And in one corner there I am, in my shabby raincoat — the perfected image of a schoolteacher. In the other corner sits poor little Toto de Brunel. Keats’s photograph traps him as he is raising a ringed finger to his temple — the fatal temple.
Toto! He is an original, a numero. His withered witch’s features and small boy’s brown eyes, widow’s peak, queer art nouveau smile. He was the darling of old society women too proud to pay for gigolos. ‘Toto, mon chou, c’est toi!’ (Madame Umbada), ‘Comme il estcharmant, ceToto!’(Athena Trasha). He lives on these dry crusts of approbation, an old woman’s man, with the dimples sinking daily deeper into the wrinkled skin of an ageless face, quite happy, I suppose. Yes.
‘Toto — comment vas-tu?’ — ‘Si heureux de vous voir, Madame Martinengo!’
He was what Pombal scornfully called ‘a Gentleman of the Second Declension.’ His smile dug one’s grave, his kindness was anaesthetic. Though his fortune was small, his excesses trivial, yet he was right in the social swim. There was, I suppose, nothing to be done with him for he was a woman: yet had he been born one he would long since have cried himself into a decline. Lacking charm, his pederasty gave him a kind of illicit importance. ‘Homme serviable, homme gracieux’(Count Banubula, General Cervoni — what more does one want?).
Though without humour, he found one day that he could split sides. He spoke indifferent English and French, but whenever at loss for a word he would put in one whose meaning he did not know and the grotesque substitution was often delightful. This became his standard mannerism. In it, he almost reached poetry — as when he said ‘Some flies have come off my typewriter’ or ‘The car is trepanned today’ or ‘I ran so fast I got dandruff.’ He could do this in three languages. It excused him from learning them. He spoke a Toto-tongue of his own.
Invisible behind the lens itself that morning stood Keats — the world’s sort of Good Fellow, empty of ill intentions. He smelt lightly of perspiration. C’est le metier qui exige. Once he had wanted to be a writer but took the wrong turning, and now his profession had so trained him to stay on the superficies of real life (acts and facts about acts) that he had developed the typical journalist’s neurosis (they drink to still it): namely that Something has happened, or is about to happen, in the next street, and that they will not know about it until it is too late to ‘send’. This haunting fear of missing a fragment of reality which one knows in advance will be trivial, even meaningless, had given our friend the conventional tic one sees in children who want to go to the lavatory — shifting about in a chair, crossing and uncrossing of legs. After a few moments of conversation he would nervously rise and say ‘I’ve just forgotten something — I won’t be a minute.’ In the street he would expel his breath in a swish of relief. He never went far but simply walked around the block to still the unease. Everything always seemed normal enough, to be sure. He would wonder whether to phone Mahmoud Pasha about the defence estimates or wait till tomorrow…. He had a pocketful of peanuts which he cracked in his teeth and spat out, feeling restless, unnerved, he did not know why. After a walk he would come trotting back into the cafe, or barber’s shop, beaming shyly, apologetically: an ‘Agency Man’ — our best-integrated modern type. There was nothing wrong with John except the level on which he had chosen to live his life — but you could say the same about his famous namesake, could you not?
I owe this faded photograph to him. The mania to perpetuate, to record, to photograph everything! I suppose this must come from the feeling that you don’t enjoy anything fully, indeed are taking the bloom off it with every breath you draw. His ‘files’ were enormous, bulging with signed menus, bands off memorial cigars, postage stamps, picture postcards…. Later this proved useful, for somehow he had captured some of Pursewarden’s obiter dicta.
Farther to the east sits good old big-bellied Pombal, under each eye a veritable diplomatic bag. Now here is someone on whom one can really lavish a bit of affection. His only preoccupation is with losing his job or being impuissant: the national worry of every Frenchman since Jean-Jacques. We quarrel a good deal, though amicably, for we share his little flat which is always full of unconsidered trifles and trifles more considered: les femmes. But he is a good friend, a tender-hearted man, and really loves women. When I have insomnia or am ill: ‘Dis donc, tu vas bien?’ Roughly, in the manner of a bon copain. ‘Ecoute — tu veux une aspirine? ’ or else ‘Ou bien — j’ai une jaune amie dans ma chambre si tu veux….’ (Not a misprint: Pombal called all poules ‘jaunes femmes’.) ‘Hein? Elle n’est pas mal — et c’est tout paye, mon cher. Mais ce matin, moi jeme sens untout petitpeuantifeministe — j’en ai marre, hein! ’Satiety fell upon him at such times. ‘Je deviens de plus en plus anthropophage’ he would say, rolling that comical eye. Also, his job worried him; his reputation was pretty bad, people were beginning to talk, especially after what he calls ‘l’affaire Sveva’;and yesterday the Consul-General walked in on him while he was cleaning his shoes on the Chancery curtains…. ‘Monsieur Pombal! Jesuisoblige de vous faire quelques observations sur votre comportement officiel!’ Ouf! A reproof of the first grade….
It explains why Pombal now sits heavily in the photograph, debating all this with a downcast expression. Lately we have become rather estranged because of Melissa. He is angry that I have fallen in love with her, for she is only a dancer in a night-club, and as such unworthy of serious attention. There is also a question of snobbery, for she is virtually living at the flat now and he feels this to be demeaning: perhaps even diplomatically unwise.
‘Love’ says Toto ‘is a liquid fossil’ — a felicitous epigram in all conscience. Now to fall in love with a banker’s wife, that would be forgivable, though ridiculous…. Or would it? In Alexandria, it is only intrigue per se which is wholeheartedly admired; but to fall in love renders one ridiculous in society. (Pombal is a provincial at heart.) I think of the tremendous repose and dignity of Melissa in death, the slender body bandaged and swaddled as if after some consuming and irreparable accident. Well.
And Justine? On the day this picture was taken, Clea’s painting was interrupted by a kiss, as Balthazar says. How am I to make this comprehensible when I can only visualize these scenes with such difficulty? I must, it seems, try to see a new Justine, a new Pursewarden, a new Clea…. I mean that I must try and strip the opaque membrane which stands between me and the reality of their actions — and which I suppose is composed of my own limitations of vision and temperament. My envy of Pursewarden, my passion for Justine, my pity for Melissa. Distorting mirrors, all of them…. The way is through fact. I must record what more I know and attempt to render it comprehensible or plausible to myself, if necessary, by an act of the imagination. Or can facts be left to themselves? Can you say ‘he fell in love’ or ‘she fell in love’ without trying to divine its meaning, to set it in a context of plausibilities? ‘That bitch’ Pombal said once of Justine. ‘Elle a l’ air d’etre bien chambree!’ And of Melissa ‘Unepauvrepetite poulequelconque …’ He was right, perhaps, yet the true meaning of them resides elsewhere. Here, I hope, on this scribbled paper which I have woven, spider-like, from my inner life.
And Scobie? Well, he at least has the comprehensibility of a diagram — plain as a national anthem. He looks particularly pleased this morning for he has recently achieved apotheosis. After years as a Bimbashi in the Egyptian
