Indeed I know the one. And what was she doing in Ozy’s lab? Not bringing him a daily bucket for analysis, surely?
“She’s been introducing me to Paracelsus. He’s a lot more interesting than I would have suspected. Some extraordinary insights, but of course without any way of verifying them. Still, it’s amazing how far he got by guesswork.”
“You won’t yield an inch to the intuition of a great man, will you Ozy?”
“Not a millimetre. No, I guess I have to hedge on that. Every scientist has intuitions and they scare the hell out of him till he can test them. Great men are rare, you see.”
“But you’re one. This award has lifted you right above the clutch of Murray Brown, hasn’t it?”
“The Kober Medal, you mean? Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“Puts you in the Nobel class, they tell me.”
“Oh, these awards—I’m very pleased, of course—but you have to be careful not to mistake them for real achievement. I’m glad to be noticed. I have to give a lecture when I get it, you know. That’s when I’ll find out what the boys really think, by the way they take it. But I haven’t shown all I want to show, by any means.”
“Ozy, the modesty of you great men is sickening to those of us who just plug along, doing the best we can and knowing it isn’t very much. The American College of Physicians gives you the best thing they have, and you demur and grovel. It isn’t modesty; it’s masochism. You like suffering and running yourself down. You make me sick. I suppose it’s your Sheldonian type.”
“It’s a Mennonite upbringing, Simon. Beware of pride. You people are all so nice to me, I have to watch out I don’t begin patting myself on the back too much. Maria, now, she insists I’m a magus.”
“I suppose you are one, in her terms.”
“She wrote me a sweet letter. A quotation from Paracelsus, mostly. I carry it around, which is a sign of weakness. But listen to the quote: ‘The natural saints, who are called magi, are given powers over the energies and faculties of nature. For there are holy men in God who serve the beatific life; they are called saints. But there are also holy men who serve the forces of nature, and they are called magi.… What others are incapable of doing they can do, because it has been conferred upon them as a special gift.’ If a man started thinking of himself in those terms, he’d be finished as a scientist. Doubt, doubt, and still more doubt, until you’re dead sure. That’s the only way.”
“If Maria wrote to me like that, I’d believe her.”
“Why?”
“I think she knows. She has extraordinary intuition about people.”
“Do you think so? She sent me a very queer fish, and he’s certainly an oddity in Sheldonian terms, so I’ve put him on the bucket. An interesting contributor, but only about once a week.”
“Anybody I know?”
“Now Simon, you know I couldn’t tell you his name. Not ethical at all. Sometimes we talk about doubt. He’s a great doubter. Used to be a monk. The interesting thing about him is his Sheldonian type. Very rare; a 376. You follow? Very intellectual and nervy, but a fantastic physique. A dangerous man, I’d say, with a makeup like that. Could get very rough. He’s abused his body just about every way that’s possible and from the whiff of his buckets I think he’s well into drugs right now, but although he’s on the small side he’s fantastically muscular and strong. He wants the money, but he isn’t a big producer. Plugged. That’s drugs. I don’t like him, but he’s a rarity, so I put up with him.”
“For Maria’s sake?”
“No. For my sake. Listen, you don’t think I’m soft about Maria, do you? She’s a nice girl right enough, but that’s all.”
“Not an interesting type?”
“Not from my point of view. Too well balanced.”
“No chance she might turn out to be a Pyknic Practical Joke?”
“Never. She’ll age well. Be a fine old woman. Slumped, probably; that’s inherent in the female build. But she’ll be sturdy, right up to the end.”
“Ozy, about these Sheldonian types; are they irrevocable?”
“How do you mean?”
“Last time I talked to you, you were very frank about me, and my tendency toward fat. Do you remember?”
“Yes; that was the first time Maria came here. What I said about you wasn’t the result of an examination, of course. Just a guess. But I’d put you down as a 425—soft, chunky, abundant energy. Big gut.”
“The literary gut, I think you said.”
“Lots of literary people have it. You can have a big gut without being literary, of course.”
“Don’t rob me of the one consolation you offered! But what I want to know is this: couldn’t somebody of that type moderate his physique, by the right kind of diet and exercise, and general care?”
“To some extent. Not without more trouble than it would probably be worth. That’s what’s wrong with all these diets and body-building courses and so forth. You can go against your type, and probably achieve a good deal as long as you keep at it. Look at these Hollywood stars—they starve themselves and get surgeons to carve them into better shapes and all that because it’s their livelihood. Every now and then one of them can’t stand it any more, then it’s the overdose. The body is the inescapable factor, you see. You can keep in good shape for what you are, but radical change is impossible. Health isn’t making everybody into a Greek ideal; it’s living out the destiny of the body. If you’re thinking about yourself, I guess you could knock off twenty-five pounds to advantage, but that wouldn’t make you a thin man; it’d make you a neater fat man. What the cost would be to your nerves, I couldn’t even guess.”
“In short, be not another if thou canst be thyself.”
“What’s that?”
“More Paracelsus.”
