Lawrence Durrell - The Black Book

From my present sumptuous boredom I sit and laugh at Lobo through the bars. What a droll little ape. I can no longer even be amused by his antics. Tarquin can be funny when he squalls and whines, but Lobo — no, I have put away my microscope for good.

I can hear the train wheels beating their rhythmic revolutions in my head as I write. The four-fourteen carrying me homeward to the slippers, the gas fire, the paper, the dripping, the text on the wall. And Kate waiting for me, trim and cheaply scented in her Marks & Spencer knickers. Done up in coloured crinkles for me like a cheap cake of aromatic soap. We shall stand together before the deputy of God, and partake of a manly little service for the connubial felicities to be legalized. Dear Kate, like a canvas doll in bed with a white stoic face, whetting the appetites of cruelty in her brand-new hubby. And all these acres of tragic struggles, of boredoms, despairs, delusions, will fall from me as I enter my prison. The ubiety of God. The fantastic zero to which I shall reduce the terms of living and so find happiness. The slow gradual ascent into silence, into dumbness. Why do we fear the modern world? Why are we afraid of becoming insects? I can imagine no lovelier goal. The streets of Paradise are not more lovely than the highways of the ant heap. I shall become a white ant, God willing. I shall have my swink to me reserved and nothing else. Let the hive take my responsibilities. I am weary of them.

This is the meaning of the smashed etchings in the grate. The dislocated books. The large red discs. From the wreckage, however, I have saved certain things that have the death in them. These I will give to Tarquin to assist his disease to kill him. To sew the tares of a greater madness inside that great throbbing egg-like cranium of his. Anything with the real taint in it, the real green gangrene. Peace on earth and good will to men. But I speak after the manner of men. I am in the grip of this slow suppurative hate, which lingers in the provinces, planted in our nerve centres. Fibre by fibre it has eaten into us. Whether I shall yet escape its ultimates — rape, havoc, murder, lust — this remains to be seen. It seems to me at times that these narrow wrists moving here are the wrists of a murderer.

I, Death Gregory, by the Grace of God, being sound in mind and body, do make and ordain this my last will and testament, in the manner and form following, revoking all other wills heretofore made.

The bequests have been carefully weighed. To the literary man I leave my breath, to fertilize his discussions, and cool his porridge. To lady novelists and chambermaids my tongue. It still retains a little native salt. To poetry a new suit of clothes. To the priest the kiss of Judas, my cosmic self. To the pawnbroker my crucifix. To Tarquin my old tin cuff-links, and to Lobo the wornout contraceptive outfit, with all good wishes. To the English nation I leave a pair of old shoes, gone at the uppers, and a smell on the landing. If they want my heart to bury beside Ben Jonson in the Abbey, they can dive for it. To God I dedicate my clay pipe and copy of the Daily Express, and my expired season ticket. To my mother I offer my imperishable soul. It has never really left her keeping. To Fanny my new set of teeth, and a bottle of the hair restorer which didn’t work. To my father a copy of The Waste Land and a kiss on his uncomprehending, puzzled face. To my charlady I leave all those books in which the soul of man is evolved through misery and lamentation. She will find them incomprehensible. To the young poets I offer my sex, since they can make no better use of their own. To the journalists my voice to assist them in their devotions. To lap-dogs my humanity. To best sellers and other livers off garbage, my laughter in the key of E flat, and the clippings of my toenails. To the government my excrement that it may try its sense of humour. To the critics what they deserve; and to the public their critics.

To Gracie the following items: a cross-section of my liver, an embryo torn from the womb, a book of sermons, a tea dance, a dark partner, love-in-the-mist, passion and mockery, the laughter of the gulls, eyelids, nettles, snuff, and a white sister to sponge her gaunt thighs when the night falls.

And now it is time to take the long leavetaking of ink and paper, and all the curious warm charities which have been corrupted by bile and ruined by men with the faces of cattle. Mantic, the dream-self projects this vast saturnine grin across the taut cosmos. I see men and women again, moving softly with expressive hands across the floor of the mind’s sunken oceans. Softly and dreadfully in their voicelessness. The strange dumb movements of plants under water, among the blithe cuttlefish and wringing octopods, and the forests of gesturing trees. What I had to offer I gave gladly. It was not enough. What remains is my own property. To the darling of the gods I give the long warm gift of action. It was no use to me.

I shall be sitting here when they find me at midnight, watching the laughter stiffen and crumble with the ashes in the grate. It will not be diffcult. A brush and pan will be all that’s needed. I shall sift gently into fragments as I am offered to the plangent dustbins. The record and testament of a death within life: a life in death.

To these tedious pages, which I shall burn before I leave, I offer the gift of life and the reality of the imagination: the colours of charity and love without bitterness. A sop to kill the worm which fattens in them. A few grains of honesty. And a last phoenix act of revelation among greater beauties, in this iron grate.

And to myself? I offer only the crooked grin of the toad, and a coloured cap to clothe my nakedness. I have need of them both. Amen.

Here ends Gregory.

There is no news — none whatsoever. The summer went down at last in a hush of bows, and now we are waiting for the first iron statements of winter, the first gruff breath from Tartary. The constellations are pinned out for us like specimens, sharp and malevolent. The Sickle and the Twins, the Pleiades and the Dog Star — Sirius. Now the night breathes authentic lungfuls of arctic air on our bodies. In the hotel gardens the crazy declamation of statues is already frozen. The first chains are being drawn across the flesh of the traveller as the earth leans on her journey. The liners are going out into the night, warm and melodious with lights. And in the long blue spaces of night curious premonitions of death halt in the still air of the playing fields, linger and disperse. The avenger’s hour when even the lovers’ voices turn to vapour, cold bodies in cold beds arch up like bows and stiffen; when deserted on a deserted pier the husband scribbles a postcard to his daughter, and the gloved talons of the blind man spell it out, painfully, in Braille. This is the doldrum, the icy limbo between seasons, between the new self and the old, between the death and the being born. The sky is lyrical with stars but there is no news.

Cross over to Bethlehem. They will be able to tell you for certain whether something will be born from this discord of the elements, or whether the fiat has gone forth; whether this is a pre-nativity or a post-mortem.

It is the particular moment when the pen hangs suspended over the paper, with the absolute phrase hanging in the nib. The phrase that will not be written.

But we have called an armistice for these few days of limbo. We have made a truce in the private and endless war which has been with us for so long. We are hardening our arteries for the last lap, the victory of defeat. Tarquin, of course, has scampered into his cell and locked the door behind him. “I have entrenched myself securely”, he lisps, “against the inclemency of the season. I shall hibernate.” But it seems to me that this winter is not something on which one can lock doors. It exists not only on the painted tradesmen’s cards, but in the individual himself, in the very bones of the protagonist. It is more than the bones of the fingers which have gone dead. What is this fanciful emanation which seems to have turned the blood to custard in our veins? I do not know. The very marrow of speculation has been turned to icy phlegm. The sonorous dewlap of the Brigadier has turned purple. A thirst has stiffened the hocks of the curate. And the sore wattles of the immortal Mrs. Juniper crackle as she walks backwards and forwards in the blazing lounge.