Dream of Fair to Middling Women Read online

  Chas, the dark seraphim in his heart, turned off all the lights in his big room, and with a little heavy hammer that he had, pounded up his gramophone records. “Je les ai concassés” he wrote “tous jusqu’à l'avant-dernier.” The trams, the Blackrock, the Dun Laoghaire, the Dalkey, one Donnybrook and a little single-decker bound for Sandy-mount Tower, cried up to him from the causeway of Nassau Street, and passed.

  The Alba in pain sat in the kitchen, nec cincta nec nuda, in a royal peignoir of cloth of gold, sipping her Hen-nessy. The trams cried to her passing up and down, the Radio played Avalon, a sad rag and old, she sat on, derelict daughter of kings, undaunted daughter, in the sunken kitchen, she sucked great packets of smoke down her ruined larynx, she thought bitterly of the old days, she finished her Hennessy, she called angrily for more. “Shall I be mewed up like a hawk” she cried “shall I, all the days of my life? Shall I?”

  And Belacqua on the hot bed, the work of prayer over, the blessed island spent, the streets full of darkness, said her name, once, twice, incantation, abracadabra, abracadabra, and saying it felt the tip of his tongue between his incisors. Dactyl-trochee dactyl-trochee, he said it wetly, biting at one and four on the viscid tip.

  There the wind was big and he was wise who stirred not at all, came not abroad. The man, Nemo to be precise, was on his bridge, curved over the western parapet. High over the black water he leaned out, he let fall a foaming spit, it fell plumb to the top of the arch, then was scattered, by the Wild West Wind. He moved off left to the end of the bridge, he lapsed down blankly on to the quay where the bus rank is, he set off sullenly, his head sullenly, clot of anger, skewered aloft, strangled in the cang of the wind, biting like a dog against its chastisement.

  Bel Bel my own beloved, allways and for ever mine!!

  Your letter is soked with tears death is the onely thing. I had been crying bitterly, tears! tears! tears! and nothing els, then your letter cam with more tears, after I had read it ofer and ofer again I found I had ink spots on my face. The tears are rolling down my face. It is very early in the morning, the sun is riseing behind the black trees and soon that will change, the sky will be blue and the trees a golden brown, but there is one thing that dosent change, this pain and thos tears. Oh! Bel I love you terrible, I want you terrible, I want your body your soft white body naked! naked! My body needs you so terrible, my hands and lips and breasts and everything els on me, sometimes I feel it very hard to keep my promise but I have kept it up till now and will keep on doing so untill we meet again and I can at last have you, at last be “Deine Geliebte”. Whitch is the greater: the pain of being away from eachother, or the pain of being with eachother, crying at eachother beauty? I so-pose the last is the greater, otherwise we would of given up all hope of ever being anything els but miserable.

  I was at a grand Film last night, first of all there wasent any of the usual hugging and kissing, I think I have never enjoyed or felt so sad at a Film as at that one: Sturm uber Asien, if it comes to Paris you must go and see it, the same Regie as Der Lebende Leichnam, it was realey something quite diffrent from all other Films, nothing to do with “Love” (as everybody understands the word) no silly girls makeing sweet faces, nearly all old people from Asien with marvellous faces, black lakes and grand Landschaften. Comeing home there was a new moon, it looked so grand ofer the black trees that it maid me cry. I opened my arms wide and tryed to imagine that you were lieing against my breasts and looking up at me, like you did thos moonlight nights when we walked together under the big chestnut trees with the stars shining through the branches.

