The World as I Found It (52 page)

No, no, he scolded. Your approach is much too negative.

Negative?
Russell was incredulous. You accuse
me
of being negative?

I do, Lawrence insisted. You mustn't waste precious time saying what is wrong. You must instead say what
is
and
must be
. Say what we've agreed on — that acquisitive, murderous impulses must be replaced with the creative life essence and that instead of acting from self, man must act from an essential sense of truth. You must get in the
positive
idea that every living community is a
living
state. That the
fundamental
passion in man is for wholeness of movement, unanimity of purpose and oneness of construction. That this is the
whole principle of construction
.

Russell was in despair.
Truth!
There you go, bandying that word again. And what have you said? All is one! Life is a unity!
Abracadabra!
Russell sat staring at him, trying to soften his tone. Please, put yourself in my position. How am I to make anything out of this? And how, for that matter, am I to make it
intelligible
to the broader public?

Lawrence was indomitable. But you don't understand! The point is
not
to make it popular! Oh, God, do not make it popular. We cannot waste our breath on the mob. We need to get to the root, to chop the snake off at the head! To kill the great falsity of subjectivism.

God help us! scoffed Russell. Now, it's not just truth but
subjectivism
! And everything you've said — it's all profoundly, impossibly
subjective
! You mistake your imagination for truth.

Aye, said Lawrence, waving his finger. And you,
mon frère
, fail to imagine!

Around and around they went, not able to frame even the opening bars of this overture. And then one night, not long after a zeppelin's bombs struck an orphanage, a mob armed with clubs and stones burst in the hall where Russell was lecturing and rushed the stage.

Get out!
Russell ordered.
Out! All of you!

Russell was determined to stand his ground, but fortunately three associates managed to drag him off before the mob enveloped him. As it was, Russell barely escaped, with bruises and a throat deeply gashed by someone's nails. To his shame, he was among the luckiest. Sixteen others were hurt, four seriously, including one man who nearly lost an eye.

After meeting with the NCF leaders, Russell decided to go into seclusion and stop speaking for a few weeks. He and Lawrence were walking through the London Zoo when Russell explained his decision. Lawrence, ill for the last month, had grown a scraggly beard that reminded Russell of a swarm of red ants.

Nonsense, man, Lawrence insisted, appalled by this pusillanimous decision. You can't stop speaking now. Good God, don't you see? The time is ripe, the crowd's ugliness is a good sign! They're ready to revolt. Why, with only a few words from you, they would do so right now!

Russell was incensed. And do what? Hail you as their Caesar? Look! he said, pulling down his collar. Do you see their claws on my neck?
Revolt?
All they're ripe for is murder.

Lawrence nodded. But they would pull down the bloody bunch over us now. Then the war would end and we all could truly begin to
live
. To
live
, Bertie. And a word, a
word
from you is all it would take. Aren't you sick? Aren't you sick to death of it? Death would be better. It's time, I say. You must cast aside all fear and do it — do it for freedom's sake.

Russell stopped short and faced him. You're right. We'll go straightaway to Hyde Park, and
you
can tell the people. You know the mood better than I. You know the word. You, of all people, have the
common
touch that I lack. Well, go on, man! That magical word from you will make it so.

Lawrence's hot eyes bulged. With a look of rage, he admitted, I can't speak to crowds — you know this.

Russell waved him off. Then don't speak this nonsense to me.

Wait! ordered Lawrence, rushing to catch up. God damn you, wait!

I'll not wait, remonstrated Russell. I have nothing more to say to you today.

Russell hoped this would end the matter, but Lawrence kept following, coughing and trying to catch his breath. They passed a clown and a man selling nuts, some children with their nanny. Lawrence was bearing down on him; Russell even wondered if he might physically attack him. But just as Russell was about to confront him, Lawrence streaked by and spat, with a screaming lunge, into the cage of a large male baboon. The ape, bent over with his back turned, whipped around with a hiss.