“He’s dead right. But it isn’t simple, being yourself. You have to know yourself physiologically and people don’t want to believe the truth about themselves. They get some mental picture of themselves and then they devil the poor old body, trying to make it like the picture. When it won’t obey—can’t obey, of course—they are mad at it, and live in it as if it were an unsatisfactory house they were hoping to move out of. A lot of illness comes from that.”
“You make it sound like physiological predestination.”
“Don’t quote me on that. Not my field at all. I have my problem and it’s all I can take care of.”
“Discovering the value that lies in what is despised and rejected.”
“That’s what Maria says. But wouldn’t I look stupid if I announced that as the theme of my Kober Lecture?”
“ ‘This is the stone which was set at naught of your builders, which is become the head of the corner.’ ”
“You don’t talk that way to scientists, Simon.”
“Then tell them it is the lapis exilis, the Philosopher’s Stone of their spiritual ancestors, the alchemists.”
“Oh, get away, get away, get away!”
Laughing, I got away.
(4)
I SET TO WORK to become a neater fat man, as that seemed to be the best I could hope for, and sank rapidly into the ill-nature that overcomes me when I deny myself a reasonable amount of rich food and creamy desserts. I thought sourly of Ozy, and great man though he might be, I reflected that I could give a better Kober Lecture than he, fattening out my scientific information with plums from Paracelsus and giving it a persuasive humanistic gloss that would wake up the audience from the puritan stupor of their scientific attitude. Whereupon I immediately reproached myself for vanity. What did I know about Ozy’s work? What was I but a silly fat ass whose pudgy body was the conning-tower from which a thin and acerbic soul peered out at the world? No: that wouldn’t do either. I wasn’t as fat as that suggested, nor was my spirit really sour when I allowed myself enough to eat. I wasted a lot of time in this sort of foolish inner wrangling, and the measure of my abjection is that once or twice—besotted lover as I was—I wondered if Maria were really worth all this tro
uble.
One of Parlabane’s tedious whims was that he liked to take baths in my bathroom; he said that the arrangements at his boarding-house were primitive. He was a luxurious bather and a great man for parading about naked, which was not unselfconsciousness but calculated display. He was vain of his body, as well he might be, for at the same age as myself he was firm and muscular, had slim ankles and that impressive contour of belly in which the rectus muscles may be seen, like Roman armour. It was surely unjust that a man who had drugged and boozed for twenty years and who was, by Ozy’s account, decidedly constipated, should look so well in the buff. His face, of course, was a mess, and he could not see very much without his glasses, but even so he was an impressive and striking contrast to the man who removed my old suit and some lamentable underclothes. Clothed he looked shabby and sinister; naked he looked disturbingly like Satan in a drawing by Blake. Not at all a man with whom one would want to get into a fight.
“I wish I were in as good shape as you are,” said I, on one of these occasions.
“Don’t wish it if you hope to be remembered as a theologian,” said he; “they are all bonies or fatties. Not one like me in the lot. Put on another forty pounds, Simon, and you’ll be about the size of Aquinas when he confuted the Manichees. You know he got so fat they had to make him a special altar with a half-moon carved out of it to accommodate his tum? You have a long way to go yet.”
“I have it on the assurance of Ozy Froats, now distinguished and justified as the latest recipient of the Kober Medal, that I am of the literary sort of physique,” said I. “I have what Ozy calls the literary gut. Perhaps if you had a gently swelling belly like mine, instead of that fine washboard of muscles that I envy, your novel might read more easily.”
“I’d gladly take on the burden of your paunch if I could get a decisive answer from a publisher.”
“Nothing doing yet?”
“Four rejections.”
“That seems decisive, so far as it goes.”
He sank into one of my armchairs, naked as he was, and though he was clearly much dejected, his muscles held firm, and he looked rather splendid (except for his thick specs), like a figure of a defeated author by Rodin.
“No. The only decisive answer that I will recognize is an acceptance of the book, on my terms, for publication as soon as possible.”
“Oh, come; I didn’t mean to be discouraging. But—four rejections! It’s nothing at all. You must simply hang on and keep pestering publishers. Lots of authors have gone on doing that for years.”
“I know, but I won’t. I feel at the end of my tether.”
“It’s Lent, as I don’t have to remind you. The most discouraging season of the year.”
“Do you do much about Lent, Simon?”
“I’m eating less, but that’s incidental. What I usually do is take on a program of introspection and self-examination—try to tidy myself up a bit. Do you?”
“I’m coming unstuck, Simon. It’s the book. I can’t get anybody to take it seriously, and it’s killing me. It’s my life, far more than I had suspected.”
“Your autobiography, you mean?”
“Hell, no! I’ve told you it isn’t meanly autobiographical. But it’s the best of me, and if it’s ignored, what of me will survive? You’re too fat to have any idea what an obsession is.”
“I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean to be flippant.”
“It’s what I’ve salvaged from a not very square deal in this miserable hole of a world. It’s all of me—root and crown. You don’t know what I would do to get it published.”
He grew more and more miserable, but did not lose his sense of self-preservation, because before he left he had touched me for two more shirts and some socks and another hundred dollars, which was all I had in my desk. I hate to seem mean-spirited, but I was growing tired of listening to the romantic agonies of his spirit, while forking out to sustain the wants of his flesh.
