended both to encourage the critic and also to dramatize the savagery and vicious, cynical opportunism of the deposed Commissioner. Gore, in fact, gets so excited at one point that I remind him of the mechanism, but he seems to have passed beyond the sphere of operation of the mechanism and to be representing no attitude that could be derived from the collisions of mere human beings but simply the fury of primal instability.