Man Without a Shadow Page 10

  I sit here, in this room, and the problem seems at once immense and non-existent. Life is a desert of freedom; but because it is a desert, we are too free. It is like being suspended in a total void, with no gravity; because you can do anything, you do nothing, and every effort to change your position costs immense energy because there’s nothing to brace yourself against; try to move your arm backwards, and your whole body turns, leaving the arm in the same position. I sometimes used to wonder how certain writers could spend their whole lives in an unchanging state of despair or feebleness; now I know; they imagine that the chance position into which freedom has flung them is a law of the universe.

  Nov. 4th.

  Things are coming to a head sooner than I expected. These complications bore me.

  Last night I met Carlotta in the hall and asked her to come and have a drink. She knew what I had in mind, and came up with her Steinhager, and we drank some wine and she cooked me some frankfurters with spinach. At about midnight, without even asking her, I undressed and got into bed. And without any comment, she went out. I assumed she had gone back to her own room; but she actually went to the bathroom, and came and climbed into bed just as I was dozing off. I woke up and tried kissing her, but a hand on her thigh got firmly pushed away. So I decided to make the best of it; I said good night, turned over, and went to sleep. After half an hour or so, her movements woke me up; evidently my indifference didn’t suit her either. So I turned over again, moved on top of her (which she doesn’t mind provided I restrict myself to kisses) and allowed myself to get excited. Although she was wearing a slip, it was above her waist. These girls puzzle me. She is in bed with a naked man; she is wearing nothing but her pants, allowing him to lie on top of her and get her into a state of sexual excitement—and yet for some weird reason of prudery or virtue, she denies him the ‘final privilege’. I carried on like this for about half an hour, then finally reached down and pulled aside the leg of her pants. She still showed no sign of objecting, so I hastily carried on. However, I’d barely achieved my objective when the accumulated tension of half an hour exploded. I decided this irony was too much, and turned over and went to sleep. I woke up again a few hours later, but didn’t feel the faintest inclination to take advantage of my new status as her ‘lover’. I realized, to my dismay, that somehow, I didn’t want this to turn into another ‘regular relationship’ of the Caroline type, and all her coquettings and denials hadn’t made me want to enter into a regular sexual relation with her.

  She slept later than usual. Suddenly, I was awakened by Caroline entering the room. My first relief at seeing Carlotta was gone vanished when I saw that her skirt was still on the chair; a few moments later, she came in in her slip. Caroline was just looking pointedly at the skirt, and starting to ask me whom it belonged to. They stared at one another with hostility; Caroline merely said: ‘I’ll see you later,’ and went out. Carlotta only said: ‘I’m sorry, but she’s bound to find out sooner or later, isn’t she?’

  I only turned over to the wall, thinking: ‘Damn all women.’ I didn’t ask either of them into my life; why do they have to start behaving as if they’d bought me?

  Later, Carlotta brought me coffee, and got into bed herself to drink it. This was obviously by way of consolidating her position; I found I no longer had to resist a temptation to undress her; I didn’t feel any inclination at all. She asked me if I was in love with Caroline; I said no, but I was fond of her, and didn’t want to hurt her. Finally, Carlotta said: ‘Well, you’d better go to her then, hadn’t you?’ and got out of bed. I didn’t call her back; I felt all this was a kind of blackmail, but it was passing over my head.

