Lawrence Durrell - The Black Book

When I think about Kate I am as dumb and passive as a bullock. It is the only solution really, the only way out. In Bournemouth, walking the streets, while the rain prolonged the lights and houses, the whole shape of my future rose up and choked me. In the municipal library I found myself all of a sudden sitting with a book on oceanography open in front of me. I was looking for the Logos. The face of the squid attracted me. Later, in a cosy little bar parlour the face of Kate was the face of the same squid I had seen on the title-page of the tome.

We got into conversation in quite a classy way. She trod on my foot and said she was sorry. I knocked her glass against her teeth and said I was sorry. “We seem to be in a proper pickle tonight,” she observed. When I agreed she went on to make sundry trite observations about the weather, etc. “Are you staying long?” she asked. “Down here for a spree?” I explained that I was down here with a dead wife, and was immediately taken in hand. I was mothered. It was tedious but pleasant. Being a widow she felt herself competent to deal with a strong man’s grief. We went to cinemas together, flirted mildly too. This, she gave me to understand, was what all widowers did. They felt so lonely. She was a knowing little thing. “Don’t you worry, chicken,” she said, patting my thigh, “I won’t snatch you.”

“Don’t call me chicken.”

“Okay, chicken.”

She knew all about men. Her husband had been one. But her honour would not stoop to mere bawdry out of wedlock, “’ere,” she said modishly, knocking my hand away. “Lay off that mucking about. I’m not one of those.”

“Oh, but you are, Katie. You are a proper one. I have never seen such a one in my life.” She could never make out whether I was sneering at her or not. However, it seemed unlikely to her way of thinking. It was just my way, she used to titter. I liked to have her on. Dilating those hard eyes of hers she would put her face close to mine and titter. Immediately the humorous squid would come to life in her.

Do you find Kate a bit of a puzzle? Here, I put her photograph before you. A trim little craft with that predatory squid’s jowls. Brass wouldn’t melt in her mouth. You can see at a glance that here is someone who knows right from wrong. You are still puzzled? I will explain. I chose Gracie, because she was, as women go, extraordinary. With Kate, I employed the method so much in vogue with the writers of best sellers. I chose her because she was the most ordinary person I could find. If I had not met her I should have had to go into a bank. Kate is the sanctuary which I have been wanting for so long. When I saw the little house, with its cheap and hideous furniture, the linoleum floors, the garish cushions, I said to myself: I am home at last. Sitting in my slippers under a steel engraving of Holman Hunt, feeling the damp sprouts of flame from the gas fire warm my trouser legs, I said to myself: This is my sanctuary. Hereafter I shall bury myself beside the wireless, behind a paper. Kate shall minister to my soul with a meat and two veg, and leave me to my private battle with God. This is deadly true. Kate is the monastery in which I am about to be interned. I have nothing to say to her, nothing in common with her. I have given up all those childish nostrums and charms with which I hoped to find salvation for so long. Hush, I say to myself, from now on I am going to lie in secrecy. A prediluvial secrecy. No demands will be made of me in this private madhouse. Kate’s husband gave her so little that she expects nothing from me. An orgasm, for instance. She does not know what that is, has never experienced it. I will take good care that she never does. She has a deep-seated nervous grudge against men, the dirty brutes. This will ensure the sacred void between our stars. She lies under one with that white, painful, Christian face of hers, and puts up with the more loathsome side of the business with the air of a real stoic. It does my heart good to see it. I need fear no intrusions, no wringing of hands or bowels.

Tomorrow I will go unto my father, by the four-fourteen. I will be met at the station. I can see it all, I can taste the manna in my mouth. The smoky little road with the hoops of iron round their dreary hutches. Home! The segment of sopping grass outside the greenhouse. The one sick dwarf apple. We shall sit down in the kitchen by the range and eat dinner together — she very wise and skittish and hard as a bell. And with our knives shall we scrape the rich brown dripping from the pudding basin, and smear it on our bread.

“Everything fair and square,” is her motto. She is a great believer in the equality of the sexes. She shall pay for herself wherever she goes, even at the cinema.

There will never be any question of personalities, because she is too much of a lady. I shall never be lonely because there will be no relief from loneliness. Chamberlain used to say: “Let us have more of the metaphysical beast, Gregory. Come on, gird up the loins of anger.” I am weary of the cult of bowel worship. Weary, utterly weary and sick from my very soul. All these pious resolutions have bled themselves empty in me. If there were an organized religion which were strong enough to grip me I would welcome it. There is something in me, I know, that must be chipped away, like dead mastoid. But I shall not bother to fight for it. The struggle is too hideous, the inner extraction of dead selves, like giant festering molars, is too too painful. Let be, and suffer the disease to run its course. From now on my hands are folded across my breast. Let the grass grow under my tongue, between my teeth, let the scabs form on my eyeballs, let the buboes burst between my toes, I shall not lift a finger.

This is the going down towards the tomb. The weather has been, on the whole, very fair. There is a slight belt of pressure settled round the south coast of Ireland, but who cares about that? Fair to fine is the general forecast, with slight local showers, and sensational fluctuations of bullion. The pork trade is doing well. The ductless glands are in training earlier this year, under a new coach. Their time from Hammersmith to Putney is already doubled. It is hoped that they will carry off the Ashes this year without any difficulty. At a twelfth reading, the bill for the distribution of more milk to pregnant members of Parliament was carried by a majority of twelve. Mr. Baldwin concurred. Altogether the outlook is magnificent for the coming year, with a definite promise of worse to follow. Stocks are falling owing to a recent eruption of Mount Rothermere, but hopes are rising. Recent excavations in Fleet Street have been suspended owing to a discharge of speckled venom. However, business proceeds as usual, with slight tremors.

Lobo is having a terrible time, they tell me. He is in love, and is finding it painful. While he was abroad he met a German girl, a pneumatic Teuton frau, of the love me or leave me breed, who held him down with her thumb and gave him something to think about. He spends all night weeping for his sins. “I have not been an angel,” he says, rolling his sore, swollen eyes. He is in two minds about cutting himself. He wants to marry her, but how can he? Such a foul, leprous little whoremonger as he is — can he marry a fine pure seafaring blonde? If she found out about him she would go into a monastery. And then he would have to go into a monastery too to equalize things. And if he does marry her, how can he keep away from prostitutes and enthusiastic amateurs? They are in his blood. “I am a dirty leetle leecher,” he says wildly, beating his thigh. “I was a pure Catholic once until that woman got me. Since then I have been thirsty … like thirst, you understand?” I understand. She taught him many peculiar refinements, did his friendly widow. She used to say, “Better to keep the shoes on when you do it. It is better shoes and long black stockings.”