Of Cardboard Books and Mosquitos

The room was lined, floor to high ceiling, with shelf upon shelf of seemingly archaic tomes, which offered the peruser enlightenment in any number of fields, and cultural imbuement by every artist from Sophocles and Virgil to Tolstoy and Joyce. Any imaginable pillar of High Culture shouted modestly their name from the spines of those volumes, while within each of those thousands of covers, the poetry, prose and promised good gave way to the sophistry of solid, durable cardboard.
Eastleigh's personal library was simply one room of many contained within the walls of his modest home; a Mock Tudor construction with a slight thirty-five metre façade looking east over the assortment of similar structures ' but infinitely more impressive to Eastleigh ' and eventually out to the harbour. It was on this clean, industry-free harbour that any number of young dilettantes could be found relaxing aboard private vessels in the middle of a weekday, while those of the lower classes in that classless society went about their drudgery.
Eastleigh envied the poor. They simply did not suffer the same crippling anxieties that were forced upon him by money. They had no need to maintain a societal charade. How often one was forced to lie! A compliment on clothing taste, or a made-up word exhibiting one's proficiency in French. The poor never needed to do that; nobody expected anything more of them than a "Good morning and the occasional sporting event riot. They had no reason to impress people with a false image of culture and taste; no need to play the game of well-constructed fallacies and garden soirées. What a bore such parties were, thought Eastleigh. Socialising with the vain and pretentious, believing they knew everything because they had more time, and could afford to sit around postulating upon and disparaging the intrinsic cultural value of Contemporary Art.
'Well, I'm sure you'll permit me to say,' said one, pompously, 'and you'll agree with me I expect, that E. Y. Irving's work has gone terribly downhill since "The College Way. I mean, there are only so many times the literate public will let you get away with pretending to be Huxley!' He chortled, by way of punctuating his amused, if not amusing, condescension.
'Indeed,' agreed another, 'he's going the way of Joseph Heller, it appears. He should have taken a cue from Salinger: nobody will remember you for your rubbish if you never publish anything.'
The other, pompous one continued to laugh, 'Ha! Ha!' It sounded false. 'My sentiments exactly. Don't you agree, Eastleigh?'
Eastleigh nodded in tacit agreement, and quickly excused himself. He knew nothing of E. Y. Irving, Huxley, Joseph Heller or Salinger, nor could he recall with any certainty the names of the two men standing before him, cocktails in hand. For all his socialising, Eastleigh could think of no reason why he continued to come to these odious parties. Oh, how he detested Society!
Yet, wishing as he did to remain in it, he was forced by the unofficial rules of society to hose such abominable soirées himself, to entertain the clique of the financial aristocracy, who would descend to his heretofore empty hilltop manor, sometimes greeting him, before hurrying off to find rich acquaintances to flatter and be flattered by, and to discuss The State of the World. At his last failure of a party, attended on a fine summer's evening by some hundred-odd people and mosquitos, the idée fixe of all conversation was the problem of Striking Workers; public transport operators, to be exact.
'Why, if they don't like the conditions of their work, then surely then should just look for other means of employment,' said one enlightened woman, who regularly saw buses when in the centre of town. 'There's no point in inconveniencing so many other people just because you're greedy for a wage rise. How inconsiderate.'
'Pay isn't the point, though,' insisted another, whose insistent, defiant face Eastleigh was sure he remembered, but whose name was just, only just, eluding him, like a ghost on the edge of one's field of vision. What it Illidge? Or Babbage? Yes, that was it. Babbage. Of course.
'Rather,' Illidge continued to the assembled crowd, 'the point is that these men and women, who provide essential services, are protesting the notion that a human being can be treated like a mechanical device, and that this fallacy can be made truth by throwing a bit of money at the machine.' Illidge was the product of thirteen years in a private school, where he had been alienated remorselessly by his peers, until he had found acceptance and socialism at the a publicly funded university. Dressed now in a black and red suit, he provided a bold contrast to the docile attendants in his social circle. Illidge took a great personal interest in Matters of the Working Class. He, too, also sometimes saw buses when being driven to business meetings and charity functions in the city.
