Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“Like all very great discoveries, this discovery of yours affords opportunities for a new principle of behavior. You are not a particularly intelligent man, as I’ve often told you, and as you yourself admit; so you probably don’t at all see the implications of your casual observation. As often occurs to you, in the course of your foolish, violent, undirected activity, you have accidentally bumped your head and seen a star. You would never think, however, of hitching your wagon to such a star—which is what I propose to do.”

Smith glanced sharply at his companion, and then began laughing on a low meditative note which gradually became shrill and derisive; he even lifted one knee and slapped it. It was obviously a tremendous joke.

“Just like you, Jones! You’re all brain to the soles of your feet. What do you propose to do?”

“Don’t be a simpleton, or I’ll begin by murdering you—instead of ending by doing so.”

This peculiar remark was delivered, and received, with the utmost sobriety.

“Of course,” said Smith. “You needn’t dwell on that, as it’s an unpleasant necessity which is fully recognized between us. It doesn’t in the least matter whether the event is early or late, does it?”

“What I mean is, that if you are right, and the beautiful obscene is the essence of the business, then obviously one should pursue that course of life which would give one the maximum number of—what shall I say?—perfumed baths of that description.… You say that this essence is most clearly to be detected in the simpler violences. In love, birth, death, all abrupt cessations and beginnings. Very good. Then if one is to live completely, to realize life in the last shred of one’s consciousness, to become properly incandescent, or identical with life, one must put oneself in contact with the strongest currents. One should love savagely, kill frequently, eat the raw, and even, I suppose, be born as often as possible.”

“A good idea!”

“I propose to do all these things. It has long been tacitly understood that sooner or later I will murder you, so, as you tactfully suggest, I won’t dwell on that. But I shall be glad to have Gleason’s address … beforehand.”

“Certainly; whenever you like. Telephone Main 220-W (I always liked that W) and ask for Mary.”

“The question is: what’s to be done about thought?… You see, this road of reflection is, after all, centripetal. It involves, inevitably a return to the center, an identification of one’s self with the All, with the unconscious primum mobile . But thought, in its very nature, involves a separation of one’s self from the—from the—”

“Unconscious?”

“From the unconscious.… We must be careful not to go astray at this point. One shouldn’t begin by trying to be unconscious—not at all! One might as well be dead. What one should try to get rid of is consciousness of self . Isn’t that it?”

Smith gave a short laugh, at the same time tilting his head to let the rain run off onto his feet. “Anything you say, professor. I trust you blindly. Anyway, I know that my pleasantest moments with Gleason were those in which I most completely lost my awareness of personality, of personal identity. Yes, it’s beautiful and horrible, the way one loses, at such moments, everything but a feeling of animal force.… Analogously, one should never permit conversation at meals. And it was decidedly decadent of Cyrano to carry on an elaborate monologue in couplets while committing a murder—oh, decidedly. Quite the wrong thing! One’s awareness, on such occasions, should be of nothing, nothing but murder—there should be no overlapping fringe which could busy itself with such boyisms as poetry or epigram. One should, in short, be a murder.… Do I interpret you correctly?”

Jones, at this, looked at Smith with a quick uneasiness. Smith appeared to be unconscious of this regard, and was as usual walking with jaunty alacrity. The way he threw out his feet was extremely provocative—the angle of his elbows was offensive. His whole bearing was a deliberate, a calculated insult.

“Quite correctly,” said Jones sharply, keeping his eye on Smith.

“Here’s a haystack,” replied the latter, equably, but also a little sneeringly. “Shall we begin with arson? We can go on, by degrees, to murder.”

“By all means.”

The two men could be seen jumping the ditch, and laboriously climbing over a slippery stone wall. Several matches sputtered and went out, and then a little blaze lighted the outstretched hands and solemn intent faces of Jones and Smith. They drew out and spread the dry hay over the blaze, the flames fed eagerly, and the stone wall and the black trunk of an elm tree appeared to stagger toward them out of the darkness.

“I think that will do,” observed Smith cheerfully.

They climbed back over the wall and resumed their walk. The rain had become a drizzle, and the moon, in a crack between the clouds, showed for a second the white of an eye. Behind them, the fire began to spout, and they observed that they were preceded, on the puddled road, by oblique drunken shadows. They walked rapidly.

“A mere bagatelle,” Smith went on, after a time. “But there’s a farm at the top of the hill, so we can, as it were, build more stately mansions.… Were you aware, at the moment of ignition, of a kind of co-awareness with the infinite?”

“Don’t be frivolous.”

“Personally, I found it a little disappointing.… I don’t like these deliberate actions. Give me the spontaneous, every time. That’s one thing I particularly like about Gleason. The dear thing hasn’t the least idea what she’s doing, or what she’s going to do next. If she decided to kill you, you’d never know it, because you’d be dead.… Not at all like you, Jones. You’ve got a devil of a lot to unlearn!”

Jones reflected. He took off his hat and shook it. His air was profoundly philosophical.

“True. I have. I’ll put off a decision about the farm till we get to it. I suppose, by the same token, you’d like me to give up my habit of strict meditation on the subject of your death?”

“Oh, just as you like about that!”… Smith laughed pleasantly. “I assure you it’s not of the smallest consequence.… It occurs to me, by the way, somewhat irrelevantly, that in your philosophy of incandescent sensation one must allow a place for the merely horrible. I never, I swear, felt more brilliantly alive than when I saw, once, a Negro sitting in a cab with his throat cut. He unwound a bloody towel for the doctor, and I saw, in the chocolate color, three parallel red smiles—no, gills. It was amazing.”

“A domestic scene?… Crime passionnelle ?”

“No—a trifling misunderstanding in a barber shop. This chap started to take out a handkerchief; the other chap thought it was a revolver; and the razor was quicker than the handkerchief.… The safety razor ought to be abolished, don’t you think?”

Jones, without answer, jumped the ditch and disappeared in the direction of the farm. Smith leaned against the wall, laughing softly to himself. After a while there were six little spurts of light one after another in the darkness, hinting each time at a nose and fingers, and then four more. Nothing further happened. The darkness remained self-possessed, and presently Jones reappeared, muttering.

“No use! It’s too wet, and I couldn’t find any kindling.”

“Don’t let that balk you, my dear Jones! Ring the doorbell and ask for a little kerosene. Why not kill the old man, ravish his daughter, and then burn up the lot? It would be a good night’s work.”

“Damn you! You’ve done enough harm already.”

There was something a little menacing in this, but Smith was unperturbed.