The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl (4 page)

‘You want to destroy everything that’s beautiful. You
destroyed
the most beautiful of all my buildings.’

‘The beauty of your buildings is nothing’, Strephon said, ‘in comparison with the beauty of flame, which is its own light, leaping out of smoke, which is its own dark. And the beauty of women is nothing in comparison with the beauty of men, now that we have discovered that men, too, can bleed.’

The group believed him.

Much later, Strephon told Corinna to build him a
hunting-lodge
. When she refused, Strephon ordered the group to cut off her fruit supply. Luckily, a few old and bold friends disobeyed.

Corinna called on Amaryllis, whom it was not difficult to
find alone because Strephon nowadays confined her to the house and preferably the kitchen, in which unglamorous setting she would be least attractive to other men. Amaryllis told Corinna the whereabouts of the blue pineapple tree. But she must have previously disclosed it to Strephon. When Corinna arrived there, hoping for a good meal, she found that the entire crop was under requisition for the ordnance factories. Indeed, a blue pineapple in its natural state has not been seen on earth since.

Corinna built herself a garret on top of one of the slums that now filled the garden. There she drew up plans for buildings, but everyone she shewed them to said her work was extravagant and uncommercial. She hoped taste would soon change.

The slums became teeming. Strephon declared war in order to wipe out the over-population problem. When the war was finished he declared that the birth-rate must be increased in order to replace the dead soldiers. Women, he said, must not waste time on any activity except breeding. So he made it illegal for a woman to be an artist or an intellectual.

Hidden in her garret, Corinna went on designing buildings illegally. But the war had so impoverished her neighbours in the slum that they no longer had scraps to give her. In the
delirium
that came of an empty belly, she conceived the most
extravagant
of her designs, a huge golden pleasure-dome decorated with inverted blue pineapples. ‘If only I could build it,’ she said aloud (not as a result of her delirium but because, living alone, she had long before formed the habit of addressing
herself
aloud), ‘I think it might last for ever. Strange,’ she added, catching herself up: ‘I never used to bother about that.’

She reckoned that it could not be long before society saw through Strephon’s sophistries, in which case the people would depose him. It seemed to her that if she could only hold out and, despite hunger, finish her design, someone would be taken with its fantasy and handsomeness; she would receive a
commission
, would eat again and would build the pleasure-dome. However, she was delirious and she miscalculated. She fell dead of starvation across her drawing-board, on which the design was still uncompleted, and Strephon, the only one of the group to be truly immortal, is in power to this day.

Trade Follows the Flag

‘I’m afraid we shall have to make a small charge,’ said the cavalry commander.

Democracy

Once upon a time, a state achieved perfect democracy.

In the idiom of this state, linguists noticed, the word ‘
reasonable
’ quickly became detached from the verb ‘to reason’. ‘Reasonable’ was used simply as an adjective of praise. It was applied chiefly to prices but it occasionally occurred in political discussion, where it was applied to compromises.

One day a public opinion poll disclosed that 33⅓% of the population believed that 2 + 2 = 5. Some people argued that this demonstrated a need to reform the education system. However, a further opinion poll discovered that there were only a few people who argued to that effect, so they were generally
recognised
as unreasonable eccentrics. Parliament took the reasonable course. It decreed that from thenceforth every computer, ready reckoner and text book should work on the principle that 2 + 2 = 4⅓.

Variations on Themes of Elgar and Brahms

intoned the solo ’cello in the first movement of Elgar’s Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (opus 85).

‘An excellent composer,’ said Brahms (on Mount Parnassus), ‘even though he has the mentality of the housekeeper or
domestic
bursar at a minor public school.’

‘How can you say such things!’ Polyhymnia protested.

‘I suppose that as Muse of Sacred Song you’re bound to muddle enjoyment, which art gives people, with reverence, which people are said to owe royalty or God. It’s attitudes like yours that put people off art.’

‘You’re not always as beastly as this,’ Polyhymnia said. ‘You yourself have written some very edifying Sacred Songs. Your Four Serious Songs—’

‘Clara Schumann was dying when I composed them, and I
wasn’t too well myself. I grant that my Four Serious Songs are beautiful, but they are no more beautiful than my profane music.’

‘It’s horrible how you set yourself up, and at the expense of a composer like Sir Edward Elgar.’

‘I said Elgar is an excellent—’

‘But you also said—’

‘I suppose it’s because you’re not an artist yourself that you assume that everything amusing must be abusive, and
everything
analytical must be destructive. If you’d ever created one, you’d realise that works of art are less brittle than you think.’

‘You’re not going to pretend it’s analytical criticism to say Elgar has the mentality of a—’

‘A domestic bursar, I was going to particularise,’ Brahms said, ‘cycling in from his minor public school to the nearby village and repeating to himself, as he pedals, in case he should forget, what it is he has to order from the grocer’s.’

‘Sheer vulgar and pointless abuse.’

‘On the contrary. Listen to his ’cello concerto again, and this time more carefully.’

The ’cello began to intone again, and this time its notes seemed to enunciate words.

Fif-teen pounds of cas-ter su-gar, fif-teen pounds of

cas-ter su-gar, fif-teen pounds of cas-ter su-gar

‘Now you’ve spoilt it for me for ever!’ Polyhymnia
complained
.

‘If it’s so easily spoilt, you didn’t truly appreciate it in the first place.’

‘Anyway, it’s merest accident. Anyone’s melodies might
happen
to fit vulgar words. I daresay yours aren’t immune.’

‘I never claimed they were. My utmost claim would be that some of mine suggest institutions of
higher
education.’

‘I suppose you’re referring to your Academic Festival
Overture
(opus 80), where you used the tunes of a lot of rowdy student songs, presumably because you couldn’t invent tunes of your own.’

‘If the tunes had been my own, there would have been no Academic Festival point. Another of your troubles is lack of humour.’

‘I suppose you’re going to maintain that because you used tunes which already possess words your overture is immune to the sort of treatment you gave poor Elgar’s concerto.’

‘On the contrary. Believing as I do that all the arts are essentially one and indivisible, I composed my overture as a tribute to literature. You remember the student song I introduce on the bassoons?’

‘Yes. Quite a rousing tune – no thanks to you, of course.’

‘Quite so. Well, listen to it again.’

This time the notes formed words.

Oh, Lo-gan Pear-sall Smith, Oh Lo-gan Pear-sall

Smith, Oh Lo-gan Pear-sall Smith, hul-lo

‘So he’s your idea of literature,’ Polyhymnia said.

‘Snootily though it’s expressed, I admit there’s something in your objection. That’s why, further on in the work, I bring the tune back and belt it out on the horns (not to mention the oboes, clarinets and, indeed, trombones), this time in tribute to a much finer writer.’