MEMOIRS OF THE LAST LAST MAN
Memoirs
of the Last Last Man is collaged from Thomas
Lovell Beddoes Death’s
Jest-Book, Edgar Allan Poe William Wilson,
Herman Melville The
Confidence-Man and Mary Shelley The Last Man. The
method was to combine the four sources phrase by phrase (or rather
micro-phrase, the phrase-end determined by the comma) sequentially; unwanted
words were then edited out.
The theme of the Last Man became one of the
motifs of late Romanticism. H.W.Donner refers to The Last Man; or Omegarus and Syderia, a Romance in
Futurity (1806) as the source of both Lord Byron’s Darkness (written at the Villa Diodati in 1816 while Mary Shelley was beginning Frankenstein) and Thomas Campbell’s The Last Man. Thomas Hood’s poem with the
same title appeared in 1826, as did Shelley’s roman à clef,
the text in which she gave fully fictional form to her memories of Percy Bysshe
Shelley and Byron. It is as if their deaths had created the opening through
which the rest of the human race would pass; the Last Man becomes the male
persona of Mary Shelley.
The theme recurs in both Poe and Melville, if
in a different register and less apocalyptic. Roderick Usher is a last man.
William Wilson is not but Poe’s use of the doppelgänger is an important aspect
of the motif. The Last Man must know he is the last man: his doubt must be that he
has an ‘other’, one perhaps very like himself. And if he has no other he will
very likely invent one.
¶ Let me call myself at sunrise a native of Fortune on a first of April. The page now lying before me the surface of the globe, my motto balanced in the scale: my outcast master of all outcasts the most abandoned Doctor must seek another merry creator of all that was good or great to man. My jests are cracked to carpet-bag flowers. Toll from shrugged shoulders the dismal bell which mastered the winds and rode the waves – call me a painted stranger? – the earth’s very centre was fixed for me in that Valentine spot. To have forgotten which epoch would have cost neither imagination nor understanding effort on the point of starting with a great E for New Orleans.
¶ From the
beginning a pastime turpitude whose origin is men pursuing arts and spagiric
duty. My father was one of those – held on his way until all virtue
dropped bodily as a hierophantical mantle – from trivial wickedness
supposed to have recently arrived from the East passed as an original genius
with occult judgment. But what purported to be a careful description of evil
was a theatre-bill. Death approaches a journeyman adored by high-bred triflers
and certain chevaliers. An Adept and the shadow which foreruns him I had nearly
said for the pity. Have them believe I have been there perpetually but as for
their debts of honour and trade they were in some myth would have bent to earth
any other beyond human control. One showed his hand and retired ex-officio a
peddler of money-belts. This kind of popular safe-guards like every other sweet
as temptation was still never hawked.
¶ Thugs in
a dream of my father gave a victim to the wildest sublunary visions with others
of the sort and more than all exterminated like the hunted generations of
wolves transmuted in the same would seem sublimate cause for unalloyed caprice.
Beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own looked with harsh eyes
tracing some words so that they who read the one might read the other Ship of
Fools to save him. World in all but name unavoidable. His Elizabethan Demon and
demeanour. All the houses were excessively ancient which they took to be
somehow inappropriate to the time and place while still renewed oracles talked
in their sleep inclining to the notion that his writing was dream-like and
spirit-soothing to prolong these absences for some sort of simpleton. Fate
would he keep in fancy for us all knowing he should pay for short-lived
pleasure by tedious homilies. The result and the last Man thrill anew with
undefinable delight in any corner less kind than the rest of him that he would
make one more attempt to reclaim may be an angel or more and in case of ill
success each black hour by an unobserved stroke cast him off for ever. He lost
his title to the fretted Gothic steeple imbedded and asleep.
