In memoriam Russel Hoban.
When Orpheus remembered himself, said Hospital, he came together so harmoniously that he began to play his lute and sing with immense power and beauty. No one had ever heard the like of it. Trees and all that, you know, rocks even, they simply picked themselves up and moved to where he was. Sometimes you couldn’t see Orpheus for the rocks and trees around him. He was tuned into the big vibrations, you see, he and the grains of sand and the cloud particles and the colours of the spectrum all vibrating together. And of course it made him a tremendous lover. Krishna with the cowgirls was nothing compared to what Orpheus was.
What about Eurydice? said Kleinzeit. How’d they meet? I don’t think that’s told in any of the stories. All I know is that she went to the Underworld after she died of a snakebite.
More schoolboy rubbish, said Hospital. Orpheus met Eurydice when he got to the inside of things. Eurydice was there because that was where she lived. She didn’t have to get bitten by a snake to go there. With the power of his harmony Orpheus penetrated the world, got to the inside of things, the place under places. Underworld, if you like to call it that. And that’s where he found Eurydice, the female element complementary to himself. She was Yin, he was Yang. What could be simpler.
If Underworld was where she lived why did he try to get her out of it? said Kleinzeit.
Ah, said Hospital. There you have the essence of the Orphic conflict. That’s why Orpheus became what he is, always in the present, never in the past. That’s why that dogged blind head is always swimming across the ocean to the river mouth.
Why? said Kleinzeit. What was the conflict?
Orpheus cannot be content at the inside of things, at the place under the places, said Hospital. His harmony has brought him to the stillness and the calm at the centre and he cannot abide it. Nirvana is not his cup of tea. He wants to get back outside, wants that action with the rocks and trees again, wants to be seen with Eurydice at posh restaurants and all that. Naturally he loses her. She can’t go outside any more than he can stay inside.
He didn’t lose her because he looked back? said Kleinzeit.
That’s the sort of thing that gets put into a story of course, said Hospital. But looking back or not looking back wouldn’t have made any difference.
What happened then? said Kleinzeit.
It just goes round again, said Hospital. Orpheus mourns, mopes about, won’t go to parties any more, won’t make love with the local women, they say he’s queer, one thing leads to another, they tear him apart, and there’s the head going down the river again, heading for Lesbos.
What does it all mean? said Kleinzeit.
How can there be meaning? said Hospital. Meaning is a limit. There are no limits.
pgs. 147-148
As we were saying, all men are sick. Life is their sickness. Life is the original sickness of inanimate matter. All was well until matter messed itself about and came alive. Men are rotten clear through with being animate. Women on the other hand have not quite lost the health of the inanimate, the health of the deep stillness. They’re not quite so sick with life as men are. I’ll tell you something I didn’t tell Kleinzeit. The Thracian women didn’t tear Orpheus apart. He fell apart, keeps falling apart, will fall apart. Hell-bent on falling apart. Tiresome, though I admire his pluck I must say. A strong swimmer.
pg. 150, Hospital to Sister
There bloody isn’t any bare room. Empty rooms yes. Bare ones no. You ever seen a bare room? Curtain rods and clothes hangers jingling in the cupboard. Plastic things with that special kind of dirt that plastic things get on them. No end of gear. Carpet sweepers with no handles, plastic toilet-brush holders. Ever find a plastic toilet-brush holder in a plain deal table story? Try to make a room bare and in five minutes three-year-old cans of dried-up paint leap into the larder. From where? You’d thrown everything out. Old shoes you’ve worn one time fill up the cupboard, jackets you’re too fat for. Your arm grows weak sliding things along the bar that you’ll never wear again, and they won’t go away. Move out and they flop along after you tied up with string. Not alone like the young man at the plain deal table with the ordinary foolscap. Bloody awful really alone with yellow paper, tons of rubbish. And you think you’ve got answers coming to you. What a baby. You and your Ibsen and your Chekhov. Maybe the revolver in the drawer’s for another play, you ever think of that? You think your three acts are the only three bloody acts there are? Maybe you’re the revolver in somebody else’s play, eh? Never thought of that, did you. It’s all got to mean something to you. Do I ask you to explain anything to me? No. Because I’m a bleeding man and I’ll take my bleeding lumps and get on with whatever it is I’m getting on with. Got enough answers for your fruity buns?
pgs. 59-60, Redbeard to Kleinzeit
