CHAPTER V

WARYWISE ODYSSEUS

'We haven't yet greeted each other properly,' he said as he came back. 'But I know you dislike emotional family scenes. You haven't running water in here; I saw a tap in the passage outside.'

He fetched water and told Peter to keep still.

'I do that without being told,' was the answer.

'I look forward to seeing your library. As a child I never understood your passion for books. I was much less intelligent than you, I hadn't your incredible memory. What a silly, greedy little boy I was, always playing around! I'd have liked to act plays and kiss mother all day long. But you had your goal straight before you from the start. I've never come across another man whose development followed such a straight line. I know you don't care for compliments, you'd like mc to stop talking and leave you alone. Don't be angry, but I can't leave you alone! I haven't seen you for twelve years, I haven't heard anything of you except in the papers for eight, you seem to have thought personal letters too great an honour for me! It's more than likely you won't treat me any better in the next eight years than you have up to now. You won't come to Paris, I know what you feel about the French and about travelling. I haven't the time to come and see you again soon, I'm snowed under with work. You may have heard I'm working in an institute close to Paris. So you see, when should I thank you if not now; I have a lot to thank you for, your modesty is altogether exaggerated, you don't even guess how much I owe to you: my character as far as I have any, my love of learning, my way of life, my rescue from all those women, my serious approach to great things, my humility towards small ones. You are in the last resort even responsible for my taking to psychiatry. It was you who aroused my interest in the problems of speech, and I made my first leap with a thesis on the speech of a certain lunatic. Of course I shall never bring myself to that complete self-abnegation, to that attitude of work for work's sake, of duty for duty's sake, which Immanuel Kant — and long before all other thinkers — Confucius, have demanded, and which you have achieved. I'm afraid I'm too weak for that. Applause does me good, I seem to need it. You are a very enviable man. You must admit that men of your strength of will are rare, tragically rare. How could there possibly be two in one family; By the way, I read your thesis on Kant and Confucius with real excitement, far more than I feel when I read Kant or even the sayings of Confucius themselves. It is so clear, so exhaustive, so ruthless to all other points of view, it is of such an overwhelming profundity and shows such comprehensive knowledge. Perhaps you saw that review in a Dutch paper which called you the Jacob Burckhardt of eastern cultures. Only they say you are not so discursive and far more exacting towards yourself. I consider your learning more universal than Burckhardt's. That may be explicable in part by the greater richness of knowledge in our time, but by far the greatest credit belongs to you personally; you save your strength to stand alone. Burckhardt was a professor and gave lectures, a compromise which was not without influence on the formulation of his thought. How tremendous your interpretation of the Chinese sophists! With few fragments, fewer even than we have from the Greek, you have reconstructed their entire world, their worlds I should say, for they are as different one from another as only the minds of philosophers can be. I was most pleased with your last important paper, the one in which you say that the school of Aristotle played the same part in the west as the school of Confucius in China. Aristotle, the spiritual grandchild of Socrates, gathers into his philosophy all the remaining tributaries of Greek thought. Among his medieval followers — and those by no means the least important — there are even Christians. In just the same way the later disciples of Confucius worked over all that was left of the teaching of Mo-Ti, of the Taoists and even of Buddhism in so far as it seemed serviceable to them and useful for the preservation of their influence. But we must not for that reason think of either the Confucians or the Aristotelians as eclectics. They are extraordinarily close to each o'ther —as you have convincingly shown —in their respective influences, the one on the Christian middle ages here, the other at about the same time, from the Sung dynasty onwards, over there. Of course I don't understand much about it, I don't know a word of Chinese — but your conclusions affect everyone who wants to understand his own roots, the ultimate origin of his opinions, the mental mechanism inside him. Am I allowed to ask what you're working on now?'

While he was washing and bandaging the hand, he observed closely, but as unobtrusively as possible, the effect of his sentences on the face of his brother. After the last question he paused.

'Why do you keep looking at meî' asked Peter. 'You're confusing me with one of your patients. You only half understand my scholastic theories, because you are too uneducated. Don't talk so much! You don't owe me anything. I detest flattery. Aristotle, Confucius and Kant are all the same to you. Any woman is preferable. If I'd had influence on you, you wouldn't now be the head of a lunatic asylum.'

'But Peter, you re not fair...'

'I am at work on ten different theses at once. Almost all of them are fiddling around with letters — as you call every work of textual criticism when you're alone. You laugh at concepts. Work and duty are concepts to you. You think only of people, and mostly of women. What do you want with me?'

'You're not fair, Peter. I told you I didn't know a word of Chinese. 'San' means three and 'wu' means five, that's all I know. I haue to look at you. How else am I to know if I'm hurting your finger; You'd never make a sound on your own. Your face is fortunately a little more expressive than your tongue.'

'Then make naste! You have an overbearing look. Leave my. studies alone! You need pretend no interest in them. Keep to your lunatics! I shall ask you nothing about them. You talk too much because you are always moving among people!'

'Very well. I've almost done.'

George felt from Peter's hand how willingly he would have stood up while he was saying these sharp words; so easily was his self-respect reawakened. Ten, twenty years ago it had always revealed itself in this kind of contradictions. Half an hour ago he had been crouching on the floor, feeble and dwindling, a little heap of bones, out of which had whimpered the voice of a beaten schoolboy. Now he was defending himself in curt, rude sentences, and showing signs of wanting to use his height as a weapon.

'I'd like to look at your books upstairs, if you don't mind,' said George when he had finished bandaging him. 'Will you come too, or will you wait for me? You must spare yourself to-day, you've lost a lot of blood. Lie down for an hour! I'll fetch you then.'

'What can you do in an hour?'

'Look at your library. The caretaker is up there?'

'You need a day for my library. You can see nothing in an hour.'

'I only want to get an idea of it. We'll look at it properly together later on.'

'Stay here! Don't go up! I warn you!'

'Why?'

'It smells in the flat.'

'Smells of what?'

'Of a woman, to use no more opprobrious terms.'

'You exaggerate.'

'You're a womanizer.'

'A womanizer? No.'

'You like a bit of skirt! Do you prefer me to speak plainly?' Peter's voice grew sharp.

'I understand your hatred, Peter. She deserves it. She deserves even more.'

'You don't know her!'

'I know what you've suffered.'

'You are like a blind man talking of colour ! You have hallucinations. You get them from your patients. The inside of your head is like the inside of a kaleidoscope. You shake forms and colours together to suit your whim. Colours, all colours, we can name each one by its name ! You should be silent about things which you have not yourself experienced!'

'I will be silent. I only wanted to tell you that I understood you, Peter, I've had the same experience myself, I am not what I used to be. That was why I changed my profession at the time. Women are a misfortune. Leaden weights on a man's spirit. If you take your duty seriously you must shake them off or you're lost. I do not need the hallucinations of my patients for my own healthy open eyes have seen more. I've learned many things in the course of twelve years. You were lucky enough to know from the beginning what I had to pay for with cruel experience.'

So as to carry conviction, George spoke with less emphasis than he had at his command. His mouth took on the lines of years of embitterment. Peter's mistrust grew, so did his curiosity; both could be clearly detected in the increasing tension of the muscles at the corners of his eyes.