¶ And now
the stranger quietly gives me a ballad to the speech which had made him meek
writing lofty admonitions to reason. The world’s as they thought it alas! no
stage in which I shall be pardoned its sign for seeking relief without epithets
and temporary poppy. Pioneer who laughed you thought his goose-grass a pledge
of continued favour. Well said as connected with a period and a locality when
and where I recognize the first ambiguous monitions of the shield-like destiny
which afterwards so fully and truly overshadowed me. This prison-like rampart
not unlike the left-hand numeral of a printed date he turned his back upon
– buried himself – I wash my hands of him. His wit was heightened
by his muteness; now his bon mots the Fates are no more humorous and twice
paraded. With how deep a spirit of wonder the threads and perplexity of men’s
destinies and talents play Punch and Judy from the gallery. And then you heard
that he was under a cloud with robes so glossy and clerically flowing only a
fellow-servant out of livery wig so minutely powdered a lost man. His absence
were some Constantinople arcade or double-distilled bazaar of Wisdom he loved
to repeat.
¶ The
Draconian paradox more necessary to him than food or pleasure. Rattled his
shutters and gate. It was rivetted and studded with iron bolts and surmounted
with jagged iron spikes and polished impressions. His still more nervous
egressions and ingressions and the rest. All its plenitude a gaudy sort of
world for pasteboard remark and solemn meditation, all gilt with irregular
likeness, kind of razor in readiness. Idol for the public ghosts words even in
fallen state squeak trust of. Sometimes he thought other and still
double-headed. He called take me with you before. Catastrophe looked forward
to that pushes between. How quaint an old nobody building a tolerable
counterfeit really no end to its windings. He was not hailed from behind by
that malicious summons to say with certainty loud and satisfied. Innumerable
life against him. Inconceivable how our most exact ideas were not far different
from a peculiar inarticulate moan. A pathetic telegraphing of his fingers would
perform the last and inexpensive office. I was never able to ascertain in what
remote locality cunningly smuggled into the world myself and twenty other
masquerade scholars not wholly pennyless and burthened went up and down
patriotically and dismally in discharge of their duties in a square enclosure
comprising this humble quarter the sanctum. In the absence of the ‘Dominie’ vague and
fantastical we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure.
¶ Under any
circumstances far less reverenced it was probable he might not have long to
escape dire penury. Quacksalver English and mathematical the dead his
companions more at home travelling far beyond the moon than on our black
planet. His own father an emigrant had died long since without book. Outcasts
increasing in tired abstraction overtaken by grotesque figures lay motionless
in tedium or thankless placidity apparently monotony of luxury or crime. These
letters full of weighty discourses even outré events and communications I dare but
whisper rarely leave a definite impression. Green prophet in slight hope
dissemblers listen to. All is a weak and irregular remembrance of humbug and
ambition like an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric
pains I knew not how or wherefore. Childhood injury as spirit-rapper vivid as
moon-calf sense apprehends. My first real knowledge – how little was
there to remember of myself – fast asleep in a pick-pocket conning kind
of daylight – Endymion riding to his occulist in praise of half-holidays.
Forget its pains and pleasures conflictingly unequal spoken or thought to
miscellaneous heaven. No token else of our varied wishes nor change of emotion
like enchanted chaplets stirring in his grave led me into deaf and dumb trust
in Providence and truth – seems the course of nature and my disposition.
¶ Thoughts
where marked the anger and revenge I will reply by amply and distinguished
among them gave me an ascendancy more than doubly the selfsame visited upon me.
With a single exception punishment like praise junks obedience. You might have
been strangers that buzz appellations by prescriptive right. One promenades in
power untaught by degradation. I wandered the balconies and hills of England as
common as the founder of Rome. In this narrative I have designated as
confidential passages not dissimilar to the strongest curse in state-rooms
plenty like secret drawers in a sentence passed on myself – like class facilities
for auctioneer dying or coiner trampled in the dust. Damn with equal ease: my
assertions might somewhere half-forgotten and misapplied – laugh so loud
the dead shall shake to my arbitrary dictation.
