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The Genius and the Goddess
Aldous Huxley, Huxley trusts and heirs
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eBook - ePub
The Genius and the Goddess
Aldous Huxley, Huxley trusts and heirs
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Thirty years ago, ecstasy and torment took hold of John Rivers, shocking him out of "half-baked imbecility into something more nearly resembling the human form." He had an affair with the wife of his mentor, Henry Maartensâa pathbreaking physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and a figure of blinding brillianceâbringing the couple to ruin. Now, on Christmas Eve while a small grandson sleeps upstairs, John Rivers is moved to set the record straight about the great man and the radiant, elemental creature he married, who viewed the renowned genius through undazzled eyes.
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AltertumswissenschaftenThe Genius and the Goddess
âThe trouble with fiction,â said John Rivers, âis that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.â
âNever?â I questioned.
âMaybe from Godâs point of view,â he conceded. âNever from ours. Fiction has unity, fiction has style. Facts possess neither. In the raw, existence is always one damned thing after another, and each of the damned things is simultaneously Thurber and Michelangelo, simultaneously Mickey Spillane and Maxwell and Thomas Ă Kempis. The criterion of reality is its intrinsic irrelevance.â And when I asked, âTo what?â he waved a square brown hand in the direction of the bookshelves. âTo the Best that has been Thought and Said,â he declaimed with mock portentousness. And then, âOddly enough, the closest to reality are always the fictions that are supposed to be the least true.â He leaned over and touched the back of a battered copy of The Brothers Karamazov. âIt makes so little sense that itâs almost real. Which is more than can be said for any of the academic kinds of fiction. Physics and chemistry fiction. History fiction. Philosophy fictionâŠâ His accusing finger moved from Dirac to Toynbee, from Sorokin to Carnap. âMore than can be said even for biography fiction. Hereâs the latest specimen of the genre.â
From the table beside him he picked up a volume in a glossy blue dust jacket and held it up for my inspection.
âThe Life of Henry Maartens â I read out with no more interest than one accords to a household word. Then I remembered that, to John Rivers, the name had been something more and other than a household word. âYou were his pupil, werenât you?â
Rivers nodded without speaking.
âAnd this is the official biography?â
âThe official fiction,â he amended. âAn unforgettable picture of the Soap Opera scientistâyou know the typeâthe moronic baby with the giant intellect; the sick genius battling indomitably against enormous odds; the lonely thinker who was yet the most affectionate of family men; the absent-minded professor with his head in the clouds but his heart in the right place. The facts, unfortunately, werenât quite so simple.â
âYou mean, the bookâs inaccurate?â
âNo, itâs all trueâso far as it goes. After that, itâs all rubbishâor rather itâs non-existent. And maybe,â he added, âmaybe it has to be non-existent. Maybe the total reality is always too undignified to be recorded, too senseless or too horrible to be left unfictionalized. All the same itâs exasperating, if one happens to know the facts; itâs even rather insulting, to be fobbed off with Soap Opera.â
âSo youâre going to set the record straight?â I presumed.
âFor the public? Heaven forbid.â
âFor me, then. In private.â
âIn private,â he repeated. âAfter all, why not?â He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. âA little orgy of reminiscence to celebrate one of your rare visits.â
âAnyone would think you were talking about a dangerous drug.â
âBut it is a dangerous drug,â he answered. âOne escapes into reminiscence as one escapes into gin or sodium amytal.â
âYou forget,â I said, âIâm a writer, and the Muses are the daughters of Memory.â
âAnd God,â he added quickly, âis not their brother. God isnât the son of Memory; Heâs the son of Immediate Experience. You canât worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, itâs hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, youâve got to die to every other moment. Thatâs the most important thing I learned from Helen.â
The name evoked for me a pale young face framed in the square opening of a bell of dark, almost Egyptian hairâevoked, too, the great golden columns of Baalbek, with the blue sky and the snows of the Lebanon behind them. I was an archaeologist in those days, and Helenâs father was my boss. It was at Baalbek that I had proposed to her and been rejected.
âIf sheâd married me,â I said, âwould I have learned it?â
âHelen practiced what she always refrained from preaching,â Rivers answered. âIt was difficult not to learn from her.â
âAnd what about my writing, what about those daughters of Memory?â
âThere would have been a way to make the best of both worlds.â
âA compromise?â
âA synthesis, a third position subtending the other two. Actually, of course, you can never make the best of one world, unless in the process youâve learned to make the best of the other. Helen even managed to make the best of life while she was dying.â
In my mindâs eye Baalbek gave place to the campus of Berkeley, and instead of the noiselessly swinging bell of dark hair there was a coil of gray; instead of a girlâs face I saw the thin drawn features of an aging woman. She must have been ill, I reflected, even then.
