Alone with Rebecca, watching her ironing or cook a meal, I had those sort of talks which one can only have with a woman if she belongs to another man.
Here there was really that spirit of «give and take» which Arthur Raymond complained of missing in me. Rebecca was earthy and not at all intellectual. She had a sensual nature and she loved to be treated as a woman and not as a mind. We talked of the most simple, homely things some ‘times, things which the music master found no interest in whatever.
Talk is only a pretext for other, subtler forms of communication. When the latter are inoperative speech becomes dead. If two people are intent upon communicating with one another it doesn’t matter in the least how bewildering the talk becomes. People who insist upon clarity and logic often fail in making themselves understood. They are always-searching for a more perfect transmitter, deluded by the supposition that the mind is the only instrument for the exchange of thought. When one really begin» to talk one delivers himself. Words are thrown about recklessly, not counted like pennies. One doesn’t care about grammatical or factual errors, contradictions, lies and so on. One talks. If you are talking to some one who knows how to listen he understands perfectly, even though the words make no sense. When this kind of talk gets under way a marriage takes place, no matter whether you are talking to a man or a woman. Men talking with other men have as much need of this sort of marriage as women talking with women have. Married couples seldom enjoy this kind of talk, for reasons which are only too obvious.
Talk, real talk, it seems to me, is one of the most expressive manifestations of man’s hunger for unlimited marriage. Sensitive people, people who feel, want to unite in some deeper, subtler, more durable fashion than is permitted by custom and convention. I mean in ways beyond the dreams of social and political Utopists. The brotherhood of man, should it ever come about, is only the kindergarten stage in the drama of human relationships. When man begins to permit himself full expression, when he can express himself without fear of ridicule, ostracism or persecution, the first thing he will do will be to pour out his love. In the story of human love we are still at the first chapter. Even there, even in the realm of the purely personal, it is a pretty shoddy account. Have we more than a dozen heroes and heroines of love to hold up as examples? I doubt if we have even as many great lovers as we have illustrious saints. We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers—but where are the great lovers? After a moment’s reflection one is back to Abelard and Heloise, or to Antony and Cleopatra, or the story of the Taj Mahal. So much of it is fictive, expanded and glorified by the poverty-stricken lovers whose prayers are answered only by myth and legend. Tristan and Isolde—what a powerful spell that legend still casts upon the modern world! In the landscape of romance it stands out like the snow-capped peak of Fujiyama.
There was one observation which I made to myself over and over again as I listened to the interminable wrangles between Arthur Raymond and Kronski. It was to the effect that knowledge divorced from action leads to sterility. Here were two vital young men, each brilliant in his way, and they were arguing passionately night after night about a new approach to the problems of life. An austere individual, leading a sober, modest, disciplined life in the far off city of Vienna, was responsible for these clashes. All over the Occidental world this wrangling was going on. One had to speak passionately about these theories of Sigmund Freud or not at all, so it seemed.
That fact alone is of significance, of far more significance than the theories under discussion. A few thousand people—not hundreds of thousands!— would in the course of the next twenty years submit to the process known as psychoanalysis. The term psychoanalysis would gradually lose its magic and become a by-word. Its therapeutic value would decrease in proportion to the spread of popular understanding. The wisdom underlying Freud’s explorations and interpretations would diminish in effectiveness with the increasing desire of the neurotic to become readapted to life.
In the case of my two young friends one of them was later to become dissatisfied with every solution to the problems of the day except that offered by Communism; the other, who would have pronounced me crazy had I then hinted at such an eventuality, was to become my patient. The music master forsook his music in order to right the world and failed. He failed even to make his own life more interesting, more satisfying, more ample. The other abandoned his medical practice and finally put himself into the hands of a quack, yours truly. He did it deliberately, knowing that I had no qualifications other than my sincerity and enthusiasm. He was even pleased at the result, which was nil, and which he had anticipated in advance.
It is now about twenty years since the period I speak of. Only the other day, as I was strolling aimlessly along, I ran into Arthur Raymond on the street. I might have passed him by had he not hailed me. He had altered, had taken on a girth almost commensurable to Kronski’s. A middle-aged man now with a row of black, charred teeth. After a few words he began to talk about his son—the oldest boy, who was now in college and a member of the football team. He had transferred all his hopes to the son. I was disgusted. In vain did I try to get some inkling about his own life. No, he preferred to talk about his son. He was going to be somebody! (An athlete, a writer, a musician—God knows what.) I didn’t give a fuck about the son. All I could make out of this effusive gush was that he, Arthur Raymond, had given up the ghost. He was living in the son. It was pitiful. I couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
«You must come up and see us soon.» (He was trying to hold me.) «Let’s have a good old session together. You know how I love talking!» He gave out one of those cachinating snorts as of yore.)
«Where do you live now?» he added, clutching my arm.
I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and wrote clown a false address and telephone number. I thought to myself, the next time we meet it will probably be in limbo.
As I walked away I suddenly realized that he had evinced no interest in what had happened to me all these years. He knew I had been abroad, had written a few books. «I’ve read some of your stuff, you know,» he had remarked. And then he had laughed confusedly, as if to say: «But I know you, you old rapscallion… you’re not taking me in!» For my part I could have replied: «Yes, and I know all about you. I know the deceptions and humiliations you’ve suffered.»
Had we begun to swap experience we might have had an enjoyable talk. We might have understood one another better than we ever had before. If he had only given me a chance I might have demonstrated that the Arthur who had failed was just as dear to me as the promising young man whom I had once idolized. We were both rebels, in our way. And we had both struggled to make a new world.
«Of course I still believe in it (Communism),» he had said in parting. He said it as though he were sorry to admit that the movement were not big enough to include him with all his idiosyncrasies. In the same way I could imagine him saying to himself that he still believed in mvisic, or in the outdoor life, or in ju-jitsu. I wondered if he realized what he had done by abandoning one road after the other. If he had stopped anywhere along the line and fought his way through, life would have been worth while. Even if he had only become a champion wrestler! I remembered the night he had induced me to accompany him to a bout between Earl Cad-dock and Strangler Lewis. (And another occasion when we had gone together to witness the Dempsey-Carpentier fight.) He was a poet then. He saw two gods in mortal combat. He knew that there was more to it than a tussle to the finish between two brutes. He talked about these great figures of the arena as he would have talked about the great composers or the great dramatists. He was a conscious part of the mob which attends these spectacles. He was like a Greek in the days of Euripides. He was an artist applauding other artists. He was at his very best in the amphitheatre.
I recalled another occasion, when we were waiting on the platform of a railway station. Suddenly, while pacing back and forth, he grabs my arm and says: «By God, Henry, do you know who that is? That’s Jack Dempsey!» And like a shot he bolts from my side and runs up to his beloved idol. «Hello Jack!» he says in
