Part 58 (1/2)

The above pa.s.sage must have been re-read some time after it was written and been the _raison d'etre_ of what follows. The various pa.s.sages are only occasionally dated, but their chronological order can be determined with some certainty by these few dates, changes of handwriting, and above all by the progress and interplay of thought.

It had not occurred to me before, with any strength that is, how very far my inner life diverges now from ordinary paths! It is, I see in a moment such as the present when I am able to contemplate it, utterly abnormal. I am glad to realise this for a time. It is so intensely interesting from the psychologist's point of view. I can so very, very rarely realise it. Immediately that I slip back into the abnormal life, long custom and habit rea.s.sert themselves and I become quite unaware that it is abnormal. I live mechanically according to the _bizarre_ and fantastic rules imposed upon me by drink. Now, for a time, I have a breathing s.p.a.ce. I have left the dim green places under the sea and my head is above water. I see the blue sky and feel the winds of the upper world upon my face. I used to belong up there, now I am an inhabitant of the under world, where the krakens and the polyps batten in their sleep and no light comes.

I will therefore use my little visit to ”glimpse the moon” like the Prince of Denmark's sepulchral father. I will catalogue the ritual of the under world which has me fast.

I will, that is, write as much as I can. Before very long my eyes will be tired and little black specks will dance in front of them.

The dull pain in my side--cirrhosis of course--which is quiet and feeding now--will begin again. Something in my head, at the back of the skull on the left hand side--so it seems--will begin to throb and ache. Little shooting pains will come in my knees and round about my ankles and drops of perspiration which taste bitter as brine will roll down my face. And, worse than all, the fear of It will commence. Slight ”alcoholic tremors” will hint of what might be. After a few minutes I shall feel that it is going to be.

I will define all that I mean by ”It” another time.

Well, then I shall send ”It” and all the smaller ”Its” to the right about. I shall have two or three strong pegs. Then physical pains, all mental horrors, will disappear at once. But I shall be back again under the sea nevertheless. I shan't realise, as I am realising now, the abnormality of my life. But I should say that I have an hour at least before I need have any more whiskey, before that becomes imperative. So here goes for a revelation more real and minute than de Quincey, though, lamentable fact! in most inferior prose!

Here this pa.s.sage ends. It is obvious from what follows that the period of expected freedom came to an end long before the author expected.

Excited by what he proposed to do, he had spent too much of his brief energy in explaining it. Mechanically he had taken more drink to preserve himself upon the surface--the poisoned mind entirely forgetting what it had just set down--and with mathematic certainty the alcohol had plunged the poet once more beneath the ruining waters.

The next entry, undated, is written in a more precise and firmer handwriting. It recalls the small and beautiful caligraphy of the old days. There is no preamble to the bald and hideous confession of mental torture.

I wish that my imagination was not so horribly acute and vivid when it is directed towards horrors--as indeed it always seems to be now. I wish, too, that I had never talked curiously to loquacious medical friends and read so many medical books.

I am always making amateur, and probably perfectly ridiculous, tests for Locomotor Ataxy and General Paralysis--always shrinking in nameless fear from what so often seems the inevitable onslaught of ”It.”

Meanwhile, with these fears never leaving me for a moment, to what an infinity of mad superst.i.tions I am slave! How I strive, by a bitter, and (really) hideously comic, ritual to stave off the inevitable.

Oh, I used to love G.o.d and trust in Him. I used to pray to Jesus.

Now, like any aborigine I only seek to ward off evil, to propitiate the Devil and the Powers of the Air, to drag the Holy Trinity into a forced compliance with my conjuring tricks. _I can hardly distinguish the devil from G.o.d._ Both seem my antagonists.

Hardly able to distinguish Light from dark, I employ myself with dirty little conjuring tricks. I well know that all these are the phantasms of a disordered brain! I am not really fool enough to believe that G.o.d can be propitiated or Satan kept at bay by movements: touchings and charms.

But I obey my demon.

These things are a foolish network round my every action and thought. I can't get out of the net.

