Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (7 page)

In other walks of life science had much the same special meaning for Divver—science was what you feared to admit, not what you could prove to be true. Divver took for granted that conduct is always suspect, and fantasy always scientific; that the greater the contrast between doing and dreaming, the greater the personal dishonesty, but that not to dream was most dishonest of all.

Divver would have denied how much misery he derived from science; he believed that education had been his salvation; there was no knowing, he often thought, what frightful mistakes he might have made in his career without science to guide him. For one thing, science had given him a vocabulary of symbols, metaphors and similes that gave point to every line he wrote. Old-fashioned writers made-do with hackneyed warnings in the form of striking clocks, gathering stormclouds, jugular veins, termites, copperheads, wormwood, gall, Frankenstein, Leviathan, Juggernaut, bastions and dykes. But Divver’s imagery, which he applied without distinction to persons, or nations, or corporations, made his articles look like an up-to-date laboratory manned by all types of psychotic workmen. Sometimes he used his imagery so freely in the body of an article, that when the time came to sum up, his final conclusions sounded lame: “Congress may consider either or both of these imperatives. But it cannot merely twiddle its thumbs”; “One morning Senor Branco will awake to find that the train has gone.”

Although Divver believed in the omnipotence of Forces, he was equally faithful to the hope that somewhere, in a town he had never heard of, in a street he had never walked, in a top room he had never entered, he would find a great man who had succeeded in denying them. It was a source of shame to him that if he was let down really painfully by objects of his admiration, he became incapable of judging them in the calm scientific terms applicable to neurotics, and invariably fell
back on irrational obscenities. He was a pugnacious man, and at such times he sometimes picked a fist-fight with someone, and felt a good deal better for it: it had always been a great help to him, though he never said so, to find that his most intellectual, anti-war friends looked on physical violence as a virtuous form of expression, the only natural and respectable outlet left, since sex had turned out to be chiefly a rational exercise of the super-ego. But when Divver’s disillusion was serious, not even fighting could help him, and he would miserably pick over his failures with previous heroes—the brave Negro trade-unionist whose fare to New York he had paid, and who turned out to be a wicked snob; the refugee with terrible stories to tell, who simply ended up as a bore; the talented girl whom Divver dreamed of making the first woman-President of the United States, or his third wife, or both, and who turned out to be just another masculine type. In these moments, he would have a horrifying fear that anybody who was capable of becoming his friend was bound to be a contemptible character, that he was doomed to despise anyone who liked him. He would also recall the sins of his youth: the fact that he had considered Jews a low type of persons; that the faces of tyrants had always impressed him; that the man in the street was just a mob. When he was depressed, he feared that he still believed these things, and that he would be discovered. He would dream of a group of simple but advanced people sitting around a plain table in a hut: one of them would say: “I’m afraid Max Divver cannot be counted as a serious man”—and Divver would wake up feeling that it must be true. Occasionally he was able to cheer himself up with a remark that put him back on a sound footing by giving him a strong classification: “I guess I’m nothing but a manic-depressive,” he would say to himself, and feel greatly relieved. At other times, he simply couldn’t think of a single scientific word that really seemed to be related to the
brutal, commonplace course of everyday life. Sometimes his self-contempt was so strong that he needed a visit to Europe to bring back his self-confidence.

