Chapter 7 Fetish

IN THE MORNING Gerald woke late. He had slept heavily. Pussum was still asleep, sleeping childishly and pathetically. There was something small and curled up and defenceless about her, that roused an unsatisfied flame of passion in the young man's blood, a devouring avid pity. He looked at her again. But it would be too cruel to wake her. He subdued himself, and went away.

Hearing voices coming from the sitting-room, Halliday talking to Libidnikov, he went to the door and glanced in. He had on a silk wrap of a beautiful bluish colour, with an amethyst hem.

To his surprise he saw the two young men by the fire, stark naked. Halliday looked up, rather pleased.

`Good-morning,' he said. `Oh -- did you want towels?' And stark naked he went out into the hall, striding a strange, white figure between the unliving furniture. He came back with the towels, and took his former position, crouching seated before the fire on the fender.

`Don't you love to feel the fire on your skin?' he said.

`It is rather pleasant,' said Gerald.

`How perfectly splendid it must be to be in a climate where one could do without clothing altogether,' said Halliday.

`Yes,' said Gerald, `if there weren't so many things that sting and bite.'

`That's a disadvantage,' murmured Maxim.

Gerald looked at him, and with a slight revulsion saw the human animal, golden skinned and bare, somehow humiliating. Halliday was different. He had a rather heavy, slack, broken beauty, white and firm. He was like a Christ in a Pieta. The animal was not there at all, only the heavy, broken beauty. And Gerald realised how Halliday's eyes were beautiful too, so blue and warm and confused, broken also in their expression. The fireglow fell on his heavy, rather bowed shoulders, he sat slackly crouched on the fender, his face was uplifted, weak, perhaps slightly disintegrate, and yet with a moving beauty of its own.

`Of course,' said Maxim, `you've been in hot countries where the people go about naked.'

`Oh really!' exclaimed Halliday. `Where?'

`South America -- Amazon,' said Gerald.

`Oh but how perfectly splendid! It's one of the things I want most to do -- to live from day to day without ever putting on any sort of clothing whatever. If I could do that, I should feel I had lived.'

`But why?' said Gerald. `I can't see that it makes so much difference.'

`Oh, I think it would be perfectly splendid. I'm sure life would be entirely another thing -- entirely different, and perfectly wonderful.'

`But why?' asked Gerald. `Why should it?'

`Oh -- one would feel things instead of merely looking at them. I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual -- we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.'

`Yes, that is true, that is true,' said the Russian.

Gerald glanced at him, and saw him, his suave, golden coloured body with the black hair growing fine and freely, like tendrils, and his limbs like smooth plantstems. He was so healthy and well-made, why did he make one ashamed, why did one feel repelled? Why should Gerald even dislike it, why did it seem to him to detract from his own dignity. Was that all a human being amounted to? So uninspired! thought Gerald.

Birkin suddenly appeared in the doorway, in white pyjamas and wet hair, and a towel over his arm. He was aloof and white, and somehow evanescent.

`There's the bath-room now, if you want it,' he said generally, and was going away again, when Gerald called:

`I say, Rupert!'

`What?' The single white figure appeared again, a presence in the room.

`What do you think of that figure there? I want to know,' Gerald asked.

Birkin, white and strangely ghostly, went over to the carved figure of the negro woman in labour. Her nude, protuberant body crouched in a strange, clutching posture, her hands gripping the ends of the band, above her breast.

`It is art,' said Birkin.

`Very beautiful, it's very beautiful,' said the Russian.

They all drew near to look. Gerald looked at the group of men, the Russian golden and like a water-plant, Halliday tall and heavily, brokenly beautiful, Birkin very white and indefinite, not to be assigned, as he looked closely at the carven woman. Strangely elated, Gerald also lifted his eyes to the face of the wooden figure. And his heart contracted.