'You still dress very carefully!' he said, the only answer to these expressions of resignation.

A painful necessity! My profession demands it. Uneducated patients are impressed when a gentleman who seems to them very grand treats them familiarly. Many melancholies are more cheered up by the knife-edge creases of my trousers than by anything I can say. If I do not cure these people, they will stay in their primitive condition. So as to open for them the way to education, even late in life, I must make them healthy first.'

'You place such emphasis on education. Since when?'

'Since I have known a truly educated man. The achievement which he has completed and is completing daily. The certainty in which his spirit dwells.'

'You mean me.'

'Whom else?'

'Your successes depend on shameless flattery. Now I understand why you are so famous. You are a consummate liar. The first word you learnt to speak was a lie. Because you delighted in lies you became a mental specialist. Why not an actor: You ought to be ashamed to confront your patients! Their suffering is the bitter truth, they suffer because they have no help left in the world. I can imagine just such a poor devil, suffering from hallucinations about a particular colour. "I can see nothing but green," he complains. He may even cry. Perhaps for months already he's been tormenting himself with this ridiculous green, What do you do? I know what you do. You flatter him, you grasp him by his Achilles heel — and how would he not have one, human beings are made up of weaknesses — you talk to him with your "my friend ' and your "my dear fellow", he weakens, first he respects you, then he respects himself. He may be the wretched-est poor devil on God's earth; you overwhelm him with respect. Hardly has he begun to think of himself as co-director of your lunatic asylum, merely kept out of the general directorship by an unjust accident, then you come along with your true speech. "My dear fellow," you say to him, "the colour you keep seeing is not green. It is —it is —let us say blue!" Peter's voice grew sharp. 'Have you cured him? No! His wife at home will torment him just as she did before, she will torment him to his dying day. "When men are ill and at the gates of death, they become as men out of their minds," said Wang-Chung, a penetrating thinker; he lived in the first century of our era, from 27 to 98, in China under the later Han dynasty, and knew more about sleep, madness and death than you with all your supposedly accurate science. Cure your lunatic of his wife! As long as he has her he will be both mad and dead—which according to Wang-Chung are closely related conditions. Send his wife away if you can! You cannot do it, because you have not got her. If you had her, you'd keep her for yourself because you like a skirt. Shut up all women in your institute, do what you like with them, wear yourself out, die exhausted and stupefied at forty, at least you'll have healed many sick men and will know for what you have received so much fame and honour!'

George noticed very well every time Peter's voice went sharp. It was enough that his thought recurred to the woman upstairs. He had not said a word about her, but already in his voice there betrayed itself a screeching, shrill, incurable hatred. Evidently he expected George to take her away; the mission seemed to him so hard and dangerous that he was already blaming him for having failed in it. He must be induced to give vent to as much of his hatred as possible. If only he would simply explain, from their origins onwards in a simple narrative, the events as they had appeared to him! George knew well how to play the part of the india-rubber in such a retrospect, and to wipe off the sensitive plate of memory all its traces. But Peter would never say anything about himself. His experiences had driven their roots right into the sphere of his learning. Here it was easier to find the sensitive spot.

'There is no love! A thing which does not exist can be neither indispensable nor dispensable. I would like to say with the same assurance: there are no women. What have the termites to do with us? Who among them has suffered anything from a woman? Hie mulier, hic salta. Let us confine ourselves to human beings! That female spiders eat their husbands after they have made use of the poor weaklings; that female gnats alone feed on blood, this has nothing to do with us. The slaughter of the drones, among bees, is totally barbarous. If they do not need drones, why do they breed them, if they do need them why do they kill them? In the spider, the most cruel and ugly of all creatures, I see an embodiment of woman. Her web shimmers in the sunlight, poisonous and blue.'

'But you yourself are talking only of animals.'

'Because I know too much about men. I prefer not to begin. I will say nothing of myself, I am only one case, I know many more serious ones, each case is wont for the man who suffers it. All really great thinkers are convinced of the worthlessness of women. Search through the sayings of Confucius, where you will find a thousand opinions and judgments on every subject of daily and more than daily life; search for a single sentence about women! You will find none ! Themaster of silence passes them over in silence. Even mourning for their death, since formalities indicate that a certain inner value is ascribed to a thing, seem to him unsuitable and disturbing. His own wife, whom he married in accordance with custom when she was very young, not out of conviction, still less out of love, died after years of marriage. Her son broke into loud lamenting over the body. He cries, he shakes with sobs; because this woman was quite by chance his mother, he feels her to be irreplaceable. But Confucius in harsh terms reproaches him his grief. Voilà un homme! His experience later justified his conviction. For several years the prince of the State Lu used him as a minister. The land flourished under his administration. The people recovered, drew breath, gained courage and confidence in the men who led them. Neighbouring States were seized with envy; they feared a disturbance of the balance of power — a doctrine which we find in favour even in the earliest times. What did they do in order to be rid of Confucius? The slyest of them all, the prince of Tsi, sent to his neighbour the prince of Lu, in whose service Confucius was, eighty chosen women, dancers and flute-players, for a present. They ensnared the young prince. They enfeebled him, he grew bored with politics, he found the counsels of the wise tedious, he was better amused by the women. Through these creatures the life-work of Confucius came to naught. He took up the pilgrim's staff and wandered, homeless, from land to land, despairing at the sorrows of the people, hoping for some new influence, all in vain; everywhere he found the chiefs and princes in the power of women. He died an embittered man: but he remained far too noble ever to lament his griefs. I have felt it only in some of his shortest dicta. I too do not complain. But I generalize and draw conclusions.

'A contemporary of Confucius was Buddha. Vast mountains divided them, how could they have known anything of each other? It is possible that the one did not even know the name of the people to whom the other belonged. "For what reason, reverent master," asked Ananda, Buddha's favourite pupil, of his teacher, "from what cause have women no place in the general assembly, pursue no trade and do not earn their living through any profession of their own?"

'"Women are prone to anger, Ananda; jealous are women, Ananda; envious are women, Ananda; stupid are women, Ananda. That is the reason, Ananda, that is the cause for which women have no place in the general assembly, pursue no trade and do not earn their living in any profession of their own."

'Women entreated to be taken up into the order, disciples took their part, but Buddha long refused to yield to them. Decades later he gave in to his own benevolence, to his pity for them, and founded against his better judgment, an order for nuns. Among the eight heavy rules that he laid on the nuns the first ran as follows:

'A nun, even if she should have been in the order a hundred years, must offer to a monk — even should he have been received on that very day —the most reverent salutations; she must stand up before him, fold her hands, and honour him according to custom. She must take heed to this rule, revere it, keep it holy, honour it in all things and never transgress it all the days of her life.

'The seventh rule, which she is also commanded to keep holy in the same terms, runs thus: 'A nun must in no wise scorn or reproach a monk.

'The eighth: 'From this day forward a nun may hold no speech whatsoever with a man. But a monk may hold speech with a nun."

