by Ian Mcewan
Parry’s sobs got the better of him then. He took a step toward me, but a car surging up the middle of the road forced him back with an angry blaring klaxon whose receding Doppler effect inverted his own sorry sound. At some point while he was shouting I felt almost sorry for him again, despite my hostility and revulsion. But perhaps sorrow wasn’t quite it. Seeing him stuck there, raving, I felt relieved it wasn’t me, much as I do when I see a drunk or a schizophrenic conducting the traffic. I also thought that his condition was so extreme, his framing of reality so distorted, that he couldn’t harm me. He needed help, though not from me. This in parallel with the abstract desire to see this nuisance guiltlessly obliterated on the asphalt.
I benefited from a third current of thought and feeling while I listened to him. It was prompted by a word he had used twice: signals. Both times it caused the curtain that had troubled me earlier to stir and twitch, and the two words mated to spawn an elementary syntax: a curtain used as a signal. Now I was closer than before. I almost had it. A grand house, a famous residence in London, and the curtains in its windows used to communicate …
The struggle with these fragile associations brought to mind the curtains in my study, and then the study itself. Not its comfort, not the glow of its parchment lamps or the glowing reds and blues of the Bokhara or the submarine tones of my Chagall forgery (Le Poète Allongé, 1915), but the hundred feet or so of box files that filled five shelves, the whole of one wall, black labeled boxes jammed with clippings, and on the other side, by the south-facing window, the little skyscraper of a hard disk drive where three gigabytes of data waited to help me build a bridge between this mansion and these two words.
I thought of Clarissa with a sudden leap of cheerful love, and it seemed an easy matter to set right our row—not because I had behaved badly or was wrong, but because I was so obviously, incontrovertibly right, and she was simply mistaken. I had to get back there.
The rain was still coming down, but less heavily. The lights two hundred yards up the road had already changed, and I could see from the disposition of the advancing traffic that within seconds Parry would have his opportunity to cross the road. So I left him where he was, with his hands over his face, crying. He probably didn’t see me as I turned and set off at a fast jog down a narrow residential road. And even if in his desolation he had had the heart to pursue me at this speed, I could have doubled round the block and lost him in a minute.
Eleven
Dear Joe,
I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable. I close my eyes and thank God out loud for letting you exist, for letting me exist in the same time and place as you, and for letting this strange adventure between us begin. I thank Him for every little thing about us. This morning I woke and on the wall beside my bed was a perfect disk of sunlight and I thanked Him for that same sunlight falling on you! Just as last night the rain that drenched you drenched me too and bound us. I praise God that He has sent me to you. I know there is difficulty and pain ahead of us, but the path that He sets us on is hard for a purpose. His purpose! It tests us and strengthens us, and in the long run it will bring us to even greater joy.
I know I owe you an apology—and that word is too small. I stand before you naked, defenseless, dependent on your mercy, begging your forgiveness. For you knew our love from the very beginning. You recognized in that glance that passed between us, up there on the hill after he fell, all the charge and power and blessedness of love, while I was dull and stupid, denying it, trying to protect myself from it, trying to pretend that it wasn’t happening, that it couldn’t happen like this, and I ignored what you were telling me with your eyes and your every gesture. I thought it was enough to follow you down the hill and suggest that we pray together. You were right to be angry with me for not seeing what you had already seen. What had happened was so obvious. Why did I refuse to acknowledge it? You must have thought me so insensitive, such a moron. You were right to turn from me and walk away. Even now, when I bring to mind that moment when you started back up the hill and I remember the stoop of your shoulders, the heaviness in your stride that spoke of rejection, I groan aloud at my behavior. What an idiot! I could have lost us what we have. Joe, in the name of God, please forgive me.
Now at least you know that I have seen what you saw. And you constrained as you are by your situation and by your sensitivity to Clarissa’s feelings, have welcomed me in ways that no intrusive ears or eyes will intercept, by means that I alone can understand. You knew that I was bound to come to you. You were waiting for me. That’s why I had to phone you late that night, as soon as I realized what you had been telling me with your eyes. When you picked up the phone I heard the relief in your voice. You accepted my message in silence, but don’t think I wasn’t aware of your gratitude. When I put the phone down I wept with joy, and I guessed that you were weeping too. Now at last life could begin. All the waiting and loneliness and praying had borne its fruit, and I got down on my knees and gave thanks, over and over again until it was dawn. Did you sleep that night? I don’t think so. You lay awake in the dark, listening to Clarissa’s breathing and wondering where all this was taking us.
Joe, you really have started something now!
We have so much to tell each other, there’s a lot of catching up to do. Exploration of the ocean floor has begun, but the surface remains undisturbed. What I’m trying to say is, you’ve seen my soul (I’m certain of that), and you know how to reach deep into me, but you know next to nothing about the ordinary details of my life—how I live, where I live, my past, my story. It’s only the outer clothing, I know, but our love has to include it all. I already know a lot about your life. I’ve made it my job, my mission. You’ve drawn me into your daily life and demanded that I understand it. The thing is, I can deny you nothing. If I ever sit an exam about you I’ll come top, I won’t get a single thing wrong. You’ll be so proud of me!
