“Of course not. But sometimes it’s intelligent to be half-witted: if you want to make your end. Personally, I consider Bolshevism half-witted; but so do I consider our social life in the west half-witted. So I even consider our far-famed mental life half-witted. We’re all as cold as cretins, we’re all as passionless as idiots. We’re all of us Bolshevists, only we give it another name. We think we’re gods … men like gods! It’s just the same as Bolshevism. One has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist … for they are the same thing: they’re both too good to be true.”
Out of the disapproving silence came Berry’s anxious question:
“You do believe in love then, Tommy, don’t you?”
“You lovely lad!” said Tommy. “No, my cherub, nine times out of ten, no! Love’s another of those half-witted performances today. Fellows with swaying waists fucking little jazz girls with small boy buttocks, like two collar studs! Do you mean that sort of love? Or the joint-property, make-a-success-of-it, my-husband-my-wife sort of love? No, my fine fellow, I don’t believe in it at all!”
“But you do believe in something?”
“Me? Oh, intellectually I believe in having a good heart, a chirpy penis, a lively intelligence, and the courage to say ‘shit!’ in front of a lady.”
“Well, you’ve got them all,” said Berry.
Tommy Dukes roared with laughter. “You angel boy! If only I had! If only I had! No; my heart’s as numb as a potato, my penis droops and never lifts its head up, I dare rather cut him clean off than say ‘shit!’ in front of my mother or my aunt … they are real ladies, mind you; and I’m not really intelligent, I’m only a ‘mental-lifer.’ It would be wonderful to be intelligent: then one would be alive in all the parts mentioned and