by Iris Murdoch
‘It’s no use, Madge,’ I said, and I stood up. At that moment I loved her deeply. A few minutes later I was going down the stairs.
Fifteen
I CROSSED the road and walked automatically towards the river. I collided with people on the pavements and was nearly run over several times. My legs were trembling under me. When I reached the Seine I sat down on a seat. I took off my coat, and found that my shirt was drenched with sweat. I unbuttoned my shirt and ran my hand about my chest and under my arms. I wasn’t at all sure what it was that I had done, but I knew that it was something important. Just then it felt like committing a murder when drunk. As I looked about me, Paris recomposed itself like a reflection which ceases to waver as the water becomes still. At last it was as still as glass. What had I done?
Refused a net sum which, on the assumption that it would have taken me at least six months to get the sack, could be reckoned at twelve hundred pounds. Refused an easy step out of the world of continual penury into the world of perpetual money. And what for? For nothing. At that moment my action seemed to me completely pointless. In Madge’s room I had seemed to see some reason why it was necessary. Now I couldn’t for the life of me think what that reason could have been. I got up and walked across the iron bridge. The clock at the Institut said ten past twelve. And as I walked a great truth became apparent to me. Nothing in the world was more important than money. Why had I not understood this before? Madge had been right when she had said that it was real life. It was the one thing needful; and I had rejected it. I felt like Judas.
I stopped to look at Paris. Its gentle colours awoke for me, clear but not violent under the July sun. The fishermen were fishing, and the flâneurs were flaning, and the dogs were barking down at the steps where people try to persuade them to swim in the Seine. How strangely it excites people to see their dogs swimming! Beyond the green trees the towers of Notre-Dame rose tenderly like lovers rising from the grass. ‘Paris,’ I said aloud. Once more something had slipped through my fingers. Only this time I knew very well what it was. Money. The heart of reality. The rejection of reality the only crime. I was a dreamer, a criminal. I wrung my hands.
As I reached the left bank I began madly to want to drink; and at the same instant I realized that I had hardly any cash. I had thrust into my pocket as I was leaving the few notes which I had left over from my last trip. I had intended to borrow something from Madge. But no one with any aesthetic sensibility would have tried to borrow five thousand francs off somebody from whom he had just refused to accept twelve hundred pounds. And anyway I didn’t think of it. I cursed. I walked as far as the Boulevard Saint-Germain wondering what to do. Then a second need, equally expensive, began to make itself felt: the need to communicate my sorrow to some other person. I balanced the two needs against my assets and against each other. The need for communication was the more profound. I made for the post office in the Rue du Four and addressed a wire to Messrs Gellman and O‘Finney which ran as follows. Just definitely refused minimum sum of twelve hundred pounds. Jake. Then I went to the Reine Blanche and ordered a pernod, which although it is not the cheapest of apéritifs is the one with the highest alcohol content. I felt very slightly better.
I sat there for a long time. At first I kept thinking about the money. I brooded on every aspect of it. I turned it into francs. I turned it into dollars. I shifted it around from one European capital to another. I invested it avariciously at high rates of interest. I spent it riotously on château wines and château women. I bought the very latest make of Aston Martin. I rented a flat overlooking Hyde Park and filled it with works of the lesser-known Dutch masters. I lay on a striped divan beside a pale-green telephone while the princes of the film world poured fawning, supplication, and praise along the wire. The exquisite star, the idol of three continents, who lay like a panther at my feet, poured me out another glass of champagne. ‘It’s H. K.,’ I murmured to her, putting my hand over the mouthpiece ; ‘what a perfect bore!’ I tossed her an orchid which lay on the table; and clasping my body with her sinuous hands she began to pull herself up to lie beside me, as I told H. K. that I was in conference and that if he would contact my secretary in a day or two no doubt a meeting might be arranged.
