As soon as I had said it I wished it unsaid, but the jealous spirit was too quick for me. “You don’t know as much about me as you do about Hollier!”
She turned pale, which made her skin an olive shade. “Who told you about that? I don’t suppose I need to ask; he must have told you.”
“Maria! Maria, you must understand—it wasn’t like that! He wasn’t boasting or stupid; he was wretched and he told me because I am a priest, and I should never have given you a hint!”
“Is that true?”
“I swear it is true.”
“Then listen to me, because this is true. I love Hollier. I love him the way I love you—for the splendid thing you are, in your own world of splendid things. Like a fool I wanted him the way you are talking about, and whether it was because I wanted him or he wanted me I don’t know and never shall know, but it was a very great mistake. Because of that stupidity, which didn’t amount to a damn as an experience, I think I have put something between us that has almost lost him to me. Do you think I want to do that with you? Are all men such greedy fools that they think love only comes with that special favour?”
“The world thinks of it as the completion of love.”
“Then the world still has something important to learn. Simon, you called me Sophia: the Divine Wisdom, God’s partner and playmate in Creation. Now perhaps I am going to surprise you: I agree that I am Sophia to you, and I can be that for as long as you wish, but I must be my own human Maria-self as well, and if we go to bed it may be Sophia who lies down but it will certainly be Maria—and not the best of her—who gets up, and Sophia will be gone forever. And you, Simon dear, would come into bed as my Rebel Angel, but very soon you would be a stoutish Anglican parson, and a Rebel Angel no more.”
“A Rebel Angel?”
“You don’t mean to tell me that I can teach you something, after the very non-academic talk we have had? Oh, Simon, you must remember the Rebel Angels? They were real angels, Samahazai and Azazel, and they betrayed the secrets of Heaven to King Solomon, and God threw them out of Heaven. And did they mope and plot vengeance? Not they! They weren’t sore-headed egotists like Lucifer. Instead they gave mankind another push up the ladder, they came to earth and taught tongues, and healing and laws and hygiene—taught everything—and they were often special successes with ‘the daughters of men’. It’s a marvellous piece of apocrypha, and I would have expected you to know it, because surely it is the explanation of the origin of universities! God doesn’t come out of some of these stories in a very good light, does He? Job had to tell Him a few home truths about His injustice and caprice; the Rebel Angels showed Him that hiding all knowledge and wisdom and keeping it for Himself was dog-in-the-manger behaviour. I’ve always taken it as proof that we’ll civilize God yet. So don’t, Simon dear, don’t rob me of my Rebel Angel by wanting to be an ordinary human lover, and I won’t rob you of Sophia. You and Hollier are my Rebel Angels, but as you are the first to be told, you may choose which one you will be: Samahazai or Azazel?”
“Samahazai, every time! Azazel is too zizzy.”
“Dear Simon!”
We talked for another hour, but nothing was said that had not been said already in one way or another, and when we parted I did indeed kiss Maria, not as an ordinary lover or one who had been promised a marriage, but in a spirit I had never known before.
Since the dinner on Boxing Day I had drunk deep of Siren tears, and to my exultant delight that trial seemed to be over. I slept like a child and woke the next day immeasurably refreshed.
(6)
“HELLO? Hello—are you the Reverend Darcourt? Listen, it’s about this fella John Parlabane: he’s dead. Dead in bed with the light on. There’s a letter says to call you. So you’ll come, eh? Because something’s got to be done. I can’t be expected to deal with this kinda thing.”
