A Meeting by the River

by Christopher Isherwood

  Olly, now you’re just making fun of me! Even you with your other-worldliness can’t pretend to be as naïve as all that! Of course, as far as my duty is concerned, it’s all towards Penny and the Children—

  Then leave them, I said.

  Patrick was sincerely staggered. Leave Penelope! You simply can’t mean that!

  If she and the Children only represent duty to you, I said, you ought to leave them. You’ll have to support them anyway—that’s the duty part of it. But to live with them out of duty, that’s heartless. You’d much better go to Tom. Or are you afraid he might become a duty too?

  You’re full of surprises, said Patrick. One always forgets what a romantic you are, underneath. So you do think I’m unfit for Penny? You think I ought to leave her? Of course one has to accept your motives as being absolutely above suspicion, considering your way of life. Otherwise one might easily jump to certain conclusions—

  Immediately after I’d made the remark about duty I’d felt ashamed of myself, it was so spiteful and cheap. If Patrick hadn’t answered as he did, I’d have apologized at once. But now I flared up in that humiliatingly reflex way I do. If you suspect my motives, I told him, you ought not to discuss Penny with me at all—that is, if you really give a damn about her, which I’m beginning to doubt— (Here I cut myself short with a terrific effort. I was appalled by the state I was in.) Patrick, I said after a pause, please try to forget I said that. I’m sorry. Forgive me.

  There’s nothing to forgive, Patrick said, putting his hand on my arm for a moment. What you said happens to be untrue, but I’m glad you said it, Olly, I honestly am—because of the way you said it. Do you realize that this is the first time you’ve spoken to me frankly, I mean really frankly, since I’ve been here?

  It was my turn to be staggered. I’m sure that Patrick knew how I felt, and that it pleased and amused him. He went on, in a tone of gentle, reproachful intimacy, do you know why I made such a point of coming here to see you, Olly—it was because I felt that perhaps you needed to talk to me, even if you weren’t aware of it. I’ll admit that there’ve been times while I’ve been here when I’ve felt pretty frustrated. It began to seem as if, after all, you wouldn’t talk or couldn’t. Look, I’m going to put my cards on the table, I’m going to make a confession to you. When I told you about Tom just now, I did that with a purpose. I mean, I could easily have made up some story to explain his behaviour, or simply laughed it off, or told you only part of the truth—I didn’t have to tell you everything. But when Tom phoned I suddenly saw it was a heaven-sent opportunity to prove to you that I could be one-hundred-per-cent frank with you—

  But Patrick, I said, what I don’t understand is, why did you want to prove that to me? I should have thought that was obvious, said Patrick; I wanted to encourage you to be frank with me, too. I’m sorry, I said, but I still don’t understand—what is there for me to be frank about?

  Do you seriously want me to tell you? (Again I could hear that Patrick was grinning.) Of course I do, I said; but my voice was slightly shaky. Somewhere in the very midst of me, a feeling of uneasiness began to grow. I most certainly do, I said.

  It’d only be the truth as I see it, Patrick said, and I may be monumentally wrong. Perhaps I ought to keep my mouth shut. I might only make you angry.

  I want to hear it, I said. I won’t be angry.

  Oh, don’t be alarmed. (Patrick laughed, he was thoroughly enjoying this, I could tell.) I’m not going to accuse you of anything. I hope you know how much I respect you—you’re a far better person than I shall ever be. Not that that’s saying much! No, seriously, I believe you’re one of those very rare people who are literally incapable of being false—I mean consciously false. I really do believe that. I believe you’ve always acted with complete sincerity and good faith, whatever you’ve done—I say, I don’t think I’d better go on with this, had I?

  I want you to go on, I said.

  Oh hell, do you really? I’m already wishing I hadn’t started! All right, here goes. Let me put it to you in this way: The one thing I’m concerned about is that I’m afraid you may be suffering from a very dangerous misunderstanding of yourself. If I’m right, it must have been influencing you and the decisions you’ve made for a long time now, perhaps ever since you grew up.

  Does that include my decision to become a monk, I asked.

