House of All Nations (72 page)

Alphendéry hastened to deny it. ‘No, I can't even shampoo a cup. I suppose I
could
. I can dry cups and—saucers—and things, but there's a technique about washing-up, it's not so easy: there's the question of getting the right amount of soap in the water, you mustn't get too much. Then there's the splashing … ' he was going on seriously but they all exploded with laughter.

‘You will like Judith,' said Alphendéry to Charles Lorée.

‘Judith is time-forward,' said Adam, became conscious he had said it before, and added, ‘and Suzanne is time-abolished: she crumbles conventions, abolishes distances, and pierces matter for the construction of her own primeval psychic world.'

Jean murmured, ‘Judith is a good girl—yes, she has her faults, we all have our faults: I have mine, I know.' He made an effort. ‘Judith has brains—too—doesn't always know how to—that is, temperament I suppose. Genius—a word I never use. Judith—oh, well, she's my wife, what—' He stuck. This was the workers' writer, known for his simple direct language, his rousing analysis, his fearless swordplay, his splendid diction, one of the few new writers in the grand tradition. Alphendéry smiled to himself, thinking unconsciously of the supple, perpetual, illuminated eloquence which was his to command. Jean said suddenly, ‘You're wasting your time, Michel: you should join us. You have responsibilities—there are greater ones, too.' He blushed. ‘Would your mother understand?'

‘No, but she'd stick by me grumbling,' laughed Alphendéry.

Adam moved, strange masses shifting slightly in the slanting lamplight by the bench: his deliberate, pure but lonely tones said, ‘My mother was a grand and splendid character, chief among ten thousand: a general, who made her sons her lieutenants. I always hated her. She quenched every revolt in fire and ashes. She utterly destroyed the spirits, brains, and souls of my three sisters. I am not lucky in my women!'

‘You are too pure, Adam,' said Michel. ‘Women like twined fire and smoke: they fear the pure man.'

‘There's Judith,' grumbled Jean good-humoredly. ‘Did we eat all the stew? We did, you know, how did that happen?'

‘I—er—h'm—it's this way, I had no lunch—' explained Charles Lorée, ‘—just a spoonfu', there wasn't any more.'

‘There are only two eggs,' said Jean. ‘Never mind—'

The door opened and Alphendéry, straightening up, smothered a word and looked keenly at Judith. She had come from some small group meeting and looked excited. She was very dark, with an oval face, a proud arched nose, large dark-gray eyes, ovals set somewhat wide apart with dark long lashes under crescent brows; the low rectangular forehead, swelling at the temples, bore a falcon cap of separately set black hairs. The mouth was firm and rather long, the chin jutted forward and was round, white, and knobby, producing a firm oval jaw: the face of a tempestuous being, a firm will, a firm destiny but ignorant of it; meditation was stormy and fruitful in this head, but the first unconscious gesture of the chin, the faint shades flying over the face showed a restless mind, not well buttressed against the affronts of life. She had a short columnar neck and was robust but not large, of medium height, with long hands. She carried a dozen yellow rosebuds. Her glance rested first on Alphendéry with surprise. Evidently the stew had been for Jean and herself! It moved in a moment from his short square form to the others. Her face lightened, became a beam and a tumult, ‘Hello, darling,' she said to Jean, and to Adam, ‘Hello, Adam,' in a lower tone. She went off into one of the bench rooms; she rustled various things making the noise that women do, of animals rustling softly through woods, and a little radiance came through the doorless opening. She called, ‘I'll have a plate of ragout, darling: I'm starved. Such a crush to get home. Someone stood on my foot. A little wretch kept tickling my leg.'

Adam got up and slowly picked up the roses which Judith had spilled over one of the benches where they lay beautifully astray among tools, pieces of leather, and paints. He smiled over them at the room, ‘Like an unrealized passion!'

Judith came out like a ball of night wind, ‘All the poems about love are about unfulfilled love: why is it impossible for me to write poems to Jean? When I was a girl I wrote poems to everyone—trash, of course—but passionate! Look at Jean! He's a whole forest, sunrise, birds, but can I write it? Never.' She laughed.

