Conrad Aiken - Blue Voyage

“Scavengers!” she cried. “That’s what we are. Devourers of the dead: devourers of ourselves. Prometheus and the vulture are one and the same. Well! I will not countenance it. Any more than Demarest does.”

She gave a little laugh, and the others laughed also, lightly and bitterly. Something had gone wrong with the scene. Disruption. Dislocation of affects. Quarrel of ghosts. Fecal coloring of imagery. The night falling over like a basket, spilling miscellaneous filth. No! Only the atom in the brain! falling infinitesimally, but by accident wrecking some central constellation. The five ghosts quarreling on the deck with harsh voices were the five sea gulls in Trout River. Charlie Riehl was himself. Drowning was consummation. It was all very simple — you turned a screw, and everything at once changed its meaning. Klio, said Cynthia. Klio, klio, sang the mad nymphs for Dido, ululating; and the vulture, tearing with sadistic beak at the liver of Prometheus— klio, klio ! it cried, turning the Semitic profile of Silberstein … But this was disturbing! One must pull oneself together — set the basket of stars on end again. What was it that had caused this trouble, this quick slipping brain slide, vertigo, that sent everything skirling and screaming raucously down the abyss? Whirlpool. Cloaca. Groping for trout in a peculiar river. Plaster of warm guts. Clyster. Death, with your eyes wide open. Christ !.. He leaned hard on lifeboat No. 14 (the motor lifeboat — they took off the canvas cover to test the engine, and stepped a little wireless pole in the bow thwart) and shut his eyes. Think. Project. Sublimate. Everything depends on it. In the sweat of your brow, the ventricle contracted, the dew dripping—

“Is it not possible, then”—he cried—“this perfection of understanding and interchange? Cynthia?”

“Oh, as for that—” Cynthia’s voice seemed to come from farther off, floatingly.

“As for that!” jeered Silberstein.

“That!” quacked Smith.

He opened his eyes. The four figures, in the now almost total darkness, were scarcely perceptible — mere clots in the night. The stars had been engulfed.

“He came to me with a shabby chessboard under his arm! And he had forgotten to button—”

“Please adjust your dress before leaving …”

“He permitted me to pay his fare in the bus! Yes, he did! You may not believe it, but he did!”

“Rear seat reserved for smokers … Lovers with umbrellas at the top—”

“And do you know what he said when I asked him if he would like to come one afternoon to hear my brother William play Bach on the piano? Do you know what he said, delicious provincial little Yankee that he is and always will be?… ‘ You bet !’”

“Ho ho! Ha ha! He he!”

“Suppress that stage laughter, please. Silence! His impurial highness—”

“I beg you,” said Faubion, “I beg you not to go on with this!”

“Silence! His impurial highness, greatest failure as a dramatist that the world has ever known, supreme self-devouring egotist, incomparable coward, sadist and froterer, voyeur and onamist, exploiter of women — William Demarest, late of New York, and heir of all the ages—”

“ Stop !”

“What’s the matter with Faubion? Is she in love with the idiot?”

“Perhaps she’s right. We ought to be sorry for him. More to be pitied than blamed. After all, he’s an idealist: a subjective idealist.”

“Who said so? An automaton like the rest of us. Nigger, blow yo’ nose on yo’ sleeve, and let dis show pro-ceed!”

“You must remember that we are only figments of his—”

Klio! klio! klio !

The gulls, the waves, the corposants, all screamed at once. The wave in Caligula’s dream. The sea ghost, seaweed-bearded, with arms of green water and dripping fingers of foam. Oo — wash — oo — wallop —are you awake — King Buskin?… And he never said a mumbalin’ word. The blood came twinklin’ down. And he never said a mumbalin’ word … Tired, tortured, twisted; thirsty, abandoned, betrayed.