Thus Parlabane’s landlady, who sounded as if she belonged to the tradition of affronted, put-upon landladies, calling me shortly after six o’clock on the morning of Easter Sunday. Doctors and parish clergymen are old hands at emergencies, and know that rarely is anything so pressing that there is not time to dress properly, and drink a cup of instant coffee while doing so. Figures of authority should be composed when they arrive at the scene of whatever human mess awaits them. Parlabane’s boarding-house was not far from the University, and it was not long before I was listening to Mrs. Mustard’s excited, angry story as we trudged upstairs. She had risen early to go to seven o’clock church, had seen a light under his door, was always telling ’em they weren’t to waste current, knocked and couldn’t rouse him, so in she went, expecting to find him drunk as he so often was—him that tried to pass himself off as some kind of a brother—and there he was on the bed with what looked like a smile on his face and couldn’t be roused and was icy cold, and no, she hadn’t called a doctor, and she certainly didn’t want any trouble.
In the small, humble room, which Parlabane had managed to invest with a squalor that was not inherent in it, he lay on his narrow iron bed, dressed in his monk’s robe, his Monastic Diurnal clasped in his hands, looking well pleased with himself, but not smiling; the dead do not smile except under the embalmer’s expert hand. Propped on his table was a letter addressed to me, with my telephone number on the envelope.
Suicide, I thought. I cannot say that I reassured Mrs. Mustard, but I calmed her down as much as I could, and then telephoned a doctor whom Parlabane and I had both known as a college friend, and asked him to come. In twenty minutes or so he was with me, also fully clothed and smelling perceptibly of instant coffee. Oh, what a boon powdered coffee is to parsons and doctors!
While waiting, I had read the letter, having got rid of Mrs. Mustard by asking if she would be so good as to make some coffee—preferably not instant coffee, I said, so as to keep her out of the way for a while.
It was a characteristic Parlabane letter.
Dear Old Simon:
Sorry to let you in for this, but somebody must cope, and it is part of your profession, isn’t it? I really cannot expect too much of La Mustard, to whom I owe quite a bit of back rent. That, and other debts, may be discharged out of the advance of my novel, which ought to be coming along soon. You think not? Shame on you for a doubter! Meanwhile I do very deeply want a Christian burial service, so will you add that to a long list of favours—see Johnny safely into his beddy-bye as you sometimes did when we were young at Spook—though you would never take the risk of joining him there, you old fraidy-cat.… God bless you, Sim—Your brother in Xt.
John Parlabane, S.S.M.
It was a relief when the doctor came, examined the body and said unnecessarily that Parlabane was dead, and surprisingly that he couldn’t say why.
“No sign of anything,” he said; “he’s dead because his heart has stopped beating, and that’s all I can put on the certificate. Cardiac arrest, which is what finishes us all really.”
“Any suggestion that it was self-induced?” I asked.
“None. That’s what I expected, you know, when you called me. But I can’t find a puncture or a mark or anything that would account for it. No sign of poison—you know, there’s usually something. He looks so pleased with himself, there can’t have been any distress at the end. I’d have expected suicide, frankly.”
“So would I, but I’m glad it isn’t so.”
“Yes, I guess it lets you off the hook, doesn’t it?”
By which my old friend the doctor paid tribute to the widely held notion that clergymen of my persuasion are not permitted to say the burial service over suicides. In fact we are allowed great latitude, and charity usually wins the day.
So I did what was necessary, adding extra work to my Easter Sunday, which was already a busy day. There was a little unseemly trouble with Mrs. Mustard, who didn’t want the body to be taken out of her house until her debt was paid. So I paid it, wondering how long she would have held out if I had allowed her to keep Parlabane in his present state. Poor woman, I suppose she led a do
g’s life, and it made her disagreeable, which she mistook for being strong.
The following day, Easter Monday morning, I read the Burial Service for Parlabane at the chapel of St. James the Less, which is handy to the crematorium. As I waited to see if anyone would turn up, I reflected on what I was about to do. There I stood, in cassock, surplice, and scarf, the Professional Dispatcher. How much did I believe of what I was about to say? How much had Parlabane believed? The resurrection of the body, for instance? No use havering about that now; he had asked for it and he should have it. The Burial Service was noble—splendid music not to be examined like an insurance policy.
