Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell [114]
‘Also, if one may say so, without showing much outward sign of having concentrated on the best literature of half-a-dozen nations.’
‘Not the smallest. I was thinking that the other day while reading a translation of I Promessi Sposi. It sounds as if I were modelling myself on Donners, but I’ve got a lot of detective stories too. There was a special reason why I Promessi Sposi made me think of Donners, wonder whether it figured on his list, when he put on that final spurt to become cultured before rigor mortis set in. Like so many romantic novels, the story turns to some extent on the Villain upsetting the Hero by abducting the Heroine, unwilling victim threatened by the former’s lust. That particular theme always misses the main point in the tribulations of Heroes in real life, where the trouble is that the Heroine, once abducted, is likely to be only too anxious to suffer a fate worse than death.’
‘You mean Sir Magnus and his girls?’
For the moment I had not thought of Matilda.
‘I meant when he abducted Matty, and married her. Not exactly a precise parallel with Manzoni, I admit, but you’ll see what I mean.’
I did not know what to answer. This was the first time Moreland had ever spoken in such terms of Matilda leaving him for Sir Magnus Donners. He sighed, then laughed.
‘I suppose she liked being married to him. She remained in that state without apparent stress. She knew him, of course, from their first round together. In his odd way, he must have been attached to her too. All the same, I believe her when she said – consistently said – that she herself always refused to play his games, the way some – presumably most – of his girls did. I mean his taste, like your friend Lord Widmerpool’s, for watching other people make love.’
‘He was a friend of Donners too, but I don’t think Widmerpool got the habit there. What you say was certainly one of the things alleged. So it was true?’
‘Let’s approach the matter in the narrative technique of The Arabian Nights – the world where Donners really belonged – with a story. In fact, two stories. You must be familiar with both, favourite tales of my youth. To tell the truth, I’ve heard neither of them since the war. I’ve no doubt they survive in renovated shape.’
Moreland sighed again.
‘The first yarn is of a man making his way home late one night in London. He finds two ladies whose car has broken down. It is in the small hours, not a soul abroad. The earliest version ever told me represented the two ladies – one young and beautiful, the other older, but very distinguished – as having failed to crank their car with the starting-handle. Thought of this vintage jewel would make the mouths water of those vintage-hounds at the Seraglio, and shows the antiquity of the legend. No doubt the help required was later adapted to more up-to-date mechanics. In yet earlier days, the horses of their phaeton were probably restive, or the carriage immobilized for some other contemporary reason. Anyway, the man gets the engine humming. The ladies are grateful, so much so, they ask him back to their home for a drink. He accepts. After placing the glass to his lips, he remembers no more. He is found the following day, unconscious, in the gutter of some alley in a deserted neighbourhood. He has been castrated.’
‘A favourite anecdote of my father’s.’
‘Of all that generation. The other story concerns a man – I like to think the same man, before he was so cruelly incapacitated – who is accosted by a beautiful girl, again late at night, no one about. He thinks her a tart, though her manner does not suggest that. She says she wants not money, but love. At first he declines, but is at last persuaded by assurances that something about him attracted her. They adjourn to her flat, conveniently near. The girl leads the way up some stairs into a room, unexpectedly large, hung with dark curtains up to the ceiling. Set in the middle of the floor is a divan or bed. On it, in one form or another, perhaps several, they execute together the sexual act When all is ended, the man, still incredulous, makes attempt to offer payment. The girl again refuses, saying the pleasure was its own reward. The man is so bewildered that, when he leaves, he forgets something