Олдос Хаксли - Eyeless in Gaza

Joan looked at him in surprise. ‘Was it?’ Then: ‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ she added, hypocritically paying the tribute of philistinism to taste. In reality, she had thought it too lovely. ‘You know,’ she confessed, ‘this is only the fifth time I’ve ever been in a theatre.’

‘Only the fifth time?’ he repeated incredulously.

But here was another street and more armed men and Iago again bluff and hearty, and Othello himself, dignified like a king, commanding in every word and gesture; and when Brabantio came in with all his men, and the torchlight glittering on the spears and halberds, how heroically serene! ‘Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.’ A kind of anguish ran up and down her spine as she listened, as she saw the dark hand lifted, as the sword–points dropped, under his irresistible compulsion, towards the ground.

‘He speaks the lines all right,’ Anthony admitted.

The council chamber was rich with tapestry; the red–robed senators came and went. And here was Othello again. Still kingly, but with a kingliness that expressed itself, not in commands, this time, not in the lifting of a hand, but on a higher plane than that of the real world—in the calm, majestic music of the record of his wooing.

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak….

Her lips moved as she repeated the familiar words after him—familiar but transfigured by the voice, the bearing of the speaker, the setting, so that, though she knew them by heart, they seemed completely new. And here was Desdemona, so young, so beautiful, with her neck and her bare shoulders rising frail and slender out of the heavy magnificence of her dress. Sumptuous brocade, and beneath it, the lovely irrelevance of a girl’s body; beneath the splendid words, a girl’s voice.

You are the Lord of duty,

I am hitherto your daughter; but here’s my husband.

She felt again that creeping anguish along her spine. And now they were all gone, Othello, Desdemona, senators, soldiers, all the beauty, all the nobleness—leaving only Iago and Roderigo whispering together in the empty room. ‘When she is sated of his body, she will find the error of her choice.’ And then that fearful soliloquy. Evil, deliberate, and conscious of itself….

The applause, the lights of the entr’acte were a sacrilegious irrelevance; and when Anthony offered to buy her a box of chocolates she refused almost indignantly.

‘Do you think there really are people like Iago?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Men don’t tell themselves that the wrong they’re doing is wrong. Either they do it without thinking. Or else they invent reasons for believing it’s right. Iago’s a bad man who passes other people’s judgements of him upon himself.’

The lights went down again. They were in Cyprus. Under a blazing sun, Desdemona’s arrival; then Othello’s—and oh, the protective tenderness of his love!

The sun had set. In cavernous twilight, between stone walls, the drinking, the quarrel, the rasping of sword on sword, and Othello again, kingly and commanding, imposing silence, calling them all to obedience. Kingly and commanding for the last time. For in the scenes that followed, how terrible it was to watch the great soldier, the holder of high office, the civilized Venetian, breaking down, under Iago’s disintegrating touches, breaking down into the African, into the savage, into the uncontrolled and primordial beast! ‘Handkerchief—confessions—handkerchief! … Noses, ears, and lips! Is it possible?’ And then the determination to kill. ‘Do it not with poison, strangle her in bed, even the bed she hath contaminated.’ And afterwards the horrible outburst of his anger against Desdemona, the blow delivered in public; and in the humiliating privacy of the locked room, that colloquy between the kneeling girl and an Othello, momentarily sane again, but sane with the base, ignoble sanity of Iago, cynically knowing only the worst, believing in the possibility only of what was basest.

There was a hideous note of derision in his voice, an undertone of horrible obscene laughter. Irrepressibly, she began to tremble.

‘I can’t bear it,’ she whispered to Anthony between the scenes. ‘Knowing what’s going to happen. It’s too awful. I simply can’t bear it.’

Her face was pale, she spoke with a violent intensity of feeling.

‘Well, let’s go,’ he suggested. ‘At once.’

She shook her head. ‘No, no. I must see it to the end. Must. ’

‘But if you can’t bear it … ?’

‘You mustn’t ask me to explain. Not now.’

Her heart was beating heavily; she felt sick with anticipation. In an almost childish voice, sweet, but thin and untrained, Desdemona began to sing.

The vision wavered before Joan’s eyes, became indistinct; the tears rolled down her cheeks.

It was over at last; they were out in the street again.

Joan drew a deep breath. ‘I feel I’d like to go for a long walk,’ she said. ‘Miles and miles without stopping.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ he said shortly ‘Not in those clothes.’

Joan looked at him with an expression of pained astonishment. ‘You’re angry with me,’ she said.

Blushing, he did his best to smile it off. ‘Angry? Why on earth should I be angry?’ But she was right, of course. He was angry—angry with everyone and everything that entered into the present insufferable situation: with Mary for having pushed him into it; with himself for having allowed her to push him in; with Joan for being the subject of that monstrous bet; with Brian because he was ultimately responsible for the whole thing; with Shakespeare, even, and the actors and this jostling crowd….

‘Don’t be cross,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s been such a lovely evening. If you knew how marvellous it’s made me feel! But I have to be so careful with the marvellousness. Like carrying a cup that’s full to the brim. The slightest jolt—and down it goes. Let me carry it safely home.’

Her words made him feel very embarrassed, almost guilty. He laughed nervously. ‘Don’t you think you can carry it home safely in a hansom?’ he asked.

Her face lit up with pleasure at the suggestion. He waved his hand; the cab drew up in front of them. They climbed in and closed the door upon themselves. The driver jerked his reins. The old horse walked a few steps, then, at the crack of the whip, broke reluctantly into a very slow trot. Along Coventry Street, through the glare of the Circus, into Piccadilly. Above the spire of St James’s the dilute blackness of the sky was flushed with a coppery glow. Reflected in the polished darkness of the roadway, the long recession of the lamps seemed inexpressibly mournful, like a reminder of death. But here were the trees of the Green Park—bright wherever the lamplight struck upwards into the leaves with an earthly, a more than spring–like freshness. There was life as well as death.

Joan sat in silence, holding firm within herself the fragile cup of that strange happiness that was also and at the same time intensest sadness. Desdemona was dead, Othello was dead, and the lamps retreating for ever down their narrowing vistas were symbols of the same destiny. And yet the melancholy of these converging parallels and the pain of the tragedy were as essential constituents of her present joy as her delight in the splendour of the poetry, as her pleasure in the significant and almost allegorical beauty of those illumined leaves. For this joy of hers was not one particular emotion exclusive of all others; it was all emotions—a state, so to speak, of general and undifferentiated movedness. The overtones and aftertones of horror, of delight, of pity and laughter—all lingered harmoniously in her mind. She sat there, behind the slowly trotting horse, serene, but with a serenity that contained the potentiality of every passion. Sadness, delight, fear, mirth—they were all there at once, impossibly conjoined within her mind. She cherished the precarious miracle.