The Fox in the Attic (38 page)

“Baroque isn't even non-Art, it's anti-Art,” he tried to argue with Reinhold, but failed. “This must just be a blind spot in old Reinhold,” he was forced to decide (to Reinhold of course the blindness was all in Augustine).

This argument happened one Sunday morning. Outside in the Square where a few weeks back the police had fired on the Nazis a band had struck up with selections from Strauss, and the two men moved to the window to look. In the sharp winter air the notes of the band swirled up to the sky while coveys of pigeons swirled down to the ground, and Reinhold pointed out the kerchiefed little old women assembled to feed them: the famous “Taubern-mutterl,” the “little dove-mothers” of Munich. The small dog with the plaid waistcoat was back there again—brisk, intent, and important: his elderly dandyfied master followed behind on a lead. The whole scene touched a chord in Augustine and he sighed, windily, wishing that Mitzi was here ...

But Sunday was Reinhold's holiday, so presently he suggested a visit to Schwabing together: “‘The Quartier-Latin of Munich' they call it,” he explained (with an almost invisible moue). “Anyway, it's the home of all the Munich poets and painters who count.” Augustine pricked up his ears: this surely was what he had come for even more than the galleries. “Genius!” Reinhold continued, observing his mood: “Genius in studios, genius in garrets, genius in basements—back-bedrooms—mezzanines: Nordic and Latin, Gentile and Jew: genius spilling out on the pavements ...” He sighed. “So we'd better take plenty of money to pay for their beer.”

“‘Schwabing' you call it? Is it far?”

“Right here on our doorstep,” said Reinhold. “In fact, here we are now,” he presently added as they passed by the Siegestor. “We're arrived at our ‘Chelsea.'”

“Odd,” thought Augustine. “I've walked round here dozens of times without guessing: it's more like the Cromwell Road.”

For a while they moved in a great half-circle sampling bars and cafés (“For sheer joie de vivre,” thought Augustine, “they're much like South Kensington private hotels.”) on the look-out for celebrities. But in all those places they found only one such, and this was that selfsame emancipated young woman from the party at Röttningen. At the sight of her Augustine flushed blackly and stopped in his tracks on the threshold; but Dr. Reinhold bowed with empressement, whereon she waved a long cigarette-holder and smiled invitingly. Augustine tugged at Reinhold's sleeve and said “
No!
”

“No? Too small game for you?” Augustine left it at that and they beat a retreat. “Come, these places are no good: I'll take you to Katty's.” So they turned down the Türkenstrasse, and halted outside a little boîte where the sign was a red bulldog baring his teeth. “‘Simplicissimus,'” said Reinhold. “With luck we'll find old T. T. Heine here, and Gulbransson.”

“Who are they?” asked Augustine.

“Look!” said Reinhold, nettled: “What living artists
have
you heard of?” He paused on the doorstep.

“John,” said Augustine. He hesitated for more names, then added: “Sargent's no good of course; but there's Eric Kennington, I've bought one of his.”

“But apart from Englishmen?”

“
Foreign
artists? Mind you, I genuinely liked some of the settings for the Russian Ballet,” he admitted.

“Derain and Picasso you mean? ‘The Three-Cornered Hat'? But have you seen any of their real work—or Matisse? Van Gogh? Cézanne?”

“N-n-no ... but do I really want to? Isn't that lot all a bit ... ?”

Reinhold groaned. Then he tilted his chin, and called—apparently into the sky: “Come down, Jacinto, and have a drink with us horrible Philistines! Help us to wash out our sins.”

Augustine looked up. At the top of a tall lamp-post, squatting cross-legged on the very lamp itself and in spite of the weather dressed only in vest and running-shorts, was a dark young man who looked like a prentice yogi. But the yogi up there only shook his head slightly, finger to lips. From the first-floor window beside him came the rhythmic sound of a burgher's Sunday siesta.

“Jacinto's a young Brazilian sculptor of distinct promise,” said Reinhold. “He's also a first-class professional runner: he lives for his art but runs for his living.” He regarded the silent, immovable figure up there with interest: “Moreover he would now appear to be cultivating a connoisseurship in snoring.”

“In
snoring
?”

