This is the going down towards the tomb. The weather has been, on the whole, very fair. There is a slight belt of pressure settled round the south coast of Ireland, but who cares about that? Fair to fine is the general forecast, with slight local showers, and sensational fluctuations of bullion. The pork trade is doing well. The ductless glands are in training earlier this year, under a new coach. Their time from Hammersmith to Putney is already doubled. It is hoped that they will carry off the Ashes this year without any difficulty. At a twelfth reading, the bill for the distribution of more milk to pregnant members of Parliament was carried by a majority of twelve. Mr. Baldwin concurred. Altogether the outlook is magnificent for the coming year, with a definite promise of worse to follow. Stocks are falling owing to a recent eruption of Mount Rothermere, but hopes are rising. Recent excavations in Fleet Street have been suspended owing to a discharge of speckled venom. However, business proceeds as usual, with slight tremors.
Lobo is having a terrible time, they tell me. He is in love, and is finding it painful. While he was abroad he met a German girl, a pneumatic Teuton frau, of the love me or leave me breed, who held him down with her thumb and gave him something to think about. He spends all night weeping for his sins. “I have not been an angel,” he says, rolling his sore, swollen eyes. He is in two minds about cutting himself. He wants to marry her, but how can he? Such a foul, leprous little whoremonger as he is — can he marry a fine pure seafaring blonde? If she found out about him she would go into a monastery. And then he would have to go into a monastery too to equalize things. And if he does marry her, how can he keep away from prostitutes and enthusiastic amateurs? They are in his blood. “I am a dirty leetle leecher,” he says wildly, beating his thigh. “I was a pure Catholic once until that woman got me. Since then I have been thirsty … like thirst, you understand?” I understand. She taught him many peculiar refinements, did his friendly widow. She used to say, “Better to keep the shoes on when you do it. It is better shoes and long black stockings.”
From my present sumptuous boredom I sit and laugh at Lobo through the bars. What a droll little ape. I can no longer even be amused by his antics. Tarquin can be funny when he squalls and whines, but Lobo — no, I have put away my microscope for good.
I can hear the train wheels beating their rhythmic revolutions in my head as I write. The four-fourteen carrying me homeward to the slippers, the gas fire, the paper, the dripping, the text on the wall. And Kate waiting for me, trim and cheaply scented in her Marks & Spencer knickers. Done up in coloured crinkles for me like a cheap cake of aromatic soap. We shall stand together before the deputy of God, and partake of a manly little service for the connubial felicities to be legalized. Dear Kate, like a canvas doll in bed with a white stoic face, whetting the appetites of cruelty in her brand-new hubby. And all these acres of tragic struggles, of boredoms, despairs, delusions, will fall from me as I enter my prison. The ubiety of God. The fantastic zero to which I shall reduce the terms of living and so find happiness. The slow gradual ascent into silence, into dumbness. Why do we fear the modern world? Why are we afraid of becoming insects? I can imagine no lovelier goal. The streets of Paradise are not more lovely than the highways of the ant heap. I shall become a white ant, God willing. I shall have my swink to me reserved and nothing else. Let the hive take my responsibilities. I am weary of them.
This is the meaning of the smashed etchings in the grate. The dislocated books. The large red discs. From the wreckage, however, I have saved certain things that have the death in them. These I will give to Tarquin to assist his disease to kill him. To sew the tares of a greater madness inside that great throbbing egg-like cranium of his. Anything with the real taint in it, the real green gangrene. Peace on earth and good will to men. But I speak after the manner of men. I am in the grip of this slow suppurative hate, which lingers in the provinces, planted in our nerve centres. Fibre by fibre it has eaten into us. Whether I shall yet escape its ultimates — rape, havoc, murder, lust — this remains to be seen. It seems to me at times that these narrow wrists moving here are the wrists of a murderer.
I, Death Gregory, by the Grace of God, being sound in mind and body, do make and ordain this my last will and testament, in the manner and form following, revoking all other wills heretofore made.
The bequests have been carefully weighed. To the literary man I leave my breath, to fertilize his discussions, and cool his porridge. To lady novelists and chambermaids my tongue. It still retains a little native salt. To poetry a new suit of clothes. To the priest the kiss of Judas, my cosmic self. To the pawnbroker my crucifix. To Tarquin my old tin cuff-links, and to Lobo the wornout contraceptive outfit, with all good wishes. To the English nation I leave a pair of old shoes, gone at the uppers, and a smell on the landing. If they want my heart to bury beside Ben Jonson in the Abbey, they can dive for it. To God I dedicate my clay pipe and copy of the Daily Express, and my expired season ticket. To my mother I offer my imperishable soul. It has never really left her keeping. To Fanny my new set of teeth, and a bottle of the hair restorer which didn’t work. To my father a copy of The Waste Land and a kiss on his uncomprehending, puzzled face. To my charlady I leave all those books in which the soul of man is evolved through misery and lamentation. She will find them incomprehensible. To the young poets I offer my sex, since they can make no better use of their own. To the journalists my voice to assist them in their devotions. To lap-dogs my humanity. To best sellers and other livers off garbage, my laughter in the key of E flat, and the clippings of my toenails. To the government my excrement that it may try its sense of humour. To the critics what they deserve; and to the public their critics.
To Gracie the following items: a cross-section of my liver, an embryo torn from the womb, a book of sermons, a tea dance, a dark partner, love-in-the-mist, passion and mockery, the laughter of the gulls, eyelids, nettles, snuff, and a white sister to sponge her gaunt thighs when the night falls.
And now it is time to take the long leavetaking of ink and paper, and all the curious warm charities which have been corrupted by bile and ruined by men with the faces of cattle. Mantic, the dream-self projects this vast saturnine grin across the taut cosmos. I see men and women again, moving softly with expressive hands across the floor of the mind’s sunken oceans. Softly and dreadfully in their voicelessness. The strange dumb movements of plants under water, among the blithe cuttlefish and wringing octopods, and the forests of gesturing trees. What I had to offer I gave gladly. It was not enough. What remains is my own property. To the darling of the gods I give the long warm gift of action. It was no use to me.
I shall be sitting here when they find me at midnight, watching the laughter stiffen and crumble with the ashes in the grate. It will not be diffcult. A brush and pan will be all that’s needed. I shall sift gently into fragments as I am offered to the plangent dustbins. The record and testament of a death within life: a life in death.
To these tedious pages, which I shall burn before I leave, I offer the gift of life and the reality of the imagination: the colours of charity and love without bitterness. A sop to kill the worm which fattens in them. A few grains of honesty. And a last phoenix act of revelation among greater beauties, in this iron grate.
And to myself? I offer only the crooked grin of the toad, and a coloured cap to clothe my nakedness. I have need of them both. Amen.