The Revolt of Aphrodite (66 page)

“Julian!” cried Benedicta sharply, opening her eyes and staring angrily at him. “I don’t like you in the mock-humble mood. It is false. You cannot stop being a demon now just because Jocas is dying, just because you will get your way at last. You have been at each other’s throats ever since you were born.”

Julian paled, his dark eyes flashed briefly like precious stones before hooding themselves once more under their heavy lids, to give his whole face an expression of massive and contemptuous repose—like an Inca mask, I thought. He paused for a long moment and then went on in a quiet voice, ignoring her and addressing himself to me, as if he were seeking a sympathy or comprehension which I was more likely to accord him than she. “I shall leave myself out of the picture, then, and simply sketch in the details of the matter for you, supposing that the business of his death is a fact, and actually takes place a few months from now. It will raise of course the question of his replacement in the Eastern field; and I have no doubt, Felix, that the senior boardroom will be extremely keen to have you take over the responsibility from him. It doesn’t surprise you, does it? Of course the decision is yours and hers, Benedicta’s. That is the first point.”

“My God” I said with a mixture of wonder and distaste, never having visualised myself as occupying any position of administrative power in this octopus of a firm. “As I say,” went on Julian, a trifle sardonically “all that is contingent upon the movement of a few planets across the natal chart of Jocas. When and if it does happen you will have to think about it. But for the moment all Jocas wants is to see you again; he wants you to visit him briefly. I leave the question of timing to you. Obviously you won’t want to abandon our experiment before it is complete, I mean Iolanthe. But once she breathes, once she walks, you might feel like taking Benedicta for a short visit to Turkey. Or perhaps before. It’s how you feel.”

The thought itself was full of the meretricious dapple of
unfamiliar
sunlight—seen through the long grey corridors of an eternal English winter; one forgot the damp, one forgot the scorching winds on the uplands, the miasmic stenches of the great capital at evening. … No, all that remained was this travel-poster sunlight with its enticing glint. Benedicta looked once more sunk in thought. “The timing is up to you,” said Julian again softly “but I shouldn’t leave it too long. As a matter of fact we are sending out a small party of people at the end of the month—we’ve chartered a plane. You know some if not all of them: Caradoc, Vibart and Goytz, for example.”

“Caradoc! Why?”

“He’s coming back to us again on the circular staircase. Jocas has been on for some time about building himself, indeed all of us, a mausoleum—if that’s the word. He wants to unite the remains of my mother and … father.” A funny little contortion travelled over his features as he uttered the word. It was as if the word itself cost him something to bring out. He repeated it in a whisper. “My
Father
”
as if to secure a firmer purchase on it; to possess it more thoroughly. “I think perhaps Caradoc is the man to talk to him about it; I have no views one way or the other. As far as parents are concerned I am hardly aware of having had any; my father was something quite different—he was simply Merlin. I owe him
everything
good and bad that has happened to me in my life. I am not a sentimentalist like Jocas—more particularly now he is growing old, and feeling, I suppose, his childlessness. Anyway, that is roughly the picture as he has sketched it for me. O and by the way, according to the soothsayer I myself don’t outlive him by very long. As if I cared….” His weariness, his sadness rang out clearly in the silence of the little room, and the phrase hung fire, remained unfinished. “When I was young, and could not sleep at night, Benedicta was sent to read or recite to me to calm my spirits. I can still remember one of the poems you recited—perhaps you have forgotten?” In his soft negligent tones, so fluent and at the same time so full of charm, he repeated the lines:

He hesitated for a moment, hunting in his memory for the next line; but Benedicta took up the strain and finished the poem in a voice which seemed charged with a queer mixture of pride and sorrow.

Julian smiled and said: “Thank you. That’s it. And it’s a fitting note on which to wish you an apologetic goodnight. Felix, make your own decisions about Jocas. I shall be away anyway if you decide to go now. And another thing, could you give Rackstraw a glimpse of your handiwork—I fear he is really completely useless for my purposes, he’s too far gone? I would really like him out of the way before the others come into the picture. And so good night to you. My God, it’s nearly morning.”

He had slipped into his coat and muffled himself up in his white scarf; the brown paper parcel with its trophy was tucked under his arm. He hesitated at the door for a moment, as if he were hunting among all his available expressions for one which might seem
perfectly
suitable to this leavetaking. “Don’t worry” he said at last, lamely, to Benedicta, and to me, “Until very soon.”

Thus he outlined himself for a second upon the spectral snowscape and then was gone, softly closing the door behind him. An effortless disappearance as always.

There was a long silence; Benedicta stood drooping with fatigue and staring into the fire. “He is no Greek” she said at last, grimly. “Our Julian does not know the word
hubris
; he thinks you can give life as easily as you can take it—and you are following him blindly, perhaps into a trap, my poor foolish Felix.”

