No More Learning

Whatever small chance these words of Belacqua might
have had of giving satisfaction was more than cancelled by his having been observed, in a dumbshow portmanteau of Selah and sigh of relief, to check off on his fingers each acknowledgment as it was made. Thelma marched to the door in an atmosphere of silence and shock, opened it and closed it behind her, which expression of independence rather cut the ground away from under Una, who had planned to sit down with a bang on the pouf, just at the moment when her services were obviously most needed, and thus put an open slight on the bride.
Hairy on the other hand, faithful to the last to his com- mission, reported smartly for duty.
"Slip out quick" said Belacqua "and run her behind into the lane off Denmark Street. "
The guests were now adjourning stiffly to the drawing- room, Walter and Otto Olaf polarised in bitter tig about the person of the Alba, Otto Olaf being it, while Her- mione and James, he propelling her in a tomb-deep arm- chair on casters, closed the recession. This grotesque equipage was brought to a standstill in the passage in consequence of the passenger's putting her feet to the ground, whether from coquetry or fatigue we leave it to the reader to determine.
"My crutches Jim" she said.
Jim went back for the crutches, Walter took sanctuary with Hermione, the Alba sent Otto Olaf flying, Jim came back with the sweeps, Hermione got them under her somehow, Walter rejoined the Alba. They remained all
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four quietly where they were, in the passage, discussing ways and means, severally first, then, when their interests were overheard to coincide, together. Four heads are better than two, eight than four, and so on.
After a fairly decent interval Belacqua excused himself just for a moment (as he did, it may be remembered, to the Poet in the Grosvenor), left the room, sprang up the stairs, caught up his bride like a Cossack and conveyed her by clandestine ways down to the garden that lay be- hind the house. He opened the wicket into the lane with the key that his love had fondly hoped would facilitate his suit in its early stages, and in another moment they had been clear of the abhorred premises when the sound of a broken-winded hue in the garden caused him to turn back. This proceeded from that irrepressible quartet, Her- mione, the Alba, Walter and James, perspiring, suppliant, making their getaway.
Belacqua stood like a stock at gaze, with an overwhelm- ing sense that all this would happen to him again, in a dream or subsequent existence. Then he stepped to the one side, Thelma to the other, of the wicket, Caudine exit, saying to himself, as he watched the fugitives storm the postern like women boarding a tram: "It is right that they who are loved should live. " It was from this moment that he used to date in after years his crucial loss of interest in himself, as in a grape beyond his grasp.
But the alarm had been given, faces sprang up in the windows, Una began to scream havoc fit to burst, the mixers and the plain-clothes man came plunging up the garden in the van of pursuit. Belacqua threw them a tub in the form of Hairy, locked the wicket on the outside and committed himself and his wife to the Morgan, fast but noisy.
As for the other four, they did not feel safe until they
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reached the Cappella Lane, superb cenotheca, in Charle- mont House. Nobody would ever think of looking for them there.
Lucy was atra cura in the dicky the best part of the way down to Galway.
They all stopped for a drink. Thelma, as ever on his wrong side, began to insist that she was Mrs Shuah, mak- ing his little heart go pit-a-pat. He turned a face that she had never seen upon her.
"Do you ever hear tell of a babylan? " he said.
Now Thelma was a brave girl.
"A what did you say? " she said.
Belacqua went to the trouble of spelling the strange
word.
"Never" she said. "What is it? Something to eat? " "Oh" he said "you're thinking of a baba. "
"Well then" she said.
His eyes were parched, he closed them and saw, clearer
than ever before, the mule, up to its knees in mire, and astride its back a beaver, flogging it with a wooden sword. But she was not merely brave, she was discreet as well.
"Your veronica" she said "that I wanted so much, where is it gone? "
He clapped his hand to the place. Alas! the tassel had drooped, wormed its stem out of the slit, fallen to the ground and been trodden underfoot.
"Gone west" he said. They went further.
The Smeraldina's Billet Doux
JDel bel by own bloved, allways and for ever mine! ! Your letter is soked with tears death is the onely thing.
