Imago Bird (8 page)

I was moving parallel to Victoria Street, between it and the river. It was a bright windy day. People in the street were going past like leaves blown from Andromeda.

There were some pornographic bookshops at the back of Victoria Station.

I thought—For God's sake, if I could hold out a crucifix at you, fart at you, would you stop following me?

Dr Anders would say—I thought you were on your way to your beloved —

— That dark horse, to drag me down, like a child at the skirts of its mother.

The man with crinkly hair had been so terrible! He had had such a life: his mother, like a seagull, had gone for his eyes and got him —

I thought—Should I not just have put out a hand to him and said—Get it out, get it out, it won't hurt you —

Or—Is it not the best in the best of all possible worlds, that there are these dark horses to take me to my beloved?

I had come to one of the pornographic bookshops at the back of Victoria Station. I thought—You go out through a door, along a passage, and in through the same door —

The covers of the magazines seemed to have been carrying on for some time a contest about how far they could see up women's arses.

I thought—And all these men, like ghosts, in their chain-mail, clanking; who want to post things like letters up women's arses —

A voice behind me said ‘Hullo.'

I said ‘Oh hullo.'

‘Have you got the time on you?'

He was a flat-faced man, rather elderly.

I thought I might explain—I'm here just to study the anthropology of this strange tribe; the question of why it is customary to make letter-boxes of arses —

I said ‘No.'

He said ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?'

I thought—Well, I would, wouldn't I?

Then—This is not a dark horse to take me to my beloved!

He said ‘I know quite a good place round here.'

I thought I could explain—But I'm carrying out an experiment, you see, to discover what happens if you simply act what seems truthful —

I said ‘All right.'

In fact I would like a cup of coffee.

We walked round the corner.

I thought—An experiment is not an experiment, is it, if you think you know the result —

Round the corner there was a café with red-topped tables and bottles of sauce like fly-traps.

He said ‘You've done this before?'

I said ‘No.'

He said ‘You'd like some coffee?'

I said ‘Yes.'

I sat at the table while he went to the counter.

I thought—There is that story about the prison warder who goes to bed with the man in the condemned cell out of pity —

Then—But I'm not his warder?

The man came back with some coffee. He said ‘Here.'

I said ‘Thanks.'

He said ‘Where do you come from?'

I said ‘Cowley Street.'

‘Cowley Street!'

‘Yes.'

I could say to Dr Anders—You see, I told you —

He said ‘What do you do?'

I said ‘Philosophy.'

We drank our coffee.

He said ‘I've got a room round here.'

I thought—Dear God, perhaps I do not after all know about dark horses!

He said ‘I'll give you twenty pounds.'

I said ‘Twenty pounds!'

I thought—Can it possibly be true, that I would not like twenty pounds?

He was a man with such a sad flat face; as if his mother had
sat on him.

I thought—But even if everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds —

Then he said ‘Haven't I seen you somewhere before?'

I said ‘I don't know, have you?'

He said ‘Excuse me.'

He got up and went to talk to the man behind the counter.

He seemed to pay for the coffee. Then he went out through a door at the back.

I thought—Perhaps it was the photograph of me getting out of the car at Mr Perhaia's party?

Or—Could he be all the time one of Uncle Bill's detectives put on to follow me —

I could explain to Dr Anders—But this is still the point: if you just let things happen truly, at least you get a cup of coffee —

— But perhaps I should not think that I could talk about this too much anyway.

The man behind the counter was eyeing me suspiciously.

After a time I went out into the street. There was no sign of the flat-faced man.

I thought—And I did know, all the time, that nothing unpleasant would happen, didn't I!

Then—One day there will be horses, or birds, to carry me to my beloved.

‘Brian, this is Bert.'

‘Hullo, Bert.'

‘This is Brian.'

The meeting that Sheila had arranged for me to talk with Brian Alick turned out to be taking place at a party at the house of Sally Rogers, a television personality. Sally Rogers had once been an interviewer on television; then she had become involved with the Young Trotskyites. She was now much in demand on talk-shows to give the revolutionary point of view; which she did in a way that did not upset people, talking pleasantly about the need to break up society for the good of the people in it; thus encouraging the people watching her I suppose to imagine, because she was pretty, that the sooner society was broken up the better; because there might then be a better chance for people like them to go to bed with people like Sally Rogers.

‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Bert?'

When we had arrived at the party Sheila had taken me straight to Brian Alick: she had not even introduced me to Sally Rogers. Brian Alick was a short, compact man with smooth hair and a grey flannel suit and eyes that looked over my shoulder as if towards an autocue.

‘Shall we sit here?'

When people wait for me to talk in public, it is once more as if all the lights have come on too brightly in a theatre and there is nothing for anyone to do except leave the building.

I sat with a glass in my hand and I wondered about language being useless because it could only say one thing at a time: while what things are truly is always a network of connections.

There were about twenty people in the room. It was a sort of drinks party. I was being treated as if I were on television.

I said ‘Why do you think if you got power—'

There was this line of guns shooting down messages between my brain and my muscles: I thought—Is it my body that cannot bear this simplicity —

‘—you would be any different from—'

— but with people who talk fluently is there not always something projected blindly like an autocue, and not a bird, behind one's head —

‘—from any other communist government in power—'

My stammer was having the effect of people paying attention to me: or rather not quite to me, but slightly to one side of me, as if there might be knobs there which might adjust my programme.