¶ By giving
us various occupations he maintained so easily proof of his superiority. We
were the poorest of the poor acknowledged by no one. Luckless mockery serpents
and krakens drag you down to. Unobserved numberless mortifications what spirit
of our enemies impertinent and dogged interference not to diminish the effects
of apostacy. Desart oblivion withheld from an applicant actuated solely by
whimsical desire – save him or mortify myself – times when I could
not help observing who darkened our lives or seemed to discover who cozened us
of our share of this sepulchral planet. Random stoppages. Pique and the last
transient memory. Statues vanished in revenge. Injuries insults bloody
contradictions. Bars of Hell gate clusters or squads peeped through
disintegrated now as a cage of apes. Identity of heart and look you thought I
disguised – we were brothers submitting to that natural law which ordains
dissolution to the mass. These do not usually inquire with much strictness as I
have said double souled not altogether saintly in disposition or my own cold ghost
or those oriental ones should have said cold and not hoping for variety.
Natives of my heart sorts with affection family and foreigners. We had been men
of business unloved neglected twins of distrust and silence. I learned from
gold-hunters and every one who approached him.
¶ My own time spent in solitude – continual anxiety occasioned me by words—whole hours walking the woods. Nearly every day a quarrel in which Eastern philosophers or that German tune which shall in some manner awaken the dead. Sense of pride on my part and dignity through it. ‘Speaking terms’ scarce a thousand combinations undergone transfusion in full drab and detail. United States soldiers poured all Lethe into heart and brains pale even to describe every error magnified by them into petulant crimes. Sphere of Lazarus jesters mourners deacons and blacklegs a hard-shell world to the moralist it will be unnecessary artifice to say I envy. Nothing but reproach open or covert for pastime, angry banter or practical joke giving into serious hostility. My endeavours even my hemlock plans most wittily concocted. All-sufficient dreams these mortals blended of visage: a Tartar-like sort of pagan all-fusing spirit that breathes more of the West interfered with the most distant and opposite zones. Pours them along helter-skelter bloody bitterness. One cosmopolitan less at his wit’s end than myself even in joy had a weakness for raising his voice above a whisper. I could go on from day to day neither expressing emotions nor seeking fellow-feeling – any grave that his wit disturbed can spare me. How so petty a thing would vex me was and is a question I never could solve; cut right down to the asinine sentiment never spoke until his good-natured lily-livered perceptions of outward objects I had always felt aversion to like a sickly light plebeian as a grave-digging spade – the words were venom or raked up deformity and indigence – one word cheerily endured because a stranger brings a plague.
¶ What will you who would be cause of two-fold repetition constantly in my presence – you must and will take with you all their possessions, this letter included –
Haste could not make gayAnd guarded through the day.
Your name often confounded with my own dropped with every circumstance tending to show I must be honest. ‘My pride to contemn for my hate was trusty.’ I had not then discovered that our schemes were the same. We met again and like a possessed pig of Gallilee your master was galled. Our destined game – the Guinea tale (lie too) of hair-breadth escapes – rumour touching a lady – combats with dogs ambush and flight. They told me devil’s daughter I am thy gipsey father. I scrupulously concealed any allusion to a similarity of person ruling the earth on your account. My sister she is at the bottom of the well.
¶ I had no reason to believe that I was even observed – what pearly song comes bubbling up here – tenfold annoyance –
All ’long shore
Dip deep the oar –
Brodder! ‘His cue is St. Louis.’ Perfect imitation of words and actions. Sunny way my shadow was freed. The game even I know we could not refuse. Nice white unattempted sea. Idiot contempt for all that was charitable. Wild identical whisper the echo of my own with a broad grin lifting the skeleton baker to the elements. A caricature I will not describe. But the fact that city – imitation nights only I looked back to – saint of the old boy order utterly worthless noticed by myself alone. Pursued my career knowing and sarcastic or satisfied degenerating into secret habits disregardful. The public success of his endeavours grown up under their influence was some portent – a riddle I could not resolve – his Sibylla shuffling off into the thickest of the crowd –taken root within me.
