Dream of Fair to Middling Women Read online

  Now then oh my Helper. The Greek bath drives sadness from the mind. Free among the dead. Oh in peace oh for the Selfsame. Optumo optume optumam operam. The demon of irony the life of irony the diamond. Lean on the orange-peel wonderfully made by the Lemon-sole that your… er… soul may arise from its weariness. So. Viel Vergnügen.

  “Now” she bickered, toiling up the steps, “of course we can't get in.”

  He felt weak after his visions. But his little mind was clear, clear as a bell, the poet's mind, par excellence and parenthèse:

  Clear and bright it should be ever,

  Flowing like a crystal river,

  Bright as light and clear as wind…

  With his mind then in this condition for the moment, brilliantly lit, canalised and purling, he said:

  “Yes of course we can, it's not twelve yet.”

  They pushed at the heavy door together and passed through the crowded vestibule to the stair-head.

  “Didn't I tell you” he said “that we could get in?”

  The Ratskeller was a revel-rout. They stood at the stairhead looking for a table.

  “Now” she said “of course we won't get a table. Why wouldn't you come on when I wanted you to?”

  It did look indeed as though they would not get a table.

  “There is no good staying here” he said “there is nothing to be done here. We can't get a drink. Come on.”

  “Come on where?”

  “We'll go to the Barberina and get a drink.”

  “It'll be gleich at the Barberina.”

  “Not at all” he said. “Come on.”

  “Anyhow we'll miss midnight.” There was certainly evil and madness in her heart at that moment. “Why wouldn't you…”

  “We won't” he recited “if you'll come on now quick.”

  He coaxed her back through the vestibule and pulled at the big door. It was locked.

  “We can't get out” he said.

  The Madonna scrabbled at the door. She panted with anger. He, evacuate, leaned up against the wall. He stood in great need of a drink.

  “It's no good” he said “you can't get out.”

  She turned on him like a leopardess, but he had not the smallest inclination to have her ruin him or anything of that kind.

  “Quick” she frothed “try the other.”

  These things take time. In due time he was back.

  “Locked” he said “we're locked till the year's out.”

  The Smeraldina-Rima began to giggle:

  “We're locked in between the years!” She fell back against the wall and began to make limp passes at him with her hands, tittering from head to foot. He looked at his watch.

  “It will all be over in a minute” he said “and then we'll get out and go to the Barberina and have a nice quiet drink. It's just twelve.”

  The Madonna did not want a nice quiet drink. She catapulted herself off the wall and swaggered past him, the bold allumeuse, to the stair-head. She curved herself over the rail and her thin black dress clung to her posteriors. He followed up beside her.

  “Back in a sec” he said, and walked gingerly down the little stairs.

  “Fow-fow!” she called gaily down after him. That was a private joke and he fluttered a hand to it without turning round however. She watched him thread a passage through the press with his usual exaggerated aloofness. A man or two noticed and hailed. The women, after a glance, dismissed him from their minds. This circumstance did not escape her. She watched him waddle remote and nonchalant into the W. C. Abandoned on the crowded stair-head, watching him limp into the W. C., she suddenly understood that there was nothing to be done, that poor Bel was lost and that perhaps his life was over. She felt sorry for him and tears collected in her eyes.

  A hand descended with familiarity on her shoulder. She pushed herself off the rail without resentment and turned to face the plump chess champion and petty financier who, as well she knew, coveted vaguely her favours. He exulted.

  “The beautiful girl” he said “will come to our table? She will join us at our table?”

  He was fat and fascinating like a satrap. He had the women he wanted, and he wondered did he want this one. So he had not had her yet.

  “Who's with you?” she asked, warding him off. He named three bucks or toffs, notorious gigerls, and pointed them out.

  “Sorry” she said “I'm with Bel.”

  Now he had beaten Belacqua at chess, he had brought him home incapable from the old town, so he knew him. He found him naïf and a dull vain dog and a patent baby-lan. He was a shrewd man.