I had been crying bitterly, tears! tears! tears! and nothing els, then your letter cam with more tears, after I had read it ofer and ofer again I found I had ink spots on my face. The tears are rolling down my face. It is very early in the morning, the sun is riseing behind the black trees and soon that will change, the sky will be blue and the trees a golden brown, but there is one thing that dosent change, this pain and thos tears. Oh! Bel I love you terrible, I want you terrible, I want your body your soft white body Nagelnackt! My body needs you so terrible, my hands and lips and breasts and everything els on me, sometimes I find it very hard to keep my promise but I have kept it up till now and will keep on doing so untill we meet again and I can at last have you, at last be the Geliebte. Whitch is the greater: the pain of being away from eachother, or the pain of being with eachother, crying at eachother beauty? I sopose the last is the greater, otherwise we would of given up all hope of ever being anything els but miserable.
I was at a grand Film last night, first of all there wasent any of the usual hugging and kissing, I think I have never enjoyed or felt so sad at a Film as at that one, Sturm iiber Asien, if it comes to Dublin you must go and see it, the same Regie as Der Lebende Leichnam, it was realey
152
THE SMERALDINA's BILLET DOUX 153
something quite different from all other Films, nothing to do with Love (as everybody understands the word) no silly girls makeing sweet faces, nearly all old people from Asien with marvellous faces, black lakes and grand Land- schaften. Comeing home there was a new moon, it looked so grand ofer the black trees that it maid me cry. I opened my arms wide and tryed to imagine that you were lieing against my breasts and looking up at me like you did those moonlight nights when we walked together under the big chestnut trees with the stars shineing through the branches.
I met a new girl, very beautiful, pitch black hairs and very pale, she onely talks Egyptian. She told me about the man she loves, at present he is in Amerika far away in some lonely place and wont be back for the next three years and cant writ to her because there is no post office where he is staying and she onely gets a letter every 4 months, imagine if we only got a letter from each other every 4 months what sort of state we would be in by now, the poor girl I am very sorry for her. We went to a 5 o'clock tea dance, it was rather boreing but quite amuse- ing to see the people thinking of nothing but what they have on and the men settling their tyes every 5 minutes. On the way home I sudenly got in to a terrible state of sadness and woulden say a word, of course they were rage- ing with me, at the moment I dident care a dam, when I got in to the bus I got out a little Book and pencil and wrot down 100 times: Bloved Bloved Bloved Bel Bel Bel, I felt as if I never longed so much in my Me for the man I love, to be with him, with him. I want you so much in every sence of the word, you and onely you. After I got out of the bus and was walking down the street I yelled out wahnsinnig wahnsinnig! wahnsinnig! Frau Schlank brought down your sock and that made me cry more than ever. I dont think I will send it to you, I will put it in to
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the drawer with your sweet letter. I had allso a letter from a man who asked me to go out with him to dance on Saturday evening, I sopose I will go. I know my bloved dosent mind and it makes the time go round quicker, the man is a bit of a fool but dances quite well and is the right hight for me. A flirt is very amuseing but shouldent go further than that.
Then I met the old man with the pipe and he told me I had a blue letter and then the fat man with the keys in the passage and he said Griiss Gott but I dident hear him.
Soon I will be counting the hours untill I can go to the station and find you amongst the crowded platform but I dont think I will be able to wear my grey costume if it is too cold and then I will have to wear Mammy furcoat. You will be by me on the 23th wont you Bel, my Bel with the beautiful lips and hands and eyes and face and every- thing that is on you, and now with your poor sore face it would make no diffrence. Two more weeks of agony pain and sadness! 14 more days oh! God and thos sleepless nights! ! ! How long? How long?
