The Green Knight

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘You mean – detective work.’

  ‘No, just watching and enquiring in a friendly manner and coming to certain conclusions which you might be interested to hear – ’

  ‘No doubt as a result of your disability, you are beginning to ramble. May I suggest again that a gift of money may be in order? Within my means of course, or a gift or indemnification of some sort, something positively good, may I put it so, to compensate you, even symbolically, for the distress I have accidentally caused you? Please think about what I am saying. By thus accepting something from me you would bring relief to both of us. I realise that your mind is not entirely clear – ’

  ‘I am not interested in symbolic compensation. It is true that I have to some extent lost my power to concentrate, and with it my ability to work, that is to do the difficult and valuable work to which I was dedicated, and thus, to put it briefly, my life has been ruined.’

  ‘I am very sorry, but I have neither the time nor the talent to act as your therapist. For that you must go elsewhere.’

  ‘I am really following our conversation very carefully and do not, contrary to your belief, think that it is getting nowhere. You have, perhaps inadvertently, given me quite a lot of valuable information. You keep expressing a wish to get rid of me and have twice offered me money. I have told you that I do not want money and have explained that I have lost forever a job which I prized – ’

  Clement, from the back of the room, said, ‘What was your job?’

  Mir paused. Then said, ‘I am, or rather I was, a psychoanalyst. I hesitated to tell you, since not everyone likes psychoanalysts. And I do not want to be told, physician heal thyself. Of course neither of you would suggest anything so silly. Anyway, leaving this aside, let me continue with my explanation. You recall that when you asked me at the end of our last encounter what I wanted, I said “restitution”, and when you queried this I said “justice”. Well, since you seem to be giving consideration to what I want, let me repeat that what I want is justice.’

  Mir had turned his chair somewhat sideways so as to include Clement in his observations, and every now and then turned towards him. Clement, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, was listening intently to the conversation which was becoming more and more baffling. Lucas was leaning back impassively, speaking softly and clearly. His yellowish thin-eyed thin-lipped face expressed a weary, sometimes faintly amused, obduracy, as of someone, capable of ruthlessness, temperately addressing a tiresome child. At that moment, as if taking advantage of a momentary silence, a gust of wind shook the garden doors, hurling pellets of rain, perhaps even little hail stones, against the glass. Mir frowned, looking at the well-drawn velvet curtains which were shuddering slightly. Lucas moved the lamp upon the desk so as to cast more light upon Mir, less upon himself. Mir was fumbling with his mackintosh, thrusting it off onto the floor. Clement took note of his expensive well-cut suit, the now visible waistcoat and chic green tie.

  Lucas continued, maintaining the same tone, ‘I am sorry that you have these persistent gaps in your memory. We agreed that there is nothing to be gained by involving lawyers and law courts. That would not in any way benefit you. Particularly after your recent admissions concerning the state of your wits. You must dismiss any such idea.’

  Mir, smiling now and leaning forward and gesturing with both hands, replied, ‘Oh, but I have no intention of that sort, not at present anyway. I agree that it would involve, as you put it, more tiresome unpleasantnesses! Justice does not dwell only in courts of law. Please let us talk for a moment or two about justice, a respectable and ancient concept, expressed in my book, if I may put it so, as an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’

  Lucas, who had been concentrating upon his visitor, observing his facial expressions and bodily movements, said ‘Are you Jewish?’

  ‘Yes. Are you?’

  Lucas, after a moment’s pause, said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What does that mean.’

  ‘I was an adopted child. I do not know, or wish to know, who my parents were.’

  ‘I see – and he – ’ Mir turned for a moment toward Clement, ‘yes, indeed. I am sorry. But really, you know, I feel sure you are Jewish, yes, I’m sure you are, I can see – ’

  Lucas, who had frowned for a moment, interrupted, resuming his cool silky tone, ‘You have spoken of restitution, you do not want money, I do not know what you want, I dare say you do not know what you want, what am I to offer – ?’

  ‘I will tell you – exactly appropriate payment.’