He saw vividly with his spirit the grey, forward-stretching face of the negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in utter physical stress. It was a terrible face, void, peaked, abstracted almost into meaninglessness by the weight of sensation beneath. He saw the Pussum in it. As in a dream, he knew her.

`Why is it art?' Gerald asked, shocked, resentful.

`It conveys a complete truth,' said Birkin. `It contains the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.'

`But you can't call it high art,' said Gerald.

`High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of development in a straight line, behind that carving; it is an awful pitch of culture, of a definite sort.'

`What culture?' Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the sheer African thing.

`Pure culture in sensation, culture in the physical consciousness, really ultimate physical consciousness, mindless, utterly sensual. It is so sensual as to be final, supreme.'

But Gerald resented it. He wanted to keep certain illusions, certain ideas like clothing.

`You like the wrong things, Rupert,' he said, `things against yourself.'

`Oh, I know, this isn't everything,' Birkin replied, moving away.

When Gerald went back to his room from the bath, he also carried his clothes. He was so conventional at home, that when he was really away, and on the loose, as now, he enjoyed nothing so much as full outrageousness. So he strode with his blue silk wrap over his arm and felt defiant.

The Pussum lay in her bed, motionless, her round, dark eyes like black, unhappy pools. He could only see the black, bottomless pools of her eyes. Perhaps she suffered. The sensation of her inchoate suffering roused the old sharp flame in him, a mordant pity, a passion almost of cruelty.

`You are awake now,' he said to her.

`What time is it?' came her muted voice.

She seemed to flow back, almost like liquid, from his approach, to sink helplessly away from him. Her inchoate look of a violated slave, whose fulfilment lies in her further and further violation, made his nerves quiver with acutely desirable sensation. After all, his was the only will, she was the passive substance of his will. He tingled with the subtle, biting sensation. And then he knew, he must go away from her, there must be pure separation between them.

It was a quiet and ordinary breakfast, the four men all looking very clean and bathed. Gerald and the Russian were both correct and comme il faut in appearance and manner, Birkin was gaunt and sick, and looked a failure in his attempt to be a properly dressed man, like Gerald and Maxim. Halliday wore tweeds and a green flannel shirt, and a rag of a tie, which was just right for him. The Hindu brought in a great deal of soft toast, and looked exactly the same as he had looked the night before, statically the same.

At the end of the breakfast the Pussum appeared, in a purple silk wrap with a shimmering sash. She had recovered herself somewhat, but was mute and lifeless still. It was a torment to her when anybody spoke to her. Her face was like a small, fine mask, sinister too, masked with unwilling suffering. It was almost midday. Gerald rose and went away to his business, glad to get out. But he had not finished. He was coming back again at evening, they were all dining together, and he had booked seats for the party, excepting Birkin, at a music-hall.

At night they came back to the flat very late again, again flushed with drink. Again the man-servant -- who invariably disappeared between the hours of ten and twelve at night -- came in silently and inscrutably with tea, bending in a slow, strange, leopard-like fashion to put the tray softly on the table. His face was immutable, aristocratic-looking, tinged slightly with grey under the skin; he was young and good-looking. But Birkin felt a slight sickness, looking at him, and feeling the slight greyness as an ash or a corruption, in the aristocratic inscrutability of expression a nauseating, bestial stupidity.

Again they talked cordially and rousedly together. But already a certain friability was coming over the party, Birkin was mad with irritation, Halliday was turning in an insane hatred against Gerald, the Pussum was becoming hard and cold, like a flint knife, and Halliday was laying himself out to her. And her intention, ultimately, was to capture Halliday, to have complete power over him.

In the morning they all stalked and lounged about again. But Gerald could feel a strange hostility to himself, in the air. It roused his obstinacy, and he stood up against it. He hung on for two more days. The result was a nasty and insane scene with Halliday on the fourth evening. Halliday turned with absurd animosity upon Gerald, in the cafe. There was a row. Gerald was on the point of knocking-in Halliday's face; when he was filled with sudden disgust and indifference, and he went away, leaving Halliday in a foolish state of gloating triumph, the Pussum hard and established, and Maxim standing clear. Birkin was absent, he had gone out of town again.