'In spite of these barriers which the Exalted One had built up against women in his eight rules, he was overcome with a great sorrow when he had done it and spoke thus to Ananda:

'"Had it not been permitted to women, Ananda, to follow the teaching of the Perfected, to leave the world and turn to a life of wandering, this holy order would long have continued; the true doctrine would have survived a thousand years. But since, Ananda, a woman has left the world and has taken to the life of wandering, this holy order will not last for long, Ananda; only five hundred years will the doctrine remain pure.

'"Like a fair field of rice, Ananda, on which the pestilence falls, which is called mildew — that fair field of rice will not flourish long; so will it be with a doctrine and an order which permits women to withdraw from the world and to take up the life of pilgrims; that holy order will not last for long."

'"Like a fair plantation of sugar canes, Ananda, on which the pestilence falls, which is called the blue disease — that fair plantation will not flourish long; so will it be with a doctrine and an order which permits women to withdraw from the world and to take up the life of pilgrims; that holy order will not last for long."

'I hear in this impersonal statement of belief a great personal despair, a note of pain which I have found nowhere else in all the countless sayings of Buddha which tradition has handed down to us.

Hard as a tree

Crooked as a river

Wicked as a woman

Wicked and foolish

runs one of the oldest of Indian proverbs, genially expressed as most proverbs are, when you think of its fearful subject but significant of the popular feelings of the Indians!'

'What you are telling me is new to me only in detail. I admire your memory. You quote from an inexhaustible store of traditions everything which bears out your thesis. You remind me of those ancient Brahmins who used to pass on the Vedas — vaster though they are than the holy books of any other people — by word of mouth to their pupils, before the art of writing existed. You have the holy books of all peoples in your head, not only those of the Indians. All the same, you pay for your scholastic memory with a dangerous shortcoming. You don't see what is happening all around you. You have no recollection for your own experiences. If I were to ask you — which I have no intention of doing — tell me now, how did you fall into the hands ofthat woman, how did she deceive and lie to you, how did she misuse and play with you, tell me the stupidities and vilenesses which, according to your Indian proverb, make up the whole of her, singly and in detail, so that I may make my own judgment and not take over yours quite uncritically — that you would not be able to do. Perhaps to please me you would strain your memory, but quite in vain. You see it is just this kind of memory, which you lack, and which I possess; in that I tower above you. Anything that has ever been said to me, whether to hurt or to flatter, I remember always. But mere statements, simple facts which might have been addressed to anyone else, these escape me with time. Artists have this — a memory for feelings, as I'd like to call it. Both together, a memory for feelings and a memory for facts — for that is what yours is — would make possible the universal man. Perhaps I have rated you too highly. If you and I could be moulded together into a single being, the result would be a spiritually complete man.'

Peter raised his left eyebrow. 'Memoirs are not interesting. Women, if they can read at all, live on memoirs. I notice very well what I experience myself. You are curious, I am not. You hear new stories every day, and now for a change you would like one from me. I renounce all such stories. That is the difference between you and me. You live by your lunatics, I by my books. Which is the more estimable? I could live in a cell, I carry my books in my head, you need a whole lunatic asylum. You poor creature, I'm sorry for you. The truth is you're a woman. You live for sensations. Let yourself go then, chase from one novelty to the next! I stand firm. When a thought troubles me, it does not leave me for weeks. You hurry on to get hold of another at once. That's what you call intuition. If I were suffering from a delusion I would be proud of it. What more evidently proves strength of will and character? Try persecution mania! I'd give you my whole library if you could bring yourself to it. You're as slippery as an eel, every strong thought slides ofFyou. You couldn't manage to have a delusion. Nor could I, though I have the necessary talent: I have character. That may sound boastful to you. But I have proved my character. Of my own free will, alone, leaning on no one — I had not even an accessory — I have liberated myself from a weight, a burden, a living death, a rind of accursed granite. Where would I have been if I had waited for you? Still upstairs! But I went into the street, I left the books in the lurch — you don't know what splendid books they were; get to know them first; possibly I am a criminal. On a stern moral judgment I did wrong, but I take full responsibility, I am not afraid. Death breaks the marriage bond. And am I to be permitted less than death? What is death? A suspension of functions, a negative quantity, nothing. Am I to wait for it? Am I to await the caprice of a tough, elderly body? Who would wait when his work, his life, his books were at stake? I hated her, I hate her still, I hate her beyond the grave! I have a right to hatred; I will prove to you that all women deserve hate; you thought I was referring only to the East. Those proofs which I cited — you thought — were all drawn from my own special subject. I shall tear the' blue down from the sky for you, and I will tell no lies. Truths, beautiful, hard, pointed truths, truths of every size and shape, truths of feeling and truths of understanding, even though in your case only your feelings function, you woman, truths until you see blue, not red, but blue, blue, blue, for blue is the colour of faith! But that's enough, you have diverted me from our first subject. We have come to a halt on a level with illiterates. You debase me. I would do better to say nothing. You make a nagging Xantippe of me, and I had so many arguments!'

'You have arguments? Let me hear them then? I believe your statements will always lead back to eidier India or China.'

He had chosen the long way round, the short was closed. Since Peter refused to tell him simply what had happened, George would have to make out from selected learned dicta what his brother really in his heart held against his wife. How was he to draw those thorns out of Peter's flesh if he could not see them? How was he to calm him when he did not even know into what corners the unrest had spread, how it worked within him, how it appeared to him, what it conceived of the past of the human race, which it had substituted — an enormous changeling — for its own?

'I will stay in Europe,' Peter promised, 'more even can be said of women in Europe. The great popular epics, both of Germans and of Greeks, have feminine broils for their subject. There can be no question of mutual influence. I suppose you admire Kriemhild's cowardly revenge? Did she hurl herself into the struggle, did she risk the slightest danger? She provoked others only, wove her intrigues, abused, betrayed. And at the end, when she had no danger left to fear, with her own hands she cut off the heads of her bound prisoners, Hagen and Günther. Out of loyalty? Out of love for Siegfried, for whose death she was alone responsible? The Furies drove her on? Did she know that she would destroy herself in gaining her own revenge? No, no, no! Nothing great inspired her. She cared for nothing but the treasure of the Nibelungen! She had lost her gewgaws through too much chattering; she avenged her gewgaws. Among the gewgaws it is true there happened to be a man. He was lost with them, and avenged with them. At die very last moment she still hoped to find out where the treasure was hidden from Hagen. I regard it as much to the credit of the poet, or of the people whom the poet embodied, that Kriemhild was slain too!'

So she was greedy, thought George, and always wanting money from him.

'The Greeks were less just. They forgave Helen everything because she was beautiful. For my part, I tremble with indignation every time I think of her again in Sparte, gay and viciously ogling, at the side of her Menelaus. As if nothing had happened — ten years of war, the strongest,' finest, noblest of the Greeks killed, Troy burnt down, Paris her lover, dead — she might at least hold her peace! Years have passed since then, but she is able to speak without embarrassment of* that time when: "Shameless as I was, for my unworthy sake, the Grecians sailed to Ilium." She could tell even how Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, slipped into besieged Troy and killed many men.

