Trivia Part 7

I should be all right.... If it weren't for these sudden visitations of Happiness, these downpourings of Heaven's blue, little invasions of Paradise, or waftings to the Happy Islands, or whatever you may call these disconcerting Moments, I should be like everybody else, and as blameless a rate-payer as any in our Row.

_Talk_

Once in a while, when doors are closed and curtains drawn on a group of free spirits, the miracle happens, and Good Talk begins. 'Tis a sudden illumination--the glow, it may be of sanctified candles, or, more likely, the blaze around a cauldron of gossip.

Is there an ecstasy or any intoxication like it? Oh? to talk, to talk people into monsters, to talk one's self out of one's clothes, to talk G.o.d from His heaven, and turn everything in the world into a bright tissue of phrases!

These Pentecosts and outpourings of the spirit can only occur very rarely, or the Universe itself would be soon talked out of existence.

_The Church of England_

I have my Anglican moments; and as I sat there that Sunday afternoon, in the Palladian interior of the London Church, and listened to the unexpressive voices chanting the correct service, I felt a comfortable a.s.surance that we were in no danger of being betrayed into any unseemly manifestations of religious fervour. We had not gathered together at that performance to abase ourselves with furious hosannas before any dark Creator of an untamed Universe, no Deity of freaks and miracles and sinister hocus-pocus; but to pay our duty to a highly respected Anglican First Cause--undemonstrative, gentlemanly and conscientious--whom, without loss of self-respect, we could sincerely and decorously praise.

_Misgiving_

We were talking of people, and a name familiar to us all was mentioned. We paused and looked at each other; then soon, by means of anecdotes and clever touches, that personality was reconstructed, and seemed to appear before us, large, pink, and life-like, and gave a comic sketch of itself with appropriate poses.

"Of course," I said to myself, "this sort of thing never happens to me." For the notion was quite unthinkable, the notion I mean of my own dear image, called up like this without my knowledge, to turn my discreet way of life into a cake-walk.

_Sanctuaries_

She said, "How small the world is after all!"

I thought of China, of a holy mountain in the West of China, full of legends and sacred trees and demon-haunted caves. It is always enveloped in mountain mists; and in that white thick air I heard the faint sound of bells, and the m.u.f.fled footsteps of innumerable pilgrims, and the reiterated mantra, _Nam-Mo, O-mi-to-Fo_, which they murmur as they climb its slopes. High up among its temples and monasteries marched processions of monks, with intoned services, and many prostrations, and lighted candles that glimmer through the fog. There in their solemn shrines stood the statues of the Arahats, and there, seated on his white elephant, loomed immense and dim, the image of Amitabha, the Lord of the Western Heavens.

She said "Life is so complicated!" Climbing inaccessible cliffs of rock and ice, I shut myself within a Tibetan monastery beyond the Himalayan ramparts. I join with choirs of monks, intoning their deep sonorous dirges and unintelligible prayers; I beat drums, I clash cymbals, and blow at dawn from the Lamasery roofs conches, and loud discordant trumpets. And wandering through those vast and shadowy halls, as I tend the b.u.t.ter-lamps of the golden Buddhas, and watch the storms that blow across the barren mountains, I taste an imaginary bliss, and then pa.s.s on to other scenes and incarnations along the endless road that leads me to Nirvana.

"But I do wish you would tell me what you really think?"

I fled to Africa, into the depths of the dark Ashanti forest.

There, in its gloomiest recesses, where the soil is stained with the blood of the negroes He has eaten, dwells that monstrous Deity of human shape and red colour, the great Fetish G.o.d, Sasabonsum. I like Sasabonsum: other G.o.ds are sometimes moved to pity and forgiveness, but to Him such weakness is unknown. He is utterly and absolutely implacable; no gifts or prayers, no holocausts of human victims can appease, or ever, for one moment, propitiate Him.

_Symptoms_

"But there are certain people I simply cannot stand. A dreariness and sense of death come over me when I meet them--I really find it difficult to breathe when they are in the room, as if they had pumped all the air out of it. Wouldn't it be dreadful to produce that effect on people! But they never seem to be aware of it. I remember once meeting a famous Bore; I really must tell you about it, it shows the unbelievable obtuseness of such people."

I told this and another story or two with great gusto, and talked on of my experiences and sensations, till suddenly I noticed, in the appearance of my charming neighbour, something--a slightly glazed look in her eyes, a just perceptible irregularity in her breathing--which turned that occasion for me into a kind of Nightmare.

_Shadowed_

I sometimes feel a little uneasy about that imagined self of mine--the Me of my daydreams--who leads a melodramatic life of his own, quite unrelated to my real existence. So one day I shadowed him down the street. He loitered along for a while, and then stood at a shop-window and dressed himself out in a gaudy tie and yellow waistcoat. Then he bought a great sponge and two stuffed birds and took them to lodgings, where he led for a while a shady existence. Next he moved to a big house in Mayfair, and gave grand dinner-parties, with splendid service and costly wines. His amorous adventures in this region I pa.s.s over. He soon sold his house and horses, gave up his motors, dismissed his retinue of servants, and went--saving two young ladies from being run over on the way--to live a life of heroic self-sacrifice among the poor.

I was beginning to feel encouraged about him, when in pa.s.sing a fishmonger's, he pointed at a great salmon and said, "I caught that fish."

_The Incredible_

"Yes, but they were rather afraid of you."

"Afraid of _me_?"

"Yes, so one of them told me afterwards."

I was fairly jiggered. If my personality can inspire fear or respect the world must be a simpler place than I had thought it.

Afraid of a shadow, a poor make-believe like me? Are children more absurdly terrified by a candle in a hollow turnip? Was Bedlam at full moon ever scared by anything half so silly?

_Terror_

A pause suddenly fell on our conversation--one of those uncomfortable lapses when we sit with fixed smiles, searching our minds for some remark with which to fill up the unseasonable silence. It was only a moment--"But suppose," I said to myself with horrible curiosity, "suppose none of us had found a word to say, and we had gone on sitting in silence?"

It is the dread of Something happening, Something unknown and awful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk from dying out. So travellers at night in an unknown forest keep their fires ablaze, in fear of Wild Beasts lurking ready in the darkness to leap upon them.

_Pathos_