I had a very queer dream last night about you and me in a dark forest, we were lieing together on a path, when sudenly you changed in to a baby and dident know what love was and I was trying to tell you that I loved you more than anything on earth but you dident understand and wouldent have any thing to do with me but it was all a dream so it dosent count. There is no object in me trying to tell you how much I love you because I will never suc- ceed, I know that for sirten. Is he the man I have allways been looking for? Yes! but then why cant he give that what I have been longing for for the last 6 months? I ofen wonder what is on you that makes me love you so greatly. I love you iiber alles in dieser Welt, mehr als alles auf Himmel, Erde und Holle. One thing I thank God for that
THE SMERALDlNA's BILLET DOUX 155
our love is so vast. I ofen wonder who I am to thank that you are born and that we met, I sopose I beter not start trying to find out whose fault it is that you are born. It comes back to the same thing, and that is, that I onely know ONE THING and that is that / LOVE YOU AND I AM ALLWAYS YOUR SMERALDINA and that is the onely thing that matters most in our life YOU LOVE ME
AND ARE ALLWAYS MY BEL.
Analiese is hacking round on the piano and there is no
peace so I will stop. Now I am going to go on reading my Book called Die Grosse Liebe and then perhaps I will try and struggel through the Beethoven sonate, it is the onely thing that can take me away from my misery, I love play- ing quietly to myself in the evenings it gives me such a rest.
Bel! Bel! Bel! your letter has just come! Even if you cease to be all and allways mine! ! ! Oh! God how could you ever say such a thing, for lord sake dont! ! ! for god sake dont ever suggest such a thing again! I just berry my head in my hands and soke your letter with tears . . . Bel! Bel! how could you ever doubt me? Meine Ruh ist hin mein Herz ist schwer ich finde Sie nimmer und nimmer mehr. (GoethesFaust. ) LordLordLordforgodsaketell me strate away what agsactly I have done. Is everything indiffrent to you? Evedintly you cant be bothered with a goat like me. If I dont stop writing you wont be able to read this letter because it will be all ofer tears. Bel! Bel! my love is so vast that when I am introduced to some young man and he starts doing the polite I get a quivver all ofer. I know what I am lifeing for, your last letter is allways on my breast when I wake up in the morning and see the sun rise. Ich sen' Dich nicht mehr Tranen hindern mich! My God! my true dog! my baby!
I must get a new nib, this old pen is gone to the dogs,
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I can't writ with it any more, it is the one I got from Woll- worth so you can imagine how good it must be.
Mammy wanted me to go out for a walk this afternoon, but I hate walking, I get so tired putting one foot delib- ertely in front of the other. Do you remember last sum- mer (of course he dose) and how lovely it was lieing hearing the bees summing and the birds singing, and the big butterfly that cam past, it looked grand, it was dark brown with yellow spots and looked so beautiful in the sun, and my body was quite brown all ofer and I dident feel the cold any more. Now the snow is all melted and the wood is as black as ever and the sky is allways grey except in the early morning and even then one can onely see spots of red between the black clouds.
My hairs are freshily washed and I have a bit more energie than usual but still feel very passiv. For god sake dont overdo yourself and try and not get drunk again, I mean in that way that makes you sick.
We cam home in the bus this evening but we dident go that way through the fields with all the little paths be- cause the big road was mended. Mammy allways asks after you. She says the time is flying, it will be no time untill Xmas and she says she hopes Frau Holle makes her bed ofen. I heard her saying to Daddy, I wonder how it is that Ivy and Bill get on my nerves when they go on together and Smerry and Bel never did. She ment when we are sitting on eachother knee and so on, I think it is because the love between Ivy and Bill is not real, there allways sems to be some sort of affection about it.
I curse the old body all day asswell because I have some dam thing on my leg so that I can barely walk, I don't know what it is or how it got there but it is there and full of matter to hell with it.
To-day is one of the days when I see everything more
THE SMERALDINA's BILLET DOUX 157
clearer than ever and I am sure everything will go right in the end.
Der Tag wird kommen und die stille Nacht! ! !
I dont genau know when but if I dident think so I would cullaps with this agony, thes terrible long dark nights and onely your image to console me. I like the little white statue so much and am longing for the day when you and I will be standing like that and not haveing to think that there is somebody outside that can come in any minute.
Arschlochweh is married and gone to the Schweiz with his wife.
You ask me to give you a taske. I think I have gived you a big enough a taske. I am longing to see the "thing" you wrotaboutmy"beauty"(asyoucallit) Imustsay(with- out wanting any complements) I cant see anything very much to writ about except the usual rot men writ about women.