¶ ‘Still the starless night holds its ghostly noon life.’ Thus far disdaining the letter. Strange distempered dreams all the polite can get their fill of. I avoided my partners, lost them by chance or design: they were sent to their destined temptation – diversion, charity, officious interference. Dare shake an outcast? None to lead or drive me forward, hinted or insinuated power I received with a repugnance that so far preserved me in appearance a being distinct from themselves. I hated simple justice – can recall no occasion when the suggestions of those errors or follies, that last and worst degradation – moral sense settled on it like a dog, began to at least hate shuffling among the crowd myself. I clung to what if not general talents then ferocious habits keener than my own despair. Wish to-day I better remembered my pitchpenny relics, those meaning whispers and the sparrows I hated with a cracked bravura. All this alms-giving served as a Saracen’s guide to lead me swearing under his distasteful supervision, bound to appear cheerfully grateful daily but all I said he swallowed as his latest prayers. My feelings still barbarously slighted. Friendship associated only with ideas of unkindness. Nearly always grinned but in the latter months and only once or twice with half-shut eyes did he wince.
¶ Resentment I was born for inconveniently unedged by circumstance. My sentiments well done of her. This game of charity at least was still no associate of goodness. A discharged custom-house officer who made a show of avoiding me – about the period the government changed if I remember – hating or suspecting everybody – altercation of violence with him. Rumour of wars more than usually got up for financial purposes – but that these suspicions come from one who fancied I discovered the story! ‘Her thoughts are far from ...’ – distant friends? Gentle remonstrances, half-forgotten times companionable enough for talk of your love tales, dream-book visions at least, say a wild fellow-limper. ‘Confused ruffians – in short an ancient royalty …’ – memories of a time when a little sympathy was a part of – I cannot describe the sensation. Some epoch very long ago some point of the past even as they gained it a countenance infinitely remote with more than patient good-nature. The delusion the day he gave us wine, the last conversation I appeal to. The right or wrong might not have overmuch to do with whatever wayward contempt: intelligence might yield a flask of liquor to forgive him. The English republic, so many little gods made the will of man odds and ends of reason economic ingenuity fitted up.
¶ People steady in waywardness. He was addicted to his improved learning. Report that one night he mentioned the secrets. I began to scrutinise the evidence. Heard about a dark speck – wilderness of passages – a thousand tales. Border of my mind I had one ill-natured thought fascination seemed to stamp its shape on. Each day became more clear what scheme to prove his imposture – resolved to make him feel the extent of the malice with which I imbued him. Reached his closet but prevented by the crowd. Turned nearly all welcome minds the other way so there’s nothing we fear when the rest refuse us on the outside. Neglected state of the property could not resist. Human weakness to take pleasure sitting in judgment as surely as it strangely sharpens perceptions, all instead of standing by and having the spell of fellow-feelings touched by unusual intelligence. My once dormant recollections, sentiments of injury, law of revenge – my occupations, plans, scattered by people forgotten. To begin life anew under no good auspices. Numbness iciness of heart I thought instantly. As it turned out guiltier than broken-hearted.
¶ Gallows I possessed with an objectless intolerable horror, the warning spectacle of the ill-fated offspring gasping for breath with such vain confidence. To such extremities I – regenerate? – my life in still nearer proximity to ‘anything like them paupers’ – again? Did the crowd-protector know of our existence; the boon I saw near at hand? His absence among other things appeared to me the certain consequence of all that had gone before. But, as if with a fit of the ague: what was there to confound me – any documentary proof? Any plain paper about the multitude of incoherent thoughts attesting that his case was not spurious but shut? The oppressor’s chain all England rang with and ‘this poor ole earth’. The same day at the academy a person arrived, another young unlettered Episcopal clergyman. ‘It were ingratitude to thank thee’ – me! My mind still as if fascinated – that what I saw was to haunt me – ‘Yes’, that sarcastic ‘Yes’, as if it was part of his memory. The plan to leave suddenly frozen up, why should we, at the first kindly word? Rich carpets and silken hangings, yes, the walls of that old academy, gold and everything around us, never again. Pious silence. Idleness. Nothing but one brief interval. Sufficient all the events I remembered sprung from ingratitude – I could never doubt from the evidence of my senses – dereliction on a plate.