'... Oh what wailing then

Was heard of Trojan women, but my heart

Exulted, alter'd now and wishing home.

For now my crime committed under force

Of Venus' influence I deplored, what time

She led me to a country far remote,

A wanderer from the matrimonial bed,

From my own child, and from my rightful lord

Alike unblemished both in form and mind.

'She told the story to her guests, and, mark you, to Menelaus. She drew the moral for him too. In this way she cajoled her way back to him. Thus she consoled him for her former adultery. Then I used to think Paris, soul and body, more beautiful than you — that's the meaning behind her words — but to-day I know that you are as good. Who stops to think that Paris is dead? To a woman a living man is always more beautiful than a dead one. What she holds now, that pleases her. She makes a virtue of this weakness of her own character, and flatters him with it.'

So she twitted him with his gloomy face, thought George, and deceived him with a less gloomy one. When the other man died, she wormed her way back with flattery.

'Oh, Homer knew more of women than we do! The blind must teach those who can see! Do you remember how Aphrodite broke her marriage vow.? Hephaestus was not good enough for her because he limped. With whom did she betray him? With Apollo perhaps, the poet, an artist like Hephaestus who had all the beauties which the sooty smith lacked, or with Hades, the dark and mysterious, to whom the underworld belonged? With Poseidon, the strong and angry, who raised the tempests in the ocean? He would have been her rightful lord, she came out of the sea. With Hermes, who understood all the ruses in the world, even those of women, and whose guile and commercial acumen should have enchanted her, the mistress of love? No, to every one of these she prefers Ares, who made up for the vacuum in his head by the strength of his muscles, a ginger-haired dunderhead, the god of the Greek landsknechts, with no spirit, nothing but fists, unlimited only in violence, in everything else the embodiment of limitations'.

That's the caretaker, thought George, so he was the second.

'Out of clumsiness he got himself caught in the net. Every time I read how Hephaestus caught the two in his net, I shut down the book for joy and ten, twenty times I passionately kiss the name of Homer. But I do not omit the end. Ares takes himself pitiably off, true he's an ass, but he's a man; he has a spark of shame in his body. Aphrodite slips away radiant to Paphos, where her temples and altars are ready to receive her, and recovers from her shame — all the Gods laughed at her in the net — by decking herself out in her finery!'

When he found the two of them, thought George, the caretaker, still humble in those days, must have taken himself off, embarrassed, forgetting his fists at the sight of the wealthy man of learning. She, however, put on an impertinent air — the one defence of the discovered — took her clothes into the next room and dressed herself there. Jean, where are you?

'I know your thoughts. You think I have the Odyssey against me. I can read in your eyes the names of Calypso, Nausicaa, Penelope. Let me show them to you with all their beauties — which one writer has taken on trust from another — nothing but three cats in an old bag. First let me point out that Circe, a woman, changed all men into swine. Calypso held Odysseus — whom she loved with all her body — a prisoner for seven years. All day long he sits, weeping bitterly, on the sea-shore, wretched with home-sickness and shame, all night long he has to sleep with her, he has to, whether he wants to or not. He does not want to, he wants to go home. He is an active man, full of energy, courage and spirit, an astounding man, the greatest actor of all time and in spite ofthat a hero. She sees him weeping, she knows well what it is that makes him suffer. In idleness and cut off from human kind, whose talk and action are the air he breathes, he wastes in her company his best years. She will not let him go. She would never have let him go. Then Hermes brings her the command of the gods: she must set Odysseus free. She must obey. Those last hours left to her, she misuses in order to place herself with Odysseus in a more favourable light. I let you go of my own will, she says, because I love you, because I am sorry for you. He sees through her, but he says nothing. And this is the way an immortal goddess behaves: she can have men and love for the whole of a long eternity, she will not grow old. What can it matter to her how he, the mortal, spends his short, small already time-devoured existence?'

She never let him alone, thought George, not at night, not when he was working.

'We know little of Nausicaa. She was too young. But we can note her tendencies. She wants a husband like Odysseus, she says. She had seen him on the sea-shore, naked. That is enough for her, he is beautiful. Who he is, she has no idea. She makes her choice from his body alone. There is the legend of Penelope, that she waited twenty years for Odysseus. The number of the years is correct, but why did she wait? Because she could not make up her mind between the suitors. She had been spoilt by the strength of Odysseus. No other man can please her. She cannot promise herself enough pleasure from these weaklings. She love Odysseus! What a myth! His old, weak, weary hound knew him when he came in, disguised as a beggar, and died of joy. She didn't recognize him, and lived cheerfully on. Before she went to sleep every night, it's true she cried a little. At first she used to long for him, he had been a fiery, strong man. Then crying grew to be a custom, a sleeping draught that she couldn't do without. Instead of an onion, she used the memory of her dear Odysseus, and cried herseif to sleep with that. The good old servant Eurykleia, the careful little mother, soft-hearted and always busy, broke into cries of joy at the sight of the defeated suitors, the hanged maids! Odysseus the avenger, the man who had been injured, had to reprove her!'

It is the housewifeliness of Penelope and Eurikleia that he hates, thinks George; she had started as his housekeeper.

'I regard as the most precious and the most personal legacy of Homer the words which Agamemnon, as a sad blue shadow in the underworld after his wife had killed him, spoke to Odysseus:

Thou therefore be not pliant overmuch 

To women; trust her not with all thy mind, 

But half disclose to her, and half conceal... 

Steer secret to thy native isle, avoid 

Notice; for woman merits trust no more.

'Cruelty too is one of the chief characteristics of the Greek Goddesses. The Gods are more human. When was a man more mercilessly tormented and harried through life than was Herakles by Hera, who had done her no wrong, except by being born? And when at last he died and got free of the terrible women, who had made even his death a hellfire, she spoiled his immortality by an underhand trick. The Gods wanted to reward him for his sufferings, they were ashamed of the hatred of hard-hearted Hera; as suitable indemnification they made him an immortal. But Hera smuggled a woman into the gift. She coupled him with her daughter Hebe. Gods are haughty: for a man to have one of them to wife seems to them an honour. Herakles is defenceless. If Hebe were a lion he could strike her down with his club. But she is a Goddess. He smiles and thanks them. He has been transplanted out of a dangerous life, whither? Into a never-ending marriage! A never-ending marriage on Olympus under a blue sky, with his eyes on the blue sea....'

What he really fears is the indissolubility of the marriage. George was glad to think of the divorce, which would be his present to his brother. Peter was silent and looked fixedly in front of him.

'Tell me,' he began hesitantly, 'I suffer from optical illusions. I was trying to imagine the Aegean Sea. It seemed to me more green than blue. Is there any significance in that? What do you think?'

'But what are you thinking of? You are a hypochondriac. The sea takes on the most different colours. You must have had a greenish tinge as some particularly happy recollection. It's the same with me. I too like the vicious green colour, before thunderstorms, on dark days.'

'Blue seems to me more vicious than green.'

'The associations with various colours are in my experience diffèrent in different people. In general blue is regarded as a pleasant colour. Think ofthat simple, child-like blue in the pictures of Fra Angelico!'