“Come” I said. “He is transformed since we gave him back the hope of an Iolanthe. He’s a new person!”

“You don’t know him” she said. “His form of ambition is so
absolute
that he could crush anyone in his path without a thought. I have been his victim once. I could tell you a strange enough tale of his alchemical experiments on me, his powers over matter—a long sad tale of false pregnancies, mock-miscarriages, even the birth of a changeling with the head of a … thing! Murder, too, if you wish. But it was all sanctified by the fact that these were scientific
experiments
conducted not from evil motives but purely in the name of alchemical curiosity; rather like your scientific self-justifications for the torture and vivisection of animals and so on. He has abandoned all that now—or so he says.”

“I don’t know what you are getting at.”

“I am only saying that whatever his final intentions are he is masking them from us; he is using you as usual.”

“Of course. What is wrong about it? I am doing a job for him—but a job after my own heart as well.”

Suddenly she turned round and put her arms round me. There were tears in her eyes as she said: “Well, I am so happy to have escaped him, to have freed myself. I can’t tell you the relief. I should be the one to put red roses on Iolanthe’s tomb every day as a
thank-offering.
Free!”

Nevertheless that night, for the first time for ages, I surprised her sleepwalking; rather, I woke to find her standing at the window, having drawn back the curtains. I thought she was watching the wonderful snowfall of the early morning, but when I moved to her side and put my arm round her slender shoulders I saw with
surprise
that her eyes were shut. And yet, not entirely, for she felt my touch and turned her sleeping face to mine in order to say: “I think we must really go and see Jocas. I think Julian is right. We should go and see Jocas as soon as possible.”

“Wake” I said shaking her. She came to abruptly and shook
herself
. “What have I been saying?” I kissed her and said, “That we should go and visit Jocas. It was exactly what I was thinking. But you were sleepwalking, an ominous sign.”

“Fatigue,” she said “nothing more. Kiss me.”

S
ome ten days later, having made my arrangements with Marchant and Said to keep Iolanthe “feeding”: that is to say “charging”: and to fill in the time by working on the male dummy Adam until my return … having done all this, I drove a patient Benedicta down to Southampton, our point of embarkation for the journey to
Turkey.
A freezing rain fell upon a muted landscape of rime-stiffened hills and clay-pits—the winter at its beastliest. Perhaps it was a trifle wicked to allow the heart to lift with every thought of a
spring-pierced
Mediterranean, with its oranges glowing on far-away islands and its lofty March seas … but lift it did. Only she was thoughtful while I whistled to myself cheerfully to drown the skirling of the tyres upon the black wet roads. Moreover it was impossible not to feel that this would turn out to be some sort of holiday—despite, I mean, the sobering news of Jocas and his death-oriented
preoccupations.
A holiday feeling was in the air, and it was accentuated when we at last ran Caradoc to earth in a dockside pub on Pier 3 to which, for some mysterious reason, we had been directed. We were not going by sea, were we? I would have preferred the old Orient
Express
with its long romantic rumble across the heart of Europe. But we were in the hands of the firm’s travel people. Everything had been arranged, as usual.

As for Caradoc, he looked both flushed and incoherent, as much with pleasure as with alcohol; but it was quite appalling the physical state he was in—his clothes dirty and torn, his new shaggy beard ungroomed. “I know” he said, taking in our consternation. “Don’t look now; I’ve been camping in Woodhenge and Stonehenge—damn disagreeable month I can tell you, living like an ape under a bush. But the firm is sending me down a couple of suitcases of decent clothes and shaving kit. I’ll soon be worthy of your respect.” He made a hermetic gesture which the barman instantly translated into
three double whiskies. “I’m back in the firm” he said suddenly, jubilantly, laughing a harsh ho-ho. “Once more into the breach, dear souls. For the moment I’m being forced to work in the
graveyard
section it seems, laying out cemeteries, designing mausolea and all that; but Julian says if I’m a good boy I can work my way back through public conveniences and council-houses towards some real architecture. For the moment it’s a sun-oriented mausoleum—once more Jocas has called for a funeral monument! It may be my last really free job—but who am I to worry? Two more Mnemons in today’s paper, have you seen?” He was beside himself with
self-congratulation
.

“And now to cap it all,” he added, jerking a thumb “look what the firm has hired. Just look.” The mystery of our presence in the
dock-area
was at last explained by the old grey flying-boat which lay at anchor in the swell, snubbing the light craft surrounding it, and presumably waiting for its passengers and crew. My misgivings were only to be allayed when we finally did go aboard by tender and found out just how spacious and comfortable it was with its two decks, its bars and conference room where we were to dine and pass most of our time. It was a good choice, really, but as a craft she was slow, slow as the devil; moreover I gathered we would have to touch down almost everywhere to refuel—Marseille, Naples, Bari, Athens. … Ah, but that was something else in its favour for we could stop overnight anywhere. Perhaps in Athens we could look in on the Countess Hippolyta, Ariadne? I conferred with Caradoc and
despatched
a telegram warning her of our threatened descent upon Naos, her country house.