Besides myself only Hollier and Maria were present. The undertaker, misled by Parlabane’s robe into thinking him a priest, had placed the body with its head toward the altar, and I did not trouble to have the position changed. I had already explained to the undertaker that the corpse did not really need underclothes; Parlabane had died naked under his robe, and that was the way I sent him to the flames; I did not want to court a reputation for eccentricity by asking for further revisions in what the undertaker thought was proper.
The atmosphere was understandably intimate, and at the appropriate moment in the service I said: “This is where the priest usually says something about the person whose human shell is being sent on its way. But as we are few, and all friends of his, perhaps we might talk about him for a while. I think he was a man to be pitied, but he would have scorned pity; his spirit was defiant and proud. He asked for a Christian burial service, and that is why we are here. In a manner that was very much his own he professed a great feeling for the Christian faith but seemed to scorn most of the virtues Christians are supposed to hold dear. It was as if faith and pride were at war in him: he knew nothing of humility. I confess I don’t know what to make of him; I think he despised me, and the last letter he wrote me was in a tone he meant to be jokey but was really contemptuous. My belief bids me forgive him, and I do; he asked for this service and it is out of the question for me to refuse it; but I wish I could honestly say that I had liked him.”
“He did everything in his power to make it impossible to like him,” said Maria. “In spite of all his smiles and caressing jokes and words of endearment, he was deeply contemptuous of everyone.”
“I liked him,” said Hollier; “but then, I knew him better than either of you. I suppose I looked on him as one of my cultural fossils; the day has gone when people feel that they can be unashamedly arrogant about superior intellect. We are hypocritical about that. He was quite open about it, he thought we were dullards and he certainly thought I was intellectually fraudulent. In this he was a throwback to the great days of Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa—yes, and of Rabelais—when people who knew a lot sneered elaborately at anybody they considered an intellectual inferior. There was something refreshing about him. Pity that novel of his was so bad; it was really one huge sneer from start to finish, whatever he may have thought about it.”
“He seems to have died believing that it would see publication,” I said. “His last letter to me says his debts could be paid out of the advance from his publisher.”
“Don’t you believe it,” said Hollier. “He simply never admitted what he knew to be the truth—that he lived by sponging. And that reminds me, Simon, who’s paying the shot for this?”
“I suppose I am,” I said.
“No, no,” said Hollier; “I must put in for it. Why should you do it all?”
“Of course,” said Maria; “that’s the way it was while he was alive and it had better be the same to the end. He died owing me just under nine hundred dollars; another hundred won’t break me.”
“Oh it won’t be anything like that,” I said; “I arranged this on the cheapest terms. With the burial costs and what he owed his landlady, and odds and ends, I reckon it will run us each about—well, you’re closer than I thought, Maria; it will probably be more than two hundred apiece.—Oh, dear, this is very unseemly. I meant that we should think seriously and kindly about him for a few minutes, and here we are haggling about his debts.”
“Serve him damned well right,” said Hollier. “If he is anywhere about, he’s laughing his head off.”
“He could have left Rabelais’s will,” said Maria. “ ‘I owe much, I have nothing, the rest I leave to the poor,’ ” and she laughed.
Hollier and I caught the infection and we were laughing loudly when the undertaker’s man stuck his head into the chancel from the little room where he was lurking, and coughed. I knew the signal; Parlabane must be whisked off to the crematory before lunch.
“Let us pray,” said I.
“Yes,” said Hollier; “and afterward—the cleansing flames.”
More laughter. The undertaker’s man, though he had probably seen some queer funerals, looked scandalized. I have never laughed my way through the Committal before, but I did so now.
We met outside after I had seen the coffin on its way. There was no need for me to return for the burning.
“I can’t think when I’ve enjoyed a funeral so much,” said Hollier.
“I feel a sense of relief,” said Maria. “I suppose I ought to be ashamed of it—but no, I don’t really suppose anything of the kind. I’m just relieved. He was getting to be an awful burden, and now it’s gone.”