Darling Bel I must stop. My bed is lonely without me and your photograph is waiting to be kissed so I better give them both peace. Soon it will all take an end, you will be by me and will feel that marvellous pain again that we did in the dark mountains and the big black lake blow and will walk in the fields covered with cowslips and Flieder and will hold once more in your arms
your own sad bloved Smeraldina
P. S. One day nearer to the silent Night! ! !
Yellow
Ihe night-nurse bounced in on the tick of five and turned on the light. Belacqua waked feeling greatly refreshed and eager to wrestle with this new day. He had underlined, as quite a callow boy, a phrase in Hardy's Tess, won by dint of cogging in the Synod: When grief ceases to be specu- lative, sleep sees her opportunity. He had manipulated that sentence for many years now, emending its terms, as joy for grief, to answer his occasions, even calling upon it to bear the strain of certain applications for which he feared it had not been intended, and still it held good through it all. He waked with it now in his mind, as though it had been there all the time he slept, holding that fragile place against dreams.
The nurse brought a pot of tea and a glass of strong salts on a tray.
"Pfui! " exclaimed Belacqua.
But the callous girl preferred to disregard this.
"When are they doing me? " he asked.
"You are down for twelve" she said.
Down . . . !
She took herself off.
He drank the salts and two cups of tea and be damned
to the whole of them. Then of course he was wide awake, poor fellow. But what cared he, what cared saucy Bel-
158
acqua? He switched off the lamp and lay back on his back in this the darkest hour, smoking.
Carry it off as he might, he was in a dreadful situation. At twelve sharp he would be sliced open—zeep! —with a bistoury. This was the idea that his mind for the moment was in no fit state to entertain. If this Hunnish idea once got a foothold in his little psyche in its present unready condition, topsy-turvy after yesterday's debauch of anxi- ety and then the good night's sleep coming on top of that, it would be annihilated. The psyche, not the idea, which was precisely the reverse of what he wished. For himself, to do him justice, he did not care. His mind might cave in for all he cared, he was tired of the old bastardo. But the unfortunate part of it was that this would appear in his behaviour, he would scream and kick and bite and scratch when they came for him, beg for execution to be stayed and perhaps even wet the bed, and what a reflection on his late family that would be! The grand old family Huguenot guts, he could not do the dirty on them like that. (To say nothing of his natural anxiety to be put to rights with as little fuss as possible.
My sufferings under the anaesthetic, he reflected, will be exquisite, but I shall not remember them.
He dashed out his cigarette and put on the lamp, this not so much for the company of the light as in order to postpone daybreak until he should feel a little more sure of himself. Daybreak, with its suggestion of a nasty birth, he could not bear. Downright and all as he was, he could not bear the sight of this punctilious and almost, he some- times felt, superfluous delivery. This was mere folly and well he knew it. He tried hard to cure himself, to frighten or laugh himself out of this weakness, but to no avail. He would grow tired and say to himself: I am what I am
)
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That was the end of all his meditations and endeavours: I am what I am. He had read the phrase somewhere and liked it and made it his own.
But God at least was good, as He usually is if we only know how to take Him, in this way, that six hours sep- arated him (Belacqua) from the ordeal, six hours were allotted to him in which to make up his mind, as a pretty drab her face for an enemy. His getting the fleam in the neck, his suffering the tortures of the damned while seem- ing to slumber as peacefully as a little child, were of no consequence, as hope saved they were not, so long as his mind were master of the thought of them. What he had to do, and had with typical slackness put off doing till the last moment, was to arrange a hot reception in his mind for the thought of all the little acts of kindness that he was to endure before the day was out. Then he would be able
to put a good face on it. Otherwise not.
