She almost succeeded. First, there was the shock of the drug: the intoxication with an oceanic unconscious, in which a riot of the senses alone subsists, stuns like a flash of lightning, and it takes all one’s will power to resist its dazzle. And then, this vertiginous absence meant total oblivion, and oblivion of Sylva first of all. I never thought nor dreamed of her a single time during that long illumination. And finally, the vacuum thus created cried out to be filled, and I imagined myself gorged with one love only—for Dorothy; for in my rapt state I confused the passing infatuation in which she engulfed me in her wake with a genuine passion.
Fortunately, this period during which we abandoned ourselves to our self-destructive fury—a period which, in my muddled memory, seems without beginning or end—did not actually last very long. A few days at most. We woke up from it for some quite earthly but forceful reasons; namely, that one cannot live without food or drink. As if in a half-sleep I recall Dorothy opening tins of sardines or pineapple—but such stopgaps cannot suffice in the long run. So if only to buy food or to cook it, we necessarily had to resume, now and then, a less overwrought, less radiantly befuddled life, and emerge into normal consciousness. For Dorothy, undermined by long intoxication, these periods of even very brief abstinence were a painful ordeal through which she hurried blindly until she could take the plunge into the drug and nepenthe. As for me who was still intact, those awakenings meant a coldly recording clear-sightedness: the stained divan, the dirty carpet, a foul-smelling disorder, not only in the room but about Dorothy herself, slouching wearily about in trodden-down slippers, unwashed, uncombed, heavy-lidded, and with flaccid, swollen lips.
At the same time I gradually became aware of the key fact of her life. I had wondered, at rare moments, what she was living on, since she no longer worked (and it seemed improbable to me that Dr. Sullivan could or would encourage her situation with financial support). The answer could be found upstairs, in the room with the blue and green striped wallpaper. I realized the part the dark-haired woman must have been playing in Dorothy’s life for a long time. She was the one who had found her the flat below her own, and she too had since been supplying her, perhaps with money, but certainly with drugs.
The first time I saw this woman clearly, I mean without being dazed with drugs myself, I was struck by her rather hideous beauty. She could not have been much older than Dorothy and I had firsthand knowledge of the slender youthfulness of her body; but her face was a field of ruins. I have never again seen such a face and I trembled at the idea that it prefigured what Dorothy would look like in a few years’ time. Not that the wrinkles that lined it were particularly deep, but they were flabby and shifting. As if a colony of worms had settled under the mortified skin. She was called Viola. I presume, from her Southern accent, that she came from Malta, Cyprus or Egypt. Perhaps she was a Copt. She worked in a film studio and came home around teatime, when Dorothy would make tea between two doses of the drug.
When we met again in a more or less normal state, she gave me a look of connivance above her full cup, a salacious wink which would have been enough to make me understand, had I not guessed it already, that I was a mere extra, an instrument of pleasure, that she tolerated my presence near Dorothy for this reason only, just as she must have tolerated a good many other lovers before me. The overheavy teapot having almost slipped out of Dorothy’s hands, I caught it by its long, banana-shaped spout.
“Fie, fie,” said Viola, with a ribald smirk, “what manners!” And stroking my cheek, she added: “But if that’s what you fancy, we’ll get you suited—the more, the merrier.” Whereupon Dorothy gave a nervous burst of laughter and tousled my hair.
Had I been in a completely normal state I believe that so much vulgarity and Dorothy’s laughter would have promptly driven me out of that room forever. But the powder box was, as usual, lying about on the table like a simple salt cellar, and indeed everybody helped himself almost absent-mindedly, as if to a pinch of salt, thus sustaining a blissful torpor in anticipation of more violent exploits. So that I too, I am afraid, gave a cowardly snicker in answer to Viola’s obscenities, and the one I have reported is just a specimen. All the same, her filth left an indelibly nauseous imprint on my mind, and heightened my disgust. Whereas Dorothy’s spineless submissiveness, the same no doubt that she had shown to her infamous husband, and for similar reasons, gradually made me lose all hope of ever being able to wrest her away. Perhaps it made me also lose all desire for her—and well before I even realized it.
In point of fact, I believe I soon realized (though maybe only confusedly at first) that the choice was no longer the one I had foreseen. It no longer lay in the pressing alternative of saving Dorothy or abandoning her, but in the no less pressing one of abandoning her or being shipwrecked with her. I continue to think, though, that she loved me—with the love of a praying mantis; only she too realized very soon that I would prove recalcitrant and not allow her to suck my brains. At all events, the frenzied ardor she showed in those first days, when I did not resist the drive to drag me down, was lazily abandoned as soon as she felt me draw back—or at least so I imagined. Why else did she begin to treat me with sly indignity—if the term still means anything in this context?
I well remember the last slights. Returning from one of the brief strolls I took to ventilate my mind as well as my lungs, like a frog coming up for air, I found the door closed. I mounted the stairs and there indeed were the two women, almost comatose, gorged with drugs. Dorothy raised a languid hand to show the powder box, clearly meaning: “Help yourself if you care to.” She could not have informed me more openly that I was merely being tolerated.
I left them and stayed away for two days. Dorothy called me upon the second evening. “What’s the matter? Please come!” When I arrived, she wept. It was a spark of hope and I thought my time had come. I implored her to leave this room, this house, and settle at the hotel with me. She did not answer but her tears had dried. She threw herself back on the bed and remained motionless for a long time, looking up at the ceiling. I did not speak either. I was waiting. At last she murmured, still without moving, “Come back tomorrow.” I left the room wordlessly and she let me go.
The next day was a Sunday. When I walked into the room, the other woman was there. I turned on my heels, but she caught my arm, made me sit down by force. “Come on! Come on!” she said, sitting down opposite me. “Let’s have it out.”
Dorothy was sprawling on an armchair, munching her Turkish delight. She avoided my eyes.
For a few seconds, Viola observed each of us in turn, her eyes screwed up ironically. “Well?” she said. “A lover’s quarrel?” She must have seen me stiffen and went on in a less mocking tone: “Why do you complicate things? We were getting on so well, the three of us. Wouldn’t I have more reason than you to show jealousy? Everything would be all right if you’d do your bit. But don’t imagine that I’ll ever give up this adorable kitten—to anyone. You may as well give up hope. She is attached to me, and faithful too, like a kitten. Aren’t you, my little puss?” She held out one arm and Dorothy, letting herself slide down from the armchair, came and squatted at her knees, laid her cheek on one thigh, and from there gazed at me with placid eyes.