  ‘Come, come. I hit you impulsively because you startled me. I called for assistance, I saw that you were looked after, this promptness saved your life, I could have simply gone away and left you, then none of these problems would have arisen at all! I admitted my responsibility, I confessed before the law of the land that I had damaged you, and I was acquitted. That was justice. I have offered you money out of pure ex gratia kindness, sympathy, regret, if you like, for the unintentional result of my impetuous reaction. May I suggest that you drop this melodramatic demand for “payment”. I owe you nothing.’

  Mir did not reply at once and seemed for a moment to be bewildered. He turned his head toward Clement, then said in a low apologetic tone, ‘Would you mind moving the lamp a little?’

  Lucas moved the lamp, then pointedly looked at his watch, then at the papers on his desk.

  Mir went on, ‘I stopped you from committing a crime – and your graceless response was therefore a crime.’

  Lucas was ready for this. ‘No crime and no therefore. My dear sir, let us deal with what actually happened, and not with your conjectures and fantasies.’

  ‘Let us deal with what I saw, and what your brother has confirmed.’

  ‘He has confirmed nothing, and as it happens is not my brother, though it pleases him to use that cosy terminology. You have been very ill, I think you are suffering from loss of memory, I cannot understand you, I have nothing to give you and I cannot help you, I am sorry.’

  Mir turned again and looked at Clement. Clement, prepared for this appeal, was looking at the carpet. Mir went on, ‘I saved you from the sin of Cain – and in return you have ruined my life. Well, let us say that, for the present, you have one view of the matter and I have another. And let us return to my crude irrational conception of tit for tat. You thought I was dead, perhaps I was dead, perhaps I am dead. But this desire for equity has lifted me up and will not let me rest. I have sought for you as for my salvation. I have pursued you because I need you. We are eternally connected.’

  As Mir uttered the final words of this speech he rose to his feet. He stood, swaying slightly, then murmured in a low intense voice. ‘You have wickedly wronged me, and you know it. I desire your punishment.’

  Looking back upon the weird conversation, Clement saw this as a turning point. The speeding sky was dark outside, the room was dark, the rain now, no longer bothered by the wind, was falling with a steady faint sizzling hiss. The lamp illumed only the surface of the desk and one of Lucas’s hands. The figure of Mir, suddenly rising up in the gloom, broad-shouldered, rectangular, seemed uncanny, unnaturally tall. Clement too, as if compelled by a kind of respect, or alarm, rose to his feet. Mir turned to him for a moment and Clement gained an impression of his head, suddenly like the head of a large animal, a boar perhaps, or even a buffalo. Then Mir, noticing Clement also risen, smiled, his glinting teeth appearing as out of dark fur. Then he sat down again, and Clement, discreetly moving his chair forward and a little to the side, sat down too.

  Lucas waited as if expecting Mir to say something, then said, not in his previous cold sarcastic tone, but as if more thoughtfully, ‘Surely in your book it says that vengeance belongs to God.’

  Mir replied at once, as if saying something obvious, ‘I am His instrument.’

  Lucas then said, as if puzzled, ‘But what do you want? Do you want us to fight?’

  ‘I had great physical strength once, but now alas – well, a duel – no –
I would prefer something rather more – refined – ’

  ‘I do not understand you. Why can you not take the path of reason, indeed of virtue, overcome your obsession and let us part company at peace with each other? Perhaps that would be sufficiently refined?’

  ‘Peace? Are you begging me to forgive you, give you absolution, kneeling at my feet perhaps?’

  ‘You jest. I am not concerned with the sickening concept of forgiveness nor with the pleasures of masochism. I do not want you to forgive me and I imagine you would not be satisfied by my grovelling. Perhaps I should say the path of reason, let us leave virtue out. Just let us not waste time – ’

  ‘Dear sir, as I said before, thanks to your assault I have all the time in the world!’

