Three Types Of Solitude by Brian W. Aldiss I Happiness In Reverse Judge Beauregard Peach was writing to his estranged wife, Gertrude. Gertrude had her own prosperous career as a lawyer. However, following a number of serious quarrels with her husband, she had taken herself off with their adult daughter, Catherine, to the South of France. There she was visited by an Oxford man she had known in the past, a well-placed journalist. They sailed and visited restaurants and drank copiously, and she received unwelcome letters from Beauregard. Beauregard did not plead for her to return. His mind worked in a more sophisticated way. Gertrude knew that way, admired it, feared it. My dearest Gertrude, (he wrote) I regret you are not here with me in Oxford, since the case I am now hearing would interest you. It may indeed prove momentous. We are sitting at Oxford Crown Court. So unusual is the problem that the court is always full to overflowing. The ushers are having difficulties with the crowds which gather outside early in the morning. Reporters are present, not only from the Oxford Mail, as one might expect, but from several of the London papers, together with a stringer from the New York Herald Tribune. Traffic comes regularly to a standstill from Magdalen Bridge to the railway station, though 'nothing unusual about that', as a would-be wit has commented. Unfortunately, the judge's wife has taken herself away for a holiday, while her husband sits upon the question, What to do with a man, no petty criminal, indeed one of a long line of Oxford eccentrics who intend no harm, who has invented a new, if rather wooden, race or species, the reproduction rate of which threatens humanity? (Incidentally, what a conundrum to face an ageing man rendered suddenly impotent by his wife's unfaithfulness! I am sure you must laugh to think of it.) The case has been unprecedented; I consider myself fortunate to sit on it. We must think it one of the perks of living in Oxford - rather as if we had been present last century at that evolution debate presided over by Bishop Wilberforce. The world is crowded enough as it is; sufficient ecological damage has already been done to our natural habitat. Here before me is someone responsible for more, much more, of the same. The accused, Donald Maudsley, is an ordinary enough fellow as regards appearances. A little beard, rather beaky nose, fair hair tied back in a short pony tail. Of average height, or under. A melancholy man, but not unintelligent. An old Oriel man, in fact. He has a way of telling his story in the third person, which I found rather irritating at first. It becomes evident that he suffers from dissociation of personality. A transcript of his deposition runs as follows: After gaining his degree, this little man, by name Donald Maudsley, went into Earth Sciences. He attended the Brazil Conference, after which he disappeared into the wilds of South America. This is the essence of his story. This little man came to live on the edge of an undiscovered rain forest which swept right down to the South Pacific ocean. The sun shone, the winds blew, the rains came and went. Days and years passed. No one knew where this man was. He had no contact with the outside world. No boat ever visited the shore. No plane ever passed overhead. It proved a congenial place in which to undergo a crisis of identity. The little man collected discarded sunsets. He swept them up every evening when they were spent, and kept them in a big golden cage in the depths of the forest. Although he often sang to himself, generally a folk song about a hermit polar bear, he remained lonely. He rarely met with another living thing, apart from crabs on the beach. Occasionally a white bird, an albatross, flew by overhead. The sight merely increased his feeling of solitude. The solitude pierced his being and became a part of him. Early one morning, he cut down a forest tree. From a section of the tree he fashioned a ventriloquist's dummy. He called the dummy Ben. He imbued Ben with an illusion of life for the sake of company. The man and the doll held long conversations together, sitting on the trunk of the felled tree. In the main, they discussed morality, and whether there was a necessity for it. The little man had a stern morality which had served to shape his life. While up at Oriel, he had met a handsome and intelligent young woman, the daughter of foreign royalty. He had been in love with her. But when she had done her best to persuade him to make lov& to her, he had refused and shunned her company. Her response to rejection had been one of fury and vituperation. He had then studied at Black Friars to take holy orders, but once more felt unable to carry his wishes through. In his despair, he felt it was morality which had driven him apart from all human company. The dummy sometimes became passionate on the subject, believing morality to be merely a failure in