§ 4
It was an extremely uninteresting ceiling to look at except for a streak of yellowish stains, but it was better to look at the ceiling for a time than to look too much at these distressing people around him. They were distressing and distracting, and Sargon knew that it was urgently necessary not to be distracted, but to think over his position very carefully before anything further happened to him. All this rush of consequences had been so unexpected, preposterous and violent since—a few hours ago—he had surveyed London from the dome of Saint Paul’s and decided that the moment had come to take hold of his Lordship of the World, that he perceived he might very conceivably be overwhelmed. How serene and distant now was that spectacle of London spread out under the amber sunshine between its far blue hills and its shining river, with its dense clusters of shipping and the black ant-currents of folk below. From that he had come swiftly, inevitably, to this echoing prison. For prison he saw it was. He knew quite well that these men around him were demented men and that he had been seized upon as a lunatic, but he thought that the Workhouse Observation Ward in which he was, was a lunatic asylum already. In his wildest imaginations he had never imagined the Power over all things could treat him thus. The possibility of a brief interlude in prison, of a severe but very public and triumphant trial, had entered his mind; but not that he might be hustled away out of the possibility of any such appeal. He had to think his position out anew, to discover what all this monstrous experience was intended to show and to teach him, and what he had to do to meet this strange occasion.
And it was very difficult to do this with a raucous voice down the room uttering foul threats about the ward attendant and a great fist beating the table in sudden storms and with that smooth, fluctuating, unending recitation nearer at hand, that cosmic poem, now almost inaudible—so that one strained to catch the words—and now in high-pitched delight. For long stretches it was just incoherent jumble and Sargon would hold it almost completely out of his attention while he pursued his own perplexities, and then it would rush together into something that challenged its way to mingle with his inmost thoughts.
“Filthy old Nature, she drives us amain;
One goad is lust and the other goad pain.
And so we get back to old nowhere again.
Nowhere to start from and nowhere again.
Want and be hurt, want and be hurt,
Out of the dirt you came, back to the dirt.
Hunger for dirt and dirty regretting
Dirty our feeding and dirty begetting
Smear yourself, paint yourself, wear a fine shirt
Put a brave face on it, Yah!—you are dirt.”
“Now is that true?” asked Sargon of himself. Is that true? Dirt? What is dirt? But no! he must not wander off after this mad raving! What was it he had been thinking about? He had been asking why had the Power thrust him into this dreadful place? Why had the Power brought him to this place? If only the man would stop that improvisation of his for a little while it might be possible to think that out. Why had he been given over to the commands of Jordan and Higgs to live among the madmen and—sudden fantastic side question!—why had they?
If only that poem would cease! If only that voice would fade to silence! It was now mere rubble and rubbish, as though thought had been broken up with a pickaxe and loaded in carts and shot down a slope. Don’t listen to it, Sargon! Don’t listen to it! Concentrate!
In his endeavour to concentrate, Sargon forgot even Higgs. He sat up in bed and drew his knees nearly to his chin and thought.
He was Sargon; that was the great issue. He had to remain Sargon. He was probably in this place of trouble and torment because of the conflict between his being Sargon and the possibility of his relapsing into Preemby. The Power had called him to be Sargon and to serve and suffer for and at last to rule the Whole World, but manifestly it was not a simple direct call. There was something working in opposition to this destiny, an Anti-Power, opposed to the Power, which was trying to put him back to Preemby and Preembyism, to being little and insignificant, to living obscurely and to no purpose and so at last to dying and becoming utterly and finally dead. That Anti-Power it was that had been permitted to bring him here, to frighten and torment him, to din mad rhymes into his ears, to urge upon him in a monotonous persistent voice that he was dirt and that God was without a face, and a multitude of suchlike blasphemies. But they were not true. The Anti-Power might talk and talk—would God there could be a respite from his talking!—but the truth was outside this place and greater than this place and altogether comprehended it. He was one, Sargon was one, from the beginning in Sumeria, in many lands and now here, the same spirit, the ruler who serves; he was one just as London was one when it was seen from on high up above there, endlessly multitudinous yet drawn together into a single personality. And so was the whole world one. To be Preemby was to be like a wretched little back street house down below there, swallowed up in the general effect. Never more could he be Preemby, even if he would. That was what he had to keep hold of. He could only be Sargon by denying Preemby—even though he had to face the pains of death.
Yet all the while the Anti-Power was insulting life and himself through that disordered poet and his recitation. The man had now fallen under the spell of a fascinating but detestable word, if one may call such a thing a word, “Tra-la-la.”
“Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.
That is the note of it.
Get the full gloat of it.
Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.
All times and places
Happy derision for Gods without faces.
Tra-la-la sunshine or Tra-la-la rain.
Eat, drink, and kiss ’em and at it again.
Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.
Kiss ’em and Kiss ’em and at it again.
At it again!
Tra-la-la.”
He varied his recitation with a loud explosive noise made by his lips on the back of his hand.
“Pray don’t think me cynical,” he said to Sargon. “It is just pure Joy de Vive.”
Sargon could not stand it any longer. This was damnable teaching to fling out before the very regenerator of mankind. He suddenly thrust out a pointing finger. “You are wrong!” he said loudly and sharply.
The poet stared for a minute and with a gesture of salutation said: “Tra-la-la-la.”
“I tell you life is real,” cried Sargon. “Life is immense. Life is full of meaning and order. I have come to tell you and all men so.”
The poet interrupted smilingly and politely with:
“Tra-la-la
Tra-la-la
Life is a hiccup and life is a sneeze
A smell from a dunghill borne on the breeze
A thing of no moment—so do as you please!
Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.”
He was going on, but Sargon would not hear him. He lifted his voice to drown his antagonist. “I tell you, you poor soul! you are utterly wrong and blind,” he said. “For the light has come to me and understanding is mine. You are not the lost thing you deem you are, or at least you need not be. No! I, too, was a lost thing such as you are, a little while ago. I, too, thought I was a grain, a fragment, a thing of no account. But the call has come to me, and I have been called to call others to take part with me in a new awakening. I have had a vision and I have seen the world like one who awakens from a long sleep. All things are joined together and work together and continue for ever.”
The poet wrinkled up his nose and waved his hand at Sargon as who should wave aside some object of offence. “Tra-la-la,” he shouted.
“All things I tell you are joined together and work together——”
“Tra-la-la,” louder.
“I tell you,” much louder.
“Shuddup there,” cried the loud and wrathful voice of Sanity embodied in Mr. Higgs.
“You’ll have the whole ward jabbering in a minute,” said Mr. Higgs, approaching and addressing Sargon in tones of earnest expostulation. “Shud Dup.”
And after a brief pause of reflection the Lord of the Whole World obeyed.
With a gesture of extreme dignity he indicated to Higgs that his crude demands were conceded.
“That’s o right,” said Higgs. “You can hold in if you want to. So you better. He can’t.”
The poet went on in a soft insinuating undertone reviling and mocking Sargon’s faith to a refrain of: “Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.”