  “That's not a reason” he mocked “when there is place for two.”

  “Sorry” she repeated.

  He pushed his head forward at her.

  “But why not?” he insisted, softly, more night of Egypt than ever.

  “He wouldn't sit with you” she said, after a moment's hesitation.

  “So!” he smiled without the least resentment “So!” he was genuinely touched. “See you later” dared he hope, and withdrew.

  The clock of the Rathaus now struck the hour, the revellers joined hands and sang their chorus. The remarkable divisibility of twelve entered the head of Belacqua who, having underestimated his need, was now pressing his forehead against the cool porcelain. “Prosit Neujahr!” he said in a very weak and scranny voice indeed and pulled the joystick. On the way back he was stopped by the Belshazzar who had spied him approaching from afar and broken away from the three gigerls, leaving them swaying in a restricted garland, to intercept him.

  “So” he opened “and how are you?”

  “A little unwell” said Belacqua “and how are you?”

  “Come and join our little party” moved the Belshazzar.

  “Sorry” said Belacqua “I am with the Smeraldina.”

  “Come” whispered the Balshazzar, to an indescribable spasm of his gross attractive face, “come with the Smeraldina, both of you come.”

  That seemed to Belacqua fair enough. When he reached the stair-head he found his partner conversing with a most charming young fellow.

  “Dare I?” said Belacqua, hovering on the outskirts.

  The young man receded for the Madonna to step smartly up to her escort. She eyed him attentively.

  “What is it?” she said “you're as white as a sheet.”

  “I'm unwell” he said “but you'll be glad to hear I have found a table.”

  “Where?”

  “That fat bastard” he said “of an indoor playboy asks us to sit at his table, and I am tired and I want a drink and you want to stay here, so…”

  He started off down the stairs.

  “Who?” cried the Madonna. “What are you talking about. Who asks us…?”

  “How do I know?” he groaned. “Will you come on. That fat dentist of a chess-player…”

  “Stop!” said the Madonna. “Come back. I'm going to the Barberina.”

  He came back a step.

  “We can't get out” he objected most violently to the idea of going to the Barberina. She turned her long back on him and disappeared into the vestibule. At the door he came up with her.

  “What's the good” he said “where's the sense in talking about going to the Barberina when we can't get OUT?” But she opened the door with her own frail hand and he had no choice but to follow her out.

  Sitting in the bar of the Barberina she exposed the combination.

  “He'll be here in a minute” she said “so we better go. Drink out and come on.”

  “Didn't himself say he'd come out after the fireworks” he said, knowing that in an hour or so he would want to talk “and bring Mammy?”

  “Give me a cigarette” she said.

  He suggested that he might light it for her. She looked at him in astonishment. He held up the cigarette before her. He felt like playing with her a little.

  “Will I?” he said.

  “Give me the one you're smoking” she said at last “and light a new one for yourself.”
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  He leaned forward across the table and she pulled the half-smoked cigarette away from his lips. Such a pop it made coming away!

  “Now” she said “light your own.”

  But he fell back into his corner without doing anything of the kind. He proposed to sulk now because she would not make a game of it.

  “What about your boy-friend?” he said. “It isn't the beer that gives you the head next morning, but all the smoking you do with it.”

  “What?”

  “I say it isn't the beer…”

  “No, before that.”

  “Oh, your boy-friend…”

  “What boy-friend?”

  How the hell did he know what boy-friend!

  “Maybe I was thinking” he said vaguely “of the one beyond in the Keller.”

  “How do you mean, maybe you were thinking?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Do you know anything?” she groaned. “That's not a boy-friend, that's the glider-champion.”

  “How, the glider-champion?”

  “He did the longest fly in a Flieger.”

  “Not a boy-friend?”

  “No.”

  “What is a boy-friend?”

  “I don't know. Do you?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Am I a boy-friend?”

  “Are you my boy-friend?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought over this.

  “No” she said “you are not.”

  “Who am I?” he said.

  She thought again over this.

  “You are my man” she said.