  Oh, very much so—that most of all. As I say, I’m not for one instant questioning your good faith—Look, do you mind my telling you what I believe your real reason was for giving up your job with the Red Cross? You’ve explained all that to me, I know—how you met the Swami and gradually came to see things his way. I’m sure you believe in that explanation implicitly, but it’s not the true one, at least not according to me. I believe your actual motive had nothing directly to do with your Swami—in fact, I’ll even venture to suggest that it was because you had to find some rationalization for your urge to leave the Red Cross that you ever allowed yourself to listen to his teachings in the first place! Subconsciously, you must have been on the lookout for someone like him—you needed what he stood for symbolically. Perhaps, in the end, you might even have been forced to invent him, as it were—only, luckily for you, he actually existed. I mean, you had the amazing luck to meet this very remarkable and admirable individual, as he obviously was, instead of having to make do with some charlatan— Please, Olly, don’t be angry with me! And don’t just dismiss all this out of hand. Ask yourself if I’m not partly right—

  I’m not angry, I said, and I’m not dismissing anything. Go on.

  What you’ve got to admit to yourself, Olly—however much it may disturb you to do it—is that you’re denying a very large part of your nature. Now isn’t that the truth? You have powers that you absolutely refuse and fear to make use of. In your heart of hearts you know it, of course, you must know it—

  You mean, I said, that I’d have made a better-than-average bank director?

  I do not mean anything of the kind, and you know damn well I don’t! I’ll even concede that you made a very smart move when you walked out of that bank of yours. Oh, I know you did it from the loftiest motives—but I suspect you may have realized instinctively at the same time that it was the wrong kind of work for you—it would never have given you the scope you needed, even after you’d climbed to the top, as you undoubtedly would have. Now please understand, I’m not talking about executive ability, a talent for administration or whatnot—yes, you have that too, I don’t doubt, but it’s common enough these days, because it’s what everyone’s being trained for—you should just see them in the States, now—and to think Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers! Success of that sort is all very nice—it brings you in a lot of money and an illusion of importance—but when you have it you’re still only a super-merchant. I ought to know, I’m one myself, and a good deal brighter than most of them—bright enough to know what I am and what I’m not and never can be. Don’t underestimate your old brother, he’s got a keen nose! I can smell this other thing a mile off—this thing I haven’t got and no merchant can ever have—on the extremely few occasions when I meet it. That’s what you’ve got, Oliver, whether you want it or not. It’s a quality not more than perhaps three or four dozen people have in any given generation—the power to lead others and make them forget their own vanity and selfish interests and finally become almost noble. Everybody recognizes this power in wartime and adores it, but actually it’s far more difficult to exercise in peacetime, when it’s essentially much more impressive. In all seriousness, Oliver, I’m convinced that you could handle any kind of project you chose to take on, nothing would be too big for you. Of course it’s possible you may lose this power by degrees, if you persist in denying its existence—

  All this certainly sounds impressive, I said with a very unconvincing laugh. But even if it were remotely true, which I question, why on earth should this power of mine have made me so anxious to leave the Red Cross?

  Because you felt guilty. You se
e, on the one hand, this sort of power is absolutely inseparable from ambition. On the other hand, anybody who has it must long to use it, by his very nature. A man like you wants to use it in a worthy cause, but that’s still ambition, and ambition horrifies you. You think it’s utterly evil under all circumstances, so you renounce it. You try to hide from it in the midst of humble communal tasks, first for the Quakers, then for the Red Cross. But even there you find yourself beginning to take over the leadership, such as it is—you can’t resist your nature and the others all gladly acknowledge it—you’re merely becoming a king-frog in an unnecessarily small pond. I saw you in action in the Congo, remember! When your guilt-pressure reaches a certain level, you leave them and fly for safety to your Swami, who promises to annihilate you entirely—ego and ambition and all.

  But, Patrick, I objected, you haven’t explained why I supposedly have this horror of ambition. Evidently you don’t accuse the Swami of making me feel it, because you claim I had it long before I ever met him. I must say, I’m not aware of any horror, even nowadays—I mean, I’d never say that ambition was always wrong for everybody, at least within limits.

