The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley

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СКАЧАТЬ got very affectionate in a sentimental, motherly style, told me the story of her life, and so on, for ever it seemed. Of course, I had to pretend to be interested to keep her in good humour. Everything might depend on that.

      But it was awful to have to let her kiss me when I went away. I wonder if I should get like that if I went on with dope.

      What absolute nonsense ! For all I know, it may have prevented her going faster still. She must have had a beastly rotten life. The way she clawed at that five quid was the clue to her troubles ; that and her ignorance of everything but the nastiest kind of vice and the meanest kind of crime.

      The morphine has certainly done me a world of good. I am quite myself. I feel it by the way I am writing this entry. I have a quiet impersonal point of view. I have got back my sense of proportion. I can think of things consecutively and I feel physically much stronger, but I've got very sleepy again....

      Joy ! Cockie has just come in full of good news. He looks fine-as fine as he feels. He had a sample from a pedlar he met in the Wisteria. It's absolutely straight stuff. Pulled him round in a second. There are two of them in it ; the man with the dope and the sentry. They talk business in the lavatory, and if another man comes in, the pedlar disappears. In case of real danger, he gets rid of his sample in a flash beyond any possibility of being traced. The loss is trifling ; they can buy the stuff at a few shillings an ounce and sell it for I don't know how many times its weight in gold.

      We shall have a great night to-night !

      August 22 A hellish night !

      Cockie kept his date with the pedlar, got ten pounds' worth of H. and fifteen of C., and the H. was nothing at all and the C., so adulterated that we took the whole lot and it was hardly worth talking about.

      What filthy mean beasts people are !.

      How can men take advantage of the bitter needs of others ? It was the same in the war with the profiteers. It's always been the same.

      I am writing this in a Turkish bath. I couldn't stand that loathsome house any more. It has done me lots of good. The massage has calmed my nerves. I slept for a long while, and a cup of tea has revived me.

      I tried to read a paper, but every line opens the wound. They seem to have gone mad about dope....

      I suppose it's really quite natural. I remember my father telling me once that the inequality of wealth and all the trickery of commerce arose from artificial restriction.

      Last night's swindle was made possible by the great philanthropist jabez Platt. His Diabolical Dope Act has created the traffic which he was trying to suppress. It didn't exist before except in his rotten imagination....

      I get such sudden spells of utter weariness. Dope would put me right. Nothing else has any effect. Everything that happens makes me want a sniff ; and every sniff makes something happen. One can't get away from the cage, but the complexity makes me... there, I can't think what I started to say. My mind stops suddenly. It's like dropping a vanity bag. You stop to pick it up and the things are all over the place and it always seems as if something were missing. One can never remember what it is, but the feeling of annoyance is acute. It's mixed up with a vague fear. I've often forgotten things before--every one does all the time, but it doesn't bother one.

      But now, every time that I remember that I've forgotten something, I wonder whether it's H. or C. or mixing the two that is messing up my mind.

      My mind keeps on running back to that American nigger we met in Naples. He said snow made people " flighty and sceptical." It was such a queer expression. By sceptical he meant suspicious, I think. Anyhow, I've got that way. Flighty-I can't keep my mind on things like I could, except, of course, the one thing. And even that is confused. It's not a clear thought. It's an ache and a fear and a pain-and a sinister rapture. And I am suspicious of everybody I see.

      I wonder if they think I'm taking it, and if they can do something horrid. I'm always on the look-out for people to play me some dirty trick, but that isn't a delusion at all. I've seen more meanness and treachery since the night I met Cockie than I knew in the rest of my life.

      We seem to have got into a bad set somehow. And yet, my oldest friends-I can't trust them like I did. They're all alike. I wonder if that's a delusion ? How can I tell ? They do act funnily. I'm unsettled. How can one be sure of anything ? One can't. The more one thinks of it, the more one sees it must be so.

      Look how Feccles let us down. For all I know, there may be some motive at the back of even a really nice woman like Gretel-or Mabel Black. I'm really suspicious of myself. I think that's it.

      I must go home. I hope to God Cockie's found some somewhere !

      I met Mabel Black coming out of the Burlington Arcade. She looked fine, all over smiles, a very short, white skirt and a new pair of patent leather boots almost up to her knees. She must find them frightfully hot. She rushed me into a tea place, awfully smart with rose-shaded lights reflected up to a blue ceiling the combination made a most marvellous purple.

      We got an alcove shut off by canary-coloured curtains and a set of the loveliest cushions I ever saw. Two big basket chairs and a low table. They have the most delightful tea in egg-shell china and Dolly cigarettes with rose leaves.

      Mabel talked a hundred miles a minute. She has struck the biggest kind of oil-a romantic boy of sixty-five. He had bought her a riding crop with a carved ivory handle ; the head of a race horse with ruby eyes and a gold collar.

      I asked her laughingly if it was to keep him in order. But what she was really keen on was H. She had got a whole bottle and gave me quite a lot in an envelope.

      The first go, oh, what joy ! And then-how strange we all are ! The minute I had it in my bag-in my blood-my mind began to work freely. The irritating stupefaction passed off like waking from a nightmare

       -a nightmare of suffocation-and it came to me with the force of a blow that the effect was not due to the H. at all, or hardly at all. When we got it again in Naples, it didn't do us much good.

      Why was I translated into heaven this afternoon ? Why had I found my wings ?

      The answer came as quick as the question. It's he atmosphere of Mabel and the relief of my worry. With that came a rational fear of the drug. I asked her if she hadn't had any troubles from taking it.

      " You can't sleep without it," she said, but not as if it mattered much, " and it rather gets on one's nerves now and then."

      She bad to rush off to meet her beau for dinner. I went back to our dirty little den, brimming over with joy. I found Cockie sprawling on the bed in the depth of dejection. He did not move when I came in. I ran to him and covered him with kisses. His eyes were heavy and swollen and his nose was running.

      I gave him my handkerchief and pulled him up. His clothes were all rumpled and of course he hadn't shaved. I couldn't resist the temptation of teasing my darling. My love had come back in flood. I tingled with the pain of feeling that he did not respond. I hugged the pain to my heart. My blood beat hard with the joy of power. I held him in my hand. One dainty act, and he was mine. I hadn't the strength to enjoy myself to the full. Pity and tenderness brought the tears to my eyes. I shook out a dose of the dull white wizardry.

      He sniffed it up with stupid lethargy like a man who has lost hope of life, yet still takes his medicine as a routine. He came up gradually, but was hardly himself till after the third dose.

      I СКАЧАТЬ