Hah!
cried Lawrence. He spat again, and the ape bounded back, the hair on his spine bristling as Lawrence stared into his hooded eyes, intoning:

Dear,
vile
monkey … Pretty,
pretty
monkey …

A screech and a shower of dust and pizzled straw as Lawrence lunged with his umbrella. Whirling around, Lawrence flicked the umbrella up like a pointer, the better to show his fellow Utopian the coiling beast, the venomous red eyes.

Look at him, Bertie. So much like you, that hideous
aggressor
, that savage
kaiser
lurking beneath.
Hah!
Lawrence rang his umbrella along the bars, then thrust it at the fanged jaws. This also is you, Bertie, lusting to jab and strike like a man with a bayonet, saying,
This is for ultimate peace
. Why don't you own to your nature? What is the use of you, haranguing the populace with vain talk of nations kissing one another? Give me no more of your lies, moaning about goodness and humanity. You are the enemy of mankind — spiteful and murderous, filled with bestial, repressed desires. Hah, monkey! Wouldn't you love to sink your teeth into my pretty neck?
Hah! Hah!

But then the blood flooded Lawrence's face, and he began to hack and wheeze. Russell made no effort to help him. Hunched and gasping, Lawrence eyed him with unspeakable loathing, then lurched off, slipping like a shade through the unquiet trees.

That night, during still another blackout, Russell decided that Lawrence was right about him, and as he sat there in his tiny flat, listening to bombs crumple in the distance, he wished that one might fall on him. It was his worst depression since that day on a beach near Ramsgate the spring previous, when, as he stood looking out to sea, with the surf lightly rushing in and not a cloud in the sky, he had heard — or rather felt — thunder, then realized it wasn't thunder at all but shock waves emanating from the massed siege guns in Artois, nearly a hundred miles away. But Russell survived that night and he survived Lawrence, who a week later sent him a letter apologizing for his outburst, saying that in quarreling with him, he had been quarreling with something deep in himself. They never did swear
Blutsbrüderschaft
. Instead, their friendship struggled along briefly before ending in a bitterness that lasted all the rest of their lives. Before the final break, however, Lawrence wrote Russell a letter saying that he hoped Russell would have the courage to stop being a savant and an ego and would concentrate instead on being just a creature. Lawrence also said once more that Russell would never reach the unknown until he had sustained a deep and abiding union with a woman. Anything less, he said, was mere sensation seeking — masturbation.

Russell resumed speaking. Later, to Lawrence's disgust, he even delivered the program of lectures he had outlined. The fashionable and humane thinking public, with Ottoline and Strachey at the vanguard, greeted his ideas with tremendous excitement. But these people, as Russell well knew, were the elect minority. For the rest of England his ideas hardly existed, or did only as very watered-down slogans. And nothing really changed. Not humanity, nor himself, nor even the women who gravitated to him, who seemed alike only in their native unhappiness and eventual dissatisfaction with him.

Later that summer, though, his bad spell broke when he met Lady Constance Malleston, a twenty-year-old actress who went by her stage name, Colette. Russell liked her naturalness and diction. Slender, elegant and well educated, she had waved auburn hair and, that rare thing in England, perfect teeth. Russell had seen her at several meetings before asking an acquaintance to introduce them. Colette told him that she had joined the NCF the year before, shortly after her brother was killed in France.

Of course, my husband's a C.O., too, she added carelessly. Russell must have shown his disappointment, because she quickly added, Harold's also in theater, an understudy to Miles Keegan. He's in Scotland now. We're both quite independent.