‘Poetry,' said Jean, ‘is desire painted on the eyeballs, a calendar ideal pasted on the dark inside of the skull, legends painted on the colorless wind, spotlights changing spider-gray silk through the spectrum, a stereoscopic view of dreams, lunacies starched and boned; but family love is flour and honey made into a cake. Even so, I don't see why you can't sing about cakes!'

‘Yes, love is an illusion,' said Judith. ‘Look how flat and impersonal the name of your sweetheart sounds when you are in love! It doesn't correspond to the thing in your heart at all.'

‘I only love pretty girls,' said Charles Lorée. ‘That shows there's no illus' about it.' He looked round at them pugilistically. ‘No illusion—point-to-poi' aff'. After that, you take what you can get. I'm speak' of unions where money cannot enter. In marriage though—always, no, great percen'—would say—mater' interes' enter' … ' His characteristic was to speak on an intake of the breath so that most of the final syllables were lost.

Alphendéry looked at him, face creased in comic veneration, ‘I don't know much about love, Professor Lorée. Would you say there were affinities as among the atoms, for example?'

‘H'm. Ah. Varyi'—er—degree'—proper condit'—biolog' plane depen' communit' origin'—spiritu' plane—nev' experimen'—ah—possible, ah—have to try people who never saw themselves in water, in a looking glass,' he said suddenly speaking on an outgoing breath. ‘Question of —charm fel' by a' or onl' one—ques' fertilit' probab' akin—ah—
QUESTION OF FERTILIZATION ENTIRELY NEGLECTED
'—he said loudly and clearly: ‘race-perpetua'—neglec' race-extinc' has attent'—due to small number of women in biology and the sciences,' he ended belligerently. ‘One man, one empha'—anoth' man, anoth' probi'—preoccupa' of women entirel' differ'n'—need them for balan' of scientif' pursui'—I ask to be permitted to speak,' he suddenly said, with the voice and air of a boy in school. ‘Female organiza' round love put into slide rule not shotgun … Love an eddy current ah—yes.' He took a deep breath and brought himself up roundly, ‘Affinities—we are often the victims of the panderism of our friends …' He seemed to decide to say nothing more and took a swig at the bottle.

‘You're quite right,' clamored Jean Frère. ‘We won't know anything about vital statistics until Negroes, untouchables, Aruntas, women, and children start drawing them up: I've seen a lot of prejudice in a figure of eight. Ciphers have no conscience.' Judith was lying back, her hands behind her head. ‘Do you know what I dreamed last night?—now don't interrupt me, Jean (Jean gets so bored with my dreams)—' Adam watched and waited: he had become silent since Judith entered. ‘Listen,' said Judith:

In dream, a cavern bore, a dusty lamp above the flicker of war;

As paled the shut-in fire, the ragged groundling flame sprang higher.

It's not very poetical and it has no sense, has it? It's terrible, some days I think all day in bad poetry and I can never write good poetry.'

‘Do you often dream it?' asked Adam quietly.

‘No, but when I do, I can be sure the next day everything is going to be blank verse—not always blank, that is. Today, all day, rhyming couplets, for example.'

‘Queer tricks,' said Adam: ‘I have no memory for music at all to speak of and one night I could not go to sleep I was forced to go right through the overture of the
Marriage of Figaro
three times—forced, I say. The next day—only a bar or two. One night, I dreamed—yes, it was soon after I met you, Jean—and you, Judith—for the first time: I noted it down. I dreamed there was a brilliant procession in ancient Rome in its prime. Judith rode at the head of the procession on a white horse, with Jean in her train: everything was jeweled leather and gilded trappings and they were singing a symphonic song—I don't know how long it went on, it was quite original and indescribably noble and splendid. I can see the cortege flashing in my eyes to this day! But the song! It was a wonderful song. I could not remember a note. What a wonderful song it was!'

‘I had a dream once,' said Lorée, daring them all to go on (for everyone suddenly felt a dervish whispering in his ears to go on and tell them, tell them all about his dreams). He felt in all his pockets, keeping them waiting, and produced a laundry bill on the back of which he wrote something and then passed it to Judith.

‘Well,' said Judith.