  ‘What can you want me to do? Punishment, mentioned just now, is usually analysed in terms of deterrence, rehabilitation, and retribution. You can now have no need to deter me from assaulting you a second time, nor do I imagine you are interested in reforming my character. I certainly do not propose to suffer at your hands, but I do not believe that you intend to murder me. So let us say, instead of retribution, reparation. This leaves me with nothing to offer you except money, which you have refused. You say you sought me, and I can understand that you might have had a craving to see me. Now you have seen me, we have talked, even conversationally sparred a little. Can you not count that as an achievement which will satisfy whatever obsessional urge you may have had? After all, such irrational states of mind are your field not mine. You seem to be in good health and still endowed with a lively intelligence. Why waste your life and poison your mind with fantasies of revenge? Why wantonly pursue a course which is bound to lead to misery, disaster, and remorse? You have money – why not spend it on the higher pleasures – the enjoyment of art, the cultivation of friendship, generosity, charity? Indeed at this very moment you are in a position to use your power for better, or for worse. Please think about what I have been saying.’

  Clement had quietly moved his chair a little farther forward again. From here he could see more of Mir’s face, the short broad nose, the big shapely curling mouth, the high cheek-bones, the smooth protruding cheeks, the curly brown hair, showing no sign of grey, which ran down in thick dense growth onto the back of his neck. Why does he look so like an animal? Clement thought, he smiles like a dog. He has proud nervy nostrils like a horse, and his hair is like a close pelt, and he has big prominent dark eyes. He is horrible, yet he is pathetic too. But what is he doing here, what a nightmare it is, oh God if only he could go away and be just a dream. What was Lucas saying, is he serious or is he just joking? Is he appealing to the man? If only it could be all just a dream. And he thought, but this man saved my life. And he saw before him as in a cloud the darkness of that scene and the slow motion of what occurred. He began to feel sick and faint.

  The visitor too had sensed, was perhaps conscious of having induced, a change of atmosphere. He sat back in his chair, staring at Lucas and allowing the silence to continue. Then he said in a soft confidential tone, ‘There is one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When I last visited you I saw something, a sort of club, lying in front of you on your desk.’

  Lucas threw back his head, frowning, and almost closing his eyes. He said after an instant, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would like to see it.’

  Lucas pushed his chair back and opened a drawer. He placed the object upon the desk. Mir rose and advanced. Clement rose too. Mir lifted the object up and weighed it in his hand. Clement stepped quickly forward. Lucas, seated, with an almost dreamy look upon his face, watched. Mir said, ‘What is it?’

  Lucas said, ‘A baseball bat.’

  Mir gave a long sigh and put it down. He said, ‘Thank you.’

  Lucas put the object away. He said to Mir in a gentle voice. ‘I hope you listened carefully to what I said. I have come a long way to meet you. Can we now part in peace?’

  Mir sat down again. Clement also retreated and sat down. Mir said, ‘I am afraid not. I must tell you what is in my mind. You said earlier that you could not be my therapist. But you can be and you must be, you and you only, I require it of you. Please do not interrupt me. I do not see that you have “come a long way”, you have not moved from your first position, you have not understood , you are just using fine words in order to mystify me, you think I am a fool. You indulged just now in a somewhat pedantic analysis of the concept of punishment – when you reached the third term, retribution, you quickly translated this grim idea into that of reparation. In fact the idea of retribution is everywhere fundamental to justice, where it has mitigated punishment just as often as it has amplified it. Recall that men were once hanged for stealing sheep. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth serves as an image for both restitution and revenge. The punishment must fit the crime, being neither more severe, nor less. In some countries, as you know, some crimes, stealing for instance, are punished by the severance of a hand. So in this case, your just punishment would seem to be the reception of a blow upon the head delivered with equal force.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Clement, suddenly short of breath, put his hand to his throat. Lucas, who had been listening intently, now said, ‘May I ask if you have been entertaining fantasies of this kind all the time you were waiting for me to return?’

  Mir replied, ‘Yes. These thoughts have raised me from the dead.’ After another silence he continued, ‘I was training to be a surgeon before I turned to the science of the soul. It is very easy to cut off a hand or a foot, it is like slicing cheese.’

  ‘But do you also admit,’ Lucas promptly continued, ‘that these were merely fantasies, evil fantasies, which you have no intention of enacting?’