Gerald was piqued because he had left without giving the Pussum money. It was true, she did not care whether he gave her money or not, and he knew it. But she would have been glad of ten pounds, and he would have been very glad to give them to her. Now he felt in a false position. He went away chewing his lips to get at the ends of his short clipped moustache. He knew the Pussum was merely glad to be rid of him. She had got her Halliday whom she wanted. She wanted him completely in her power. Then she would marry him. She wanted to marry him. She had set her will on marrying Halliday. She never wanted to hear of Gerald again; unless, perhaps, she were in difficulty; because after all, Gerald was what she called a man, and these others, Halliday, Libidnikov, Birkin, the whole Bohemian set, they were only half men. But it was half men she could deal with. She felt sure of herself with them. The real men, like Gerald, put her in her place too much.

Still, she respected Gerald, she really respected him. She had managed to get his address, so that she could appeal to him in time of distress. She knew he wanted to give her money. She would perhaps write to him on that inevitable rainy day.

 

早晨，杰拉德醒得很晚，这一夜睡得很实。米纳蒂仍然在熟睡，象孩子一样可怜。她娇小，蜷缩着，毫无戒备，这一点让血性十足的小伙子很不满足，他感到自己贪心不足，很遗憾。他又看看她，如果叫醒她可是太残酷了。他克制住自己，走了出去。

杰拉德听到起居室里传来海里戴同里比德尼科夫的说话声，就走到门口朝里扫了一眼。他身穿一件漂亮的蓝绸衣，衣服镶着紫水晶边。

令他吃惊的是，他看到这两个年轻小伙子浑身一丝不挂地躺在壁炉边上。海里戴抬起眼皮朝上看看，很得意。

“早上好，”他说，“哦，你要毛巾吗？”说着他赤着身子走到前厅去，那奇特的白色身躯在静态的家具中间穿行着。他取回毛巾，又回到原来的位置上，挨着火蜷坐下。

“你不喜欢让火舌舐一舐你的皮肤吗？”他问。

“那挺舒服吧？”杰拉德说。

“在不用穿衣服的气候下生活该是多么美妙呀。”海里戴说。

“是啊。”杰拉德说，“还要没有那么多东西叮你、咬你才行。”

“这点可是不利因素。”马克西姆喃言道。

杰拉德看着这个金黄皮肤裸体的人间动物，心里有点厌恶，感到耻辱。海里戴则不同。他身上有那么一种庄重、懒洋洋、很散淡的美，皮肤黝黑，骨架很结实，很象躺在圣母玛丽亚怀抱中的基督。杰拉德还注意到海里戴的眼睛很漂亮，那眼睛是棕黄色的，透着温暖、迷茫的光，眼神中显出些病态。火光照在他沉重、圆滚滚的肩膀上，他蜷坐着靠在壁炉前的栅栏上，一副倦怠的神态。他的脸抬起来，脸色有些苍白，神情潦倒，但仍然很漂亮动人。

“可是，”马克西姆说，“你去过人们赤身裸体的热带国家呀。”

“真的吗！”海里戴感叹道。“哪儿？”

“南非和亚马逊河流域。”杰拉德说。

“啊，太妙了！我最想做的事情之一就是这件事——整天不穿任何衣服逛来逛去。如果我能做到这一点，我才会感到我是在活着。”

“那是为什么呢？”杰拉德问，“我不认为这有什么两样。”

“哦，我觉得那太美了。我敢肯定，那样生活就会是另一种样子，全然不同于我们的生活，百分之百地美妙。”

“可这是为什么呢？”杰拉德问，“为什么？”