“Precisely. Doubtless he sprints from superlative snorer to snorer all over the city—I bet he's just finished his rounds.—Come down!” he shouted again. “You'll catch cold!” The solo ended abruptly and the agile young man slid to the ground and joined them. “Tell me,” asked Reinhold anxiously. “Is it possible to translate the essential rhythms of a snore like that into marble?”

For answer Jacinto made a rapid and complex series of movements in the air with his hands, then dropped them to his sides helplessly.

“I was afraid not,” said Reinhold sadly, and the trio moved inside.

Reinhold ushered them into a tiny room too dark to see anything at first, and where the only sounds were the unmistakable sounds of drinking. When their eyes got used to it the two famous cartoonists (Gulbransson and Heine) turned out to be absent, but there were other celebrities here: “That,” said Reinhold behind his hand, “is no less than Ringelnatz!—Servus, Joachim!” he called. “Join us, my treasure!” The sailor-poet was drunk already and joined them with difficulty. “And that,” said Reinhold indicating the Jew in the corner, “is Tucholsky himself.”

“Don't catch his eye!” hissed Jacinto through chattering teeth. “I dislike him.”

“So? All the same, Kurt's a brilliant writer and our young English friend here ...”

“If Tucholsky joins you I go!” said Jacinto with such finality that Reinhold gave in, ordering beer for only the four of them. “‘Our young English friend here!'” quoted Jacinto and examined Augustine owlishly. “Can you run?” he asked with a note of anxiety.

“Yes ... no, I mean not like you can.”

“What a relief! Then I needn't challenge you when I'd far rather get drunk.”

Meanwhile Ringelnatz was clumsily trying to cover his mug with a large slab of cheese: “... keep out the goblins,” he muttered. But the cheese fell into the beer and then when he tried to drink got in the way of his nose, so he burst into tears.

“If you don't run what
do
you do?” Jacinto pursued. “I mean, for a living?”

“He snores,” said Reinhold wickedly. “London theatrical managers employ him to snore off-stage when it's needed in plays.”

But Jacinto was not to be deceived: “Impossible! He hasn't the nose.”

“Nose?” broke in Ringelnatz angrily. “Who's talking of noses?”
His
nose was a large one and he never liked noses discussed; but especially now when his own was dripping with beer.

Presently Ringelnatz wandered out to the back, and when he returned he had borrowed Katty Kobus's own dressing-gown to wrap round the shivering Jacinto. But Jacinto was oblivious of the kindness, for the talk had got onto Aesthetic and Jacinto had gone like a person possessed. Reinhold was delighting in the scrimmage he had managed to stir up between Augustine and Jacinto: he kept himself in the background but from a safe distance was egging on both and sniping at both.

In any such argument with an Augustine Jacinto was at several advantages. To begin with, the Brazilian could talk with his hands (which the subject required): his hands served Jacinto as slides serve a lecturer, he drew so fast in the air the whole line seemed simultaneously there. Second came something always essential for absolute clarity of thought: he had read almost everything which agreed with his theories and nothing whatever which didn't, whereas Augustine's notions were merely an unorganized ten-year deposit from many conflicting sources. And third, most important of all, was his passion: hearing and seeing him talk you realized that verily “Significant Form” was for Jacinto almost what the Cross of Christ Crucified was for St. Paul.

Augustine admitted at once that
of course
there was more in Art than mere imitation: there was a something ...“like the wipe-round with garlic essential to a good bowl of salad?” Reinhold suggested ... but it staggered Augustine when Jacinto allowed in Art no role for imitation at all. “But you can't make a salad out of
only
that wipe-round with garlic,” Augustine argued. Jacinto however took all Augustine's representational notions and tore them to shreds. He lashed into Augustine as Paul lashed into the Galatians (those two-timing Gentile Christians who hankered after obedience to Mosaic injunctions “as well”). Once you discover Significant Form (said Jacinto) and know this alone is what matters you must “stand fast in that liberty” (as Paul told the Galatians), and never be entangled again with the representational yoke. “Significant Form ...”

“‘The contemplation of beautiful objects,'” Reinhold quoted: “The first of the only two valid rules of conduct, according to your own Moore's ‘Principia Ethica'—the bible of Bloomsbury, Augustine! Have you read it?”

“... is the sole meaning of things,” Jacinto pursued, “without which the universe were a kind of visual gibberish ...” And so on, and so on. Jacinto had a fourth advantage in argument: Augustine listened, and so was pervious to conviction however unwilling, but Jacinto listened to no one.