Peter was again silent. Suddenly he clutched at George's sleeve and said: 'While we are on the subject of pictures, what do you think of Michelangelo?

'What made you think of Michelangelo?'

'Precisely in the centre of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Eve is created out of Adam's rib. The representation of this event, which turned the newly begun and best into the worst of all worlds, is of a smaller size than the creation of Adam and the Expulsion from Eden on either side of it. It is a narrow and wretched process: the robbery of man's worst rib, the splitting into sexes, of which one is no more than a fragment of the other; yet this little event is in the very centre of Creation. Adam is asleep. Had he been awake he would have locked up his rib. Oh that the passing desire for a companion should have become his fate! The goodwill of God was exhausted with the creation of Adam. From that moment he treated him like a stranger, not like his own work. He held him to words and moods, swiftly changing as clouds, and forced him to bear the result of his whims for all eternity. Adam's whims grew into the instincts of the human race. He sleeps. God, the good father, contemptuously benevolent at this occupation, conjures Eve out of him. One of her feet is on the earth, the other is still in Adam's flank. Before she has the means to kneel she is already folding her hands. Her mouth murmurs words of flattery. Flatteries addressed to God are called prayers. She has not learnt how to pray in real sorrow. She is cautious. While Adam sleeps, she is hastily building up a hoard of good works. She works by instinct, and guesses God's vanity, which is gigantic, like himself. For the different acts of creation God bears himself differently. Between one act and the next, he changes his garments. Wrapped in a wide, beautifully draped cloak, he contemplates Eve. He does not see her beauty, seeing everywhere only himself; he accepts her homage. Her mien is humble and sinful. From her first moment she is all calculation. She is naked but feels no shame before God in his wide cloak. She will not know shame until one of her sins miscarries. Adam lies there, limp, as if he had been with a woman. His sleep is light and he dreams of the sadness that God is giving him. The first dream of mankind was this fear of woman. When Adam wakes God leaves them, cruelly, together; she will kneel to him, her hands folded as they were before God, the same flatteries on her lips, loyalty in her eyes, the lust of power in her heart, and so that he shall never escape her again she will tempt him to depravity. Adam is more magnanimous than God. God loves himself in his creation. Adam loves Eve, the Second, the Other, the Evil, the Misfortune. He forgives her what she is: an expanded rib. He forgets, and of One, Two are made. What misery for all time!'

A whim, a caprice is to blame for his marriage. He entered into it against his will. He cannot forgive himself. It irritates him the more that he can only believe in the Categorical Imperative and not in God. Otherwise he could transfer the blame to Him. He thinks of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to get some idea of God. There is no other credible Bible God to be found anywhere else in pictorial art. He needs Him in order to abuse Him. Aloud George uttered some non-committal sentence as far as possible removed from his thoughts.

'Why for all time? We were speaking of termites who have got the better of sex. It is therefore neither an inevitable nor an invincible evil.'

'Yes, and just such another miracle as the love riot in the termite hill and the burning of my library, which is impossible, out of the question, inconceivable, stark madness, treason unparalleled to priceless treasures such as no one else has gathered together, sheer scandal, an obscenity, something you must not even mention to me in jest, let alone presume, you can see now, I'm not mad. I'm not even a little unbalanced, I've gone through a lot, there's nothing wrong in getting excited, why do you sneer at me, my memory is perfect, I know everything I want to know, I am master of myself, why? — even if I married once I never had a single love affair, and you, what haven't you done in love, love is a leprosy, a disease, inherited from the first living organisms, others marry twice, three times, I had nothing to do with her, you insult me, you've no right to say it, a madman might do such a thing but I shan't set my library on fire, clear out, if you insist on it, go back to your Bedlam, where are your wits, you answer everything I say with Yes, or Amen! So far I've heard not one personal expression of thought from you, you rattle, you think you know everything! I can smell your contemptuous thoughts. They stink. He s mad, you think, because he abuses women! I'm not the only one! I'll prove that to you! Takeaway your filthy ideas! You even learnt to read from me, you squirt. You don't even know Chinese. Very well, I'll have my divorce later. I must rehabilitate my honour. A wife isn't necessary for a divorce. Let her turn in her grave. She's not even in a grave. She doesn't deserve a grave. She deserves hell! Why is there no Helh One must be founded. For women and womanizers, like you. What I say is the truth! I am a serious person. You are going away now and won't bother with me any more. I am alone. I have a head. I can look after myself. I'll not leave the books to you. I'd sooner burn them. But you'll die first, you're already worn out, that's your disgusting way of life, only listen to yourself, to the way you talk, without force in long involved sentences, you're always polite, you woman, you're like Eve, but I'm not God, those ways cut no ice with me! Take a rest from all this femininity! Maybe you'll become human again. Miserable, unclean creature! I'm sorry for you. If I had to change places with you, do you know what I'd do? I have not got to, but if I had to, if there were no other way, if the natural law was merciless—I would know a way out. I'd burn your lunatic asylum, till it flamed like daylight, with all its inhabitants, with me too, but not my books! Books are worth more than lunatics, books are worth more than men, you don't understand that because you're a play-actor, you need applause, books are dumb, they speak yet they are dumb, that is the wonder, they speak and you hear them more swiftly than if you had to hear them with ears. I'll show you my books, not now, later. You'll say you're sorry for your revolting suggestion, or I'll throw you out!'

George did not interrupt him, he wanted to hear it all. Peter spoke with such haste and excitement, that no friendly word would have held him up. He had stood up: as soon as he spoke of books, his small gestures expanded, grew determined. George regretted the image which, for the lack of another, he had chosen to illustrate the termites and their happy sexlessness in order to lure his brother's thoughts into the desired direction; it had proved, unfortunately, a bad choice. The mere thought that he could set fire to his books, burned Peter more than fire itself. He loved his library so dearly; it was his substitute for human beings. He might have been spared this painful vision: but still it had not been in vain. From it George learnt that there was a cure for the woman, more certain than poison; it was this overwhelming love which had only to be brought into play against that hatred and it would be extinguished and destroyed. It would be worth living for the sake of books which even from an imagined danger he would protect with such passion. Quickly and noiselessly I shall throw out the woman, George decided, and the caretaker with her, remove from the flat anything which may remind him of them, go through the library in case anything's missing, put his financial affairs in order — he's probably got little or nothing left — lead him back to the bosom of his books, fan his old love for a day or two, direct his attention to work which he had intended before, and then leave this dry fish to himself in his own dreary element — he finds it gay enough. At the end of six months I'll call on him again. I owe him these little attentions though he is my brother and I despise his ridiculous profession. I've discovered all I need to know about his married life. His judgments, which he thinks objective, are as transparent as water. First I must calm him down. He is calmest when he can disguise his hatred under the names of mythical or historical women. Behind these ramparts of his memory he feels safe against the woman upstairs. She could not make him a single answer on those scores. Fundamentally he is limited and has a petty character. His hatred gives him a kind of vigour. Perhaps a little of that will be left over for his later theses.

