Free Imago Bird by Nicholas Mosley Page A

birds, to carry me to my beloved.

VIII
    â€˜Brian, this is Bert.’
    â€˜Hullo, Bert.’
    â€˜This is Brian.’
    The meeting that Sheila had arranged for me to talk with Brian Alick turned out to be taking place at a party at the house of Sally Rogers, a television personality. Sally Rogers had once been an interviewer on television; then she had become involved with the Young Trotskyites. She was now much in demand on talk-shows to give the revolutionary point of view; which she did in a way that did not upset people, talking pleasantly about the need to break up society for the good of the people in it; thus encouraging the people watching her I suppose to imagine, because she was pretty, that the sooner society was broken up the better; because there might then be a better chance for people like them to go to bed with people like Sally Rogers.
    â€˜What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Bert?’
    When we had arrived at the party Sheila had taken me straight to Brian Alick: she had not even introduced me to Sally Rogers. Brian Alick was a short, compact man with smooth hair and a grey flannel suit and eyes that looked over my shoulder as if towards an autocue.
    â€˜Shall we sit here?’
    When people wait for me to talk in public, it is once more as if all the lights have come on too brightly in a theatre and there is nothing for anyone to do except leave the building.
    I sat with a glass in my hand and I wondered about language being useless because it could only say one thing at a time: while what things are truly is always a network of connections.
    There were about twenty people in the room. It was a sort of drinks party. I was being treated as if I were on television.
    I said ‘Why do you think if you got power—’
    There was this line of guns shooting down messages between my brain and my muscles: I thought—Is it my body that cannot bear this simplicity —
    â€˜â€”you would be any different from—’
    â€” but with people who talk fluently is there not always something projected blindly like an autocue, and not a bird, behind one’s head —
    â€˜â€”from any other communist government in power—’
    My stammer was having the effect of people paying attention to me: or rather not quite to me, but slightly to one side of me, as if there might be knobs there which might adjust my programme.
    â€˜You mean—’
    â€˜â€”which—’
    â€˜Sorry.’ This was Brian Alick
    â€˜â€”can only maintain itself in power—’
    Sally Rogers was watching me intently. She was a brown-faced, dry-skinned woman like a Californian tennis player.
    â€˜â€”by means of a secret police—’
    Dr Anders had once said—You know how attractive it is when you stammer?
    â€˜â€”the chief aim of which is—’
    I thought—This cannot be attractive!
    Then—If I get out of this alive, might I get off with Sally Rogers?
    â€˜â€”to oppress the workers that they say they want to liberate.’
    I had finished. I seemed to have taken about ten minutes. I tried not to let my breath out too heavily.
    I thought—It is an effort like making love to Sheila?
    Also—Did not Plato say, somewhere, that there is a vulgarity in people who are too fluent and precise?
    Brian Alick waited for a time as if to make sure I had finished: then he spoke with his eyes still over my shoulder.
    â€˜I suppose we are talking about the Soviet Union. Now as you know we are opposed to the Soviet Union. We consider in fact that the Soviet Union has quite deliberately betrayed socialism—’
    I thought—But with people who speak fluently, isn’t it then the case that their mouths are different from their anuses?
    â€” But still, it is the case that their mouths are where things go in?
    â€˜â€”as Trotsky himself said as early as 1927. No, the role of the party in a workers’ social