Cards of Identity (28 page)

But I was too unstrung to discuss literature. The taxi drew up, I paid the driver with a half-sovereign from the greatcoat pocket, and Harold rang the bell. The door opened, a shaft of light fell upon me, and I swooned upon the doormat, the beard slipping from my fingers.

*

I awoke, dressed in silk pyjamas and with scent behind my ears, on a lovely painted sofa, set in a room that was filled with light, colour, and flowers. Harold was lying naked under a sun-lamp, rubbing cold-cream into his crow’s-feet and turning with his palms the pages of a pornographic volume. In a corner, deftly arranging Michaelmas daisies in a tall vase, stood a plump, well-dressed man. A Philippino manservant was dusting a figure of Adonis with a feather whisk – or so I thought until the figure said: ‘That’s
quite
enough, Carlo,’ and walked lightly from the room.

‘Yes,’ said the man with the flowers: ‘it will be a lesson to you, Harold. I have urged you a hundred times to bring a little daintiness and
order
into your life, and instead you have
courted
turmoil. I was patient when the bosun thrashed you; I hid you when you fled the large Jamaican; I interposed
my
own
form
when your devious camping turned the sun-porch to a
jungle.
As a result, you have come to believe that my affection for you will always be on
top,
my sword for ever
unsheathed
in your behalf. But this is not the case. What, pray, would you have done, if this bearded monster had proved
real
?
How would you have emerged from such a test? Would you have emerged at all? Would you have
wished
to
emerge? For that is really the main question. Each time I succour you, I have the feeling that I have
let
you
down,
disappointed
you. It is no good your talking of Zeus in the guise of some
predatory animal: what are you doing in the
den
at all? What have the
classics
to do with it? It seems to me you have got your identity confused: in the Greek world it is only
heroes
who go out in search of monsters, and there is no trace of the heroic in
you.
Instead, there is some nagging compulsion to
wriggle
yourself – for wriggle is the
only
word – into the very centre of a predicament in which you will be utterly defenceless when the moment comes to
pay
the
piper.’

Harold gave a slight scream and went on reading.

‘But is that not true? Well, I am going to find out. Next time you find yourself in the clutch of some bar-room Jove,
I
shall
not
be
there.’

Harold screamed again.

‘No, I shall not. I shall watch your struggles with complacent negligence. When you are carried from the scene, shrieking, I shall not wind my horn. I shall not whistle-up my
dogs.
We shall see then how you emerge from the
bonfire
which has resulted from your childish obsession with
matches.
If anything
remains
of you thereafter –’

Harold gave a third scream and drummed his ankles.

‘– If anything
remains
of you, it will perhaps be a more
orderly
remnant, more discriminating in its choice of
friends,
more
sensible
of
itself,
less ready to cast its
bread
upon the waters, leaving a
better
taste in the mouth than is the case at present.’

‘What’s the time?’ said Harold.

The gentleman consulted his wrist-watch and replied: ‘It is exactly eleven twenty-nine.’

‘Then I must turn over,’ said Harold. He did so. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted,’ he added, ‘do go on.’

‘I shall certainly do so. What I see ahead of
you,
Harold, is
middle-age.
No, don’t scream. I’m only being cruel to be kind. I was once every inch as slim as you. When I entered a room, I, too, did so like a graceful spinning-top. Like you, I tormented my elders and betters, mocking their sage flesh with fluttering and suggestive glances. Like you, I veiled a heart full of trickery and malice under looks of hapless innocence. Indeed, I know it all so well, that when I look at you now, my glance penetrates you from end to end.’

‘I like that,’ said Harold.

‘Of course. But you won’t when you have become impenetrably
fat.
And you are
going
to be fat. You are the type who becomes
ex
ceedingly
fat. You are going to look like a
Queen
’
s
Pudding.
The creases
that you are at this moment so easily smoothing from your eyes are going to be
gullies,
Harold, deep passages down which your elderly tears will flow between banks of mountainous
tissues.
Your hair will not grey; oh no. It will never know a charming silver. It will fall from your head, as silky hair always does, sliver by sliver, and leave not a wrack behind, only the domed sheen of a moribund chamber-pot. You will be a repulsive sight; your feet flat, hot, and heavy; your gait a rolling wobble; your
knees
– but let us say nothing of
them.
Burnt, indeed,
immolated,
at both ends, your candle will not last the night, if only because there will be no night to give it harbour.’