relationships. For a wooden thing, the dummy was surprisingly eloquent. It ran about the beach, such was its strength of conviction. But these arguments led nowhere, like the beach. Gertrude, I am dining in hall this evening, and must change my clothes. My scout is here. I will write to you again soon, to give you an account of the conversations which took place, according to Maudsley, between him and his dummy. With love, Gertrude felt herself moved to write Beauregard a note in return. The case on which you are sitting holds curious echoes of our own past. This fellow Maudsley must ache to find love in a loveless and godless universe. Yet, according to his account, he can find it only with a thing of wood. You will recall how Hippolytus spurns the amatory approach of Phaedra, his step-mother, with priggish coldness. Both die. This must provoke your own memory, causing you to look back upon the seeds of our present difficulties. I wish to hear no more about the case. Gertrude Nevertheless, the judge wrote again to his absent wife. The case continues. We are now into the fourth day. Maudsley claims that his treatment of the dummy, Ben, as an independent entity was the cause of its increasing semblance of life. He built the dummy a small hut next to his own, on a cliff above the beach. When he cooked a crab, or a fish, he always served a portion to the dummy, who took it away to 'eat' in private. Gradually, he claims, they fell into discussing more personal topics. The dummy had no past life to talk about, although it came out strongly for a belief in abstaining from meat and growing upwards, sprouting foliage and fruit as you went. This was like a religion with it. When the man tried to contradict it on this score, the dummy claimed that bearing fruit was the moral way to live, since it was asexual. A pineapple was a symbol of morality, true morality. One day, the following conversation took place. Maudsley said, 'You cannot argue that asexual reproduction is superior to sexual reproduction. We are different kinds of people, and have to employ whatever methods God has placed at our disposal to increase our kind. To argue otherwise is childish.' 'I'm a child at heart,' said the dummy, striking its chest. 'But you don't possess a heart.' The dummy regarded him strangely. 'What do you know of my life? Unlike you, I spring from the earth itself. I repress my feelings because I was born of a tree. Trees, in my limited experience, are very dispassionate. I've been so private, I behave so woodenly. I desire to have a heart. But then -' this was said after some thought - 'don't you find that hearts make you sad?' Maudsley stared meditatively out to sea, to the ocean which possessed something of the blankness of eternity. 'Mm. Something certainly makes me sad. Something hard to define. I always considered it was just the passage of time, not my heart.' The dummy gave a scornful snigger. 'Time doesn't pass. That's just a human myth. Time's all round us, like some kind of jelly. It's just human life that passes.' 'But what I'm trying to say is that I don't really know what makes me sad.' 'You can't have much knowledge of yourself, then!' said the doll. 'Nothing makes me sad, except perhaps a splinter in my buttocks.' It took a pace or two along the shore, its hands clasped behind its back. Without looking at the man, it said, 'Nope, I'm never sad. Never have been, not even when I was a sapling. I can imagine sadness, like a kind of sawdust. It worries me when you claim you're sad. You're like a god to me, you know that? I can't bear your sadness.' The Oriel man gave a sad little laugh. 'That's why I try not to tell you about all the grief and longing in my heart.' The dummy came and sat by the man, resting its chin in its hand. 'I didn't mean to upset you. It's really none of my business.' 'Maybe it is your business.' A silence fell between them. Over the wide expanse of ocean, another sunset was gathering up its strength to happen, searching in its palette for a brighter gold. The dummy broke the silence. 'So what's this "sad" business mean, anyway? I mean, how often do you feel like doing it?' 'Sad? Oh, sadness is just happiness in reverse. We humans have to put up with it. Just being human is an awful burden to bear.' 'You keep on doing it? Is that why you feel compelled to collect all these old secondhand sunsets?' But Maudsley became annoyed at being quizzed by a mere doll. 'Go away, please! Leave me in peace. You're pathetic, and your questions are meaningless!' 'How can they be meaningless? My questions are your questions, after all.' 