by Iris Murdoch
During this speech Lucas had turned his chair a little, facing toward the curtained windows. Not looking at Mir he spoke now wearily, even sadly. ‘What you say is interesting. Do not ruin the effect by being pathetic. In any case you know you are invulnerable – what is in parenthesis is easy of access, and your “despair” at the “evil act” is only a possibility. You must also envisage, as equally likely, the pleasures of a just revenge. I too have had nothing to do with happiness, and I certainly cannot create it for another. Indeed, in our situation, the concept is odd and out of place. And you have rightly implied, the only pleasure I could afford you would be that of being your victim.’
Mir replied. ‘I am sorry, what I still have to say will seem strange to you and will embarrass me. I wish I could say it more carefully and at length, but I fear you might not listen, so I shall be brief. I was an only child, early an orphan, I have never married. I have never, to use a crude phrase, had much success with women. I have no close friends, that is, no friends. Now in the long time during which I was waiting for you I have had the opportunity to study your family and your friends, I have watched them, I have speculated about them. Studying them has indeed been a crucial occupation whereby I kept my sanity and my reason during that long agonising vigil. You,’ he said to Clement, ‘I discovered in the telephone book, and you led me to others, to the man with the grey collie dog, to the young man who now has a limp, to the fashionable lady, French perhaps, and to other persons, including the four ladies, a mother and three daughters, who – ’
At this point Clement cried out, ‘For heaven’s sake tell us what you want!’
‘All right, I will state it simply, I have come to like these people, they interest me very much, I want you to introduce me to them, I want to get to know you all, I want to become part of your family.’
Clement, utterly astonished, instinctively horrified, said ‘Oh!’ He looked at Lucas. Lucas said, ‘Well – ’, then began to laugh quietly. ‘Well, Mr Mir, you really do turn out to be a comedian after all! So this favour is to be a substitute for severed hands!’
‘Yes, and an intelligent and humane one I think. Of course I do not know how far I, just as my person, might be welcome. You yourself have opened a way for me when you spoke of friendship, generosity, charity. What am I to do with my money? I could leave it to an institution. But why should I not also play the part of a rich uncle? I am not suggesting that I bribe my way in! What I want, if I may be blunt, is love – at least loving kindness, friendship, the chance visibly to benefit people, to assist in the children’s education for instance. I have not been able to achieve such things, which I have often longed for, alone – if you will help me I may now achieve them, as it were, ready-made. Do you understand me?’
After saying all this, addressed to Lucas, Mir turned to Clement. Mir’s large eyes, seen at close quarters, were very dark, nearly black. Clement was about to say ‘Yes’ when Lucas spoke.
‘Thank you for telling us about your life, we have listened with interest to your various reflections. Now please at last it is time for you to go.’
‘You haven’t answered him!’ said Clement. ‘He has asked you to do something.’
Mir intervened, ‘Of course I could simply go and introduce myself, but it would be so much better – ’
Lucas said, ‘Who and what are you anyway? What are your motives? No, I am afraid I do not understand you.’
‘It would be so much better if you would introduce me.’
‘I am very tired of this conversation which has gone on far too long.’
Lucas rose abruptly. He marched to the door and opened it. Clement picked up Mir’s trilby hat and his umbrella and proffered them to him. Mir took them with a smile and a little bow. He said to Clement, ‘Don’t worry, there is no hurry.’ Pausing half way to the door he said to Lucas, ‘So, will you work with me, or against me?’
Clement expected Lucas to explode in exasperation, but he did not. He said, holding the drawing-room door wide, ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘I have intended,’ Mir went on, ‘to require you to confess to these people.’
‘Humiliate myself? Bow to the ground? I am not a Russian Jew.’
‘How do you know you are not? But there, I will think about that too. I am tired also. I will come back on Monday at this time. Be here please. Till then, farewell. By the way, my first name is Peter.’
Peter Mir had departed, Lucas was sitting on his desk. He was again laughing. Clement watched him with anxiety and amazement.
