Literature, I say! But these were life itself, not a studied representation of it in a form — life itself, the flowing undivided stream of life with all its pitiable will-intoxicated memories, its pains, terrors and submissions. Here illusion and reality were fused in one single blinding vision of a perfect incorruptible passion which hung over the writer’s mind like a dark star — the star of death!
The tremendous sorrow and beauty which this man expressed so easily — the terrifying abundance of his gifts — filled me with helpless despair and joy at once. The cruelty and the richness!
It was as if the words poured from every pore in his body — execrations, groans, mixed tears of joy and despair — all welded to the fierce rapid musical notation of a language perfected by its purpose. Here at last the lovers confronted one another, stripped to the bone, stripped bare.
In this strange and frightening experience I caught a glimpse, for a moment, of the true Pursewarden — the man who had always eluded me. I thought with shame of the shabby passages in the Justine manuscript which I had devoted to him — to my image of him! I had, out of envy or unconscious jealousy, invented a Pursewarden to criticize. In everything I had written there I had accused him only of my own weaknesses — even down to completely erroneous estimates of qualities like social inferiorities which were mine, had never been his. It was only now, tracing out the lines written by that rapid unfaltering pen, that I realized that poetic or transcendental knowledge somehow cancels out purely relative knowledge, and that his black humours were simply ironies due to his enigmatic knowledge whose field of operation was above, beyond that of the relative fact-finding sort. There was no answer to the questions I had raised in very truth. He had been quite right. Blind as a mole, I had been digging about in the graveyard of relative fact piling up data, more information, and completely missing the mythopoeic reference which underlies fact.
I had called this searching for truth! Nor was there any way in which I might be instructed in the matter — save by the ironies I had found so wounding. For now I realized that his irony was really tenderness turned inside out like a glove! And seeing Pursewarden thus, for the first time, I saw that through his work he had been seeking for the very tenderness of logic itself, of the Way Things Are; not the logic of syllogism or the tidemarks of emotions, but the real essence of fact-finding, the naked truth, the Inkling … the whole pointless Joke. Yes, Joke! I woke up with a start and swore.
If two or more explanations of a single human action are as good as each other then what does action mean but an illusion — a gesture made against the misty backcloth of a reality made palpable by the delusive nature of human division merely? Had any novelist before Pursewarden considered this question? I think not.
And in brooding over these terrible letters I also suddenly stumbled upon the true meaning of my own relationship to Pursewarden, and through him to all writers. I saw, in fact, that we artists form one of those pathetic human chains which human beings form to pass buckets of water up to a fire, or to bring in a lifeboat. An uninterrupted chain of humans born to explore the inward riches of the solitary life on behalf of the unheeding unforgiving community; manacled together by the same gift.
I began to see too that the real ‘fiction’ lay neither in Arnauti’s pages nor Pursewarden’s — nor even my own. It was life itself that was a fiction — we were all saying it in our different ways, each understanding it according to his nature and gift.
It was now only that I began to see how mysteriously the configuration of my own life had taken its shape from the properties of those elements which lie outside the relative life — in the kingdom which Pursewarden calls the ‘heraldic universe’. We were three writers, I now saw, confided to a mythical city from which we were to draw our nourishment, in which we were to confirm our gifts. Arnauti, Pursewarden, Darley — like Past, Present and Future tense! And in my own life (the staunchless stream flowing from the wounded side of Time!) the three women who also arranged themselves as if to represent the moods of the great verb, Love: Melissa, Justine and Clea.
And realizing this I was suddenly afflicted by a great melancholy and despair at recognizing the completely limited nature of my own powers, hedged about as they were by the limitations of an intelligence too powerful for itself, and lacking in sheer word-magic, in propulsion, in passion, to achieve this other world of artistic fulfilment.
I had just locked those unbearable letters away and was sitting in melancholy realization of this fact when the door opened and Clea walked in, radiant and smiling. ‘Why, Darley, what are you doing sitting in the middle of the floor in that rueful attitude?
And my dear there are tears in your eyes.’ At once she was down beside me on her knees, all tenderness.
‘Tears of exasperation’ I said, and then, embracing her, ‘I have just realized that I am not an artist at all. There is not a shred of hope of my ever being one.’
‘What on earth have you been up to?’
‘Reading Pursewarden’s letters to Liza.’
‘Did you see her?’
‘Yes. Keats is writing some absurd book ——’
‘But I just ran into him. He’s back from the desert for the night.’ I struggled to my feet. It seemed to me imperative that I should find him and discover what I could about his project. ‘He spoke’ said Clea ‘about going round to Pombal’s for a bath. I expect you’ll find him there if you hurry.’ Keats! I thought to myself as I hurried down the street towards the flat; he was also to play his part in this shadowy representation, this tableau of the artist’s life. For it is always a Keats that is chosen to interpret, to drag his trail of slime over the pitiful muddled life of which the artist, with such pain, recaptures these strange solitary jewels of self-enlightenment. After those letters it seemed to me more than ever necessary that people like Keats if possible be kept away from interfering in matters beyond their normal concerns. As a journalist with a romantic story (suicide is the most romantic act for an artist) he doubtless felt himself to be in the presence of what he, in the old days, would have called ‘A stunner. A Story in a Million’. I thought that I knew my Keats — but of course once more I had completely forgotten to take into account the operations of Time, for Keats had changed as we all had, and my meeting with him turned out to be as unexpected as everything else about the city.
I had mislaid my key and had to ring for Hamid to open the door for me. Yes, he said, Mr. Keats was there, in the bath. I traversed the corridor and tapped at the door behind which came the sound of rushing water and a cheerful whistling. ‘By God, Darley, how splendid’ he shouted in answer to my call. ‘Come in while I dry. I heard you were back.’ Under the shower stood a Greek god! I was so surprised at the transformation that I sat down abruptly on the lavatory and studied this … apparition. Keats was burnt almost black, and his hair had bleached white. Though slimmer, he looked in firstclass physical condition. The brown skin and ashen hair had made his twinkling eyes bluer than ever. He bore absolutely no resemblance to my memories of him! ‘I just sneaked off for the night’ he said, speaking in a new rapid and confident voice. ‘I’m developing one of those blasted desert sores on my elbow, so I got a chit and here I am. I don’t know what the hell causes them, nobody does; perhaps all the tinned muck we eat up there in the desert!