Lawrence Durrell: The Dark Labyrinth

He halted for a moment on the marble steps, experiencing a sense of aimless emptiness which must, he thought, be such as prisoners feel, who, after a long sentence, hear the prison gate close behind them. It was a leave-taking peculiarly without any positive sentimental bias, and as a sentimental man he regretted it. “I’ve resigned,” he told himself aloud, and, looking round, found that the pock-marked elementary Easter Island carvings were staring at him with their familiar cruelty from the porch.

Museum Street looked drab. So did Great Russell Street. Drabness multiplied by drabness. The last suds of light were running down behind St. Pancras. London was drawing up the darkness like a blotter. Syrinx was out, however. He saw that it was in several bookshops. A few notes on the scrannel for a Spring that was, as usual, late. “Ah well,” he said, and took off his hat to feel the air upon his brow. He bought a Times Literary Supplement and a packet of cigarettes at the corner. It was no good reading the reviews in the left-wing papers — they always upset him with their ill-bred shrillness. As an afterthought he stole into a bookshop and bought himself a copy of Syrinx: as usual he had given all his complimentaries away. It was absurd to feel guilty and panic-stricken, for he was still comparatively unknown as a poet. Syrinx was his seventh book and he did not expect more than the usual mede of literary lip-service for it. He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that his verse was neither very experimental nor very exciting. But at least it got published: and he adored publishing. He had all the author’s vanity in the appearance of a new book, and Syrinx was really very pretty, very pretty indeed. The cover was bright, and yet refined. The pan-pipes, the reeds, the rather mouldy-looking swan — they all, he felt, admirably expressed the nature of the poems. They, too, were a little mannered, a little old-fashioned, perhaps a little threadbare. (“Lord Graecen’s Muse, turned housewife, once more beats out her iambics like some threadbare carpet”: that was the kind of thing he found so unkind.)

Enjoying the feeling of the little book under his arm he turned into a tea-shop to look it over once more. The review in The Times would be, as always, sepulchral but kind. Old Conklin admired his work, genuinely admired it. He avoided the corner where old Sir Fennystone Crutch was devouring buttered toast. His skull-cap and slippers made him a familiar figure in the reading room. He hated being disturbed at his tea — which was the only real meal he had during the day. Graecen had once done so and had been severely reprimanded. “Go away,” the old man had said, “Can’t you see I’m eating?” An all-consuming passion for Sanscrit and buttered toast — did that give one the right to be rude to people, Graecen wondered? Nevertheless he had learned his lesson; he squeezed past the old man in a hurry and fitted himself into one of the dark wooden alcoves, ordering tea, toast and a boiled egg. He opened the paper.

For over an hour now he had forgotten what had been haunting him for several days; well, haunting was too strong a word. He sought in his mind for something with a little less value. His round innocent face puckered as he searched the columns of the paper, leaving one-half of his mind to indulge its capacity for fear, and to play with metaphors for death. It was like having a cavity in a tooth — one simply could not keep the tongue away. Death, of course, was a cavity considerably larger and more exciting. After all, he reminded himself, it was not certain that he might die during the next few months. It was merely the opinion of certain medical men — an unreliable faculty at the best. The thought had been, of course, sufficient to dislocate his life to a degree — and yet there need have been no reason. After the first day the expectation of death had assumed a kind of uniform greyness; he referred back to it as he had, when a schoolboy, referred back to the expectation of a thrashing scheduled for the next day. There was an element of pleasure in it too; at times it gave him a sense of isolation and detachment from the rest of the human race, and then he was forced to remind himself that they were also going to die. They, however, were not disturbed by the accent upon a particular time. Yet the idea, which he had confided to nobody, was disturbing. At times he felt almost ashamed of the knowledge — as if it were a disease that should be hidden from his fellows. That was really why he had resigned. It would be somehow awful to die in the Museum. “It might happen quite suddenly,” the doctor had said, adding, “Pop, just like that.” Graecen had been impressed by the phrase. He had found himself saying absently to an assistant curator apropos of a badly-arranged terra-cotta. “It might fall down and break — pop, just like that.”

And once more logic began to intervene with its clearer assessments. Just look (he had invited himself for the last three mornings running) at Sir Fennystone Crutch. He could not go on for ever. No sane medical man would give him more than six months to live. Toothless, buried in his Sanscrit, forgetting his lunch-hour every day and leaving a jumble of gnawed crusts all over the reading-room floor. He could have no delicacy about the idea of dying at his desk, could he? What would they do if he did? Graecen decided that they would put him on the trolley — already groaning under tomes of Sanscrit — and lay his carpet-bag, skull-cap and slippers beside him. Then they would wheel him away. Would they go through the North Library, and so avoid the main entrance?

Graecen became exasperated with himself for wasting his time like this … Following up these fatuous chains of possibility. What the devil did it matter which way they wheelec him? He pictured them wheeling the old man’s body across the Graeco-Roman section. Young Stubbs would obviously be the one to wheel him.… He frowned at himself and drew his mind back to the task in hand.

All this time his eye had been travelling across the sedate columns of the newspaper searching for a review of Syrinx . He was eating buttered toast, his face growing more and more innocent and childish as he felt the butter trickle to his chin. He got out a handkerchief and started absently to dab it. Could he say that life had gained in value from the possibility of its extinction? He knotted his brows in a scowl and cracked the top of the egg. In one way, yes. Everything had been thrown into dark relief — as though he had woken one morning and found the whole world inked in at the edges by a fall of snow. It had informed his critical sense — that was rather an awful phrase. And yet his feelings neither rose nor fell at the idea. Why?

Even his poetry — had it shown any inclination to strike a deeper note? No, it was just the same. He remembered that his work had been described by a young critic in a little review as “pre-atomic, non-radioactive, non-conducting bilge”. It had annoyed him considerably. “Lord Graecen sticks to the rut of rentier poetry”, was another phrase from the same article. Was he honestly so bad?

When torpid winter covers

The city and its lovers ,

The cold finality of snow

Whitens the signs and clear defines

The way mortality must go .

It was all of a range, but he liked it. Of course the demonic element he admired so much in Emily Brontë, that was missing. But was it, as the young men said, cake without currants? It seemed on the contrary rather full of plums. At any rate Yeats had printed one in an anthology; and old Lord Alfred had once invited him to Hove where, he said, he would teach him the elements of the sonnet. It was rather condescending of him, really, but Graecen had thanked him profusely.