The Dark Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF Page B

away from Boyd.”
    Graecen registered a rather fussy interest. Boyd was a friend of his. He was wondering how much he should tell Hogarth. “Boyd wants me to do the preface for his book on psychoanalysis and art. He takes both seriously.” Hogarth sounded gloomy and irritable. “The book is farcical. There is an analysis of Poe’s Raven which would make your hair stand on end. You know the Freudian tie-up between the symbol of the bird and the penis?” Graecen did not, but he blinked and nodded rapidly, moistening his lips with his tongue. “Well, the Raven with its mournful ‘Nevermore’ is a terrible confession of Poe’s impotence.” Graecen said “Dear me” twice, with sympathy. He knew nothing about psycho-analysis, but he could never bring himself to be disrespectful about anything. Hogarth lit up with seven gargantuan puffs. “He has traced a strong interest in masturbation running through Dickens; the choice of names like Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller are only thinly disguised symbols … Dicky, what’s the matter?”
    Graecen felt suddenly unhappy again; he had remembered the sentence. “I’ve resigned from the Antiquities,” he said in a small voice. He had a desire to confide a number of things in Hogarth—among them even old Conklin’s article; but they had all got jammed together at the entrance of his mind and he did not know which he could get out first. His face looked round and ingenuous. His lower lip trembled ever so slightly.
    â€œYou’re run down,” said Hogarth.
    Graecen nodded and handed the paper across the table to his friend, pointing with his finger to the offensive passage in the review; yet before Hogarth had time to read it he added, rather out of breath, “I’m supposed to have only a few months to live.” It sounded absurd. They looked at each other for a second and both laughed, Hogarth gruffly and Graecen in a high boyish register.
    â€œOf all people, me,” he said, suddenly feeling almost jubilant.
    â€œI don’t believe it.”
    â€œOh yes, it’s true,” said Graecen eagerly. He was all of a sudden anxious that the trophy should not be taken from him by mere scepticism.
    â€œOf all people—me. Dicky Graecen.” He had the rather irritating habit of objectivising himself in the third person, as children do. “So what does old Dicky Graecen do?” was a phrase that appeared unfailingly in all his stories of his own doings. He saw himself, as he said it, childishly far-off and remote, as a sort of wayward young man. Young Dicky Graecen. In this case it was young Dicky Graecen who was going to do the dying—he himself, his alter self, was going to live forever; well, if not forever, for at least another fifteen years. By association this brought him back to Syrinx .
    â€œMy new book is out,” he said with a certain pleasant coyness, flushing again. Hogarth looked at him steadily, his eyes still laughing. Whatever happened to Dicky was funny—even the idea of him dogged by a premature death-sentence was funny. One’s compassion was stirred for him through one’s humour. He was holding up the book of poems for inspection.
    Graecen never sent Hogarth his books because the latter professed no interest in poetry or the fine arts. Hogarth however always sent him his own books, however ponderous and smudgy they were. On the flyleaf he always wrote “Dicky—push this round among the nobs. Good for trade.”
    Graecen felt faintly irritated by this suggestion, that he was, at best, a social tout for Hogarth’s clinical work; but the long friendship and affection, dating back to their university days, always won the upper hand, and he swallowed his chagrin.
    â€œThere is no reason”, said Hogarth turning over the book in his paws, “why you shouldn’t die. All of us will have to. And I’m not sure I