Prelude To A Certain Midnight

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was informed that someone had been nosing around here.’

‘Oh, you were, were you? I wouldn’t mind betting that you were informed by a little girl with ring-worm. Is that so?’

‘Well, it was a little girl who told me. She said somebody was nosing around.’

‘Oh, she said somebody was nosing around? Well I can tell you for a fact that somebody is nosing around. I am nosing around. On whose behalf? On my own behalf. Anybody’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind: is that quite clear? I am involved in mankind. Get that into your thick head, you and your ridiculous helmet. I’m looking. Is there any law against looking?’

‘That front door ought to be locked, ma’am.’

‘Don’t ma’am me, my name is Thundersley, Miss Asta Thundersley.’

‘I didn’t mean to bother you, ma’am, but that front door ought to have been locked.’

‘By the by, officer, do you happen to know whether the police force is looking for traces of coal dust?’

‘I must get back on the beat, mum.’

‘Get back wherever the hell you like, you bloodhound without a nose!’

The policeman went out. Asta Thundersley went away to where she thought she might find a taxi.

20

At the cab rank she met a man she knew. His name was Schiff. He was a kind of scientist, a German who called himself an Austrian and got himself up to look like an Englishman in ginger tweeds, big brown boots and a fair moustache. No one knew exactly what his background was, but everyone knew that he had something to do with medicine. Now he is working for a firm that manufactures nose syringes and fountain-pens. Then he was looking for a patron and had his eye on Asta Thundersley. She told him what was on her mind. He quoted Groddeck:

‘Why are you concerned so much about sadist-masochism? What says Groddeck? “What you have read and learned about sadism and masochism is … untrue. To brand as perversions these two inescapable human desires which are implanted in every human being without exception, and which belong to his nature just as much as his skin and hair, was the colossal stupidity of a learned man. … Everyone is a sadist; everyone is a masochist; everyone by reason of his nature must wish to give and to suffer pain; to that he is compelled by Eros.” So said Groddeck.’

‘I don’t give a damn what Groddeck said,’ said Asta Thundersley. ‘If I had your friend Groddeck here I’d give him a piece of my mind. Didn’t Groddeck ever come across —’

‘“Humanity created for itself a god who suffered, because it felt that pain was a way to heaven, because sorrow and bloody torment it esteemed divine.”

‘Bah! To hell with your filth! Does it make murder good, you fool?’

‘“Was your skin never reddened by the sucking of the mouth? Did you never bite into an encircling arm and did it not seem good to you to be bruised. … Why, most dear lady, even the child wants to be punished — he yearns for it, he pants for a beating as my father used to say. And he uses a thousand tricks to attract punishment. The mother soothes the child on her arm with gentle pats and the child smiles; she washes it and kisses it on its rosy little bottom, which only just now was so full of dirt, and as the last and greatest treat she gives the dancing baby a slap which sets it crowing for joy.” So said Groddeck. Of Groddeck, the Master, Freud said: “We shall gain a great deal by following the suggestion of Dr Groddeck .. and we need feel no hesitation in finding a place for Dr Groddeck’s discovery in the fabric of science.” Pay no attention, dear lady. All this is not your world.’

‘It is my world, and if, Dr Schiff, you have nothing more to contribute, you can go and —’

Schiff said: ‘Dear lady. Dear, good kind lady. I beg you. Do not look at it like this. Everything is not so easy. There is a good reason for everything. Let us have no sweeping generalizations. Nothing occurs without a good reason.’

‘To hell with your good reasons,’ said Asta, with the memory of the derelict house still in her mind. ‘There isn’t any good reason for anyone to do what that man did. I’m going to find who did it, and, so help me God in heaven, I’m going to hang him. I don’t want him on earth.’

She started to walk away, but Schiff followed her. Asta habitually walked fast, and he was a short-legged, short-winded little man. Still, he kept up with her and trotted beside her talking in gasps:

‘Consider, consider. There is much you want to do. Socially, socially, I grant you very properly. You are a lady with money.’

‘None to give to you, I assure you.’

‘Not so fast, not so fast. Give? Who said give? It is I who want to give. I want to give advice, advice worth money.’

‘I suppose you want me to invest in some wildcat scheme of yours, is that it?’

‘Listen,’ said Schiff, as Asta slowed down. ‘I knew Georg Groddeck. I have studied psychology in Vienna. I know what I’m talking about. There is something you want to achieve. As a millionairess or a multi-millionairess you will achieve what you hope to achieve five times more quickly.’

‘I’m not a millionairess, or half a quarter of a millionairess. And if I didn’t know where my next bit of bread was coming from I’d still achieve what I wanted to achieve, as you put it; so stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr Schiff.’

Schiff said: ‘I wasn’t suggesting that you were a millionairess, or a half, or a quarter, or an eighth of a millionairess. I was only going to tell you how to become — not a millionairess, but something like a tenth part of a millionairess. I wanted only to tell you how to make a hundred thousand pounds. I am a psychologist. Also, I am a chemist. I am a psychological cosmeticist. I was with Groddeck, and I knew Coty. Listen. This is the era of the new self-consciousness. This is the period of the self-inflicted psychic wound; the age of masochism. Now, you do not