Lorée smiled guilelessly. ‘It is all wrong but it resembles a trisection of an angle. I dreamed once I was in the trench' and ever' time we popped up we took off our heads. Usefu'—he, he, he …'

Alphendéry was most impatient with all this talk and was struggling through the sea of dreams with breast strokes, gasping towards the safe rocky shore of important discussion. ‘Professor Lorée, I last heard you at the meeting in the Salle des Sociétés Savantes, on the platform with Lacour, Cohen, and Amillé—pity Amillé takes drugs—'

But Lorée had decided obstinately to talk about himself. ‘I take drugs!' They all stared at him. He peeped at them all through his bushy eyebrows—they saw a few live gleams under the pink bluff. ‘I spent a fortnight with Amillé in Libya, he gave me the maximum dose every day for a fortnight,' he boasted. He took another swig at the bottle, wiped his mouth, and suddenly heaved himself off the floor and went blunderingly to look for the door.

‘Upstairs, outside,' called Jean Frère. At the same time, they heard someone running upstairs and the exclamations of collision. It was Henrietta Achitophelous. Adam started and recomposed himself. Henrietta bounced into the room, her eyes black diamonds, her hair all curls, beautiful as always: they perceived Lorée filling the doorway, stooping, looking after her in surprise. Then he faded away, and they heard his steps on the stairs.

‘Oh,' cried Henrietta, ‘we had the most frightful row at the cell meeting! Everyone has always given the right advice in retrospect. It was about expelling—
you know who
.' She blushed and added, ‘Pierre. Of course, everyone said they had their
suspicions
. Oh, Jean, isn't it terrible! My father is sending me to
Scotland
! Scotland is simply terrible.' Her voice trailed off, warmer. ‘Of course, if you like that sort of—grayness and cragginess—it's all right—if you like golf. I suppose I could get in touch with the Scotch party. The Scotch are all for the French, aren't they? Oh, Judith, who was that man, it
wasn't
Professor Lorée, was it ? Is he
really
coming over to us? Isn't it marvelous,' she breathed in ecstasy. ‘What a marvelous man, why it's the
leviathan
! I do—oh, I do worship that sort of cosmic biology, don't you? What were you talking about?'

‘Dreams,' answered Alphendéry.

She was disappointed. ‘
Freudianism
, you mean?'

‘No, just plain boloney dreams,' said Alphendéry.

‘Oh, you don't suppose he'd let me write up his conversation—I mean a sort of interview at large, you know—for our quarter journal, for Young France, do you?'

‘Ask him,' advised Adam.

‘Don't make him nervous,' said Jean. ‘Let him alone, Henrietta …'

‘He is—wonderful,' she sighed in her deepest whisper: ‘Sh! Here he comes.' The professor came back to his seat with his eyes glued on Henrietta's lovely, glowing face.

‘Henrietta Achitophelous, Lorée,' said Judith.

‘Oh, I am so—' breathed Henrietta. ‘I
do
think you're the best stylist we have alive in France today. What do you think, Professor Lorée?—'

Alphendéry broke in, ‘Do you see any evidence for the theory of secular movement of cyclical returns of depression and prosperity, Professor Lorée?'

Lorée turned pointedly to Henrietta, and asked, ‘What were you saying?'

Alphendéry, baffled, fell back in his chair.

Henrietta babbled at once, ‘Oh, you don't think Marxism is boring, do you? My father says it's so boring I'll become absolutely ugly reading it. I think it's terribly—turribly exciting,' she finished in her low voice. ‘I just bought the whole of Lenin—two hundred francs.'

Lorée laughed delightedly. ‘Boring—no one can say it's boring; false perhaps, but boring, never!' He was speaking quite clearly. He turned to Alphendéry. ‘No, I think it's dialectical—you see—'

‘You
are
,' said Judith, ‘a good scholar, you
are
a neophyte!'

Lorée turned to her, on the defense, said at once, ‘Please, may I say something? I didn't mean any harm: I was just—funning: Pardon me, just a joke … There is no evidence that I can see for theor' of secul' return'.' He stopped suddenly and relaxed in the low chair. His boots stretched out across the room. He appeared to be contemplating his folded hands, but everyone in the room became aware that he had no other interest at the moment but Henrietta. The conversation languished, mental life was difficult in that atmosphere; they had all been disintegrated and everything had been dislocated since the mammoth sat amongst them.

There was a ring at the door. Judith started and hurried to open it. ‘Who can it be now?'

At the door stood a woman of stone, with a face dug up from the grave. ‘Suzanne!' exclaimed Adam.