¶ Seldom called up the subject of sympathy at all but wonder at the extent of human credulity and generous feeling. In other countries doubtless a smile at another godliker mankind. I hereditarily possessed this species of scepticism. So many deify the world diminished by their fathers. I left them a mingling tide of thoughtless froth. My past must and will speak for me. Beauty to live here the focus of every unloving solid or serious unloved impression and memory only of a former existence I scoff at. If I think that beside this grandeur was an unruffled infamy and that to trace the course of my profligacy he proclaimed I eluded vigilance, three years of folly, no room for any wish but debasement. Yet I envied him and no doubt without profit show you his love of wordy praise. How find adoration? When? was the question. After a week of dissipation compare their merits umbrella in hand. Forcibly wrenched from my chambers at a late hour of night. From feverish restlessness tormenting bitterness protracted until morning by unnatural vexation.
¶ To find Perdita and half hear how rebukefully there were echoed other perhaps more dangerous seductions. The ‘visionary clergyman’ – a year since she told me – madly insisting on suiting action to the word. My attention diverted by violent pain, the strange eager voice, said again: ‘She don’t ... apparently ... believe there’s a soul.’ Hoping for another word, to see me beggar for it fast enough, wildly spoken. Tries: ‘Every one loves him.’ ‘I say he can lie – his rank is … some white operator.’ They brought me to the vestibule. I would speak to him there. ‘Not at all what I said.’ ‘Admitted.’ I saw his image clearer than you through the semi-circular window, eyes strangely troubled. ‘Perdita?’ ‘Never here.’ Aware I dared talk to him and repeat it literally. I said you deceived the minister – the proofs of his generosity, protection, his affability. ‘His least merit.’ Gesture much more petulant than all that impatience promised – whispered the words derived from – I must forget. ‘And the light on that?’ ‘Impossible’ – said with difficulty: ‘We know him, he looks to die honest. He is our enemy. Looks are one thing, the key facts another.’
¶ Syllables with a thousand memories, shock of a galvanic battery. I could recover the use of my senses with less patience. My disordered imagination – how was it? – to associate this with your silent inquiry or snapped out shadows of the other morbid words – must be speculation. I did not pretend to speak his language but thought I should laugh and shout. ‘Perdita is in love with him.’ Melted with despair and half mad indignation. What would enable me to forget at will? Luxury so dear to my heart, my love of expenditure – he continued, such calmness – I spurned even common decency in mad infatuation. Absurd to pause now and if I did let it suffice I should exercise no charity in judging the words you choose. Pitiless do you think I would name a multitude of follies with a grin – that list of vices then usual with the praises of Europe – it could be hardly credited. I felt my limbs grow numb and my pain served as food – how is that for insane aversion? That conscientiously he had me by the neck, reason and excuse for my hatred. Unheeding gambler by profession, sneer so entirely the father: ‘and I ain’t an adept.’ His virtuous science a means of increasing income at the expense of the weak-minded comes close to wonder.
¶ Things I
proved beyond doubt the sole reason I puzzled through each day – each
hour added these exaggerated wrongs – his indignation now the clearest
evidence, so many senses infixed at last. If I did not sustain my rage you
seemed poisoned by his jargon. Every phrase by some antipathy goaded his fancy
and careless extravagance. Any demonstration that I even lived to feel a half
delight in watching the lovely almost tame animals and ordered that greater
care should be taken in reports – you could abuse a Christian silence
– my plans you made use of – I proposed the enterprize. Well said
and better done. Determined, lawless and silly. I understand I was left a voice
unperceived against the world, dazzled of course, my unknown feelings now a
fitting subject. None of them betrayed me. ‘One word and we’ll speak of this no
more.’ Magic book of fools. Of Triumphant Extasy. With full intention we wrote that
this mutual bond should be final and decisive – remember the promise
followed by idle threats – admonisher there swore this victim died one
day before. Justice disdaining argument, such a liberated rabble, scorn more
than repaid. I was told that the order cancelled suspicion or better rebuke: administered honour.
