Or the Dialogue Had Twixt Cyril and Vivian In the Former’s Garden
Cyril and Vivian were very good friends.
They were the queerest sort of friends. You yourself, doubtless, have a friend of the same sort, who behaves to you in the most horribly unfriendly of ways, and yet whom you are powerless to remove yourself from. There is something immediately disarming about them which dismisses the idea without fail. You try, time and time again, to extricate yourself, but they offer some odd parting comment, or a last hint of their truest self, and you glimpse, for a moment, a reality so unlike your own. And you can not help yourself but remain. You must. They are too pleasurable to listen to. And if you do ever part– and you may not –it is only after many hours, many drinks, and many bruises upon your sanity. Cyril and Vivian were friends of this awful sort.
In understanding them, you must know only that Cyril is rich and mad, and Vivian is rich and usual– as much as any rich man can be. If the rest of this work is impenetrable to you, that will suffice as perfectly tolerable explanation for it, and you may leave having understood it wholly.
If the rest of this work is not impenetrable to you, and is, perhaps, somewhat penetrable, you may begin your penetrating now.
Vivian was in the absolute habit of coming to Cyril’s home, and never the other way around. It was unthinkable, that Cyril should come to Vivian’s home. Cyril, for one, never came to anyone’s home besides his own. He did not see the point in it. He had a home at home, and it was always better than anyone else’s. It had his bed, and he liked his bed. It had his parlour, and he liked his parlour. It had his garden. And Cyril loved nothing if not his garden. So Cyril never would come to Vivian’s home in the first place.
But there is more to it than this, for it is not only that Cyril did not come to Vivian’s home. He did not come to Vivian. He had no use for it. Vivian offered nothing to Cyril but a willing audience, and Cyril found it slightly more palatable to hear his own voice when he knew he was speaking to an eager listener– what is more, to an eager interlocutor: Cyril wanted nothing more than to be humored. He was never humored. So when it was that Vivian desired Cyril’s company, he arrived unannounced, they took their dinner together, and they smoked in Cyril’s garden, and the entire time, they talked. When it was that Cyril desired Vivian’s company, he would send a cryptic and passive-aggressive letter. And in this way they got on for quite some time.
It was absolutely idyllic, but the weakness of such a habitual relationship is that one can not divide one day from another. There were, from time to time, weeks where Vivian had arrived, unannounced, at Cyril’s doorstep every single day, and ate, and smoked, and talked, and did not depart until the next morning. And yet, without fault, he would return the same evening and they would continue. And when living such a way, how am I to know when they spoke and what they spoke of? Doubtless they would retread the same subject over and over again, tirelessly fighting the same battles, and each time treasuring the other’s turns of phrase as if they were not ancient and worn. There were probably days immediately succeeding one another where they had nearly the same conversation, one to the other, with the same errors and surprises, and had not noticed at all. So I can not tell when this conversation occurred. Do not ask me. I think it had been around the war in Crimea, for Vivian had been deeply moved by the conflict, and would not stop bringing it up. But I know nothing more. There is nothing distinct about this dialogue. The day was not any different from any of the other hundred they had spoken. There is no reason it should be remembered. It is merely Cyril’s philosophy, expressed neatly, and cleanly, and in his garden. And if Cyril should be remembered for anything, it should be his garden.
Whatever day it had been been, it began in this way:
Vivian arrived at Cyril’s doorstep unannounced.
You may say, surely it began otherwise? It began at midnight, and Vivian surely did not arrive at Cyril’s doorstep at midnight! You are correct. But consider how slow a day is, when you have nothing to do but read the paper and bother your awful friends. It is very slow. And so, for both the gentlemen, it did not begin until Vivian arrived at Cyril’s doorstep, and was let in by Cyril’s weathered, sere, deeply elderly majordomo. Cyril should, reasonably, have had more servants. But he did not. His house budget had gone entirely to groundskeepers and gardeners. And so, the majordomo, who was only still working– and in all likelihood, still alive –out of sheer stubbornness, took Vivian’s coat, and directed him to the drawing room where Cyril had been having his coffee.
Cyril drank coffee. Vivian drank tea. This is one of their many irreconcilable differences.