'You interrupted yourself. You wanted to say something important.' George broke gently, with a soft expectant voice, into Peter's staccato exclamations. So much gravity and officiousness disarmed his rage. He sat down once more, searched in his head and found, in a very little time, the requisite connecting thread.

'Just such another wonder as the love riot in the ant-heap and the impossible burning of my library would have been the destruction of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo himself. He might possibly — in spite of four years work — at the command of some crazy pope, have peeled off or painted over one figure after another. But Eve, this Eve, he would have protected against a hundred Swiss Guards. .She is his testament.'

'You have a nose for the testaments of great artists. History justifies you too, not only Homer and the Bible. Let's forget Eve, Delilah, Clytaemnestra and even Penelope, whose ruthlessness you have proved. They are formidable examples, outstanding figures for the demonstration of your point, but, who knows if they ever lived? A Cleopatra proves a thousand times more to us, amateurs of history.'

'Yes — I have not forgotten her, I had not got so far. Good, we'll omit the intervening ones ! You are not as thorough as I am. Cleopatra has her sister murdered — every woman fights every woman. She deceives Antony — every woman deceives every man. She exploits him and the Asiatic provinces of Rome for her own luxuries — every woman lives and dies for her love of luxury. She betrays Antony at the first moment of danger. She talks him into believing that she will burn herself alive. He kills himself meanwhile. She does not burn herself. But she has a mourning robe ready to hand, it suits her, dressed in it she tries to entangle Octavian. He was astute enough to lower his eyes. I dare swear he never saw her. The sly young fellow was in full armour. Otherwise she would have tried the touch of her skin, would have clung to him at the very moment when Antony was breathing his last. He was a man, Octavian, a fine man, he protected his body with armour and his eyes by casting them down! He is said to have answered not a word to her siren songs. I have a suspicion he may even have stopped his ears as Odysseus did for his part. Now, she couldn't captivate him through his nose alone. He could rely on his nose. Probably his olefactory organ was ill-developed. A man, a man I admire! Caesar yields to her, not he. And in the meantime she had grown a great deal more dangerous owing to her age, more importunate I mean.'

He even reproaches his wife her age, understandably enough, thought George. For a very long time he went on listening. Hardly a misdeed of womankind, whether historically vouched for or merely traditional was passed over. Philosophers explained their contemptuous opinions. Peter's quotations were reliable, and, since he spoke like a school master, imprinted themselves deeply on his brother's mind. Many a phrase, corrupted by time-honoured tradition, he would correct as he went along. You can always learn, even from a pedant. Much was new to George. Thomas Aquinas had said: 'Women are weeds which grow quickly, incomplete men; their bodies only come earlier to ripeness because they are ofless value, nature takes less pains with them. And in which chapter does Thomas More, the first modern communist, treat of the marriage laws of his Utopia? In the chapter on slavery and crime! Attila, King of the Huns, was called by a woman, Honoria, the Emperor's sister, into Italy her own homeland, which he very largely plundered and laid waste. A few years later the widow of that same Emperor, Eudoxia, married, after her husband's death, his murderer and successor, and called in the Vandals to Rome itself. Rome owed that notorious sack to her, as Italy owed the ravages of the Huns to her sister-in-law.'

Little by little Peter's anger grew less. He spoke ever more calmly, and cited appalling crimes almost casually. The material was more ample than his hatred. So as to omit nothing — his chief characteristic was still his accuracy — he divided it scrupulously into periods, peoples and thinkers. Only a little was left for each person. An hour ago Messalina would have heard a great deal more of herself. Now she got off lightly with a few lines of Juvenal. Even the mythology of certain negro tribes seemed to be saturated with contempt for women. Peter found his allies wherever they were. He could forgive the ignorance of illiterates if they agreed with him about women.

George used a small pause for recollection, to make a proposal; he offered it respectfully and with unchanged expectation, though it concerned simply a meal. Peter agreed: he would prefer to eat out of the house. He had seen enough of the closet. They went into the nearest restaurant. George felt, sidelong, that he was being closely watched. Scarcely had he opened his mouth before Peter was back on his hyenas. But soon his sentences gave way to silence. Then George too fell silent. For a few moments both rested from their vigilance. In the restaurant Peter ceremoniously took his place. He fidgeted on his chair until he had completely turned his back on a neighbouring lady. Immediately after another appeared, still older and more anxious to be looked at: even a Peter interested her; grateful for the attention which she soon hoped to attract, she took no exception to a skeleton. The head waiter, a gentleman of distinguished appearance, stood before George, whom he took for the benefactor of the hungry guest, and took his order. With inconspicuous nods in the direction of the beggar, he recommended two sorts of dish, nourishing for the poor fellow, and more refined for his benefactor. Suddenly Peter got up and declared curtly: 'We will leave this place!' The waiter was full of regret. He ascribed the blame to himself and overflowed with courtesies. George felt himself painfully moved. Without any explanation, they went. 'Did you see the hag?' asked Peter in the street. 'Yes.' 'She was looking at me. Atme! I am not a criminal. How can she have thought of such a thing, to look at me! What I have done, I am ready to answer for.'

In the second restaurant George took a private cubicle. Over their meal Peter went on with his interrupted lecture, long and tedious, his eyes always on the watch to see if his brother was listening. He lost himself in commonplaces and hackneyed stories. His speech limped along. Between sentences he fell asleep. Soon he would be separating his words by whole minutes. George ordered champagne. If he spoke more quickly he would be done sooner. Besides, I shall learn his last secrets, if he's got any. Peter refused to drink. He abhorred alcohol. Then he drank all the same. Or else, he said, his brother might think he had something to hide from him. He had nothing to hide. He was truth itself. His misfortune came from his love of truth. He drank freely. His learning shifted to another sphere. He revealed an astonishing knowledge of historic murder trials. With passion he defended the right of men to set aside their wives. His speech transformed itself naturally into that of the defending counsel, pleading before the court the reasons why his client had been forced to kill his fiendish wife. Her fiendishncss was clear from the immoral life which she would so willingly have led, from her provocative way of dressing, from her age which she tried to conceal, from the vulgar words which were her entire vocabulary, and above all from her sadistic violence which went so far as the most brutal beating. What man would not have killed such a woman; All these arguments Peter pursued at length and with deep emphasis. When he had finished he stroked his chin with satisfaction, like a true barrister. Then he pleaded in general for the murderers of less gifted women.