He earned money. Not much, but enough to keep him. What did he spend my money, and Maria’s money, and Hollier’s money on?
Could it really be drugs? He looked too well. Drink? He drank a good deal when he could sponge on somebody, but he didn’t have any sign of being a drunkard. Where did the money go? I didn’t know but I resented being continually asked for contributions.
(5)
LENT, PROPER SEASON for self-examination, perhaps for self-mortification, but never, so far as I know, a season for love. Nevertheless, love was my daily companion, my penance, my hair shirt. Something had to be done about it, but what? Face the facts, Simon; how does a clergyman of forty-five manoeuvre himself into a position where he can tell a young woman of twenty-three that he loves her, and what does she think about that? What might she be expected to think? Face facts, fool.
But can one, in the grip of an obsession, face facts or even judge what facts are relevant?
I worked out several scenarios and planned a number of eminently reasonable but warmly worded speeches; then, as often happens, it all came about suddenly and, considering everything, easily. As Hollier’s research assistant, Maria had the privilege of eating with the dons in Spook’s Hall at dinner, and one night in late March I met her just after the Rector had said the grace that ended the meal, as we were moving toward coffee in the Senior Common Room. Or rather, I was heading toward coffee and asked her if I could bring some to her. No, she said, Spook coffee wasn’t what she wanted at the moment. I saw an opening, and snatched it.
“If you would like to walk over to my rooms in Ploughwright, I’ll make you some really good coffee. I could also give you cognac, if you’d like that.”
“I’d love it.”
Five minutes later she was helping me—watching me, really—as I set my little Viennese coffee-maker on the electric element.
Fifteen minutes later I had told her that I loved her and, rather more coherently than I had ever expected, I told her about the notion of Sophia (with which she was acquainted from her medieval studies) and that she was Sophia to me. She sat silent for what seemed a long time.
“I’ve never been so flattered in my life,” she said at last.
“Then the idea doesn’t seem totally ricidulous to you.”
“Certainly not ridiculous. How could you think of yourself as ridiculous?”
“A man of my age, in love with a woman of your age, could certainly seem ridiculous.”
“But you’re not just any man of your age. You are a beautiful man. I’ve admired you ever since the first class where I met you.”
“Maria, don’t tease me. I know what I am. I’m middle-aged and not at all good-looking.”
“Oh, that! I meant beautiful because of your wonderful spirit, and the marvellous love you bring to your scholarship. Why would anybody care what you look like?—Oh, that sounds terrible; you look just right for what you are. But looks don’t really matter, do they?”
“How can you say that? You, who are so beautiful yourself?”
“If your looks attracted as much attention as mine do, and made people think so many stupid things about you, you’d see it all differently.”
“Does what I’ve told you I think about you seem stupid?”
“No, no; I didn’t mean that. What you’ve said, coming from you, is the most wonderful compliment I’ve ever had.”
“So what do we do about it? Dare I ask if you love me?”
“Yes, most certainly I do love you. But I don’t think it’s the kind of love you mean when you tell me you love me.”
“Then—?”
“I must think very carefully about what I say. I love you, but I’ve never even called you Simon. I love you because of your power to lead me to understand things I didn’t understand before, or understand in the same way. I love you because you have made your learning the chief nourisher of your life, and it has made you a special sort of man. You are like a fire: you warm me.”
“So what are we to do about it?”
“Must we do something about
it? Aren’t we doing something about it already? If I am Sophia to you, what do you suppose you are to me?”
“I’m not sure I understand. You say you love me, and I am something great to you. So are we to become lovers?”
“I think we already are lovers.”
“I mean differently. Completely.”
“You mean a love affair? Going to bed and all that?”
“Is it out of the question?”
“No, but I think it would be a great mistake.”
“Oh, Maria, can you be sure? Look, you know what I am; I’m a clergyman. I’m not asking you to be my mistress. I think that would be shabby.”
“Well, I certainly couldn’t marry you!”
“You mean it’s utterly out of the question?”
“Utterly.”
“Ah. But I can’t make dishonourable proposals to you. Don’t think it’s just prudery—”
“No, no; I really do understand. ‘You could not love me, dear, so much/ Loved you not honour more.’ ”
“Not just honour. You can put it like that, but it’s something weightier than honour. I am a priest forever, after the order of Melchisedek; it binds me to live by certain inflexible rules. If I take you without giving you an oath before an altar it wouldn’t be long before I was something you would hate; I would be a renegade priest. Not a drunkard, or a lecher, or anything comparatively simple and perhaps forgivable, but an oath-breaker. Can you understand that?”
“Yes, I can understand it perfectly. You would have broken an oath to God.”
“Yes. You do understand it. Thank you, Maria.”
“I’m sure you will admit I’d cut a strange figure as the wife of a clergyman. And—forgive me for saying this—I don’t think it’s really a wife you want, Simon. You want someone to love. Can’t you love me without bringing in all these side-issues about marriage and going to bed and things that I don’t really think have any bearing on what we are talking about?”
“You certainly ask a lot! Don’t you know anything about men?”
“Not a great deal. But I think I know quite a lot about you.”