How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him. is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman, down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap. To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without first traversing the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage…
My thoughts were running crab-wise. Melanie’s image popped up suddenly. She was always there, like a fleshy tumor. Something bestial and angelic about her. Always limping along, dragging her words, droning, drooling, her enormous melancholy eyes hanging like hot coals in their sockets. She was one of those beautiful hypochondriacs who, in becoming unsexed, take on the mysterious sensual qualities of the creatures which fill the Apocalyptic menagerie of William Blake. She was extremely absent-minded, not about the usual trivialities of routine life, but about her body. It was not at all unusual for her to roam about the house, doing the chores which never ended, with her full milk-white teats exposed. Maude was always berating her, always furious about Melanie’s indecencies, as she called them. But Melanie was as innocent as an insane otter. And if the word otter seems odd it is because it is so appropriate. With Melanie all sorts of absurd images always leaped into my mind. She was only «mildly» insane, so to speak. The more her mental faculties dribbled away the more obsessive her body became. Her mind had sunk down into the flesh and, if she was awkward and doddering in her movements, it was because she was thinking with this fleshy body and not her brain. Whatever sex there was in her seemed to have become distributed throughout the body; it wasn’t localized any more, neither between her legs nor elsewhere. She had no sense of shame. The hair on her cunt, if she happened to expose it at the breakfast table while serving us, was undifferentiated from her toe nails or her bellybutton. I am sure that had I ever absent-mindedly touched her cunt, while reaching for the coffee-pot, she would have reacted no differently than if I had touched her arm. Often, when I was taking a bath, she would open the door unconcernedly and hang the towels on the rack over the tub, excusing herself in a weak, self-effacing way, but never making the slightest attempt to avert her eyes. Sometimes, on such occasions, she would stand and talk to me a few moments—about her pets or her bunions or the menu for the morrow—looking at me with absolute candor, never in the least embarrassed. Though she was old and had white hair her flesh was alive, almost revoltingly alive for one her age. Naturally now and then I got an erection lying there in the tub with her looking on unabashed and talking utter gibberish. Once or twice Maude had come upon us unawares. She was horrified, of course. «You must be crazy,» she said to Melanie. «Oh dear,» the latter replied, «what a fuss you make! I’m sure Henry doesn’t mind,» and she would smile that melancholy, wistful smile of the hypochondriac. Then she would shuffle off to her room which Maude had selected for her to live in. Wherever we lived Melanie’s room was always exactly the same. It was a room where Dementia was caged and imprisoned. Always the parrot in its cage, always a mangy poodle, always the same daguerreotypes, always the sewing machine, always the brass bedstead and the old-fashioned trunk. A disorderly room which to Melanie seemed like Paradise. A room filled with shrill barks, with squawks punctuated by caressing murmurs, coaxings, cooings, jumbled phrases, squeals of affection. Sometimes, in passing the open door, I would catch her sitting on the bed clad only in her chemise, the parrot perched on her crooked hand, the dog nibbling at the bait between her legs. «Hello,» she would say, looking up at me with blank, bland innocence. «It’s a beautiful day to-day, isn’t it?» And perhaps she would push the dog away, not because of shame or embarrassment, but because he was tickling her with his diabolically cunning little moist tongue.
Sometimes I stole into her room on the quiet, just to snoop around. I was curious about Melanie, about the letters she received, the books she read, and so on. Nothing was hidden away in her room. Neither was anything ever fully consumed. There was always a little water in the saucer under the bed, always some half-nibbled crackers lying on the trunk or a piece of cake which she had bitten into and forgotten to finish. Sometimes an open book lay on the bed, the page held open by a torn slipper. Bulwer-Lytton was one of her authors, apparently, also Rider Haggard. She seemed to be interested in magic, in the black art more particularly. There was a pamphlet about Mesmerism which betrayed evidences of having been well thumbed. The most amazing discovery, tucked away in one of the bureau drawers, was of a rubber instrument which had only one vise, unless Melanie in her cracked way had intended it for some wholly innocent visage. Whether Melanie sometimes whiled away a pleasant hour with this object, as did the nuns of old, or whether she had bought it in a junk shop and hidden it away for some unsuspected use some time or other in the course of her never-ending life, was a mystery to me. It was not difficult for me to picture her lying on the filthy quilt clad in her torn chemise, poking this thing in and out of