When I was tired of this I began to think about Madge, and to wonder who it was who had installed her in the Hotel Prince de Clèves and whose unseen presence had hovered in the background of our interview. Was it the man who had owned ships or something in Indo-China? I pictured him, white-haired and heavy, battered by winds and stained by the oriental sun, with power and intelligence breaking through the lines of his face of an old Frenchman who had seen, in his tune, many things. I liked him. He was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. The years which had passed since he had pursued money with passion could now be counted by the score. He had had his fill of money: he had loved it, struggled with it, suffered for it and made others suffer; he had bathed in it until it had filled his head and eyes with gold; finally he had tired of it, and cast it from him fortune by fortune. But money will never leave a man who has endured enough for its sake. He had become weary, he had consented. He lived with it now as with an aged wife. He was come back to France, tired and detached, with the detachment of one who has gratified every wish and found every gratification equally transitory. He would watch with a gentle indifference the launching of his film company, in a scene where every actor except himself was driven mad by the smell of money.
Or perhaps Madge’s protector was some shrewd Englishman: a middle-aged man, I pictured him, with long experience of the film business. Perhaps a failed director who had turned his artistic talents into the business side of the industry, consoling himself by making money for the loss of a vision of beauty which would nevertheless haunt him all his life, and make him short-tempered whenever he came near the set and saw other men struggling with the problems which had given him ecstasy at twenty-five, and sleepless nights at thirty, and finally brought him to despair. Where had Madge met him? Possibly at one of those parties of ‘film people’ which Sammy had said that Madge frequented on the occasion when he had warned me that not letting them out of your sight was the only way.
Or perhaps — the devastating thought struck me at last — perhaps Madge’s friend was Jean Pierre himself? I absolutely hated this idea. But it was by no means impossible. I had never introduced Madge to Jean Pierre although she had often asked me to do so. Some instinct of caution had deterred me from promoting this particular juxtaposition. There are Englishwomen for whom Frenchmen are, as it were, ex officio romantic, and I think I suspected Madge of being one of these. Madge was, however, perfectly capable of having introduced herself to Jean Pierre without telling me. I remembered the familiar way she had referred to him by his Christian name in our recent talk; and although she might have simply picked this up from me, or from her new milieu, it was also possible that she had in fact cast Jean Pierre in the role of her for tunemaker. He was not my idea of a charmer, but women are funny.
I thought about this a bit longer and then decided that after all it was unlikely. Of my three hypotheses the second one was doubtless the most probable. A while later I felt that I didn’t care anyhow. One glass of pernod had taken me some way; a second glass took me further still. The sun began to rise over my intellectual landscape and I saw at last, in an outburst of clarity, the real shape of that which had before so obscurely compelled me to what had seemed to be a senseless decision. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to enter Madge’s world and play Madge’s game. I had so littered my life already with compromises and half-truths, I could have picked my way through a few more. The twisting hills of falsehood never cease to appal me, but I constantly enter them; possibly because I see them as short corridors which lead out again into the sun: though, perhaps, this is the only fatal lie. I didn’t care for the role of valet de sentiment which Madge had prepared for me, but I could perhaps have supported it because I really liked Madge and because of the cash prizes, if there had been
nothing else at stake. I had said to Madge that it wasn’t Anna, and I think that that was true. What my relations with Anna might or mightn’t compel me to do in the future remained to be seen. I felt, indeed, almost fatalistic about it. If Anna was strong enough to draw me to her over every obstacle she was strong enough to draw me, and the obstacles would be overcome at the proper time. Meanwhile Madge was in no position to make complaints. It wasn’t that.
When I asked myself what it was, there rose authoritatively before me the shop window which I had seen earlier that morning surmounted by the words Prix Goncourt. As for the Prix Goncourt itself, je m‘en fichais, that was just a label. What mattered was what Jean Pierre had done. Or rather even that didn’t matter. Even if Nous Les Vainqueurs turned out to be just as bad as Jean Pierre’s other books, this was of no importance either. All that mattered was a vision which I had had of my own destiny and which imposed itself upon me as a command. What had I to do with script-writing? When I had told Madge that it was not my genre I had not been thinking what I was saying; but it was true all the same. The business of my life lay elsewhere. There was a path which awaited me and which if I failed to take it would lie untrodden forever. How much longer would I delay? This was the substance and all other things were shadows, fit only to distract and deceive. What did I care for money? It was as nothing to me. In the light of that vision it shrivelled like autumn leaves, its gold turning to brown and crumbling away into dust. When I had had these thoughts a profound contentment filled me, and I resolved at the same instant to go and look for Anna.
