Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

— Well, and what was it all about? Do you understand it?

— Don’t be simple-minded. Of course I do.

— And what about Bertha.

— That’s what it was about, you idiot. That’s what I’m talking about all the time.

— So I see.

— Well, then, don’t interrupt. This was my little attempt at a counterblast.

— Not the first, either.

— What do you know about it?

— Oh, I’ve been here and there myself, and in and out, and up and down, and heard a thing or two, some from your own lips, before this.

— Too true, too true. I’ve always been your best case, Bill, your richest specimen. What on earth would you have done without me. I’m one of those talented fellows who combine all the madnesses in one — paranoia, dementia praecox, manic depressive, hysteria — name another. And so I watched faces on the screen — large weeping faces, eight feet high and five feet wide, with tears the size of cannon balls on the common and teeth like gravestones in the snow. Eyes—! You never saw such eyes. Like glassless windows in a ruined church. I think bats were coming and going out of them and into them. And the hair was like high-tension wires, and I saw a louse the size of a sparrow being electrocuted. It was great. Did I ever tell you of the time I stole a girl’s hat in the University Theater?

— No.

— Then I won’t. Now don’t tell me what Freud thinks a hat means.

— What do you think a hat means.

— If I were a Martian, strayed to earth, long after the death of the last man, I could reconstruct the whole of human civilization from one female hat. Preferably one of those early specimens with a lot of ostrich plumes. But this is a hypothetical question and I won’t go into it. The truth is, I want to cry.

— Go ahead and cry.

— No, I can’t. You’ve become my alter ego for the moment, the skeptical and analytic part of myself, and you disapprove of crying. So do I. Did you every cry at a prize fight? No? Why, Bill, I’m surprised at you. I don’t think you can have been to any prize fights. Everybody cries at a prize fight. The tears of Christ. You can buy them at the soda fountain, if you can get near enough to buy anything , which you seldom can, between bouts. And on Vesuvius once — but that was long ago, far away, and besides it was in the spring.

— You’re a riot. I wish to God I could take this down. But I don’t doubt you’ll remember it.

— Why should I. It’s my business to forget.

— So you think.

— So it is.

— The ostrich puts its head in the sand.

— I’m an ostrich, one of the best. An Arabian sparrow. Hiding my head in the desert of memory.

— I don’t think you’d better drink any more. You’re pretty well advanced.

— Not at all. How easily whisky comes out of a bottle — did you ever notice? Just like that. I think I’ll sit down. I think I’ll lie down. I think I’ll put this nice cold silk cushion on my face. Oh, that’s grand. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. And so I came back from New York, in response to a note from Fred (nice fellow, Fred) and found a hat, a man’s hat, a dirty felt hat, just as he predicted, on the chair in the front hall. What a melodrama. I had foreseen, in the train, every detail — that’s my way, Bill, I always foresee. So the hat wasn’t really a surprise at all. I was so sure it was there that I let myself in very quietly, like a cat, and banged the door behind me, and went up to the hat. It occurred to me to address the hat in Elizabethan style. O thou, most treasonable shape 0’ the human head, cornuting horror … but there were gloves also, and a stick — and what do you think of this — this is the dirtiest touch of all — a pair of humble muddy galoshes. Side by side, so meek and subservient, waiting for their exhausted master.

— For God’s sake, Andy.

— Yes, for God’s sake. You shrink from the horror, the plain physical horror, just as much as I did. Isn’t it wonderful? What a symbol, what a symbol. The hat, the stick, the gloves, the galoshes — a little constellation in the front hall, of which the meaning was plain even to me, who am no astronomer. I saw the whole life which they signified: Thomas Crapo, idealist, scientist, professor of biology, my friend, excellent tennis player, frequenter of wrestling matches, lover of Beethoven, but also the lover of my wife. And the apartment was so quiet, Bill! I could have heard a pin drop — and perhaps I did. A hairpin. Ting! And then silence.

— I’ll shut the window. It’s getting cold.

— I hear a snowplow.

— It’s one o’clock.

— Where?

— Here. One hour past midnight in the human soul.

— Then we’re getting on. If I were a dead leaf I would swallow myself.

— Why wait to be a dead leaf.

— Ah, I see, you’re bored, and quite rightly, with this harangue. Poor fellow, that’s the unfortunate duty of analysts, isn’t it? They only sit. I forget my Milton. But, seriously, have you ever found Christ’s hat in your front hall? And his gloves and stick and galoshes? You wonder what to do. You feel — as you should — like an intruder. How can you most tactfully announce your inconsiderate arrival. It would be tactless to go to the bedroom door — don’t you think — and say, Are you there, darling? Or perhaps darlings. It might be better simply to go to the bathroom and pull the chain, which would give them a cheerful warning that father was come home again. But there is this murderous impulse, too — have you ever killed a fly, or thrown a baby out of a window? I have, from time to time. Oh, my God. Look — I see my pulse on the radial side of my wrist, at the joint. I’m a doomed man, thank heaven. This is that blood that brought me where I am. You can throw the hat out of the window, of course — and perhaps that’s the best solution, though not the easiest. Hat equals schaden-freude . Bilingual pun, Bill, which does you credit. But why not open the bedroom door dramatically, and stand there frozen for a moment, eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves? I don’t like the smell of this cushion — I believe you’ve been entertaining young women here, Bill, and I think I recognize — do I recognize — yes, I’ve certainly come across that before. Now where was it?

— It doesn’t matter — go ahead.

— Yes, go ahead. Forward into the untrodden — but that’s an unfortunate suggestion. Do angels fear to tread? Not by a damned sight. And he was such an angel, such a white man, so gentle, so good, so shy — his little mustache is so neatly clipped with his nail scissors, on Tuesdays and Fridays always, and he always blows his nose before going to bed, and every penny he spends he puts down meticulously in his little notebook. Cup of coffee at Liggett’s — five cents. Carfare to Boston and back — twenty cents. Boston Evening Transcript —three cents. But I’m forgetting about Michelangelo. Do you suppose Michelangelo ever saw the sea?

— The sea?

— Yes, the sea. You know, the ocean, the bounding main. That thing that has waves, and bears ships, and laughs unarithmetically at the moon. Did he ever see it? I wonder. I wonder if he wanted to get back to it. What do you think. Don’t sit there and grin at me!

— Go on, let’s get back to it. A little free association, please! While I have a drink and try to catch up with you.

— Oh, my God, I’m a fool, a bloody, bloody fool. Why am I always in such a damned panic, in such a hurry to make decisions, why do I run round in mad circles like a beheaded hen?

— You know pretty well why.

— For six months I’ve been doing it — I’ve done no work — I’ve drunk like a fish and gone from one wild party to another. An unreasoning terror, a terror that had no particular shape — nightmares one after another too, I’d wake up sweating, my heart beating like hell — dreams of falling, dreams of climbing and falling, desperate efforts to carry monstrous loads up broken and rotten ladders, fantastic scaffoldings which fell away beneath me as I climbed — night after night.