Lawrence Durrell - The Black Book

Turning away from the graveside, beginning to walk with that explosive action of his, he said, without any sort of emotion, “Well, what’s done’s done.” But the sigh he fetched from his very lungs expressed something more than he would ever be able to say.

We said good-bye in the sodden square of the town, somehow reluctant to part from each other. He had a train to catch, he said. There was no time even for a drink at the Plough. I think he was afraid of any sort of intimacy. So off he went in his wet muffler towards the station, like a little dancing master.

Retrospect! Retrospect! What a hive of memories I have become. There has been time, in this wilderness, to account for everything: to excuse my shortcomings, to re-enact my failures, to adjust my differences with destiny. Above all to make the great decision. To be or not to be has been the question for too long. I am determined to answer it in the negative.

Walking the streets of Bournemouth I came upon many faces I should know, many places I should remember, many mouldering old houses which my essence visited in the third cosmos. (Metaphysics is the last refuge of the actor.) Trees, shapes, smoke from a cigarette in the dark — strata by strata my memories were laid out across my dead body; wheeling and skirling with anguish like gulls across the nerves. Love me, I whispered, love me and take me from myself. I do not want the gift of freedom — it has become a prison. At night the sea beat like a hammer against my temples. The lights of cars wheeled across the bedroom walls. I had become an inhabitant of a private pandemonium.

On the hill, its garden hidden in spray, was the house in which I lived when I was a child. My mother lives there for eternity among the chipped statuary, the unweeded walks. “Herbert, will you ever sin?” The white round face of the woman above me, and my own voice, “Never, Mother.” She used to say: “We are such friends, aren’t we, my darling? I know every little thought that passes in your head.” From that remark my life begins, a solid unbroken line of dependencies — at home, at school, at the university. Behind the bars, serenely unaware of the flood outside.

Regard me, I used to say to the world, I am the average Englishman. I have never left school and I am proud of it. I carry my virginity and my self-satisfaction on a string round my neck.

Shall I outline it all with introspective precision? I am not a Powys. Shall I explore my garish literary life? Why, I have written disparagingly of Shakespeare in an advanced review — and then returned home to my guardian virgin as the snow and dressed in horn-rimmed spectacles. I have critically disposed of Pascal, Molinos, and Ronsard standing at the bar of a Red Lion Square pub. Once I even lectured on the sexual aberrations of Lawrence to an audience of vipers as learned as myself. In the final audit how heavily will these weigh against me? “You were born to spit on the delicate things,” said Chamberlain once in a fit of fury. And in my little cackle of laughter he added, “Because you have learned how to spit on yourself.”

Alas! in this personal limbo from which I letter out my fragmentary diary, I see that this observation is very just. It is not the world that is poisoned so much as the people in it. It is my world dying because I am dying — of an intolerable brain poisoning. Pity me, etc.

These nights are very long. I sit here in the laboratory which I have made of my ego, and listen for the familiar sounds, once foreign, now local. At two the boilers are stoked. I brew myself tea, light a cigarette, yawn, take a step, remember an anecdote of Lobo’s, and laugh. I am always aware of myself as an actor on an empty stage, his only audience the critical self. I dramatize my least action, make it studied, calm. I have the eternal illusion of being watched; of being visible to an audience before whom I must be careful not to break down. The late trains drizzle outwards across the snowy landscapes, across the hills, the valleys, the dark blue bodies of the counties. I am alone, but no more alone in the spirit than I have ever been. Now that the moon has gone I am able to stand at the window, staring at a star of the third magnitude. I am acting my head off. I chuckle and scratch my head. I lift my cup to my mouth with the air of a dowager. Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime. In the corner lies the long svelte horn-gramophone. I select the most moving records of “the master’s” Op. 61 and play them one after another, as fast as the turntable can rotate. The violin scamps like a cat, poops and squalls and gutters. It is a capital joke. “A violin in an empty house, remote in its meditations as a ghost.” That’s what I wrote once. Now it micturates like a wombat, hurtles and squeals, winces and foams. I lie here in the chair, chuckling to myself, and let the discords play upon me like jets from a hose. I revel in the anguish of that quivering fiddle. Metaphorically I spit on Beethoven. Mentally, physically, from my very soul, I spit on his misery. I would like to take up those shelves of folio music, throw them in the grate and piss on them.… When it becomes intolerable I go and look at myself in the mirror. Standing there in my peacock dressing gown, with one of the smashed records in my hand. The revulsion sobers me. I light a cigarette, shrug my shoulders in infinite contempt, and sit down at my desk, to add the paragraph you have just read.

This morning I receive a visit from Perez. He is a little angry with himself for neglecting me. He says he is only just back from the country, which is a lie because he has been back a week. “A woman?” I say to him archly. It is almost our only subject of conversation. He diverts the conversation. Lobo has the flu. He lies in bed all day, like a little black imp, strumming on his big inlaid guitar. Perez is wondering how to condole with me in my sorrow. He is a little disgusted at having to show any sympathy over the loss of someone like Gracie. A little contemptuous, too, of me for getting entangled with such a one. I can see it all written in his eyes. At last he blurts out: “I say, Gregory, I’m sorry to hear …”

“Yes?” I say, demanding my pound of flesh.

“Grade … your wife … I’ve just heard,” he mumbles shamefacedly. “Very sorry for you.”

When he goes, I return to the piano, pour out a glass of sherry, and sit down to Mozart. My fingers ease the chords from the white soft jacks, like heavy bunches of grapes. The music wraps me in its ectoplasm of emotion. Really, if you forgive the precious litotes, I am an executant of no mean calibre. In my imagination the tears are running down my face, on to my fingers, on to the lush ivories. My bowels are running out of me like tap water. I am become a figure of sodden cardboard. The notes rap holes in me, smothering me in bullets of sound. Mozart claws my liver and nibbles my tongue like a woodpecker.…

It is the same when I sit down to write. The submarine profundities of my imagination are suggested by the florid sweep of my pen.

My intention is always to become the very paper on which I write. Alas! the rhythm is sadly uneven. My brain, like an engine, gives the first tug, which communicates a series of bangs to the carriages. Bang, bang, bang — all the way down the line. My teeth chatter, and my vertebrae clang together. Very slowly and stiffly we are off, puff, puff, puff. The nib squeaks at every level crossing. I am in mortal terror of a collision. All the signals are dead against me.… Pity me, etc.

However, it is not for long now. The decision has been made. I sit here on this final Monday morning of the world, with my pen in my hand, and contemplate those infinities of feeling which I would like to express. There is nothing in the Lamentations of Jeremy to touch the terrible thin squealing which I would like to rise from this paper and stifle you. This thin, astringent script of mine — let it be poured into your ears, most delectable of corrosives, until your brains turn green, cancerous, nitric.…