He was helped by such visits because to find a hero one must first define evil, and Divver believed that evil in its basic form was exclusively European. He knew that it was wicked to think like this, and in his editorials he was harsh with people who did: such a point of view, he said, was chauvinistic and immature. Nonetheless, Divver could imagine real evil trickling into America only as a harbour official imagines the tricky entry of an undesirable alien. But unfortunately he also felt sometimes that by hogging all the evil, like old masters, Europeans made their lives unfairly exciting. When he met the officials of foreign chancelleries, and when he looked at the careers of expatriate artists and ambassadors, he sometimes was very disappointed by the drabness of his native land. And here, too, was one of the most absorbing puzzles of his life: when Americans went abroad they were simple, straightforward people; when they stayed abroad they became cynical climbers. A man who had spoken contemptuously of
knee-breeches
in New York harbour, was soon photographed smiling at the Pope, or lounging in a punt on the Thames with the daughters of a titled brewer. A man who had painted tall corn since puberty was found in the studio of a Parisian abstractionist. A new Secretary of State, who had never even stirred from home and had harried his predecessor with demands for a “genuinely American” foreign policy, soon began arranging trade-treaties with the most contemptible foreign elements. This sort of apostasy struck Divver with special shame—because it reminded him of himself. He, too, was unable to resist the colour and brilliance of the European opera, any more than he could resist the glamour of a full-blown psychosis. Whole chapters of his books were given over to the richest details of ornate banquets, Foreign Office
interiors
,
interviews with peers, cardinals, pro-consuls, academicians, visits to country houses, symbolical weather conditions. But Divver always made clear that these glamorous accounts were included simply as an overture to honest indignation of the kind that had caused his work to be known as “fearless” and “cuts to the bone.” “As I sat sipping Turkish coffee in this luxurious home,” he would write, “I thought of how many centuries of exploitation had gone into its making. I thought of the man I had seen barely an hour earlier, pushing his junk cart toward an East End market, one in whom I had detected a natural, open vitality and generosity of feeling which was certainly not visible in those who now surrounded me. I also thought of Garibaldi, and of Lincoln, in whose faces, when I recalled them at this moment, I recognized that self-same mark of … etc., etc.” In his books there were also pages devoted to the life of the underprivileged; but these were usually more sketchy, because such common people were the ground on which Divver planted his feet in order to see what went on above his head, and he had no wish to break up with analysis what he found so stable as a mass. He also found it easier to enter palaces than cottages, and so his writing about cottagers was based mainly on hand-outs from trustworthy sources, short trips through depressed areas, remarks overheard in bars and buses, and humane conclusions evoked by the sight of a farmhand covered with manure.

*

Early one Saturday morning, in May, 1939, Divver realized that the pain in his left ear was a growing boil. The sun edged in through slits in the closed venetian blinds and shaped itself on the bedroom floor in powdery markings, bringing a dim light into the room. Lily was still asleep; Divver heard the morning paper flop outside the hall door; in the next room
Home
On
The
Range
was being sung in a subdued but
querulous soprano, his son Arthur’s warning that worse would come if he were deprived of many more minutes of another glorious day. Divver propped himself against the bedhead with two pillows, easing himself up with the heavy breathing and muted grunting of a man who is determined that no matter how great his agony, his wife shall get her full sleep. He held his head gingerly on one side, brushed his throbbing ear gently with four fingers, and finally delicately inserted his crooked little finger and probed into his ear-hole, edging in further and further, his features expressing excruciating wariness. Soon, a stab of pain rewarded him; Divver gave a sharp hiss, and, his guess that he was in pain being now confirmed, let his face rise into ridges of suffering, while a muted whistle came from his lips. His wife responded with a faint bleat; her smooth black eyebrows started to meet in a frown; then they drifted apart again, and with a little sigh Lily continued to sleep.

For some seconds Divver remained still, his head bent, his eyes half-closed in discomfort. Then, with intense caution, and side-glances at his sleeping wife, he began to manœuvre his right arm, working it free of the covers inch by inch, wincing at the rustling, until the whole limb was exposed in its sleeve of maroon silk. The free hand advanced nervously on a package of cigarettes; Divver’s breathing became stertorous; cigarettes and matches came together with the noise of blown leaves; a match was struck after three or four vain strikes, each of which made the bed hop; the flame flared up with a hiss, and Lily bleated again and again returned to sleep.

Silent as an Indian scout, Art appeared in the open doorway. He looked at his father with sharp interest and made a hopeful grimace. Divver responded with a fearful frown and expansion of the nostrils, jerking his head forcefully in the direction of Art’s mother. Art at once replied with a whole series of contortions, which any trained parent could interpret
as suggesting that he might sit on Divver’s side of the bed without saying a single word or moving the least little muscle; to which Divver replied with his own series of facial twitches; which set the whole bed trembling. Art disappeared, giving the door jamb a loud slap as he passed.