George learnt nothing new of the case of his brother. The opinion which he had already formed remained, in spite of the alcohol, intact. Injuries to pedantic heads are easily repaired. They arise from an excess of logic, and by logic they are cured. These cases were the only ones which George did not care for; they were not real cases. A man who is the same lit-up as he is stone-cold aeserves the lowest possible opinion. What an all-devouring lack of imagination in this Peter! A brain of lead, moulded out of letters, cold, rigid, heavy. Technically a miracle perhaps; but are there miracles in our technical times? The boldest thought to which a philologist can bring himself is that of murdering his wife. And even then the wife has to be more or less a monster, a good twenty years older than the philologist in question, his own evil image, a person who treated men as he treated the texts of great poets. If he were to carry out the murder, if he were to raise his hand against her and not draw it back at the last moment, if he were to go to his destruction for this crime, to sacrifice to his revenge manuscripts, texts, library, all the furniture of his lean heart — then hold his memory in honour! But he prefers to pay her off. He telegraphs first to his brother. He asks help for no murder. He will live and work another thirty years. In the annals of some science or other he will shine as a star of the first magnitude for all earthly eternity. Grandchildren, turning over the pages of the Transactions of this or that Sinological Society (for grandchildren of this kind too will be born) will come across his name. He has the same name himself. He ought to change it. Fifty years hence the Chinese National Government will honour him with a statue. Children, graceful, delicate creatures with slant eyes and smooth skin (when they laugh the hardest houses bend down) play in a street called after him. In their eyes (children are a bunch of riddles, they and everything around them) the letters of his name will become a mystery, he a mystery who during his life was so obvious, transparent, understandable and understood, who, if he ever was an enigma, was an enigma immediately solved. What luck that people do not usually know after whom their streets are called! What luck that they know so little altogether!

Early in the afternoon he brought the philologist to his hotel and asked him to rest there while he settled up his affairs at home.

'You are going to clean out my flat,' said Peter.

'Yes, yes.'

'You must not be surprised at the odious stench.'

George smiled: cowards incline to circumlocutions.

'I shall hold my nose.'

'Keep your eyes open! You may see ghosts.'

'I never see ghosts.'

'Maybe you'll see some all the same. Tell mc if you do!'

'Yes, yes.' How tasteless his jokes are!

I've a request for you.'

'And that is?'

'Don't talk to the caretaker! He's dangerous. He may attack you. Say a word which doesn't suit him, and he hits out at once. I don't want you to come to any harm on my account. He'll break all your bones. Every day he throws beggars out of the house; he injures them first. You don't know him. Promise me you won't have any contact with him! He's a liar. You should not believe anything he says.'

'I know, you've warned me already.'

'Promise me.'

'Yes, yes.'

'Even if he does nothing to you, he'll jeer at me later.'

So he's already afraid of the time he'll be alone again. 'You can be certain I'll get rid of him out of the house.'

'Truly?' Peter laughed, since his brother had known him, for the first time. He clutched for his pocket and handed George a bundle of crushed bank notes. 'He'll want money.'

'This is your entire fortune?'

'Yes. You'll find the rest in the flat in a more noble form.'

This last phrase almost made George sick. One half of their vast internal inheritance was locked up in dead tomes, the other in a unatic asylum. Which half had been the better used? He had expected to find at least some of the capital still with Peter. That wasn't the reason he was distressed, he said to himself; not because I shall have to support him for the rest of my life. His poverty annoys me because with this money I could have helped so many patients.

Then he left him alone. In the street he wiped his bands clean on his handkerchief. He would have wiped his forehead too; he had already lifted his hand when he remembered that similar gesture of Peter's. Hurriedly he dropped his hand again.

When he was once again outside the door of the flat he heard loud screams. Inside people were fighting. It would be all the easier for him to deal with them. At his violent ringing the woman opened the door. Her eyes were red and she was wearing the same comical skirt she had worn in the early morning.

'I ask you, Mr. Brother!' she shrieked, 'he's taking liberties! He pawned the books. It's not my fault, is it? Now he's going to tell the police of me. He can't do it, I tell you. I'm a respectable woman!'

George led her with elaborate politeness into one of the rooms. He offered her his arm. She clutched at it at once. In front of his brother's writing desk he asked her to take a seat. He himself set the chair for her.

'Make yourself comfortable!' he said. 'I hope you feel safe here. A woman like you should have every attention. Unhappily I am already married. You ought to have a business of your own. You are a born business woman. We shall not be interrupted here, I truste' He went to the communicating door and rattled at the lock. 'Locked, good. Would you very kindly lock the other door as well?'

She obeyed. He understood exactly how to turn himself at once into the owner, and the householder into his guest.

'My brother is unworthy of you. I have been talking to him. You must leave him! He wanted to report you for double adultery. He knows everything. But I have dissuaded him. A man like him would be deceived by every woman. I suspect that he is not in any case normal. All the same he might easily make you appear as the guilty party in a divorce. You would get nothing at all in that case. Then you would have nothing for all your sufferings with this wretched creature — I know just what he's like. You would have to pass your old age in poverty and loneliness. A respectable woman like you with a good thirty years before you yet. How old are you then? Not a day over forty? He has already secretly filed his petition. But I will take your part. You please me. You must leave the house at once. If he doesn't see you any more, he'll do no more against you. I'll buy you a dairy shop at the other end of the town. I shall put up the capital on one condition: you must never cross my brother's path again. If you should do so the capital which I am putting up will come back to me. You will sign an agreement to this effect. You will do well out of it. He wanted to have you shut up. He has the law on his side. The law is unjust. Why should a woman like you have to suffer because a few books are missingî I cannot allow it. Ah, if only I were not already married! Permit me, dear lady, as your brother-in-law, to kiss your hand. Tell me, if you will, exactly, what books are missing. I have taken it upon myself to replace them. Otherwise he would not have withdrawn his complaint. He is a cruel man. We will leave him to himself. Let him see how he gets on then. Not a soul will look after him. He has deserved it. If he commits any more follies then he'll only have himself to blame. Now he tries to blame everything on you. I shall see that the caretaker loses his job. He has taken liberties with you. From now on he can caretake in another house. You will soon marry again. You can be sure the whole world will envy you your new shop. A man would glady marry into that. You've got what a woman needs. Nothing is missing. Believe me! I'm a man of the world. Who else to-day is so particular about having everything clean as you are? Your skirt is something quite unusual. And your eyes! And your youth! And your little mouth! As I've said already if I were not married I'd try to seduce you! But I have a respect for my brother's wife. When I come here again later to keep an eye on that fool, I shall permit myself, if I may, to call on you in your dairy shop. Then you won't be his wife any longer. Then we'll let our hearts speak.'

He spoke with passion. Each word had the calculated effect. She changed colour. He paused after some sentences. Never before had he dared so much melodrama. She said nothing. He grasped that it was his presence which struck her dumb. He spoke so beautifully. She was afraid of missing a single word. Her eyes started out of their sockets, first with fear, then with love; she pricked her ears; water ran out of her mouth. The chair on which she sat creaked a popular tune. She held out her hands to him, folded into a cup. She drank with lips and hands. When he kissed her hands, the cup lost its shape and her lips breathed — he could hear it: more please. So he overcame his revulsion and kissed her hands again. She trembled; her emotion extended even to the roots of her hair. Had he embraced her she would have fainted. After his last sentence, the one about hearts, he remained fixed in a baroque attitude. Her hand and the greater part of his arm lay, ceremoniously, across his chest. She had, said she, savings. None of the books had gone altogether, she still had the pawn tickets. Ostentatiously and awkwardly she turned away — the shamefacedness of the shameless — and fetched out of her skirt, which presumably contained a pocket, a bundle of pawn tickets. Did he want her savings book too; She would give it him for love. He thanked her. For love too, he could not agree. Even while he was refusing she said, I ask you, who knows if you really deserve it. She regretted the offer before he accepted it. Would he come and see her for certain, he was what she called a man. She recovered her self-command by speaking these few words. But scarcely had he opened his mouth than she was his again.