Otherwise he would bite, scratch, etc. , when they came for him. Now the good face was all that concerned him, the bold devil- may-care expression. (Except of course that he was also anxioustobemadewellwiththeleastpossibleado. ) He did not pause to consider himself in this matter, the light that the coming ordeal would shed on his irrevocable self, because he really was tired of that old bastardo. No, his whole concern was with other people, the lift-boy, nurses and sisters, the local doc coming to put him off, the emi- nent surgeon, the handy man at hand to clean up and put the bits into the incinerator, and all the friends of his late family, who would ferret out the whole truth. It did not matter about him, he was what he was. But these out- siders, the family guts and so on and so forth, all these things had to be considered.
An asthmatic in the room overhead was coughing his heart up. God bless you, thought Belacqua, you make
things easier for me. But when did the unfortunate sleep? During the day, the livelong day, through the stress of the day. At twelve sharp he would be sound, or, better again, just dozing off. Meantime he coughed, as Crusoe laboured to bring his gear ashore, the snugger to be.
Belacqua made a long arm and switched off the lamp. It threw shadows. He would close his eyes, he would bilk the dawn in that way. What were the eyes anyway? The posterns of the mind. They were safer closed.
If only he were well-bred or, failing that, plucky. Blue blood or game-cock! Even if he lived in his mind as much as was his boast. Then he need not be at all this pains to make himself ready. Then it would only be a question of finding a comfortable position in the strange bed, trying to sleep or reading a book, waiting calmly for the angelus. But he was an indolent bourgeois poltroon, very talented up to a point, but not fitted for private life in the best and brightest sense, in the sense to which he referred when he bragged of how he furnished his mind and lived there, because it was the last ditch when all was said and done. But he preferred not to wait till then, he fancied it might be wiser to settle down there straight away and not wait till he was kicked into it by the world, just at the moment maybe when he was beginning to feel at home in the world. He could no more go back into his heart in that way than he could keep out of it altogether. So now there was noth- ing for it but to lie on his back in the dark and exercise his talent. Unless of course he chose to distress the friends of his late family ( to say nothing of perhaps jeopardising the cure for which the friends of his late family were pay- ing ) . But he had too much of the grocer's sense of honour for that. Rather than have that happen he would persist with his psyche, he would ginger up his little psyche for the occasion.
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Poor Belacqua, he seems to be having a very dull, irk- some morning, preparing for the fray in this manner. But he will make up for it later on, there is a good time com- ing for him later on, when the doctors have given him a new lease of apathy.
What were his tactics in this crisis?
In a less tight corner he might have been content to barricade his mind against the idea. But this was at the best a slipshod method, since the idea, how blatant an enemy soever and despite the strictest guard, was almost certain to sidle in sooner or later under the skirts of a friend, and then the game was up. Still, in the ordinary run of adversity, he would doubtless have bowed to his natural indolence and adopted such a course, he would have been content merely to think of other things and hope for the best. But this was no common or garden fix,
he was properly up against it this time, there could be no question of half-measures on this melancholy occasion.
His plan therefore was not to refuse admission to the idea, but to keep it at bay until his mind was ready to receive it. Then let it in and pulverise it. Obliterate the bastard. He ground his teeth in the bed. Flitter the fucker, tear it into pieces like a priest. So far so good. But by what means. Belacqua ransacked his mind for a suitable engine of destruction.
At this crucial point the good God came to his assist- ance with a phrase from a paradox of Donne : Now among our wise men, I doubt not but many would be found, who would laugh at Heraclitus weeping, none which would weep at Democritus laughing. This was a godsend and no error. Not the phrase as a judgment, but its terms, the ex- tremes of wisdom that it tendered to Belacqua. It is true that he did not care for these black and white alternatives as a rule. Indeed he even went so far as to hazard a little
paradox on his own account, to the effect that between contraries no alternation was possible. But was it the mo- ment for a man to be nice? Belacqua snatched eagerly at the issue. Was it to be laughter or tears? It came to the same thing in the end, but which was it to be now? It was too late to arrange for the luxury of both. Now in a mo- ment he would fill his mind with one or other of these two orders of rays, shall we say ultra-red and ultra-violet, and prepare to perforate his adversary.
Really, thought Belacqua, I cannot remember having ever spent a more dreary morning; but needs must, that was a true saying, when the devil drives.
