Body and Soul

From WILLIAM GOLDING HOLLINS, VA.

EAST COAST blanked out from North Caro- lina right up to the Canadian border; ,a half-continent under a pat of fog; nothing visible but the extreme tip of the Empire State Build- ing; planes grounded. Fog, the airman's common cold; all the resources of science are squeaking and gibbering under it; lights blink unseen, radar echoes quiver and ping; the gigantic aircraft lumber round the ramps and aprons like death's- head moths in cold weather; money leaks away. We, the privileged, sit in a sort of underground air-raid shelter, racked by public-address sys- tems and blasts of furious air-conditioning. Evening drags into night. Everything is astonish- ingly dirty, and time itself is stale. We sit.

Most passengers drift away, to go by train, or try a night's sleep in the airport hotel. But 1 am going too far to get there any way but by jet. Tomorrow I give the first of three lectures in Los Angeles, on the other side of America. Here it is midnight, or past midnight, or feels like midnight. I am late already. and must go by what flight I can. I cannot telegraph anyone, even though I shall land at the wrong airport.

A loudspeaker honks and burbles. Incredibly, and for the next hour, we have take-off and landing limits. Our plane is getting through; and sure enough, presently it bumbles out of the fog from the runway. I go with our group to Gate Nine, shudder into a freezing night with a dull grey roof. The jet crawls towards us, howling and whistling with rage, perhaps at the fog or perhaps at the human bondage which keeps it only just under control. For• a moment or two, it faces us—no, is end-on to us; for here there is no touch of human, or animal, or insect, no face—only four holes that scream like nothing else in creation. Then it huddles round and is still. Doors open and two streams of passengers ooze out. Their faces are hagga'rd. They ignore the night that has caught up with them. They stagger, or walk with the stiff gait of stage sleep- walkers. One or two look stunned, as if they know it is midnight more or less but cannot re- member if it is today or tomorrow midnight and why, or what. Strange •vehicles flashing all over with red lights come out of the darkness, not for the passengers, but to tend the jet. They crouch under the wings and the front end, attach them- selves by tubes while all their lights flash, and lights on the jet flash, and the engines sink from a wail to a moan—a note, one might think, of resignation, as if the machine now recognises that it is caught and will have to do the whole thing over again. But for half an hour they feed it well, while it sucks or they blow, and we stand, imprisoned by the freezing cold and our own need to be somewhere else. Jet travel is a great convenience.

Then we are in, fastening safety belts, and I peer out of the window with a naivety which seems to increase as I grow older; and a suc- cession of blue lights flick by- faster and faster; and there is an eternity of acceleration at an angle of forty-five degrees, while the whistling holes under the wings seem no longer angry but godlike—see what we can do! Look, no hands! The 'No Smoking, Fasten Your Safety Belts' notice disappears. Cupping my hands round my face, squinting sideways and down, I can make out that there is a white pat of fog slipping by beneath us, and over it a few stationary stars. An air hostess demonstrates the use of the oxygen masks.

Comfort, warmth flowing back into rigid hands, comparative silence, stillness except for an occasional nudge as the plane pierces a furlong of turbulence; I try to think of what our air- speed means: it remains nothing but arith- metic. The interior of the plane is like a very superior bus. Am thawed and relaxed. They say that this is not the latest mark of jet—do jets come any faster or bigger or plusher?

Glasses tinkle. Air Hostess brings round drinks—not what happens in a bus. Select Bour- bon. (Always live off the country as far as possible.) I also secrete the TWA swizzlestick as a memento. Do not cross America often this way. Another Bourbon. That makes the two obligatory drinks before an American dinner. Am cheerful now --but second drink did not con- tain swizzlestick and wonder if I am 'detected?

Air Hostess approaches for the third time and cower—but no. She is English and recognises a fellow-countryman. Speaks Kensingtonian, which sounds odd at this place and altitude.

(Note to intending immigrants. Kensingtonian despised in a man. Gets him called a pouf. Do not know exactly what this term means. but cannot think it complimentary. On the other hand, Kensingtonian in a girl widely approved of. Americans think it cute.) Peripeteia! English Air Hostess has read my books and seen me on English telly! 1 instantly acquire overwhelming status. Feel utterly happy and distinguished in a nice, diffident, English sort of way. Neighbour puts away his brief- case—we all have briefcases—then talks to me.

Is physicist, naturally. Tells me about jets suck- ing air in at one end and blowing result of combustion out at the other. Encourage him, from a pure sense of joie de vivre. Rash, this, very. Tells me about navigation lights, naviga- tion, fluids, including the sea, acceleration— Bourbon now dying down. Make my way for- ward to lavatory in diffident but distinguished manner, watched by all the unhappy briefcases who haven't been on telly, or haven't been noticed there by an Air Hostess. Lavatory won- derful, buttons everywhere. Push the lot, just to tell grandchildren. Tiny, ultimate fraction of our airstream is scooped in somewhere and directed to blow a jet vertically up out of the pan. Could balance celluloid balls on it and shoot them down with a rifle, as at fairs.