“啊，那样，人就是在感知事物，而不仅仅是观察。我更愿意感触我周围的空气流动，感触我周围的事物，而不是仅仅观看。我敢说，生活之所以全走了样儿，那是因为我们把它太视觉化了——我们既不能听、也不能感受、不能理解，我们就会看。我敢说，这么做整个儿地错了。”

“对，说的是，说的是。”俄国人说。

杰拉德瞟了一眼他柔和、金黄的肉体，他的四肢象光洁的树干，黑头发长得很好看，自由地舒展着象植物的卷须一样。他很健康，身材也很不错，可他为什么让人感到耻辱、令人生厌呢？为什么杰拉德会厌恶这裸体，为什么这裸体似乎是有损于他的尊严呢？难道人就是这样的吗？太没有灵气了！

杰拉德想。

伯金身穿白色睡衣突然出现在门道里，他湿着头发，胳膊上搭着一条毛巾。他淡漠、苍白，有点纤弱。

“浴室空了，要洗就来吧。”他对大家说，说完刚要走就被杰拉德叫住了：

“听我说，卢伯特！”

“什么？”那白色的人影又出现了，象一个幽灵。

“你看那雕塑怎么样？我想知道你的看法。”杰拉德说。

伯金面色苍白，幽灵般地走到那尊野女人生育的雕像前。

她大腹便便的裸体蜷缩着，双手抓着乳房上方的带子。

“这是件艺术品。”伯金说。

“太漂亮了，太漂亮了。”俄国人说。

大家都凑过来看。杰拉德看着这几个男儿：俄国人躯体金黄，象一株水生植物；海里戴颀长、庄重、散淡、很漂亮；伯金非常苍白、朦胧，细细地看着那女人的塑像，那形象难以形容。杰拉德感到一阵异样的激动，也去看那木雕了，看着看着他的心都缩紧了。

他用自己的心看着这野蛮女人那向前伸出的铁青色的脸，脸上肌肉紧绷着，全身都在用力。这是一张可怕的脸，紧皱着，由于下身的痛感太强烈，这张脸已经缩得看不出原样。他在这张脸上看出了米纳蒂的影子，似乎他是在梦中认识了她。

“为什么说这是艺术品？”杰拉德感到惊诧，反感地问。

“它表达了一条十足的真理，”伯金说，“它包容了那种条件下的全部真实，不管你作何感想。”

“可你无论如何不能称它是高级艺术。”杰拉德说。

“高级！在这座雕刻之前，艺术已直线发展了几百个世纪了，这雕刻标志着某一特定文化的惊人高度。”

“什么文化？”杰拉德反问，他厌恶纯粹野性的东西。

“纯感觉的文化，肉体意识的文化，真正最高的肉体意识，毫无精神作用，十足的肉感。太肉感了，因此是艺术的终极，最高的艺术。”

可是杰拉德对此表示反感。他试图保留某种幻象，即诸如衣服之类的观念。

“你喜欢反常的东西，卢伯特，”他说，“那是些与你作对的东西。”

“哦，我知道，这并不是一切。”伯金说着走开了。

当杰拉德洗完澡回他的房间时，他也没穿衣服，而是搭在手臂上。他在家时很守规矩，可真离开家，过现在这种放荡的生活，他就享受这种令人难以容忍的生活方式了，彻底放荡。于是，他手臂上搭着绿绸衣，挑战般地走回屋去。

米纳蒂一动也不动地躺在床上，圆睁的蓝眼睛就象一泓宁静、不幸的清水。他只能看到她眼睛里那一潭无底的死水。可能她很痛苦。她那莫名其妙的苦楚燃起了他心中原有的情火，一种撕心裂肺的怜悯和近乎于残酷的激情。

“醒了？”他说。

“几点了？”她平静地问。

她似乎象液体一样从他这里向四面流动，孤立无援地离开他，下沉着。她纯静的表情看上去象一个受到伤害的奴隶，她只有一而再再而三地受到伤害才会得到满足，这副样子令他的神经发抖，激起他强烈的欲望。归根结底，他的意志对她来说是唯一的意志，而她则是他意志的附庸。他被这种微妙的感觉撕咬着。然后他知道他必须离开她，他们两人必须分开。

