THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 8

THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE

on Bernard Shaw Kuew It Too

F the several operations I have endured in my time, the one from which I have just recovered was, in a way, the least interesting. It was done with the assistance of a new anaesthetic -which spared me those fantastic and terrifying adventures of the mind I'd always had beneath the chloroform mask. And yet, though I say it was less interesting, that is true only of the theatre episode. Afterwards, it became an occasion of fascinating discovery and speculation. My first visitor was a good friend who had been through this kind of thing herself, and knew how to behave. She came in, if I remember correctly, chattering gaily to the nurse about the whole affair, as if it were a huge joke. "Brought you some books, dearie," she said, and pulled a teasing face. "Haven’t read one of them myself but Frank thought they’d be your kind of book." And when I had approved of her husband’s thoughtful selection we got talking. It wasn’t long before we were on that topic so dear to the victim of a surgical operation-his own experiences, "But didn’t they give you chloroform?" "Not a whiff. I had an injection. Marvellous. You don’t know a thing. I had some sort of preliminary jab in the arm an hour before, which they said would probably make me sleepy-but it didn’t -and then I just rode in on the trolley in the usual way-and they put the old pink bedsocks on my feet, you knowand then a tough nurse with her sleeves rolled up, and a look as if she’d stand no nonsense, told me to climb on the table. Then I lay there and started shivering with fright as usual and someone said’ something about it being only a prick in the arm. I think they put some sort of strap round my wrist, then there was the prick, and the doctor said "Count." I thought: "Count yourself!" and went on shaking all over. But he said, "Come on, count out loud," so I started counting slowly. I only got to six, though. He said something about there being no need to breathe like that

-I was heaving away the way I used to under chloroform to try and get it over quickly. When I got to about three I had a funny taste in my mouth. Then I think I got to six before I floated away. Perhaps I only think I did. At any rate I didn’t go under bit by bit from the feet up the way you do with chloroformy and have horrible nightmares on the way." The Riddle My visitor suffered my loquacity with a sweet patience. But she seemed a little disappointed. "Then you didn’t solve the Riddle of the Universe?" "The Riddle of the Universe?" I said, and sat up a little. "What makes you say that?" My tone was the tone of interest and surprise, because in fact I did know something about the Riddle from a prees operation. But I wanted to know what my visitor knew first. "My dear," she said, "didn’t you dream you were just going to solve the Riddle of the Universe when they put you under? Didn’t you see the Ultimate Truth wrapped in a silver ball, coming nearer and nearer, and just as you were going to snatch it-poof! out you went?" I was delighted by this speech. At last, I thought, here was someone I could talk to, one other who would understand the Secret of my Soul. I tried to prop myself up on my elbows. A jolt of pain made me sink back. I sighed, and accepted the necessity of telling my tale on the flat of my back. "Astonishing you should say that," I said. "I had no idea anyone else had these experiences. Nothing happened this time, but I once dreamt I saw the doctor who was supposed to be giving my anaesthetic, on the clothes line on our back lawn-it was right through him, starting at his navel. He was riding backwards and forwards on it, banging the post at one end, then banging the trellis at the other, and going faster and faster. Mother must have left the prop on the ground. And he was talking, and his voice got unbearably loud and he started racing, faster, and faster. And he was going to melt like the tigers that turned into butter in Little Black Sambo, and I knew that when that happened’ I was going to know Everything. I was going to know Why. Oh, but it was dreadful;

the moment never came. Instead I just woke up feeling awful and started being sick, What Time Was "Then the last time I had chloroform I was a red-hot ball-bearing between two enormous plates about as thick as the world and as wide as from here to the moon, both going round and round like butter pats, and I realised that I almost knew what Time was. I was going to defeat Time, and control it. A small piece of Time was being taken right out of my life, so that it would be in two parts for ever afterwards, slightly different, like two scales in a Vernier, and I would be able to compare. these two slightly different specimens of Time, and after that I would always know the answer to everything." My loquacity was still endured with a good humour. My visitor knew that I would get excited and develop a temperature if she tried to interrupt and add to my story. In spite of my morphia, I perceived this forbearance. But it was curiosity, and not courtesy that made me say: "And you've had these experiences too, have you?" "Indeed I have. I told you, I. saw the Ultimate Truth coming .towards me wrapped in a silver ball, and just as I was going to take it, away I went. One of the nurses told me people sometimes start shouting ‘I’ve found it-I’ve it’ and so on.’ I can hardly say how deeply affected I was by these revelations. When my visitor had gone, I began to Believe in

Myself. My whole person relaxed, and my mind soothed itself with contemplation of harmonies of the soul hitherto unheard of. The light blue screen by my bed became a brilliant summer sky; the pale green walls became a calm sea; and the plaster ceiling became beautiful cumulus clouds across the ocean. The bedclothes were shining sand, and I was lying there by the sea at peace with the whole world . Shaw in the Theatre Next day I was fit to read. I picked up one of my books. It was Volume 11 of Bernard Shaw’s Collected Dramatic (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Opinions and Essays, the kind of thing you could dip into without becoming committed to go on by some teasing plot that made you wonder what would happen next. I opened it near the very end. Well, you know how your own name will catch your eye instantly if it’s on a page in front of you. It wasn’t my name, in this case. It was the. word "anaesthetic." I read: "Then the effect of the anaesthetic passed away more and more; and in less than an hour I was an honest taxpayer again... ." At once I turned back to the beginning of that’ essay, and what did I see there but the opening sentence beginning with a great big capital E like this: "T-UREKA! I have found it out at last. I now understand the British drama and the British actor... ." How can I describe the profound emotions with which I read on? It turned out that Shaw had had an operation on his foot, and it was to the anaesthetic that he owed the discovery that made him cry Eureka! But in his case it was the process of recovering that was interesting. "For then a very strange thing happened. My character did not all come back at once. Its artistic and sentimental side came first: its morality, its positive elements, its commonsense, its incorrigible Protestant respectability, did not return for a long time after. For the first time in my life I tasted the bliss of having no morals to restrain me from lying, and no sense of reality to restrain me from romancing. I overflowed with what people call ‘heart.’ I acted and lied in. the most touchingly sympathetic fashion; I felt prepared to receive unlimited kindness from everybody with the deepest, tenderest gratitude; and I was totally incapable of even conceiving the notion of rendering anyone a service myself... . 1 carefully composed little ravings, and repeated them, and then started again and let my voice die away, without an atom of shame .. .. Then the effect of the anaesthetic passed away more and more; and in less than an hour I was an honest taxpayer again, with my heart perfectly well in hand... ." Reproducible Miracle And so Shaw had discovered, in May, 1898, how to understand from their own point of view the life and world of those critics of his who said he had no heart, and. of those other playwrights of that time: "At last I can speak of it at first hand + + » » What is more, I know how to reproduce the miracle at will as certainly as if I the wishing-cap of Siegfried. My wishing-cap is a bag of ether. With that, J can plunge into the darkness that existed before my birth and be simply nothing. Then zee namae Fe pe tee Peet fps.» sone of feeling-as everything I have so bitterly reproached for not being. I can prolong that condition indefinitely by taking a whiff or two of ether whenever I feel the chill of a moral or intellectual impulse. I can write plays in it; I can act in it; I can gush in it... and finally I can come back to full consciousness and criticise myself as I was in it." ‘ ; Well, what are you going to do about it. I, for my part, am going to organise | a league to urge that world leaders should undergo progressive courses of anaesthesia-with chloroform, not injec-tions-in the belief that ‘the law of averages will eventually disclose to them the Riddle of the Moment-whlt is to be done with the atomic bomb. |

NEMO