‘It’s too funny for words! He wants to be adopted into our family, he wants security, affection, shelter, love. It’s too touching. Who knows, he may decide to buy one of the girls!’
‘You shouldn’t have let him see the bat.’
‘Perhaps not. I felt I owed it to him!’
‘You must get rid of it, you must destroy it, it must never have existed – like me. But, Luc, what are we to do? You said you’d think – ’
‘Oh let him have what he wants! Why shouldn’t he meet all those charming people? I think it’s a wonderful idea!’
‘But we don’t know him – and he made such terrible threats – you called him a terrorist, he may be dangerous, he may be raving mad.’
‘Oh, he’s dangerous all right, he’s very dangerous. I’m just relieved that at last he wants something that I can give him. You said you’d seen him hanging about, pressing his nose against the window-pane, poor fellow! I’ll brush him off on the family, what a priceless solution!’
‘But he said he wanted you to confess to them all – ’
‘Confess what, dear boy?’
‘All right, but he might talk – isn’t he bound to talk?’
‘Let him talk, they won’t believe him, they’ll be mystified, they won’t understand, you must see to that.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. I’ll tell you what to do.’
Harvey was sitting on Tessa Millen’s bed, Tessa was sitting opposite to him on a chair. They had been talking for some time. ‘It’s like philosophy!’ Harvey had exclaimed at one point. It was evening, it was dark, a little squat lamp, a bulbous blue bowl and a yellow shade, was alight on the bedside table. A gentle wind was blowing, pensively rattling the ill-fitting windows. Harvey’s crutches were leaning against the wall. The damaged limb, its discoloured flesh damp and softened was, where visible, the consistency of lard. His ankle and half of his foot were bound in thick bandages. The remainder of his foot protruded pathetically, plump and red. Harvey had rolled up his trouser and removed the big unseemly slipper which was supposed never to touch the ground. Tessa had promptly lifted the wounded leg, laying it across her knees, placing her cool hand upon the hot unhappy toes.
Tessa now released his toes and laid his foot gently upon the ground. ‘And cheat the poor girls?’
‘Don’t make jokes. Anyway I’ve changed my mind.’
‘So be it, my child.’
‘I can’t fall in love, I just can’t, I can’t even imagine it.’
‘Well don’t complain. It leads to dangerous and distressing things like sex and marriage. The end of freedom, the end of romance. Don’t be in a hurry. Go on having romantic friendships.’
‘Like with you? Do you think I’m gay?’
‘No, you’ve just had too much cold milk.’ (This referred to ‘the girls’.) ‘You don’t realise you’re in clover. Relax. Work, think, learn languages, read books, read poetry, write poetry, attract people, make lots of eternal friendships, parade your beauty. Youth is a great green field. Romp in it.’
‘Surely romping means sex.’
‘No, that is the mistake all you young people make. You don’t colonise all the potential joys of being young. Later you’ll look back and wonder why you made so little use of your freedom. Sex means anxiety, fear, servitude, and being forced to be unkind. Watch and wait.’
‘I feel everything’s too late already. It isn’t just the leg – that’s a sort of symptom, or a la
bel, or an emblem. What’s wrong is in my soul. I’m maimed and that shows what I’m like. And I’m putting on weight. I need help.’
‘Do some good. Go and see your mother. She needs help.’
‘All right, all right! Have you seen Lucas?’
‘That creature? No. Why do you suddenly bring him in?’
‘You know he’s back?’
‘Of course. You don’t imagine he could help you?’
‘I sort of want to see him. I think I’d feel better if I’d – just – seen him.’
‘Like touching a big black stone. He’d make you cry.’
‘You said he was real.’
‘That’s what real does. Just ask your mother about him.’
‘Why? What does she know?’
‘Oh, well, just what everyone knows.‘
‘I feel unreal.’
‘That feeling is self-pity.’
‘Perhaps I need the tears which reality would make me shed. You are real. Tessa – could you just – do it for me?’