âI was in Athens when she died,â I said aloud.
âI remember.â And then, âI wish youâd been here,â he added. âFor her sakeâshe was very fond of you. And, of course, for your sake too. Dyingâs an art, and at our age we ought to be learning it. It helps to have seen someone who really knew how. Helen knew how to die because she knew how to liveâto live now and here and for the greater glory of God. And that necessarily entails dying to there and then and tomorrow and oneâs own miserable little self. In the process of living as one ought to live, Helen had been dying by daily installments. When the final reckoning came, there was practically nothing to pay. Incidentally,â Rivers went on after a little silence, âI was pretty close to the final reckoning last spring. In fact, if it werenât for penicillin, I wouldnât be here. Pneumonia, the old manâs friend. Now they resuscitate you, so that you can live to enjoy your arteriosclerosis or your cancer of the prostateâŠ. So, you see, itâs all entirely posthumous. Everybodyâs dead except me, and Iâm living on borrowed time. If I set the record straight, itâll be as a ghost talking about ghosts. And anyhow this is Christmas Eve; so a ghost story is quite in order. Besides, youâre a very old friend and even if you do put it all in a novel, does it really matter?â
His large lined face lit up with an expression of affectionate irony.
âIf it does matter,â I assured him, âI wonât.â
This time he laughed outright.
âThe strongest oaths are straw to be fire iâ the blood,â he quoted. âIâd rather entrust my daughters to Casanova than my secrets to a novelist. Literary fires are hotter even than sexual ones. And literary oaths are even strawier than the matrimonial or monastic varieties.â
I tried to protest; but he refused to listen.
âIf I still wanted to keep it secret,â he said, âI wouldnât tell you. But when you do publish, please remember the usual footnote. You knowâany resemblance to any character living or dead is purely coincidental. But purely! And now letâs get back to those Maartenses. Iâve got a picture somewhere.â He hoisted himself out of his chair, walked over to the desk and opened a drawer. âAll of us togetherâHenry and Katy and the children and me. And by a miracle,â he added, after a moment of rustling among the papers in the drawer, âitâs where it ought to be.â
He handed me the faded enlargement of a snap-shot. It showed three adults standing in front of a wooden summerhouseâa small, thin man with white hair and a beaked nose, a young giant in shirt sleeves and, between them, fair-haired, laughing, broad-shouldered and deep-bosomed, a splendid Valkyrie incongruously dressed in a hobble skirt. At their feet sat two children, a boy of nine or ten and a pigtailed elder sister in her early teens.
âHow old he looks!â was my first comment. âOld enough to be his childrenâs grandfather.â
âAnd infantile enough, at fifty-six, to be Katyâs baby boy.â
âRather a complicated incest.â
âBut it worked,â Rivers insisted, âit worked so well that it had come to be a regular symbiosis. He lived on her. And she was there to be lived onâincarnate maternity.â
I looked again at the photograph.
âWhat a fascinating mixture of styles! Maartens is pure Gothic. His wifeâs a Wagnerian heroine. The children are straight out of Mrs. Molesworth. And you, youâŠâ I looked up at the square, leathery face that confronted me from the other side of the fireplace, then back at the snapshot. âIâd forgotten what a beauty you used to be. A Roman copy of Praxiteles.â
âCouldnât you make me an original?â he pleaded.
I shook my head.
âLook at the nose,â I said. âLook at the modeling of the jaw. That isnât Athens; thatâs Herculaneum. But luckily girls arenât interested in art history. For all practical amorous purposes you were the real thing, the genuine Greek god.â
Rivers made a wry face.
âI may have looked the part,â he said. âBut if you think I could act itâŠâ He shook his head. âNo Ledas for me, no Daphnes, no Europas. In those days, remember, I was still the unmitigated product of a deplorable upbringing. A Lutheran ministerâs son and, after the age of twelve, a widowed motherâs only consolation. Yes, her only consolation, in spite of the fact that she regarded herself as a devout Christian. Little Johnny took first, second and third place; God was just an Also Ran. And of course the only consolation had no choice but to become the model son, the star pupil, the indefatigable scholarship winner, sweating his way through college and post-graduate school with no spare time for anything more subtle than football or the Glee Club; more enlightening than the Reverend Wigmanâs weekly sermon.â
âBut did the girls allow you to ignore them? With a face like that?â I pointed at the curly-headed athlete in the snapshot.
Rivers was silent, then answered with another question.
