The Chinese Room

by Vivian Connell

  She stayed for perhaps fifteen minutes in meditation while Nicholas watched her, and when she turned, her rain-sprinkled hair glittered in the almost horizontal rays of the sunlight. “Good Lord,” he thought, “how young she is! I never noticed that in the bank!”

  “Good evening, Mr. Bude.”

  “Hello, Miss Coleman.” He paused. “Funny to meet you outside the bank.”

  That was a silly remark, and she ignored it. “I didn’t think you stayed in London, Mr. Bude.”

  “Only for this week. My wife is away.” He paused. “You were looking at the water in a very solemn way.”

  “Yes, I was just noticing that when the sun is on the water it looks warm, and it turns cold in your eyes when the light goes out of it.”

  He smiled. “Well, did you get any lesson out of that!”

  “Yes. That it’s only what you feel about things that matters, not what they are in themselves. The water is only cold when you feel it cold in yourself.”

  He had guessed that neither her eyes nor mind were ever idle, and that she would not go in for small talk. She made a slight movement as if to go, and he said: “Do you always walk here in the evening?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “Good evening, Mr. Bude.”

  He knew that he would come there tomorrow evening, and he did come. He met her at almost the same place and the same hour. He was nervous, but he spoke in an honest way. “I hope that you don’t mind. I came down here because you said you came here.”

  “I do not mind.”

  Never a smile, always that grave expression, that sense of being absolutely alone with herself, or in the company of a ghost known only to her. They talked very quietly for fifteen minutes, and then she went along.

  That happened again on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday evening it was cold, and he said: “It’s cold here. Would you like to come somewhere and have a drink? We can walk up to the Ritz.”

  There was no particular sign on her face, but he felt she knew that the suggestion of the Ritz meant everything, that he understood she was the kind of girl Nicholas Bude could be seen with in the Ritz, and that he was not the kind of man who was going to suggest a place where he was not known. In a thing like this, Nicholas never did anything that old Jock Bude would not do, and it was his habit to look life in the eyes and not go in through back doors. Nicholas knew that all this was passing through her mind, and that she understood it, and, he hoped, she would not have expected anything else from him.

  “No. Thank you,” she answered. “Would you like to walk back to my flat. I can give you a drink.”

  All the way to Chelsea she got fits of shivering, and something warned him not to comment on it. Inside that cold face she might be trembling mercury. She had a lovely flat, and there were some paintings in it by a man called Matisse, a design by somebody called Ben Nicholson, a piece of marble that looked as if it might have been worn smooth and round by the sea by somebody called Barbara Hepworth, and a couple of vague shapes in walnut by somebody called Henry Moore that reminded one, after a time, of seals in the zoo. It was later on that he learned the names of the people who had worked these, and later still that he found out that they were valuable. But on the first evening he just noticed that they somehow belonged to the room and her and did not get in the way of his eye.

  She was very cool and formal and yet made him completely at home. She mixed a hot claret cup in which she put various things that he did not know, and then burned some brown sugar and stirred it in and grated a nutmeg over it, and with some nut-flavored biscuits, it was delicious. She did almost all this in silence, and he began to feel his hands were in his way, and he did not quite know what to do with them, and now, more than ever, they seemed to have an existence of their own, and wanted to touch her much as a child might want to touch a rose to find out if it felt as it smelled. The claret warmed him, but did not seem able to prevent her fits of trembling, and he knew that she did not smoke a cigarette because she could not hold it steady.

  “I am sorry,” she said, “I can’t stop shivering. It’s the cold air.”

  He knew by now it was not the cold air, only her electric nerves, but he nodded.

  “I like this place. Can I come again?”

  “Yes. Come tomorrow...Oh, it’s Saturday. I suppose you’re going home for the weekend?”

  “I am not.”

  It was at that instant that he decided to stay in London, and he thought she guessed it, and did not mind. “Very well. Come at nine o’clock.”

  The next evening he came at nine o’clock, and she wore a frock that in some way made him less conscious of that feeling she gave of mind dominating body. There was a silence when she gave him a drink, and he seemed to have no control over his hands. She again had fits of trembling and she laughed uneasily.

  “I am sorry. I am nervous.”

  “You are no worse than I am.”

  “Oh...”

  “I am just wondering if I am in love with you.”

  She got up and walked about, and one could feel the tension as she calmed herself.

  “If you come here, you must not talk about love.”

  “I am sorry.” He paused. “I meant what I said.”

  “I know.”

  As she was going back to her chair his hand went out and touched her hand. He took it away as if from a live wire. -

  “I am sorry. I couldn’t help that.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  She sat in silence and had gone cold white. Then she got up and said: “I can’t stand it. This damned shivering...”

  When he got up and took her in his arms, it was to comfort her. She kept on shivering, and a sweat came on her forehead, and if one touched any part of her body it jumped. When he kissed her, she seemed unable to kiss him back, and he could not bear her agitation. “You are all on edge,” he said. “I am going now.”

  “No. Don’t go. I must get over it. I couldn’t bear all this again. I...”

