Chapter Thirty-Three
Gangakanta, meditating on cosmic mysteries entirely unrelated to Enid’s fixation, was interrupted mid-mantra by a papery rustle from his door. He opened the door, naturally, to find Sanns crouched in the corridor—Sanns quickly pulled back something rolled up in twine and hid it in his inner coat pocket.
“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” Gangakanta asked.
Sanns looked around. “Whatever do you mean, sir?”
“Your visit, sir.”
Sanns rose. “Do you mean to say that you weren’t expecting me, sir?”
“I was not.”
“But you did invite me—did you not?”
“I don’t recall doing so, no.”
“But—” And here Sanns smiled. “—I have your invitation in my pocket.”
“Do you indeed?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Then may I see it?”
“No.”
“No?”
“You may certainly not. No.”
“Well then.” Gangakanta took a deep breath, folded his arms across his chest, and exhaled. “Thank you for accepting my invitation.”
“You are most welcome.” Sanns bowed.
“I wish you a most pleasant evening.” Gangakanta moved to close the door.
“But!”
Gangakanta halted, the door a quarter closed.
“. . .Can’t I come in?” Sanns said it with such a pleading look that his host was genuinely moved, and opened the door, fully, so that his guest might enter.
Once inside, Sanns made himself at home, searching the place for alcohol, waving away Gangakanta’s insistence that there was none to be found, and finally throwing himself onto the settee. Gangakanta sat down across from him, and waited for the purpose of the visit to be revealed.
He rather waited in vain.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Sanns nodded.
“Thank you. Is it different from your room?”
“Not at all. Just the same.”
“Ah.”
Sanns tapped a soft tattoo on his knees with his fingertips, then clapped his hands, once, loudly, and confronted his host: “Look here, sir!”
“Yes?”
“Well—it’s just. . .”
“Go on. You needn’t be hesitant with me.”
“I’m not being hesitant!”
“Of course you’re not.”
“Well, you implied as much that I was!”
“I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m going to accept that apology, you know!”
“Oh?”
“But I appreciate your being decent, and manly, enough to make it, anyhow.”
“Thank you for saying so.”
“You’re welcome.”
They stared at each other, Gangakanta with curiosity, Sanns with suspicion, without speaking.
Obviously, this state could not subsist forever, and, as if to prove the validity of my contention, Sanns broke, like a blind, dumb ape a fistful of twigs to which he’d taken an irrational dislike, the silence:
“At what, precisely, are you staring, if I might ask, dear sir?”
“At you, dear sir.”
“Ah! I thought as much.”
More silence, until Sanns blurted out: “Do you want to know why I’ve done all these things or not, sir?!”
“What things?”
“My pranks! My tricks! My spitting in the eye of society!”
“Oh, well, certainly, if you like.”
“Fine! But only because you’ve dragged it out of me, you understand!”
“I understand.”
“Mmf!” The growl Sanns emitted was somewhat bestial, as if he’d been clawed, and wounded, and chased into a corner, and forced to submit lest he be sexually dishonoured in some fashion. “Very well! You have noticed that we are all, every one of us, trapped inside this hotel until the storm subsides, I presume?”
“I’ve noticed that, yes.”
“Very good. And you might have noticed that an increasing number of mores by which the behaviour of man and woman is ordinarily circumscribed have, shall we say, thawed, in place of the snow?”
“You might put it that way.”
“Very good. Well, then—I say to myself: ‘Why shouldn’t I, like the others, remake myself—sire myself—into something wholly other than the unmitigated failure I had heretofore dragged around as a carcass with my identifying attributes attached?’ By which I mean: ‘Why shouldn’t I fill the void atop the plinth with a monument fashioned from my own most intimate, unspoken hunger?’ Do you see what I mean?”
“Sort of.”
“I’ll try to be more clear. I am making a desperate grab for life, sir!”
“Life?”
“Life—just so!”
“Had not you life before this?”
“You call that a life?!”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Sanns scoffed at Gangakanta for his prurient curiosity, only saying, “When I was a boy, after once seeing a circus, I dreamt of being a clown. That is all that matters, that is all you need to know, and that is all you will know!”
“All right.”
“‘All right’, indeed! Now let me ask you: do you remember this Inspector Pluck?”
“But of course.”
“‘But of course’—bah! He, I see now, was the only one of us with any spirit! With any purpose, any appreciation of life! And if I, modest I, little I, can keep a little of his irreverence alive—well!”
“So your juvenile inanity is your way of honouring our departed inspector?”
“Ah, sir, ha-ha, very good! Yes, you can call it that—you can insult me all you want—I don’t care! Because I have become, if you can see clear enough to see it, something of your own opposite.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really!”
“And what are you?”
“A—a metaphysical—prankster!”
“Ah.”
“Yes, ‘ah’! ‘Ah’ is right! ‘Ah’ is certainly right!”
“I’m not sure what that means, but very well.”
“Yes! ‘Very well’!”
“And so if you are a metaphysical prankster, would you be so very kind as to inform me, whom you’ve already nominated as your opposite, who exactly am I?”
“Without reservation, sir! For you are—a strip of desiccated bark snapped off a tree.”
“Hm!” Gangakanta appeared a little offended, despite himself.
“What have you to say to that, sir?”
“Well. . .it sounds rather. . .cut off from things, I suppose.”
Sanns leant forward and, unexpectedly, grabbed Gangakanta’s hand between his. “But it’s not too late!”
“It isn’t?”
“No!”
“What. . .do you recommend I do?”
“Throw your life to the winds, as I’ve done!”
“I suppose that is an option.”
“Why, I regret I didn’t do this years ago!”
“I’m sure.”
“Because—now do you want to hear the truth?”
“Certainly.”
“The absolutely brutal truth?”
“That’s why I invited you to my room in the first place, if you’ll remember.”
“Well! It’s that—” And here, releasing his interlocutor’s hands, Sanns leant still more forward till he was whispering in Gangakanta’s ear: “. . .I fear I might be snuffed out, into non-existence, at any moment!”
“Why. . .why do you fear that?”
Sanns withdrew, leant back, straightened himself, shrugged, and said simply: “Because it’s all too good to last!”