Hilda Doolittle - Asphodel

“You’re exaltée. You saw him alone.” “O, no, no, no, no, no. How could I see him alone?” “What’s easier? You tell us he asked you to meet friends of his. You don’t ask us to come along. You disappear at three, saying the friends asked you to early tea and hear music. You come home at — heaven knows what hour — and in Paris. Alone.” “I wasn’t alone.” “Well there you are. I suppose in all decency he would have to see you back at two in the morning.” “It wasn’t two in the morning.” “Wasn’t it?” “Was it?” “Well, you ought to know.”

Was it two in the morning? Odd white mist rising from a silver river, far and far and rather cold stars. Stars in France are oddly rather cold, taking on a sort of artificial glamour like diamond stars on kings’ breasts. “Isn’t it odd even the stars looking different?” “Stars?” “I mean over the river.” “So you stood and star-gazed on the Seine.” “Ever so long. He started telling me about Debussy. It was so odd. The gold fish, you know that thing he plays us and the castle under the sea, he knows all about them. Debussy says Walter is the only person who can play his music.” “So you talked of Debussy. And what else?” “I don’t know. Walter is making drawings, so exquisite of harps and things—” “ Harps and things?” “O. I don’t understand. He thought I might. He said he thought I might.” “Understand what (at two in the morning) hanging like any street walker over the Seine parapet?” “Street walker? We did walk rather. He was making drawings of Egyptian harps and things, things like that in the Louvre. He believes he can hear things. Doesn’t really care about Debussy. He thinks it’s all written if one could only get it. He thought I might be able to get it.” “Get what? Cold in your head, I should imagine.” “Get — something — somewhere.” “This is interesting. So instructive, strangely illuminating.” “That is why he was at the Louvre the other morning. He loves Egypt.” “Egypt? The last thing—” “I thought so too. But do we understand? Egypt. He means the music. The harps. Odd pipes. He says voices too. He wants to hear the voices. He cares more about that than his music.”

But I care more about Greek than Egypt. Walter says it’s all wrong but that I personally am all right, limited — and don’t understand — couldn’t be expected to understand — the real things. Real? What is real? Candles reflected in a mirror and our clock doesn’t go here either. Clocks that go and clocks that don’t go. Most of them don’t. This one is like the one in the first room in Rouen before we left. Havre. Rouen. Did they really happen? “O you came to Havre . How funny of you.” Rouen. They didn’t ever seem to have heard of Rouen. “But we must go to Chartres.” Must they go to Chartres? “But were here now in Paris. How can we go to Chartres?” “Well, it was you yourself who suggested it in Rouen.” “That was before we came to Paris.” “Does that make any difference?” “Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know what I mean.” “I should think you didn’t.” “I mean how can anything one has suggested in Havre or Rouen, have anything to do with anything else of moment in Paris?” “Quite a speech for you. If Peter Piper ate the peck of pickled peppers then where is the peck and so on. Say it quickly, it will improve your manners.” “My manners are all right, Josepha. It’s your morals.” “Morals? I thought you thought yourself a nereid, a nymph, a cold and icy star and all shine and luminous quality that nothing could mar or befoul.” “Befoul? What an odd word, Fay.” “Yes. Isn’t it? Not the sort of word you get standing on the bridge at two in the morning asking the price of diamonds.” “Diamonds?” “Stars, was it? Well, stars. Diamonds. Both decorated.” “Who both? Walter and Vérenè?” “Walter and who — is that her name?” “I told you her name long ago. Vérenè Raigneau.”

Vérenè. Vérenè. Vérenè. Was it a name. Was it a person. O, yes it was a person. It was herself and Fayne and Walter who were somehow out of it, out of the picture, out of drawing. Drawing. How odd that he should draw so beautifully. “Look, Fayne. He gave me this.” Fayne took the bit of paper, held it to the light. “I think he must have traced it from a book.” “No. Look, Fay. It’s one of the things in the big case in the Egyptian room we were looking at the other day. A sort of harp arrangement; don’t you remember. They had it propped up against a lovely chair that looked quite new, quite a comfortable new chair with no back and odd arms and the seat sagging just as if it had been sat in.” “Yes, I remember the chair.” “Well, Walter drew the chair and the harp and put the person there in the chair to play the harp.” “But he copied it, I tell you out of a book.” “No. No, he didn’t. You can see it’s the same chair and the person playing the harp—” “It’s you, I suppose.” “He didn’t say so. . saying I’m too Greek and that he doesn’t care for Greek things and that I don’t understand. I think it’s someone else or no one at all.” “O, it’s you all right.” “But he keeps telling me I’m too Greek — not understanding—” “Does he say you don’t understand?” “Yes. All the time.” “What do you talk about then?” “I don’t know. . nothing in particular. He’s quite common sometimes. He asked me if we went like all other American tourists to the top of the Eiffel Tower for the express purpose of seeing how far we could spit.”

Let’s destroy things. Build them up and destroy them. Wasn’t that their attitude? Walter had reached perfection of a technical order. Therefore he must reach beyond it, destroy in a gesture his exquisite technique, his music flowing like water, a technique that Debussy said he himself couldn’t cope with. Walter must play his music, play it the first time to let him (Debussy) see how it went. Walter playing to her, “but I want to know what you think. Debussy doesn’t like the allegro so much either.” Had she agreed (knowing nothing about music) then with Debussy? What was it all about? Why? Something in the air. Paris. Something there are no words for. Walter was right with his harps and his absolute conviction that there were things, notes, voices in the air about them. X rays, Morse code. Telegraphs and so on. We are only just beginning. People will think us of the year 1912 circa (was it?) somehow crude and old fashioned even doubting, thinking, thinking such things odd. But we didn’t. Not us. Not Walter, Hermione and Josepha.

Are we ahead then of people? O this is horrible. What will people think 1922 or 1932 some great age like that, ten, twenty, thirty years from this year? They will catch us when they know that we are ahead of them. Bash out our brains. Stench of flesh roasting, roasting fumes rising above Rouen. Lilies and the Magdalene looking for the Lover. My Lord, my Lover. How odd. My Lover. You would love us all alike, making no difference, reaching us telepathically, men and women alike, both the same, simply a matter of telepathic rays or X rays or something. Christ seeing colours. Walter would be white, trimmed with blue, a terrible blue. Heat when it gets too hot becomes white, then violet. See Chemistry for Beginners. Does cold, then by the same scientific logic become something other, blue, when it becomes too cold? The cold of Walter that commences by being just cold, the soft cold of snow, soft and of the quality of a moths breast, becomes toward the edges more cold. A cold, people can’t bear. Walter knows people can’t bear him that’s why he hates them, hates them, apologetically closing the window. “We sometimes collect a crowd here and the gendarme doesn’t like it.” Shutting the window not so much against them as against himself. Byronic smile. Collar loosened. Walter shutting the window. “Now what would you like me to play you?” Asking them, waiting actually for an answer. Chopin. Chopin, the de Musset of music. Playing them Chopin.