Kingsley Amis - The Green Man

I was back up again in half an hour, after chatting with a couple of businessmen from Stevenage and a young farmer from round about who was rich enough to be doing his farming on purpose, so to speak. As I remounted the stairs, I found I had forgotten every word of the conversation, not by way of the instant-amnesia process I had had the benefit of twice earlier, but owing to that alcohol-fuelled unmemorability that does something to make middle age less intolerable, however coarsely tuned it may become with use. On the landing I was ready for an appearance of the woman with auburn hair, presumably Underhill’s wife, and a tractable spectre by local standards; but she was not to be seen. Then, finally, just at the apartment door, I had a moment of simple selfish joy at the memory of what had happened in the hollow by the wood, and in that moment experienced a genuine hallucination, wonderfully and purely tactile, of Diana’s naked flesh against my own. It has never surprised me that some men should try to beat Don Juan’s traditional total, only that more do not. Seduction is the unique sensual act; other pleasures, including sex per se, are mere activities, durative and repetitive. Each particular seduction is a final and unchangeable thing, a part of history, like a century before lunch or a winning try (few of which carry the bonus of orgasm). And a sculpture can become nothing but a stale grotesque, a poem lose all its edge, but nothing of the sort can happen to what you got up to that night with the princess or the barmaid.

In the dining-room, the three of them were sitting over coffee. No drink had been so much as poured. While they struggled with the silence that had arisen at my entry, I got myself a glass of claret and started on some bread and a piece of Cheddar. In an under-rehearsed way, Nick said casually that, since he happened to have brought a bit of work with him and nothing was going on at the university, he would—if convenient, and only if—welcome the chance of a couple of days off from young Josephine, who was teething again, and stay on for the funeral. Lucy would return for this occasion, if that was all right, but meanwhile intended to go back home the following morning. I said that that and everything else would be all right.

Outside, I could hear men and women coming out of my house, standing about and chattering, getting into their cars and driving away, a series of sounds that always filled me with momentary animation and sadness and unconsidered envy. In the room, tonight as every night, the old Roman, the Elizabethan boys, the French officers and the French girl looked better than by day, more assimilated into the rest of the environment, though no less to be felt as presences. The humidity seemed to have increased again; at any rate, there was sweat on my forehead and at the roots of my hair.

Joyce said, ‘Isn’t it incredible to think that last night Gramps was just as much alive as any of us?’ She was never one to be put off a disturbing remark merely by its obviousness.

‘I suppose it is,’ I said. ‘But it’s not the sort of thing anybody spends much time trying to take in, even in a situation like this, where you’d imagine none of us would be able to get our minds off it. That’s what’s really incredible. And I honestly can’t see why everybody who isn’t a child, everybody who’s theoretically old enough to have understood what death means, doesn’t spend all his time thinking about it. It’s a pretty arresting thought, not being anything, not being anywhere, and yet the world still being here. Simply having everything stopping for ever, not just for millions of years. And getting to the point where that’s all there is in front of you. I can imagine anyone finding themselves thoroughly wrapped up in that prospect, especially since it’s where we’re going to get to sooner or later, and perhaps sooner. Of course, it’s not really true to say that that’s all that’s going to be in front of you. There are all sorts of other things thrown in, like waiting to see the doctor, and fixing up to have a test, and waiting for the test, and waiting for the result of the test, and fixing up another test, and waiting for that, and waiting for that result, and going in for a period of observation, and being kept in, and waiting for the operation, and waiting for the anaesthetist, and waiting to hear what they found, and waiting for the second operation, and waiting to hear how that went, and being told they can unfortunately do nothing radically curative but naturally all measures will be taken to prolong life and alleviate suffering, and that’s where you start. A long way to go from there before you get to the first lot of things that are turning up for the last time, like your birthday and going away and going out to dinner, and then the rest of those things, like going out anywhere and going downstairs and getting into bed and waking up and lying down and shutting your eyes and beginning to feel drowsy. And that’s where you start, too.’

‘It doesn’t happen like that to everybody by any means,’ said Joyce.

‘No, I quite agree for some people it’s much worse. And I’m leaving out things like pain. But for most of us it’s either what I’ve said or it’s like what happened to my father. With reasonable care and a hell of a lot of luck you might last another ten years, or five years, or two years, or six months, but then of course again on the other hand as I’m sure you’ll appreciate trying to be completely objective about the matter you might not. So in future, if there is any, every birthday is going to have a lot of things about it that make it feel like your last one, and the same with every evening out, and after four of your five years or five of your six months the same with most things, up to and including getting into bed and waking up and the rest of it. So whichever way it turns out, like my father or like the other lot, it’s going to be difficult to feel you’ve won, and I don’t know which is worse, but I do know there’s enough about either of them to make you wish you could switch to the other for a bit. And it’s knowing that every day it’s more and more likely that one or the other of them will start tomorrow morning that makes the whole business so riveting.’

Nick stirred and muttered. Lucy, after glancing at me to make sure I felt I had done about enough maundering for the moment, said, ‘The fear of death is based on not wanting to consult fact and logic and common sense.’

‘Oh, in that case I’ll pack it up right away. But it isn’t exactly fear. Not altogether. There’s a bit of anger and hatred, and indignation perhaps, and loathing and revulsion, and grief, I suppose, and despair.’

‘Isn’t there something egotistical about all those feelings?’ Lucy sounded almost sorry for me.

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘But people usually feel bad when they realize they’re on one of the conveyor-belts I was talking about. Which makes it natural, at any rate, to feel something of the same when you realize we’re all on conveyor-belts to those coveyor-belts from the moment we’re born.’

‘It’s all right, Nick, I’m trying to be helpful, really. Natural, yes. But it’s natural to be all sorts of things it’d be better if we weren’t. Being afraid of the dark, for instance; that’s natural. But that’s one we can do something about, by using reason on it. The same with death. To start with, death isn’t a state.’

‘That’s what I don’t like about it.’

‘And it isn’t an event in life. All the pain and anxiety you’ve been talking about can be very horrible, no doubt, but it all takes places in life.’

‘That’s what I don’t like about life. Among other things, let it be said.’

‘I mean you’re not going to be hanging about fully conscious observing death happening to you. That might be very bad and frightening, if we could conceive of such a thing. But we can’t. Death isn’t something we experience.’