'By what logic do you reach that conclusion?' The dummy replied, 'I'm only your echo, when all's said and done.' The man had never considered the matter in that way. It occurred to him that perhaps all his life he had only been hearing echoes of himself, and that his morality, on which he had once prided himself, was merely a refusal to permit other people into his life. He left the doll on the beach, and went to see how the sunset was getting on. As he dragged its discarded colours to the cage in the middle of the rainforest, he saw that the other sunsets he had salved were slowly darkening with time, like old newspapers or discarded flags. When Gertrude received this account from her estranged husband, she became furious. She was convinced that he was making up the Maudsley case. She phoned and left a message on the answerphone in Beauregard's college rooms, ordering him not to communicate with her on the subject again. However, the judge sent his wife another letter, excusing himself by saying he imagined that she might care to hear about the conclusion of the case. Next morning, as Maudsley walked alone along the sand, a motorboat came roaring towards the shore and a woman jumped out on to the beach. She wore a white chino suit and had a leather belt with a bolstered gun about her waist. Although she behaved in an athletic way, he saw when she came close that she was quite old. Her neck had withered. There were liver spots dotting her arms and hands. But the smile on her lined cheeks was good and her hair was dyed blond. 'Found you at last,' she said. 'I'm from the Chile Forestry Commission. I've come to rescue you.' He was bemused, asking her shyly if she was the woman he had loved and rejected long ago in his Oriel days. She laughed. 'Life isn't as tidy as all that. Besides, I was at Wadham. Hop into the boat.' Maudsley thought about his dummy and about the store of spent sunsets. Then he hopped into the boat. There his deposition ended. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury [I said), through this man's negligence, the dummy people now number many thousands. The original dummy reproduced itself asexually, as his descendants continue to do. They have now ruined the rainforest - cut most of it down for their bodies -and that part of the world is completely darkened by guttering sunsets. A sentence of life imprisonment for crimes against ecology would seem to be appropriate. That's the end of my letter to you today, my dear Gertie. Of course I feel lonely without you, otherwise I would not waste my time inventing fables. I hope you and Catherine are having a happy spell by the sea, and will soon make up your minds to return to Oxford. Encaenia takes place in ten days; it would be so convenient if you were to accompany me - it's to be held in All Souls this year. You are the hope and inspiration of my life; I cherish your beauty and the loveliness of your soul. Come back soon! With love, Your Beau II A SINGLE-MINDED ARTIST Arthur Scunnersman bought a mansion in the hills behind Antibes. He rented a house in Santa Barbara. He bought a yacht in Nice which never left harbour. He threw lavish parties in London, Paris and New York. He gave the University of Oxford two million dollars for a new art institute to be built on the site of the Radcliffe Infirmary. His clothes were newly bought every day. Arthur Scunnersman was everywhere. His face appeared everywhere. His women friends were many. He treated each one well, but casually; he was uninterested in their inner lives. It was rumoured that on occasions he slept between a lady and her son. The breath of scandal made him even more interesting. Arthur Scunnersman was the artist of his age. He had become famous while still up at Oxford. His paintings and sketches commanded vast sums. His scenic designs for movies and ballets were immensely well paid. And his subjects were so various. There seemed nothing he could not do. The name Scunnersman was on everyone's lips. His friends noted that he would disappear for weeks at a time. He would reappear with new works, abstracts, rep-resentationals, portraits... On his return to society, he would throw a party. Everyone attended who had the privilege to be invited. Arthur himself sang at such parties. Sometimes he sang songs he had composed on the spur of the moment. Everyone was charmed, touched, amused. Records were issued of his music, with Arthur singing the songs. Everyone bought them. What a magician he was! Certainly he was diverse. It was the astonishing diversity of his artwork that most charmed the world - that glowing, fashionable, wealthy world which was so cap*^ vated by Arthur Scunnersman and all he seemed to stand for, effortless success above all. Until one month an influential art critic criticized his diversity as rootlessness. Then Arthur was gone. The world's reporters swore to track him down. They never found him. They did not think to look in a small Norwegian town twenty kilometres south of Oslo. The town was called Dykstad. The house Scunnersman bought was ordinary, and stood in an ordinary street, opposite the post office. In the Dykstad house, Scunnersman lived in solitude with a housekeeper, a woman by name Bea Bj0rklund. Bea was a country woman. Strange to