And the majordomo brought Vivian his tea, and refilled Cyril’s coffee, and the two of them sat there and talked while the majordomo and several groundskeepers he had menaced prepared dinner.
I will skip their pleasantries, because neither Cyril nor Vivian were particularly pleasant people. They greeted, Vivian commented on the weather, and Cyril said the following:
“Do you know, Vivian, I’ve been thinking.”
“Have you, Cyril?”
“I have, Vivian. I have, actually, for most of my life. But recently, Vivian, I was thinking. I was thinking in my Garden.”
“It’s your favorite place to think, Cyril.”
“It is, Vivian. You know me well. A little too well. It imperils me, how well you know me. But I have come to terms with that, too, because I have been thinking. Do you know something, Vivian?”
“I know a few things, Cyril.”
Cyril did not laugh, as a general rule. But he smiled, in his odd, Cyrilic way, and this was how Vivian knew a joke had landed. It was Cyril’s only way of indicating this. Cyril did not generally smile, and when he did, it was solely from amusement. He closed his eyes, and tasted some thought or another. And Cyril spoke, and said:
“Do you know about snails?”
Speaking to Cyril did not by necessity make one a sharp conversationalist– Cyril himself was a rather poor conversationalist. He merely said what came to his mind. And there was nothing particularly enjoyable in Cyril’s mind. It did, however, make one into a fluid conversationalist, for Cyril, when a thought had occurred to him, would bring the conversation there, and one could not speak to him on any subject which he did not desire. One accommodated, or fell silent. Vivian, in all cases, accommodated. And, smiling, he replied. Vivian, in contrast to Cyril, was always smiling. It was a bright, sharp, vulpine smile. He stopped smiling only when he was amused, and at such times, his expression turned into one of dimly glowing interest.
“Why, Cyril, I know a number of things about snails. I know that they have shells, and produce mucus, and I imagine they eat leaves or something similarly trivial.” Vivian inclined his head, slightly, towards the glass window through which was Cyril’s perfectly manicured garden. “I suppose, sir, they live in gardens. Is that so?”
Cyril listened, eye-lidded, while Vivian listed his knowledge of snails, and nodded ruminatively at his question.
“You are almost correct, Vivian. But snails do not only eat leaves, or live only in gardens. I have been observing them very closely. And I have learned things from snails that have eluded the philosophers for many hundreds of years. I know snails now very intimately. I would say– I can not say this, Vivian, but I would say, you see –that I know every mark upon the shell of a snail as well as– nay, Vivian, better than –I know my own mother’s face. But I can not say this. Every snail’s shell is entirely and distinctly its own. They are perfectly sculpted things. But the psyche of a snail? Every snail has an ideology– a philosophy –and that is identical between them. And I am now an expert in such a philosophy. I understand it completely. I have cannibalized it and made it my own. And I am right to do so. I know now, Vivian, that I am a sort of saint.” Cyril paused, and regarded a spot on the ceiling. “I flatter myself, Vivian, that I am a prophet.”
“How did you learn the ideology of snails?”
“Observation. Close study.” A pause. “Theological discourses.”
“You discoursed,” asked Vivian, “with a snail?”
“I discoursed,” answered Cyril, “with many snails. A horrendous quantity. It is very unpleasant to discourse with many snails. They dogpile upon you. They browbeat and strawman. They are not so eloquent as they are wise, Vivian. But through me their doctrines can be better distilled, and you may have the pleasure of hearing them in a method as delightful as they are profound. I would like to show you something, Vivian. Come to the garden with–”
But just then entered the majordomo, and dinner was ready, and if the two gentlemen could please eat it with all haste,
And Vivian and Cyril went to the dining room.
“What is it you would like to show me, Cyril?”
“It can wait, Vivian. Please. Eat your food. Douglas worked extremely hard to prepare it for you.”
Cyril’s majordomo was not named Douglas, but in these days it was considered unbecoming for a majordomo to correct his master upon the subject of his name, and so the fiction continued. Vivian thanked Douglas, who was standing dutifully at the room’s door, and made a good show of enjoying his food, which was entirely subpar. It was cooked by an ancient majordomo and several press-ganged groundskeepers. One can not blame Douglas for this. Vivian returned his attention to Cyril.
