The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [430]
but of course ageing fast, altogether too fast! It will sound damn silly to you, but the presence of death out there as a normal feature of life — only in full acceleration so to speak — has given me an inkling of Life Everlasting! And there was no other way I could have grasped it, damn it. Ah! well, I’ll probably get bumped off up there in full possession of my imbecility, as you might say.’
He burst out laughing once more, and gave himself three noise-less cheers, raising his cigar-hand ceremoniously at each cheer. Then he winked carefully at me and filled his glass once more, adding with an air of vagueness the coda: ‘Life only has its full meaning to those who co-opt death!’ I could see that he was rather drunk by now, for the soothing effects of the hot shower had worn off and the desert-fatigue had begun to reassert itself.
‘And Pursewarden?’ I said, divining the very moment at which to drop his name, like a hook, into the stream of our conversation.
‘Pursewarden!’ he echoed on a different note, which combined a melancholy sadness and affection. ‘But my dear Darley, it was something like this that he was trying to tell me, in his own rather bloody way. And I? I still blush with shame when I think of the questions I asked him. And yet his answers, which seemed so bloody enigmatic then, make perfect sense to me now. Truth is double-bladed, you see. There is no way to express it in terms of langua ge, this strange bifurcated medium with its basic duality!
Language! What is the writer’s struggle except a struggle to use a medium as precisely as possible, but knowing fully its basic im-precision? A hopeless task, but none the less rewarding for being hopeless. Because the task itself, the act of wrestling with an insoluble problem, grows the writer up! This was what the old bastard realized. You should read his letters to his wife. For all their brilliance how he whined and cringed, how despicably he
presented himself — like some Dostoievskian character beset by some nasty compulsion neurosis! It is really staggering what a petty and trivial soul he reveals there.’ This was an amazing ins ight into the tormented yet wholly complete being of the letters which I myself had just read!
‘Keats’ I said, ‘for goodness’ sake tell me. Are you writing a book about him?’
Keats drank slowly and thoughtfully and replaced his glass somewhat unsteadily before saying: ‘No.’ He stroked his chin and fell silent.
‘They say you are writing something’ I persisted. He shook his head obstinately and contemplated his glass with a blurred eye.
‘I wanted to’ he admitted at last, slow ly. ‘I did a long review of the novels once for a small mag. The next thing I got a letter from his wife. She wanted a book done. A big rawboned Irish girl, very hysterical and sluttish: handsome in a big way, I suppose. Always blowing her nose in an old envelope. Always in carpet slippers. I must say I felt for him. But I tumbled straight into a hornets’ nest there. She loathed him, and there seemed to be plenty to loathe, I must say. She gave me a great deal of infor-mation, and simply masses of letters and manuscripts. Treasure trove all right. But, my dear chap, I couldn’t use this sort of stuff. If for no other reason than that I respect his memory and his work. No. No. I fobbed her off. Told her she would never get such things published. She seemed to want to be publicly martyred in print just to get back at him — old Pursewarden! I couldn’t do such a thing. Besides the material was quite hair-raising! I don’t want to talk about it. Really, I would never repeat the truth to a soul.’
We sat looking thoughtfully, even watchfully at each other, for a long moment before I spoke again.
‘Have you ever met his sister, Liza?’
Keats shook his head slowly. ‘No. What was the point? I abandoned the project right away, so there was no need to try and hear her story. I know she has a lot of manuscript stuff, because the wife told me so. But