Authors: Paul Ableman
“There’s Merkitt.”
I am instantly recalled to my senses not by any violent or even overt reproof but simply by the way the man, without obviously moving, seems to draw a little away from me and, clamping his pipe, stares with impregnable attention at the knob. However, I do receive a little comfort from a chap behind me who leans forward and says:
“Bravo. Cheers. I don’t know Merkitt, but I do see your point. Terrible stream of mud. Bravo.”
I am both contrite and amused to find that he garners the reproaches that I have merited. Calls or rather hisses of “Quiet,” “Hsst” and “Really” for an instant eclipse a vital statistic, and so are immediately followed by anxious inquiries
of “What was that?” “How many?” and “I missed that.”
Later, the voice having leapt back through its field, and the choir having sung a farewell anthem, very beautifully but in a new style or manner that no one can make out, we all gather at the bar to discuss the implications of this latest governmental statement.
“Quite absurd,” a chap standing near me remarks warmly. “Half that number would do perfectly well.”
“Do you mean,” asks his courteous companion after a slight, puzzled pause, “half? I mean, you don’t mean double?”
“Look here,” returns the other, with as much patience and goodwill as he can manage. He seizes at once on a concrete example. “Last Thursday, I —”
Just then the fellow who applauded me earlier on, comes up and resumes:
“Really lovely. What is Merkitt, anyway?”
I try to explain that Merkitt is someone whom I saw hopping beside a ditch once after a team had deposited structural equipment in the vicinity. I try to re-create the atmosphere of the occasion, the cloudy day, the clouds flying and the few trees that remained amongst the broken concrete, huddling together so that their voices, as they tried to supplicate the impatient wind, would gain strength from unity. Earlier, they had tried to gain Merkitt’s attention, but he had responded merely by hurling a clod of earth at one of them. This one had murmured to the others: “He is aiming at a crow, not at me. He lives over there.” And he had pointed across the wastes towards the low silhouette of the dark city outlined by its own haze of light.
“Have a drink,” the chap now says cordially but still
distractedly
, “and tell me about Merkitt.”
I realize that he has missed my entire explanation, having been darting glances swiftly around the chamber to see if he can notice anything promising. I also sense that he is already a
little bored with my company which he finds rather mysterious and unsympathetic. This feeling is confirmed when, before he has ordered me a drink, he suddenly notices someone and says:
“Excuse me a moment,” and then hurries away.
I do not stay much longer after this and, as I make my way out past the trophies, I hear a few words being exchanged between two people and one of these words is “Merkitt.” When I get out into the thronged street again, I feel relieved to be out of the rather oppressive political atmosphere of the club. Out here it is not political except for certain groups being conducted here and there. This is managed so discreetly, however, that one can hardly distinguish these groups from the ordinary knots and tangles of pedestrians caused by faulty control.
A sense of oppression has been hanging over me for some time and suddenly I realize what it stems from. It stems from desire. It stems from longing for someone to love, someone who will love me. One goes on for a long time, thinking one is whole and competent, and then suddenly one finds that one is alone. And perhaps then one is nothing. I suddenly feel like nothing. My first impulse is to hurry home, but then the conviction that this would be futile comes to me and so I go into the park and try to reach an understanding with a woman sitting there. However: “I’m a married woman,” she tells me. “See, I have a baby.” And she indicates a baby waving a leaf nearby.
“Then,” I ask, “you won’t reach an understanding with me?”
“Of course not,” she insists. “I’ve only been married a short while. I married an Italian.”
“Like many girls,” I comment, “noble or plebeian.”
“I don’t know about that,” she reflects, but her eyes, and with them her concern, remain tied to the little object lurching and pausing in front of us.
“Get the ball,” she urges. “Go and get the ball.”
And the amiable child trundles down the slope towards its ball. Before it gets there, however, a blade of light distracts it, which it inspects for some moments and then, having started again, at the last moment some new interest deflects its course and it swerves away in a different direction. Then, having completely forgotten the ball, it merely waits and stares mildly up at us.