  However, I went down to the Coffee House to see Caroline (she works there two mornings a week now). To my relief, she didn’t show any sign of jealousy, and was obviously perfectly ready to believe me when I said that very little had happened. I swore that I hadn’t made love to the girl (I thought my abortive attempt last night didn’t count), and said, truthfully, that I hadn’t expected her to sleep with me last night, but that she’d climbed into my bed. Caroline declared that she had noticed a long time ago that Carlotta had ‘designs’ on me, claimed that Carlotta always scowled when she opened the door to her, and said that I ought to move out of the place. I was so charmed by Caroline’s good humour and lack of reproach that I agreed to look for a new place this afternoon (Caroline said I could move in with her for a few days, but I thought of Madeleine, and refused). So this afternoon, I took the tube over to Whitechapel, and spent the afternoon looking around. Just as I’d about given up, disgusted with pokey rooms where the landlady’s family have non-stop right of way and the house smells of cabbage, I had some luck. My friend the barber in Hanbury Street told me about a flat only a few minutes away, and I found the owner and looked at it. He wanted thirty pounds for ‘fittings’, but the rent is twenty-five bob a week—five shillings less than my present room—so I wrote him a cheque on the spot and took it. It hasn’t much furniture, and is at the very top of the house. But apart from that, it seems too good to be true. I rang Caroline at school, told her to meet me, and took her to see it.

  There is only one minor problem. When I got back, I felt I had to go and tell Carlotta immediately—I would have felt too much of a coward otherwise. But as usual, I tried to soften it all I could, said I wasn’t leaving because of her, and hinted that this room is too close to Gertrude. Dishonest, I suppose, but I detest hurting people. Finally, I said that I hoped I would still see her. Unfortunately, she immediately took me up on this, and has offered to help me move in! Luckily, Carlotta’s tied up with this house a great deal and is afraid of the landlady, who lives only a few doors away and loves to drop in unexpectedly.

  Nov. 5th.

  For two days I’ve been involved in this loathesome process of moving and trying to get this place into livable condition. I decided I could move my stuff with the bike in about three journeys, but it actually took seven. Even then, Gertrude brought over a load of stuff in her car. I told her frankly why I was leaving—she got very upset at first—and now she seems reconciled to it, although she hates Whitechapel. I am now alone again, it is half past eight, and there are sounds of fireworks from the street; I passed a magnificent bonfire in the middle of a piece of waste ground two streets away. Yes, I think I shall enjoy living here; perhaps I can get more solitude in the midst of so many strangers. The district reminds me constantly of Austin and Oliver, but I suppose this will pass.

  Strange, how a mere change of environment seems to give you a better grip on living. Temporary, I suppose. For a person like me, life is bound to be difficult. Wells says somewhere that ‘we intellectual workers’ are like the earliest amphibians dragging themselves out of the sea and learning to walk on land. Man’s natural sphere is everyday life, action, movement, not sitting in a room, thinking. The amphibian on land naturally finds it hard work moving around on his flippers—and will continue to do so until he develops legs. I still have no legs. Besides, my kind of thinking is a kind that is foreign to the human race. We know how to think objectively, about mathematics or philosophy. But to try to force your own life into a strait-jacket of thought, to see meanings in it—that is infinitely more difficult. When we used to play blind man’s buff as kids, they blindfolded you, then turned you round half a dozen times to make you lose sense of direction. Well, life is like that, only a thousand times more so. You are dropped into the world, turned around and upside down, hit on the head, stupefied with noise and lights, and then told to guess ‘what life is all about’. Just to make it more difficult, they repeat the bewilderment treatment every few days, just in case you’re succeeding. Or it’s like Theseus’s maze, where you’re continually crossing your own tracks. This diary, like all my writing, is my own attempt to maintain a sense of direction by a ball of thread; but it’s not nearly so efficient as Theseus’s thread, because I cross my own track every few weeks, and realize that a new
‘idea’ that has excited me is only a slightly different version of an idea I wrote in my journal two years ago. Yes, this is the problem: we try to find a way in the maze by thought, by applying the methods of science to actual living, but so far, the results are not very spectacular.