Return to seat and physicist continues course. American Air Hostess comes and talks. More status. Physicist goes to sleep. English Air Hostess conies and talks about London, Paris, Rome, Athens. American Air Hostess counters with Hawaii and Japan. Slight loss of status. I would like to go to sleep. Body here, can see it sitting in the seat. Soul still leaving Atlantic coast. Time? AHs have got on to books. It's the beard, I think. Beard down there on the deck, just beard. Beard in jet v. distinguished. Bourbon quite dead. Return to lavatory for a bit of peace in less distinguished manner. Jet still playing and cannot be bothered to push all the buttons. Return. Physicist says 'Di!' very loudly in his sleep. Die? Diana? Diathermy? AHs wander away. Nod. Have instant vision of Ann with Hoovermatic on carpet. She switches it off, switches off all the sweepers in the world, they fade, whining—am started awake —oh my God, my God! `No Smoking, Fasten Your Safety Belts'—briefcases stirring like sea- life under returning tide.

Am awake, dammit, or rather body is awake; soul two thousand miles behind, passing through Nashville, Tennessee, shall never be whole again, body mouldering in the jet, soul marching on towards Denver. Time? Bump, rumble, rumble, lights, lights! Los Angeles. Time? Enter Bel- shazzar's Hall. Body finds hall moving slowly, but they can't fool body. Body knows the move- ment is the world turning to catch up. More halls, enough for whole dynasties of Bel- shazzars.

Soul will enjoy this when it catches up. More halls, Mene, mene. Briefcases have vanished. Tunnels, fountains, lights, music, palms, lights, more halls—they would have to put Mene, metre out by roneograph, or use the public-address system. A message for Mr. Belshazzar! Am de- lirious, I think. Find broom supporting man in centre of hundredth hall. Body asks broom politely, 'Which way is out, Bud?' Broom answers politely, 'Don't arst me, Bud, we just built it.' More halls. Movement of earth deposits body in cab which hurls it ten thousand miles through lights to a recommended English-type hotel. Body recognises bed as English. Has knobs at each corner. Body falls on bed, giggling at thought of soul now plodding through Death

'What do you mean. the Hebrews are talking of working to rule?'

Valley. Body undresses so as to gel an hour or two of sleep, telephone rings. Bearleader would like to show body the sights. Body dresses and descends. Nice bearleader drives body through sunny Los Angeles and up the Del Monica heights where the fire was. Body sees mountain road of burnt houses for film stars. Only thing left is row of swimming pools built on stilts out over the gorge, since there is nowhere else for them.

Descent to Pacific. Waves coming the wrong way—no, that was the Atlantic. Sherry in house. Lunch in university. Forty thousand students, or is it seventy? Own campus police and bus ser- vice. After lunch, body looks at lecture notes, but cannot bring itself to care Body gives first lecture and hears its mouth making the appro- priate noises 'Soul not really necessary in this game. Has drinks beneath original Beerbohm cartoons. Has dinner with the Christmas Story lining the road outside, each tableau the size of a cottage with full-size figures in plaster and floodlit. Party after dinner. Body is told about the definitive Dickens and the Boswell factory. Body is nearly frightened to hear itself advise against the export of American novels. Stick to cars, it says. Soul would be very angry if it could hear that. Body finds itself getting smaller, or is it larger? Is led away, and falls on English- type bed with knobs at each corner.

At two o'clock in the morning there seemed to be a second person present. With the sort of effort one makes to achieve binocular vision, they united themselves; and soul in body, I was look- ing at the ceiling of a hotel bedroom in Los Angeles. The luxury of being whole was such that I could not sleep, but smoked till I felt like stockfish. The real trouble was that I had a defect of imagination which would not let me believe I was where I was, and yet I knew I was in Los Angeles. Being whole, I was im- mediately frightened at the vision of tomorrow's lecture and began to compose it in my sleepless head. That way the day dawned, and just as I ran out of cigarettes, my nice bearleader tele- phoned to set up the morning's sightseeing. We saw the Mormon temple, with a gold angel on the tower—Aboni?--far larger than any God has in heaven. We saw the colossal Medical Centre where the corridors run clean out of perspective to infinity at a point; where the patient is taken in at one end and can be served up as a complete set of demonstration slides at the other. We saw the beach—and for a moment I was really where 1 was—watching the waves turn over, and stunned by the acute realisation that this had been here all the time, had not been created in Europe and exported to form part of a set. .I lectured again, pleaded for an evening in bed, but sneaked off on my own- peccavi—and had dinner; filet mignon and a bottle of burgundy-type wine. (Note for wines- men : it was an Almaden '57; suffered like all Californian wines from that fatal inferiority complex—but once convinced you were a friend, it would offer you what it had.) At two in the morning carried my filet mignon and my bur- gundy-type wine back to my English-type bed,. and lay with my head full of tomorrow's lec- ture. Dawn.

