The Razor's Edge

by W. Somerset Maugham

We had warned Isabel of our arriving, so I was not surprised to find a note from her awaiting me, but I was surprised at its contents: Come round the moment you get in. Something terrible has happened. Don’t bring Uncle Elliott. For God’s sake come as soon as you can. I am not less curious than anyone else, but I had to have a wash and put on a clean shirt; then I took a taxi and went around to the apartment in the Rue St. Guillaume.

“Who’s she?” “Don’t be so stupid,” cried Isabel, her eyes flashing with anger. That drunken slut we met at that filthy café you took us to. God knows why you took us to a place like that. Gray was disgusted.” “Oh, you mean your Chicago friend?” I said, ignoring her unjust reproach. “How d’you know?” “How should I know? He came and told me himself yesterday afternoon. I’ve been frantic ever since.”

“ ‘If I were you I wouldn’t waste my time on her,’ I said. “Then he smiled. You know how he smiles, as though he thought what you’d said funny, though it isn’t funny at all.” ‘But you’re not me,’ he said.

“How did you sacrifice yourself?” “I gave Larry up for the one and only reason that I didn’t want to stand in his way.” “Come off it, Isabel. You gave him up for a square-cut diamond and a sable coat.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when a plate of bread and butter came flying at my head. By sheer luck I caught the plate, but the bread and butter was scattered on the floor. I got up and put the plate back on the table. “Your uncle Elliott wouldn’t have thanked you if you’d broken one of his Crown Derby plates. They were made for the third Duke of Dorset and they’re almost priceless.” “Pick up the bread and butter,” she snapped. “Pick it up yourself,” I said, seating myself again on the sofa. She got up and, fuming, picked up the scattered pieces. “And you call yourself an English gentleman,” she exclaimed, savagely. “No, that’s a thing I’ve never done in all my life.” “Get the hell out of here. I never want to see you again. I hate the sight of you.” “I’m sorry for that, because the sight of you always gives me pleasure. Have you ever been told that your nose is exactly like that of the Psyche in the museum of Naples, and that’s the loveliest representation of virginal beauty that ever existed. You’ve got exquisite legs, so long and shapely, and I never cease to be surprised at them, because they were thick and lumpy when you were a girl. I can’t imagine how you’ve managed it.” “An iron will and the grace of God,” she said angrily. “But of course your hands are your...

“You won’t succeed. You see, he’s enthralled by one of the most powerful emotions that can beset the human breast.” “You don’t mean to say you think he’s in love with her?” “No. That would be trifling in comparison.” “Well?” “Have you ever read the New Testament?” “I suppose so.” “D’you remember how Jesus was led into the wilderness and fasted forty days? Then, when he was a-hungered, the devil came to him and said: If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But Jesus resisted the temptation. Then the devil set him on a pinnacle of the temple and said to him: If thou be the son of God, cast thyself down. For angels had charge of him and would bear him up. But again Jesus resisted. Then the devil took him into a high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world and said that he would give them to him if he would fall down and worship him. But Jesus said: Get thee hence, Satan. That’s the end of the story according to the good simple Matthew. But it wasn’t. The devil was sly and he came to Jesus once more and said: If thou wilt accept shame and disgrace, scourging, a crown of thorns and death on the cross, thou shalt save the human race, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Jesus fell. The devil laughed till his sides ached, for he knew the evil men would commit in the name of their redeemer.” Isabel looked at me indignantly. “Where on earth did you get that?” “Nowhere. I’ve invented it on the spu...

“A tear of zubrovka could do Monsieur no harm. It’s well known to be very good for the kidneys.

“I’ll have some sent round to the apartment.” “Oh, Uncle Elliott, would you?” cried Isabel enthusiastically. “You are so kind to us. You must try it, Gray; it smells of freshly mown hay and spring flowers, of thyme and lavender, and it’s soft on the palate and so comfortable, it’s like listening to music by moonlight.”

Because of all these ships and the ferryboats that take the bustling crowd to various points of the vast harbor, Toulon gives you the effect of a terminal on which all the ways of the wide world converge; and as you sit in a café, your eyes a little dazzled by the brightness of sea and sky, your fancy takes golden journeys to the uttermost parts of the earth. You land in a longboat on a coral beach, fringed with coconut palms, in the Pacific; you step off the gangway on to the dock at Rangoon and get into a rickshaw;

“Life’s hell anyway, but if there is any fun to be got out of it, you’re only a god-damn fool if you don’t get it.”

“A great honor, my dear fellow,” he said. “I shall enter the kingdom of heaven with a letter of introduction from a prince of the Church. I fancy that all doors will be open to me.” “I’m afraid you’ll find the company very mixed,” I smiled. “Don’t you believe it, my dear fellow. We know from Holy Writ that there are class distinctions in heaven just as there are on earth. There are seraphim and cherubim, archangels and angels. I have always moved in the best society in Europe and I have no doubt that I shall move in the best society in heaven. Our Lord has said: The House of my Father hath many mansions. It would be highly unsuitable to lodge the hoi polloi in a way to which they’re entirely unaccustomed.” I suspected that Elliott saw the celestial habitations in the guise of the châteaux of a Baron de Rothschild with eighteenth-century paneling on the walls, Buhl tables, marquetry cabinets, and Louis Quinze suites covered with their original petit-point. “Believe me, my dear fellow,” he went on after a pause, “there’ll be none of this damned equality in heaven.”

I had seen dead men when I was a medical student and I had seen many more during the war. What had dismayed me was how trifling they looked. There was no dignity in them. Marionettes that the showman had thrown into the discard.

“ ‘Our wise old Church,’ he said then, ‘has discovered that if you will act as if you believed belief will be granted to you; if you pray with doubt, but pray with sincerity, your doubt will be dispelled; if you will surrender yourself to the beauty of that liturgy the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon you.

‘A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?’

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

But why should we of the West, we Americans especially, be daunted by decay and death, hunger and thirst, sickness, old age, grief, and delusion? The spirit of life is strong in us. I felt more alive then, as I sat in my log cabin smoking my pipe, than I had ever felt before. I felt in myself an energy that cried out to be expended. It was not for me to leave the world and retire to a cloister, but to live in the world and love the objects of the world, not indeed for themselves, but for the Infinite that is in them. If in those moments of ecstasy I had indeed been one with the Absolute, then, if what they said was true, nothing could touch me and when I had worked out the karma of my present life I should return no more. The thought filled me with dismay. I wanted to live again and again. I was willing to accept every sort of life, no matter what its pain and sorrow; I felt that only life after life, life after life could satisfy my eagerness, my vigor, and my curiosity.

Antoine, the manservant, brought in a tray with an array of bottles, and Isabel, always tactful, knowing that nine men out of ten are convinced they can mix a better cocktail than any woman (and they are right), asked me to shake a couple. I poured out the gin and the Noilly-Prat and added the dash of absinthe that transforms a dry Martini from a nondescript drink to one for which the gods of Olympus would undoubtedly have abandoned their home-brewed nectar, a beverage that I have always thought must have been rather like Coca-Cola.

I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.