The World Is Made of Glass Read online

  The interpretation of the dream brought Toni and me very close to a quarrel. I was – and am – convinced that it contained magical and alchemical allegories connected with old folk lore: the Knights of the Round Table and the search for the Holy Grail – which symbolised my own search for meaning in the midst of confusion.

  Toni disagreed emphatically. The knight was Freud, she said. Freud was the lonely crusader unrecognised by the heedless. She claimed that I recognised his worth and his power but could not follow him because I could not accept the fundamental thrust of his ideas – and because my affection for him had turned to hostility.

  I began to be tense, as I am always at the onset of another irrational rage. Then she broke off the argument and came to me and held my throbbing head against her breast and crooned over me.

  “There now! There! We’ll have no arguments this beautiful morning. We’re both frayed and tired. I lay awake half the night thinking about you and wanting you. Please, will you walk me home this evening and make love to me?”

  Had she been combative or timid, I might have raged at her for hours, as I do sometimes with Emma; but her tenderness disarms me totally and sometimes brings me close to tears.

  Even so, she surrenders no ground in clinical debate. She is convinced that my problems with Freud contribute to my psychosis. I admit that to myself; but I cannot yet admit it to her. I have never told her of the homosexual rape to which I was submitted in my youth, nor of the consequent homosexual element in my affection for Freud and how hard it is to free myself from his domination.

  Sooner or later the truth must come out as we continue my analysis together. But, please God, not yet! I am a middle-aged, married fool in love with a twenty-five-year-old girl. I want to enjoy the experience as long as I can. I see battles looming with Emma; and if my dark Doppelgänger ever takes control of me, I shall be lost to all joy and all hope. Rather than endure that despair, I shall follow the example of my old friend, Honegger, and put myself to sleep for ever.

  MAGDA

  Paris

  For the first time in twenty years I am not staying at the Crillon but in a modest pension near the Étoile. I take my meals in the house and my promenades in those quarters of the city where I am least likely to meet friends or acquaintances. There is a kiosk nearby where foreign newspapers are on sale and I have ordered a daily copy of the Berliner Tageblatt.

  So far, I have seen no mention of my colonel or of his fate. The only reference to my presence in Berlin has been a brief item announcing that: “Prince Eulenberg has bought, from a well known stud, a string of six hunters which are being schooled on his Baltic estate for the coming season.”

  So, I consider the logic of the situation. My colonel is alive or he is dead. If he is dead, they will announce the news in the obituary column. They will bury him with full military honours: muffled drums, a riderless horse with empty boots in the stirrups, reversed cannon, the whole panoply of military nonsense. If he is alive, he must be at least temporarily crippled and he will have had to find some plausible explanation for his wife. I know him for an epic liar in erotic affairs; but this episode will really stretch his talent.

  There is, however, a more sinister possibility: that my colonel is in convalescence but plotting my downfall. He has no reason to love me. He may well be afraid of blackmail – one of the few games I have never played. However, there is much talk lately of new struggles between the Great Powers. Bulgaria has attacked Serbia and Greece. Here in the West there are tales of spies, anarchists and assassins. Only three months ago there was an attempt on the life of King Alfonso of Spain. If the Kaiser and his colonel want to get rid of me, they can arrange it very simply. It is stale news that the Kaiser is very sensitive these days about the honour of his court. Even his royal cousin in England once remarked: “Really, Willy is so clumsy!” And I was nearly ruined by rumours which identified me – quite wrongly for once! – as “the equestrian beauty with whom the Kaiserin is reputed to be in love”.

  So, for the present, I sit demurely in my pension near the Étoile. I read the morning papers, shop a little, take a ladylike stroll and pray that Gräfin Bette in Berlin gives value for money! I make a joke of it, but truly it is not funny at all. I am scared, shocked to the marrow of my bones – not because of what anyone may do to me but of what I have done to myself. Suddenly, a black pit has opened at my feet and I am tottering on the brink of destruction.