Eastleigh felt oppressed by this man's diatribe on issues he felt strongly ambivalent about, and once again made a hasty retreat with cursory excuses of making hostly devoirs. He fled to the other end of his garden, where but for the incessant buzzing of mosquitos ' and perhaps because of it ' it was quiet. Sitting on a bench he had never sat on in eight years in his house, he was struck by how wonderfully a two-edged sword loneliness could e. If only they would leave him alone! Those detestable people; where was somebody real?
A figure emerged from the shadows of the trees, disturbing again the insects who had just finally found inertia. The dim, sickly light radiating lazily out from Eastleigh's library ' where tipsy guests were now marvelling at the immensity of their host's collection ' illuminated the stranger's face. This did nothing for his identity ' Eastleigh did not recognise him, but, as he did with everybody nowadays, had the worrying sensation that he ought to have.
'A nice evening,' the figure drawled, slapping at a mosquito. The others fled from him. He sat next to Eastleigh who, panic-stricken and with no visible escape opportunity, was forced to swallow his fear, apologise, and admit that while he was 'sure that I'm supposed to recognise you from somewhere, you are a stranger to me.'
'Quite alright,' the other chuckled. 'My face is hardly as recognisable as I'm sure some of my words would be to your cultured friends.' He nodded up the hill to where the rest of the guests were rapidly getting drunk and philosophical. 'In fact, I believe we've met before, at another one of these frightful self-congratulatory festivals. We were chatting with some obnoxious inebriated gentleman, who was ranting about the quality of modern literature.'
Eastleigh remembered the snippet of dialogue he had heard before, when he had ignominiously fled. 'Something about some writer, E. Y. ¦ Turing, or someone.'
'Edward Y. Irving,' the stranger said, and Eastleigh understood that it was both a reminder and an introduction. 'I know,' he went on, attempting to console Eastleigh's confusion, 'that I wasn't invited. I rarely am. To tell the truth, I can't stand these people. So literate and cultured and sterile. They don't know a thing; they're just stupid, rich, arrogant ' I'm not offending you at all am I?'
Eastleigh blushed slightly at the prospect, and also at the notion that someone was considering how he felt about something. He told Irving that he agreed.
'I do that,' Irving went on. 'Offend people, a lot. So few people I speak to agree with me. Probably because they're so often the object of my vitriolic ridicule.'
'Then why do you come to these things then, if you hate them so much?' Eastleigh asked.
'I might ask you the same thing. But you can't very well expect me to abandon Society, do you? Not when there's so much fun to be had.' After two minutes' conversation, Eastleigh had concluded that Irving was a madman. Fun? What fun? 'You really can get a lot of pleasure out of making mordant observations about people behind their backs. That's what writing is to me: thinly veiled attacks on people I know. If I can't judge them to their face, then at least I can judge them in caricature.'
'And that brings you happiness.' It was as much a statement as a question; Eastleigh tried to comprehend how someone could be spiteful and alienating for nothing but laughs.
'Sure. Do you read my ' no what a stupid question, of course you don't. Remember that fellow who thought I was a bit too "Aldous Huxley? Well, it so turned out ' Mr Black was his name ' that Mr Black was being a tad too liberal with his marriage vows. Don't ask me how I found this out; rumour mills have a wonderful sense of natural justice. Needless, "Mr White's Notorious Cavorts in Infidelity went quite well critically. I even got a favourable review from one of his mistresses, funnily enough. See, if you do things right, you get to people like these without their ever knowing it. And you have a good chuckle in the process; sometimes they even laugh along, like they know what the joke is all about.'
Eastleigh was impressed, to say the least. Finally, it appeared that there was someone who might possibly understand what it was to be surrounded by vain, empty-headed dilettantes who know nothing about emotion or personal depth. At last in this crowd into which Eastleigh had tried so hard to fit into, there was somebody worth knowing. Here was somebody whose name was worth remembering.
He tried to impress Irving, and asked genially, 'Would you like to see my personal library?'