Conrad Aiken - Blue Voyage

Tin-tin: tin-tin: tin-tin: tin-tin: eight o’clock. The flute player folded his tripod, the pianist closed the yellow-toothed piano. The Blue Danube, miles behind, sank into the Atlantic, was caught by mewing gulls.

“Good night, Mr. Demarest … Are you comfortable in your stateroom?”

“Quite, thanks.”

“That’s good … Good night.”

“Good night …”

“G’night, sir,” said the table steward, flicking crumbs.

… Smith’s alley: but Smith was not there, and neither of the girls … The long red carpet abruptly declined before him. The wind had freshened. The sea was getting rougher. 142–156. Home. A light in the room beyond his own — the Irish girl moved about, there, with door half opened. Snap, went a suitcase lock. A tumbler clinked. The bed curtains were harshly slid along, brass rings on brass rod — ZRING … An electric bell buzzed remotely, twice: a voice, remote, called “Mrs. Atherton!.. Mrs. Atherton !.. One sixty-eight …” “Coming!” cried Mrs. Atherton … Mrs. Atherton could be heard pelting down the corridor, a whirlwind, and laughing, then a male voice, laughing, and Mrs. Atherton gave a squeal, and “Don’t!” she cried. “Get out of my way!” she cried, then both laughs sliding down the scale, diminuendo … A madhouse. I am in a madhouse, thought Demarest … Figures given for the year 1920 show a considerable increase in the number of cases admitted to institutions in the United Kingdom. Of these 56 per cent were female, 44 per cent male … It is noted with interest that few insane people die of cancer … General paralysis of the insane … Certified as insane … All is insanity … Who so among you that is without insanity, let him think the first think … Shall we read, tonight? A nuisance carrying a book … The amusements provided for the insane show a gratifying variety … Croquet, phonographs, picture puzzles in great numbers … We are happy to report that the Society for the Encouragement of Vocal Therapy has co-operated with us now for six months with … Music and hot baths … Therapeutic value of jazz … Even staid old country preachers are engaging tango teachers … You can’t get away from it — can’t get away from it — you can’t get away from it at all … If one could only establish a direct mode of communion with another being, instead of undergoing this pitiful struggle of conversation? Extraordinary, the way conversation, even the most intimate (not at present apropos) concealed or refracted the two personalities engaged. Impossible to present, all at once, in a phrase, a sentence, a careful paragraph — even in a book, copious and disheveled — all that one meant or all that one was. To speak is to simplify, to simplify is to change, to change is to falsify. And not only this — there were also the special demons who inhabit language; and again, the demons who make a perpetual comedy, or tragedy, of all human intercourse, the comedies and tragedies of the misunderstood. These were the same thing — or aspects of the same thing? The experience of an individual is coextensive with the world and therefore infinite? — he is, in epitome, the history of the world, a history still being lived. But this “language”—by which one such epitome seeks to make himself understood or felt by another (felt, rather than understood!) — this meager affair of signs and sounds, this tiny boxful of shabby, worn trinkets, few in number, dim in color and crude of shape — how much, of one’s infinitude, could one express by an earnest stringing together of these? Little or nothing. And these demons of language — they invited one, how tiresomely often, to disregard the reference of the trinkets, and to play a game with them, to toss and catch them, to match their colors and shapes, to demonstrate one’s skill: turning human intercourse into a game of anagrams. Ah, the disgusting way in which one is always trying to “make an impression!” and the even stranger way in which casual groups of people actually co-operate to make a collective impression, a mutual deception of smartness, gaiety, good humor, good breeding, vulgarity, or wit! Their dinner table, for example — all of them unnatural. Bridge with Silberstein and the others — unnatural. Chess with Hay-Lawrence — unnatural … Smith? Ah — this seemed closer to the real … Faubion? Relations with her, too, would be real or nothing. And what a profoundly interesting experience! A marriage with earth … With reversed meanings — Blest be the marriage betwixt earth and heaven! Now, in the round blue noon of space (round blue noon was delicious) the mortal son, and the daughter immortal (immoral!) make