Half an hour later she was helping him in his campaign against the caretaker. 'You can't know who I am!' shouted George in his face. 'The head of the Paris police, on vacation ! One word from me and my friend the head of the police here will have you arrested ! You'll lose your pension. I know everything you have on your conscience. Take a look at these pawn tickets ! I won't say a word about anything else for the present. Not a word from you! I know you through and through. You lead a double life. I am for taking drastic proceedings against anti-social elements. I shall ask my friend the head of your police to purge his forces. Leave this house! To-morrow morning early you'll be gone! You are a suspect! Put your luggage together and be off! I'll let you off with a caution for the time being. I shall exterminate you! You criminal! Do you know what you've donei It's being shouted from the roof-tops!'

Benedikt Pfaff, the stalwart ginger-headed tough, contracted his muscles, knelt down, folded his hands and implored the Head of the Police for forgiveness. His daughter had been ill, she would have died of her own accord anyway, he begged leave to recommend himself, and asked not to be sent away from his job. A man had nothing in the world except his peep-hole. What else had he left? You couldn't grudge him a beggar or two. Very few came nowadays, anyway ! The tenants were blown-out with affection for him. He had a bit of bad luck! If only he'd known! The Professor didn't look the kind of man who'd have had the head of the Paris police for his brother. He'd have had him met at the station and respectfully conducted home if he'd known ! God was reasonable. Thanking him, he permitted himself to stand up.

He was very well satisfied with the honour he had done the important gentleman. When he got up again he blinked at him in a friendly way. George remained curt and stern. But all the same he came halfway to meet him. Pfaff promised to redeem all the books he had pawned, in person, on the following morning. He was, however, to leave the house. At the far end of the town, close to the dairy shop bought for the woman, he was to be set up in the animal business; the two declared themselves ready to move in together. The woman made her own terms: she was not to be pinched or knocked about and she was to be allowed to receive the Professor's brother whenever he wanted. Pfaff agreed, flattered. He had his doubts about the prohibition on pinching. He was only human after all. But as well as committing themselves to mutual love, they were each to watch the other. If one or the other were to go wandering off in the direction of Ehrlich Strasse the other was immediately to inform Paris. In which case both shop and liberty would be ruthlessly removed. The very first information would be followed by arrest by telegraph. The informer could claim a reward. Pfaff didn't give a sh— for Ehrlich Strasse if he could live among a crowd of canary birds. Thérèse complained: Please he's doing it again. He mustn't always sh—. George spoke to him seriously about using the sort of language which was more suited to a better-class business man. He was no longer a miserable half-pay policeman, but a made man. Pfaff would sooner have been a publican, best of all a ring-master with a boxing turn of his own and tame canary birds which would sing at a word and shush down at a word. The Head of the Police gave him permission, if his business made so much profit and he behaved himself properly, to open a pub or a circus. Thérèse said no. A circus isn't respectable. A pub perhaps. They decided to divide the work. She would look after the pub, he would look after the circus. He was the master, she was the mistress. Clients and visitors from Paris were promised by the Head of the Police.

That very evening Thérèse began a thorough spring-cleaning of the flat. She engaged no outside help but did it all herself, so as to spare Mr. Brother needless expense: For the night, she made up her husband's bed with clean sheets and offered it to his brother. Hotels get more expensive every day. She was not afraid. Georges made his brother his excuse; he had to keep an eye on him. Pfaff withdrew for the last time to his little room; his last sleep, his dearest memory. Thérèse went on scrubbing all night.

Three days later the owner celebrated his homecoming. His first glance was for the little closet. It was empty ; where the peep-hole had been was only a desolate hole in the wall. Pfaff, the inventor, had broken up and carried off his patent. The library upstairs was intact. The communicating doors were flung open at right angles. Peter paced once or twice up and down before the writing desk. 'There are no stains on the carpets,' he said and smiled. 'If there were stains on them, I would burn them at once. I hate stains!' He pulled his manuscripts out of the drawers and piled them up on the writing desk. He read out the titles to George. *Work for years to come, my friend! And now I will show you the books.' Exclaiming, 'Here you see', and 'What do you think I have here?' with gloating glances and patient encouragement (not everyone has a dozen oriental languages all at his finger-ends), he hauled out books which only a short while before had been pawned, and explained their peculiarities to a willingly astounded brother. With uncanny speed the atmosphere changed; it rang with dates and textual references. Mere letters acquired a revolutionary significance. Dangerous misreadings were satisfactorily dealt with. Frivolous philologists were unmasked as monsters, who deserved only to be publicly pilloried in blue robes. Blue, this most ridiculous of colours, the colour of the uncritical, the credulous, the believers. A newly discovered language was proved to be one already well known, and its supposed discoverer an ass. Angry cries were heard against him. The man had dared, after a bare three years residence in the country, to come out with a work on the language there spoken! Even in the realms of scholarship the insolence of the self-made was on the increase. Scholarship should have its Inquisition, to which it could hand over heretics. There was no need, immediately to condemn them to burning at the stake. The legal independence of the priesthood in the Middle Ages had a great deal to be said for it. If only men of learning enjoyed such treatment to-day! A man of learning whose work may be of inestimable value can to-day be judged by a lay court for some small, perhaps unavoidable misdemeanour.

George began to feel uncertain of himself. Not a tenth of the books they discussed were known to him. He despised this knowledge which oppressed him. Peter's desire for work grew powerfully. It awakened in George his yearning for a place where he too was no less absolute master than his brother in the library. He called him quickly a second Leibniz, and made use of a few perfectly true statements as a pretext to escape from his power for the afternoon. He must engage some innocuous charwoman; he must arrange with the neighbouring café to send in meals regularly; he must place a deposit with the bank and arrange for automatic payments into the house on the first of every month.

Late in the evening they took leave of one another. 'Why do you not turn up the lights?' asked George. It was already dark in the library. Peter laughed proudly. 'I know my way about here even in the dark.' Since he had come home he had changed into a self-assured and almost cheerful character. 'You'll harm jour eyes,' said George and turned up the light. Peter thanked him for services rendered. With aggressive pedantry he counted them all over. The most important of all, the expulsion of his wife, he passed over in silence. 'I shall not write to you!' he concluded.

'I can well believe it. With all the work which you have planned out for yourself.'

'Not on that account. I don't write on principle. Letter writing is a form of laziness.'

'As you please. When you need me, send a telegram! In six months I'll come to see you again.'

'Why? I don't need you!' His voice sounded angry. So he felt the parting. Under his rudeness he was concealing grief.

In the train George continued the weft of his thoughts. Would it be surprising if he should care a little for me? I have helped him a great deal. Now he has everything exactly, as he wants to have it. Not a breath of wind can disturb him.

His own escape from that inferno of a library made him feel happy. Full of impatience eight hundred believers were waiting to worship him. The train went too slowly.