relate, she had never heard the name of Scunnersman. But she knew a great deal about mackerel fishing. Bea was plain and placid and given to plumpness, and her blond hair was kept plaited and rolled about her head, so that it resembled an ornamental bread loaf. Her teeth were good, her eyes blue. She washed and cooked and cleaned for Scunnersman, and, after two months had passed, she succumbed to his entreaties, let down her long hair and entered his bed. She insisted that they made love in the missionary position. She reached orgasm quickly and calmly. They lived lives of strictly regulated mediocrity. Oxford was never mentioned. Scunnersman did nothing. Occasionally, Scunnersman would go for a walk in the neighbourhood -just as far as the old stone bridge and back. He did not take drugs or drink, as formerly, although Bea sometimes persuaded him to enjoy a glass of akavit with her in the evening, before they went to bed. Sometimes they drove to the coast in her old rusty Ford and went mackerel fishing on the deep and restless North Sea. Bea taught Scunnersman how to hold a rod. Soon, he was also able to catch mackerel, though never as many as she. He did not paint. He had no paints in Dykstad. When Christmas came, he went to the big local store up the street and bought Bea some lacy French underwear. Bea went to the big local store up the street and bought Scunnersman a wooden case of oil paints and brushes. He opened it with astonishment. 'What gave you this idea?' She showed two pretty dimples as she replied, 'I thought perhaps you might like to take up painting as a hobby. I once saw an artist on television and he looked quite a lot like you. They said he was very successful.' 'Did they now?' 'Maybe you could be successful like him, if you tried. You got good at catching mackerel, that's sure!' She laughed, showing her pretty gums and teeth. He kissed her and suggested she try on the underwear. He would watch. On the twelfth day of Christmas, he decided he would paint. One corner of the sparse living room particularly attracted him. It contained a shelf with some books propped up against a heavy stone vase, an old armchair, purple with a red cushion on it, and a little window which looked out on the small patch of land where they grew vegetables, mainly cabbages. He began slowly to paint. The brush on the canvas was strange to his touch. Bea watched the process without comment. He asked her over his shoulder what he had asked her before, 'What gave you the idea?' This time she said with a smile, 'People in the village find it bad that we live together without marriage. So I make you out to be an artist. Then they do not worry. They expect nothing else from artists.' He rose and kissed her ripe lips. She was sceptical about the painting when it was finished. 'It's nice. But it's not quite like the real thing.' 'But what would be the point of it being exactly like the real thing?' The next day, he painted the same corner of the room as previously. Bea's response was as before. He was amused. He painted the corner of the room over and over. She was never entirely satisfied. When he had produced his hundredth canvas, she kissed him tenderly, suggesting he gave up. 'You'll never be a success...' But Arthur Scunnersman was just beginning to enjoy himself. III TALKING CUBES War had followed war. Civil war had come with destructive ferocity. My adopted country was in ruins. Many hundreds of thousands of people had died. Many fine buildings had been destroyed. Many hovels had gone. Whole towns were now mere rubble. People were homeless. Many lived under sheets of plastic and boiled water on fires built of twigs. Many died in their sleep, of anger or sorrow or injury. I had returned there attached to a peace-keeping force, as an Oxfam official. No longer young, I found this country I had loved, where I once enjoyed an intense love affair, had succumbed to old age. How was it to grow young again? How were the minds of the people to be rejuvenated? How were north and south ever to live in harmony again? Enemy landmines were still hidden in the open country, waiting to blow off the legs of peasants and passers-by. Enemy machines still prowled amid the desolate streets of towns. These technological crabs remained untiring in their programmed malice, and would fire laser beams at anything that moved, whether from north or south. I volunteered to officiate in the task of detecting and dismantling them. One fine October weekend, I had to attend a multiethnic peace conference in the capital city. A fine new international hotel had been built in an area still remaining moderately intact. Something resembling what we call 'normality' - our Western version of normality - had been established there. Our version included baths and showers and meals for which one sat down at tables to eat. Meals for which one paid with plastic credit cards. On my first evening in the hotel, I