Harold began to cry. Well-pleased, the gentleman continued: ‘In short, you are in mid-passage, Harold. Two more years of your present identity is the
very
most
you can expect. Now is the time for you to learn from my experience. What did
I
do when, like you, I saw myself approaching the middle of the journey? Did I press on, oblivious, keeping to the dear, familiar road of beauty, youth, and malice? I did not. I resolved then and there to trim my nails and cut my losses. Before Nature could rob me of my hair, I myself clipped it to the brosse. My shirts of many colours I gave to younger men. My suits became double-breasted and severe; my necktie a firm, simple bow. I learnt to walk stiffly upright; I charged my languorous hands with a chubby firmness suggestive of aesthetic dignity. I voluntarily became tubby before my time; I cleansed my house of the riff-raff which haunted it; substituted for the ever unmade double-bed the refined bust, the well-chosen tea-cup, the select
objet
d’art
…. And turn that sun-lamp on to some higher part of you or you will be a Botticelli from the waist-up, a Bronzino from waist-down.’

Sniffling, Harold obeyed.

‘Let me continue. I saw, even at that early stage of my life, that the reward of age is not wisdom but despotism. I trained myself to be hard, crusty, and ruthless. I made myself feared. I killed the butterfly in me and became a managerial figure. No one knew in what shape I might appear – a tyrannous interior-decorator, an authority on harpsichords, a racing motorist, a designer of winter-gardens and connoisseur of camellias, a royalist historian, a distinguished general. I even made a brief venture into marriage – a condition I would still be in were it not for the fact that my strength of character and ferocity made it impossible for me to stimulate the soft, spineless role of an up-to-date
husband. And what has been the consequence of all this? Does anyone regard me in the way they will soon regard you – as a repellent old Micawber whose puffy antics and sloppy ways provoke only derision and boredom? Do I live a lonely, drunken life, cooking myself precious little dishes over a dirty gasfire and obtaining from food the gluttonous joy that I am denied by my fellow-girls? Far from it. I am a well-to-do, revered and powerful figure. That Establishment which we call England has taken me in: I am become her Fortieth article. I sit upon her Boards, I dominate her stage, her museums, her dances, and her costumes; I have an honoured voice in her elected House. To her-and her alone-I bend the knee, and in return for my homage she is gently blind to my small failings, asking only that I indulge them privately. The few who dare to sneer at me, do so well-behind my back, and when I find them out my revenge is subtle, immediate, and deadly. When I look at
you,
Harold, sprawled beneath that lamp like an earthworm on a sunny stone, it is not envy or admiration I feel … it is
joy
– joy that no one can ever turn
my
stone over and render me a revolting slug, condemned to a dark, wet world of slime and misery. … What? Weeping again? You do not want the Establishment to seize you, try you, and imprison you, to be considered degraded even by the House of Lords and corrupt even by the evening press? You object to standing in a magistrate’s court hearing your psychological oddity explained to three rich grocers and a retired colonel? You don’t want every illiterate in town to make you responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire, or to become the victim through whom the Establishment will threaten all who detest it? You do not wish to be sponged upon by golden-haired youths who will spend what they squeeze from you on orgies with others more handsome and robust? Surely you need have no fear of
that.
It is you who will be begging from them – piteously reminding them that you, too, were once comely and exotic. But the young never read the terrible messages that are writ on tombstones, Harold, nor do they throw away good money on
ancient
mariners.
’

Poor Harold! I had been sorry to hear that he had been keeping such bad company and that his character, as I had suspected already, was of a weak kind. I was glad, on the other hand, to know that there was some older man to take an interest in his future and explain how worried the Establishment always is about the Roman Empire having
lasted only a thousand years. But it did seem to me that he was having it laid on pretty hard. It touched my heart to see him lying there, burnt quite red in some places and merely tinged in others, his eyes red with tears, the cold cream smeared all over his pretty book, his insteps twitching with his sobs. It was to save him from further humiliation that I gave a genteel cough.