There was, however, one immediate difficulty, which was that I hadn’t enough money to pay the bill. I seemed somehow to have consumed four glasses of pernod to a tune of several hundred francs. Even not counting the tip, I was about fifty francs short. I was considering whether I wouldn’t ask the patron to charge it to Jean Pierre, who is well known at the Reine Blanche, when there hove up on the horizon a cadger of international repute who was an old acquaintance of mine. He bore down upon me with glistening eyes; and a few minutes later I had the satisfaction of taking off him the thousand-franc note which shame and the remembrance of hundreds of drinks which I had bought him in at least three capital cities could not permit even him to withhold. I left him a poorer but a better man.
My conviction that Anna was still in Paris was after all rather irrational. It was, no vever, very strong; and when I had got well round the corner I made for a telephone. I telephoned first of all to the Club des Fous, a gay but enlightened boîte where Anna had made her Paris début some years earlier. But no one there had any news of her. They knew she had been in Paris, but whether she was still there, or where she was to be found, no one could say. I then rang up various individuals who might have come across her, but they all said the same thing, except one who said that he thought she had sailed on the previous day, unless it had been Edith Piaf, he couldn’t remember. I then started phoning hotels, first the ones at which I had stayed with Anna, in case sentiment might have led her back to them, and afterwards more luxurious hotels which I knew Anna knew of, in case comfort had triumphed over sentiment or sentiment had worked in a contrary way. It was all in vain. No one had seen her, no one knew where she was. I gave up, and started walking disconsolately. It was very hot.
If Anna were in Paris, what would she be doing? She might be with somebody. If she was with somebody I was done for anyway. I must work on the assumption that she was alone. If she was not with any of the song or theatre people, what would she be doing here all by herself? The answer, from my knowledge of Anna’s character, was clear. She would be sitting in some place which she found beautiful and meditating. Or walking very slowly along a road somewhere in the fifth or sixth arrondissement. Of course she might have gone to Montmartre; but she always used to complain so about the steps. Or to Père-Lachaise; but I didn’t want to have to think about death. If I made a tour of our shrines on the left bank I might stand some small chance of finding her. The alternative was to get drunk. I bought a tartine and set off for the Luxembourg gardens.
I went straight to the fontaine des Médícis. There was nobody there; but the spirit of the place held me at once and I could not go. When I had been in Paris with Anna long ago we had used to come here every day; and now when I had stood in silence for a moment I could not but believe that if I waited she must come. There is something compelling about the sound of a fountain in a deserted place. It murmurs about what things do when no one watches them. It is the hearing of an unheard sound. A gentle refutation of Berkeley. The pied plane trees enclosed the place. I approached slowly. Today there was hardly a trickle down the green steps and the tall grotto swayed only slightly in the water on which a few leaves floated lotus-like. On the steps fantail pigeons waded in to drink deeply. Above them the lovers lay immobile, she in a pose of abandoned shyness exposing an exquisite body, while he cups her head in a gesture which is too concerned to be called sensual. So they lie, petrified into stillness by the one-eyed gaze of huge rain-marked, weather-stained, pigeon-spattered, dark-green Polyphemus, who leans over the rock from above and sees them. I stood there for a long time, leaning against a marble urn and meditating upon the curve of her thigh. How her right leg is drawn under her, and her naked left leg outstretched in that pure undulation which can lift contemplation and desire almost together to the highest point of awareness, the curve of a reclining woman’s thigh. There she lies, braced and yet relaxed, superbly naked and smiling faintly with closed eyes. I waited a long time, but Anna did not come.
Then I recalled to mind all the things and places which Anna had liked most in Paris. She had liked the chameleons in the Jardin des Plantes. I went next and looked at the chameleons. Very very slowly they were climbing about their cage, their long tails curling and uncurling with unspeakable deliberation as with a scarcely perceptible motion they stretched out one of their long hands to grasp another branch. Their squinting eyes would stare quietly for a while until one of them would swivel very gently to another angle. I liked them very much. This is the real tempo of the world, they told me, as with an almost unbearable slowness they brought another limb into play, and then relaxed into a rigid immobility. Watching them, my sense of duration slowed down and almost stopped; and I stayed there too for a long time, where every second was lengthened out into a minute, and motion and rest almost completely reconciled. Anna did not come.
