The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley

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СКАЧАТЬ born into a world where ignorance and folly are in constant competition for the premiership of the minds of the educated classes. The commonest ploughman would have had more horse-sense than that doctor.

      I gave Peter the tablet with plenty of water when he began to get restless. It soothed him a great deal. I wished I had one for myself. I felt my irritability returning ; but I didn't break out because it couldn't be long till Basil came round. I looked forward to his coming as to a certain end to all our troubles....

      What actually happened was quite different. I hardly know how to write it down. The shame and the disappointment are blasting. I feel that the doors of hope have been slammed in my face. I can imagine the grinding of the key as it turns in the lock, the screech of the rusty bolt as it is driven home.

      The moment Basil appeared, Peter's insanity blazed up. He poured out a stream of insults, and accused Basil to his face of trying to get me away.

      If Basil had only known how eagerly I would have gone ! A man in sexual mania is not fit to consort with human beings. I never realised before why women despise men in their hearts so deeply. We respect men who have mastered their passions, if only because we are ourselves uftimately nothing but those passions. We expect a man to show himself superior. It will not do to kill passion, like Klingsor ; the sexless man is even lower than " the wounded king," Amfortas, the victim of his virility. The true hero is Parsifal, who feels the temptations. " A man of like passions with ourselves." The more acutely alive he is to love, the greater are his possibilities. But he must refuse to surrender to his passions; he must make them serve him. " Diemen ! Diemen ! "

      Who would kill a horse because he was afraid to ride him ? It is better to mount, and dare the brute to bolt.

      After the man is thrown, we pick him up and nurse him, but we don't adore him. Most men are like that. But what every woman is looking for is the man with the most spirited horse and the most complete mastery of him. That's most symbolic in The Garden of Allah, where the monk who cannot ride takes a stallion out into the desert, determined to fight the thing out to a finish.

      Basil was not moved by the savage spite of Peter. He refused to be provoked. Whenever he got a chance to put a word in, he simply asserted the purpose of his visit. He did not even take the trouble to deny the main accusation.

      It tired Peter to dash himself so uselessly against the cliff of Basil's contempt. I don't mean that it was contempt, either, but his calm kindness was bound to be felt as contempt because Peter couldn't help knowing how well he deserved disdain. He was aware of the fact that his abuse became weaker and emptier with every outburst. He simply pulled himself together with a last effort of animosity toward the friend who could have saved us, and ordered him out of the house. He made himself more ridiculous by posing as an outraged husband.

      Lofty morality is the last refuge when one feels oneself to be hopelessly in the wrong.

      It was the first time I had ever known Peter play the hypocrite. His professions of propriety were simply the measure of his indignity.

      There was nothing for Basil to do but to go. Peter pretended to have scored a triumph. It would not have deceived anybody, but-if there had been a chance-he cut away the pulpit from under his own feet when he swung back into the room and snapped with genuine feeling:

      " God damn it, what a fool I am! Why didn't you tip me the wink ? We ought to have played up to him and got some heroin out of him...."

      This morning has taken everything out of me. I don't care about saving myself. I know I can't save Peter. Why must a woman always have a man for her motive ? All I want is H. Both Cockie and I need it hellishly.

      "Look here, Lou," he said with a cunning grin, such as I'd never seen before, quite out of keeping with his character. " You doll yourself up and try the doctors. A man told me last night that there were some who would give you a prescription if you paid them enough. A tener ought to do the trick."

      He pulled some dirty crumpled notes out of his trousers' pocket.

      " Here you are. For God's sake, don't be long."

      I was as keen as he was. All the will to stop had been washed out of me when Basil went. My self-respect was annihilated.

      Yet I think it was reluctance to go that kept me hanging about on the pretence of attending to my toilet.

      Peter watched me with approval. There was a hateful gleam in his eye, and I loved it. We were both degraded through and through. We had reached the foul straw of the sty. There was something warm and comfortable about snuggling up to depravity. We had realised the ideal of our perversion....

      I went to my own doctor. Peter had put me up to symptoms; but he wasn't taking any. He talked about change of climate and diet and the mixture to be taken three times a day. I saw at once it was no good by the way he jumped when I mentioned heroin first.

      All I could do was to get out of the old fool's room without losing face....

      I didn't know what to do next. I felt like Morris What's-his-name in The Wrong Box when he had to have a false death certificate, and wanted a " venal doctor."

      It annoyed me that it was daylight, and I didn't know where to go. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there came the name and address of the man who had helped Billy Coleridge out of her scrape. It was a long way off, and I was horribly tired. I was hungry, but the thought of lunch made me sick. I felt that people were looking at me strangely. Was it the scar by my eye ?

      I bought a thick veil. The girl looked surprised, I thought. I suppose it was rather funny in September, and might attract still more attention ; but it gave me a sense of protection, and it was a very pretty veil

       -cream lace with embroidered zig-zags.

      I took a taxi to the doctor's. Doctor Collins, it was, 61 or 71 Fairelange Street, Lambeth.

      I found him at home; a horrid, snuffy old man with shabby clothes; a dingy grimy office as untidy as himself.

      He seemed disappointed at my story. It wasn't his line, he said, and he didn't want to get into trouble. On the other hand, he was frightened of me because of what I knew about Billy. He promised to do what he could; but under the new law, he couldn't do more than prescribe ten doses of an eighth of a grain apiece. Four or five sniffs, the whole thing I And he wouldn't dare to repeat it in less than a week.

      However, it was better than nothing. He told me where to get it made up.

      I found a cloak-room where I could put the packets into one, and started.

      The relief was immense. I went on, dose after dose. Cockie could get his own. I should tell him I had drawn blanks. I felt I could eat again, and had some light food and a couple of whiskies and sodas.

      I felt so good that I drove straight back to Greek Street, and poured out a mournful tale of failure. It was delicious to deceive that brute after he'd struck me.

      It was keen pleasure to see him in such pain ; to imitate his symptoms with minute mimicry; to mock at his misery. He was angry all the same, but his blows gave me infinite pleasure. They were the symbols of my triumph.

      " Here, you get out of this," he said, " and don't come back without it. I know where you can get it. Andrew McCall is the man's name. I know him to the bottom of his rotten soul."

      He gave me the address.

      It was a magnificent СКАЧАТЬ