At that time Martin was fresh from a summary eviction. He had been told to leave the flat he shared with his longterm sweetheart (arraigned for infidelity). So by the time he began his research on the question of escort girls, he was already to be found in a hotel – a decadently welcoming little place in South Kensington. Although the published piece claimed to describe his engagements with three escort girls, in reality there were only two: Ariadne and Rita.
Ariadne was from Athens; Rita was from Whitechapel in the East End. These were atypical escort-girl experiences, he assumed: the subject of money never came up. In fact, when he casually offered Ariadne a fiver for cab fare (it was raining), she said, ‘A taxi does not cost five pounds.’*1
Why did Ariadne and Rita go to bed with Martin for nothing? A brief trance of self-satisfaction would seem to be in order. As against that, though – well, he was anomalously young (twenty-five), and he was anomalously respectful and unpresumptuous: he treated them not like escort girls – and how would you go about that? – but like blind dates whom he naturally wished to please with his inquisitive and undivided attention. Anyway, go to bed with him they did…
Meanwhile, as he wondered what he was about, his whole being, his history, his childhood, his Ribenas at Sunday school, his particular elders, his heroes and heroines in poetry and prose: his entire inner life was saying to his inner ear, You can’t possibly get away with all this – and nor should you.
He agreed (quite right), and bowed his head, thinking, Come on. What was the world waiting for?
…The quote that opened this segment is one of Orwell’s more limited epigrams. He was writing about a memoir by Salvador Dalí, the kind of man who was far more likely to belittle his virtues, if any, and aggrandise his sins. It is not for nothing that Orwell is regarded as quintessentially English; and the English literary tradition, unlike those of the mainland, is quintessentially moral, never having come up with many exponents (or many readers) of the perverse. There is only Lawrence, that perennial exception…With just a single novel under his belt, Martin knew very well that this was the tradition he belonged to. ‘You’ve done wrong,’ his mother used to say all her life, humorously (and nearly always referring to herself). ‘So now you’ve got to be punished.’
3. Genghis Khan
Satire is winter, wintry, bitter; the frost has its teeth fast in the ground.
Romance is summer, a time of freedom and adventure, and dream-strange possibilities.
Comedy is spring, the burgeoning of the flora, the Whitsun weddings, the maypole.
Tragedy is autumn, the sere, the yellow leaf…
While every death is a tragedy, Stalin famously observed, the death of a million is just a statistic. The second half of this statement is untrue. In giving voice to it, the big moustache laid bare his hope for some historiographical leniency – as did the little moustache when he said that the court of time listens exclusively to the victors, and so for example ‘history sees in Genghis Khan only the great founder of a state’.*2
A million deaths are at the very least a million tragedies (to be multiplied by the children, spouses, and immediate family of each victim). Every death is a tragedy; but then so is every life. Every life is a slave to the curve, the upended U, the woeful gape of the tragic mask.
4. The gravamen
In the decadent hotel Martin typed out the piece on his Olivetti (now was the moment, Leonora was clearly suggesting, when I should conjure up the ‘gratuity’ or the ‘little present’, i.e., the carnal bribe, to call it what it was; but with a smile of regret, etc., etc.), placed the folded sheets in the addressed envelope, and went downstairs to give it to the desk clerk; then he returned to his room and smoked and waited.
Retribution was surely impatient to come his way – and from so many angles. Let him think: a dramatic intervention from Ariadne’s mountain-dwelling, junta-loving father (and all his male clan); or a surprise visit from one of Rita’s many ex-convict ex-boyfriends; or an invasion of passionately mercantilist pimps armed with baseball bats and straight razors…At the very minimum (what was keeping it?) he hourly foresaw a targeted nemesis, one brewed by Mother Nature.*3 In the end even his dealings with the nude magazine would advance smoothly; Oui at once accepted and processed his perjured report (and duly printed it without challenge), and remitted him £200…
Thus the world did nothing. Society, equity, law, God, the Protestant ethos, common justice – all these spirits and entities stood down and sat on their hands. In the end only one precept applied. If you want something done (i.e., punishment), you have to do it yourself.
It started in the hotel room as he was packing his bag: a marshland, illumined by marshlights and fireflies and phosphorescent earthworms, was opening up beneath his feet. The sudden sickness felt mortal; in somatic synergy, organ after organ, one after the other, would be apologetically shutting down. At no point did he connect this horrible turn with his recent trespasses; it was perfectly simple: he had reached the end of his span. There was the phone on the bedside table. Should he dial 999?…When you’re young, and you find yourself in sole charge of the bodily instrument, you may be infinitely hypochondriacal, of course; but you’re also much too fatalistic to squander your last breaths among doctors. He sank back and dialled 0.
‘Good morning – this is room twenty-seven. I’ll soon be checking out.’ And he asked them to prepare the reckoning.
…I will arise. I will
