backwards, with all its lights ablaze. There is flotsam everywhere, including the human. A satisfactory amount of screaming and shouting wafts over the water. The other lifeboats are either smashed or else pulling, overcrowded, away. Everyone one ever knew is on that boat, and the people one is confronted with at the moment are all struggling in the water.
In the foreground floats still another lifeboat, intact, in which nobody but me is sitting. I have a coat flung across my shoulders, a jewel box in my lap, and I am smoking a cigarette, cool as a cucumber. Various people splash alongside. If they are worth saving, I haul them aboard. If I don’t like them, which is to say, if they are definitely not worth saving, I push them under. The gesture of the hand used to push them under is the gesture you use to throw a football, and gives deep and abiding satisfaction.
As Unne came alongside, Charlie threw away his cigarette, placed his hand on that neat if wet blond head, and very deliberately and with satisfaction pushed her under. Then he lit another cigarette.
Under the circumstances, Lotte thought it best to get him out of there.
XXIV
“ THAT wasn’t very nice,” she said.
“Why the hell should I be nice? I pay for him, don’t I? When I pay good money, I expect to get good service. Not to have to sit around in a goddam peepshow. I do not, I never have, nothing would ever induce me to pretend I did, I cannot stand, Mme. de Staël,” he said. “Any woman who would wear a turban, Benjamin Constant or not, is no friend of mine.” His rages tended to be erudite: a novelist is a specialist in general information, and besides, he always defended himself with a fine skunk spray of culture when the chase got too close.
“Charlie, shut up.”
“I am shut up. I have been shut up for two weeks here. I’m going silly.”
But after a while he cooled down.
“Not even an American Ph.D. would have invented a game like that,” he said. “Scandinavia must be horrible.”
She had to admit she agreed. But then most games are horrible. In view of that, the place of origin doesn’t much count.
XXV
PAUL was doing his duty, which meant he must be scared. He wasn’t very good at it. But Charlie had his own methods of compensation, so he didn’t mind that. On the contrary, he was touched.
Somewhere along the line he’d stumbled across the truth that far from losing themselves in the sexual act, most people take refuge from it, and make it satisfactory, only by vanishing into a private fantasy. What’s the use of having a mind if you can’t compensate?
He had been curious. Unfortunately, when he had asked other people what their fantasies were, they’d shut up at once. He had struck against one of the strictest taboos in the world, a sterner one, even, than the one which forbids us to mention that we masturbate. What with Proust, Sacher-Masoch, The Well of Loneliness , and Jean Genet, one would have thought nothing secret to exist. That masturbation was not discussed he could see the reason for; after all, there is no point in putting information into the wrong hands; but he was sorry about the fantasies. He would have liked to know.
Come to think of it, he had never mentioned his own to anybody either. His own took place in a Piranesi world, though not the Carceri . They were deeper down than that. Once well launched on a return voyage there, and he was momentarily content. That Victorian, Howard Sturgis, once wrote a novel called All that was Possible . This was all that was possible. He always had a good time down in that cellar.He always came back definitely refreshed. Imaginary bruises have no color, and imaginary tortures leave no wounds. It was better that way. Yet it was perhaps a pity that the available passions were so inevitably vitiated by our real desires, and our real desires, for that matter, by the available passions.
After Paul had gone, he picked up All that was Possible again, which he had with
In the foreground floats still another lifeboat, intact, in which nobody but me is sitting. I have a coat flung across my shoulders, a jewel box in my lap, and I am smoking a cigarette, cool as a cucumber. Various people splash alongside. If they are worth saving, I haul them aboard. If I don’t like them, which is to say, if they are definitely not worth saving, I push them under. The gesture of the hand used to push them under is the gesture you use to throw a football, and gives deep and abiding satisfaction.
As Unne came alongside, Charlie threw away his cigarette, placed his hand on that neat if wet blond head, and very deliberately and with satisfaction pushed her under. Then he lit another cigarette.
Under the circumstances, Lotte thought it best to get him out of there.
XXIV
“ THAT wasn’t very nice,” she said.
“Why the hell should I be nice? I pay for him, don’t I? When I pay good money, I expect to get good service. Not to have to sit around in a goddam peepshow. I do not, I never have, nothing would ever induce me to pretend I did, I cannot stand, Mme. de Staël,” he said. “Any woman who would wear a turban, Benjamin Constant or not, is no friend of mine.” His rages tended to be erudite: a novelist is a specialist in general information, and besides, he always defended himself with a fine skunk spray of culture when the chase got too close.
“Charlie, shut up.”
“I am shut up. I have been shut up for two weeks here. I’m going silly.”
But after a while he cooled down.
“Not even an American Ph.D. would have invented a game like that,” he said. “Scandinavia must be horrible.”
She had to admit she agreed. But then most games are horrible. In view of that, the place of origin doesn’t much count.
XXV
PAUL was doing his duty, which meant he must be scared. He wasn’t very good at it. But Charlie had his own methods of compensation, so he didn’t mind that. On the contrary, he was touched.
Somewhere along the line he’d stumbled across the truth that far from losing themselves in the sexual act, most people take refuge from it, and make it satisfactory, only by vanishing into a private fantasy. What’s the use of having a mind if you can’t compensate?
He had been curious. Unfortunately, when he had asked other people what their fantasies were, they’d shut up at once. He had struck against one of the strictest taboos in the world, a sterner one, even, than the one which forbids us to mention that we masturbate. What with Proust, Sacher-Masoch, The Well of Loneliness , and Jean Genet, one would have thought nothing secret to exist. That masturbation was not discussed he could see the reason for; after all, there is no point in putting information into the wrong hands; but he was sorry about the fantasies. He would have liked to know.
Come to think of it, he had never mentioned his own to anybody either. His own took place in a Piranesi world, though not the Carceri . They were deeper down than that. Once well launched on a return voyage there, and he was momentarily content. That Victorian, Howard Sturgis, once wrote a novel called All that was Possible . This was all that was possible. He always had a good time down in that cellar.He always came back definitely refreshed. Imaginary bruises have no color, and imaginary tortures leave no wounds. It was better that way. Yet it was perhaps a pity that the available passions were so inevitably vitiated by our real desires, and our real desires, for that matter, by the available passions.
After Paul had gone, he picked up All that was Possible again, which he had with
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