  The only way I can explain it is to recall what happened twenty years ago, when I had just finished my studies. Papa took Lily and me on a cruise to the Far East. We travelled on the flagship of the old Royal Dutch Line calling at Hong Kong, Shanghai, the East Indies, Siam and Singapore. One day we were ashore in Surabaja, walking through the market, when suddenly there was panic. People scattered in all directions, shouting and screaming. We looked up and saw a Malay running towards us, slashing and stabbing right and left with a big, curved kris. He was quite close to us – ten metres perhaps – when a Dutch policeman shot him dead. It was, Papa explained, the only way to stop him. The man was amok, in the grip of a murderous manic rage against which no reason could prevail.

  “So, you kill him,” said Papa, in that cool, smiling fashion of his. “It’s a mercy to him and an act necessary to the public order. That kind of madness communicates itself like the plague among these people.”

  I wonder what he would have said if he had seen his daughter amok in the bedroom of Gräfin Bette’s house of appointment. It began as a common sexual game – albeit a somewhat violent one. My colonel, a big stalwart fellow, a martinet with his troops, liked to abase himself to women. He demanded to be abused, humiliated and punished for fictional faults. I was the perfect companion for his fantasy. I am tall, athletic, a good horsewoman and well known in hunting circles. I enjoyed the game, too – as indeed I enjoy most sexual experiences. But suddenly it was not a game any more. I was a shouting fury full of vengeful angers that welled up from nowhere. I wanted to kill the man. I lashed him and battered at him with the handle of my riding crop. And it was only the sight of his cardiac seizure – his chest caving in, his mouth contorted in a breathless rictus of agony – that shocked me back to reality. It was hard to believe how close I had come to murder – and how much I had enjoyed the experience.

  Looking back now, from my discreet refuge in Paris, it is very easy to believe that the experience may repeat itself and that next time I may not be so fortunate. Something is happening to me – has been happening over a long period – which I cannot explain.

  Every night before I go to bed, I study myself naked in the mirror. I have every reason to be pleased with what I see. I am forty-five years old. I have borne a child, but my breasts are firm, my skin is clear my muscles are strong as a young girl’s. My hair is still its natural russet brown. There are a few telltale lines round my eyes, but in a kind light and with careful maquillage, even these are hardly visible. My menstruation is still regular and I have not yet begun to experience any of the discomforts of menopause. If I go tonight, as I am tempted to do, to Dorian’s club or to visit Nathalie Barney, I shall have my choice of the flower basket, man or woman.

  The change, whatever it is, is taking place inside me. It is as if – how shall I explain? – as if a door has opened in my brain and all manner of strange and freakish creatures have been set free. They are out of control now. I cannot recapture them. They are not all cruel and angry, like the one which possessed me in Gräfin Bette’s. Others are fantastic, witty, bawdy, full of wild and brilliant speculations; but it is their own caprice which they follow and not my direction. I could as easily turn cartwheels in the Tuileries Gardens as make lesbian love with Nathalie Barney at a tango tea.

  But this is precisely what troubles me. I hate to be out of control. With men, horses and dogs I have always been the mistress; with women, either a tender friend or a most subtle enemy. I have never depended on alcohol or on drugs, though I have used them both. It was Papa who taught me that lesson in
his offhand, agreeable fashion:

  “Never fall in love with a bottle or an opium pipe. There’s no fun and no future in either. Never have sex with a stranger. Syphilis plays hell with the system. Remember that the only lover who can break your heart is the one you depend on.”

  I wish he were here now, so that I could ask him the questions that are plaguing me.

  “What do you do when you can’t depend on yourself? Where do you turn when you can’t read the street signs? What do I do about all these strangers capering inside my brain-box?”

