by David Lodge
‘Oh Mum . . .’ they complain.
‘I mean it. Come and help me set the table for tea.’
One by one the children get out of the tub, wrap themselves in towels, and mount the stairs to the house. Emily is the last to go. ‘I guess I ought to help Mom,’ she sighs.
‘I really should be going,’ says Helen, without stirring from her seat. ‘I came to lunch, not tea as well.’
‘Oh stay,’ Ralph says. ‘You seem to be enjoying yourself.’
‘It’s blissful,’ she says, tilting her head to look up at the sky. ‘Lying in a hot bath looking straight up at the stars! My mother would have a fit if she could see me. “You’ll catch your death of cold,” she’d say.’
‘You won’t,’ Ralph assures her.
‘Can you buy these tubs in England?’
‘Not made out of redwood, as far as I know. We shipped it from California, at enormous expense, and had our local builder plumb it in.’
‘Well, it’s a wonderful invention,’ says Helen, stretching out her legs and letting them float to the surface. ‘I suppose it must have a thermostat. Does that make it conscious?’
‘Not self-conscious. It doesn’t know it’s having a good time – unlike you and me.’
‘I thought there was no such thing as the self.’
‘No such thing, no, if you mean a fixed, discrete entity. But of course there are selves. We make them up all the time. Like you make up your stories.’
‘Are you saying our lives are just fictions?’
‘In a way. It’s one of the things we do with our spare brain capacity. We make up stories about ourselves.’
‘But we can’t make up our own lives,’ Helen objects. ‘Things happen to us, or don’t happen to us, outside our control. Did you read about that poor Frenchman with, what do they call it, locked-in syndrome?’
‘Yes, interesting.’
‘You can’t say he’s making up his ghastly situation.’
‘He’s constructing a particular response to it,’ says Ralph. ‘A pretty heroic one, I grant you.’
‘But doesn’t it make you believe there is some such thing as the soul, or the human spirit?’
‘No, why should it?’
‘Well, the courage of the man, his determination to communicate . . .’
‘Yes, it’s very admirable . . . but it’s still just information processing by his brain. There’s nothing supernatural about it. No ghost in the machine.’
‘That’s such a loaded word, “ghost”,’ says Helen. ‘It has connotations of superstition and fantasy. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I believe in souls.’
‘Immortal souls?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Helen says, stirring the water with her foot.
‘Oh well, I’ll grant you a mortal soul, it’s just another way of describing self-consciousness. But Descartes believed he had a soul because he could imagine his mind existing independently of his body. Isn’t that what ghosts are reputed to do?’
‘Well, isn’t that what the Frenchman, whatshisname, Bauby – isn’t that what he’s doing, going on thinking independently of his body? His body is totally paralysed.’
‘He can still see with one eye, I believe. And hear. And anyway, his brain is part of his body.’
After a pause, Helen says, ‘What did you mean about our spare brain capacity?’
‘Well, the human brain is much bigger than that of any other animal on the planet. Our DNA is only about one per cent different from that of chimps, our nearest relatives, but our brains are three times bigger. Obviously that gave our primitive ancestors a great advantage in the evolutionary stakes. We learned to make tools and weapons, to communicate through language, to solve problems by running various options through our mental software, instead of just reacting instinctively. We got beyond the four Fs.’
‘What are they?’
‘Fighting, fleeing, feeding and . . . mating.’
‘Oh . . .’ Helen sniggers.
‘But the greater size of the human brain is way out of proportion to the evolutionary advantage we gained over other species. That’s what I mean by spare capacity. Primitive man was like a guy who’s been given a state-of-the-art computer and just uses it to do simple arithmetic. Sooner or later he’s going to start playing with it and discover that he can do all kinds of other things as well. That’s what we did with our brains, in due course. We developed language. We reflected on our own existence. We became aware of ourselves as creatures with a past and a future, individual and collective histories. We developed culture: religion, art, literature, law . . . science. But there’s a downside to self-consciousness. We know that we’re going to die. Imagine what a terrible shock it was to Neanderthal Man, or Cro-Magnon Man, or whoever it was that first clocked the dreadful truth: that one day he would be meat. Lions and tigers don’t know that. Apes don’t know it. We do.’