I assembled a party of eight or ten and was careful to omit that introduction,
‘still better should appear accidental reasons and originate the proposal
himself on the second night after the release …’ So I was there again, besotted
victim of his one-sided view and I had to trust your decoy as my sole
antagonist.
¶ Again
released. Now turn the game from a distance pointing back. I dared find the
forbidden park – but trust the rest of the company enraged by my
obstinacy? Orders I again abandoned which gave me proof of his lenity, my crime
forgotten. He had been induced by my artifices to satisfy his own resentment
before he made me over to the higher powers. Late presence unknown to liberty
and caution I played with, a semblance, my seedy nervousness of manner still a
qualm of fear. I had become I dare say admired and suspect. I had been coolly
anticipating each double thought and well-feigned reluctance, my repeated
refusal coaxing compliance. ‘Now I shall be loved’: this talking had a deep image
lent it by the wine. ‘We’ll leave the country’ – all my science,
astonishment I perceived, fearful delight answered with bitterness and fury had
been represented and echoed as ever through secret spleen and the sums he had
lost. Spleen – ‘the rickety soul-compelling child of unbelief’ – I
supposed it made him mad. I suspect I must surrender – me, naturally
reprobate – much less violently, overcome by wine. I was my
persecutors.
¶ ‘With a
view to preservation of lives’ my own character admonished in the eyes of my
associates by the melancholy raver. To defend myself to the last from any less
interested motive I insist is well thought. ‘As if mistrusting Providence’,
some expressions grasped from dead silence against hard-earned despair. I have
been in mad-houses and she is there rendering a flower an object of suspicion,
cynic face besmeared with the same guilty signs from the offices witness
against me. What might have been my conduct is now difficult to say. Pitiable
dupe for years in embarrassed gloom, must have looked like the vulture himself,
those words which are the name of scorn cast upon me by the less abandoned. I
will even own that intolerable weight of all the anxiety for a brief indignant
instant. The sudden blood and extraordinary interruption from the corner
opposite, the grimace, the idiot had never seen the master before – what
an example – the doors all at once thrown open – to think now what
you whispered – as if by magic response with all the arrogance of light
my reply was ready and a reproach I deemed calculated to sting his heart. To
see that he came in a stranger, entered poor, and now wailed about his
appearance – returning muffled in a sweet western cloak, fearlessly. I
however had come in time to feel absent – could only feel that he echoed us.
The excess of sensibility we recover from extreme astonishment abruptly changed
into air before me.
¶ And the
morning we will be heard remains to be seen. ‘I tell you I know no other way to
live’ – he said this – ‘I would you had been more distinct.’
He said he had responded to the never-to-be-forgotten whisper ‘which the
troublesome gentlemen make no apology for. This is marked behaviour.’ No doubt
fulfilling that shame enough and that’s all I would wish. You are needless like
him but those times are past – you may not be uninformed of the true
character of the forgotten person. ‘He has no confidence to-night.’ ‘A large
sum of money – you hear me?’ ‘Plan to examine before we meet.’ ‘We will
wait now you know the report. One of your friends who has to speak for us you
very likely do not acknowledge. The hereditary bond may be found which I trust
will unite us.’ Stillness fixed in those words I shouldn’t answer entered my
heart. He will conclude he has my sensations – the mere thought – I
felt all the horrors return. I had little time for reflection, to feel subdued
against will and reason. Something wickedly torturing her queer soul to its
depths with spells and adjurations to acknowledge his love and accept in
despair his last words. So fitting an intercessor, irresolute and troubled, not
used to rough sittings: I would have again called the supplicant but somehow
took pity. Seemed instinctive with me, distrusts set at rival sides.
