Judith

by Nicholas Mosley

  One evening I was on my own in the sitting-room of the flat and there was a ring on the doorbell from downstairs and I pressed the button and then when I opened the door of the flat there was Desmond.

  I thought I might say – Go away! Don’t you know it is dangerous to be here?

  – You have come to rescue me after all? But it is too late! Don’t you know this might be a trap?

  Desmond said ‘Oliver told me you were here.’

  I thought – I know Oliver would have told you I was here!

  Desmond followed me into the sitting-room. He closed the door. He said ‘He said I could come and see you.’

  I thought – So you are a member of Them – who? – the invaders from Andromeda? The Gestapo? You will put on rubber gloves. You will be looking for – Guns? Papers? Foetuses?

  Desmond sat with his arms along the sides of a chair. I thought – If I had a button, I might get currents passing through him –

  He said ‘How have you been?’

  I said ‘All right.’

  He said ‘Oliver doesn’t mind!’

  I thought I might say – There will be the explosion; the rubble; the dome of the observatory; the spire open to the wind –

  He said ‘What does Oliver do? I’ve heard stories!’

  I wanted him to go away. I wanted to explain – We each have to be getting on with – whatever is in those pictures.

  He said ‘Come to bed.’

  I said ‘Why did Oliver want you to come here?’ He said ‘I don’t know, do you?’

  He sat with his arms along the sides of the chair. I thought – But don’t you know what happens to people who are booby-trapped –

  Then – Perhaps all of us have to be wiped out.

  He said ‘Show me what he does.’ Then – ‘I’d like anything!’ I thought – Oh I have seen children with dogs’ heads and fins of fishes! –

  He said ‘Aren’t you well?’

  I said ‘No.’

  He said ‘Perhaps I better come back another time.’

  I thought – You mean, there really is something keeping an eye on this, just round some corner?

  The experiment that the Professor had once done with his students (he told me later) was –

  The students were placed in front of a screen and each was given to hold an instrument similar to those by which you alter the channels on television. The students were told that by pressing this or that button they could affect what image came up on the screen: there were five or six buttons and five or six corresponding images available: the students were told that their instruments were connected to a machine which would project the image selected by the majority of buttons. In fact the instruments were connected to nothing that affected what image came up on the screen: they were connected to a computer which recorded what buttons were pressed, and which analysed the relations and patterns of relations between the buttons pressed and the images. What came up on the screen was occasioned by another machine which made its ‘choices’ at random: by ‘random’ was meant something to do with the behaviour of elementary particles: this at that time among scientists had become a definition of ‘randomness’. But students were under the impression that they could influence what came up on the screen by becoming part of a statistical majority. So, what was the point of the experiment? The computer recorded the buttons pressed and the images that came up and it analysed the relations and patterns of relations: there were certain coincidences that occurred slightly more or slightly less than what might be expected from laws of averages: there were certain numbers of occasions that the image that came up was the one before, or the one after, the corresponding majority – button pressed – and so on. There were statistics that might seem interesting here and there: but these seemed to be offset by interesting figures somewhere else. So what, indeed, was the point of the experiment?

  It was, I suppose, that all this was like life: we are under the illusion – are we not? – that we influence things – even if we imagine our influence is dependent on its being part of a statistical majority. But then, after a time, the students got bored – do we not get bored like this in life: however much we think we participate actively in events we also suspect, at some level, that we do not: and anyway, what sort of personal influence is it that depends on being part of a majority statistic? Is there here anything of control? And so there is a sort of despair (might there not be a button by which we could blow up the world!). And so on. You see what I mean.

  But there were one or two students (was one of them you, Bert?) who some time before had begun to see the whole business as absurd: to suspect that, of course, the instruments they held in their hands were connected to nothing except perhaps that which could record and analyse their actions; what else, indeed, would be scientifically possible in such an experiment? But I think these one or two students would have seen this with some sort of irony: they could still press their buttons: does one not thus go on pressing buttons (what else is there to do) in life?

  But the Professor then began to notice something very odd that was happening (was it you, Bert? was it you?). Just when these one or two students were going on pressing their buttons without any hope of effect, as it were – in some deference I suppose just to the irony of being conscious of absurdity – there began to come up on the computer, the Professor noticed, quite a few extraordinary results: I mean the buttons pressed by these one or two students began to coincide exactly with the images that came up on the screen: these coincidences happened enormously in excess of anything that could be explained statistically: this seemed to be happening just when these students had given up one set of expectations and were not yet feeling paralysed about another: I mean their minds were open, quizzical, blank; both caring and not caring. They did not know, of course, what was happening: at first the Professor hardly knew himself: but the effects, the results, the coincidences, were there. But then, of course, the Professor became very excited; his excitement communicated itself, perhaps, to these students; anyway, after a time they seemed in some way to become aware of what was happening and the extraordinary run of results tailed off; then stopped altogether. One of the students put his instrument down; would not go on; walked out of the experiment room. Was it not, indeed, Bert, you! Perhaps some white light had come down. What can you do, how can you go on, when you know that the experiment works, but only when, as it were, you do not know that it works; when in the face of impossibility you have a certain – insouciance? You would have to leave – would you not – at least that area that you knew was a theatre.