So, my own outer clothing. I know you’ll be here one day soon. It’s a beautiful house, set back from a little kink in Frognal Lane, surrounded by lawns, with its own courtyard in the center which no one can see, even if they were to step beyond the front gates (hardly anyone does, apart from the postman) and come right up to the front door. It’s a miniature version of some rather grand French place. It even has faded green louvered shutters and a cockerel weathervane on the roof. It belonged to my mother, who died from cancer four years ago, and she inherited it from her sister, who got it in a divorce settlement just weeks before she died in a car crash. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to get a false impression about our family. My aunt had a terrible marriage to a crook who got rich in a property boom, but the rest of our family scraped by with ordinary jobs. My father died when I was eight. I’ve got an older sister in Australia, but we weren’t able to track her down when my mother died, and for some reason she wasn’t mentioned in the will. I’ve got a handful of cousins I never see, and as far as I know, I’m the only one in our family to get an education past the age of sixteen. So here I am, the king of my castle, which God has granted to me for a purpose of His own.
I can feel your presence all around me. I don’t think I’m going to phone you again. It’s so awkward, with Clarissa, and writing to you brings you closer. I imagine you sitting here next to me, seeing what I am seeing. I’m sitting at a small wooden table on a covered balcony that extends from the study and looks out over the inner courtyard. The rain is falling on two flowering cherry trees. The branch of one grows through the railings, so that I am close enough to see how the water forms into oval beads tinged by the flowers’ pale pink. Love has given me new eyes, I see with such clarity, in such detail. The grain of the old wooden posts, every separate blade of grass on the wet lawn below, the little tickly black legs of the lady bird walking across my hand a minute ago. Everything I see I want to touch and stroke. A
t last I’m awake. I feel so alive, so alert with love.
Speaking of touch and the wet grass reminds me. When you came out of your house yesterday evening and you brushed the top of the hedge with your hand, I didn’t understand at first. I went down the path and put out my own hand and fingered the leaves that you had touched. I felt each one, and it was a shock when I realized they were different from the ones you hadn’t touched. There was a glow, a kind of burning on my fingers along the edges of those wet leaves. Then I got it. You had touched them in a certain way, in a pattern that spelled a simple message. Did you really think I would miss it? Joe! So simple, so clever, so loving. What a fabulous way to hear of love, through rain and leaves and skin, the pattern woven through the skein of God’s sensuous creation unfolding in a scorching sense of touch. I could have stood there for an hour in wonder, but I didn’t want to be left behind. I wanted to know where you were leading me through the rain.
But let me go back to the ocean surface. I used to teach English as a foreign language in a place near Leicester Square. It was bearable, but I never really got on with the other teachers. There was a general lack of seriousness, which irritated me. I think they talked about me behind my back because I cared about my religion—not fashionable these days! As soon as I came into the money and the house, I gave up the job and moved in. I thought of myself as in retreat—waiting. I was always quite clear in my mind that this amazingly beautiful place had come to me for a purpose. One week, a shabby one-bedroom flat in Arnos Grove, the next a little chateau in Hampstead and a small fortune in the bank. There had to be a design in this, and my duty, I thought (and time has proved me right), was to be calm and attentive to the silence, and ready. I prayed, meditated, and sometimes took long walks in the country, and I knew that sooner or later His purpose would unfold. My responsibility was to be finely tuned, prepared for the first sign. And despite all that preparation, I missed it! I should have known it when our eyes met, up there on the hill. Not until I came back that evening, back into the silence and solitude here, did I begin to comprehend, so I phoned you … But now I’m going round in circles!
This house is waiting for you, Joe. The library, the snooker room, the sitting room with its beautiful fireplace and huge old sofas. We even have a miniature cinema (videos, of course) and an exercise room and a sauna. There are barriers ahead, of course. Mountain ranges! The biggest of which is your denial of God. But I’ve seen through that, and you know it. In fact, you probably planned it that way. It’s a game you’re playing with me, part seduction, part ordeal. You are trying to probe the limits of my faith. Does it horrify you that I can see through you so easily? I hope it thrills you, the way it thrills me when you guide me with your messages, these codes that tap straight into my soul. I know that you’ll come to God, just as I know that it’s my purpose to bring you there, through love. Or, to put it another way, I’m going to mend your rift with God through the healing power of love.
Joe, Joe, Joe … I’ll confess it, I covered five sheets of paper with your name. You can laugh at me—but not too hard. You can be cruel to me—but not too much. Behind the games we play lies a purpose that is neither yours nor mine to question. Everything we do together, everything we are, is in God’s care, and our love takes its existence, form, and meaning from His love. There’s so much to talk about, so many fine details. We have yet to discuss the whole matter of Clarissa. I think it’s right that you take the lead in this and let me know what you think is best. Do you want me to talk to her? I’d be very happy to. I don’t mean happy, of course; I mean prepared. Or should we sit down, the three of us together, and talk it through? I’m convinced there are ways of handling it that will make it far less painful for her. But this has to be your call, and I’ll wait to hear what you have decided is best. While I’ve been writing I’ve felt your presence, right by my elbow. The rain has stopped, the birds have taken up their songs again, and the air is even brighter. Ending this letter is like a parting. I can’t help feeling that every time I leave you I’m letting you down. I’ll never forget that time at the bottom of the hill, the way you turned away from me, rejected, stunned by my refusal to recognize in that first instance our love. I’ll never stop saying I’m sorry. Joe, will you ever forgive me?