âDid your mother ever tell you that the most wonderful wedding present a man could bring his bride was his virginity?â
âFortunately not.â
âWell, mine did. And she did it, whatâs more, on her knees, in the course of an extemporary prayer. She was a great one for extemporary praying,â he added parenthetically. âBetter even than my father had been. The sentences flowed more evenly, the language was more genuinely sham-antique. She could discuss our financial situation or reprimand me for my reluctance to eat tapioca pudding, in the very phrases of the Epistle to the Hebrews. As a piece of linguistic virtuosity, it was quite amazing. Unfortunately I couldnât think of it in those terms. The performer was my mother and the occasion solemn. Everything that was said, while she was talking to God, had to be taken with a religious seriousness. Particularly when it was connected with the great unmentionable subject. At twenty-eight, believe it or not, I still had that wedding present for my hypothetical bride.â
There was a silence.
âMy poor John,â I said at last.
He shook his head.
âActually it was my poor mother. She had it all worked out so perfectly. An instructorship in my old university, then an assistant professorship, then a professorship. There would never be any need for me to leave home. And when I was around forty, sheâd arrange a marriage for me with some wonderful Lutheran girl who would love her like her own mother. But for the grace of God, there went John Riversâdown the drain. But the grace of God was forthcomingâwith a vengeance, as it turned out. One fine morning, a few weeks after I had my Ph.D., I had a letter from Henry Maartens. He was at St. Louis then, working on atoms. Needed another research assistant, had heard good reports of me from my professor, couldnât offer more than a scandalously small salaryâbut would I be interested? For a budding physicist it was the opportunity of a lifetime. For my poor mother it was the end of everything. Earnestly, agonizingly, she prayed over it. To her eternal credit, God told her to let me go.
âTen days later a taxi deposited me on the Maartensesâ doorstep. I remember standing there in a cold sweat, trying to screw up my courage to ring the bell. Like a delinquent schoolboy who has an appointment with the Headmaster. The first elation over my wonderful good fortune had long since evaporated, and for the last few days at home, and during all the endless hours of the journey, I had been thinking only of my own inadequacy. How long would it take a man like Henry Maartens to see through a man like me? A week? A day? More likely an hour! Heâd despise me; Iâd be the laughingstock of the laboratory. And things would be just as bad outside the laboratory. Indeed, they might even be worse. The Maartenses had asked me to be their guest until I could find a place of my own. How extraordinarily kind! But also how fiendishly cruel! In the austerely cultured atmosphere of their home I should reveal myself for what I wasâshy, stupid, hopelessly provincial. But meanwhile, the Headmaster was waiting. I gritted my teeth and pushed the button. The door was opened by one of those ancient colored retainers in an old-fashioned play. You know, the kind that was born before Abolition and has been with Miss Belinda ever since. The performance was on the corny side; but it was a sympathetic part and, though she dearly loved to ham it up, Beulah was not merely a treasure; she was, as I soon discovered, well along the road to sainthood. I explained who I was and, as I talked, she looked me over. I must have seemed satisfactory; for there and then she adopted me as a long lost member of the family, a kind of Prodigal Son just back from the husks. âIâll go make you a sandwich and a nice cup of coffee,â she insisted, and adding, âTheyâre all in here.â She opened a door and pushed me through it. I braced myself for the Headmaster and a barrage of culture. But what I actually walked into was something which, if I had seen it fifteen years later, I might have mistaken for a parody, in the minor key, of the Marx Brothers. I was in a large, extremely untidy living room. On the sofa lay a white-haired man with his shirt collar unbuttoned, apparently dyingâfor his face was livid, his breath came and went with a kind of wheezing rattle. Close beside him in a rocking chairâher left hand on his forehead and a copy of William Jamesâs Pluralistic Universe in her rightâthe most beautiful woman I had ever seen was quietly reading. On the floor were two childrenâa small red-headed boy playing with a clockwork train and a girl of fourteen with long black legs, lying on her stomach and writing poetry (I could see the shape of the stanzas) with a red pencil. All were so deeply absorbed in what they were engaged uponâplaying or composing, reading or dyingâthat for at least half a minute my presence in the room remained completely unnoticed. I coughed, got no reaction, coughed again. The small boy raised his head, smiled at me politely but without interest, and returned to his train. I waited another ten seconds; then, in desperation, advanced into the room. The recumbent poetess blocked my path. I stepped over her. âPardon me,â I murmured. She paid no attention; but the reader of William James heard and looked up. Over the top of the Pluralistic Universe her eyes were brilliantly blue. âAre you the man about the gas furnace?â she asked. Her face was so radiantly lovely that for a moment I couldnât say a word. I could only shake my head. âSilly!â said the small boy. âThe gas man has a mustache.â âIâm Rivers,â I finally managed to mumble. âRivers?â she repeated blankly. âRivers? Oh, Rivers!â There was a sudden dawn of recognition. âIâm so gladâŠâ But before she could finish the sentence, the man with the death rattle opened a pair of ghastly eyes, made a noise like an indrawn war whoop and, jumping up, rushed toward the open window. âLook out!â the small boy shouted. âLook out!â There was a crash. âOh, Christ!â he added in a tone of contained despair. A whole Grand Central Station lay in ruins, reduced to its component blocks. âChrist!â the child repeated; and when the poetess told him he mustnât say Christ, âIâll say something really bad,â he menaced. âIâll sayâŠâ His lips moved in silent blasphemy.