  I met a new girl, very beautiful, pitch black hairs and very pale, she onely talks Egyptian. She told me about the man she loves, at present he is in Amerika far away in some lonely place and wont be back for the next 3 years and cant writ to her because there is no post office where he is staying and she onely gets a letter every 4 months, imagine if we only got a letter from eachother every 4 months what sort of state we would be in by now, the poor girl I am very sorry for her. We went to a 5 o'clock tea dance, it was rather boreing but quite amusing to see the people thinking of nothing but what they have on and what they look like and if there lips are painted well and the men settling there tyes every 5 minutes. On the way home I sudenly got in to a terrible state of sadness and woulden say a word, of course they were rageing with me, at the moment I dident care a dam, when I got in to the bus I got out a little Book and pencil and wrot down 100 times: Beloved Beloved Beloved Bel Bel Bel, I felt as if I never longed so much in my life for the man I love, to be with him, with him. I want you so much in every sence of the word, you and onely you. After I got out of the bus and was walking down the street I yelled out wahnsinnig! wahnsinnig! wahnsinnig! Frau Schlank brought down your sock and that made me cry more than ever. I dont think I will send it to you, I will put it in to the drawer with your sweet letters. I had allso a letter from a man who asked me to go out with him to dance on Saturday evening, I sopose I will go, I know my beloved dosent mind and it makes the time go round quicker, the man is a bit of a fool but dances quite well and is the right hight for me. A flirt is very amusing but shouldent go further than that.

  Then I met the old man with the pipe and he told me I had a blue letter, and then the fat man with the keys in the passage and he said Grüß Gott but I dident hear him.

  Soon I will be counting the hours untill I can go to the station and find you amongst the crowded platform but I dont think I will be able to wear my grey costume if it is too cold and then I will have to wear Mammy furcoat. You will be by me on the 23th wont you Bel, my Bel with the beautiful lips and hands and eyes and face and everything that is on you, and now with your poor sore face it would make no diffrence. Two more weeks of agony pain and sadness! 14 more days oh! God and thos sleepless nights!!! How long? how long?

  I had a very queer dream last night about you and me in a dark forest, we were lieing together on a path, when sudenly you changed in to a baby and dident know what love was and I was trying to tell you that I loved you more than anything on earth but you dident understand and wouldent have anything to do with me but it was all a dream so it dosent count. There is no object in me trying to tell you how much I love you because I will never succeed, I know that for sirten. Is he the man I have allways been looking for? Yes! but then why cant he give that what I have been longing for for the last 6 months? I ofen wonder what is on you that makes me love you so greatly. I love you über alles in dieser Welt, mehr als alles auf Himmel, Erde und Hölle. One thing I thank God for that our love is so vast. I ofen wonder who I am to thank that you are born and that we met, I sopose I better not start trying to find out whose fault it is that you are born. It comes back to the same thing, and that is, that I onely know ONE THING and that is that I LOVE YOU AND I AM ALLWAYS YOUR SMERRY and that is the thing that matters most in our life YOU LOVE ME AND ARE ALLWAYS MY BEL.

  Analiese is hacking round on the piano and there is no peace so I will stop. Now I am going to go on reading my Book called Die Große Liebe and then perhaps I will try and struggel through the Beethoven sonate, it is the onely thing that can take me away from my misery, I love playing quietly to myself in the evenings it gives me such a rest

  Bel! Bel! Bel! your letter has just come! Even if you cease to be all and allways mine!!! Oh! God how could you ever say such a thing, for lord sake dont!!! for god sake dont ever suggest such a thing again! I just berry my head in my hands and soke your letter with tears… Bel! Bel! how could you ever doupt me? Mein Ruh ist hin mein Herz ist schwer ich finde Sie nimmer und nimmer mehr. (Herr Geheimrat Johann Wolfgang Goethes Faust.) Lord Lord Lord for god sake tell me strate away what agsactly I have done. Is everything indiffrent to you? Evedintly you cant be bothered with a goat like me. If I dont stop writing you wont be able to read this letter because it will be all ofer tears. Bel! Bel! my love is so vast that when I am introduced to some young man and he starts doing the polite I get a quivver all ofer. I know what I am lifeing for, your last let
ter is allways on my breast when I wake up in the morning and see the sun rise. Ich seh’ Dich nicht mehr Tränen hindern mich! My God! my true dog! my baby!