of the world their resting place … Not so bad: the colors a little aniline, perhaps, as in a flower piece by Hiroshige Third … Curious that Silberstein — Caligula (who seemed so almost identically one person!) should have started this train of feeling and precipitated a poem involving (so transparently!) Cynthia and himself. But, of course, the Caligula strain in himself was familiar enough — from the age of ten (that vacant lot, with ruined cellar walls, grass-grown, secret) all through the horrible furtive years of adolescence. Little Caligula ran on the sidewalk, pulling after him a toy fire engine, from which poured the thick smoke of burning excelsior. Little Caligula invited Gladys Dyson to come to the vacant lot. Little Caligula was kissed unexpectedly in the tailor’s shop by the Italian tailor’s black-eyed daughter. Walking through a slum alley, little Caligula heard voices, peeped in through the wet green shutters, saw a Negro and Negress embracing, heard the Negress moan. He had wanted to remain and watch, but hadn’t dared. The vocabulary of little Caligula — the profane vocabulary — increased rapidly. The cook made startling contributions to it, screeching with laughter as she did so. Then there was that Swedish sailor, caught in the same doorway during a shower, who on seeing the two dogs had cried “ Jesus !” Why Jesus? What connection? Little Caligula looked from dogs to Axel, from Axel to dogs, and sought a clue. Jesus, then, was not merely a god who had suffered crucifixion, but could be mentioned, laughingly, on such occasions as this?… There were also the singular totems carved out of wood by the “gang” to which he had once or twice been admitted. And there, too, strange words had been pronounced, which had rendered him more than ever a little Caligula — a Caligula with strange festered recesses in his mind, with wounds in his body. Love (he had been taught) was sensuality, sensuality was evil, evil was prohibited but delicious: the catechism of the vacant lot. But how, then, had beauty come in? How had it so managed to complicate itself with evil and sensuality and the danks and darks of sex? — It had come in with the trumpet vine. It had come in with the seven-year locust and the chinaberry tree. It had come in with the stenciled shadows, on a tropic moonlight night — shadows, on the walls and floors, which suddenly galloped. It had come in with the song of the Negress who walked in the sun with the basket swaying on her head and sang “Ay-y-y-y prawns — ay-y-y-y-y prawns …” No — the tissue was too complex;—it was impossible to say where beauty had come from, or even to predicate that there had ever been a beginning; to be born, to become conscious, was to be, and at the same time to face, pain and beauty … “All this, Faubion, is what I am trying to say to you when I make a vulgar joke and laugh at you!.. It is Caligula, who nevertheless has the rainbow wings of a seraph; Caligula, corrupt and yet devout, who beseeches you to be kind to him. And yet it is not entirely Caligula — it is something less than Caligula, and also something more; it is a life small and innocent, inconceivably naïve and at every instant new, a life infantine and guileless; but unhappily this ethereal waif harbors in his heaven-born mind a little black seed, the gift of Tellus. This little black seed is the yearning to be Caligula. I MUST be Caligula. And is it not you who provide me with the opportunity to achieve my destiny — you and your sisters? It is in your presence that the black seed begins to grow. Eunice warmed it, smiling upon it. Helen Shafter wept upon it, watering its terrible roots. Mary gave her body to be devoured by the terrible roots. Anita, fleeing, tempted it to grow like a vine … And here are you, Faubion — vigorous synthesis of all these; the familiar theme repeated, but repeated more emphatically than ever …” O God, if he could only escape! But did he really desire to?… The Irish girl in the next room again moved the bed curtains, brass rings on brass rod — ZRING. The light, which had shone through the reticulated grill at the top of the wall, above the upper berth, suddenly went out. She was going forth — he could meet her. It was time to meet Smith. And the five minutes of solitude, of morose reflection, had been (as he had foreseen) just what was needed to restore him to himself. His periodic need of escape. To re-establish his boundaries — to re-establish his awareness of his own periphery. Now he could go forth calmly — to face the Irish girl calmly, to face Smith calmly, to face the sea with joy.