“May I write to you, madam? A literary collaboration is perhaps best prosecuted by letter.”
“Yes.”
“Your address?”
“I don’t know — I am moving elsewhere, I don’t know where yet. I have many arrangements to make. Leave your letters with the management here. I will find a way to collect them.”
I said, “Good,” and achieved a smile. She arose, came to my side and hesitated. I signalled by a small headshake that condescension would be unwelcome. She turned and hurried out. I sat perfectly still, attending to the beaks of the vultures tearing at my liver. They had never felt so sharp. The manageress came over and asked if I felt well? I grinned at her and nodded repeatedly until she went away.
After that I waited. I could do almost nothing else. Study was impossible, sleep difficult. I addressed to her a parcel of worknotes for Prometheus Unbound and it lay on the zinc beside the till, but I was always sitting nearby for I wanted not to leave the only place where I might see her again. I waited a day, a week, three weeks. I was dozing over my book and glass one afternoon when I grew conscious of her talking to the manageress. She seemed to have been doing it for some time. They frowned, nodded, glanced towards me, shrugged and smiled. I was very confused and prayed God that when she sat facing me I would be calm and firm. She patted the manageress’s arm and walked straight out through the door. I screamed her name, scrambled down from the chair, charged into the crowded street and ran screaming to the right, banging against knees, treading on feet and sometimes trodden on. Not seeing her I turned and ran to the left. As I passed the café door I was seized and lifted, yes, lifted up by one who held her face to mine so that our noses touched, and whispered, “Mister Pollard, this conduct does you no good. I have a letter.”
I became very icy and hissed, “Put me down, madam.”
I should have asked to be taken home. I could suddenly hardly walk. I got to my table and opened the letter, noticing that my parcel lay uncollected beside the till.
My dear friend,
I no longer wish to be a poet. It requires an obsessional balancing of tiny phrases and meanings, an immersion in language which seems to me a kind of cowardice. As a man and poet I can respect you but only because you are also a dwarf. For people of ordinary health and height, with a clear view of the world and a wish to do well, it is a waste of time making signboards pointing to the good and bad things in life. If we do not personally struggle towards good and fight the bad, people will merely praise or denounce our signs and go on living as usual. I must make my own life the book where people read what I believe. I decided this years ago when I became a socialist, but I still grasped, like a cuddly toy, my wish to be a poet. That wish came from the dwarfish part of me, the frightened lonely child who hoped that a DECLARATION would bring the love of mother earth, the respect of daddy god, the admiration of the million sisters and brothers who normally do not care if I live or die. Your critical letter had an effect you did not intend. It showed me that my declarations are futile. It has taken a while for the message to sink in. I am grateful to you, but also very bitter. I cannot be completely logical.
My sweet, you are the cleverest, most deluded man I ever met. Rewriting PROMETHEUS UNBOUND is like rewriting GENESIS, it can be done but who needs it? It is just another effort to put good wine in a filthy old bottle. I was touched when you poured over me your adolescent enthusiasm for ancient Athens but I also wanted to laugh or vomit. I am educated. I have been to Greece. I have stood on the Acropolis facing the Erichtheon and can tell you that Greece represents:
men against women
war against peace
business ” play
intellect ” emotions
authority ” anarchy
hierarchy ” equality
discipline ” sensuality
property-inheritance ” sexuality
patriarchy ” everything
Yet you see civilization as an unfinished story the Athenians started and which a few well-chosen words will help to a satisfactory finish! You are wrong. The best state in the world was that primitive matriarchy which the Athenians were foremost in dismantling. Men were happy and peaceful when women ruled them, but so naturally wicked that they turned our greatest strength (motherhood) into weakness by taking advantage of it and enslaving us. Men have made hell of the world ever since and are now prepared to destroy all life in it rather than admit they are wrong. Masculine foresight cannot help our civilization because it is travelling backward. Even our enemies realize this. In the last fifty years they have driven us to the brink of the dark age. The rational Greek foundation of things has been unbuilt, unlearned. And you did not notice! My poor dwarf, you are the last nineteenth-century romantic liberal. That is why a corrupt government wishes to make you a national institution.
Which brings me, beloved, to what you really want from me: cunt. In your eyes it probably looks like an entrance to the human race. Believe me, you are human enough without. No good was ever done by those who thought sexual pleasure a goal in life. I speak from experience. I divorced a perfectly nice husband who could only give me that stultifying happiness, that delicious security which leads to nothing but more of itself. But if you require that delight you can have it by merely relaxing. As a national institution — a blend of tribal totempole and pampered baby — you are ringed by admirers you have so far had the sense and courage to ignore. Weaken, enjoy your fame and get all the breasts you want: except mine. When I first spoke to you I accused you of impersonating a dead man. That was jealousy speaking. I admired you then and I regret I unhinged you so easily. I did not want to do that. I love you, but in a way you cannot perceive and I cannot enjoy. So I also hate you.
I am a monster. The cutting words I write cut my heart too. I am under unusual strain. I am about to do something difficult and big which, if discovered, will end my freedom forever. My friends will think me insane, an unstable element, a traitor if they learn I have told you this. But you love me and deserve to know what I am leaving you for, and I do trust you, my teacher, my liberator. Adieu.
Is printing the above letter for the world to read a betrayal of her trust? Is a secret police computer, as a result of this story, stamping the card of every female, blonde, brown-eyed, snub-nosed poet with a number which means suspect political crime investigate? No. This story is a poem, a wordgame. I am not a highly literate French dwarf, my lost woman is not a revolutionary writer manqué, my details are fictions, only my meaning is true and I must make that meaning clear by playing the wordgame to the bitter end.
Having read the letter I sat holding it, feeling paralysed, staring at the words until they seemed dark stains on a white surface like THIS one, like THIS one. I was broken. She had made me unable to bear loneliness. And though we had only met twice I had shown the world that women could approach me. I sat at the table, drinking, I suppose, and in the evening a girl sat opposite and asked what I thought of de Gaulle’s latest speech? I asked her to inform me of it. Later we were joined by another girl and a young man, students, all of them. It seemed we were on the brink of revolution. I ordered wine. Said the young man, “Tomorrow we will not protest, we will occupy!”