âFrom the window, meanwhile, came the dreadful sound of a man being slowly hanged.
ââExcuse me,â said the beautiful woman. She rose, put down her book and hurried to the rescue. There was a metallic clatter. The hem of her skirt overturned a signal. The small boy uttered a shriek of rage. âYou fool.â he yelled. âYouâŠyou elephant.â
ââElephants,â said the poetess didactically, âalways look where theyâre going.â Then she screwed her head round and, for the first time, acknowledged my existence. âTheyâve forgotten all about you,â she explained to me in a tone of wearily contemptuous superiority. âThatâs how things are around here.â
âOver by the window the gradual hanging was still in progress. Doubled up, as though someone had hit him below the belt, the white-haired man was fighting for airâfighting what looked and sounded like a losing battle. Beside him stood the goddess, patting his back and murmuring words of encouragement. I was appalled. This was the most terrible thing I had ever seen. A hand plucked at the cuff of my trousers. I turned and found the poetess looking up at me. She had a narrow, intense little face with gray eyes, set wide apart and a size too large. âGloom,â she said. âI need three words to rhyme with gloom. Iâve got roomâthat fits all right. And Iâve got wombâwhich is simply gorgeous. But what about catacombâŠ?â She shook her head; then, frowning at her paper, she read aloud. âThe something gloom Of my soulâs deep and dreary catacomb. I donât like it, do you?â I had to admit that I didnât. âAnd yet itâs exactly what I want to say,â she went on. I had a brain wave. âWhat about tomb?â Her face lit up with pleasure and excitement. But of course, of course! What a fool she had been! The red pencil started to scribble at a furious rate. âThe something gloom,â she declaimed triumphantly, âOf my soulâs irremediable tomb.â I must have looked dubious, for she hastily asked me if I thought irrevocable tomb would be better. Before I could answer there was another, louder sound of strangling. I glanced toward the window, then back at the poetess. âIsnât there anything we can do?â I whispered. The girl shook her head. âI looked it up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,â she answered. âIt says there that asthma never shortened anybodyâs life.â And then, seeing that I was still disturbed, she shrugged her bony little shoulders and said, âYou kind of get used to it.ââ
Rivers laughed to himself as he savored the memory.
ââYou kind of get used to it,ââ he repeated. âFifty per cent of the Consolations of Philosophy in seven words. And the other fifty per cent can be expressed in six: Brother, when youâre dead, youâre dead. Or if you prefer, you can make it seven: Brother, when youâre dead, youâre not dead.â
He got up and started to mend the fire.
âWell, that was my first introduction to the Maartens family,â he said as he laid another oak log on the pile of glowing embers. âI kind of got used to everything pretty quickly. Even to the asthma. Itâs remarkable how easy it is to get used to other peopleâs asthma. After two or three experiences I was taking Henryâs attacks as calmly as the rest of them. One moment heâd be strangling; the next he was as good as new and talking nineteen to the dozen about quantum mechanics. And he continued to repeat the performance till he was eighty-seven. Whereas I shall be lucky,â he added, giving the log a final poke, âif I go to sixty-seven. I was an athlete, you see. One of those strong-as-a-horse boys. And never a dayâs illnessâuntil, bang, comes a coronary, or whoosh go the kidneys! Meanwhile the broken reeds, like poor old Henry, go on complaining of ill health until theyâre a hundred. And not merely complainingâactually suffering. Asthma, dermatitis, every variety of bellyache, inconceivable fatigues, indescribable depressions. He had a cupboard in his study and another at the laboratory, chock full of little bottles of homeopathic remedies, and he never stirred out of the house without his Rhus Tox, his Carbo Veg and Bryonia and Kali Phos. His skeptical colleagues used to laugh at him for dosing himself with medicines so prodigiously diluted that, in any given pill, there couldnât be so much as a single molecule of the curative substance.
âBut Henry was ready for them. To justify homeopathy, he had developed a whole theory of non-material fieldsâfields of pure energy, fields of unembodied organization. In those days it sounded preposterous. But Henry, donât forget, was a man of genius. Those preposterous notions of his are now beginning to make sense. A few more years, and theyâll be self-evident.â
âWhat Iâm interested in,â I said, âis the bellyaches. Did the pills work or didnât they?â
Rivers shrugged his shoulders.
âHenry lived to eighty-seven,â he answered, as he resumed his seat.
âBut wouldnât he have lived to eighty-seven without the pills?â
âThat,â said Rivers, âis a perfect ...