‘Elephants must know,’ Helen interjects. ‘They have graveyards.’
‘I’m afraid that’s a myth,’ says Ralph. ‘Homo sapiens was the first and only living being in evolutionary history to discover he was mortal. So how does he respond? He makes up stories to explain how he got into this fix, and how he might get out of it. He invents religion, he develops burial customs, he makes up stories about the afterlife, and the immortality of the soul. As time goes on, these stories get more and more elaborate. But in the most recent phase of culture, moments ago in terms of evolutionary history, science suddenly takes off, and starts to tell a different story about how we got here, a much more powerful explanatory story that knocks the religious one for six. Not many intelligent people believe the religious story any more, but they still cling to some of its consoling concepts, like the soul, life after death, and so on.’
‘I think that’s what really irks you, isn’t it?’ says Helen. ‘That most people go on stubbornly believing that there is a ghost in the machine however many times scientists and philosophers tell them there isn’t.’
‘It doesn’t “irk” me, exactly,’ says Ralph.
‘Oh yes it does,’ says Helen. ‘It’s as if you’re determined to eradicate it from the face of the earth. Like an Inquisitor trying to root out heresy.’
‘I just think we shouldn’t confuse what we would like to be the case with what is the case,’ says Ralph.
‘But you admit that we have thoughts that are private, secret, known only to ourselves.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘You admit that my experience of this moment, lolling here in hot water, under the stars, is not exactly the same as yours?’
‘I can see where this argument is going,’ he says. ‘You’re saying, there’s something it is like to be you, or to be me, some quality of experience that is unique to you or to me, that can’t be described objectively or explained in purely physical terms. So one might as well call it an immaterial self or soul.’
‘I suppose so. Yes.’
‘And I’m saying it’s still a machine. A virtual machine in a biological machine.’
‘So everything’s a machine?’
‘Everything that processes information, yes.’
‘I think that’s a horrifying idea.’
He shrugs, and smiles. ‘You’re a machine that’s been programmed by culture not to recognize that it’s a machine.’
Carrie’s voice calls from above. ‘Messenger! Are you two going to stay out there all night?’
‘We’d better go in,’ says Helen.
‘Yes, perhaps we should,’ says Ralph.
They climb out of the pool and ascend the wooden steps that lead to the rear of the house. In a dark angle of the staircase, where a lightbulb has failed, Ralph detains her with a hand on her arm.
‘Helen,’ he murmurs, and kisses her on the lips.
She does not resist.
10
MONDAY 10TH MARCH. I’ve been trying to read students’ work-in-progress today but finding it hard to concentrate, thinking all the time about THAT KISS. I was tak
en totally by surprise – we’d been having such a lofty intellectual discussion, not to say ding-dong argument . . . I felt his foot touch mine once or twice in the hot tub, but I thought it was just accidental, it never crossed my mind that he had any amorous intentions. Can you argue, really argue, argue to win – and flirt at the same time? Surely not. Though I remember thinking that he was going to kiss me when we parted outside the car-park in Cheltenham after a similarly sharp exchange of views . . . Perhaps he finds it sexually stimulating, a woman standing up to him in debate. But I didn’t anticipate anything more than a friendly social kiss on that occasion, a light brush of the cheek, whereas yesterday’s kiss was firmly mouth on mouth – not passionate, not intrusive, but definitely sexual. And I accepted it. At least, I didn’t resist it. I didn’t slap his face or push him away, or ask him what he thought he was doing. I didn’t say a word. Perhaps I even responded a little. I certainly enjoyed it – my whole body twanged like a harp that’s been plucked. I feel moistly aroused now, as I revive the moment. Goodness, how can one kiss have such an impact?
