After the restaurant closed they spent the remainder of the evening in Tyrconnel’s lodgings. Dowson lay on the rug in front of the fireplace, Tyrconnel sprawled across the divan, and Johnson sat at the writing table. The more he drank, the more monkish his appearance and manner became. The facial features of the other two seemed to blur — his had grown sharper, as in death.
Tyrconnel turned off the light and they sat like damned souls in the eerie flickering light of a tall candle, deep into the night. They all had the feeling that something was coming to an end, something truly sublime, now beyond all helping.
“Only they are happy,” murmured Tyrconnel, “who, like Cuchulain, come across the Invisible People dancing in the moonlight and lie entranced in a clearing in a great wood, somewhere far, far away…”
“With the help of a little opium, perhaps,” Dowson interjected.
“Most probably. Even I think that now,” Tyrconnel replied. “I used to think I had no need for such chemical and scientific aids to free my soul from time and place. For example, I have those Kabbalistic cards…”
“Tell me, Tyrconnel,” Johnson suddenly asked. “Have you ever actually tried them?”
Tyrconnel replied rather shamefacedly that he hadn’t.
“Then why don’t we try them now?” Johnson returned, rising to his feet. There was a strange excitement in his voice. “I know the Church rigorously condemns the use of magic, but it does to some extent condone the Christian Kabbalah — because it can’t be used to conjure up the devil, or those evil spirits who bring mortal souls into danger. So where are these cards, then?”
With some hesitation Tyrconnel drew them from the leather cases in which they had been silently skulking.
“So, what do you do with them?” asked Dowson, as in a dream.
“Everyone picks a card, takes it home and studies it. The diagram or symbol shown on it will inspire a vision that holds the hidden solution… at least, according to George Russell. I won’t presume to guarantee that this will happen. But if we really are going to put it to the test, let’s each take the same symbol. Then, according to Russell, we should all see the same vision. Tomorrow we can report back to one another, or we could all three of us work our revelations up into separate poems. It’d be interesting to see how they differed.”
“To hell with the individual differences,” said Johnson. “Give us the cards, and let’s be off. It’ll put an end to this very long night.”
“Look, here are four identical cards, for example, all number eights, with a full moon, signifying Love. Here are three with the symbol for Marriage. And three with the Death symbol. Which one shall we choose?”
“Why not Love?” said Dowson.
“Why not Death?” said Johnson. “It’s the one most in fashion these days.”
Johnson and Dowson went home, each with a card in a leather case in his pocket.
After they had gone, Tyrconnel stayed up. His level of fatigue and inebriation had reached the point where a man no longer feels tired and for a while his brain remains clear and sober. He aired the room, tidied it up, then leafed through a Dublin periodical. From time to time he heaved a great sigh. Life, he felt, was utterly incomprehensible.
He decided he really should get to bed. As he was taking off his coat he came upon the leather card case, whose existence he had completely forgotten. It bore the number nine, and a Hebrew letter whose name he did not know. “Obviously the letter for Death,” he thought.
“Should I really look at it?” he wondered. “I suppose I have to, since we all three said we would.” In that instant he realised that it was something more than mere indifference that had made him leave it where it was. Some other feeling was at work in him, a kind of fear… Perhaps, after all…
Wanting to defer the moment, he started to cut the pages of the French novel he intended to read in bed the next morning. He was barely halfway through when he suddenly received what was effectively an order — that he look at the card. He leapt up and dashed across to the candle.
He took the card out of its leather case. At first his shortsighted eyes could make out nothing but the lines that made up the matrix. Then he noticed that they were starting to draw the face of a man. He leant closer, and dropped it in horror. It was the face of Lionel Johnson.
“Well, I did drink a fair amount,” he thought. “How on earth could Johnson’s face get onto the card?”
He picked it up again.
Once again his friend’s image appeared before him. But now it was not as he had seen it earlier. It had definitely changed. The features had become much sharper. Sinister shadows were forming beneath the eyes, and the jaw seemed to have sunk a little, as if all the strength had gone out of it.
He threw on his coat and hat and dashed out into the street. Luckily a cab was waiting at the corner. He shook the driver awake and gave him Johnson’s address.
Arriving, he leapt out of the cab. At that precise moment a second cab stopped at the door, and out jumped Ernest Dowson.
“You too?” Tyrconnel asked, with a frisson of horror.
Dowson nodded in affirmation. They raced up the four steps and began to hammer on the door. No response. They pummelled and kicked it, in a rising frenzy of impatience and hysteria.
The commotion produced a policeman from somewhere. Normally the streets of this well-to-do neighbourhood were completely deserted.
“And what are you up to, then?”
“We’ve come to see Mr Johnson.”
“Mr Johnson came home earlier, perhaps half-an-hour ago. If he wanted to let you gentlemen in he would already have done so. He clearly does not wish to see you. You’d better go home.”
“My God, you must help us get this door open somehow.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Something terrible has happened in there…”
The policeman considered this.
“His doorman went away this morning. Mr Johnson is there on his own. Hm… Right, let’s go.”
He fetched a crowbar and prised the door open.
They found Lionel Johnson in his bedroom. He was lying on the bed, in his dressing gown, which now looked even more like a cowl. His facial features had become much sharper, and the lower jaw had sunk slightly, as if all the strength had gone out of it. His heart had stopped.
Brain haemorrhage, the doctor decided.
1934
A DOG CALLED MADELON
Unattainable are man’s desires,
A will-o’-the-wisp, unreachable,
Delusory.
JÁNOS BÁTKY, PhD, took care to protect himself against the greyness of everyday life. As a child he even managed on occasions to convince himself that the chocolate he was eating was in fact salami. Later, he acquired a passion for cocktails. The gin in his vermouth seemed to him to embody the mighty spirit of ancient pine forests. Adding curaçao to red wine conjured up a sixteen-year-old girl — who no doubt had long since married. Women’s actual faces he forgot instantly.
“What does Jenny look like?” he was wondering, one autumn afternoon in London. The walls of the little Welsh chapel that stood before him were overrun with ivy. How wonderful it is that, in the midst of all the traffic, London churches retain that pristine air of rustic piety.
The little aphorism was quickly noted down — he was a methodical man — then his thoughts returned to Jenny. Five minutes to six. If he couldn’t remember what she looked like by then it would be a disaster. True, she usually wore dark blue, but that could not be relied on as an incontrovertible truth. Doubtless there would be something unmistakably Jennyish about her, but it would be as subtle as the difference between two varieties of tea. In the end, all women were Jennys.