Helen and Desire by Alexander Trocchi

Author:Alexander Trocchi [Trocchi, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Erotic, Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9780857869425
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 1954-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

INSERTION BY MAJOR PIERRE JAVET, ADJUTANT, GHARDAÏA.

I regret the necessity of having to interrupt the account of Mlle. Helen Smith at this point. Unfortunately, there appear to be a number of sheets missing from the manuscript.

The Arab denies all knowledge of these missing pages. He found the manuscript, he says, as it stands. All our attempts at ‘persuasion’ have been of no avail. Thus, at a critical point in the amazing document, we are left, to risk a figure of speech, ‘in the air!’ In the water, rather, for the small aircraft must have hit the water to have somersaulted in such a manner.

This is unfortunate in two ways. In the first place, the continuity of the woman’s trek across the desert with the caravan is interrupted. When we take her up again, she seems to be installed in what I imagine is some kind of brothel, and we are thus deprived of pages in which the last stages of her journey might, through her descriptions, have taken on real geographical reference. That is to say, she might have described some well-known landmark whose presence in the manuscript would have led us to trace her whereabouts quickly and efficiently. As it is, progress in our investigations is, at least temporarily, blocked.

Secondly, the continuity of the document as it pertains to her crash into a shark-infested sea with the young naval officer, Hawkes, and her subsequent appearance in the middle of India, is broken. How she escaped from that plight, and whether or not Hawkes perished (this latter appears likely because of a later reference in the manuscript to the young pilot) we shall perhaps never know.

An interesting sequel, however. Information passed on to the British government about the character Chen has already led to his arrest and conviction on a charge of wide-scale opium smuggling in southeast Asia. Other facts have already been checked by the various governments concerned and every item of information (e.g. the burning alive in a barn not far from Sydney of a man called Tony Sulla, next to whose body was found a branding iron, and in whose flat was discovered correspondence which led to many subsequent arrests) has been corroborated.

Thus, I feel, it would be stupid to doubt the veracity of the document. Literally, everything capable of corroboration has been subsequently corroborated. As for the character and inclinations of the protagonist herself, I should count myself fortunate indeed to be able to corroborate that for myself!

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