¶ Now
reviving I have much to say and if I come home I will find his antagonist. An
honour. I believe that. Letting go while the blood has its way. The gambler I
know you will pardon. My mistakes, my crime, I as certainly have confidence you
forget. So many things which were nothing before may count in the records, any
burst of indignation would have affected me less than the silent contempt or
the sarcastic composure – so piteously putting his arm in mine –
would bring us humanely to the point, to have it decided in his favour. Here is
after all some proof of thought. Surely the very one who suspected it heard my
secret with delight: my friend, tucking his umbrella under his arm. Such
things as this subdued my heart. Was it I alone who quitting my faith felt I
had thrown every sympathy off? I presume it is no more supererogatory to seek
intelligence here unobserved – even you see all human things die here at
this early age and decay around us – we have had the last day –
enough – this spirit fellow you gave a tone of irresistible persuasion to,
others will see: we stand the bare necessity to let our cause be
tried.
¶ ‘So who
more grateful shall tear out his soul with unerring kindness to name me with
abased titles of shuffling affection, in person, as I then was?’ Hardly
probable that I alone resented this galling language, its immediate personal
violence. My attention unconsciously arrested by the startling overinformed
description of his mind, more apt in despite of the general sentiment. How
costly perhaps his smile I would say caused the power crowd to envy me too
– I seemed somehow to convey a sort of reproach as my own fantastic
invention – I would not be forgetful and was more pertinaciously
fastidious to an absurd degree than ever of personal occurrences – but he
wished probably to yield to the one frivolous confidence. ‘Give me time to
gather my scattered thoughts’ – talked of subjects and ideas I had never
conceived he had picked up – spoke of the old Greek terror and the power
I had acquired over the minds of my own men hanging on no doubt unwittingly
‘through the force of love and not wisdom.’ ‘I have no hope of ’em myself’
– and in the minutest possible particular described the characters who
had so disastrously exposed me.
¶ Friend of
my pride and strength I remembered subdued by this blue-eyed boy. At this point
I had found none had been regarded by any members of our party with the
exception of myself as inaccessible. The ringing bell summoning all persons who
had offered me their tickets, the announcement, the cripple as ignorant himself
of the treasure I had made my own. He reverted to the past – the agony of
explanation – ‘perhaps you pursued me, remember, with such a wish as if
your father – his name is one of my earliest recollections, respectable
type, wealth, wine, wit, conspicuous friends, familiarity of old acquaintance
– ’ Is it possible? How pale and small, spectral, frosty: officiousness
he encouraged. My answer not to recall my inquiries at Berlin, relate what I
remembered distinctly. He gave but half an account of those circumstances. I saw
you had now cut off. More perilous my own line of conduct – I’d truly
drive again to the ends of the earth, again and again, honestly bewildered.
From the time that he had in secret quitted London – questions –
the night of his defeat at the gaming-table: I don’t know who received him.
When and what are his objects, really, after the lapse of years? No answer
there but he exerted himself to discover every traitor, scrutinized every
trace, lost forms he clung to without thought, the shapeless methods and the shadowy
traits of his impertinent supervision, like a dumb creature: very little that
seems to me noticeable though I know personally that his attachment survived
dreadful separation and silence.
¶ No one
comes except with promises to frustrate his last faltering schemes. This letter
referred to you among others. It had been one triumphant crime if fully carried
out and I alone brought it to light – poor justification there, the
living truth-worm of conscience so often commemorated I know he discovered the
name of. An authority so well assumed. Identity for me. Self-agency. I have
insultingly said all he denied and been forced to notice their distrust. He had
been occupied for a long time making inquiries scrupulously maintaining his
whim of arranging an identity with myself preliminary to the execution of my
father. My vanity the veil the place delicately cast over. I saw his murder a
duteous fulfilment the breathless masked feature soothing my other less
ambiguous character to another man at least. His afflicted conciliating manner was the
affectation of moral worth I’ll hang my wrath in. Admiration come of folly
– puzzled? – love don’t compel me to say that I cannot despite my
best efforts – my fate-kissed demand was death-honied. He’s sepulchred in
Rome or is it Paris? ‘You must not be passionate to-morrow.’
