Forty-Seventeen by Frank Moorhouse Page B

book.
    He examined it and read the novella White Nights.
    He then explained to Belle that white night referred to the midsummer nights at the sixtieth latitude north.
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜I am in the midsummer latitude of my life.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    Â 
    In November, one year from the Jonestown suicides, an American journalist flew in and telephoned him, Joe Treaster from the New York Times.
    Joe Treaster wanted to talk to him about the IAEA.
    â€˜Who put you on to me?’
    â€˜The Department of Information.’
    A few days later a friend rang and invited him toa party. ‘Joe Treaster from the New York Times will be there. You should meet him.’
    â€˜Yes, he rang me.’
    â€˜Did you know he was the first journalist into Jonestown after the suicides? He’s very interesting on it.’
    â€˜No!’
    He then rang Joe at his hotel but could not reach him and left a message for Joe to ring back.
    But he was due in Vienna and could not fit in with Joe’s itinerary. They didn’t meet, which he thought was probably just as well.
    That week Senator Knight from Canberra dropped dead at the age of forty.
    He gave up the White Knight TV project, not having written a word of it.
    He said to Belle that he did not really suffer from the illusion that the universe was rearranging itself to give him a personal message. He knew that was ultimate egoism.
    But he could be excused for thinking it was a year of shadows, confusing linguistic signals, ricocheting beams, that maybe a bony hand had been groping for him, inviting him to dance, lanterns had been waved in the dark to guide him towards the cliff. But he was through it now.
    â€˜That’s a relief,’ Belle said, ‘I thought for a while there you were loony tunes.’
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    Later in the next year, having again given up the idea of being a writer, he was working at a university andthey had given him a room formerly occupied by a medievalist.
    He was seated at the desk for some hours before he realised that a poster of an ivory chess piece on the wall facing him was a white knight – the caption said it was from the Isle of Lewis. The white knight was glum and toy-like and it did not frighten him. He photographed it and during his time at the university became quite fond of it.

Libido and Life Lessons
    When he noticed that his libido was low while in Vienna the first time he thought it was because he was travelling – the beast out of its habitat does not feel secure enough to mate or, maybe, to perform any part of the breeding act. He reasoned that animals needed to be confident of their safety. But we are not purely animals. And sometimes he had become randy while travelling. Now he didn’t feel randy for days and days. It continued after his return to Australia.
    â€˜Hullo,’ he said, ‘is this some sort of suicide?’ Was this why his grandfather committed suicide? Which came first, the loss of interest in life or the loss of libido?
    His fantasy life became dulled. He was able to have sex, but without much drive. Another explanation was that he was ‘growing up’ and putting behind him random sexuality. Was this the way an adult genital male should be at forty? All the books said that turning forty should not affect the libido. Were the books lying?
    He found too that he desired to feel desire as much as he wanted to have sex; to feel the full juices of desire, to be restless with appetite would please him now.
    He could recall the visitations of desire for Belle. The desire strong enough to make him get up from hisbed into a car and to drive in the middle of the night to see her.
    He understood why Faust in the Gounod opera wanted the return of desire as part of his contract with the devil.
    Or was he in fact better off without it?
    He wondered if it were absent long enough would it fade as a known part of his person – would the feel of it be beyond imaginative recall, even?
    That might