  ‘Not at all. I have been doomed to live with, and feed upon, these pictures. They are with me at this moment. You, sir, must be well acquainted with the relation between evil fantasies and evil acts. I am quite capable of enacting any one of them, and I may say there are many more, more foully ingenious and extreme, than the ones I have just mentioned. However, if I desire to ruin your life as you have ruined mine, I have also a choice of less crude methods.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I have only to write a letter to a newspaper telling the truth about what happened on that terrible evening, including your vile intent to kill your brother.’

  Clement cried out, ‘But he did not kill me, how can we tell whether he intended to or not? A mere intention is nothing. No, he would never have killed me, I am sure!’

  ‘Charming!’ said Mir. ‘An interesting testimony, which may sound touching in the witness box, but will carry little weight. Anyway let us leave aside these unfulfilled conditionals. I would maintain that you had that intent. The whole amusing story would be back in the papers, your brother appearing as a fascinating extra. The whole history of your relationship would be scrutinised and publicised and invented. You would then have to accept these accusations with their consequence, or sue me for libel. I would drag you back to the law court. How long would this poor fellow here, easily confused and not used to lying, last out? His recent outburst is an instance of the damage he could unintentionally do to your case. I said I did not need money, let me now vulgarly say that I am extremely rich. I would employ the best and cleverest lawyers to prove you a liar. And do not think that you could escape me by leaving the country, going into hiding in America for instance. My well-paid agents would find you. Your peaceful days as a secluded scholar would be over, your precious books, your silent libraries, all gone. I could haunt you to the end of the world, I could very easily make your entire life a misery and drive you to suicide.’

  Mir had been speaking in a calm slow matter-of-fact voice. Lucas, again waiting with close attention for the speech to finish, said, ‘If you are offering me a choice, it is certainly an unappetising one. Are we to bargain about it, am I to beg you to accept a severed hand? At the very least the speech you have just made seems intended to make me fret myself to death, expe
cting the catastrophic exposure or the lurking assassin. So, you are a terrorist. I do not care for blackmail. My answer is that I defy you. I felt some sympathy for you, and I have enjoyed your rhetoric, but now that you have revealed how extremely nasty you really are, I have finished with you.’

  Lucas stood up abruptly and switched off his lamp. He said, in a voice now trembling with rage, ‘Clement, see this gentleman out.’

  Clement rushed forward to Mir who was still seated, and seized hold of his sleeve. ‘Don’t go please, and please say you don’t mean any of this, you were just trying to frighten him, please say you won’t do anything to him – ’

  Mir, gently shaking off Clement’s hand, said to Lucas, ‘You have an eloquent and potent defender, I hope you feel how little you deserve his loyalty. Now you sit down, my child, bring your chair nearer, and you too please, Professor, sit down and check your anger, I have more to say.’

  Clement brought his chair forward again, placing it close to Mir. Lucas pushed his chair back against his books and sat down. For a moment only he covered his face with one hand.

  ‘I should have explained, Professor and Clement, that I have also something else in view. I said earlier that, in the course of my long vigil, I had come to certain conclusions which you might be interested to hear. It was necessary, and you, sir, will surely understand this, to rehearse aloud, to spill out if you like, the truly terrible thoughts and images which have been tormenting me during this interval. I have not mentioned the physical pain which I endured and must continue to endure, we need not speak of that. I wish you to know what you have done. I have also wished, another natural reaction, to display to you the power I have to punish you for it. Let this be put away in parenthesis. Now please listen while I trouble you with some brief autobiography. I have been a successful man, but a lonely man, not really a happy man. My work filled my life, its success was my satisfaction. I have not hitherto sought for happiness, assuming it was not my destiny. Now I cannot work. You spoke reasonably enough just now when you advised me to cultivate the higher pleasures. Why should I not intelligently seek for happiness? If I were to revenge myself upon you, as I could certainly and easily do, that would be an act of despair, and incidentally an evil act, in which I too might perish, a form of suicide – and such a desperate idea has indeed travelled with me. But I have also thought, why should I not use my power to coerce, or let us say persuade, you into making me happier.’