7 Fingers And Fins And Wings
With Lucifer still soaring in his mind, Klein found himself cruising his bookshelves. He saw his hand go up and return with one of his own titles, Darkness and Light: the inner eye of Odilon Redon. He turned to No. 14 of the third series of lithographs illustrating Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Antony: Oannes with his serpentine body, human face, and pharaonic headdress, hovering in a blackness.
He took the French edition of Flaubert from the shelves, turned to the Oannes page, and read his translation that was inserted there:
Then appears a singular being, having the head of a man on the body of a fish. He advances upright in the air by beating the sand with his tail; and this patriarchal figure with little arms makes Antony laugh.
‘Redon’s Oannes,’ said Klein, ‘is not laughable; he is of the darkness, he is between the times of one thing and another.’ He read on:
OANNES
In a plaintive voice:
Respect me! I have been here from the very beginning. I have lived in the unformed world where hermaphrodite beasts were sleeping under the weight of an opaque atmosphere, in the depths of the dark waters — when fingers and fins and wings were mingled, and eyes without heads were floating like molluscs, among bulls with human faces and serpents with the paws of dogs.
‘Yes,’ said Klein: ‘a world of undifferentiated matter where nothing has found its final form and function and doesn’t know whether to swim or fly or walk. That’s how it is with me.’ He read on:
Over this muddle of beings, Omoroca, bent like a hoop, extended her woman’s body. But Belus cut her clean in two, made the earth with one half, the sky with the other, and the two equal worlds contemplate each other.
‘Is there a sky in me?’ said Klein, seeing Lucifer high, high above him in pinks, in greens, in greys. ‘Is there an earth?’ He read on:
I, the first consciousness of chaos, I have risen from the abyss to harden matter, to regulate forms, and I have taught humans fishing, sowing, writing and the history of the gods.
‘“Fishing, sowing, writing and the history of the gods,”’ Klein repeated, and read on:
Since then I have lived in the pools that remain from the deluge. But the desert encroaches on them, the wind fills them with sand, the sun dries them up; and I am dying on my bed of mud, looking at the stars through the water. I must return.
He leaps, and disappears in the Nile.
‘No!’ said Klein. ‘Oannes should stay and Antony should go! Poxy old Saint Antony. What did he ever teach that was any use to anyone?’ He looked again at Oannes hovering in the black. Was Oannes looking back at him? Were his eyes open or closed? So dim, his face! Klein thought of Oannes dying on a bed of mud, his pools filled in, his blackness gone, and shook his head. ‘But,’ he said, ‘but! Oannes didn’t die; his original self, his old self, his powerful self, moved into the head of Odilon Redon and compelled him to create a noir for him to live in. Oannes lives! Perhaps he will yet harden my matter, regulate my form, teach me to fish, to sow, to write. Perhaps he will teach me the history of the gods. Or something else. Are there pinks in the black? Greens and greys?’
8 Fear, Guilt, Violent Fantasies?
‘Well,’ said Mrs Lichtheim, ‘it’s now two weeks since you did the Bender and the Rorschach tests. Looking back on that session, how do you feel about it?’
‘I still see Lucifer soaring high above me in pink and grey and green.’
Mrs Lichtheim consulted her notes. ‘Days of Wrath,’ she said. ‘You said you almost heard that music while looking at the fallen angel far above you. Are you wrathful? Is there anger in you?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘Why of course?’
‘I don’t like being invisible, I don’t like being pushed off the pavement.’
‘You’re talking about now, but this anger in you, I think it goes further back than that; and it seems to me that you have to exert very strong control to keep it from bursting out.’
‘Well, you know, in seventy-two years a lot of resentments accumulate: the whole world changes, and every change I’ve seen has been for the worse. The only exception is residential parking in our street but I haven’t got a car.’
‘How do you feel about your mother?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because in you there seems to be fear of women, as well as anger and guilt.’
‘I think all men are afraid of women.’
‘But we’re talking about you.’
‘All right, I’m afraid of women. But I already know that and I’d like us to start dealing with the present problem.’ He was beginning to resent being steered by Mrs Lichtheim.
‘I think your fear of women is part of the present problem,’ she said. ‘Your inner voice is the superego; sometimes it keeps you from saying what you really think. Now it shuts down, maybe it’s tired of concealment; maybe now you are forced to hear yourself say what you really want to say. I think there are violent feelings in you, maybe violent fantasies.’ Again she looked at his folder. ‘You’re an art historian. Are you working on something now?’
‘I’m always working on something; I’m doing a study of the nudes of Gustav Klimt.’
‘Naked women.’
‘You can’t be nude without being naked.’
‘What’s the title of your study?’
‘Naked Mysteries: the Nudes of Gustav Klimt.’
‘Are naked women a mystery to you?’
‘They’re even a mystery to themselves; that’s why the Greeks celebrated those mysteries at Eleusis.’
‘Do you believe that work is the way to understand a mystery?’
‘Play won’t do it.’
‘Do you ever not work, just do nothing?’
‘When I knock off for the day around midnight I put my feet up and watch a video.’
‘You remember the first Rorshach blot, the motorcycle with a man on either side but nobody in the driver’s seat? It didn’t fall over because its forward speed maintained its equilibrium.’
‘What about it?’
‘Do you think you’ll fall over if you stop working for a week or a month?’
‘Why should I stop?’
‘Just for the pleasure of being without producing anything.’
‘I picked the wrong parents for that.’
‘How so?’
‘Jewish immigrants from Russia, hot for self-improvement and offspring achievement. I drew well from the age of five so they laid it on me that I was going to be a great painter. I didn’t produce great paintings but I write well about Art, so maybe they’re partly easy in their graves.’
‘Did you like your mother?’
‘No.’ Encouraged by Mrs Lichtheim he let himself go and talked about his mother and her faith in enemas; he talked about his father, about his school days, his first love, his army time; he talked about Francine, his first wife, and Hannelore, his second.
‘Do you fantasise about women?’ said Mrs Lichtheim.
‘Certainly; I should think that all men do.’
‘What kind of fantasies are yours?’
‘All kinds.’
‘Can you describe one?’
‘Maybe when we get to know each other better.’
Mrs Lichtheim looked at her watch. ‘This is the last time I’ll be seeing you — I haven’t got a vacancy so I’ll be referring you to another psychologist for therapy.’
‘Just when I was beginning to feel comfortable with you.’
‘I believe you’ll be comfortable with him as well.’
‘What’s his name?’