  But of course you’re not aware, Olly! How could you be? We’re none of us aware of these deep compulsions. As to how you got it in the first place, I’m afraid I must blame Mother, entirely. She meant no harm, bless her! You can’t even describe it as favouritism, though I used to resent her attitude before I began to understand it. She only did what so many mothers do—she cast her sons for roles in life, and they had to be different roles, of course, so that we shouldn’t clash. I was to be the worldly success—that role was already taken before you appeared on the scene. So you were cast to be the unworldly one, the subtler, finer spirit who’s above competition and shrinks from ambition in disgust as something vile and low. Poor old Olly! You were born to play one part, but Mother cast you for another! Don’t you think it’s time you took over your proper role? Don’t you feel an obligation to use this power of yours? Have you the right to refuse to use it? Isn’t this refusal ultimately selfish?

  Suppose it is, I said. Suppose—just for the sake of argument—I do have this extraordinary thing you say I have, what do you propose I should do about it? Come on, Patrick, you’ve diagnosed my case, now let’s hear your advice.

  Advice? Really, Olly, who am I to presume to tell you?

  You’ve told me quite a lot of things already, I said.

  But that was all just theoretical, really.

  Please be honest with me, Patrick, I said. You didn’t mean it theoretically, I simply can’t believe you did. Patrick, if you care for me at all, don’t try to back out of it now, because this isn’t something I can be theoretical about—it’s my life. What you’re actually telling me is that you think I oughtn’t to be in this Monastery at all, isn’t that it? I paused for him to answer, but he didn’t. So I asked him, seriously—you think I ought to leave?

  Oliver, I am not telling you that you ought or ought not to do anything—I want that to be clearly understood. Of course, if any of what I’ve said struck you as being true, I suppose you might just possibly come to a conclusion which would make leaving here the logical next step for you—

  You mean leaving now, I said, at once, without taking sannyas?

  I hardly see what your taking sannyas would prove, if you were intending to leave anyhow. I’m sure the Mahanta would release you from any obligation you may have to the Order. He’s evidently a man of great understanding—

  And what should I do then? I asked.

  Oh, then your course of action would be perfectly clear. You’d fly straight back to England—I need hardly say that I’d be delighted to let you have whatever money you needed. I know a chap who could certainly find you something worthwhile, that’d really appeal to you, in the United Nations probably. And then in six months or a year, when they’d all realized what a treasure I’d dropped into their laps, they’d offer you one of the top jobs, something really big—

  And what about my ambition? I said. A nerve in my left cheek had begun to twitch, something which hasn’t happened to me once since I’ve been here. It used to twitch quite often when I was younger, whenever I got tense.

  Oh, I think you’d soon stop bothering about your ambition, said Patrick. You’d learn not to be afraid of it when it had once been healthily satisfied.

  You make the whole thing sound so simple, I said. All I have to do is write off everything that’s happened in the last seven years.

  My dear Oliver, this is your choice, not mine. If you should agree, on thinking this over, that you’ve been wrong about yourself, and if you should decide to change your life accordingly, then you’ll know what’s important to you and what isn’t. Suppose you do decide that this Monastery, helpful as it may be for many kinds of people, is the wrong place for you to be in—a hiding-place from your natural vocation, in fact—that doesn’t necessarily mean you’d have to give up believing in—sorry, I seem to have some block against remembering these Sanskrit names, I’m not even sure if it’s a He or an It—

  Just say God, I told him.

  Thank you. I mean, speaking purely as an ignorant unbelieving outsider, I should have thought that if you really believed in God you’d actually be proving it by taking this plunge. You’d have proved to yourself that your faith was strong enough to survive, outside in the wicked world. I mean, I can quite well understand how the weaker brethren need the moral support of monastery walls and monastic rules and robes. But, heaven only knows, Olly, you’re not weak!

  I started laughing. My laughter was very near to hysteria, but Patrick didn’t seem to notice this. He laughed too, in an ordinary way. And then his laugh turned into a big yawn. I’m afraid I’ve been talking an awful lot of rot, he said. I’m sorry, I suddenly feel most terribly sleepy. You’ve been very patient, listening to my ramblings. I’m afraid I’ve been keeping you up.