  But this is foolishness. Wishes are beggars’ horses. Papa is long, long gone and I cannot spend the rest of my life talking banalities with the widow of a deputy and defending my non-existent virtue against a wine salesman from Bordeaux who pats my knee under the table. Whatever the risks, I have to get out of this place. So, tonight it is Dorian’s and whatever befalls in that freak show.

  Freak show? Who am I to talk? I have been a member of Dorian’s club for longer than I care to remember. According to Papa – usually a most reliable chronicler of the demi-monde – it was founded by Liane de Pougy, who was the poule de luxe of her day. The King of Portugal lavished a fortune on her. Baron Bleichroder and Lord Carnarvon and Prince Strozzi and Maurice de Rothschild all paid tribute in passion and money. The passion she exploited ruthlessly. The money she spent like water on girl lovers and wrestlers and oddities from the dives of Mont-martre.

  The club was to be her own private raree-show, where she could milk a little more from her complaisant clients. Her manager was Dorian, a little humpbacked gnome from Corsica who looked like Polichinelle, had a sputtering temper, a fine disdain for most of the human race and a heart as big as the hump on his back.

  Papa used to visit both Pougy and Dorian whenever he came to Paris. She consulted him about the ailments of her trade. Dorian he treated for the arthritic pains that racked his twisted frame. When Pougy wanted to sell out her share of the club, it was Papa who financed Dorian to buy it. So, one fine day I inherited a life membership.

  When my husband died and my small daughter went to live with her aunt, I was left with a large fortune and a variety of urgent appetites which – unless I, too, wanted to set myself up as a poule de luxe – could only be satisfied in secret. Dorian’s became my Paris rendezvous. When I introduced myself and presented Papa’s old card, Dorian embraced me and instantly appointed me his personal physician. I remember vividly his crooked grin and how he laid his index finger against his nose and told me:

  “Fair exchange, eh? You’ll keep me healthy. I’ll keep you out of trouble. I liked your Papa. He was a bold one; but he had healing hands – and oh such style! The English milords couldn’t snub him. The Germans never dared to bully him. And the French never quite understood him! I’m not certain I did either. I was never sure what he was up to with you. He had very strange ideas about bringing up a young daughter . . . But that’s none of my business! Some like fish and some like fowl and how do you know till you taste ‘em, eh?”

  Dorian is older now, by more than a decade. His hair is white. His bones creak as he moves. He has the dusty pallor of a cave creature. He keeps body servants always at call: a sinister silent fellow from Ajaccio and a barmaid from Calvi who looks as though she could strangle an ox with her bare hands. The barmaid runs the household. The man from Ajaccio is Dorian’s shadow: close, scarcely visible, but dangerous as a viper.

  When I visit Dorian, I go first to his house on the Quai des Orfèvres. It is a ritual courtesy. I am his physician. I am expected to examine him. Afterwards, with the big, silent fellow in attendance, we step across the cobbled courtyard to the club, where Dorian’s exotics display themselves.

  Tonight I decided to wear my Poiret suit – black trousers, black smoking, white ruffled jabot, with a cloak lined in midnight-blue silk to cover it all. As I dressed I wondered how much I dared tell Dorian of my predicament. We are good friends, but in our circus of the absurd, malice is always an element in the love play.

  However, I need not have troubled myself. Dorian knew everything – more than I, in fact. My colonel was alive and recuperating on his estate in East Prussia. He had recovered from his heart attack, but his back was still in plaster. He had resigned from the Kaiser’s household to take a post on the General Staff. As for me, there would be no reprisals, but I would be well advised never again to set foot in Berlin.

  “You got off lightly!” Dorian was terse about the whole affair. “If you can’t control yourself, don’t play these games. I promise you the Prussians can get very rough . . . Now, take a look at me and tell me how long I’ve got to live.”

  As I examined his grotesque little body, listening to the rales in his lungs, feeling the bony spurs in his spine, the chalky nodules in every joint, he lectured me like a schoolmaster.