What was not easy was the take-off, however; we leeched up and down the sound trying to get up sufficient speed to free ourselves, to get airborne, but in vain. We were stuck to the water as if to a flypaper; the great engines groaned and screamed, the spars
shuddered,
the hull vibrated under the thwacking of waves. But at long last, after a run which seemed to last an eternity she suddenly broke free, tore herself loose from the shackles of the water and swayed up into the free air, turning in a long slow curve over the land with its toy houses and gardens and infantile piers and railway stations—turning her prow towards the tall blue spring sky which waited for
us somewhere off Corsica. And all at once the noise diminished and speech became possible; from everywhere stewards appeared with drinks and sandwiches. A few light pantomime clouds puffed around us in glorious Cinerama giving us the illusion of speed and mastery. Our spirits rose.

There was so much room that each of us had a choice of different corners if we wanted to read or work or doze. Vibart, for example, he had gone off to the far end of the saloon to sit alone, briefcase on knee, gazing out of the window. We had hardly had a chance to exchange a nod. He had arrived at the last minute in an office car, and had been forced to gallop down to the tender and crawl aboard with scarcely enough time to exchange a wave with his friends and colleagues. But he looked sad and somehow withdrawn in his dark city clothes and broad-brimmed Homburg. Goytz on the contrary looked splendrous but completely relaxed. One might imagine him to be perhaps a great violinist on his way to fulfil an engagement abroad. He had a mysterious leather box which, though somewhat like a gun-case in shape, could easily have housed a master’s
Stradivarius.
Spectacles on nose he benignly if sleepily leafed his way through what looked like a large seed catalogue—though the
illustrations
were of corpses in various states of prize-winning splendour. But if Vibart looked unhappy and withdrawn how much more so did Baum, the firm’s overseas sales representative? He looked as if he were listening intently to his own inner economy and trying to ascertain whether he was going to be sick or not. I went to pass the time of day with him, for he was very sensitive, very Jewish, and quick to imagine that neglect by a senior might be a slight. I found though that his preoccupations, though unusual, had nothing to do with air-sickness. “I am worried about England” he said broodingly, gazing down at as much of it as swam into visibility through the low cloud. “I am worried about the young, Mr. Felix. They are all studying economics. They are all taking degrees in it—you can get them anywhere now. Now you know and I know that economics isn’t really a subject at all. But the mental evolutions necessary to study it can easily fix one at the anal stage for the rest of one’s life. And people fixed at the anal stage are a danger to humanity, Mr. Felix. Is it not so?” It was. It was.

I agreed seriously with him; his brooding concern for the national fate was so well grounded and so sincere. I wondered if Goytz was fixed at the anal stage … and Nash? Or Julian, trotting about with that golden turd in the brown paper parcel? I patted Baum’s shoulder in silent sympathy and signalled the steward for another reviver. Benedicta slept, so innocently, so discreetly. If I had to be murdered, I thought, by somebody I would like it to be by
somebody
like her. Caradoc’s voice poured in upon me, raised half a tone against the massive thrum of the great engines as they pushed us across the skies of France. “I haven’t wasted my exile one bit” he said exultantly. “Although this trip to Stonehenge nearly killed me with cold. I went down with Pulley and a sextant to take some
readings
and do some drawings. You know my old interest in deducing a common set of principles for all our architectural constructions? It still stands up, and wherever I touch the matter I get verifications, whether the Parthenon or the Celebes—whether ancient or modern, whether Canberra or Woodhenge. It’s as if city-builders had a
built-in
gyrocompass which pushed them to build in respect to certain cosmic factors like sun, moon and pole.”