By now, moreover, Jacinto had also a fifth advantage: the powerful nature of Munich beer. Ringelnatz of course had a start, but now Augustine was becoming inarticulate too.

Ringelmatz had long been beyond interfering—beyond listening even. Just now when Augustine had emptied his pockets to pay for a round he had inadvertently left on the table his last-year's rover-ticket for Lords, and this circle of cardboard so beautifully printed in gold had fascinated Ringelnatz: indeed he admired it so much that presently he spread it with mustard: later he had added a slice of salami and topped it with beer-washed cheese and now he was munching it, his thoughts far away on Parnassus.

Though Augustine liked drinking he hated getting too drunk (something associated with mindless hearties at Oxford). But tonight, being too deeply absorbed in the argument to notice how much he was drinking, it caught him unawares. The first he knew of it was a roaring in his ears that had nothing to do with Jacinto and the coldness of sweat on his forehead: then the slapping beer in his stomach seemed almost to top his esophagus ... Augustine had drunk a little too much that first night at Lorienburg but this was something more dire; for the room was losing its equilibrium and even its shape, it resolved into separate revolving planes if he didn't prevent it and only by Herculean efforts could he hold it together and upright.

Augustine had no ears now for Jacinto: every effort had to be concentrated on keeping control or the ceiling lost its balance and swooped, while the menacing floor hung over his head by a thread ...

“Significant F-form ...” That's the thing: hold on to Significant Fff ... Fff ...

So he held on, as long as he could: then slid to the floor.

Never in his life before had Augustine been so drunk. Even two days later when (on his way back to Lorienburg) he pondered this ignominious ending of his visit to Munich he could still recall nothing, from the moment of losing his desperate struggle to keep Space loyal to Euclid, till he woke in his bed at the flat and found it was Monday and midday. He was wearing pajamas, so
someone
had undressed him and put him to bed ... it was utterly shaming to think that this must have been Reinhold.

Lord, too, what a head he had had! When he first sat up his skull had come apart like a badly-cracked cup in the hands of a housemaid. At that awful moment of waking he had thanked heaven that Reinhold by now would be out for the day; for how could he ever face Reinhold again, he had wondered (yet when Reinhold did come home in the evening he had been wonderfully decent about it). What a way to repay Reinhold's kindness ... what must his host think of him ... what a FOOL he had been!

After drinking a quart from the water-jug and splashing his face with the rest Augustine had felt better, and dressed. Then he went for a walk, crossing the square into the Hofgarten, under the arcade. It was there, in the frosty air of the Gardens, that he first realized the momentous thing which had happened to him under the shock of the alcohol: that in spite of his headache his mind was unprecedentedly clear—
and clear because it was empty!

Even now in the train next day Augustine was still enjoying the pristine freshness of that new empty-headedness; for all those old outworn ideas which had cluttered his mind for so long had been swept away in a kind of spring-cleaning—he had been brain-washed in beer (“Good Gracious!” he thought. “Perhaps then one
ought
to get drunk every two or three years to get rid of the rubbish!”).

The result of the riddance was that two things alone stood out clear in his mind, now; and one was the image of Mitzi, washed free of any last trace of hesitation or doubt. “Heavens!” he had thought in the Gardens. “What on earth am I doing in Munich when I ought to be back at her side? How can I bear to stay away from her one minute longer? Indeed, why on earth did I ever come away to Munich at all?” He must go back to Lorienburg at once and claim her at once.

But beside Mitzi's image stood now one other idea, and that was “Significant Form.” In this respect, how describe what had happened to him? In spite of himself that Gospel phrase “being born again in the Spirit” occurred to him; for though Heaven forbid all this should be concerned with religion, still that done-away-with clutter had indeed been replaced by one single overwhelming idea: the concept of “Significant Form” as an immanence in the perceived which the painter's eye can uncover. A
physical
immanence mind you; for though this transcended the merely physicist's-real it was still a wholly physical kind of super-reality. “I mean,” thought Augustine, “it isn't the philosophers or the scientists any more than the saints who have discovered the meaning of the universe, it's the painters! That ‘meaning' is something that can't be intellectually expressed, it's something essentially visual.”