I swivel in my chair, pull myself up and talk to Helen pompously, as if giving a lecture. I suppose I feel the need to appear sensible and knowing, because I am wondering at myself, questioning whether my friendship with her has somehow to do with a kind of frustrated heterosexuality, though I think it hasn’t in this case. I am not attracted to her. I do accept Freud’s notion of an original bisexuality. Certainly in dreams I’ve desired men and women, even simultaneously, yet in life I rarely ever find a woman sexually attractive, sexually desirable.
I explain to Helen that art makes virtue out of necessity — the artist must do what he does; he can see no way other than the way he sees. That is vision. Science, on the other hand, makes necessity itself a virtue — that is, it says that nature is beautiful, even though it is cruel. Niels Bohr once told his colleagues, I heard, that the task of physics was “not to find out how nature is, but what we can say about nature.” This is much like writing, I go on. Physicists designate equations elegant when they serve many functions, which is part of that beauty. That is what elegance is. I’m defending my earlier assertion, and some other position, my position vis-à-vis hers, but I’m not sure what hers is, except one of disbelief. And she must never guess that I have had, even for the most minute second, a nanosecond, the slightest trace of desire for her. I would never act on it. Am I an old fool like Lear? “O heavens, if you do love old men…”
Drunk, teetering on the maudlin, I pursue an ambiguous line, but I cannot stop myself. I cannot go home now. I know I should. The white wine is gone, much of it swirling around my brain. Helen is most certainly by my side. I am close to her, but what does that mean? Am I really close to anyone? It must be the alcohol that has produced this phantasm — that I could bed her, could desire her. I feel not a trace of lust for her. It is all a product of my imagination, mental activity — an inventive kind of willfulness, in a sense.
I focus as best I can. She’s probably not concerned yet with elegance, and may never be. It’s odd how quickly one becomes or feels drunk. It’s true — to me, her father’s being a psychiatrist serves a function; Roger over there with Adonis serves another; even Alicia, who is not here, annoying, marvelous Alicia, serves a function — she appears at the wrong times, as she did in the hospital. But what function do I serve? Am I content with thinking of myself as a storyteller? Isn’t that too easy?
Wallace, who has just arrived — this I observe with a start — he serves no function whatsoever. He is inelegant. A clod. No, a succubus. The Dutchwoman is with him, propping him up, and with them an aged stooped creature whose face is covered by a beard. I squint and squint. It’s Stephen the Hermit. This is quite extraordinary, I exclaim to Helen, that man hasn’t been out in years — not in company. He was once exquisitely beautiful, so beautiful. A great beauty. How did they manage to capture him?
Helen turns to look at him and giggles, as she should. It’s as if I were describing Tarzan. Tarzan was English, wasn’t he? Stephen is English, a scion of colonialists; I would bet on that, were I a gambling man like Rhett Butler. She probably hasn’t read Gone with the Wind. She must have seen the movie. I am effervescent, giddy, and at the sight of Stephen, light-headed if not light-hearted. Words almost dance off one’s tongue when one’s mind is addled by drink.
They’re coming our way. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Stephen. Roger is coming over too. It’s a feast. I feel festive, ebullient. More drink. I call out, Wine for everyone, Christos.
Stephen sits down beside Helen. It is hard to believe that he was once a child movie star. His mother was Hungarian, I believe, his father terribly English and rich, but for some reason or other, Stephen was raised primarily in Rome. There a director cast him in a role and he quickly became a child actor, whose adorable looks were beloved by a nation that worships its bambini. The early attention did little good for Stephen, as he grew up surrounded either by doting nannies, a narcissistic mother, or film crews paid to pander to him. And what does a child know, father to the man.
My word, Stephen now — a sight to behold, a sorry sight. I can’t quite believe my eyes. How low a man can sink. Roger and Wallace are arguing about politics, so I needn’t join in. I can observe the scene.
Helen is rapt. Weird Stephen, in good form, is talking to her in a respectable way. He flails his arms every now and again, but is in most ways well behaved. English eccentrics are wonderfully odd. Even though he is completely mad, he still retains some of the manners of a gentleman. I hear bits of his monologue; it follows in a seemingly logical order. Perhaps he does make sense much of the time, but as I never see him, how would I know. He makes sense in the forest, with no one to hear him out, and we all judge him so harshly. I am ashamed of myself and turn to face Helen and him. They are blurry shapes. They are good people, I know this in my heart.
I listen wholeheartedly to Stephen, moving my chair closer to his to catch his every word. He has no money, as he has been cut off by his family, almost entirely; naturally they disapprove of the way he lives. He pushes his hair back — long, unruly hair — which exposes more of his face, though there’s nothing to be done with his beard. Helen takes my hand, she must know I’m drifting in and out of this world, and squeezes it every once in a while. Sweet Helen. Sad Stephen. The authorities cut off his electricity some months ago, and he lives in a house without light except from that of candles which he’s set about his place in tin cans. He’ll die by fire. I know it. I feel it. The house will go up in a second, and he will be destroyed, burned to death. No, asphyxiated. It seems inevitable.
An impish smile plays on Stephen’s lips. He is exuberant. He declares to Helen, as if exposing a great truth, his great truth, that he has discovered electricity, how important it is, how electricity is magic. He ecstatically enthuses on the power of Light and God, that electricity running through thin wires and cables is the lifeblood of our society. He’d never realized before the way that God was a part of everything, but seeing dots of electric light in houses around the world was proof of God’s power. His mother and father had tried to control him through the telephone, but that was not the fault of God or electricity. His daily life was once absorbed in switching lights on and off, and he rues the day he complained of that activity as simple repetition when in fact it was central to his life and all life. Now, without this routine, it’s as if he were doing penance. Lighting candles makes him wish he were Catholic but still he misses the radio, the voices that spoke to him and the world. The BBC, the BBC World Service, he can’t live without it. He bellows: I love electricity. I love electricity.
Roger, Wallace and the Dutchwoman laugh, first in horror, and then raucously, in morbid delight. Stephen looks about only to discover them laughing at him, staring at him, as at a comedian or worse. He grabs his book bag and shuffles off from the restaurant, walking in long angry strides around the harbor until he is well out of sight. The mirth dies a self-conscious death. Wallace explains that he wooed Stephen out of his ramshackle debacle of a house with the promise of a good dinner. Roger, ever the one to know more than anyone else, Roger insists that Stephen cribbed all of that from Nijinsky, and that he’s not mad at all. Just playing possum. Like Pound? Wallace goes on again. Roger notes sarcastically that even madness is unoriginal. I simply won’t hear any more of this, I think.