“Cyril?”
“Yes, Vivian?”
“What is the philosophy of snails?”
“The snail philosophy, Vivian?”
“That’s the one, Cyril.”
“Ah. It is an elegant one, sir. And a simple one. Most elegant things are simple, Vivian.” Cyril was chewing a tough piece of beef, then, and it was not clear if he was pausing to think or to focus on his masticating. “Most simple things are elegant, too, I think,” said Cyril at some length. “But I fear misrepresenting it by merely describing it to you. It is a philosophy, Vivian, which deserves to be seen.” Vivian nodded, and in lieu of snail philosophy, attempted to discuss their mutual friend Percy Llewig, who had recently been bucked by his horse, stabbed by his footman, poisoned by his mistress’s husband, and was now in bed with the fever. This had all happened within four days, and Vivian intended the anecdote as a minor diversion.
“A horrible string of things, wouldn’t you say, Cyril?” But Cyril, who had not a minute before expressed his disinterest in discussing snail philosophy further, blurted immediately:
“Why, Vivian, what is so horrible about it? Snail philosophy, I have observed, answers all questions, and answers this one perfectly, also. Why did the footman stab Mr. Llewig, Vivian?”
“I can not know, Cyril.”
“I shall put a simple potential to you, Vivian: He wanted so. Is that not a reasonable assumption?”
“I suppose, Cyril, people only do what they want to do.”
“You are wrong, Vivian. People generally do not do anything they want to do. But, in matters of such dramatic energy, such as in a stabbing, it is most reasonable that they wanted, truly and deeply, to do so. In that we can agree, I think.” Vivian nodded. Cyril continued.
“But this is only half of why the footman stabbed Mr. Llewig, Vivian. Do you know the other half?”
“I can not, as I said, Cyril, know the first half, let alone the second.”
“The answer, Vivian, is that it was within his power to do so. It is a sensible thing, no? If it was not within his power to stab Percy, then he would not have done it. It would not have occurred. It would’ve been impossible.” This last word Cyril spake as if it were a slur. “He would merely have attempted” (this said with the same inflection of contempt) “to stab him. And that is a wholly different thing, Vivian. Is it not?”
“I suppose it is, Cyril.” Vivian tactfully spat a piece of firm meat into his napkin. And then, “What do you suppose should be done with him?”
“With Percy?”
“With the footman, Cyril.”
“That, Vivian, requires information we do not have. Was the footman trying to murder Percy? That, to me, is the critical question. Was he trying only to stab him, or to stab him in such a way as ended his life?”
“I think,” said Vivian, with a broad smile— for Vivian, broad smiles were symbols of consternation — “that it would be a very queer thing for a man to stab someone and not intend to kill them.”
“So you suggest that it was a failed murder attempt, as we know Mr. Llewig to be recovering now in bed?”
“I do, sir.”
“Then the footman has done a wicked thing and should be punished accordingly, provided we could discover some sort of proof that his intention had been to kill his master. Of course, if the evidence should suggest to the contrary, and he has not intended that at all, and had merely wanted to give him a stabbing of the sort he gave, it is the master that should be punished.”
The two gentlemen had now finished as much of their dinners as they could palate, which was a very minuscule amount, and as Douglas cleared the table, Vivian asked:
“How is it you’ve figured that?”
But Cyril had already stood and made for the garden, and Vivian had no choice but to follow.
In the garden, Vivian repeated his question, and Cyril did not answer. He instead studied the boxwood just off the start of his garden path, turning about and regarding it from different frenzied angles as if searching. He maintained this course until Douglas shortly emerged, and offering a long, perfumed cigarette to his master and to Vivian, he relaxed briefly and took a long drag.
These cigarettes, odd and imported, smelled far more like incense than anything else, and it was a pleasant air that now settled over the garden, even as the gentlemen’s breath and fingertips began to adopt an acrid and chemical scent. They studiously ignored this. Cyril took another long drag, and said to Vivian,
“It is like this:”
And leaning down to the boxwood once more, and holding out a ginger hand, he rose with a small, brown-shelled snail upon the black cloth of his gloved palm. He held the snail out for Vivian to inspect. They looked rather ordinary. They were a small creature, with a pale off-white body crowned by a spiraled, swirling little shell, the color of autumn leaves once they had been thoroughly slain and tamped down. They were handsome, probably, amongst snails, for they were a slight fraction larger than Vivian thought most snails ought to be. Amongst snails, largeness correlates closely to power, and power equates entirely to beauty.