  “Women! You’re fools, every one of you! You never understand that you’re playing against the house – and the house wins in the end. Take you, chérie! You’re tough and you’re rich and you’re intelligent, but even your hide’s rubbing thin. Soon you’ll be galled down to the raw nerves. That’s when the screaming starts. Except you won’t be yelling for help; you’ll be shouting murder. Next thing you know the flics will be hustling you off to gaol.”

  He reached up and stroked my cheek with a tiny arthritic hand, clenched like a bird’s claw. The gesture was at once tender and threatening.

  “You worry me, chérie. Most of the women who come in here I can read like a child’s catechism. A man’s done ‘em wrong. They’ve got the middle-age miseries. They’re lesbians – or loners looking for a new kind of thrill. They’re on drink, drugs or both. But you’re different. One minute you’re a madonna with a honey smile and breasts full of child milk for all the world; the next you’re Medusa with poison in your mouth and a wig made of snakes.”

  “Do I frighten you, too, Dorian?”

  “Frighten me?” He laughed, an odd, furry chuckle that ended in a coughing fit. “Not at all! I know you too well. Besides, nobody dares frighten a hunchback. They rub his hump for good luck. You can rub me too, if you want. You need some good fortune.”

  The word “rub” was a code word tacitly agreed between us. It was his cry for sexual comfort from a friend who would not laugh at him or tell outside the secrets of his twisted body. I was happy to oblige him. It was, God knows, a brief enough exercise, but I felt neither resentment nor distaste in performing it. Instead I experienced a curious surge of tenderness. I wanted to give him pleasure, make him feel a man, watch him afterwards, drowsy and content as we sipped a cognac together. It was then that he faced me with the blunt question:

  “Why do you do this . . . this lion tamer act?”

  “Lion tamer?” The idea was so incongruous that I burst out laughing. Dorian was instantly angry.

  “Don’t joke. That’s your name now on the whole European circuit: La Dompteuse de Lions.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “It’s not meant to be. It’s a risky reputation to have. What do you get out of this crazy exercise?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So why indulge in it?”

  “I don’t know, little friend; truly I don’t. When it happens, it’s a rage, a firestorm. I hardly know who I am any more.”

  “Where are you living now?”

  “In a mousehole with other grey mice. It’s a pension near the Étoile.”

  “Can you entertain there?”

  “No.”

  “So, stay here tonight. Use my guest room. I’ll introduce you to someone who’ll leave you tranquil as a nun at vespers.”

  “Thanks, but no! I couldn’t cope with any man just now.”

  “Who said anything about a man?” He combed my hair with his little talon fingers. “This is a girl like the one Sappho sang for on Mitylene. I think you need someone like her just now. Besides, what do you have to lose? If you sleep happy and wake friends, you’ll both be better off than you are now.”

  He was rig
ht. I lost nothing. I gained something – I think. She nuzzled at my breast like a child and then cried out, “Love me, little mother! Love me! Take me inside you again.”

  I thought of my lost daughter and was gentle to her. Then I, in my turn, burrowed at the mouth of her womb, but found it too small and too tight to admit me. Still, I was not angry because she wanted so much to welcome me. It was not her fault that the house was too small and had never yet been lived in. We fell asleep in each other’s arms, not happy, perhaps, but tender and quiet.

  Somewhere around three in the morning I woke. She was sleeping in the crook of my arm with her lips against my breast. The moonlight lay on her face and I saw with a small shock of surprise that she was almost as old as I, with the same crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes, the same furrows downturned from her lips. I felt no regret, no disappointment. I had only the sudden poignant memory of my father grinning at me across the breakfast table after my first all-night adventure. He said:

  “It’s a hell of a problem, isn’t it?”

  “I beg your pardon, Papa.” God, how prim I was! “But I have no problem.”

  “You’re lucky, then!” He was still grinning at me like Til Eulenspiegel. “When I was young I never knew what to say to them afterwards.”

  “But you’ve learned now?” Two could play this teasing game.