  Then he knew that she could only get out of this by letting herself go in passion. Currents seemed to be passing through her body like ripples through a snake. Suddenly she gave him her mouth and began to beseech his body with her hands, and he knew nothing more except that he wanted her and he took her in to the bed. So fierce was their mating that it was afterwards he realized that she was a virgin.

  “Yes. I was frightened.”

  After that, there was no trace of the frightened girl, and he never got near her again. Their passion was a kind of catharsis that purged their bodies and never touched their minds. For some reason that she could not disclose she left Chelsea and took an expensive flat. Often, he felt that she hated him, but could not do without him, and he dared not approach her with tenderness of speech or touch. Very soon, she gave up kissing him and would never let down her hair, but, sexually, she was completely a woman and had by instinct as much ingenuity as Laura had by experience. In some way, she seemed to let her body love him freely, but withheld her mouth and her mind and her soul, if she had a soul. She began to upset him, because he could not understand this kink in her, and, often, he felt that he would have to give her up. But in some mysterious way he felt that to give her up would be to leave her alone, in that frightened solitude she had in her. She was like a hermit who compelled one to go out into the wilderness and keep her company. Often he felt that she would prefer him to hate her than love her, and when he bought her a diamond clasp, he thought that she had almost accomplished that.

  “I don’t wear jewels,” she said coldly. “If you want to give me something, I would prefer money.”

  He almost walked out. He was shocked at her plain way of putting it. But he knew by now that he would never understand her, and he supposed that it was no good trying, and on every Monday evening, he left an envelope on the table. A hundred times, trying to compel himself to leave her, he had told himself that she was, for all her beauty, brain, and fine breeding, nothing but a kept girl. And in his heart he had never believed
it. He could never feel that when she gave him a drink, he had paid for it. Nor did he ever believe that she stayed at the bank because she got a good salary.

  And now, he thought, as the light sank down to the edge of the lawn, The Times had proved him right about the money. But it did not bring him one inch nearer to knowing her, or understanding why she did anything.

  In a way, he felt now, Sidonie had given him a kind of peace. She stayed cold and beautiful, like a Greek statue, and even when her passion gusted up like a storm about her, it could no more disturb her inward calm than a gale could make any tumult in the silent marble. She had become a habit, and hostile as she was, there was a bond that held them, a curious bond, that sometimes made him wonder if hate did not join in a closer union than love. But, at times, she was so cold and menacing that she alarmed him into something like a physical fear, as on that day, for example, that she had compelled him to give her the roses that he had bought for Muriel in his usual Friday custom, as if she knew that it was a habit that meant nothing, and could not tolerate it.

  It was on that day that Sarah Fuidge had poisoned herself, and it was on that day that he had been somehow trapped by Saluby into pledging himself to write those letters, and it was on that day it was full moon, and ever since that day he had lost all sense of location in his world and all feeling of security in his mind. Had Sarah not died, he would not have discovered Elder’s Chinese room, that had made him realize that everybody around him seemed to have a Chinese room—even old Charndale, whose Chinese room was in that flybook of small rainbows. Into Sidonie’s Chinese room, he knew, he would never go. It might be an empty white room, like that square within the mathematical lines of the Ben Nicholson design that was somehow like a map of her mind. But he had been content to remain outside, knowing that she was inside, and had settled down with her into a kin solitude of his own. She was enough of woman for him, and neither at home nor elsewhere had he been disturbed by other women.

  And now the astonishing thing had happened with his own wife, who for years had made no more disturbance in him than Oxinham. And with her, also, it seemed to have begun on the day Sarah had died.

  He relighted his pipe and pulled it in long draughts as if he would inhale some oxygen into his mind to enable it to understand this change in Muriel. It was extraordinary that a dull if very nice-looking woman should develop almost overnight into the vital person who had excited Charndale. And nothing struck him more than the fact that Charndale had clearly felt she was a thoroughbred. Unpleasant as the thought was, Nicholas would not have sworn on the Book that Muriel was a gentlewoman in the natural sense of the word, and she had never handled the staff at Barrington with assurance or walked into a room as if she owned it. He had noticed that as lately as the day Sarah died. But now she had altogether a new air, and, Nicholas realized, Oxinham in his own sphere must be almost as puzzled as he was. For it was unquestionable that Oxinham was now afraid of her.

  Nicholas almost spoke his thought aloud: “Good God, it must be an affair. Nothing else can explain it.” He did not care fourpence if she were having an affair—in fact, after his own awakening with Laura he had prayed for Muriel to have a similar experience—but he could not believe it was with Saluby, although her changing seemed to date from his arrival. That skinflinted neurotic could not have turned Muriel into this woman conscious of her sex appeal. For she knew damned well, she’d got it now, wherever it had come from in this torrid summer. It was amazing, but, after all, he had been thirty-six himself before Laura had enabled him to know what had been asleep in his own body. And, if it was Laura with him, it was somebody else with her, for that kind of thing didn’t happen by itself. He did not care who it was, or what her secret was, but he cared a great deal about its effect on him, for she had shaken him out of his content with Sidonie, and she was beginning to trouble his sleep. He was afraid of the whole thing. His instinct told him that if he slept with Muriel now, it would murder Sidonie, and he had a strange feeling that he was more necessary to Sidonie, and that he somehow belonged to her. But he knew very well that Muriel would get him if she wanted him now. By God, it was a ridiculous situation, when a man hesitated to be unfaithful to his mistress with his own wife I That had not troubled him during these last years when his infrequent and dismal sexual attempts with Muriel had only made Monday nights with Sidonie more real. But now it would be something very different with Muriel, and she would not, like Sidonie, keep her mouth away and shut like a Chinese room.