Jed
Twelve
My sense of failure in science, of being parasitic and marginal, did not quite leave me. It never had, really. My old restlessness may have been brought on afresh by Logan’s fall, or by the Parry situation, or by the fine crack of estrangement that had appeared between Clarissa and me. Obviously, sitting in my study and thinking hard was not going to bring me to the source of my unease or to a solution. Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud, in my view. These days I preferred to drive my car. A couple of days after Parry’s letter arrived—his first letter, that is—I drove to Oxford to see Logan’s widow, Jean.
The motorway was unaccountably empty that morning, the light was even, gray, and clear, and I had a brisk tailwind. Along the high flat stretch before the escarpment I came close to doubling the speed limit. The mighty onward rush, the requirement to keep a quarter of my attention on the rearview mirror (for police, for Parry), and the general demand on concentration was calming and granted the illusion of purification. As I dropped down through the chalk cutting three miles north of the scene of the accident, the Vale of Oxford opened before me like a foreign country. Sixteen miles across the flat green haze, confined within a large Victorian house, was the sorrow I was driving toward. I let my speed fall to seventy and allowed myself a little more time for reflection.
A trawl through the database for curtain/signal had brought nothing. I had opened a few box files of clippings at random, but with no clear heading to guide me, I gave up after half an hour. I had read something somewhere about a curtain used as a signal, and it had some relevance to Parry. I thought my best chance was to cease pursuing it actively and hope that stronger associations would break through, perhaps in my sleep.
I was not having much better luck with Clarissa. It was true, we were talking, we were affable, we had even made love, briefly, in the morning before work. At breakfast I had read Parry’s letter, then passed it to her. She seemed to agree with me that he was mad and that I was right to feel harassed. “Seemed” because she was not quite wholehearted, and if she said I was right—and I thought she did—she never really acknowledged that she had been wrong. I sensed she was keeping her options open, though she denied it when I asked her. She read the letter through the medium of a frown, pausing to look up at me at a certain point and say, “His writing’s rather like yours.”
Then she questioned me about what it was exactly I had said to Parry.
“I told him to bugger off,” I said, perhaps too hotly. And then, when she asked again, I raised my voice in exasperation. “Look at that stuff about a message in the hedge! He’s mad, don’t you see?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, and went on reading. I thought I knew what was bothering her. It was Parry’s artful technique of suggesting a past, a pact, a collusion, a secret life of glances and gestures, and I seemed to be denying it in just the way I would if it had happened to be true. What was I so desperate about if I had nothing to hide? The bit about “the whole matter of Clarissa” on the penultimate page made her stop and look not at me but to one side, and she took a slow deep breath. She put down the page she had been holding and touched her brow with her fingertips. It wasn’t that she believed Parry, I told myself, it was that his letter was so steamily self-convinced, such an unfaked narrative of emotion—for he obviously had experienced the feelings he described—that it was bound to elicit certain appropriate automatic responses. Even a trashy movie can make you cry. There were deep emotional reactions that ducked the censure of the higher reasoning processes and forced us to enact, however vestigially, our roles: I, the indignant secret lover revealed; Clarissa, the woman
cruelly betrayed. But when I tried to say something like this, she looked at me and shook her head slightly from side to side in wonderment at my stupidity. She barely glanced at the last few lines of the letter.
When she stood up suddenly, I said, “Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to get ready for work.” She hurried out of the room, and I felt we had been denied a conclusion. There should have been a moment of consolidation, of mutual reassurance; we should have been standing side by side or back to back, protecting each other against this attempt to violate our privacy. Instead it seemed we had already been violated. I was about to say this to her when she came back, and this time she was cheerful and kissed me on the mouth. We embraced for a whole minute in the kitchen and said loving things. We were together, I didn’t need to say my piece. Then she broke away, snatched her coat, and was gone. I thought that there remained between us an unarticulated dispute, though I wasn’t certain what it was.
I lingered in the kitchen, clearing the plates, finishing my coffee, and gathering up the pages of the letter, those small blue sheets that for some reason I associated with semiliteracy. Our easy ways with each other, effortlessly maintained for years, suddenly seemed to me an elaborate construct, a finely balanced artifice, like an ancient carriage clock. We were losing the trick of keeping it going, or of keeping it going without concentrating hard. Each time I had spoken to Clarissa lately, I had been aware of the possible consequences of what I was saying. Was I giving her the impression that I was secretly flattered by Parry’s attention, or that I was unconsciously leading him on, or that without recognizing the fact, I was enjoying my power over him or—perhaps she thought this—my power over her?