Of course, my life has been rather sparsely furnished with kisses for some time. Remember that, dear, won’t you? You’re very susceptible, very vulnerable, at the moment. Do you mean sex-starved? Well, yes dear, perhaps you are a little bit, and he’s a very attractive man, whatever you think about his opinions and his morals. Just keep your head, don’t do anything foolish. Right then, I won’t.
But to begin at the beginning: I went to the Messengers’ cottage yesterday for lunch, as arranged. It’s situated in the middle of pretty, picture-postcard Cotswold country – pretty even at this time of year, when there isn’t a leaf to be seen on the deciduous trees. The road wound and undulated between dewy meadows and green humpbacked hills dotted with sheep, through villages embalmed in a Sunday morning hush, past ancient churches and neat farmhouses and snug thatched cottages. ‘Horseshoes’ has a thatched roof, but it’s more of a house than a cottage – double-fronted, built of mellow Cotswold stone, its walls covered with wisteria which one can imagine dripping with mauve blossom in May. It has low, raftered ceilings, and a bumpy flagged floor covered with rugs, and a huge open fireplace in the living-room. Needless to say it’s provided with central heating and other mod cons, all tastefully integrated into the eighteenth-century fabric.
Here the Messenger family simulates the life of English country folk for one or two days a week: Carrie bottles fruit and makes preserves on the oil-fired Aga, Emily rides the pony she keeps at a local stable, and Ralph chops wood for the open fire or takes the younger children out for rambles and bike-rides. At the back of the house, however, a more exotic and sybaritic note is struck: a balcony, or ‘deck’ as they call it, has been constructed on two levels, with a redwood hot tub on the lower level. The effect is rather bizarre as you pass from the English eighteenth century of the house to twentieth-century California in the back garden, like walking through different film sets in a studio.
After lunch (a superb leg of local lamb, roasted to perfection, with slivers of garlic and sprigs of rosemary delicately inserted into its layer of fat) we went for a walk around a circuit of lanes and footpaths in the neighbourhood, I in borrowed Wellington boots (they have several sizes for visitors to choose from). And then, as the red winter sun was setting, we changed into swimming costumes, wrapped ourselves in towels and bathrobes and sallied out to the hot tub. I must say it was most enjoyable, sitting in the open air, immersed up to one’s neck in bubbling hot water, looking up as the stars came out in the darkening sky. The whole family squeezed in and sat round in a circle.
It wasn’t long before Ralph mounted his hobby horse. I suspect the rest of the family is bored with consciousness as a conversational topic, but it’s new to me and extremely interesting. After the others had got out and returned to the house, he and I lingered for some time, talking about the existence – or non-existence – of the soul. He has this utter confidence in the evolutionary, materialistic explanation of everything that is difficult to resist, certainly with the kind of faltering half-belief in the transcendental that is all I possess now. Then Carrie called us from the house to come in for tea, and as we were going up the steps, he kissed me.
I didn’t, of course, tell Carrie about it later. So it’s there, now, a secret between us, something he and I know, and she doesn’t. When he passed me the honey and the butter at the tea-table, and our eyes met, the knowledge passed between us silently and invisibly – not merely that we had kissed, but also that we had agreed to conceal it. We did not betray to the others what had happened by so much as the flicker of an eyelid or slightest tremor of the voice. How adept at deception we human beings are, how easily it comes to us. Did we acquire that ability with self-consciousness?