Nice bearleader came and took me to see the San Gabriel mountains with snow on them and the Chinese Theatre, its pavements with foot- prints, handprints, graffiti of film stars on them; showed me Hollywood, Gangster's Corner, Mae West's hotel, the William Andrews Clarke Memorial Library. For ten ridiculously exciting seconds I held the MS of The importance of Being Earnest in my hands. (You, too, have been awarded an Oscar!) We finished that jaunt in a bowling alley, where the beer was good, the telly in colour and the machines for setting up the pins seemed, in their implacable devotion, to be much more intelligent than anything else in sight.

I lecture, meet students, and pack grip in a flash. Meet faculty. Party. Nth, I think. Now I am taken to dinner in an English-type restaurant to make me feel at home. Recognise it as English instantly, because the bartender and all the waiters are in full hunting kit. At one moment they gather round a table and sing 'Happy Birthday' in close harmony. Los Angeles is the mostest, am utterly happy. What other place et cetera. Am eating abalone, the local must, and talking in six directions at once, but am suddenly seized and rushed away to jet, leaving soul still continuing conversations. Body 'Ws a top-priority, crash research programme—We're trying to find an etlective cause for cancer.'

loses way down to plane and is nearly sucked through engine, ha ha. Acceleration and fifty miles square of lights tilts under us. This is the latest mark of jet, they say, can see no difference, that is the Pacific down there, time, eleven o'clock.

American Air 1-13stess brings round Bourbon. Secrete swizzlestick. Another Bourbon. Ameri- can Southern Belle-type Air Hostess, v. pretty, guesses I am English and a writer (beard in jet), comes and sits! Immense status. SBAH did Creative Writing Course at College. Said to her Prof: 'All aim to be a writer.' Prof said: 'What do you know about life?' SBAH said : hey written a critical essay on Thomas Wolfe and a short story which ah would like you to read.' Prof read story, said: 'Go and be an Air Hostess'—'So heah ah em!' Delightful girl, there ought to be a lot more of them and there prob- ably are. Supper. Go to lavatory and discover this really is the latest mark of jet. Tiny, ultimate fraction of our airstream is scooped in some- where, led into the pan and merely chases itself round and round and round.

Am tucked up solicitously for the night, but am still able to see out of the window, my good- ness me, no sleep with a view like that. America sliding by, 650 miles an hour airspeed with 150 miles an hour tail wind; 800 miles an hour over the ground—no cloud. Cities, gleaming, glowing ravishments slide under us six miles down, lines of phosphorescence scored at right-angles to each other. Moon and snow. Stars, perceptibly wheel- ing. More molten cities. Body understands that America is crust of earth with fire inside, must break out somewhere, hence these scores, these right-angled lava cracks, these chessboard pat- terns of luminosity (with here and there a wink of veritable incandescence like the white spark on a red coal), but all soft as the tiny lights of a shock cradle. Garish street lamps, Christmas Decorations, traffic signals, window displays, sky signs, now softened, softened. Body lines up jet- hole with city—sees it swallow a whole street six miles long in seconds, how to take the children to school, scoop! three blocks of run- down houses, park, Motel, Motel, Motel, parking lot, cemetery, jump the sparking traffic lights, scoop! Drugstore, Charlies Cheeseburgers, Eats, Frolic Fashion House, Beautician, Physician Mortician, Realty, News Office WinnDixie MountjoyToyTownSurplusWarStockCrossroads ChurchofChrist(Airconditioni ng)Square ! Mayor- altyFireStationPoliceStationHowardJohnsonSqu- are!LightsLightsLightsSquare!LightsLightsLights RiverSquare! All sucked in and blown out, scooped up, hurled back, august, imperial, god- like, America, oh from up here and at this power, even unto weeping, America The- SBAH is tinkling glasses and switching on lights. My God. BREAKFAST! Four hours out from Los Angeles—where soul is still engaged in fierce discussion of freedom, birth control, how to be happy though British, Emblems—four hours out, there is ahead of us the distinction between grey and black that betokens dawn over the curved Atlantic. Sure enough, the Hoover- matic is switched off for a thirty-minutes' de- scent. Poor soul, no longer the centre of my sin- ful earth, but setting out just now on that long climb over the Rockies. Fasten your safety belts. And the time is . . .