At once the older man gave me a most sympathetic smile and started across the room. On reaching Harold, he paused, struck him a sharp blow on the buttocks, and cried: ‘Stop!’ When Harold, with a yell, burst into more tears, he slapped him again, saying: ‘Immediately! This is the last warning!’ I was impressed to see that within a few seconds Harold’s tears had disappeared and only a silent quivering remained to indicate his distress. The Master switched off the sun-lamp and said: ‘Now, go and get dressed at once. You are a horrible sight.’ And Harold, sighing, rose to his feet and went obediently to the door. I was sorry to see that though he staggered in an ungainly way at first, by the time he reached the door he was moving in his usual affected way, as if totally unimpressed by the sermon he had just received.

‘So you are the bearded lady?’ said the Master, sitting beside the sofa with a smile. ‘Well, my dear, let us first get one thing
quite
clear. It was purely as an act of humanity that I gave you refuge here, and if you are one of the gang with whom Harold associates when my back is turned, I assure you that you will
leave
immediately.’

I was most offended by such a rude beginning. I was about to say so, in the strongest language, when I took notice of the extreme severity of his face and changed my mind. ‘Far from being one of any gang,’ I answered simply, ‘I am an unhappy, persecuted person who has suffered only misfortune as a result of clinging to the strictest principles.’

‘You had better tell me the whole story, then,’ he replied, ‘And no lies and exaggerations, please. I am
never
fooled.’

‘This will be the fourth time I have told “the whole story”, in a single week,’ I answered, ‘and yet it is already ten times as long. Only a few days ago it had a long beginning and no end; now, the beginning is negligible as the end stretches into interminable nightmare. A week ago, I stood firmly upon my past; today, it has disappeared and I am swimming in incomprehensibility. It used to worry me not to know who I was, but I find it far worse not knowing
when
I am.’

I then told him the whole story, weeping vigorously when I reached the moment of my parents’ deaths because I knew that from now on they would play no part whatever in my life.

‘And so,’ he said, when I had finished, ‘what is the situation now? In what identity do you intend to face the future? Are you going to choose one of the sexes as your own or are you going to continue on the undetermined course laid down by your parents?’

‘I cannot see myself doing either,’ I replied. ‘It seems that the choice I have to make is quite different from what my parents supposed. It seems that nowadays one must choose between being a woman who behaves like a man, and a man who behaves like a woman. In short, I must choose to be one in order to behave like the other. This is going to be much more difficult: already I can see the confusion that will mark my life; the overlappings of the real and the feigned; the mingled half-bass, half-soprano; the incessant switchings, self-reminders, lapses, and interludes of sexual forgetfulness.’

‘Oh, come now,’ he said, smiling: ‘You make it seem too complicated. Let us suppose you decide to be a sort of Harold. Clearly you will see yourself as a sort of accidental man whose aim is to overcome your handicap as quickly as possible. The first step in this direction is to keep the word “girl” uppermost in your mind. This is a decisive, transitional word, specially contrived to fit your particular difficulty. Once you start thinking of yourself as “girl”, you will find yourself quite at home in the feigned role. The important thing is to get the word “woman” out of your mind: you can be a girl-man, if you know what I mean, but not a woman-man. Similarly, if you decide to follow in Violet’s footsteps, you can become a man-girl, but not a man-woman. Do you follow?’

‘Do you really see me a man-girl like Violet?’ I asked, smiling.

‘Why not? Don’t imagine that all men-girls have to look like oxen. There are many, like you, who are slim and delicate and make up for lack of poundage with a hard, cold power which is a great deal more impressive than sheer weight. No, the great thing to remember about this intermediate zone of ours is that your choice is as wide as it would be in the normal world. You can be a languishing type of man-girl, a ruthless type of girl-man. You can also be anywhere in between; there is no fixed register. Moreover, any time you find your chosen role unsuitable, you can make a complete switch.’