“It is like this:” Cyril said again. “Do you know what law I have observed in snails? Aiwass, here,” for that, it seemed, was the snail’s name, “has told me much of snail law. It reflects their singular and universal philosophy. It reflects a sort of snailen cosmology that I have begun, though in an amateur and puerile way— like a solicitor’s child holding his bag in imitation of his father’s case —to imitate. Let me tell you what Aiwass would say of your Percy Llewig. He would say, what is the desire of the servant? What is the desire of the master? Did the master desire to be stabbed? We can say, I think, that surely he did not, Vivian. Few men desire to be stabbed, and only very rarely in such a context. But also, he did not desire to die, we can quite assume. We must assume. Just as it is a tenet of communication and language that our listeners can be assumed to listen, we must take it as a fundamental tenet of life that our opponents can be assumed to oppose. So one of these two things was the crux of his disagreement with that man; all of life is disagreement, Vivian. That is what Aiwass has taught me. So what was the disagreement? Was it a man who wished to stab and a man who wished to be unstabbed? Or a man who wished to kill and a man who wished not to die? They are different moral questions, Vivian.”
“Well yes, Cyril,” Vivian said. “They are very different moral questions, because to kill a man is worse than to stab him for its own sake.”
“No, Vivian, you do not understand at all. Do not interrupt. There is no innate wrongness in stabbing or killing a man. When the world is as it is, how could there be an innate wrongness in anything? You have missed it entirely, Vivian. The question, sir, is which man has won. In the case of a conflict oriented around stabbing, the footman had the desire to stab, and more importantly— listen, please, Vivian, this is the important bit —had the power to perform the stabbing. If he had stabbed another person whom he did not want to stab, it would be entirely a wicked thing. If he had attempted to stab, and that was his sole desire, but failed through some trial of arms at the final hour, that would be an even more wicked transgression. But, as I have observed in my garden, and been instructed by Aiwass, here,” for Aiwass clung still and unmoving to Cyril’s glove, “the question is alone whether or not the footman has accomplished his true aim. I think it likeliest that he has not. You are correct in your earlier remark, Vivian: it would be a queer thing to stab a man without the wish that he dies. And so, in their battle, the footman is vanquished— his whim dispelled and made subservient to the will of his master, who likely does not wish to be stabbed, I infer, but tolerates it as a simple byproduct— a minor casualty —of the war for his own life, in which his desire is to survive, and his power, evidently, is to achieve that end.”
Vivian digested all of this, and at some length questioned that the footman may not have been successful with some small turn of luck, and the master unsuccessful if another man’s strength and power had been unable to deliver him from his assailant.
“Ah,” responded Cyril, “Ah, but what is power? Is luck not the power of the lucky man? Are allies not the power of the influential one? These things both were within the men’s power, Vivian. The luckier footman would’ve been a more powerful footman, and perhaps succeeded. The less influential master would’ve had less allies to save him, and been a less powerful master, and perhaps failed and lost his life. And that consequence, Vivian, would have been utterly deserved.”
“For what cause is it deserved, Cyril?”
“Because, Vivian, the master resisted, and to lack the power to defeat your adversary in a contest you have accepted is a sin. Penitence, Vivian, is submission to the victor.”
“And Aiwass here believes this?”
“In that he is an icon of his kind.”
“What need have snails for such a cruel and violent philosophy?”
“What need has man for truth, Vivian? It is a correct philosophy, and so they adhere to it. But your point is well taken, and the lethal riposte to it is that the garden is a cruel and violent place. What do you suppose happens, Vivian, if Aiwass performs altruism? He starves or is eaten. And in having accepted the struggle of life, he therefore fails it. And failure, Vivian, is the most wicked sin. It is for this reason that snails avoid it at any possible cost.”
