Читать книгу The Open Gates of Mysticism - Aleister Crowley - Страница 12

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The lunch at the Restaurant de la Cascade was like a lunch in a dream. We seemed to be aware of what we were eating without actually tasting it. As I think I said before, it's the anzesthesia of cocaine that determines the phenomena.

When I make a remark like that, I understand that it's the dead and gone medical student popping up.

But never you mind that. The point is that when you have the right amount of snow in you, you can't feel anything in the ordinary sense of the word. You appreciate it in a sort of impersonal way. There's a pain, but the pain doesn't hurt. You enjoy the fact of the pain as you enjoy reading about all sorts of terrible things in history at school.

But the trouble about cocaine is this ; that it's almost impossible to take it in moderation as almost any one, except an American, can take whisky. Every dose makes you better and better. It destroys one's power of calculation.

We had already discovered the fact when we found that the supply we had got from Gretel, with the idea that it would last almost indefinitely, was running very short, when the dressing-gown came to solve the problem.

We had only been a few days on the stunt, and what we had got from three or four sniffs, to begin with, meant almost perpetual stoking to carry on. However, that didn't matter, because we had an ample supply. There must have been a couple of kilograms of either C. or H. in that kimono. And when you think that an eighth of a gain is rather a big dose of H., you can easily calculate what a wonderful time you can have on a pound.

You remember how it goes-twenty grains one penny-weight, three penny-weights one scruple-I forget how many scruples one drachm, eight drachms one ounce, twelve ounces one pound.

I've got it all wrong. I could never understand English weights and measures. I have never met any one who could. But the point is you could go on a long time on one-eighth of a grain if you have a pound of the stuff.

Well, this will put it all right for you. Fifteen grains is one gramme, and a thousand grammes is a kilogramme, and a kilogramme is two point two pounds. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether it's a sixteen-ounce pound or a twelve-ounce pound. But I don't see what it matters anyway, if you've got a pound of snow or H. you can go on for a long while, but apparently it's rather awkward orchestrating them.

Quain says that people accustomed to opium and its derivatives can take an enormous amount of cocaine without any bother. In the ordinary way, half a grain of cocaine can cause death, but we were taking the stuff with absolute carelessness.

One doesn't think of measuring it as one would if one took it by hypodermic. One just takes a dose when one feels one needs it. After all, that's the rule of nature. Eat when you're hungry. Nothing is worse for the health than settling down to a fixed ration of so many meals a day.

The grand old British principle of three meat meals has caused the supply of uric acid to exceed the demand in a most reprehensible manner.

Physiology and economics, and, I should think, even geology, combine to protest.

Now we were living an absolutely wholesome life. We took a sniff of cocaine whenever the pace slackened up, and one of heroin when the cocaine showed any signs of taking the bit in its teeth.

What one needs is sound common sense to take reasonable measures according to the physiological indications. One needs elasticity. It's simply spiritual socialism to tie oneself down to fixed doses whether one needs them or not. Nature is the best guide. We had got on to the game.

Our misadventure at the Petit Savoyard had taught us wisdom. We were getting stronger on the wing every hour.

That chap Coud is a piker, as they say in America. "Every day, in every way, I get better and better," indeed ? The man must simply have been carried away by the rhyme. Why wait for a day ? We had got to the stage where every minute counted.

As the Scotchman said to his son, half-way through the ten-mile walk to kirk, when the boy said, " It's a braw day the day." " Is this a day to be ta'king o' days ?

Thinking of days makes you think of years, and thinking of years makes you think of death, which is ridiculous.

Lou and I were living minute by minute, second by second. A tick of the clock marked for us an interval of eternity.

We were the heirs of eternal life. We had nothing to do with death. That was a pretty wise bird who said, "To-morrow never comes."

We were out of time and space. We were living according to the instruction of our Saviour Take no thought for the morrow."

A great restlessness gripped us. Paris was perfectly impossible. We had to get to some place where time doesn't count.

The alternation of day and night doesn't matter so much ; but it's absolutely intolerable to be mixed up with people who are working by the clock.

We were living in the world of the Arabian Nights; limitations were abhorrent, Paris was always reminding us of the Pigmies, who lived, if you call it living, in a system of order.

It is monstrous and ridiculous to open and close by convention. We had to go to some place where such things didn't annoy us... *

An excessively irritating incident spoilt our lunch at the Cascade, We had made a marvellous impression when we came in. We had floated in like butterflies settling on lilies. A buzz went round the tables. Lou's beauty intoxicated everybody. Her jewellery dazzled the crowd.

I thought of an assembly of Greeks of the best period unexpectedly visited by Apollo and Venus.

We palpitated not only with our internal ecstasy but with the intoxicating sense that the whole world admired and envied us. We made them feel like the contents of a waste-paper basket.