He sipped his drink and adopted a pleased and somewhat glassy expression as he divagated about megaliths aligned to the sun as early as 1800
B
.
C
.; about early Pole Stars like Vega and Betelgeuse and their influence upon the orientation of cities and temples. “Why,” he said regally “Pulley and I even discovered a magnetic field at
Stonehenge
—a certain place near the centre which gave off enough juice to demagnetise a watch, or make a compass squeal with pain. It’s reminiscent of the spot at Epidaurus where the acoustic wave is at its highest and clearest. I hadn’t got anything to leave as a marker but my drawings have it. I don’t know yet what such a thing might prove. And by the way the same goes for St. Paul’s Cathedral—there’s a magnetic spot in the main aisle, about where they’ve sunk that black hexagonal stone. Again I’m not surprised as perhaps I should be. St. Paul’s is of course more an engineering feat than any of the other cathedrals and naturally much less aesthetically
beautiful.
It was built by a great artificer in conscious pursuit of
mathematical
principles; it was not a dream of godhead full of poetry or frozen music or what not. No, it belonged to its age; it was a fitting
symbol for a mercantile country in an age dedicated to reason, hovering on the edge of the Encyclopaedia and the Industrial
Revolution.
It is no accident that the business part of the city, the moneyed part, grouped itself round this great symbol of the stock and share. Nor is it an accident that it should in some ways feel strongly
reminiscent
of a railway station—say Euston or Waterloo. It stands as a symbol for the succeeding ages which produced both. But after St. Paul’s where do we go? The Dome’s rise is like the South Sea Bubble. The Mercantile dream has been shattered. And now the mob has too much pocket money we can expect nothing so much as a long age of bloodshed expressed by the concrete block. It is hard nowadays to distinguish a barracks from a prison or a block of
dwellings
—indeed I’d go so far as to say it was impossible. They belong to the same strain of thought—Mobego I call it after our old friend Sipple. I wonder if we’ll see him in Turkey? It is quite impossible to predict what might come out of it, though one can almost be sure that some sort of universal death by boredom and conformity is being hinted at. And I won’t live to see what happens after the blood bath….” He mooned on, slowly drumming himself into innocent slumber with his tongue rocked by the soft drubbing and jolting of the huge plane in the aircurrents of the French mountain-ranges.

I wondered what Julian might make of these considerations. Obviously he would have seen the results of Caradoc’s work.

As Benedicta still slept with the new
Vogue
on knee I started to make my way across to Vibart in order to exchange a word with him, but I was waylaid once more by the pensive Baum who motioned me to sit down with the obvious intention of opening his heart to me. I hoped we would not have to dwell any longer on the English nation and its habits, as I had long since given up worrying about it; fortunately not, it was now the turn of the Jews. “I am wondering” said Baum
sotto
voce,
looking round to see if we might be overheard “if there isn’t a touch of anti-Semitism entering the firm from
somewhere
. Lately I have been troubled.” When Baum was troubled he had a very troubled look indeed. “From where?” I said, longing to break free from what threatened to be a curtain lecture.

“From Count Banubula” he said surprisingly enough, suddenly staring me in the eye in a challenging manner. “Banubula?” I said
with genuine puzzlement. Baum nodded with compressed lips and went on slowly, with emphasis. “Yesterday I overheard something in the senior boardroom which made me pause, Mr. Felix. He was there addressing a very large group of salesmen. I don’t know what the meeting was about or where they were selling but what he was saying was this: I made a note.” Always meticulous, Baum
produced
a pocket diary with a note in shorthand. He cleared his throat and read in a vague imitation of Banubula’s aristocratic drawl the following: “‘Now the foreskin, as everybody knows, is part of the poetic patrimony of man; whether firmly but gracefully retracted or in utter repose it has been the subject for the greatest painters and sculptors the world has known. Reflect on Michelangelo, his
enormous
range….’” Baum put the book away with pursed lips and said, “That was all I heard because they closed the door, but I was very struck. I wondered if all those salesmen were Jews and whether he was….” I drained my drink and took the dear fellow by the forearm. “Listen,” I said, “for Godsake listen Baum. Michelangelo was a Jew. Everybody was a Jew: Gilles de Rais, Petrarch, Lloyd George, Marx and Spender, Baldwin, and Faber and Faber. This much we know for certain. BUT THEY HAVE ALL KEPT THEIR FORESKINS. What you don’t know is that Banubula himself is a Jew. So am I.”

“He is not. He is Lettish” said Baum obstinately.

“I assure you he is. Ask anyone.” Baum looked mollified but in some deeper way unconvinced. He said: “Now that this work of his is so delicate that it is on the Top Secret list one doesn’t quite know what he is doing. I hesitate to accuse the firm of course; but with a Lett one never knows where one is.” He looked overwrought. I took my leave of him in lingering loving fashion, smoothing out his sleeve and assuring him that everything would be all right. “Above all resist the impulse to become anti-Lettish” I said, and he nodded his acquiescence, though his face still wore a twisted and gloomy
expression.
He buried himself in his papers with a sigh.

Nor did Vibart seem the less gloomy as he sat looking sideways and down across the clouds to where somewhere slabs of blue sky were beginning to fabricate themselves. “Ah Felix” he said moodily. “Come and sit down; you never answered my letter.” I admitted
the fact. “It was hard to know what to say; I was sorry. One couldn’t just be awkwardly flippant—and flippancy has been our small change up until I ran away, got banged on the head, and wound up in the Paulhaus munching sedatives.”

“I had to tell someone” he said. “And I was hoping that you would stay mad and locked up with the information. But it didn’t work.”