The Twinkling of an Eye. Brian Aldiss

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       3

       The School

      Suddenly, after a long silence, he began to talk … ‘A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it will live to regret his steps.’

      Carlos Castaneda

       The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

      We held a ‘Wings for Victory’ fair on WBS rugger field, the Huxtable. It was a great event. Our vendettas against local farmers were set aside so that we could borrow their carts. I turned what had been shameful into satire against myself and became Adolf for a day.

      Some years previously, one of the innumerable Framlingham bullies, a creature with the skin of a bullfrog and hyperthyroid eyes to match, grabbed me and declared that I resembled Adolf Hitler. Dragging me into his foul den, he pulled a lock of my hair down over my forehead and painted a moustache of black boot polish on my upper lip. I was then made to goose-step round a senior common room, giving the Sieg Heil for the delectation of all the other bullies – many of whom would doubtless have given their eyeteeth to dress up in Nazi uniforms, rape Slav women, and bugger each other while strangling Jews.

      By Buckland’s ‘Wings for Victory’ day, I had sufficiently recovered from this degradation to put the act to good use. Suitably uniformed, I mounted one of the farm carts and addressed all and sundry in gibber-German, looking remarkably like Adolf. Or so my friends and admirers told me later.

      Hitler still exerts an awful attraction. He has proved to be many things to many men. Hugh Trevor-Roper captured something of the truth when he described Hitler’s mind as ‘a terrible phenomenon, imposing indeed in its granitic harshness and yet infinitely squalid in its miscellaneous cumber – like some huge barbarian monolith, the expression of giant strength and savage genius, surrounded by a festering heap of refuse – old tins and dead vermin, ashes and eggshells and ordure – the intellectual detritus of centuries.’

      Well, that does sound fascinating …

      It is terrible to think one should still hold Hitler in mind. And I once imitated him! Even the young and innocent are fascinated by wickedness. I suppose it helped prepare us at WBS to be soldiers.

      To Crasher Fay I owe more than mere learning. For English classes, we had to produce an essay every Monday. I was excused. Crasher permitted me to present a story instead. A gratifying privilege as we trudged towards the School Certificate …

      By this time, the writing of short stories had become a continuous occupation. Our form enjoyed, shared, quoted, laughed aloud at Sellar & Yeatman’s 1066 and All That, as well as their less famous books, such as Horse Nonsense and Garden Rubbish. I wrote ‘Invalids and Illnesses’. It was sanitary enough to take home, where my mother read it. I overheard her saying to someone, after reading out a funny bit about diphtheria, ‘You may not like it, but it is clever.’ Eavesdroppers seldom hear good about themselves; I felt she had summed me up.

      Most of my stories were less sanitary. They were mainly planetary adventures, dirty SF, crime, or dirty crime. Screwing featured largely. I often wrote in the dormitory, under the bedclothes by torch-light. The stories always remained first draft. Penny-a-read was the nominal charge. Nobody paid, everyone read. It was gratifying. A superior fellow in the Sixth, a horn-rimmed Harrison, said, ‘Aldiss, these tales of yours are ridiculous and badly constructed.’

      He was probably right. But I wrote compulsively, and risked beating and expulsion if they fell into the wrong hands.

      I also wrote and illustrated a series of comic tales, ‘The Jest-So Stories’. At term’s end, Bowler and I put all the manuscripts in a Huntley & Palmer’s biscuit tin and buried it in a rabbit burrow in the Plantation, from where we retrieved it the following term.

      I became prolific. At one of my more acceptable sardonic stories, presented as a Monday offering, Fay took offence. After reading parts of it aloud, he stared hard at me and said, ‘I warn you, Aldiss, if you go on like this you’ll become another Evelyn Waugh.’ Never had I heard such praise.

      Bowler was a great character. He, Saxby, and I were jokers-in-chief. Don Smith was a more sophisticated type. He brought a wind-up gramophone and played jazz records. We heard for the first time Tommy Dorsey and Orchestra playing ‘Getting Sentimental Over You’, and, ah!, Jimmie Lunceford and his band playing ‘Blues in the Night’, with the Johnny Mercer lyrics:

      From Natchez to Mobile

      From Memphis to Saint Joe,

      Wherever the four winds blow СКАЧАТЬ