The Transfiguration of W. H. Auden
“Alice is what, after many years of suffering and countless follies and errors, one would like, in the end, to become.”
W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden stared at himself in the mirror. “Dear, dear, Wystan,” he murmured. “Dear, dear.”
Friends were waiting. Let them wait. That’s what friends were for, to suffer. All pleasures faded with age, save one, the pleasure of being the cause of suffering in others.
Auden drank from the glass of gin that sat on the back of the water closet. It was poor gin, because Auden was a poor man. To be rich, or at least comfortable, was not beyond Wystan’s capabilities, but it was beyond his desire. There was a comfort in his wretchedness. He was free, after all, from the necessity of keeping up appearances, of pretending that he wished to be presentable, which he did not. It was pleasant to see people wince at the sight of him; it was worth even wearing glasses, which unfortunately obscured his hideous, rheumy eyes.
Auden chuckled over the word, displaying his stained dentures and unhealthy gums. He was a rheumy ruin. Those wrinkles! Certainly the worst in Christendom, a warning to all who might seek comfort in the flesh. Behold the true Christian, stinking of gin and filthy with tobacco. Auden held up a hand to display its thick, horny fingers and brutally gnawed nails, stained nicotine yellow, subdued to the narcotic that sustained him. Tobacco, even more than alcohol, and far more than sex—though sex retained its potency even now—was his refuge and consolation. One could always smoke, always. The stink of tobacco permeated every aspect of his existence, from his slippers to his soul.