met in the bar a woman who had studied with me at university. Later, we had met again in the foreign capital, before the divisions in the country erupted into civil war. Her name was Sushia Klein. A heavily built man with a shaved head accompanied her. My heart seemed to leap. I stood stock still. She was seated at a table, looking up at the man, who was standing with his broad shoulders turned to me. Behind them on the wall was a panoramic picture of storks, flying or preening, against a black background. With terrible force, the thought came to me how everything had changed; not only the circumstances of a once prosperous country, not only my circumstances, but no doubt Sushla's circumstances as well. However hard my life had been since we parted, her life had probably been at least as difficult - this precious woman once destined for a quiet scholarly life. Something in the look of her partner's thickset body told me that she had few choices, perhaps few desirable choices, in her current way of living. So I stood there, uncertain whether or not to retreat. The joy and pain of an old love was upon me. The thickset man took a chair, still with his back to me. So I could see Sushia less in profile, more in full face, as she turned her gaze on him. Sushia, I saw, had grown much older - as had I. She was from the south, whereas I was from the north. Nevertheless, we had once enjoyed an intense love affair. I say we enjoyed it; but the enforced secrecy of our love tore us apart; it was an extraordinary mixture of fear, triumph, admiration and sheer lust. We had both been proud to take a lover from the rival race; but there had been peace then, of a kind, and hope for the future, of a kind. Memories of that past time overwhelmed me as our eyes met. Sushia excused herself from the man she was with and came gladly towards me. He sat glaring at us. 'Sushia, after so many years...' 'Oh, was it not all just yesterday?' We sat in a corner of the salon and drank slow beers together. We were formal with each other, and rather at a loss for words. 'Although it's a coincidence that we meet here,' she said, 'I am better prepared for it than you, as it happens.' I looked a question at her. There were streaks of grey in her hair. She produced from a carrier bag a small transparent cube, perhaps ten centimetres to a side. She pushed the ashtray away, setting the cube on the table between us. Looking sometimes directly at me, and sometimes at the perspex cube, she said, 'I have had the afternoon off duty. I wandered through the old streets in the ancient quarter. As I went, I thought of you, and how we had once walked there together. I loved the city at that time. It seemed so full of vigour. Most of the stalls have gone now. Then, of course, it became the capital of an enemy power, the north. And you were gone. Well, times were different when we were at university, weren't they? Better, certainly.' 'Very much better, Sushia.' Her hand lay on the table. I covered it with mine. 'This cube - they were known as holocubes in their day - turned up in a junk shop just along the road and down the first alleyway to the left. I bought it because it so happens that I had found its double in a shop in a south town some while ago. So much for synchronicity... Now I have the pair. It's a miracle that both have survived amid so much destruction. Both still work. I shall take them back to Oxford with me next week.' 'You're going back to Oxford?' 'My daughter works at the Ashmolean Museum, in the print department. But you didn't know I had a daughter.' She flashed me a smile from under her eyelashes. 'Not by you, I may add.' A little dart of jealousy coursed through my being. 'The other cube is in my room, the one I bought earlier. I wish you to see them both working. We can plug them in there. I don't imply anything else by inviting you up to my room. We're too old for all that stuff. Drained of love. At least I am. Nor can I forget you were recently my enemy, or one of them. And the atrocities your people committed against mine.' 'Not my people. I don't have people any more.' 'Yes, you do. It's written all over you. England. Oxford.' 'Oh, that! No, I just have mines.' I explained what my occupation was. 'Those mines were laid by both sides. Despite the peace, they continue to kill and maim.' 