  Later: I’ve just had a curious experience. When I’d written the above, my pen ran out of ink, and I discovered I’d left the ink behind in Camden Town. So I went out and bought some. Then I had a walk around, to stretch my legs, and eventually found myself outside a public library. Naturally, I went in. I found an interesting book on the Faust legend, and sat down in a quiet corner to read it. From where I was sitting, I could see across to the desk where the assistants stamp books, and I couldn’t help noticing one girl, dressed in red, who was returning books to their shelves. She wasn’t particularly pretty—rather bony, and in her late twenties—but something about the way she was dressed and the way she walked aroused my interest. It may only have been that her red skirt was rather tight, but she made me think immediately of bed. As I watched her, a man came to the bookshelves near where I was sitting, and looked through the section on magic, ghosts, etc. He also struck me as an interesting type—a big man, running to fat, about thirty-five or forty, with a completely bald head. If he was an actor, he’s the sort I’d choose to play the mad scientist. This man also glanced once or twice at the girl in red; then he took a book, and came and sat within a few feet of me, on the other side of the table. I felt him looking at me, but pretended to be reading. After a few minutes, I heard him muttering something under his breath, and I looked at him cautiously over the top of my book. He had odd round eyes with a bulgy look, and he was staring at the girl who was now back at the desk. Suddenly I experienced a feeling of tension—the kind of thing you might experience if you went into a room where two people hate one another, although you’ve never met either of them before. Then, a moment later, the girl came over to our bookshelf, carrying a pile of books. The man looked away as she came towards us, then looked at her again when she had turned her back. Suddenly, she looked round, first at me then at the man, wearing a startled expression, as if one of us had pinched her. Then an odd thing happened. I was watching her cautiously, sitting well back with my book propped on the desk. She stood staring at the man, quite openly, and went very pale, then very red. He was still staring back at her. Then she took a step forward, as if she wanted to hit him, then stopped and turned away. At this point, he said: ‘Excuse me, miss. I wonder if you could help me?’ He had a heavy, actor’s-type of voice, rather rich, with a faint lisp. He got up and went over to her, then stood there, very close, talking to her in a very low voice. I was fascinated by it, because for some reason, I felt certain she didn’t know him, and that he had noticed in her exactly what I had noticed: a kind of sexual tension. He was standing there, facing her as he talked, but much closer than you would normally stand if you were asking a librarian an innocent question. Her back was towards me, so that I couldn’t see what was happening, but I could swear he placed a hand on her breast. Then she said, in an odd, strained voice: ‘It’s in the special collection, sir, in the basement. If you’d like to come this way, I’ll show you.’ For a moment, he looked at me, and his look was as clear as if he’d winked at me and said: ‘You see, I’ve done it.’ As they walked away, he had his hand lightly on the back of her dress.

  I sat there, trying to untangle the knot of lust inside me. I’ve heard that certain animals perform a ritual courtship in public, but this is the first time I’ve seen a man seduce a strange woman in a library.

  About ten minutes later, they came upstairs, and he went out immediately. When I went out, I looked at her, and she looked back at me and blushed.

  There may, of course, be another explanation. He may have been her lover; perhaps they had quarrelled and he’d come to make it up with her. Or perhaps I was imagining it all, and he was really interested in the special collection. But I don’t believe either of these explanations.

  Some Frenchman said, ‘Women like to be violated.’ While I don’t think this is true, I do believe that certain women emanate a kind of helplessness towards certain men. This is the opposite of the come-hither sexiness of certain attractive women (Caroline, for example). I wonder if loneliness and sexual frustration can give some women a kind of aura, something like the smell given off by a female animal on heat? This was what I seemed to sense about the girl in red as soon as I saw her; something about her was an invitation to take her brutally, and I got the impression that the bald-headed man was prepared to do just that.

  All this has made me unpleasantly excited, and unable to continue the train of thought that I started before I went out to buy ink. I shall try to sleep.

  Later: I feel tired and depressed. My vitality has sunk so low that I can’t even fall asleep. Why? I suspect that, somewhere down inside me, there’s a knob like the volume control on my radio, and it turns my vitality up or down. I wish I could find it. . . .

  It’s stupid. I have too much freedom. Consequently I don’t know what to do or where to go. I’m now in a position I would have envied three years ago. I have a room of my own, enough money to live without working, and a few records and books. And yet I need to distract myself with seductions.