“—Silence! The transfiguration scene will now begin. Dress rehearsal. Special benefit performance for Mr. Demarest. At the first stroke of the bell, Miss Battiloro, arch snob and philanderer, several times engaged, virgin in fact but not in thought, she who stood on a June day perspiring and admiring, adoring and caloring, before the unfinished Titian, will take her place beneath the mainmast, on the port side, facing the stern. Her head will be bowed forward meekly, and in her hands she will clasp lightly, with exquisite Rossetti unlikelihood, a waxen lily. At the second stroke of the bell, the five angelic corposants will unite in the air above her, singing softly, as they tread the wind, the verses written by Mr. Demarest for the occasion— King Caligula . No weeping, by request. Listening to this heavenly music, with its message of healing for all mankind, Miss Battiloro will lift her eyes, in the attitude of one who sees, at long last, the light that never was on land or sea. While she is in this attitude, the third stroke of the bell will be given by the shipboy; and on the instant Miss Battiloro will be transformed, for all time, into a stained-glass widow. Beg pardon, I mean window. Now is everything in readiness, please? Shipboy, are you there?… He says he is there. Is Miss Battiloro ready to make this noble and beautiful sacrifice?”

“Ay ay, sir.”

“Miss Battiloro says she is ready to make this noble and beautiful sacrifice. And Mr. William Demarest — is Mr. William Demarest present? Mr. Demarest, please?”

“Oh yes, he’s here, all right!”

“Very well, then, we will proceed … Shipboy, the first bell, if you will be so kind!”

It was painfully true, every word of it. The bell note fell down from aloft, a golden ingot of sound, and Cynthia was standing under the tall tree as announced; like a charade for purity and resignation; clad in white samite; and clasping a tall lily with unimaginable delicacy. Wasn’t it perhaps, however, more Burne-Jones than Rossetti? It was a little dark, and therefore difficult to see; but Demarest thought so. Yes. And at the second bell note — three minutes have elapsed, silent save for the hushing sound of the waves — Cynthia lifted her meltingly beautiful eyes, and the five blue seraphim, treading the night air above her, began softly, sighingly, to sing. This was very affecting. In spite of the warning, it was difficult to refrain from tears. Smith, in fact, gave an audible sob, like a hiccough. At the words “ resting-place, ” the five seraphs disbanded, two deploying to starboard, two to port, and the fifth catapulting straight up toward the zenith. At this moment, Demarest experienced acutely a remarkable temptation. He desired to rush forward, kneel, bury his face passionately in the white samite, and cry out—γύναι, ἴδε ό ὑιόϛ σου! Before he could do more than visualize this action, however, the third stroke of the bell was given. The whole night had become a Cathedral. And above Demarest, faintly luminous in the cold starlight that came from beyond, was a tall Gothic window, where motionless, in frozen sentimentalites of pink, white, and blue, Cynthia was turned to glass.

To his Lady, his Mother, his Wife, his Sister: her Servant, her Child, her Lover, her Brother, and to express all that is humble, respectful, and loving, to his Cynthia, W. D. writes this .

ONE

You are not ill-educated, Cynthia — if for the first and last time you will permit me so to address you — and you will therefore recognize this clumsy paraphrase of the salutation with which Heloise began the first of her letters to Peter Abelard. It is not by accident that I choose this method of opening what will no doubt be the last letter I address to you. For what, under the peculiar circumstances — I refer to the fact that, for reasons into which I forbear to inquire, your mother and yourself have decided to drop me from your acquaintance — what could be more likely than this beautiful exordium to persuade your eye to read further? And that, for me, is all-important. The reasons for this you will readily understand. Suppose this letter is delivered to you by your stewardess. I shall be careful to address the envelope in a style which you will not recognize, so that you will at least not destroy it unopened; but having opened it, is there not a great likelihood that you will then tear it to pieces as soon as you see from whom it comes? Yes. And for that reason I have — let me confess at once my iniquity, calculated iniquity! — employed this striking method of greeting you. It will perhaps — that frail pontoon “perhaps,” on which so many desperate armies have crossed — amuse you, perhaps even a little excite your curiosity. You might retort, derisively, that it is odd of me to model my salutation on that of Heloise rather than on that of Abelard? But unfortunately, Abelard is altogether too blunt for my purpose. He plunges in with a directness quite disconcertingly up-to-date; beginning with a mere “could I have known that a letter not addressed to you would fall into your hands.” Would this be more likely to tempt you on, Cynthia? Or could I have the heart to begin, as Abelard began his fourth epistle, “Write no more to me, Heloise, write no more”?… This would be both melancholy and absurd.