The two gentlemen stood and smoked in silence, and Aiwass crawled slowly into the sleeve of Cyril’s coat, and was not seen again.
“So the moral act is the one which can be done?” said Vivian, having watched Aiwass’s transit with some growing boredom.
“No. Many acts can be done which are immoral. The moral act is the act which the actor wishes to be, and has the power to perform. The immoral act is the act which the actor wishes to be, but does not have the power to perform, or alternatively, the act which the actor does not wish to be, and does not have the power to prevent.”
“What of the acted?”
And at this, Cyril smiled, and said to Vivian,
“There is no ‘acted’. Life is a pantomime, and the living are its actors. One who seems acted upon is not acted upon. He is merely counter-acting. To seem to be acted upon, this is an illusion arising from a severe failure, and consequently is the cardinal sin within snail philosophy.”
“It seems, Cyril, that surely people do what they want, and so those who do things at all are moral, and those who do not are immoral.”
“Your error, Vivian, is an obvious one. People do not do what they want. It is the rarest thing in the world for a person to do when they actually want. But a snail? They attempt nothing but what they want. It is part of their wonderful philosophy. When they would like to eat, they eat. If they fail to do so, they are sinners, and their God punishes them with starvation.”
“Their God is different than ours?”
“We do not worship their God, but we are within their demesne.”
“Do you worship now this God, Cyril?”
“I do not. But I glorify them, and that is a sort of worship. In every expression of power I glorify them. Power, Vivian, justifies itself. Power invites and demands its own usage. And to be used in accordance with the desire of the empowered, this, Vivian, is next to saintliness.”
“Are we, who could at whim destroy this garden and the snails within, more powerful than they? If we desired to do so and did so, would we be more virtuous?”
Cyril took a long drag of his dying cigarette, and smiled.
“Power, Vivian, is control over one’s own world. And in this matter snails are expert.”
Vivian nodded at this. Finally, he probed the weakest point in Cyril’s logic.
“Cyril?”
“Yes, Vivian?”
“What of the apparently evil horrors daily faced? Are the atrocities levied upon sleeping children and so on not wretched irregardless of the whim and power of their doers? What of the war raging just now?”
“Which one, Vivian?”
“The war in Crimea? I sent you the charity address? You promised, Cyril, that you would donate t-“
“Ah, yes! Yes, I remember, Vivian. Well, you have answered your own question, sir. It is in Crimea.”
“How do you mean?”
“Snail philosophy does not leave the garden, Vivian. My garden is here. There is no utility for it elsewhere. It does not work beyond my arches.”
“Is this not a limited sort of ideology, Cyril? That it can exist only in your garden?”
“We must cultivate our garden, Vivian.”
“Voltaire?”
“No. Aiwass.”
“Please answer the question, Cyril.”
“It would be a limited ideology, Vivian. But my garden is not limited. It is quite unlimited, in all fact. For the mind can make a garden of Crimea and a Crimea of the garden. It is my wish at times that all the cosmos should be nothing more than my garden— our world but a leaf on Aiwass’s boxwood tree, which he claimed through his power and in accordance with his own will —and it is in my power to fulfill that wish. Morally, Vivian, I can not do otherwise.”
“Then, Cyril, if the war rages in your garden, the children—“
“The snails, Vivian. Snails.”
Vivian huffed. He was smiling very intensely, and Cyril knew this was a sign of his absolute upset.
“I shall demonstrate to you, Vivian. Please, behold.” And Cyril closed his eyes, and all the world was his garden. In the far reaches of distant Crimea, he saw snails battling, their long and slimy necks hurtling into one another’s like those of warring seals, the shells of the weak shattering like church glass, the flesh of the weak melting in raining salt like chemical fire, the lungs of the weak— for Cyril imagined snails had lungs, and I know not if he is correct in this —shriveling as they fill forever with toxins more powerful than their own, and the powerful prevailing, across the cosmos, killing, thieving, consuming, each world but one branch of an emerald and verdant boxwood, each leaf claimed by a sovereign snail, coated with the blood and shell shards of his inferiors, and Cyril whispered aloud.
“Aiwass…. Aiwass…. How wonderful is our God!”
Vivian showed himself out that day, and returned for supper the next.