Thus the conscious, that which is supposed to be on top and in sight — the obvious; and the subconscious, that which is hidden and of which we are not often aware — the unknown and menacing. They have their own geography, not the normal top-and-bottom Freudian kind that I might have learned to live with if I had not been born to search after my own truth, but a more complicated, geopsychic flux of forces, of a globe whose maps show a constantly shifting tectonic surface.
This chart of the soul indicates that the ultimate truth will never show itself, no matter how long the search goes on. To penetrate one subconscious is difficult, but to cut a way into two is not feasible. One moment they help each other, the next minute they compete and intermix, hinder and pull apart.
The double meeting of ice and heat generate their own phosphorescence, a forked illumination from two batteries, twin sources of power. Though one light makes for clarity, two create confusion. They cross-dazzle and blind, and closing the eyes in order to escape it only sends you back into the dark, in which the heat fights the cold in an eternal battle of opposites.
From this prism of the soul grows understanding. This system of the conscious and the subconscious increases confusion. There is a purpose in everything. It is either an excuse for not being able to get at the truth, or it is done in the belief that truth can only be pulled from chaos, not from the false truths already in existence. Having a subconscious in the ice of the northern pole, and another in the intense heat of the Equator, I am able to draw on more than one consciousness, and be fed by more than one subconscious. One hemisphere of the conscious-subconscious is inhabited by the Sillitoe ethos, and the second contains that of the Burtons. The devils of both fight the angels of both.
This might be sure proof of madness — if I believed in madness, which I do not. It is said that someone who is mad has so many souls in the greater soul that he is unable to control them properly. They heave and push, like the hemispheres closing in, and one soul hasn’t the knack of playing off the other as it has in a person who can contain them.
The circle never breaks. It explodes from time to time and takes us forward, but constantly reforms. Chaos is the source of life and richness. Order is not possible without chaos. It is the combustible charge that energizes the arteries of the mind. Through such raw material one can travel back to anyone and any condition, and forward without fear into another chaos, to touch the heat of more raw material for a moment before returning laden with this loot of the spirit.
One must do it without fear, and to get rid of fear one needs to find the truth. The nearer we get to the truth, the further away it is. Like trying to reach the most distant star of the universe, there will always be another beyond it. Our fingertips are not made of the right stuff to touch the end of all experience, nor our wide-open eyes to see it. We can only put forward stepping stones to extend the limits of our understanding into as many colours and complexities as it will take without being crushed in on itself, set a compass towards infinity, but not into it; go in the pursuit of truth but never get close enough to touch it.
61
I sit and write at a somewhat unstable table with one of Burton’s horseshoes in front of me, and Edgar’s open-faced Gommecourt watch to keep the time. The third and small hand on the dial of it pushes the seconds behind as it hurries on an endless donkey-like journey into the future. There’s no doubt about the truth of that.
The table is old and rickety, found in the garage among lots of rubbish abandoned by the last people who lived here, but I like its large rough surface on which I spread notebooks and papers, ashtray, inkwell, and bric-à-brac lavishly. It is dangerously active with splinters, but I can spill ink over it with impunity, and it stretches the whole length of the double window, to face trees and bushes beyond.
It is inevitable that I should wind back to my workroom in a quiet country house — not always silent when a gale blows as if to bump it flat. To spend the time while trying to write I have my playthings of gramophone and tape-recorder. On another table is a high-powered black and magic box of a wireless receiver that weighs 60 kilos and can barely be carried from the removal van at each change of house. An ex-service communications set, it brings in wonderfully clear and amplified morse so that I listen to wireless-telegraph stations, and write down telegrams from ships to see if any information suggests a story or poem.
It never does, of course, though it is a relaxing pastime. A 100-foot wire running up the side of the house and across the garden to a tree helps me to hear Peking or Australia, Japan or the Voice of Zion from Jerusalem — loud and clear — giving the illusion of being in touch with the world.
The mechanical effect of taking morse at telegraphic speed persuades me I could still be useful as a radio-operator. Even though trained for it over twenty years ago I read it as fast and accurately as ever. Perhaps I come from families where economy of sweat and effort was paramount, and nothing taken in as a trade or job should be wasted, because it might one day come in handy and show its value again. However it was, the basic morse rhythms never left my brain, and I don’t suppose they will, having been programmed on to it. The symbols for certain letters being absolute facts, maybe I am attracted by it for this reason. The alphabet has a sound rhythm, a drumbeat construction as it cuts through the ether and forces my brain to change it into words, makes my hand decipher it like a form of magic, which it is though, as with all magic, it is only the result of prolonged learning. At dusk, when birds send out territorial and mating calls, I hear their sounds as more signals. Each bird has its own set letter of the alphabet going like a superheterodyne spark among the long shadows.
After nightfall and the curtains are drawn I can switch on and listen to Mendelsohn or Prokofiev, Mozart or Shostakovitch or Elgar, or the rich and sombre voice of Chaliapin singing his peasant songs and arias. There is also a record given to me in Russia, with Tolstoy reading a few paragraphs of War and Peace, and Yesenin and Mayakovsky reciting their poems, and Maxim Gorki giving a speech. Though I only understand a few words, their spirits fill the room.
A small rack of treasured and personal books includes a copy of the Bible given to me before the assembled school for ‘proficiency in Biblical knowledge’. I was embarrassed at having to go up and get it, but it is a volume with a fine soft leather cover which I always have with me. Years ago I tore out the New Testament and threw it away, so that only the Masoretic text remains. I have read the old books several times, and prefer their poetry to the propaganda of the Christian part, leave myself with a thousand pages of great verse, from the awesome openings of Genesis to the ultimate words of the Prophets, an exaltation of life to comfort me through all existences.
Other titles in my bookcase of specialities are dictionaries by Skeat and Halliwell, Isaac Taylor and Bardsley; as well as Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and a couple of works on the history and topography of my home county. The dozen or so publications of my own I keep well away, not because I have anything against them, but I don’t want to be reminded of their existence while I’m writing something new, so that I can treat each book in progress as if it’s my first novel.