  “But not with two enns” he said.

  “What?”

  “I say I'm not your man with two enns.”

  She frowned terribly.

  “What?” she cried.

  “I mean not your M-A-N-N.”

  “Don't annoy me” she moaned “don't bother me. Drink out and come on.”

  “Come on where?”

  “Anywhere. That brute will be here if you don't.”

  “But I thought you wanted to dance.”

  “No” she said sharply “what's the good of wanting to dance when there's nobody to dance with.”

  “Can't you dance with me?”

  She stood up in that case and pulled down her dress behind. Poor girl, it was always rutsching up on her, the poop of her behind was so kolossal.

  He rose up painfully.

  “I can't dance” he grumbled.

  She stood looking at him across the table.

  “Du lieber Gott!” she whispered.

  Now he was frightened and furious.

  “I'm sorry Smerry” he whined, with all kinds of angry waftures, “I can't dance. I'd like to be able to dance, but I can't. I don't know how to dance. I get tired. I don't know how to do it.”

  She sat down.

  “Take a seat” she said.

  To hell with you anyhow, he thought.

  “What” she enquired in a low voice “did you come from Paris for?”

  “To look at your face” he said, very short and sure of himself.

  “But you don't look at it.”

  “I do look at it.”

  “But you don't, Bel, you know you don't.”

  “You don't see me” he said.

  “You used to say you only wanted to look at my eyes, to look into my eyes.”

  He let that pass.

  “Bel!” she implored.

  He hardened his little heart.

  “He doesn't want” she whinged “to look into my eyes any more!”

  “Because I want to look at your face?” he sneered, furious. “I'm a classicist” he said “didn't you know?”

  “You couldn't love me or you wouldn't go on like that!”

  “Go on like what?” he cried, striking the table.

  “The way you always go on” raising the note to a pule “indifferent to everything, saying you don't know and you don't care, lying about all day in that verdammte old Wohnung, reading your old book and fooling around with Daddy. And he's supposed” she concluded hopelessly “to be in love with me!”

  To hell with you anyhow, he thought.

  “He wants to look at my face” she mimicked, forcing a little cackle, “he came all the way from Paris” she cackled “third class to look at his darling Smerry's face!” She leaned across the table, closed her eyes and reared up the little angry face gone Judas-colour for inspection. “Now” she jeered “have a good look at it.”

  “You don't understand me” he said earnestly “it must be surreptitious.”

  “What's that?” she said, opening her eyes, “something to eat?”

  “When I say” he explained “that I want to look at your face, what I mean is that I want to steal a look at it. Steal a look at it.”

  “Are you drunk?” she said, restored to good humour by his seriousness.

  “Leider!” he said.

  “So he came all the way from Paris, third class, to steal a look at my face.”

  “Put it that way” he said “if you like.”

  “I'm not putting anything. That's what you said.”

  He thought it might be a good idea if they dropped it.

  “You started it” she said.

  The tiff had been so public that a hard case becalmed in a distant corner of the bar waved a big promiscuous hand at the Madonna, and the Ungeküßte Eva gratified the discomfited Belacqua with a slow hitch on her upper-lip. The Ungeküßte Eva was the barmaid. She had lost her looks, the virtuous girl, supposititiously, in Dickens's striking adverb, through her passion for Steinhägers and late hours. Steinhägers in abundance she cadged from the soft unhappy class of client, and she knew our young hero for an easy mark. Thus it was that now she bared her teeth in token of her desire. Belacqua snuggled up to his corner and helped himself to one of the series at the Madonna, who had reorganised her pallor and was exhibiting herself. Belacqua let a great sigh hoping to come back into the tableau. Far up the bar the vigilant Eva elevated her private bottle.

  “Darf’ ich” she piped.

  Belacqua blushed.

  “You've got off” mentioned the Madonna, over her shoulder, “with the barmaid.”

  Eva raised towards them the fruit of her derring-do.

  The Pyrotechnist swaggered in. Belacqua was delighted.