I left the Jardin in haste and ran along the quais. I dashed into the churches, one after the other, Saint Julien, Saint Severin, Saint Germain, Saint Sulpice, in case I should find Anna there, her head thrown back, feeding some sad wish. Nobody. I went to the garden behind Notre-Dame where the church bears down like a ship and we had often fed the sparrows. I crossed to the right bank and went to the garden with the cascade, behind the Grand Palais, which is open all night. Nobody. Then I went to Saint Eustache and wandered in a forest of multiform pillars. After that I gave up. It was late in the afternoon. Outside the halles they were cleaning the pavements with hoses. Fruit and vegetables coursed along the gutters. I bought some bread and a Camembert, and through crowds of fat women nibbling the ends of the long loaves which they were taking home, my feet began automatically to carry me back towards the quartier Saint Germain. As I walked, and the vision of Anna faded a little from my eyes, I began to notice that the city was more than usually decked with tricolores, and down side streets I saw little strings of flags which ran from house to house across the roadway. Some fete was on. Then I remembered that it was the fourteenth of July.
When I got as far as the Brasserie Lipp I felt ready to sit down. So I sat down and ordered vermouth. The events of the morning already seemed far away, and equally far away the moment of insight which had succeeded them. In so far as I felt anything now concerning these things it was a sort of dull stupid pain which may have been regret for the money, or may have been simply the after-effects of too much pernod at lunch-time. But my need of Anna had not lost its sharpness. Where was she at this momen
t? Perhaps not half a mile away, sitting on the bed in some hotel room and looking at a half-packed suitcase. As I pictured the sad angle of her head I began to find the idea unbearable. No, doubtless she was on the sea, leaning on the rail with her eyes already full of America. I could not decide which of these thoughts was the more unpleasant.
I hadn’t been sitting in the Brasserie Lipp for more than a few minutes when I heard one of the waiters culling out ‘Monsieur Dohnagoo, Monsieur Dohnagoo.’ I have had my name called on the terrasses of cafés all over Europe, so that I was ready for this. I waved my hand. The waiter approached me holding a telegram. My first irrational notion was that it must be from Anna in New York. I seized it. It was from England; it was from Dave, who knew my partiality to the Brasserie Lipp and evidently sent the wire there on the off chance of its finding me. It read — Never mind Lyrebird won today at twenty to one.
Paris was beginning to tremble with the excitement of the quatorze. I started to walk along the Boulevard Saint-Germain. I was in my shirt sleeves, but still feeling extremely hot, although the day had softened into evening. I walked slowly, passing Diderot, where he sits amid the acacia trees looking with understandable dubiety in the direction of the Café de Flore. There were a great many people walking up and down, and a confused hum of voices and laughter rose above the traffic. All Paris was out of doors. When I reached the Odéon I saw that the cafés had spread themselves over half the road, and in the Rue de l‘Ancienne-Comédie people were already dancing to the sound of an accordion. Above them strings of coloured lamps were burning in the evening daylight. I sat down for a while to watch.
If like myself you are a connoisseur of solitude, I recommend to you the experience of being alone in Paris on the fourteenth of July. On that day the city lets down its tumultuous hair, which the high summer anoints with warmth and perfume. In Paris every man has his girl; but on that day every man is a sultan. Then people flock together and sweep chattering about the city like flights of brilliantly coloured birds. Amid unfurling of streamers and bursting of rockets and releasing of pigeons and popping of corks the unit of gaiety becomes, as the evening advances, larger and larger. No one is left outside; until the whole city has turned into one enormous party. To be alone in such a carnival is a strange experience. I decided to refrain from drinking. After a few drinks I knew that a sentimental loneliness would begin to spoil my detachment. Whereas to be the cool and collected spectator of scenes of mad revelry, the solitary man who brushes aside with a wan smile the women who accost him and coloured streamers in which the enemies of solitude hasten to entangle him; this was the pleasure which I promised myself for that evening, and I had. no mind to let such rarely compounded moments of contemplation be ruined by miserable yearnings for a woman I could not find.