  But there is always a good way of overcoming this ‘excess of freedom’ that turns into boredom—that is, to make an exercise of recalling the worst moments in your life, or in other people’s lives. When he was in front of the firing squad, Dostoevsky must have felt that he knew what life is all about. I often meditate on that episode in Lawrence’s Seven Pillars where the Turkish leader has an old man thrown into a furnace, and then orders everyone to listen; there is a crashing noise, and the leader observes: ‘Their heads always pop like that.’ I imagine that I am standing there, waiting to be thrown into the furnace; all the life and power in me rises up, and suddenly I know a little about the value of life.

  But what is it that actually happens in these moments? It is worth analysing, because I suppose it is the whole subject of this diary, and of all my work. It is not that you see the value of life. It is more complicated. The energy in you rises up to meet the emergency. It is as if life said: ‘You are allowed only so many gallons of energy per day, but for special emergencies, you can draw upon ten times that amount.’ That immense flow of energy is vision. We usually put so little energy into living. Quite small inconveniences can make us think that it’s not worth being alive, or at least, make us temporarily incapable of pleasure. We so easily relapse into a state of sullenness. ‘If life can treat me as badly as this, I’m damned if I’m going to put any energy into living.’ And, like angry children, we refuse to be made to laugh. Now if, at that moment, we were confronted with a real threat to life, that refusal to enjoy living would vanish immediately.

  It seems to me that this refusal to enjoy living is somehow the basis of the whole problem—the biggest problem of all. Because what we are doing in this moment is assigning a fixed value to life. Most of us need much less than Job’s suffering to refuse to make any further effort. We lie down in the middle of the road, like Ivan Karamazov’s sinner, and refuse to budge. The woman in the local café has a fixed scowl of bad temper on her face, and even small inconveniences make her thoroughly impolite (nobody can bear the red-headed bitch). Obviously, she is within the great grey shadow of boredom. A more precise name is needed for this bad temper, this devaluation of life, this decision that it isn’t worth making any further effort, this area of human emotion where pleasure fails to arouse a smile (although we still object as vigorously to pain). I suppose I could call it the indifference threshold. This indifference threshold is everything that is wrong with human nature, and therefore corresponds to what the Catholics call Original Sin.

  We accept pleasure as our right, as an animal basking in the sun accepts sunlight as its right. But there is no reason at all why our lives ought to be pleasant. If
they are to be made pleasant, worth living, then it must be with infinite calculation—just as an animal’s life cannot be pleasant because the sun goes in and the season of frost and hail arrives. The ‘natural life’, ‘taking life as it comes’, is death. We do not yet know how to live; we haven’t even the faintest idea. But pain does make us think; and so it ought; to make us calculate how to avoid it. And then we learn that avoiding it is not enough, because a life without pain is not necessarily very satisfactory.

  This, I would say, is about the point at which the human race has arrived at present—at least, our little Western bit of it. This idea that ‘freedom from pain is not enough’ is now a cultural cliché; it has been said in a hundred different ways by a hundred different authors. In Shakespeare’s time, a play about boredom would have been unthinkable. Now we have an extensive literature of boredom—a great deal of it in Russian, beginning with Dostoevsky’s Possessed. That is why we think Dostoevsky so great: all his work is completely preoccupied with these problems that are becoming the great problems for the human race. Kierkegaard was the first to give boredom its central place when he stated his principle ‘All men are bores’ (and, therefore, are bored), and pointed out that there is only one satisfactory way of overcoming boredom: not conquering the world, like Alexander (or leaping into bed with different women, like me), but developing an inner-concentration—Shotover’s seventh degree of concentration. This inner-concentration is what happened to Dostoevsky in front of the firing squad. It is also what happens in a sexual orgasm. I am actually aware that my inner-being contracts and concentrates. It is like a large, diffused pool of light; the orgasm is like a magnifying glass that makes it concentrate into one tiny burning point.