  It was as if, without any warning, he’d slammed a door in my face. It left me completely frustrated and helpless. I wanted to beg him to stay with me, he seemed to have become the one person on earth who could decide my fate. I wanted to make him tell me what to do, or else unsay the things he’d said. And yet I couldn’t speak to him, I couldn’t even say goodnight. He said goodnight to me, and we parted, there on the spot.

  I knew I shouldn’t be able to sleep and I didn’t even try to. I stayed out of doors, wandering around in the dark. I tried sitting on Swami’s seat but even there I felt restless. I had to get up again and keep moving. The Temple was no good, either.

  After what seemed like infinite ages, it got light. Then I forced myself to begin writing all this down. That seemed to be the only way of stopping my mind from running round and round in circles—now at least I’ve reviewed the whole thing consecutively from start to finish. I’d hoped that writing it down would help me to look at it objectively, but I already know that it hasn’t. And though I’ve tired myself so that I’m shaking all over, I’m still a hundred miles from feeling sleepy.

  One moment, everything that Patrick said seems utterly idiotic and even laughable. The next, it seems terribly insidiously true.

  I feel like a madman—that’s to say I have absolutely no idea what I may or may not do next.

  To go to Patrick, tell him he was right and borrow the money from him for a ticket back to England—wouldn’t that be the ultimate unthinkable humiliation? Yes. But, just because it’s ultimate, it’s not really unthinkable. In fact, I’m beginning to see it as the only thinkable act which wouldn’t have even the least taint of falseness in it. All other ways of mortifying Oliver seem like self-cheating of one kind or another. But this one I can believe in, this would really strike Oliver’s pride at its roots and bring him down grovelling to the ground. For that very reason it’s appallingly attractive.

  There’s one insane thought which keeps recurring, I can’t get it out of my head: When Patrick told me about himself and Tom, wasn’t he implicitly offering me Penny?

  S
wami, I’m praying to you now as I’ve never prayed before. Show me what I must do.

  7

  My dear Tom,

  after our conversation last night, I feel I must get a letter off to you at once. You see, I’m terribly afraid that some of the things I said then may have hurt you. Of course, there’s always the possibility that you don’t remember what I did say—you certainly were drunk! But I can’t count on that—I mean, I have no desire to count on it. I want you to remember, because this is something we have to get cleared up between us, in all frankness. (Perhaps you’ll say to yourself, well, if he’s in such a hurry to clear things up, why the hell doesn’t he telephone me? But I think, if you do remember anything about last night, you’ll have to agree that that just wouldn’t be sensible. It would still be almost impossible for us two to communicate calmly with each other in our present emotional state. We’d only get excited and incoherent and tie ourselves up in further misunderstandings.)

  First of all, I want to tell you that I do understand perfectly what made you make that call. (How on earth you managed to find out the number and get yourself put through to me is nothing short of a miracle. No wonder it took you most of the night!) Believe me, Tom, there’ve been many times when I longed to call you. I know only too well what loneliness can do to one—how, if one lets oneself brood on it, it distorts everything into a nightmare of isolation and self-pity, until one simply doesn’t stop to consider the consequences of one’s actions, or just doesn’t care what they’ll be. I know I lost my temper last night and said some things I shouldn’t have said and didn’t quite mean. But all the time I was saying them I felt so deeply sorry, sorry for you and sorry for myself.

  I think very few of us ever take the trouble to visualize what may be going on at the other end of a telephone line. I know I often fail to do that myself, and sometimes one can’t be expected to. How could you possibly have known that I was talking to you last night in the presence of at least thirty people, several of whom undoubtedly understood English quite well, well enough certainly to get a general idea of what was going on between us? The fact that our conversation was, to put it mildly, personal didn’t mean to them that it should be private. No one left the room. I suppose in Asia this kind of insensitiveness, as it appears to be from our viewpoint, is normal behaviour, like not moving away when people pee in the street!