The head waiter himself became a high priest. He rose to the situation like the genius he was. He was mentally on his knees as he ventured to advise us in the choice of our lunch.

It seemed to us the tribute of inferior emperors. And there was that fellow King Lamus five or six tables away !

The man with him was a Frenchman of obvious distinction, with a big red rosette and a trim aristocratic white moustache and beard. He was some minister or other. I couldn't quite place him but I'd seen him often enough in the papers: somebody intimate with the president. He had been the principal object of interest before we came in.

Our arrival pricked that bubble.

Lamus had his back to us, and I supposed he didn't see us, for he didn't turn round, though everyone else in the place did so and began to buzz.

I didn't hate the man any more; he was so absurdly inferior. And this was the annoying thing. When he and his friend got up to leave, they passed our table all smiles and bows.

And then, the deuce ! The head waiter brought me his card. He had scribbled on it in pencil: "Don't forget me when you need me."

Of all the damned silly impertinence ! Absolutely gratuitous insufferable insolence! Who was going to need Mr. Gawd Almighty King Lamus ?

I should have handed out some pretty hot repartee if the creature hadn't sneaked off. Well, it wasn't worth while. He didn't count any more than the grounds in the coffee.

But the incident stuck in my mind. It kept on irritating me all the afternoon. People like that ought to be kicked out once and for all.

Why, hang it, the man was all kinds of a scoundrel. Every one said so. Why did he want to butt in ? Nobody asked him to meddle.

I said something of the sort to Lou, and she told him off very wittily.

" You've gaid it, Cockie, " she cried. "He's a meddler, and his nature is to be rotten before he's ripe. "

I remembered something of the sort in Shakespeare. That was the best of Lou ; she was brilliantly clever, but she never forced it down one's throat.

At the same time, as I said, the man stuck in my gizzard. It annoyed me so much that we took a lot more cocaine to get the taste out of our mouths.

But the irritation remained, though it took another form. The bourgeois atmosphere of Paris got on my nerves.

Well, there was no need to stay in the beastly place. The thing to do was to hunt up old Feccles and pay him the cash, and get to some place like Capri where one isn't always being bothered by details.

I was flooded by a crazy desire to see Lou swim in the Blue Grotto, to watch the phosphorescent flames flash from her luminous body.

We told the chauffeur to stop at Feccles's hotel, and that was where we hit a gigantic snag.

Monsieur Feccles, the manager said, had left that morning suddenly. Yes, he had left his heavy baggage. He might be back at any moment. No, he had left no word as to where he was going.

Well, of course, he would be back on Saturday morning to get the five thousand. It was obvious what I was to do. I would leave the money for him, and take the manager's receipt, and tell him to send the papers on to the Caligula at Capri.

I started to count out the cash. We were sitting in the lounge. A sense of absolute bewilderment and helplessness came over me.

" I say, Lou," I stammered, " I wish you'd count this. I can't make it come right. I think I must have been going a bit too hard."

She went through the various pockets of my portefeuille.

" Haven't you some money in your pocket ? " she said.

I went through myself with sudden anxiety. I had money in nearly every pocket ; but it only amounted to so much small change. A thousand francs here and a hundred francs there, a fifty-pound note in my waist-coat, a lot of small bills

In the meanwhile, Lou had added up the contents of my porte-feuille. The total was just over seventeen hundred.

" My God ! I've been robbed," I gasped out, my face flushing furiously with anger.

Lou kept her head and her temper. After all, it wasn't her money ! She began to figure on a scrap of the hotel note paper.

" I'm afraid it's all right," she announced, " you dear, bad boy."

I had become suddenly sober. Yes, there was nothing wrong with the figures. I had paid cash to the jeweller without thinking.

By Jove, we were in a hole ! I felt instinctively that it was impossible to telegraph to Wolfe for more money. I suppose my face must have fallen ; a regular nose dive. Lou put her arm around my waist and dug her nails into my ribs.

"Chuck it, Cockie," she said, " we're well out of a mess. I always had my doubts about Feccles, and his going off like this looks to me as if there were something very funny about it."

My dream of a quarter of a million disappeared without a moment's regret. I had been prudent after all. I had invested my cash in something tangible. Feccles was an obvious crook. If I had handed him that five thousand, I should never have heard of him or of it again.

I began to recover my spirits.

"Look here," said Lou, " let's forget it. Write Feccles a note to say you couldn't raise the money by the date it was wanted, and let's get out. We ought to economise, in any case, Let's get off to Italy as we said. The exchange is awfully good, and living's delightfully cheap. It's silly spending money when you've got Love and Cocaine."

My spirit leapt to meet hers. I scribbled a note of apology to Feccles, and left it at the hotel. We dashed round to the Italian consulate to have our passport vise'd, got our sleeping cars from the hotel porter, and had the maid pack our things while we had a last heavenly dinner.