‘You mean—'

‘—which—'

‘Sorry.' This was Brian Alick

‘—can only maintain itself in power—'

Sally Rogers was watching me intently. She was a brown-faced, dry-skinned woman like a Californian tennis player.

‘—by means of a secret police—'

Dr Anders had once said—You know how attractive it is when you stammer?

‘—the chief aim of which is—'

I thought—This cannot be attractive!

Then—If I get out of this alive, might I get off with Sally Rogers?

‘—to oppress the workers that they say they want to liberate.'

I had finished. I seemed to have taken about ten minutes. I tried not to let my breath out too heavily.

I thought—It is an effort like making love to Sheila?

Also—Did not Plato say, somewhere, that there is a vulgarity in people who are too fluent and precise?

Brian Alick waited for a time as if to make sure I had finished: then he spoke with his eyes still over my shoulder.

‘I suppose we are talking about the Soviet Union. Now as you know we are opposed to the Soviet Union. We consider in fact that the Soviet Union has quite deliberately betrayed socialism—'

I thought—But with people who speak fluently, isn't it then the case that their mouths are different from their anuses?

— But still, it is the case that their mouths are where things go in?

‘—as Trotsky himself said as early as 1927. No, the role of the party in a workers' social state—'

Sally Rogers was standing with her legs apart and was watching me as if I were one of her tennis balls in California—

‘—but I need not go on about this. Take the example for instance of Chile—'

— Her legs bent slightly inwards at the knees: turn her over, and her sand would run down the other way as in an hourglass —

‘—No, what we say is, give power to the British worker—the British worker who is a responsible and sophisticated political being—and you will find, once he has been liberated from the conditioning of his oppressed and oppressive past—'

‘But—'

‘—that he will be able to look after his own interests: and how will it be in his interests to let himself be oppressed by what will be after all his own police?'

I thought—Sally Rogers might be like Miss Paragon the Belgian Schoolmistress.

‘But you were saying?' This was Brian Alick.

I thought—One day, you old man at my windpipe, I will get you before you get me.

‘How—'

I thought—I will now do my breathing exercises: in, one two: hold it, three four: out, five six seven eight—like one of those statues that stare out, or wait to give birth, over the banks of the Nile.

‘Take your time, Bert.'

‘How will you free him?'

‘Free him?'

‘The British worker. From his conditioning.'

‘It will take some re-education certainly—'

‘But that's—'

‘—what we're planning—'

‘—what would be done by—'

‘—as I was saying —'

‘—the secret police.'

I thought suddenly—Is it the point of my stammering that I won't accept that I may have to attack people?

— But still, who would be hurt?

Brian Alick said ‘No. We see this as much more of a natural process when once the substructure and superstructure of an oppressive society have been taken away—'

But how —

And so on: round and round: like mice on a treadmill

I thought—I am frightened of myself being hurt? Of Brian Alick being hurt? Of my opponent, whoever he is, lunging forwards and flying out of the window?

‘—a natural process as much as a part of the processes of history—'

I thought—It is life that does the hurting; and the reeducation, certainly; I should not fear it.

Then there came in at the door, as late arrivals at the party, a group of people who were like dancers coming on half way through an opera: people different from the others on the stage: very conscious of themselves, of their bodies, of how they looked and moved; in contrast to the lumpishness of an opera chorus —

‘—which after all was seen clearly enough by Trotsky—'

One of the people who had come in was a girl of about my own age who wore a cap and a sort of jacket with bells —

Brian Alick's voice faded as if sound had been switched off.

— a girl with such softness, tightness about her; such a taste of dust; that at a touch she might crumble; as if exposed in a tomb after thousands of years —

The camera, my eyes, remained on Brian Alick; his lips moving like mice on a treadmill —

— someone round and compact as a nut or an internal organ —

I thought—This, then, is my dark horse? Do I feel life emerging?

— like a butterfly; a girl with such soft skin over sharp bones; a small, self-reflecting, curly-haired girl —

Brian Alick said ‘But you were saying?'

— that my heart turned over.

She had come in with two or three men who were older than she. They were shaggy men, like trappers, out all winter.

They went over to a table and began to eat and drink as if they were starving.

I said ‘Power is to do with armies and police. That is, once you've thrown over custom and tradition. All this stuff you talk of, workers' committees and co-operation and so on, this is the talk of people with no real interest in power, who like to stay in opposition.'

Brian Alick said ‘I can tell you we certainly don't intend to stay in opposition!'

I thought—Does she provide honey for those bears and bees?

I said ‘Then you'll have the problem of what to do with the people who don't do what you tell them, won't you.'

I thought—Now, when I have someone to talk for —

Someone said ‘But Bert, not everyone is like your uncle!'

This was Sheila.

I thought—Now, I do not stammer?

Sheila was sitting beside, and slightly behind, Brian Alick, on a sofa. She had her hand on his shoulder.

I thought—I believe that by talking like this I can attract the girl at the table?

I said ‘What's wrong with my uncle? He knows about power. He doesn't shelter behind the fact that it's easier for anyone to be a sort of martyr in opposition.'

The girl at the table still had her back to me. She seemed to move slightly while remaining quite still; like a table-tennis ball on a jet of water.

Sheila said ‘He shelters behind the army and the police!'

I said ‘My Uncle Bill?'

I remembered Dr Anders so often saying—If you do object to people, why don't you get angry?

People were now listening to me openly. There was what seemed to be some slight confrontation.

Everyone was paying attention, that is, except the group by the table.

Sheila said ‘Well take the Matanga tribe for instance—'

I thought—I will not be taking this out on Sheila just
because it is easy —