smutsfink … Tomorrow I will write out for you the history of my childhood. All sorts of exquisite things will be in it — delicate perceptions, gentlenesses of feeling, of which you would not have supposed a mere male to be capable. I have always been kind to birds, dogs, children, cats and mice. Particularly mice. Once I found a swift, imprisoned in a house. I saw it flapping against the window as I passed, flapping against the curtains. The house was empty, deserted. I walked miles to get the key, wondering how I would capture the poor thing when I returned. It wasn’t necessary — I opened the window and he flew out. He had fallen down the chimney.… This, and many others … I would narrate them humorously, of course — but you would detect the gentleness and pity … A kitten — I climbed a telegraph pole, when I was eight, to rescue a kitten, which had got all the way to the top and was afraid to come down. I had stationed my brother and another boy on the roof of the chicken coop — they were to hold out a towel between them, into which I was to drop the kitten. Unfortunately, Tom (he’s a darling, Tom — you’d like him!) let go of his end. Still, the kitten wasn’t hurt … A dog, I saved once from drowning at Keswick … Blind men I have led across the street … Old women I have helped in and out of trains — several thousand … The woman who fainted in the Grand Central Station — I helped to carry her into the waiting room — how extraordinarily white she was. Beggars. Hurdy-gurdy men. The tramp in the ditch, who said, “You might as well be cheerful, especially if you’re miserable!”—and went on singing … Yes. All the unhappy world — the overworked, the starving, the starved for love, the deserted and lonely — MISERY … Like the vampire I have been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; like the lobster, I do not bark, and know the secrets of the sea. I am shy, I am sensitive, I am impressionable. How many lovely things, how many horrible things, I remember! This you would love in me if you loved nothing else: this treasure house, this golden thesaurus, of my memory. If only I had succeeded in showing this to you before you fell in love! You would have been astonished — perhaps … Perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps … On the other hand, you might have thought me not sufficiently masculine?… A sentimental introverted weakling, with that tendency to sudden cruelty which all the injured manifest. But my trick of unexpected reticence, my impassivity of appearance, my proneness to fatigue and indifference, the rapidity with which I tire of people — no matter whether they be angels or devils — these characteristics give an air of masculinity which might have deceived you? Are you listening, Cynthia?… Listening, mud-puppy … My absurd chin is on your window sill in the dark, but I am like Fama, and my feet are not at all on this deck, as you might imagine, but way down upon the Sewanee River, far, far away. I am like Daisy Dacey — England and the United States rolled into one. To see all is to be all. But it is above all my childhood that I should like to put into your lap — my romantic and beautiful childhood, my suffering and pitiful childhood. I was disliked and distrusted. I was cruelly beaten. I was humiliated. My pride and will were broken before I had come to my seventh year. I was in a state of continual terror. I sneaked in and out of the house, mouselike and secretive, my only purpose to attract as little attention as possible. My favorite story — would you believe it? — this is very touching — was the story of the ugly duckling. This held out a ray of hope for me — I would revenge myself — someday — someday — by turning into a swan. I read this story over and over, memorizing every detail, and as I read it I searched in my soul for signs of the wonder that was to come. How was this to be? What gifts had the good fairies given me, that I might someday astonish and confound my cruel father, my forgetful mother? It could not be strength, for I was weak, and I was constantly ill. It could not be courage, for I hardly ever forgot what it was to be afraid. It could not be beauty, for beauty was not a prerogative of boys. Could it, perhaps, be wisdom? This was conceivable — it was only by my teachers that I was ever given encouragement. I remember how I was overcome, how I blushed, when one day Miss Baring said aloud in the classroom (there was a drawing of Julius Caesar on the blackboard behind her head), “William will some day be successful. He is intelligent, and he works.” Successful! What a blaze of glory, what a bursting of stars of light, was in that word. Like sky rockets on Christmas Eve! Like Roman candles vomiting their colored balls of fire and slow streams of fading sparks! So perhaps it was in this way that I began to associate knowledge with success; or mental skill of some kind. I began by copying the drawing of Julius Caesar — I showed my drawing to Miss Baring, and this too she praised … Eight bells … Changing the watch. With heavy boots, with oilskins, with a black oilskin hat, he climbs the ladder to the crow’s nest. A fine rain falling on his face and hands. All clear, Bill?… A light two points off the port bow … Right. Getting a little sea up. Thickening a bit, too … Smith is in bed at sea. Faubion, the Fleshpot, is in bed. The Welsh Rarebit is in bed — whose? Vivien Hay-Lawrence is in bed. The Major is in bed. Solomon Moses Caligula Silberstein is in bed. Cynthia is in bed. Mrs. Battiloro is in bed. The pianist lies awake, thinking of his wife and daughter in Blackpool. The Chief Steward is having a game of bridge in his stateroom, whisky is on the table. All the others lie horizontal, above and below the water line, like chrysalids, like corpses in coffins. The clairvoyant? He, too; but his sleep is troubled by vatic dreams. He sees each chrysalid being secretly attacked by ants, the larva destroyed, the psyche released. Ah psyche from the regions which. MISERY. Last night as I lay on my pillow — last night as I lay on my bed — last night as I lay on my pillow — I dreamed that my bonnie was dead … You know the story of Strindberg and the mouse? He was terrified by an electric influence, an evil stream, which everywhere pursued and persecuted him. It came through walls, aiming at his heart. He hid his head in the pillow, but the malevolent stream came up through the bed. He ran out into the hall and lay down by the banisters — but a mouse trotted up close to him and looked into his face: and he fled screaming. I am Strindberg. I look at his photograph and a feeling of self-love and self-pity, a profound narcissistic compassion and tenderness, comes over me. Those harassed and noble temples, the tortured deep-seeing eyes, the magnificent head, the small mouth, which is the mouth of the child and of the adder!.. I am wise, I am weak, I am persecuted; I am unlucky, I am beautiful, I am strong. Der Gekreuzigte. I love my own body. When I was a youth, I used to stand naked before a tall glass, or walk gracefully toward it, transported by the beauty I saw, the exquisitely flexing muscles of abdomen and calf and thigh, the suave Greek brow, the candid eyes. Ah, the profile of the body, with the ribs arched, the lean hollow curve of the belly! The lightly hung and powerful arms, the hands large, fair and strong as those of the David! This is what is now rejected and despised. Therefore it is not beautiful. It is obscene, gross, despicable. It is a whited sepulcher; a mass of secret corruption, of filthy juices and clots of half-destroyed food; an infirmary sicklied o’er with the pale cast of consciousness. I have always been one in whose consciousness illusion and disilluson flashed simultaneously. My hand remains still, because it releases even before it has grasped. Are you listening, Moon? Are you listening, chaste Nymph? I am on the first-class deck beside you, wearing pearl-gray spats, carrying gloves and a silver-topped cane of malacca, a gardenia in my buttonhole. There is no obstacle between us, you are not in love with another man, you have all this time been secretly in love with me. I am your social equal (indeed your superior) and my stick is really the wand of Trismagistus.