Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [232]
CHAPTER XXXVII
Spandrell was very insistent that they should come without delay. The heilige Dankgesang eines genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart simply must be heard.
‘You can’t understand anything until you have heard it,’ he declared. ‘It proves all kinds of things—God, the soul, goodness—unescapably. It’s the only real proof that exists; the only one, because Beethoven was the only man who could get his knowledge over into expression. You must come.’
‘Most willingly,’ said Rampion, ‘But…’
Spandrell interrupted him. ‘I heard quite by accident yesterday that the A minor quartet had been recorded for the gramophone. I rushed out and bought a machine and the records specially for you.’
‘For me? But why this generosity?’
‘No generosity,’ Spandrell answered laughing. ‘Pure selfishness. I want you to hear and confirm my opinion.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I believe in you and, if you confirm, I shall believe in myself.’
‘What a man!’ mocked Rampion. ‘Ought to join the Church of Rome and have a confessor.’
‘But you must come.’ He spoke earnestly.
‘But not now,’ said Mary.
‘Not to-day,’ her husband echoed, wondering as he spoke why the man was so strangely insistent. What was the matter with him? The way he moved and spoke, the look in his eyes…. So excited. ‘I have innumerable things to do this afternoon.’
‘Then to-morrow.’
As though he were drunk, Rampion was reflecting. ‘Why not the day after?’ he said aloud. ‘It would be much easier for me. And the machine won’t fly away in the interval.’
Spandrell uttered his noiseless laugh. ‘No, but I may,’ he said. ‘I shall probably be gone by the day after to-morrow.’
‘You hadn’t told us you were going away,’ said Mary. ‘Where?’
‘Who knows?’ Spandrell answered, laughing once more. ‘All I know is that I shan’t be here any more.’
‘All right,’ said Rampion, who had been watching him curiously, ‘ I’ll make it to-morrow.’ Why is he so melodramatic? he wondered.
Spandrell took his leave.
‘What was wrong with him?’ said Rampion, when he was gone.
‘I didn’t notice anything particularly wrong with him,’ Mary answered.
Rampion made a gesture of impatience. ‘You wouldn’t notice the Last Judgment,’ he said.’didn’t you see that he was holding down his excitement. Like the lid of a saucepan on the boil—holding it down. And that melodramatic way of laughing. Like the conscious villain in the play….’
‘But was he acting?’ said Mary, ‘was he playing the fool for our benefit?’
‘No, no. He was genuine all right. But when you’re genuinely in the position of the conscious villain in the melodrama, you inevitably begin to behave like the conscious villain. You act in spite of yourself.’
‘But what’s he being a conscious villain about?’
‘How on earth should I know?’ said Rampion impatiently. Mary always expected him, by some mysterious and magical intuition, to know everything. Her faith sometimes amused and sometimes pleased, but sometimes also annoyed him.’do you take me for Spandrell’s father confessor.’
‘There’s nothing to fly in a rage about.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Rampion, ‘there’s practically nothing not to fly in a rage about. If one keeps one’s temper, it’s because one lives most of the time with one’s eyes shut, half asleep. If one were always awake, my God! There wouldn’t be much crockery unsmashed.’ He stalked off to his studio.
Spandrell walked slowly eastwards from Chelsea along the river whistling to himself over and over again the opening phrases of the Lydian melody from the heilige Dankgesang. Over and over again. The river stretched away into the hot haze. The music was like water in a parched land. After so many years of drought, a spring, a fountain. A watering-cart rumbled past trailing its artificial shower. The wetted dust was fragrant. That music was a proof, as he had said to Rampion. In the gutter a little torrent was hurrying a crumpled cigarette packet and a piece of orange peel towards the drain. He stopped whistling. The essential horror. Like carting garbage; that was what it had been. Just nasty and unpleasant, like cleaning a latrine. Not terrible so much as stupid, indescribably stupid. The music was a proof; God existed. But only so long as the violins were playing. When the bows were lifted from the strings, what then? Garbage and stupidity, the pitiless drought.