  I must get a new nib, this old pen is gone to the dogs, I cant writ with it any more, it is the one that I got from Wollworth so you can imagine how good it must be.

  Mammy wanted me to go out for a walk this afternoon, but I hate walking, I get so tired putting one foot delibertely in front of the other. Do you remember last summer (of course he dose!) and how lovely it was lieing hearing the bees summing and the birds singing, and the big butterfly that cam past, it looked grand, it was dark brown with yellow spots and looked so beautiful in the sun, and my body was quite brown all ofer and I dident feel the cold any more. Now the snow is all melted and the wood is as black as ever and the sky is allways grey except in the early morning and even then one can onely see spots of red between the black clouds.

  My hairs are freshily washed and I have a bit more energie than usual, but I still feel very passiv. For god sake dont overdo yourself and try and not get drunk again, I meen in that way that makes you sick.

  We cam home in the bus this evening but we dident go that way through the fields with all the little paths because the big road was mended. Mammy allways asks after you. She says the time is flying, it will be no time untill Xmas and she says she hopes Frau Holle makes her bed ofen. I heard her saying to Daddy: I wonder how it is that Ivy and Jacky get on my nerves when they go on together and Smerry and Bel never did. She ment when we are sitting on eachother knee and so on, I think it is because the love between Ivy and Jacky is not real, there allways seems to be some sort of affection about it.

  I curse the old body all day asswell because I have some dam thing on my leg so that I can bearly walk, I dont know what it is or how it got there but it is there and full of matter to hell with it.

  To-day is one of the days when I see everything more clearer than ever and I am sure everything will go right in the end.

  Der Tag wird kommen und die stille

  NACHTH!!!

  I dont know genau when, but if I dident think so I would cullaps with this agony, thes terrible long dark nights and onely your image to console me. I like the little white statue so much and am longing for the day when you and I will be standing like that and not haveing to think that there is somebody outside that can come in any minute.

  You ask me to give you a taske. I think I have gived you a big enough a taske, I am longing to see the “thing” you wrot about my “beauty” (as you call it) I must say (without wanting any complements) I cant see anything very much to writ about except the usual rot men writ about women.

  Arschlochweh is married and gone to the Schweiz with his wife.

  Darling Bel I must close. My bed is lonely without me and your photograph is waiting to be kissed so I better give them both peace. Soon it will all take an end, you will be by me and will feel that marvellous pain again that we did in the dark mountains and the black lake blow and we will walk in the fields covered with cowslips and hedges of Flieder and you will hold once more in your arms

  your own sad beloved

  Smerry

  P.S. One day nearer to the silent night!!!

  A severe bout of hepatic colics confined him to his room. They were very severe. They pulled him down, they reduced him to a shadow of his robust self. He groaned in spirit. How intempestively, he groaned, am I pulled down. Just when I wanted so much to be at the top of my form, à point, to wrestle with the Madonna. God, he made moan, forgive me, but I'll arrive like Socrates, as cold as January, as little and unable as a child, a mere bedful of bones. Now he was as sad as a hare on this account. A procella raged in his sweetbread. Non est vivere, he was absolutely of that famous opinion, sed valere, vita. He declined the darkest passages of Schopenhauer, Vigny, Leopardi, Espronceda, Inge, Hatiz, Saadi, Espronerda, Becquer and the other Epimethei. All day he told the beads of his spleen. Or posa per sempre, for example he was liable to murmur, lifting and shifting the seat of the disturbance, stanco mio cor. Assai palpitasti... and as much more of that gloomy composition as he could remember. To his chafing Braut he scribbled a line whose burden was: that feeling a little inclined to be seedy he might be detained, that he might not feel up to undertaking so long a journey so soon, that she must not allow herself to be disappointed, must not worry, on no account get it into her head that there was the least thing seriously amiss, that he simply wanted her to be prepared for the possibility of his being obliged to arrive a day or two later than he had hoped and led her to expect, immer Dein, tuissimus, and gave it to post to the cyanosed valet de chambre. Well, would you believe it, promptly by return a letter from Mammy that made him sit up in the bed and no error:

  “Smerry nearly had a fit on receipt of yours. She went off in a hysteria (sic) and the family daren't approach her. She seems to have got it into her head, whatever you said in your letter, that either you are dying or have ceased to care for her. For God's sake pull yourself together, throw a bottle and a toothbrush into a bag, and come on. Expect you without fail for --- by the midday train.”