  There is this behaviour of elementary particles that is called random – that does not seem to be to do with what is known as cause and effect. But at the same time, in the same area, there are connections – I mean something happens to a particle here (this has been observed) and something (the same thing? its complement?) happens to a particle there; instantaneously, without (but the question is with what?) what has been called connection. And there are these particles both inside and outside the brain. So what are, indeed, connections?

  If you start talking about this, then – good heavens! of course it is easier to go back to talking about statistics.

  But if you paint a picture, you are looking – are you not – not at what you expect; but at what you have (how could this be!) discovered – or created?

  I got my suitcase out to pack every now and then. I sat by the window looking down into the street.

  People moved like bits and pieces of slime-mould. They did not seem able to find a way of coming together. If they did, they would explode?

  Somewhere or other there was a tower being built up to heaven. If one were a god, I thought, why should one not press the button.

  Once or twice Oliver brought people back to the flat. I thought – Each time I get nearer like that child to the edge of the bed: to flip over.

  Oliver would say – No one thrown you away yet?

  There was an evening when I was sitting on th
e floor of the bedroom watching television: on television I could do with people what I liked: switch them from one thing to another. I thought – What if God just gets bored with our programme on television; plays us fast-forward to extinction? On one channel there was a ballet: Romeo and Juliet, I think: people were staggering about, flopping, coming together, climbing on one another’s shoulders: they seemed to be trying to get out of the framework of the picture. But the framework moved with them: they were trapped within their cave. On another channel there was a child crossing a railway bridge; he stopped and looked back; he looked into the camera. I thought – His parents, Romeo and Juliet, are always flopping around; how can he get up off their dreadful shoulders? A train came underneath the railway bridge: I wondered – The child, to get himself loved, will have to jump over?

  On another channel there was a programme about the men who in fact had made the Bomb; they were like large-eyed animals that come out only at night: there was their habitat, the dump of buildings in the desert. Then they were in white coats facing switches and dials. On another channel there was a girl being enclosed in an iron case: the inside of the case was exactly the same shape as the girl: she was to be entombed and abandoned, as some sort of retribution. I thought – Those men in white coats are trying to get something through to her: but she cannot scream: there is just that slit like a peephole through which her eyes act terrified. I wanted to see what was going on with the child on the railway bridge. I heard Oliver coming into the flat: he had someone with him. The child on the bridge was looking down: I thought – Do not jump: jump: what particles are there that will make you do one thing rather than another? It seemed that the person with Oliver was Desmond. I thought – Well, after all, yes, Oliver may be half in love with Desmond. Romeo and Juliet were flopping about on their tomb. I wondered what it was the girl in the iron case had down her throat so she could not scream; perhaps I should check with the men in white coats again. But then there was that picture of the miles and miles of rubble: the dome of the observatory, the spire open to the wind. Oliver and Desmond were laughing in the next room. I thought – You can manipulate these pictures: where is it that those people are in the paintings in the National Gallery? I thought I might try soon to get there. Oliver and Desmond came in from the sitting-room. Oliver said to me ‘Look who’s here!’ I thought I might say – But I know who’s here. Oliver said to Desmond ‘You see what I mean!’ Desmond said ‘Yes.’ I thought – I despise – what? – myself, as well as others. The child had gone down from the railway bridge and was walking by a canal. Romeo and Juliet were having what looked like a fuck on their tomb. There was a button that you pressed that made everything go roaring and blank. Oliver said ‘What shall we do with her?’ Desmond said ‘We can’t just leave her like that.’ I thought – Where is the girl in the iron case? Perhaps she is the foetus, waiting in the tomb. Oliver said ‘I’ll leave you two together.’ Desmond said ‘No you needn’t go.’ Oliver said ‘Would you like some help?’ Desmond said ‘Yes let’s get her over the bed.’ He began to lift me. I said ‘Just a minute.’ Oliver said ‘No more minutes.’ I said ‘I want to pee.’ Desmond said ‘You needn’t go to pee.’ I still had in my hand the instrument that changed the channels on television: the child was looking down into the waters of the canal. I said ‘There’s something I want in the bathroom.’ Oliver said ‘All right.’ When I looked at them I thought – Eeny meeny miney mo, Holofernes. Oliver was that thick-set man like a probe: Desmond was a glove with the hand sweating up inside him.

  I went out of the bedroom and across the passage into the bathroom. I thought – You can do anything, can you, when you’ve no idea what it is you are doing. In the bathroom I locked the door. The shelf above the basin was where that piece of screwed-up paper with the powder had been: I thought – Well, it was some sort of signpost – wasn’t it – through the maze. I did not know if I was the child above the canal, the foetus, or the girl in the iron case. I wondered – What happens when those men with their probes reach the holy of holies; the heart of the atom, the tomb?