‘Do you mean now? Do you mean what you said before?’
What Harvey had said before was that he wanted Tessa to initiate him into the mysteries of sex.
‘Now I’ve said it again, I suppose I do mean what I said before.’
‘Make up your mind.’
‘I do mean it.’
They sat looking at each other. Evidently it had now begun to rain, Harvey could hear the mild rain which now enclosed the little room on all sides, tenderly holding it in space, a continuous sibilant presence. He saw, with the huge rounded eyes of a dragonfly, the global room, the meagre chairs, the battered chest of drawers, the crumpled flimsy curtains shuddering in the continuous draught from the faintly rattling windows, the fat little blue bowl and dusty parchment lamp-shade, the double divan bed, jammed up against the wall, upon which he was sitting and at whose faded Welsh quilt he had been unconsciously picking, his hands, he discovered, holding little balls of dusty textile which he now surreptitiously released onto the floor. He saw Tessa, leaning forward, her long hands on her knees, her old worn tweed jacket, her brown shirt open at the neck, her thick trousers tucked into her boots. Her pale straight yellow hair, as pale as primroses, cut neatly short, gave her a tranquil authoritative air, calm with the gentle serenity of some sibyl who through millennia has observed the foolish helpless grief of mortal men. Her lips reflectively parted, her grey eyes narrowed, expressed as she perused him the gentle whimsical pity of a superior being. Harvey, motionless, felt the impulse to kneel at her feet and kiss her long hands. He wanted to groan and weep. He wondered, is this it after all?
He said, ‘Yes, yes. But forgive me.’
‘Don’t be silly. Get up. One has to undress, you know. What about your leg? Is it hurting now?’
‘No. You don’t mind?’
‘No, you fool!’
‘Suppose someone comes.’
‘No one will come.’
They moved, avoiding each other in the little room. Harvey thought, it’s like chess. Tessa pulled back the quilt and blankets, and sat on the bed to take off her boots. Harvey, standing, watched her. He took off his jacket. He stepped back and felt a pain in his leg. He had forgotten his leg. He sat on one of the thin rickety chairs and took the shoe and sock off his good leg. By this time Tessa had removed her boots, socks, jacket and trousers. Harvey began to ease off his trousers. He thought, now she will take off her knickers. In his brother and sister upbringing with the girls, when they went on holidays to the sea together, he had often seen them undressing, even undressed. He had often watched them, before the time of the taboo, dropping their skirts in circles round their feet, and then hauling off their knickers. This had interested him only in retrospect. Much later, remembering those times, he had noticed how just that action, that movement, had something so thrilling about it, so crucial, so holy. Even the word ‘knickers’ had for him a kind of charisma, like a religious charm or mantra. As carefully and deftly, keeping his bad leg outstretched, he was removing his under-pants with his trousers, he became aware that Tessa had performed the action in question and was looking at him with nothing on except her rather large and long shirt which he now saw to be not just brown but khaki, and evidently bought at some army-surplus shop. A soldier’s shirt. Harvey had pulled his own shirt and vest down as far as he could. The room was cold. Now Tessa had unbuttoned her shirt but not removed it. She was not wearing a vest. Looking back at her Harvey wondered whether now they would burst out laughing. Perhaps it would all end in crazy helpless laughter. Sex was funny, it was ridiculous, how had he got himself into this absurd situation! For a moment indeed they might have laughed, but by a silent compact they did not, but smiled at each other, gentle smiles, as Harvey recalled it, full of deep and complicated sadness. Harvey felt the presence of those tears.
She moved across the bed, sitting up and clasping her knees.
‘Tessa do you mind if I keep my shirt on, just for now – ’
‘I don’t mind! Harvey, whatever happens don’t worry. Come here.’