At this all-important juncture of his delirium Belacqua found himself blinking his eyes rapidly, a regular nicta- tion, so that little flaws of dawn gushed into his mind. This had not been done with intent, but when he found that it seemed to be benefiting him in some curious way he kept it up, until gradually the inside of his skull began to feel sore. Then he desisted and went back to the dilemma.
Here, as indeed at every crux of the enterprise, he sacri- ficed sense of what was personal and proper to himself to the desirability of making a certain impression on other people, an impression almost of gallantry. He must efface himself altogether and do the little soldier. It was this paramount consideration that made him de- cide in favour of Bim and Bom, Grock, Democritus, whatever you are pleased to call it, and postpone its dark converse to a less public occasion. This was an abnegation if you like, for Belacqua could not resist a lachrymose philosopher and still less when, as was the case with Heraclitus, he was obscure at the same time. He was in his element in dingy tears and luxuriously so when these were furnished by a pre-Socratic man of acknowledged
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distinction. How often had he not exclaimed, skies being grey: "Another minute of this and I consecrate the rem- nant of my life to Heraclitus of Ephesus, I shall be that Delian diver who, after the third or fourth submersion, returns no more to the surface! "
But weeping in this charnel-house would be miscon- strued. All the staff, from matron to lift-boy, would make the mistake of ascribing his tears, or, perhaps better, his tragic demeanor, not to the follies of humanity at large which of course covered themselves, but rather to the tumour the size of a brick that he had on the back of his neck. This would be a very natural mistake and Belacqua was not blaming them. No blame attached to any living person in this matter. But the news would get round that Belacqua, so far from grinning and bearing, had piped his eye, or had been on the point of doing so. Then he would be disgraced and, by extension, his late family also.
So now his course was clear. He would arm his mind with laughter, laughter is not quite the word but it will have to serve, at every point, then he would admit the idea and blow it to pieces. Smears, as after a gorge of blackberries, of hilarity, which is not quite the word either, would be adhering to his lips as he stepped smartly, ohne Hast obex ohne Rast, into the torture-chamber. His fortitude would be generally commended.
How did he proceed to put this plan into execution? He has forgotten, he has no use for it any more.
The night-nurse broke in upon him at seven with an-
other pot of tea and two cuts of toast.
"That's all you'll get now" she said.
The impertinent slut! Belacqua very nearly told her to
work it up.
"Did the salts talk to you? " she said.
The sick man appraised her as she took his temperature and pulse. She was a tight trim little bit.
"They whispered to me" he said.
When she was gone he thought what an all but flawless brunette, so spick and span too after having been on the go all night, at the beck and call of the first lousy old squaw who let fall her book or could not sleep for the roar of the traffic in Merrion Row. What the hell did anything matter anyway!
Pale wales in the east beyond the Land Commission. The day was going along nicely.
The night-nurse came back for the tray. That made her third appearance, if he was not mistaken. She would very shortly be relieved, she would eat her supper and go to bed. But not to sleep. The place was too full of noise and light at that hour, her bed a refrigerator. She could not get used to this night-duty, she really could not. She lost weight and her face became cavernous. Also it was very difficult to arrange anything with her fiance. What a life!
"See you later" she said.
There was no controverting this. Belacqua cast about wildly for a reply that would please her and do him jus- tice at the same time. Au plaisir was of course the very thing, but the wrong language. Finally he settled on / suppose so and discharged it at her in a very half-hearted manner, when she was more than half out of the door. He would have been very much better advised to let it alone and say nothing.
While he was still wasting his valuable time cursing himself for a fool the door burst open and the day-nurse came in with a mighty rushing sound of starched apron. She was to have charge of him by day. She just missed being beautiful, this Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Aber- deen!
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After a little conversation obiter Belacqua let fall casu- ally, as though the idea had only just occurred to him, whereas in fact it had been tormenting him insidiously for some little time:
"Oh nurse the W. C. perhaps it might be as well to know. "
Like that, all in a rush, without any punctuation.
When she had finished telling him he knew roughly where the place was. But he stupidly elected to linger on in the bed with his uneasy load, codding himself that it would be more decent not to act incontinent on intelli- gence of so intimate a kind. In his anxiety to give colour to this pause he asked Miranda when he was being done.