“What about lunch?” said I. “Please let me take you. It was good of you to come.”
“Couldn’t think of it,” said Hollier. “After all, you made the arrangements and actually read the service. You’ve done enough.”
“I won’t go unless you let me pay,” said Maria. “If you want a reason, let’s say it’s because I’m happier than either of you that he’s gone. Gone forever.”
So we agreed, and Maria paid, and lunch stretched out until after three, and we all enjoyed ourselves immensely at what we called Parlabane’s Wake. Driving to the University, where none of us had been earlier in the day, we noticed that the flag on the main campus was at half-staff. We did not bother to wonder why; a big university is always regretting the death of one of its worthies.
Second Paradise
6
February: unquestionably crisis month in the University, and probably everywhere else in our Canadian winter. Crisis was raging all about me in Mamusia’s sitting-room where, for at least an hour, Hollier had been circling his obsession with Urquhart McVarish and the Gryphius MS without ever coming to grips with the realities of the matter. The room seemed darker even than five o’clock in February could explain. I kept my head low and watched, and watched, and feared, and feared.
“Why don’t you say what you want, Hollier? Why don’t you speak what is in your mind? Do you think you can fool me? You talk and talk, but what you want shouts louder than what you say. Look here—you want to buy a curse from me. That’s what you want. No?”
“It is difficult to explain, Madame Laoutaro.”
“But not hard to understand. You want these letters, this book, whatever it is. This other fellow has it and he teases you because you can’t get it. You hate him. You want him out of your way. You want that book. You want him punished.”
“There are considerations of scholarship—”
“You’ve told me that. You think you can do whatever can be done with this book better than he can. But most of all, you want to be first with whatever that is. No?”
“Very bluntly put, I suppose that’s it.”
“Why not bluntly? Look: you come and you flatter me and tell me I’m a phuri dai, and you tell me this long story about this enemy who is making your life a hell, and you think I don’t know what you want? You talk about me becoming your colleague in a fascinating experiment. You mean you want me to be your cohani, who casts the evil spell. You talk about the Dark World and the—what’s the word—Chthonic Powers and all this professor-talk, but what you mean is Magic, isn’t it? Because you’re in a situation that can’t be dealt with in nice, fancy professor terms and you think maybe the black old stuff might serve you. B
ut you’re scared to come right out and ask. Am I right?”
“I’m not a fool, Madame. I have spent twenty years circling round and round the sort of thing we are talking about now. I’ve examined it in the best and most objective way the scholarly world makes possible. But I haven’t swallowed it wholesale. My present problem turns my mind to it, of course, and you are right—I do want to invoke some special means of getting what I want, and if that brings harm to my professional rival, I suppose that is inevitable. But don’t talk to me of magic in simple terms. I know what it is: that’s to say, I know what I think it is. Magic—I hate the word because of what it has come to mean, but anyway—magic in the big sense can only happen where there is very strong feeling. You can’t set it going with a sceptical mind—with your fingers crossed, so to speak. You must desire, and you must believe. Have you any idea how hard that is for a man of my time and a man of my training and temperament? At the deepest level of your being you are living in the Middle Ages, and magic comes easily—I won’t say logically—to you. But for me it is a subject of study, a psychological fact but not necessarily an objective fact. A thing some people have always believed but nobody has quite been able to prove. I have never had a chance to experiment with it personally because I have never had what is necessary—the desire and the belief.
“But now, for the first time in my life—for the very first time—I want something desperately. I want that manuscript. I want it enough to go to great lengths to get it. I’ve wanted things before, things like distinctions in my professional work, but never like this.”
“Never wanted a woman?”
“Not as I want that manuscript. Not very much, I suppose, at all. That kind of thing has meant very little to me.”
“So the first great passion in your life has its roots in hatred and envy? Think, Hollier.”
“You simplify the whole thing in order to belittle me.”
“No. To make you face yourself. All right; you have the desire. But you can’t quite force yourself to admit you have the belief.”