  “Have a drink” he gushed “do have a drink. On me” he added, this kind invitation not having been accepted with the speed he would have wished.

  “Where's Mammy?” said the Madonna, in a very vicious tone of voice.

  The Pyrotechnist stood at the threshold of the alcove, appraising the situation.

  “Where's Mammy?” repeated the Madonna.

  He caressed an unshaven Gioconda smile.

  “This is the town of miracles” he said at last. “The Grauler drove me down in his superb machine.”

  “May I offer you a drink?” said Belacqua.

  “It's what I have always said” groaned the Mandarin, very worried and resentful all of a sudden. “Can you imagine this” turning round to be dumbfounded “in Drogheda?” turning back with a flame in his pale blue eye.

  “A feast of Cana” said Belacqua.

  “But this” sobbed the Mandarin, following up his vision, “is the Drogheda of Germany. Not even the Drogheda, the Ballyboghill of Germany!”

  “Daddy!” The Madonna was choking. Daddy pulled down his waistcoat.

  “I am still wearing your excellent braces” he confided to Belacqua. “Is there a ruby left in the bottle?”

  Just about as much as a “by your leave” interrupted Thibaud in the Sala Bianca. The glider-champion paused for permission, he was insolently erect at the Madonna's side.

  “Please” said Belacqua, blushing again.

  The Mandarin took the seat. Watching them dance out of the bar was the first ague of the new year. She danced all wrong, throwing herself about. She pranced, she waggled her seat of honour. A fessade, a chiapp
ata, a verberation on the breech. He squeezed his palms together under the table. Oh a most superlative bastinado à la mode…!

  “What does Horace say?” he said. “A defective…”

  “Carpe diem” said the Mandarin.

  “No. He says: a defective bottom, aflat nose and a long foot… The human bottom” he proceeded “is extremely deserving of esteem, conferring as it does the faculty of assiduity. The great Lawgiver urged his pupils to cultivate an iron head and a leaden posterior. The Greeks, I need hardly tell you, entertained a high notion of its beauty; and the celebrated poet Rousseau worships in the temple of Venus Callipyge. The Romans bestowed upon the part the epithet of ‘fair’, and many have thought it susceptible, not only of being beautiful, but even of being endowed with dignity and splendour. Thus Monsieur Pavillon, academician, bel esprit and nephew of a bishop, in his noble Métamorphose du Cul d'Iris en Astre. Oh Caterina” he cried in a transport “oh little Caterina of Cordona, how couldst thou unmask those charms to a lower discipline” he closed his eyes “and of chains and hooks!”

  “Who is the lady?” enquired the Mandarin.

  “I have no idea” said Belacqua “a rival of Saint-Bridget the Rose.”

  “I have never heard her called that before.”

  “She was never called that before” exclaimed Belacqua “she was never called that before! Saint-Bridget the Rose without the white goat! Blissful Saint-Bridget the Rose without the white goat and the bunch of keys and the besom!”

  “Write a poem to her” said the Mandarin, sourly.

  “Oh I will” cried Belacqua “a long poem to the tormented bottom of Caterina. I would have been an Adamite” he vociferated, ignoring the return of his mourning bride, “I would have died for Juniperus the Gymnosophist! Juniperus the Gymnosophist! I will write a long long poem on Caterina and Juniperus the Gymnosophist, how he dreamed her a naughty vestal in the dark gauze or Medusa in a Carmelite Ecce Homo or a barren queen bleeding, bleeding like a banner, bleeding in a Lupercal, and he filled his hands with rods…”

  “Move up in the bed” said the Madonna.

  “This is a kip” growled the Mandarin “come where the booze is cheaper.”

  “Or at the altar, a Spartan queenboy…”

  “Go on” said the Madonna “who's keeping you?”

  “Oh there's nobody keeping me” said the Mandarin, very suave, “as far as I know. I do not think there is anybody keeping me. Not what you could really call keeping. But I thought perhaps our friend here might care to join me possibly in the darker draught.”