Conrad Aiken: King Coffin

“April 28. Law Society, Hempy talking for an hour on torts, sheer waste of time, I could have done it better myself—

“April 29. Queer mixup with Ammen about tea. He left a note in my box, asking me, I scribbled an answer on the back of it and put it into his, a little later I found it in my box again and thinking it a mistake put it back into his, and this happened twice more . I began to be a little mad about it. And when I went to his room at half past four he wasn’t in. God deliver me from these geniuses. I feel sorry for them. Signet for lunch, and Peters brought—

“April 30.… what Gerta said. I can’t make out Gerta. Of course I don’t suppose she is quite what they call a lady, she’s knocked around a little, she’s not one of that Beacon Hill crowd for nothing. But you feel that what the others do because they’re unprincipled, she does because of an idea . You can’t help respecting her — and you can’t help feeling sorry for her either, especially this attachment of hers for J — good God what a burden that must be. Bad luck that she should have attached herself to him, who so obviously cares only for himself.… Sandbach came in for a minute and said J was resigning from the little anarchist group and making an unnecessary amount of stink about it. Wanted to know if I knew what was behind it. I told him J hadn’t discussed it with me and wasn’t likely to. Sandbach says he is behaving very queerly about it. It’s certainly damned funny how his peculiarities and oddities lend a curious sort of importance to his actions — whatever the reason may be he keeps every one interested, not to say angry. Maybe because you never know which way he’ll jump. Which of course is one of the difficulties of dealing with a deliberate egoist. And he has brains.”

And he has brains.

Ten-thirty-five.

He returned the diary to its drawer, had a look at the Chicago letter, which turned out to be merely a business note with regard to the sale of a stamp collection, with reference also to a mandolin (apparently a former roommate at school in Connecticut), then went to the open window and filled and lit his pipe. Toppan was intelligent, but not intelligent enough — he could easily be kept at the right distance, he was also sufficiently good company, and his own peculiarities were themselves sufficiently interesting. That business of the safety-razor blades, for instance, and the episode of the girl’s hair at Mechanic’s Hall after the relay race. It had been put down as an aberration due to overwork and overtraining, but the fact remained that Toppan had always been fooling with knives and razor blades and scissors, always carried them round with him and was obviously in some abnormal way fascinated by them. It was a weak spot, one could exert pressure upon it, the odd thing was that Toppan had weathered the business without a further or deeper collapse of some sort.

The difficulties of dealing with a delicate egoist. Insane?

He was looking closely at the color print of the Chinese painting, Lychees and Birds, which of course Toppan had bought in sedulous imitation of his own taste for Chinese art, when Toppan came in. As usual he blushed: the signal of inferiority: as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He said, putting a book down beside the tray:

— I hoped you would be here.

— Why do you always blush?

Toppan gave an uneasy laugh, the blush deepening into the roots of his reddish hair, and it was also noticeable that his hand trembled as he held a match for his cigarette, but in spite of this he looked back steadily enough, the blue eyes timid but sharp behind rimless round glasses.

— Ah, that’s my innocence. Have a drink?

— No, thanks. You’ve been talking to Gerta, haven’t you.

— How did you know.

— I saw her tonight.

— Yes.

— That’s all right, it’s your own affair, but I want to say that I’m quite satisfied with things as they are and don’t want any complications of an accidental or external nature. Do you see what I mean.

— Certainly.

— I’ve got a project of a very important and private sort which I don’t want jeopardized. I can’t discuss it with you now, I may later.

— I see.

Toppan, standing sideways, said this into the glass as he poured himself a drink: he was very self-conscious in his obvious attempt to make it apparent that he was intelligent, that he understood. He was perhaps a little frightened.

— Gerta doesn’t mean to be disloyal and it might not matter if she were, but her present situation is difficult, she may be tempted to ask questions, and I think it advisable that they shouldn’t be answered. I’m not asking a favor — I’m merely putting a choice before you. You can do as you like.

He smiled a little, watching the shape of Toppan’s decision, watching Toppan’s desire for importance in Jasper Ammen’s eyes rise delightedly to the surface. He was as easy to handle as Gerta, and as translucent, there was even something to be said for making Toppan the victim, for then it would be possible to watch the record of the “closing in” in the diary, an extra turn of the screw. But no, this would sacrifice the notion of purity —

— Also I want to put a supposititious case before you. It was suggested by your passion for pure detection, detection for the sake of detection—

— Oh, I wouldn’t say it was a passion—

— what is valuable in such an experience is the unsuspected mastery of another person’s life: you know all about him, while he doesn’t even guess your existence, much less that you are following him. Suppose you pushed it to its logical extreme, and took his life. That’s all right, it’s quite understandable if you had a contempt, like the Orientals, for the value of human life, it might for people like you and me be actually an essential accomplishment on the way to becoming completely realized. I’m not discussing that, we can take it for granted, we both agree about it. Beyond values and so on.

He directed at Toppan a look of deliberate openness, and paused. He wanted to feel the edges of what he had just said, to feel quite sure of its shape and direction, its weight and its speed, and he wanted also to give Toppan plenty of time for a flurried conjecture that it was now precisely the secret “project” which was being discussed. It was to be dangled before him just like that, dangled but not defined or named or admitted. He would be allowed to draw his own breathless conclusions and then, in turn, to doubt them. Toppan took a sip of his drink and put down the glass very guardedly, his hand remained on the glass, with his forefinger he was tapping the rim reflectively, he had nothing to say; the situation had already become too precarious for him. He was simply waiting.

— All right. Now suppose it was you who decided to do this, suppose you picked out some one, me or Sandbach or Gottlieb or Taber, and began planning your murder.

He stood still, with his back to the open window, looking downward at Toppan. The quarter bells of Saint Paul’s Church began their melodious and lazy cycle in the still air, then the hour was struck, and before it was quite finished Memorial Hall began striking on the same tone, but farther away. Eleven o’clock. He listened intently till the last note had sounded, waited for the neutral returning silence to lift them once more into isolation, then pointed with his pipestem for emphasis.

— Suppose you decide there is a sublime rightness in the idea, that it is true to yourself and to nature, a deep principle vested in you and nature, as natural as being born, or eating, or loving: you might even say it is a profound obligation if you are to become complete, and just as inevitable as exploitation — exploitation is the natural order of things. To injure or destroy is natural, it’s life itself: to deny that is to deny life. Well, you know it’s right, and I know it’s right, but society won’t agree with us, will it? Consequently what? Consequently what ought to be a public action, and done openly, has to be private or secret: unless you make up your mind to go the whole hog and do it openly and take the social consequences. That’s the way it ought to be, to be perfect, it ought to take place in sunlight .