Waste Land to a Scream: A Gay Science

Novel 016

16. “Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.” Nietzsche

Io vidi già cavalier muover campo,

e cominciare stormo e far lor mostra,

e talvolta partir per loro scampo;

(I have seen the cavalry break camp,

prepare for an attack, make their must

and at times fall back to save themselves.)

Dante, Inferno XXII 1-3

London, 1917, Autumn. A pub.

On the outside, the leaves were tumbling from the top to the bottom in a graceful cascade ordained by some Deity which shall remain nameless, for now. On the inside, in the catacombs of Maple logs stood two men looking out at the bustling streets. It was confusion in the extremis. Their eyes followed one piece and then another because outside there was war and it seemed to go rather badly for the people on the street.

The thin unbearded man was looking at the women with an unearthly detachment that bordered on hypnosis. He drank a bit of ale and then went back to looking rather intently. The faintly bearded man watched both on the inside and on the outside, partaking of the swirling eyes of his companion, and occasionally managed to make a smirk at his companion’s circumlocutions. Both were young and it showed by the tension that gripped both.

Finally, the whisp-bearded man said: “One would think that you had already been spoken for.”

Resting his class on the wooden table, the younger man finally uttered, in a half-forgotten phrase, "I know Dante forwards and back from Inferno to Paradiso, and yet I cannot find a paragraph which adequately sums up my feelings towards the female of the sex, it is a mystery within an enigma. From Midway into the journey to the outward stars I do not know what to make of my beloved, if she is indeed that."

"You speak from a distant time perhaps another war will enlighten your visage." At this point, the scrubbed man took his own drink but was careless as to swallowing it down. It was clear that he was careless as to whether he slopped his drink, it seemed as if it was merely an accouterment to his watching. then he began again: "It seems that you are both annoyed and bewitched."

"There is the old line that I cannot live without the company of females but grow annoyed almost with the first perplexion. which also means that I long to be married and at the same time grow impatient with her company."

"It seems that like the French you seem to be either on the inside looking out or on the inside looking in."

The young man quoted: "The stars of last night tonight stir ripples in the wind."

The scraggly bearded man shook his head. "Is that yours?"

"Hardly, it is my fractious rendition of a poem from the French though badly misaligned and tortured in its aspect."

The bearded man looked out again at the striding of the mob, most of them were perplexed and almost diluted because they hoped for victory but tarried in defeat. But on the inside, there was a different pace because the war was out there not in here and another heartbeat was eluding the unbearded man in his inner thoughts. The clashing of glasses and the role of plates clashed endlessly on the outside what was happening on the inside.

They then paid their bill and departed with no words to summarize their feelings or expressions. A pair of doilies were all that was left.