  I sat on a chair at the side of the bath over the back of which there was a towel with flowers on it. I thought – So where is that bird; that finger coming down: hullo, hullo, little one.

  After a time Oliver came to the other side of the bathroom door and banged on it. He said ‘Are you all right?’

  I did not know how long I had been there. Perhaps I had been asleep.

  I went to the window of the bathroom and tried to open it. It was the sort that swings outwards on a horizontal hinge. It did not seem possible to crawl through at the bottom, as it were between someone’s legs; you had to lie along the top, but then you might be hurled outwards as if from some seige machine.

  There was that foetus on the floor with a rope tied round its throat. I thought – That girl of the Professor’s, where is she?

  I stretched out along the slope of the window. I thought – If the hinge breaks, I will be flung out and fly.

  Oliver or Desmond, at the door behind me, seemed to be trying to break it down.

  I intended to get out and to crawl along the parapet as I had done once or twice before: then I might come to another window where I might get into some dimension where I had not been before.

  I thought – That empty nest on the ground: is it where someone fell? a child? a bird? a stone?

  That, at last, might be rock bottom?

  It was not difficult to get out of the window. But the parapet on this side of the building was more narrow and fragile than the one on which I had crawled before. It seemed, as I landed on it, that a piece of stone became loose and might, indeed, have fallen to the street below.

  I thought – No wonder those shadow-watchers liked staying within their cave!

  Someone behind me seemed to be getting through the bathroom door.

  I set off along the parapet. I was going towards the windows of the next-door flat. I had sometimes wondered about whoever it was who lived there. Perhaps it was he or she who had picked me up that evening when I had passed out in the lift.

  I thought – Hang on, little one; help is coming. I am that bird!

  I was coming to a window of the next-door flat; the curtains were only partly drawn; there was a slit in the middle through which I could see (as if they were in a painting) a man and a woman sitting side by side at a piano; they had their backs to me: they were quite still. I thought – They are in love: they are representative of something quite different: they are like the figures that have been lying, that have risen, above an Etruscan tomb. And their notes fly about like birds of music. I crawled on. I heard a voice call out my name behind me. I thought Oliver must be pursuing me on to the parapet. I came to a window like the one out of which I had just climbed; it was on a horizontal hinge opening outwards at the top; but here there was just enough room to crawl through at the bottom. I thought – I will be born. It did seem that there was someone emerging on to the parapet some distance behind me. I thought – Perhaps, yes, if I kick backwards with my feet, there will be that mysterious and instantaneous effect at a distance. The room beyond the window through which I was crawling was in darkness: I had in fact to push against something solid, I think it was the balustrade, with my feet. I seemed to be pulling myself on to the top of another surface, or slope, on a central hinge inside the room. I thought – This is ridiculous. There was some sort of cry behind me. Then the surface on which I was stretching tipped, and I was projected head-first into the darkness. I thought – Well, good-bye, old life: I suppose I never really knew you. I had landed on some rug. I was on all fours in the darkness. I thought – Well, are we or are we not those particles to whom this happens here and that happens there at the same time? Then – At least, this is quite a comfortable rock bottom.

  I did not want to think of anything else.

  You know that experiment in which you look into a box through a peephole and there is what appears to be a room with a bed and a table and chairs: and
then you look over the top of the box and you see that it contains just disconnected lines and planes and it has been yourself, your way of seeing things, that has transformed the bits and pieces into the structure of a room. Well, this space into which I had been projected seemed to be the inside of such a box: I could not make out what it was into which I had fallen; there were bars of light at some distance like suspended strips of neon. I was on a carpet; there was linoleum; then a platform; then a pair of metal legs. I thought – Dear God, not those legs of the girl in the iron case! I had imagined I might come to a bathroom similar to the one which I had left: but this space was larger: there were distances between solid objects. As I crawled I hit my head against the soft edge of a bed. I worked out, after a time, that the bars of light must stand for the gaps round a door: they also seemed to be reflected in a mirror somewhere behind me. It seemed likely that there would be a light-switch at the side of the door. I crawled on. I thought – But there will be that bright light coming down: the end of the play: the audience leaving the theatre.

  There were noises from the street below. I thought – Please God, there was that cry: there will not be an ambulance?

  But also – Where are that man and woman who are in love in the next room?

  When I found the switch and the light came on it appeared that the room in which I had landed was a combined bedroom-bathroom and there was a swing-mirror on a stand beneath the open window which was what I had crawled on to – as if it were a second window after I had got through the first – and it was because of this that I had been projected head-first, although inwards. I went and shut the window. It was luck, of course, that at the first window I had not been projected outwards. There was a bed on one side of the room and a bath and a washbasin and a lavatory on the other. I thought – This is all right: I can wash; then perhaps lie down on the bed for a while at least. I was not wearing many clothes: there was a dressmaker’s dummy in the room. I thought I might say – Hullo and good-bye: Judith, Holofernes.