He knelt on the bed, then lay down awkwardly as she stretched out beside him, lying on her back, the khaki shirt unbuttoned but still on. The shirt, that was something holy too, as if she were robed for a ceremony, as if it were all happening inside some great serene temple. He saw close to him her breasts, rising up suddenly out of the landscape, miraculous, pale and luminous in the faint light. His good leg pressed against her, felt the hem of her shirt as he began to turn, cautiously lifting his bad leg. A flash of pain shot up his thigh. He paused. Then, with a further determined movement of his adjacent hand, burrowed in under her waist which arched to his pressure, and laid his heavy head down into the hot softness of her bosom, while his other hand, tugging the khaki shirt back, gently explored the extension of her body. They lay quietly thus, breathing deeply. Then she moved slightly, dislodging his head, tilting onto her side, so that, with lips apart, they breathed each other’s breath. Harvey thought, as he withdrew his hand from beneath her, damn, it’s too late now to take off my shirt and vest. He moved his other hand vainly trying to haul the recalcitrant garments up a little. Someone’s heart was beating violently. Her questing hand fleetingly touched his genitals and he glimpsed her closed eyes as their lips met. He found himself shuddering. He suddenly thought, how clumsy, how awkward, how absurd these fumblings are, we might as well be two machines trying to mate. He resisted an urge to thrust her away. Aware of this incipient movement Tessa withdrew a little. Their lips parted, their eyes opened, their hands stopped exploring. Harvey thought, it’s not passion it’s fear, it’s miserable timidity, I’m cold, I’m no good, nothing is happening, I might as well be castrated. He turned on his back. He said, ‘Sorry, my leg is hurting.’ Tessa murmured, ‘Just lie quiet for a while.’ Supine they lay side by side. They both sighed, deeply. Then Harvey thought, is she laughing? No, she’s smiling, I know she’s smiling. She’s a goddess, I can’t serve her, I can’t even touch her properly. What a perfectly awful business it all is, any other creatures can do it better. He moved again and his heavy leg fell over the edge of the bed, jerking him up with a gasp of pain. He sat up on the bed with both his feet on the floor, leaning forward and holding his head in his hands.
He felt Tessa slipping past him. She stood buttoning up her brown shirt, then drawing on a black and white kimono and tying its belt. Now he saw her smile.
‘Sorry, Tessa, it’s my bloody leg. No, it’s bloody me, like I said before, I’m under a curse. I’m terribly sorry. I couldn’t – there was nothing – ’
‘You think that was nothing!’
‘I’ve just proved I’m no good.’
‘Try to understand that you have learnt something. It’s not just a matter of male and female mechanics or male and female roles! Love and trust and gentleness between two humans is very rare. Love is rare and expression of love is rare. I am grateful to you.’
Harvey had seized his trousers and was hastily dragging them on, manoeuv
ring his bandaged foot through the slit which had been made in the trouser leg. He thought, what’s this, she’s grateful , it’s about love? How does love come in? What was I after anyway? Oh God!
He said awkwardly, staring at Tessa’s pale bare feet, ‘I’m grateful to you. I know it’s of value, I mean it’s been useful, I mean I’m very glad I’ve had the feeling – you were very generous – I suppose, I expect, that it will make things easier later on, I don’t just mean between us but – I’m sure I’ve learnt something – I’m sorry, I’m talking nonsense – but I’m sure you’ll understand. Oh hell, I’m sorry, it’s all my fault!’
‘There is no fault. You have taken an important step. We were closer, we are friends, friends help each other, friends trust each other, friends love each other. We won’t forget this being together.’
Harvey had put on his trousers and his jacket and his socks and was frantically donning his shoe and his slipper. He moaned with exasperation. ‘But I failed – !’
‘Oh shut up, Harvey. Nothing has damaged you. You are young, your life is a great big place. If you need me I’m here, that’s all. Now clear off.’
Tessa was sitting on one of the chairs, her long hands upon her knees. He said, ‘You are an angel.’ He put a hand to the floor and fell awkwardly onto one knee. Smelling the fresh clean innocent smell of the kimono, he touched her hands, he kissed her feet.