Insouciance
MY balcony is on the east side of the hotel, and my neighbors on the right are a Frenchman, white-haired, and his white-haired wife; my neighbors on the left are two little white-haired English ladies. And we are all mortally shy of one another. When I peep out of my room in the morning and see the matronly French lady in a purple silk wrapper standing like the captain on the bridge surveying the morning, I pop in again before she can see me. And whenever I emerge during the day I am aware of the two little white-haired ladies popping back like two white rabbits, so that literally I see only the whisk of their skirt hems.
This afternoon being hot and thundery, I woke up suddenly and went out on the balcony barefoot. There I sat serenely contemplating the world, and ignoring the two bundles of feet of the two little ladies which protruded from their open doorways, upon the end of the two chaises longues. A hot, still afternoon — the lake shining rather glassy away below, the mountains rather sulky, the greenness very green, all a little silent and lurid, and two mowers mowing with scythes downhill just near. Slush! slush! sound the scythe strokes.
The two little ladies become aware of my presence. I become aware of a certain agitation in the two bundles of feet wrapped in two discreet steamer rugs and protruding on the end of two chaises longues from the pair of doorways upon t he balcony next me. One bundle of feet suddenly disappears; so does the other. Silence!
Then lo! with odd, sliding suddenness a little white-haired lady in gray silk, with round blue eyes, emerges and looks straight at me, and remarks that it is pleasant now. A little cooler, say I, with false amiability. She quite agrees, and we speak of the men mowing: how plainly one hears the long breaths of the scythes! By now, we are tête-à-tête. We speak of cherries, strawberries, and the promise of the vine crop. This somehow leads to Italy, and the Signor Mussolini. Before I know where I am, the little white-haired lady has swept me off my balcony, away from the glassy lake, the veiled mountains, the men mowing, and the cherry trees, away into the troubled ether of international politics.
I am not allowed to sit like a dandelion on my own stem. The little lady in a breath blows me abroad. And I was so pleasantly musing over the two men mowing: the young one, with long legs in bright blue cotton trousers and with bare black head, swinging so lightly downhill, and the other, in black trousers, rather stout in front, and wearing a new straw hat of the boater variety, coming rather stiffly after, crunching the end of his stroke with a certain violent effort. I was watching the curiously different motions of the two men, the young thin one in bright blue trousers, the elderly fat one in shabby black trousers that stick out in front, the different amount of effort in their mowing, the lack of grace in the elderly one, his jerky advance, the unpleasant effect of the new boater on his head — and I tried to interest the little lady.
But it meant nothing to her. The mowers, the mountains, the cherry trees, the lake, all the things that were actually there, she did n’t care about. They even seemed to scare her off the balcony. But she held her ground, and, instead of herself being scared away, she snatched me up like some ogress, and swept me off into the empty desert spaces of right and wrong, politics, Fascism, and the rest.
The worst ogress could n’t have treated me more villainously. I don’t care about right and wrong, politics, Fascism, abstract liberty, or anything else of the sort. I want to look at the mowers, and wonder why fatness, elderliness, and black trousers should inevitably wear a new straw hat of the boater variety, move in stiff jerks, shove the end of the scythe stroke with a certain violence, and win my hearty disapproval, as contrasted with young long thinness, bright blue cotton trousers, a bare black head, and a pretty, lifting movement at the end of the scythe stroke.
Why do modern people almost invariably ignore the things that are actually present to them? Why, having come out from England to find mountains, lakes, scythe mowers, and cherry trees, does the little blue-eyed lady resolutely close her blue eyes to them all, now she’s got them, and gaze away to Signor Mussolini, whom she has n’t got, and to Fascism, which is invisible anyhow? Why is n’t she content to be where she is? Why can’t she be happy with what she’s got? Why must she care?
I see now why her round blue eyes are so round, so noticeably round. It is because she cares. She is haunted by that mysterious bugbear of caring. For everything on earth that does n’t concern her she cares. She cares terribly because far-off, invisible hypothetical Italians wear black shirts, but she does n’t care a rap that one elderly mower whose stroke she can hear wears black trousers, instead of bright blue cotton ones. Now if she would descend from the balcony and climb the grassy slope and say to the fat mower, Cher monsieur, pourquoi portez-vous les pantalons noirs? Why, oh why, do you wear black trousers? then I should say, What an on-the-spot little lady! But since she only torments me with international politics, I can only remark, What a tiresome, off-thespot old woman!
They care! They simply are eaten up with caring. They are so busy caring about Fascism, or Leagues of Nations, or whether France is right, or whether marriage is threatened, that they never know where they are. They certainly never live on the spot where they are. They inhabit abstract space, the desert void of politics, principles, right and wrong, and so forth. They are doomed to be abstract. Talking to them is like trying to have a human relationship with the letter x in algebra.
There simply is a deadly breach between actual living and this abstract caring. What is actual living? It is a question mostly of direct contact. There was a direct sensuous contact between me, the lake, mountains, cherry trees, mowers, and a certain invisible but noisy chaffinch in a clipped lime tree. All this was cut off by the fatal shears of that abstract word, ‘Fascism,’ and the little old lady next door was the Atropos who cut the thread of my actual life this afternoon.
She beheaded me, and flung my head into abstract space. Then we are supposed to love our neighbors!
When it comes to living, we live through our instincts and our intuitions. Instinct makes me run from little overearnest ladies, instinct makes me sniff the lime blossom and reach for the darkest cherry. But it is intuition which makes me feel the uncanny glassiness of the lake this afternoon, the sulkiness of the mountains,
the vividness of near green in thunder sun, the young man in bright blue trousers lightly tossing the grass from the scythe, the elderly man in a boater stiffly shoving his scythe strokes, both of them sweating in the silence of the intense light.