  Hah! So he was to pull himself together. It did not matter about his feeling as sick as a dog, he was to pull himself together and dash off into the unknown with no more luggage than a bottle and a toothbrush.

  He fell back very cross indeed on the bed. He stretched out his legs and put on his considering cap. To do this he had to liquidate Limbo, he had to eject the grey angels, and disperse with light the shoal of spirits. This moment will do to mark the term of his beatitude, the relâche of the tunnel, the centroid of the massive ictus that began to descend with the arrival of the Smeraldina's letter, the colics and concomitant anxiety. This was the moment if ever, now that he was alone in his chamber and pricked into anger, to slay his old man, to give, there and then, this love the slip. But the moment passed with the dull and drowsy formula. Anon, he said, anon, take your hurry, and he opened wide the lids of the mind and let in the glare. The beaver bites his off, he said, I know, that he may live. That was a very persuasive chapter of Natural History. But he lost no time in reminding himself that, far from being a beaver or the least likely to sympathise with its aspirations, he was no less a person than the lover of the Belacqua Jesus and a very inward man. Hold your horses, was again his coarse thought, there's no sense in trying to bawl down an echo.

  Out from the tunnel therefore he came, it clanged behind him, the libido sentiendi flared up, and he purled along in a foxy meditation. To begin with he considered offensive the tigress tone of the old multipara's letter. “Pull yourself together and come on”! It was easy to talk. He composed a letter in his mind:

  “… had you gone to the trouble of taking cognisance of the terms of my letter to your delicate and third or fourth daughter (and no doubt, in the excitement of the moment you might have arranged to do that) you would scarcely, I believe, have conveyed so unreflected a tone to your recommendations. My letter was affectionately to the effect that I, unwell and confined to my room, might be obliged to postpone my departure for a day or two. I occupy one of the many positions that separate death from indifference to your daughter the Smeraldina-Rima. I am suffering from DIARRHCEIA. There is no reason why this affliction should turn out to be fatal, nor yet jeopardise my feeling for the Smeraldina-Rima…” and so on. Then he thought better, he thought, no, I can't send a thing like that, and anyway I don't know how to write a stinger in English, I always overdo it. In French I can write a fine stinger, but in English I overdo it. And it is possible that Mammy is acting for what she conceives to be the best for all parties. It's that great heifer of a pucelle bawling out of her beauty-sickness—that's the one I want to get. I'll get up, I'll take a train this very day, I'll arrive beginning to look like St Francis skull-gazing, and then when the thing fiascoes I can I told you so.

  He lay there working it all out on the bed and already the Reisefieber burned him. He left the bed in a spasm, he wired “Gewiß” and went.

&
nbsp; Down you get now and step around. Two hours menopause at least. Drag your coffin my lord. Half a day and I'll be with. HIER! The bright beer goes like water through the shortsighted fliegende Frankfurter porter. In Perpignan exiled dream-Dantes screaming in the plane-trees and freezing the sun with peacock feathers and at last at least a rudimentary black swan with the blood-beak and HIC! for the bladderjerk of the little Catalan postman. Oh who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus! Here oh here oh art thou pale with weariness. I hope yes after a continental third-class insomnia among the reluctantly military philologists asleep and armed as to nasals and dentals. Laughter. Ten Pfenige in such a dainty slot gives the la I am bound to concede and releases the appropriate tonic for the waning love. Moderate strength rings the bell. Like hell it does. Cosi fan tutte with the magic flute. Even in the Xmas holidays. Half a day and I'll be in.