"Didn't the night-nurse tell you" she said sharply, "at twelve. "
So the night-nurse had split. The treacherous darling!
He got up and set out, leaving Miranda at work on the bed. When he got back she was gone. He got back into the made bed.
Now the sun, that creature of habit, shone in through the window.
A little Aschenputtel, gummy and pert, skipped in with sticks and coal for the fire.
"Morning" she said.
"Yes" said Belacqua. But he retrieved himself at once. "What a lovely room" he exclaimed "all the morning sun. "
No more was needed to give Aschenputtel his measure.
"Very lovely" she said bitterly "right on me fire. " She tore down the blind. "Putting out me good fire" she said.
That was certainly one way of looking at it.
"I had one old one in here" she said "and he might be snoring but he wouldn't let the blind down. "
Some old put had crossed her, that was patent.
"Not for God" she said "so what did I do? " She screwed round on her knees from building the fire. Belacqua obliged her.
"What was that? " he said.
She turned back with a chuckle to her task.
"I block it with a chair" she said "and his shirt over the
back. "
"Ha" exclaimed Belacqua.
"Again he'd be up" she exulted "don't you know. " She
laughed happily at the memory of this little deception. "I kep it off all right" she said.
She talked and talked and poor Belacqua, with his mind unfinished, had to keep his end up. Somehow he managed to create a very favourable impression.
"Well" she said at last, in an indescribable sing-song "g'bye now. See you later. "
"That's right" said Belacqua.
Aschenputtel was engaged to be married to handy Andy, she had been for years. Meantime she gave him a dog's life.
Soon the fire was roaring up the chimney and Belacqua could not resist the temptation to get up and sit before it, clad only in his thin blue 100,000 Chemises pyjamas. The coughing aloft had greatly abated since he first heard it. The man was gradually settling down, it did not require a Sherlock Holmes to realise that. But on the grand old yaller wall, crowding in upon his left hand, a pillar of higher tone, representing the sun, was spinning out its placid deiseal. This dribble of time, thought Belacqua, like sanies into a bucket, the world wants a new washer. He would draw the blind, both blinds.
But he was foiled by the entry of the matron with the morning paper, this, save the mark, by way of taking his
YELLOW 167
168 MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS
mind off it. It is impossible to describe the matron. She was all right. She made him nervous the way she flung herself about.
Belacqua turned on the flow:
"What a lovely morning" he gushed "a lovely room, all the morning sun. "
The matron simply disappeared, there is no other word for it. The woman was there one moment and gone the next. It was extraordinary.
The theatre sister came in. What a number of women there seemed to be in this place! She was a great raw chateaubriant of a woman, like the one on the Wincarnis bottle. She took a quick look at his neck.
"Pah" she scoffed "that's nothing. "
"Not at all" said Belacqua.
"Is that the lot? "
Belacqua did not altogether care for her tone.
"And a toe" he said "to come off, or rather portion of a
toe.
"Top" she guffawed "and bottom. "
There was no controverting this. But he had learnt his
lesson. He let it pass.
This woman was found to improve on acquaintance.
She had a coarse manner, but she was exceedingly gentle. She taught all her more likely patients to wind bandages. To do this well with the crazy little hand-windlass that she provided was no easy matter. The roll would become fusiform. But when one got to know the humours of the apparatus, then it could be coaxed into yielding the hard slender spools, perfect cylinders, that delighted her. All these willing slaves that passed through her hands, she blandished each one in turn. "I never had such tight straight bandages" she would say. Then, just as the friend- ship established on this basis seemed about to develop
into something more—how shall I say? —substantial, the patient would all of a sudden be well enough to go home. Some malignant destiny pursued this splendid woman. Years later, when the rest of the staff was forgotten, she would drift into the mind. She marked down Belacqua for the bandages.
Miranda came back, this time with the dressing-tray. That voluptuous undershot cast of mouth, the clenched lips, almost bocca romana, how had he failed to notice it before? Was it the same woman?
"Now" she said.
She lashed into the part with picric and ether.