At dinner later, she insisted on paying for her part of the meal, and he, owing to his pinched circumstances, reluctantly agreed. Afterward, they drifted outside. It was a warm, clear, moonless evening, and London was nervously expecting another zeppelin raid, the third in three nights. Nine people had died the night before in fires and explosions. The tabloids were filled with headlines like
FLAMING FIANCÉE
and
HERO HOUND
and stories like that of doughty little Arthur, the messenger boy who pulled old Mrs. Birme from her burning house. Dropping as much as four thousand pounds of high explosives and incendiary bombs, and flying at heights that often required their crews to suck pure oxygen from rubber nozzles, the airships were portrayed by the press as infernal Jules Verne machines driven by goggled Teutonic insects clad in black leather. For more than a year, the Germans had been making raids farther and farther inland in preparation for raids on London. It had only been recently, and with deep reluctance, that the kaiser had given his permission to bomb the city, and only with the proviso that they spare historic landmarks and, above all, cousin Georgie's palace. For a month the Germans had been making successful raids, and now the German navy was in on it, competing with the army zeppelins to see who could tally the most destruction. In London, the mood was ugly and defiant. A primitive defense system had been devised, but the zeppelins were steadily improving their bombing and defensive capabilities and hence their value as a terror weapon. No longer was it a matter of feinting experimental raids by one and two ships. There were nights now when the coastal lookouts spotted flotillas of four or five of the giant airships moving like long, dark clouds across the Channel. As ominous and slow and out of range as the weather, the zeppelins would begin a slow descent at King's Lynn, every hamlet in their path blacking out as the droning airships swept like a gathering storm toward London.

Russell, meanwhile, was pursuing Colette, but thanks to Lawrence he was being more subtle than usual — tepid, in fact. Yes, Lawrence had rather spoiled his stride with these accusations about being a sexual predator and sensation seeker. Russell was being so mild and tentative that Colette had grown wary herself, sensing that the moralist was having second thoughts, no doubt because she was married.

No telling how long this impasse would have lasted were it not for the bleat of a police whistle, blown by an old warden wobbling down the street on a bicycle that bore the sign
KINDLY TAKE COVER
. As the street-lights dimmed and went dead, Colette said:

You should come with me. I'm only a few blocks away.

He was only too happy to agree. Emboldened then, he took the liberty of pressing his hand against the small of her perspiring back as he squired her through darkness suddenly filled with voices, blowing whistles, barking dogs and slamming doors and windows. Yet while others rushed by to get to shelter, Colette seemed to feel no urgency whatsoever. She positively dawdled, stopping to play with a maundering cat, then gazing at the stars, remarking, Oh, you can really see them now, can't you? Quite as if you were out at sea.

Watching her, Russell wondered if his anxiety was in anticipation of impending sex or falling bombs. Here, he said, smoothing her shoulder. We ought to be going, don't you think?

Oh, she said. She sounded surprised. Of course. I'm just one block over.

Passing through a narrow, vine-choked archway, they entered the courtyard of her building, where people were now veering toward the shelter.

Shouldn't we go into the shelter? he asked, feeling for her arm. There's time, she said, feeling back. I'm only on the third floor.

Her palm was damp as she took his hand and led him up the narrow stairs, clogged with sweaty bodies hugging bundles, blurting infants, pets.

Cyril … Cyril, is that you?
Russell felt a jittery hand tap his head and shoulder, then quickly retract when he said it wasn't. Once at Colette's door, he burned six matches while she jiggled the lock.

I've only three more, he said impatiently. Can't I try?

But Colette didn't seem to hear, just kept rattling the lock, all the while chattering about her last role as daughter Winnifred in the drawing room farce
Father's Fond Fairest
.

It just closed at the Whitehall, she said. Ever hear of it? Well, I'm not surprised — it was dreadful rubbish, but popular. As usual, I played an ingenue — I'm always playing precious, conniving little ingenues, giggling to the audience and saying,
But Pa-pa! Oh, Plleee-ease, Pa-pa
. You don't know what a frightful bore it is, wearing patent shoes and some enormous bow in your hair. I'm
dying
to age a little.

Well, said Russell glumly, striking another match. I hope you won't feel you must wear a bow in your hair for me.

Don't be silly, she protested, stroking his arm. You're not at all old. My own father is sixty-something.

The latch broke, and they alighted into stuffy darkness. Can you see? she asked. I hate blacking out the windows, so we can't very well switch on a light. Here. Just a sec —

Before he could object, she handed him a glass of sherry, then gulped hers down, all the while watching him with a faint smile. Bringing his glass to his lips, he found the edge sticky from some previous drinker — perhaps Harold, he thought, as he swallowed it, distastefully warm and sweet. Again he said, I think we ought to go. But Colette kissed him lightly, then slipped a cool hand up the back of his coat as he pulled her toward him. Two sallies before he said again, Colette, I'd love nothing better than to stay but we really must go now.