The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley
dark little room on the ground floor in Greek Street. The landlady was some kind of Southerner with a dash of black blood. Her face told us that she was exactly the kind of woman we wanted.
We paid the taxi. Cockie was very restless. He wanted to get the man to do what we wanted. He was itching all over, but he was afraid. We sat down on the bed, and began to make plans.
August 21
I don't remember anything. I must have gone off suddenly to sleep as I was. Cockie is out....
He has been going round town all night ; the clubs and that. He got two sniffs from Mabel Black ; but she was shy herself. He and Dick Wickham went down to Limehouse. No luck I They nearly got into a row with some sailors....
Madame Bellini has brought breakfast. Horrible, beastly food. We must eat some ; I'm so weak....
She came in to clear it away and do the room. I got her talking about her life. She has been in England nearly thirty years, I worked round to the interesting subject. She doesn't know much about it. She thinks she can help. One of the women lodgers injects. She asked could we pay. It's really rather comic. Eight thousand a year and one of the most beautiful houses near London. And here we are in this filthy hole being asked "can we pay!" by a hag that never saw a sovereign in her life unless she stole it from some drunken client.
Cockie seems to have lost his sense. He flashed a fifty-pound note in her face. It was because he was angry at her attitude. She rather shut up. Either she thinks we're police spies or she's made up her mind to rob us.
The sight of the cash knocked her out of time ! It destroyed her sense of proportion. It put all her ideas of straight dealing out of her mind. Her manner changed. She went off.
Pete told me to go and see the dope girl myself. It's the first time he ever spoke to me like that. All sexual feeling is dead between us. We've tried to work up the old passion. It was artificial, horrible, repulsive ; a degradation and a blasphemy. Why is it ? The snow intensified love beyond every possibility. Yet I love him more than ever. He's my boy. I think he must be ill. I wish I weren't so tired. I'm not looking after him properly, and I can't think about anything except getting H. I don't seem to mind so much about C. I never liked C. much. It made me dizzy and ill.
We have no amusements now. We get through the day in a dark, dreary dream. I can't fix my mind on anything. The more I want H. the less I am able to think and act as I should to get anything else I wanted.
Cockie went out slamming the door. It swung open again.
I couldn't go to the woman like this. I've written this to try to keep from crying.
But I am crying, only the tears won't come.
I'm snivelling like a woman I once saw when I visited the hospital.
I haven't got a handkerchief.
I can't bring myself to wash in that dirty cracked basin. We've brought no soap. The towel's soiled and torn. I must have some H....
I've just been to see Lillie Fitzroy. How can men give her money ? Her hair is gray, crudely dyed. She has wrinkles and rotten teeth. She was in bed, of course. I shook her roughly to wake her. I've lost every feeling for others, and people see it, and it spoils my own game. I must pretend to have the kindness and gentleness which I used to have so much; which used to make people think me an amiable fool.
Some one told me once that adjectives spoilt nouns in literature, and you can certainly cut out that one.
She's a good sort, all the same, poor flabby old thing. She only takes M., and only gets that in solution ready to inject. She saw I was all in, and gave me a dose in the thigh. It doesn't touch the spot like H., but it stops the worst of the suffering. She never gets up till tea-time. I left her a fiver. She promised to see what she could do that night with the man who gets it for her.
She got very affectionate in a sentimental, motherly style, told me the story of her life, and so on, for ever it seemed. Of course, I had to pretend to be interested to keep her in good humour. Everything might depend on that.
But it was awful to have to let her kiss me when I went away. I wonder if I should get like that if I went on with dope.
What absolute nonsense ! For all I know, it may have prevented her going faster still. She must have had a beastly rotten life. The way she clawed at that five quid was the clue to her troubles ; that and her ignorance of everything but the nastiest kind of vice and the meanest kind of crime.
The morphine has certainly done me a world of good. I am quite myself. I feel it by the way I am writing this entry. I have a quiet impersonal point of view. I have got back my sense of proportion. I can think of things consecutively and I feel physically much stronger, but I've got very sleepy again....
Joy ! Cockie has just come in full of good news. He looks fine-as fine as he feels. He had a sample from a pedlar he met in the Wisteria. It's absolutely straight stuff. Pulled him round in a second. There are two of them in it ; the man with the dope and the sentry. They talk business in the lavatory, and if another man comes in, the pedlar disappears. In case of real danger, he gets rid of his sample in a flash beyond any possibility of being traced. The loss is trifling ; they can buy the stuff at a few shillings an ounce and sell it for I don't know how many times its weight in gold.
We shall have a great night to-night !
August 22 A hellish night !
Cockie kept his date with the pedlar, got ten pounds' worth of H. and fifteen of C., and the H. was nothing at all and the C., so adulterated that we took the whole lot and it was hardly worth talking about.
What filthy mean beasts people are !.
How can men take advantage of the bitter needs of others ? It was the same in the war with the profiteers. It's always been the same.
I am writing this in a Turkish bath. I couldn't stand that loathsome house any more. It has done me lots of good. The massage has calmed my nerves. I slept for a long while, and a cup of tea has revived me.
I tried to read a paper, but every line opens the wound. They seem to have gone mad about dope....
I suppose it's really quite natural. I remember my father telling me once that the inequality of wealth and all the trickery of commerce arose from artificial restriction.
Last night's swindle was made possible by the great philanthropist jabez Platt. His Diabolical Dope Act has created the traffic which he was trying to suppress. It didn't exist before except in his rotten imagination....
I get such sudden spells of utter weariness. Dope would put me right. Nothing else has any effect. Everything that happens makes me want a sniff ; and every sniff makes something happen. One can't get away from the cage, but the complexity makes me... there, I can't think what I started to say. My mind stops suddenly. It's like dropping a vanity bag. You stop to pick it up and the things are all over the place and it always seems as if something were missing. One can never remember what it is, but the feeling of annoyance is acute. It's mixed up with a vague fear. I've often forgotten things before--every one does all the time, but it doesn't bother one.
But now, every time that I remember that I've forgotten something, I wonder whether it's H. or C. or mixing the two that is messing up my mind.
My mind keeps on running back to that American nigger we met in Naples. He said snow made people " flighty and sceptical." It was such a queer expression. By sceptical he meant suspicious, I think. Anyhow, I've got that way. Flighty-I can't keep my mind on things like I could, except, of course, the one thing. And even that is confused. It's not a clear thought. It's an ache and a fear and a pain-and a sinister rapture. And I am suspicious of everybody I see.
I wonder if they think I'm taking it, and if they can do something horrid. I'm always on the look-out for people to play me some dirty trick, but that isn't a delusion at all. I've seen more meanness and treachery since the night I met Cockie than I knew in the rest of my life.
We seem to have got into a bad set somehow. And yet, my oldest friends-I can't trust them like I did. They're all alike. I