“Like mankind,” I observe, “pursuing truth.”
“You sound like a philosopher,” she says ironically. “You should meet some of my friends. They could use a bit of
philosophy
.”
“I’m not really a philosopher,” I confess. “As a matter of fact, I was nearly a plumber once. And recently, I nearly
became
one of Arthur’s assistants.”
“Deary!” calls the woman. “Lovey. Come here, baby. Come here, we’ve got to go now.”
And then, when an approving eye has seen the unsteady, frequently distracted progress at least begin, she turns to me again.
“Are you educated?”
“Not really. I was apprenticed to a plumber for a while, but I was never much good with pipes and things. And anyway Arthur doesn’t like me to mention it now. He’s rising swiftly. But I’m not really educated.”
“Still, you talk a bit like a philosopher. Do you think you could help my friends?”
“Where are your friends?” I ask.
But for a few moments maternal duties occupy her and she has to brace her son on her knee and pat him into shape.
“Do you think you could help my friends?” she asks again, absently. “I don’t see why you should—still—Maria could use some help.”
“Not my Maria?” I ask, startled.
“This one went to school with me. We had little secrets—but now she seems to have cracked up.”
“She’s not drifting? Or rising to meet the seedpods?” I ask.
“The nice man’s a bit cracked,” the woman informs her uncritical son. She is, however, a pleasant, bland woman and quite willing to indulge my vagaries. “Maria’s just an ordinary girl,” she informs me, “but she’s very nice and she’s not very happy. I thought if you were a philosopher—though you sound more like a lunatic—anyway, if you want to meet her—”
And your other friends?” I interrupt. “Do they need
philosophy
? Does your husband need philosophy? Does he need a rival?”
“Take your hand away!” she exclaims, but then, when she has speedily deposited her son and come to her own rescue, her punitive slap is not very hard. It is, however, purposeful and I realize that it would be difficult to induce her to dally.
“Will you dally?” I ask, without much hope.
“Seriously,” she says, taking up her little sacks of
domesticity
and preparing to go, “would you like to meet them?”
“Well, if you give me some money.”
“What? I should think not.”
“But,” I protest, “I haven’t got any money. Arthur doesn’t pay me. I can’t wander around until this evening or whenever you want me to meet your friends without money. How can I?”
But now, although still disposed to listen to me, she has become a trifle guarded.
“Anyway,” I revert, “tell me about your other friends. Why do they need philosophy?”
“I don’t know if they need philosophy,” she now pretends. “I don’t know what they need—shooting, I should think, some of them.”
“But what’s wrong with them?”
“Look,” she says, on a note of finality, “if you’re a philosopher,
that’s for you to find out. Here,” she sets her bundles down for the last time, produces a scrap of paper and a pencil and writes, “that’s our address—if you want to call some time—and here’s some money—if that little bit is any good to you.”
She takes up her things again and carries them and her uncomprehending child away. After a few steps, however, she pauses and turns back and says:
“And I wouldn’t talk to any more strange women, if I were you. You never know.”
And then the two particles, the native and the stranger, disappear slowly into the expanses.
When they have gone I can not suppress a slight feeling of satisfaction. Cousin Susan and Maria, although they never stated it explicitly, had little confidence in my social abilities. I could tell. Perhaps they did when I was younger and could delight people with simple, childish naiveté, but for a long time now, I feel sure, they have not regarded me as richly endowed with the social graces. And here, on my very first independent encounter for ages, I find myself cordially invited to the home of a celebrated Italian, partly, no doubt, to function in a
professional
capacity—and that would surprise Susan too—but partly also because my wit and spirits proved irresistible. I examine my retaining fee, a bank-note, my first for a very long time. I wonder whether to spend it on food, or whether to sacrifice the lower to the higher centers and buy a book. A book might prove a useful preparation for the series of consultations I have
engaged
myself upon, but then physical contentment might be an even more valuable asset. Also, if I decided to buy a book, I should have to seek preliminary advice since that decision would transport me into unfamiliar regions. The lieutenant moved there familiarly but had, I seem to remember, a low opinion of books. Perhaps, disposing of my sum as a bribe, I could induce the manager to write one specially for the
occasion
.