Touching, I do not so much mind. In me it is a symptom of alcoholism, but greater people have known it as a mere nervous affection quite apart from drink. Dr. Johnson used to stop and return to touch lamp-posts. In ”Lavengro,” Borrow has words to say about this impulse--I think it is in Lavengro or it may be in the Spanish book. Borrow used to ”touch wood.” I began it a long time ago, in jest at something young Ingworth said. I did it as one throws spilt salt over one's shoulder or avoids seeing the new moon through gla.s.s. Together with the other things I _have_ to do now, it has become an obsession. I carry little stumps of pencil in all my pockets. Whenever a thought of coming evil, a radiation from the awful cloud of Apprehension comes to me, then I can thrust a finger into the nearest pocket and touch wood. Only a fortnight ago I was frightened out of my senses by the thought that I had never been really touching wood at all. The pencil stumps were all varnished. I had been touching varnis.h.!.+ It took me an hour to sc.r.a.pe all the varnish off with a pocket knife. I must have about twenty stumps in constant use. At night I always put one in the pocket of my pyjama coat--one wakes up with some fear--but, half asleep and lying as I do upon my left side, the pocket is often under me and I can't get to the wood quickly. So I keep my arm stretched out all night and my hand can touch the wooden top of a chair by the bed in a second. I made Tumpany sand-paper all the varnish off the top of the chair too. He thought I was mad. I suppose I am, as a matter of fact. But though I am perfectly aware of the d.a.m.nable foolishness of it, these things are more real to me than the money-market to a business man.

If it were only this compulsion to touch wood I should not mind.

But there are other tyrannies coincident which are more urgent and compelling. My whole mind--at times--seems taken up by the necessity for ritual actions. I have no time for quiet thought.

Everything is broken in upon. There is the Sign of the Cross. I have linked even _that_ in the chain of my terrors. I touch wood and then I make this sign. I do it so often that I have invented all sorts of methods of doing it secretly in public, and quickly when I am alone. I do it in a sort of imaginary way. For instance, I bend my head and in so doing draw an imaginary line with my right eye upon the nearest wall, or upon the page of the book that I am reading. Then I move my head from side to side and make another fict.i.tious line to complete the cross. A propos of making the sign, the imaginary lines nearly always go crooked in my brain. This especially so when I am doing it on a book. I follow two lines of type on both pages and use the seam of the binding between them to make the down strokes. But it hardly ever comes right the first time. I begin to notice people looking at me curiously as I try to get it right and my head moves about. If they only knew!

Then another and more satisfactory way--for the imaginary method always makes my head ache for a second or two--I accomplish with the thumb of my right hand moving vertically down the first joint of the index finger, and then laterally. I can do this as often as I like and no one can possibly see me. I have a little copper Cross too, with ”In hoc vinces” graved upon it. But I don't like using this much. It is too concrete. It reminds me of the use I am making of the symbol of salvation. ”In hoc vinces”! Not I. There are times when I think that I am surely doomed.

But I think that the worst of all the foul, senseless, and yet imperative petty lords.h.i.+ps I endure, is the dominion of the two numbers. The Dominion of The Two Numbers!--capital letters shall indicate this! For some reason or other I have for years imagined mystical virtue in the number 7 and some maleficent influence in the number 13. These, of course, are old superst.i.tions, but they, and all the others, ride me to a weariness of spirit which is near death.

Although I got my first in ”Lit. Hum.” at Oxford, have read almost everything, and can certainly say that I am a man of wide culture and knowledge, Figures always gave me aversion and distaste. I got an open scholars.h.i.+p at my college and was as near as nothing ploughed in the almost formal preliminary exam of Responsions by Arithmetic. I can't add up my bank-book correctly even now, and I have no sense whatever of financial amounts and affairs.

But I am a slave to the good but stern fairy 7 and the h.e.l.l-hag 13.

I attempt lightness and the picturesque. There is really nothing of the sort about my unreasoning and mad servitude. It's bitter, naked, grinning truth.