Phlegm made its way into Divver’s throat; after ignoring it for a moment he made two or three throaty ejaculations which emerged in a rattle. With great caution he scratched his right shin, which was suddenly ticklish. Again Art appeared in the doorway, this time holding up a box of some mechanical outfit, which jingled. Divver shook his head fiercely. Art disappeared again. In a few minutes,
Home
On
The
Range
drifted back into the bedroom, sung this time with more expression. Better to get it out of the way for good and all, Divver decided, and cleared his throat raucously. Lily opened her eyes. “Go back to sleep, honey,” said Divver in a low voice, patting her shoulder: but Lily had already done so.

Divver touched his ear again. Placing his index finger on the top of the ear and his thumb under the lobe he cautiously pinched the ends together until the ear resembled a sweet-pea. A loud drumming noise now rang in the cavity, accompanied by a high singing, and a nervous throbbing pain that appeared to be directed into the very heart of the brain. Divver hissed again, and nervously looked down at Lily: her morning face was so soft and full that he could scarcely believe that at the very instant of waking it would take on a whole complexion of lines. When he examined the flesh on either side of her lips, the two grooves that normally ran from her nostrils almost to her jawbone in such a frightening way were visible only as delicate tracings: she looked positively girlish in a smooth, pink way, and her flesh appeared to be as rich and sleek as a good leg of lamb. Divver felt, half-way down the bed, a stirring and knotting of his muscles and insides; he looked crossly at the centre of the quilt and pressed out his cigarette; soon
his boil gave him a sharp stab, and he was able to reflect with some pride that if at this moment Lily were to wake, and to hold out her arms to him, as she had often done years ago, he would be obliged to shake his head. “I am sorry, dear. I have a boil.” “You have a
what
?” “I have a boil in my ear.” Divver hung his head dismally to one side; the boil throbbed louder than ever, and the bedside clock ticked away the minutes in its usual pointless way. About time she woke up, thought Divver crossly.

Art reappeared. This time he carried a woolly animal which he held against his chest. Avoiding his father’s menacing eye as artlessly as a waiter avoids a patron’s, he stepped across the carpet and sat in a low chair beside the dresser. Here he held the animal at arm’s length and began to address it—without speaking, of course, but pursing his lips at it, wagging one finger warningly at its nose, suddenly projecting his chin and appearing to strike the animal sharply on the backside with his right hand. His father was not sure what to do; he eyed his son fiercely and tossed his head, but Art failed to notice: he made up his mind to ignore his son’s exhibitionism, but couldn’t resist glancing toward the animal from time to time. Noticing instantly that his father’s interest was aroused, Art looked at him with a winning smile and began a speechless, grimaceful explanation of the animal’s misconduct, stopping now and then to shake it savagely and threaten it with his bared teeth. He then looked hopefully at his father. Divver half-closed his eyes, to express pain. Art raised his eyebrows and patted his stomach questioningly. Divver replied by laying an open palm against his left ear. “Ts! Ts!” said Art. “Sshh!” said Divver. The bed shook.

A few minutes passed. Art dropped the animal suddenly and stared vacantly into space, his mouth open. Divver lay back on the pillows with his eyes closed, listening to the morning traffic and pressing a plump end of the top pillow against
his ear. When he next opened his eyes, he saw that Art had opened the closet door and was toying with the ends of his mother’s skirts, pulling each hem towards him, studying the colour and fingering the material. “Art!” cried Divver in a high whisper. Art turned; Divver beckoned to him, and the little boy came over in a sulky slouch, tossing his body pettishly from the hips up. “Get me the newspaper, eh?” whispered Divver, stroking his hair and kissing him. “What’s wrong with your ear?” whispered Art. “Sshh! We mustn’t talk. It’s a boil.” “What’s a boil?” “Like that thing you had on your arm, but bigger.” “May I see?” “Don’t talk, will you? There’s nothing to see. Get me the paper, please.”

He heard Art wrestle with the handle of the hall door; there was the clang of a milk bottle rolling across the hallway, scraping sounds of pursuit, a loud slam, and the boy reappeared, walking at dead-slow pace, in deep study of the back page of the
New
York
Times.
“Go and play in the living-room,” whispered Divver, taking the paper and patting Art’s hand. “I’m hungry,” said Art. “It won’t be long now. Go and play in the living-room.”