¶ In what
he falsely termed my wild voice I tried to answer. My evil was all ignorance. I
could recognize a form stood by his bed-side by the Pennsylvania namesake with
heavy new tears in her eyes. I could not pray. The rest moaning. The
advertisement of a rival business, cards and stars. Impossible but I let the
murder happen, to have the one last eventful scene with you. I had succumbed to
the careless domination of outward objects. ‘You are not the man I take you
for. Master the spirit within by bodily fatigue.’ This majestic wisdom: the apparent omnipresence perhaps omnipotence of sleep. I hope
to-morrow to know a feeling myself of power and certain self-knowledge but for
a time you may impress me with an idea of my own utter weakness and
helplessness. For somebody else to suggest things have happened although
bitterly reluctant and arbitrary.
¶ I had
given myself up entirely to the fervour of a new proselyte. Another now
maddening dream some influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me six years
back more impatient of control. I began to doubt: was it only fancy which
induced me to believe that you wept aloud? I felt I lay beside the bed of her
who dreams you nurtured secret forgotten thoughts – a stern and desperate
resolution I would be enslaved to. What was said at Rome about my former life?
That I attended a masquerade – a hundred times – indulged in
excesses of sleep – on the wine-table – sung and laughed – ?
To discover you know I had been forcing my way through the Death mazes with
what unworthy motive – a career in the harsh transactions of the day as
tedious as lisping devotions. Gone my confidence she had communicated the
secret of a master she neither desired nor was able to resist, this was another
dream, the first glimpse of her hurrying to make this the most fortunate day of
my life, the hand placed now upon my shoulder and lips: a death-kiss
ever-remembered, that sacred boundary which divides the faithless, memory
called into play to give fitting responses to damnable wisdom. And the murderer
who had interrupted me to tell the truth – in some ways a goodness all
his own – the infinite honest delight of his rejoinder. His friend he had
heard I ‘expected in a costume’ – perplexedly – ‘similar to my
own’: the scornful Spanish cloak, blue velvet about the waist, crimson belt.
None of the sustaining virtues of a mask. I did not doubt but every syllable
uttered seemed fuel to my memory. Imposter: he had no guidance, sympathy
– a tedious depository of weary accounts.
¶ They have
such faithless memories. Remarks the last ballroom gossips repeated to him of
this friendly chat. If I see his fascinations I see his faults hallowed by
regret. The love of many a one his loss erased: sincerely deplored and even
commanded to deprive him of admiration. Bitter bird-like mockeries – a
sudden sarcastic illumination – a slight contemptous sigh – such a
silence and censure. To his errors I devoted such ill-bestowed defence and
disinterestedness and as to events subsequent to the injury I was all
pre-possessing grace. I know the facility with which he yielded to the energy
and power of temptation. In a few seconds double oblivion and the incurable
mark a brown spot as he said at the time. All that was perfectly and repeatedly
to register in his memory. At that instant in fact I could reason why all was
dying out but what language can adequately rank that horror with the ordinary
spectacle then presented? The brief moment had been sufficient apparently for a
material change insensible for a long time in addition to the neglect bound it
seemed to me in my confusion to – my heart’s a blank – afraid every
faintest trace had been perceptible and could be distinguished from what others
force to extremity. A similarity for which I gave proof, that all the knowledge
of those particulars, those dabbled statements I advanced should not be lost
– the reason why this plan appeared implicit – disenchanted. But
since I’d rather not deceive you: once my curiosity caused me to pass days and
nights in reading and study I was already a casualty. The endeavour enslaves
me. I will in an instant obliterate the most absolute identity and the various
appearances of love and reason. I know your researches about the period speak
of ‘sleeping ideas’ and I will with pleasure supply the void. By minutely
rehearsing the circumstances of our acquaintance I felt betrayed. ‘The shore of
Elysian dreams … America’ – and thanks him for my discoveries! Unknown
regions. I was unable to excite the same appetite for knowledge. How right he
even confessed that to understand me
Wave 3.5c
After Oulipo
November, 2010
Alan Halsey
Alan Halsey's latest collections are Term as in Aftermath (Ahadada) and Lives of the Poets (Five Seasons)