But I have neither of their addresses and even if I had they might have moved and tracing people is the very devil in a city this size.
At this point, I find that my random footsteps have carried me out of the park and, doubtless in subconscious obedience to the stream of my conscious thought, deposited me in front of a new bookshop run by selected, poverty-stricken students under the direct supervision of a governmental department. All my old frustrated rage at the government returns as I study the
cunning
notices outlining in whimsical but official terms the
nature
of, and services provided by, this new enterprise.
“It was simple, honest fury,” I inform the student who, having noticed the hostile expression on my face, and fearing for the ornate flow of the decorations, has, very prudently, stepped out of the gush to restrain me. “But never fear—no one knows better than I—bricks, anarchy, all that’s dead, deader than personality which is deader than chivalry.”
The student takes me for a simple fellow and smiles a wry, patronizing but good-natured smile.
“Oh, we’re not too bad, you know,” he suggests, “anyway, I’m not the government. As a matter of fact, none of us are. Some of us detest it. Come in if you like.”
“You’re all poverty-stricken students,” I remark. “Do you ever think about the government? Do you ever consider my unfinished business with the government?”
But he informs me very courteously that he can not accept responsibility for it.
“But come in and look at the books. Anyway,” he concludes briskly when I show no sign of accepting his invitation, “don’t destroy anything. You said yourself anarchy was dead.
Fortunatly,
there are no bricks around, but for all I know you may have one or a lump of metal on you—remember, it would be better to destroy nothing.”
He returns to the interior of the shop and a few minutes later I follow him.
“You may be wrong,” I begin, but am immediately
interrupted
.
“Don’t talk to Federico now,” urges a girl-student, or rather a woman of about forty who doesn’t seem much like a student. “You shouldn’t talk to him when he’s bandaging parcels. That’s a particularly dainty volume he’s bandaging for a neglected element.”
“He started it,” I protest. “He came out and suggested that I hurl bricks through the windows.”
“Yes, he’s peculiarly high-strung. But he’s the best scholar on the premises. They say it was a trauma. But I say it’s all traumas. You may guess that I’m reading psychology.”
“And are you fond of him?”
“Yes, I’m very fond of him,” she admits and turns away.
“Look, I know you only want to talk,” begins Federico,
turning
to me now that he has eclipsed the volume and a messenger is shooting away with it, “and that you’re not really dangerous. But you mustn’t interrupt the work. There’s not much
admittedly.
Still, they do watch us.” He pauses uncertainly for a moment and then quietly but without embarrassment asks: “What did that colleague, the female one, say to you?”
“She said she was fond of you.”
“Mmm,” he muses. “I think it’s only my background—primitive, dashing romanticism. My name’s Federico. My father emigrated from an uncharted but Spanish speaking
island
, a damned, messy romantic background altogether what with a mother who built coaches. I’m a statistician you see, and a very able one at that.”
“Is she a student?” I ask. “She seems too old.”
“Mmm, she is a bit, nearly 40 I should think though I never asked her. Well, fact is, she had a rather curious background
too. Father who drank and did such things as collect herons. He had the collector’s mania and tried to collect at least little bits of everything. For example, if he couldn’t get the picture, he’d scrape off a bit of pigment. If he couldn’t get the farm, he’d buy a single pig, if he couldn’t manipulate a whole pig, he’d hire veritable battalions of servants to pursue it through Italian gardens, veldt, various structural theories, orchards—”
“On the threshold?” asks the woman, leaning down in order to hear us better. “Did he say, on the threshold? I’d like to—Oh—” she recovers, realizing abruptly, from the blank looks she encounters, that she has mistaken what was said. She inserts a final volume into its place and then comes down the ladder.
“You were listening again,” says Federico, calmly but with a reserve meant to be interpreted as displeasure.