Foreign travel in John’s company was apt to be a humiliating experience. Not only did he learn to speak a new language in an incredibly short time and in a manner indistinguishable from that of the native; he was also amazingly quick at learning foreign customs and intuiting foreign attitudes of mind. Consequently, even in countries with which I was familiar I found myself outclassed by my companion within a few days after his arrival.
When it was a case of learning a language entirely new to him, John simply read through a grammar and a dictionary, took concentrated courses of pronunciation from one or two natives or from gramophone records, and proceeded to the country. At this stage he would be regarded by natives as a native child who had been in foreign parts for some time and had lost touch somewhat with his own speech. At the end of a week or so, in the case of most European languages, no one would suspect that he had ever been out of the country. Later in his career, when his travels took him farther afield, he reckoned that even an Eastern language, such as Japanese, could be thoroughly mastered in a fortnight from his landing in the country.
Travelling with John on the European Continent I often asked myself why I allowed this strange being to hold me perpetually as his slave. I had much time for thought, for John was as often as not away hunting some writer or scientist or priest, some politician or popular agitator. Or else he was getting in touch with the workers by travelling in third or fourth class railway carriages, or talking to navvies. While he was thus engaged he often preferred to be without me. Every now and then, however, I was needed to act the part of guardian or travelling tutor. Sometimes, when John was particularly anxious to avoid giving any suggestion of his unique superiority, he would coach me carefully before the interview, priming me with questions to ask and observations to make.
On one occasion, for instance, he persuaded me to take him to an eminent psychiatrist. John himself played the part of a backward and neurotic child while I discussed his case with the professional man. This interview led to a course of treatment for John, and occasional meetings between the psychiatrist and myself to discuss progress. The poor man remained throughout ignorant that his small patient, seemingly so absorbed in his own crazy fantasies, was all the while experimenting on the physician, and that my own intelligent, though often provoking, questions had all originated in the mind of the patient himself.
Why did I let John use me thus? Why did I allow him to occupy so much of my time and attention, and to interfere so seriously with my career as a journalist? It could hardly be said that he was lovable. Of course, he was unique material for the journalist or the biographer, and I had already decided that some day I would tell the world all that I knew of him. But it is clear that even at this early stage the unfledged spirit of John exercised over me a fascination more subtle than that of novelty. I think I felt already that he was groping towards some kind of spiritual re-orientation which would put the whole of existence in a new light. And I hoped that I myself should catch some gleam of this illumination. Not till much later did I realize that his vision was essentially beyond the range of normal human minds.
For the present the only kind of illumination which came to John was apparently a devastating conviction of the futility of the normal species. To this discovery he reacted sometimes with mere contempt, sometimes with horror at the doom which awaited the human world, and with terror at his own entanglement in it. But on other occasions his mood was com passion, and on others again sardonic delight, and yet on others delight of a more serene kind in which compassion and horror and grim relish were strangely transmuted.
CHAPTER X
THE WORLD’S PLIGHT
I SHALL now try to give some idea of John’s reactions to our world by setting down, more or less at random, some of his comments on individuals and types, institutions and movements, which he studied during this period.
Let us begin with the psychiatrist. John’s verdict on this eminent manipulator of minds seemed to me to show both his contempt for Homo sapiens and his sympathetic appreciation of the difficulties of beings that are neither sheer animal nor fully human.
After our last visit to the consulting-room, indeed before the door was closed behind us, John indulged in a long chuckling laugh that reminded me of the cry of a startled grouse. “Poor devil!” he cried. “What else could he do anyhow? He’s got to seem wise at all costs, even when he’s absolutely blank. He’s in the same fix as a successful medium. He’s not just a quack. There’s a lot of real sound stuff in his trade. No doubt when he’s dealing with straightforward cases of a fairly low mental order, with troubles that are at bottom primitive, he fixes them up all right. But even then he doesn’t really know what he’s doing or how he gets his cures. Of course, he has his theories, and they’re damned useful, too. He gives the wretched patient doses of twaddle, as a doctor might give bread pills, and the poor fool laps it all up and feels hopeful and manages to cure himself. But when another sort of case comes along, who is living habitually on a mental storey about six floors above our friend’s own snug little flat, so to speak, there must be a glorious fiasco. How can a mind of his calibre possibly understand a mind that’s at all aware of the really human things? I don’t mean the highbrow things. I mean subtle human contacts, and world-contacts. He is a sort of highbrow, with his modern pictures and his books on the unconscious. But he’s not human in the full sense, even according to the standards of Homo sapiens. He’s not really grown up. And so, though he doesn’t know it, the poor man is all at sea when he comes up against really grown-up people. For instance, in spite of his modern pictures, he hasn’t a notion what art is after, though he thinks he has. And he knows less of philosophy, real philosophy, than an ostrich knows about the upper air. You can’t blame him. His wings just wouldn’t carry his big fleshy pedestrian mind. But that’s no reason why he should make matters worse by burying his head in the sand and kidding himself he sees the foundations of human nature. When a really winged case comes along, with all sorts of troubles due to not giving his wings exercise, our friend hasn’t the slightest perception what’s the matter. He says in effect, ‘Wings? What’s wings? Just flapdoodle. Look at mine. Get ’em atrophied as quick as possible, and bury your head in the sand to make sure.’ In fact he puts the patients into a sort of coma of the spirit. If it lasts, he’s permanently “cured,” poor man, and completely worthless. Often it does last, because your psychiatrist is an extremely good suggestionist. He could turn a saint into a satyr by mere sleight of mind. God! Think of a civilization that hands over the cure of souls to toughs like that! Of course, you can’t blame him. He’s a decent sort on his own plane, and doing his bit. But it’s no use expecting a vet to mend a fallen angel.”