styles are lovely, fluffing up the human strands, binding the unruly moss, the reeds—but the period? Manorial, I think, or modern? ”
“A weeny period,” smiles the manager. “A mere flicker on the screen, a dancing point—I’m glad to see they have nuts.”
He bends down for a handful of the green husks, peels away the thick, blackening integuments and munches the fodder, chewing it until it ferments and then inhaling the giddy fumes.
“Shan’t we go anywhere?” I ask. “I mean—we haven’t met anyone yet.”
“Do you want to meet people? There may be no one here that interests you. There’ll be no one here that interests me. There couldn’t be. Bits of people are different—of one sex that is. Still—let’s see—I had a list of names, guests’ names; my secretary punched it out this afternoon on some development, some new development or another. It was a speaking list, a flashing, semaphore list, but I seem to have lost it. The human element you see.”
“Perhaps,” I suggest. “In that case, we’d better just mingle, just stroll around and—”
“It’s a large area,” cautions the manager. “I’m no good at trekking until I’ve had a drink, a real drink that is, not these unsophisticated nuts.”
“Well then,” I urge, feeling that for some reason, not unconnected with an immense sadness, the manager is going to take no crisp decisions this evening, no deliberate strides or motions towards, “let’s go and find a drink. There are none here.”
“There are owls here,” murmurs the manager. “Owls and bats—uninvited guests, hooting at the feast. Do you read the Bible?”
“No,” I say, interested and detained, in spite of my anxiety to penetrate closer to the center of the festivities, by the prospect of a literary discussion, “but it was explained to me this afternoon, how it goes too slowly, how it fails to plunge from the heavens, how things go on mingling and tingling—”
“So they do,” agrees the manager. “You can’t get at a tenth, not a millionth of them. I’ve read bits of the Bible myself, the bit about Abraham and something about donkeys and it’s quite true, I could sense even as I read them that other thoughts were being prepared for me. The manager’s night out. The drunken manager.”
“Could you write books?” I ask him. “I mean adventure books—and so on.”
“I suppose so. Anyone could. What’s the point? Clara loved Bill and they got married. There’s a book. Or they didn’t get married. There’s another one. Or there were some other people as well, all doing different things. There’s a hundred books. What’s the point? I don’t read them and I’m not going to write them. More pay, that’s my battle-cry. More pay, more booze, more women, more holidays, more life! Do you understand? More life, that’s what I want.”
He glares around at the dubious shapes, colored hazes, service tables, baroque alcoves, as if eager to detect a substantial portion of it that he can consume without further ado.
“There,” he says. “That bubble thing, that damned promenade place with the flagstaff or bust. Let’s blow in that quarter. Let’s find a green earth olive and poultice of gin. You depress me, friend, I don’t know why. I’m glad to have you. But you make a hammock of my spirits. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “People always affect each other in some way.”
The night is dark. It is the old, evil, dark night, and the festivities, though all round us, seem remote and hard to reach.
“There seems to be a path here,” pretends the manager, slashing irritably at some brambles with his stick. I follow him, at first staying as close to him as I can. Soon, however, an unexpected feeling of sympathy for the dark leaves and harsh vegetation dissolves my earlier trepidation and I fall back to look into the hollows and corridors of the wood and to sense the sudden, earthy life in the briars around my
“A weeny period,” smiles the manager. “A mere flicker on the screen, a dancing point—I’m glad to see they have nuts.”
He bends down for a handful of the green husks, peels away the thick, blackening integuments and munches the fodder, chewing it until it ferments and then inhaling the giddy fumes.
“Shan’t we go anywhere?” I ask. “I mean—we haven’t met anyone yet.”
“Do you want to meet people? There may be no one here that interests you. There’ll be no one here that interests me. There couldn’t be. Bits of people are different—of one sex that is. Still—let’s see—I had a list of names, guests’ names; my secretary punched it out this afternoon on some development, some new development or another. It was a speaking list, a flashing, semaphore list, but I seem to have lost it. The human element you see.”
“Perhaps,” I suggest. “In that case, we’d better just mingle, just stroll around and—”
“It’s a large area,” cautions the manager. “I’m no good at trekking until I’ve had a drink, a real drink that is, not these unsophisticated nuts.”
“Well then,” I urge, feeling that for some reason, not unconnected with an immense sadness, the manager is going to take no crisp decisions this evening, no deliberate strides or motions towards, “let’s go and find a drink. There are none here.”
“There are owls here,” murmurs the manager. “Owls and bats—uninvited guests, hooting at the feast. Do you read the Bible?”
“No,” I say, interested and detained, in spite of my anxiety to penetrate closer to the center of the festivities, by the prospect of a literary discussion, “but it was explained to me this afternoon, how it goes too slowly, how it fails to plunge from the heavens, how things go on mingling and tingling—”
“So they do,” agrees the manager. “You can’t get at a tenth, not a millionth of them. I’ve read bits of the Bible myself, the bit about Abraham and something about donkeys and it’s quite true, I could sense even as I read them that other thoughts were being prepared for me. The manager’s night out. The drunken manager.”
“Could you write books?” I ask him. “I mean adventure books—and so on.”
“I suppose so. Anyone could. What’s the point? Clara loved Bill and they got married. There’s a book. Or they didn’t get married. There’s another one. Or there were some other people as well, all doing different things. There’s a hundred books. What’s the point? I don’t read them and I’m not going to write them. More pay, that’s my battle-cry. More pay, more booze, more women, more holidays, more life! Do you understand? More life, that’s what I want.”
He glares around at the dubious shapes, colored hazes, service tables, baroque alcoves, as if eager to detect a substantial portion of it that he can consume without further ado.
“There,” he says. “That bubble thing, that damned promenade place with the flagstaff or bust. Let’s blow in that quarter. Let’s find a green earth olive and poultice of gin. You depress me, friend, I don’t know why. I’m glad to have you. But you make a hammock of my spirits. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “People always affect each other in some way.”
The night is dark. It is the old, evil, dark night, and the festivities, though all round us, seem remote and hard to reach.
“There seems to be a path here,” pretends the manager, slashing irritably at some brambles with his stick. I follow him, at first staying as close to him as I can. Soon, however, an unexpected feeling of sympathy for the dark leaves and harsh vegetation dissolves my earlier trepidation and I fall back to look into the hollows and corridors of the wood and to sense the sudden, earthy life in the briars around my
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