species.”
He emptied another glass.
“I laugh out of politeness,” he went on a little later. “I laugh to try and hide my melancholy. And, as I don’t succeed in hiding it either from myself or from others, I drink, to hide it at any rate from myself. I drink to get rid of my mental wrinkles, but they can’t be got rid of, they can only be smoothed out for a moment, like the lines that women smooth out with facial massage. For a short time they vanish, and then they come back deeper than ever.”
He drank again.
“As a result of spending a lifetime in newspaper composing rooms I’ve got used to reading upside down, to seeing things the wrong way up. It’s a sad gift. Thanks to it I lost confidence in the loyalty of a friend who was dear to me, and I discovered that the woman who pretended to love me despised and betrayed me.
“So now I drink.
“I drink, and drink will be my ruin. I know it, but it helps me to see things through rose-tinted spectacles, and that’s enough for me. And then when I look at the world I see it as the optimists paint it.”
“And when you haven’t been drinking?” Tito asked.
“When I haven’t been drinking . . . Permit me a slight digression. When believers, mystics, look at the world, they don’t see beautiful, provocative women or pleasure-loving men; they see skeletons, skulls with empty eye-sockets, jaws without tongues, teeth without gums, shamefully bald heads, feet that seem to be made of imperfect dice, long hands that look like the mouthpieces of pipes strung together. But when I look at mankind I see spinal columns, spinal cords and nerves branching out from them.”
“So much for men,” said Tito. “And what about women?”
“Women? Roving uteri. That’s all. I see roving uteri and men pursuing them, hypnotized, talking confusedly of glory, ideals, humanity. And so I drink.”
Through the steamed up windows two dense and continuous streams of people were to be seen. The sound of their voices, the brouhaha, the trampling of feet, the movements of the crowd, suggested a color — bitumen mixed with a uniform grayish yellow, against which the occasional cry of a hawker, the loud laughter of a street Arab or a woman’s shrill voice stood out like splashes of red, blobs of white, daubs of violet, parabolas of silver, jets of lilac, quivers of green, hieroglyphics of yellow, arrows of blue. The agile, springy legs of women contrasted with the leaden monotony, all of them long, slender, muscular, pink and wrapped in their silk stockings as if by a spiral of thread that wound round their thighs and calves like the grooves of gramophone records.
The modern Venus no longer has the soft, plump gracefulness that our grandfathers sought for (with their hands); the contemporary Venus reminds one of the androgynous girl in a troupe of British gymnasts.
“And so I drink,” said the man who smiled out of politeness. “Love might perhaps be left to me, but I’ve at last realized what love is. It’s a sweet poison that comes to me from a woman I like. After some time all the poison I’ve absorbed makes me immune, and then the poison that continues to come to me from her no longer affects me.
“Once upon a time I still had the stimulus of being faced with rivals, and I tried to fight them, but now that I’m chief sub-editor, now that I’ve ‘arrived,’ I’m also finished. I’ve lost the joy of struggle, chiefly because I have no more enemies, but also because if I had I would not take the trouble to fight them. I’ve come to see that competitors are necessary to those who want to get on in the world. Opposition is indispensable to success. We should have realized that elementary truth from the embryonic beginnings of life; spermatozoa have to swim upstream to reach the ovary.”
“That’s a paradox,” said Tito.
“I never state paradoxes, because generally they are nothing but cleverly presented absurdities,” the chief sub-editor replied. “I
He emptied another glass.
“I laugh out of politeness,” he went on a little later. “I laugh to try and hide my melancholy. And, as I don’t succeed in hiding it either from myself or from others, I drink, to hide it at any rate from myself. I drink to get rid of my mental wrinkles, but they can’t be got rid of, they can only be smoothed out for a moment, like the lines that women smooth out with facial massage. For a short time they vanish, and then they come back deeper than ever.”
He drank again.
“As a result of spending a lifetime in newspaper composing rooms I’ve got used to reading upside down, to seeing things the wrong way up. It’s a sad gift. Thanks to it I lost confidence in the loyalty of a friend who was dear to me, and I discovered that the woman who pretended to love me despised and betrayed me.
“So now I drink.
“I drink, and drink will be my ruin. I know it, but it helps me to see things through rose-tinted spectacles, and that’s enough for me. And then when I look at the world I see it as the optimists paint it.”
“And when you haven’t been drinking?” Tito asked.
“When I haven’t been drinking . . . Permit me a slight digression. When believers, mystics, look at the world, they don’t see beautiful, provocative women or pleasure-loving men; they see skeletons, skulls with empty eye-sockets, jaws without tongues, teeth without gums, shamefully bald heads, feet that seem to be made of imperfect dice, long hands that look like the mouthpieces of pipes strung together. But when I look at mankind I see spinal columns, spinal cords and nerves branching out from them.”
“So much for men,” said Tito. “And what about women?”
“Women? Roving uteri. That’s all. I see roving uteri and men pursuing them, hypnotized, talking confusedly of glory, ideals, humanity. And so I drink.”
Through the steamed up windows two dense and continuous streams of people were to be seen. The sound of their voices, the brouhaha, the trampling of feet, the movements of the crowd, suggested a color — bitumen mixed with a uniform grayish yellow, against which the occasional cry of a hawker, the loud laughter of a street Arab or a woman’s shrill voice stood out like splashes of red, blobs of white, daubs of violet, parabolas of silver, jets of lilac, quivers of green, hieroglyphics of yellow, arrows of blue. The agile, springy legs of women contrasted with the leaden monotony, all of them long, slender, muscular, pink and wrapped in their silk stockings as if by a spiral of thread that wound round their thighs and calves like the grooves of gramophone records.
The modern Venus no longer has the soft, plump gracefulness that our grandfathers sought for (with their hands); the contemporary Venus reminds one of the androgynous girl in a troupe of British gymnasts.
“And so I drink,” said the man who smiled out of politeness. “Love might perhaps be left to me, but I’ve at last realized what love is. It’s a sweet poison that comes to me from a woman I like. After some time all the poison I’ve absorbed makes me immune, and then the poison that continues to come to me from her no longer affects me.
“Once upon a time I still had the stimulus of being faced with rivals, and I tried to fight them, but now that I’m chief sub-editor, now that I’ve ‘arrived,’ I’m also finished. I’ve lost the joy of struggle, chiefly because I have no more enemies, but also because if I had I would not take the trouble to fight them. I’ve come to see that competitors are necessary to those who want to get on in the world. Opposition is indispensable to success. We should have realized that elementary truth from the embryonic beginnings of life; spermatozoa have to swim upstream to reach the ovary.”
“That’s a paradox,” said Tito.
“I never state paradoxes, because generally they are nothing but cleverly presented absurdities,” the chief sub-editor replied. “I
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