'Like old grudges.' Sushia smiled sadly. She watched as the man she had been with - possibly her husband - violently stubbed out a cigarette and left the hotel through the glass doors. I accompanied her up to her room. I was jaded and glad to have someone to talk to - her above all others. A man's tropical suit hung on a cupboard door. His shaving kit lay on a side table. The bed was dishevelled. Sushia phoned room service for coffee. Decaffeinated. I stood apart from her. My desire was no longer for her, only for our past, our mutual past, when our beds had been permanently dishevelled. I did vaguely remember the holocube craze. Lovers liked them. When the cubes were switched on, a head appeared inside, looked lifelike, spoke, smiled, sometimes wept. The illusion was simply achieved: a hologrammed image of the subject was inscribed on a collapsed germanium-alloy core. It sprang to life when current was passed through it, speaking via loudspeakers concealed in its base. If another person had a similar bolocube, the two heads could be made to appear to converse together. Sushia switched on one of the cubes. The head of a woman with short raven hair, red lips, and a pert nose appeared. She did not move, remaining frozen in the block of artificial ice. The image was rather grainy. When the other cube was switched on, a male head appeared, young, perky, with broad cheek bones. From an oilskin cap on his head, blond curls protruded. He too was immobile. I recognised the portraits of ourselves when young. Dread overcame me. That had been she. That had been me. Sushia moved the cubes closer together and made the two heads, the man and the woman, face each other. The images began to speak. The young woman opened falteringly, but almost at once began an outpouring of love. '... I am unable to tell you how much I love you. At home, a brook of fresh water flows by our little house. My love for you is like that - always clear, always renewed. I have never felt before what I feel for you, not for any man. Oh my darling, I know I will always, always, love you and crave your company.' The man's image was sharper. It was easier to hear what he was saying. 'These are hard times. The situation grows worse. Our politicians must be blind or mad. This house came under rifle fire last night. I want to tell you I still love you, but it is impossible to visit you now. But I must let you know I am thinking of you.' He paused. The woman spoke again. 'You were in my arms only last night. All night long you were in my arms. How wonderful it was! You know I give myself to you entirely, without reserve, as the ground drinks the summer rain. Be mine for ever, my darling, and - Happy Birthday!' The male smiled with some tenderness. He spoke English with a concise Oxford intonation. 'The vows we took two years ago remain valid. It's just that I cannot get a permit any more to travel in the south. I'm sick of the whole situation. In fact, I have to tell you -I'm leaving our country, this country suddenly full of disputation. I'm going abroad before things get any worse...' As he mastered his feelings, the woman spoke again. 'Oh, thank you, my darling, for saying you can come tomorrow. We can stay together in my cousin's room. She is away. I will be open to you. Indeed, just to say these happy things, I feel myself already opening. Oh, my darling lover, come to my arms, to my bed. Tomorrow we'll be together again.' The man said, 'It's ghastly that things have turned out this way. More than we bargained for, eh? Still, there were always differences between us. Your ways were more -well, backward, than ours in the north. You should have come here when I invited you. Not that I blame you. We should have foreseen that civil war was brewing. So -farewell, dear Sushia!' Sushla's image said, 'Yes, I'll be here waiting for you. Not a cloud shall mar our love for one another. That I swear!... I am unable to tell you how much I love you. At home, a brook of fresh water flows by our little house. My love for you is like that - always clear, always renewed. I have never-' Sushia switched off the cubes. 'After that they just go on repeating themselves. Saying their little piece over and over again - those protestations of love.' With tears burning in my eyes, I said, uneasily, 'Of course, his holocube was recorded some months after hers. When things had become so much worse...' She buried her face in her hands. 'Oh, we know they are not really conversing, those two, those ghosts of our young selves. Their pre-programmed speeches are triggered by pauses in the other's monologues. But oh, it cuts so deep-' Dry sobs choked off her words. In guilt and sorrow, I said, 'Sushia, I remember cutting that cube. Having to part hurt me just as much as it did you...' When I put an arm about her shoulder, she gently detached it. 'I know that,' she said, looking up angrily, her face stained with tears. 'What happened to us was just in the nature of things.' I clutched one of her hands. 'The nature of things.' She gave a kind of laugh. 'How I hate the nature of things!' When I tried to kiss her lips, she turned her head away. I pleaded, then our lips met, as once they had done. Though they remained together, lip against lip, breath against breath, this time it was not as prelude but rather as finale. As I made my way downstairs - the lifts were not working - I thought, the war is over now. Like my youth. I had not stayed for the coffee to arrive. Sushia remained in her room with the old cubes, old words, old emotions.