Christopher Isherwood - A Single Man

So he smiles with an extra benevolence on the three who have lingered behind to ask him questions. But Sister Maria merely wants to know if George, when he sets the final examination, will require them to have read all of those books which Mr Huxley mentions in this novel. George thinks, how amusing to tell her, yes, including The 120 Days of Sodom . But he doesn’t, of course. He reassures her and she goes, away happy, her academic load that much the lighter.

And then Buddy Sorensen merely wants to excuse himself. ‘I’m sorry, Sir – I didn’t read Huxley because I thought you’d be going through it with us first.’ Is this sheer idiocy or slyness? George can’t be bothered to find out. ‘Ban the Bomb!’ he says, looking at Buddy’s button; and Buddy, to whom he has said this before, grins happily, ‘Yes, Sir, you bet!’

Mrs Netta Torres wants to know if Mr Huxley had an actual English village in mind as the original of his Gonister. George is unable to answer this; he can only tell Mrs Torres that, in the last chapter, when Obispo and Stoyte and Virginia are in search of the Fifth Earl, they appear to be driving out of London in a southwesterly direction. So, most likely, Gonister is supposed to be somewhere in Hampshire or Sussex. . . . But now it becomes clear that Mrs Torres’s question has been a pretext, merely. She has brought up the subject of England in order to tell him that she spent three unforgettable weeks there, ten years ago. Only most of it was in Scotland, and the rest all in London. ‘Whenever you’re speaking to us,’ she tells George, as her eyes fervently probe his face, ‘I keep remembering that beautiful accent. It’s like music.’ (George is strongly tempted to ask her just which accent she has in mind. Can it be Cockney or Gorbals?) And now Mrs Torres wants to know the name of his birthplace, and he tells her, and she has never heard of it. He takes advantage of her momentary frustration to break off their tête-à-tête .

Again, George’s office comes in useful; he goes into it to escape from Mrs Torres. He finds Dr Gottlieb there.

Gottlieb is all excited because he has just received from England a new book about Francis Quarles, written by an Oxford don. Gottlieb probably knows every bit as much about Quarles as the don does. But Oxford, towering up in all its majesty behind this don, its child, utterly overawes poor little Gottlieb, who was born in one of the wrong parts of Chicago. ‘It makes you realise,’ he says, ‘ the background you need, to do a job like this.’ And George feels saddened and depressed; because Gottlieb obviously wishes, above all else in life, that he could turn himself into that miserable don and learn to write his spiteful-playful tight-assed vinegar prose.

Having held the book in his hands for a moment and turned its pages with appropriate respect, George decides that he needs something to eat. As he steps out of the building, the first people he recognises are Kenny Potter and Lois Yamaguchi. They are sitting on the grass under one of the newly-planted trees. Their tree is even smaller than the others; it has barely a dozen leaves on it. To sit under it at all seems ridiculous; perhaps this is just why Kenny chose it. He and Lois look as though they were children playing at being stranded on a South Pacific atoll. Thinking this, George smiles at them. They smile back, and then Lois starts to laugh, in her dainty-shamefaced Japanese way. George passes quite close by their atoll as a steamship might, without stopping. Lois seems to know what he is, for she waves gaily to him, exactly as one waves to a steamship, with an enchantingly delicate gesture of her tiny wrist and hand. Kenny waves also, but it is doubtful if he knows; he is only following Lois’s example. Anyhow, their waving charms George’s heart. He waves back at them. The old steamship and the young castaways have exchanged signals – but not signals for help. They respect each other’s privacy. They have no desire for involvement. They simply wish each other well. Again, as by the tennis players, George feels that his day has been brightened; but, this time, the emotion isn’t in the least disturbing. It is peaceful, radiant. George steams on toward the cafeteria, smiling to himself, not even wanting to look back.

But then he hears, ‘Sir!’ right behind him, and he turns and it’s Kenny. Kenny has come running up silently, in his sneakers. George supposes he will ask some specific question, such as what book are they going to read next in class, and then leave again. But no, Kenny drops into step beside him, remarking in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘I have to go down to the bookshop.’ He doesn’t ask if George is going to the bookshop and George doesn’t tell him that he hasn’t been planning to.

‘Did you ever take mescalin, Sir?’

‘Yes, once. In New York. That was about eight years ago. There weren’t any regulations against selling it, then. I just went into a drugstore and ordered some. They’d never heard of it, but they got it for me in a few days.’

‘And did it make you see things – like mystical visions and stuff?’

‘No. Not what you could call visions. At first I seasick. Not badly. And scared a bit, of course. Like Dr Jekyll might have felt after he’d taken his drug for the first time. . . . And then certain colours began to get very bright and stand out. You couldn’t think why everybody didn’t notice them. I remember a woman’s red purse lying on a table in a restaurant – it was like a public scandal! And people’s faces turn into caricatures; I mean, you seem to see what each one is about, and it’s very crude and simplified. One’s absurdly vain, and another is literally worrying himself sick, and another is longing to pick a fight. And then you see a very few who are simply beautiful, just because they aren’t anxious or aggressive about anything; they’re taking life as it comes. . . . Oh, and everything becomes more and more three-dimensional; curtains get heavy and sculptured-looking, and wood is very grainy. And flowers and plants are quite obviously alive. I remember a pot of violets – they weren’t moving, but you knew they could move; each one was like a snake reared up motionless on its coils. . . . And then, while the thing is working full strength, it’s as if the walls of the room and everything around you is breathing; and the grain in woodwork begins to flow, as though it were a liquid. . . . And then it all slowly dies down again, back to normal. You don’t have any hangover. Afterwards, I felt fine. I ate a huge supper.’

‘You didn’t take it again, after that?’

‘No. I found I didn’t want to, particularly. It was just an experience I’d had. I gave the rest of the capsules to friends. One of them saw pretty much what I saw, and another didn’t see anything. And one told me she’d never heen so scared in her whole life. But I suspect she was only being polite. Like thanking for a party —’

‘You don’t have any of those capsules left now, do you, Sir?’

‘No, Kenny, I do not! And even if I had, I wouldn’t distribute them among the student body. I can think of much more amusing ways to get myself thrown out of this place.’

Kenny grins. ‘Sorry, Sir. I was only wondering. . . . I guess, if I really wanted the stuff, I could get it all right. You can get most anything of that kind, right here on campus. . . . This friend of Lois’s got it here. He claims, when he took it, he saw God.’

‘Well, maybe he did. Maybe I just didn’t take enough.’

Kenny looks down at George. He seems amused. ‘You know something, Sir? I bet, even if you had seen God, you wouldn’t tell us.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘It’s what Lois says. She thinks you’re – well, kind of cagey. Like this morning, when you were listening to all that crap we were talking about Huxley —’