这顿早餐吃得很简单，气氛很安宁。四个男人洗过澡，看上去都很清爽。杰拉德和俄国人的外表与风度都很合时宜。伯金则憔悴、一脸病容，他想象杰拉德和马克西姆一样穿得合时宜些，可他那身打扮证明他做不到这一点。海里戴穿着粗毛花呢外衣和法兰绒内衣，扎一条旧领带，这条领带配他倒合适。那阿拉伯人端来许多烤面包，他看上去跟昨天晚上一模一样。

吃完早餐以后，米纳蒂出现了，她穿着一件绸外衣，系着一条闪闪发光的腰带。她有点恢复过来了，但仍然郁郁寡欢。这时谁跟她讲话对她都是一种折磨。她的脸象一只小巧的面罩，有点可怕，脸上笼罩着不堪忍受的痛苦。快中午了。杰拉德站起身出去办他的事了，走的时候心里很惬意。但他并不就此罢休，他还会再回来，晚上他们要共进晚餐，他为这些人在音乐厅订了座位，不过伯金不参加。

晚上大家又很晚才回来，喝得满脸通红。那阿拉伯人晚上十点到十二点时不在，现在默默、不可思议地端着茶点进来了，低弯着腰，象豹子那样，进来后把茶点托盘轻轻地摆在桌子上。他的面容没有变，仍然象贵族，皮肤有点发灰，他还年轻，很漂亮。但是伯金一看到他就感到有点厌恶，感到他脸上的灰色象灰粉或腐败后的颜色，在他那贵族气的表情中透着某种令人作呕的兽性愚蠢。

大家又热情地聊起来，谈得很热闹。但已经出现了要散伙的气氛。伯金有些气得发疯；海里戴已经对杰拉德恨之入骨；米纳蒂变得又冷漠又残酷，象一把锋利的刀；海里戴对她可算是竭力逢迎。而她的目的就是最终俘获海里戴，彻底控制他。

早晨大家又优哉游哉起来，但杰拉德可以感觉出大家对他怀有某种奇怪的敌意。这让他变得倔犟起来，他要与之对抗。他又多呆了两天，结果是在第四个晚上同海里戴发生了一场疯狂的恶战。在咖啡馆里，海里戴很荒谬地对杰拉德表示敌意，于是他们争吵起来。有一阵，杰拉德差一点就要打海里戴的嘴巴，不过他突然感到一阵厌恶和无聊，拂袖而去，让海里戴白拣了个胜利去大吹大擂。米纳蒂无动于衷，她的立场很坚定，马克西姆毫不介入。那天伯金不在，他又到城外去了。

杰拉德有点不自在，因为他走时没给米纳蒂留下点钱，不过他真地不知道她是否缺钱。但如果给她十镑她或许会高兴的，况且他会很高兴给她钱的。现在他感到自己做错了事。他一边走一边伸出舌尖舐着唇上剪得短短的胡茬。他知道米纳蒂正巴不得甩掉他呢，她又俘获了她的海里戴。她想海里戴，要彻底控制他，然后会同他结婚。她早就想跟他结婚了，她打定主意要跟海里戴结婚。她不想再听到杰拉德的音讯，但有困难时会求救于他，因为不管怎么说杰拉德是她称之为男子汉的人，另外那一帮人，诸如海里戴，里比德尼科夫还有伯金这些放荡的文人和艺术家不过是半条汉子。可她能对付的就恰恰是这些半条汉子们。跟他们到了一起她就有信心。象杰拉德这样真正的男子汉太让她不敢越雷池了。

她仍然尊重杰拉德，这是真的。她想办法得到了他的地址，这样她在失意时就可求助于他。她知道他想送钱给她，或许在哪个淫雨天她会写信给他的。