I have absolutely no intention of embarking on an affair with Ralph Messenger, for a whole host of reasons. Let’s be quite clear about that. Nevertheless I was left with a small irreducible feeling of guilt about the episode, which I tried to assuage by helping Carrie to clear up the kitchen after the meal. As we were stacking the dishwasher she mentioned casually that she was writing a book, a historical novel set in San Francisco at the time of the great earthquake in 1906. Apparently she has some old family papers – letters and diaries – from the period, to draw on for material. She thinks it will have a ready-made readership in contemporary California where everybody is obsessed with earthquakes. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know how much historical background to put in,’ she said. ‘It’s basically a family story.’ Somehow I found myself offering to read the manuscript – which, to use one of Emily’s expressions, is something I need like a hole in the head. Another fictional world to assimilate! Carrie eagerly accepted the offer. Was I trapped into it – was that why I’d been invited to Horseshoes – is that why Carrie has been cultivating my acquaintance all along? Or was it my own guilty conscience about the kiss that prompted this act of supererogation? I couldn’t – I can’t – decide. But why do I always have to look for devious motives for everything? Why shouldn’t Ralph’s kiss have been just a spontaneous, unpremeditated action, a simple piece of gallantry, a frank admission that he finds me attractive and enjoys my company, nothing more than that, setting the seal on a pleasant shared experience, arguing about metaphysics in the hot tub. And why shouldn’t Carrie have mentioned her novel by chance, and why should I distrust my own generosity in offering to read it? I suppose it comes of being a novelist, that one always prefers a complicated explanation to a simple one.
My ‘lunch’ invitation had been stretched inordinately, and in the end we all left the house together at about seven o’clock. Suddenly the pace of life speeded up. Everybody bustled about, supervised by Carrie, picking up things and putting them away, resetting thermostats and turning off lights, drawing curtains and fastening shutters, making the house secure for another week. It was as if the curtain had come down on some dreamy pastoral idyll, and the company was suddenly galvanized into action, shedding their costumes and packing up their props before moving on to the next venue. We parted in the lane outside the house as we got into our respective cars. I said goodbye and thanked them sincerely.
‘Come again,’ said Carrie. ‘Make a habit of it . . . I hate to think of you spending your Sundays on campus.’ Ralph grinned at me over her shoulder. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘We’ll see you next Saturday, anyway,’ said Carrie. She meant at Ralph’s fiftieth birthday party, to which I have been invited.
LATER. I heard on the news tonight that Jean-Dominique Bauby has died, just days after his book was published. Very very sad, but at least he lived long enough to know it was a huge success. Perhaps that’s what kept him going, the determination to see his book through to publication, and once that was achieved his exhausted spirit gave up the struggle. So where is he now? Nowhere, according to Ralph Messenger, he has just ceased to exist – except in the minds of readers of Le scaphandre et le papillon, and in the memories of those who knew him personally. But those minds and
memories are themselves allegedly constructs, fictions, tied to decaying brain cells, doomed to eventual extinction too.
There’s something horribly plausible about Ralph’s arguments, religion arising out of man’s unique awareness of his own mortality, etc. I checked in the Encyclopaedia Britannica about elephants’ graveyards, and he’s right, dammit. Animals brought to the slaughterhouse sense their impending fate, one is told – they kick and struggle and shit themselves as they are chivvied towards the abattoir; probably they can sniff the taint of blood in the air long before human nostrils would detect it, or perhaps they smell the fear of the animals that preceded them. But they don’t know why they are distressed; they fear death without knowing what it is. We are the only creatures that know, and know all the time, after infancy. Was that the terrible price of self-consciousness?
In fact – when you think about it in this light – the story of Original Sin in Genesis could easily be a myth about the advent of self-consciousness in evolutionary history. Homo sapiens, by virtue of his sudden surge in brain-power, apprehends his own mortality, and is so appalled by the discovery that he makes up a story, as Ralph said, ‘to explain how he got into this fix and how he might get out of it’. A story about having offended some power greater than himself, who punished him with death for his transgression – and, in later elaborations of the story, offered him a second chance of immortality. It’s all there in the first five lines of Paradise Lost:
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat . . .
Strip away the mythology and the theology and the baroque poetry, and you find there perhaps a faint trace of primitive man’s first dismayed discovery that he is mortal, that he lives in time and will die in time. In the myth, the forbidden tree is the tree of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. Eat of its fruit, God warns Adam and Eve, and you will die. But perhaps in reality the knowledge was of death, and all the existential angst it brought in its train. The fall of man was a fall into self-consciousness, and God a compensatory fiction. QED.