  He stowed away his pipe. It was smoked out. And his mind was filled with ashes. Going over it all, as he tried to find himself in the social structure of England, in his banking life, to find himself with Muriel and Sidonie, he knew that he was only going about the outside of that Chinese room that was the interior of Nicholas Bude, and that was a place of mystery and shadow and strange lights, that Elder might guess in him, that Sidonie might guess, but that only somebody like Sarah Fuidge could know. When he dreamed at night, he went down into the earth like a badger into his warren, when he walked by the full moon his soul moved like a fish in a mesmeric field of water, and whenever in the daylight his hands got beyond his mastery, they were fumbling for the door of that Chinese room, to open it and let him go in there alone. He guessed that everybody had a Chinese room, and that many, like him, were afraid to go into that haunted chamber.

  He could not get the Chinese-room notion out of his mind, for it seemed to make everything clear, and he seemed to know what his hands were always doing, trying to open that door. He had always known that Nicholas Bude was in his hands. They were the hands that for generations had worked the soil of the Highlands, and then the English earth of the shire when his grandfather had come down from Scotland, and they were the hands that had swung his father’s pick into the gold. They were the peasant’s hands that had to grip something—an ax, a plow, a spade. Clenched on the oars, tight on the bat, they had been occupied at Harrow and Oxford. Since then they had been empty, and they ached like an empty stomach, in a continual hunger for the handle of the spade, the iron of the plow, hard loaves of rock, the wet dough of yellow clay, the moist wool of lambs at birth, com sprinkling through fingers, for the whole sensual flesh of the world. They wanted to build with stones, to pack earth about stalks and make things grow. And they wanted to do these things themselves. It did not satisfy them to know that Forsyte was planting in the garden, that Cantlebye was lopping in the woodland. And they never’ left him alone. He could never forget his hands. Some things gave them a curious peace. Whenever Sidonie was out of the room, he would pouch them about the Barbara Hepworth sphere of marble, and they would be somehow cooled. And couching Sidonie’s breasts in his hands they would be soothed and healed by that white flesh. But even then he had not forgotten them.

  Only once in his life, he realized, had he entirely forgotten his hands, or, perhaps, they had forgotten him. And that was last night in Elder’s Chinese room. It was an hour after he had gone to bed, waking up in the hot club bedroom, that he had woken up out of a kind of coma and known that all the sense of peace in Elder’s had come from the absolute forgetfulness of his hands in that room.

  He looked at his great hands. He did not think they were ugly. They never fully opened and, even when hanging, kept in the position in which a man walking behind a plow might bend them to hold the reins loosely. They wanted to carry things and to close about shafts of wood and make them instruments that turned the earth and built and made chips fly from the boles of trees. They simply wanted to work, and to earn their own living. There was nothing very lunatic about that. At this moment, his uncle, Christian Bude, lived in a small cottage in Northumberland and earned his living as a farm laborer because he liked to work with his hands, and had never accepted one penny of the unlimited money that was available to him for the asking. And at sixty-five, Jock Bude had pensioned himself off on three pounds a week and ended his days in a wood cabin, and had come in, aged eighty, from a hard day’s work in a nor’easter and s
at down in a straw-rope chair that he had made himself and looked at the peat fire and gone to sleep forever.

  These men, his father and his uncle, would nod their heads quietly now if he said that he was going to do the same thing, and they would not have stared in wonder had they seen him, the night of the day on which Sarah Fuidge had died, suddenly tearing up sods of earth, as a bull might tear up the ground when the light of the full moon sent tides through his blood as it sent tides through the sea. They might not understand these things any more than he understood them, but they would not laugh at them, but ruminate in their minds about eggs in thunderstorms and such mysterious phenomena. His mother would have said: “Aye, he’s got a bothering in his hands, and he’d best be getting a spade and keeping them from thinking.” Even in her Ascot gown, Deborah had a habit of dropping into speech like that. And once, listening to her Harrovian son talking about his match at Lords, she had muttered to herself: “It be a bad thing for the corn to come up too quick.”

  Perhaps that was the trouble, they had come up too quickly in the world. There was not yet enough distance between him and the soil. He was as ridiculous as a shaggy Highland colt in the social harness. It was ridiculous that because he wanted a spade and an acre of ground, he should be shut into the spacious enclosure of Barrington. He felt like a muzzled horse in a grassy paddock. All around him was food, and he could not eat...

  Ah, here was Muriel, coming up in the shadow of the laurel wood. A golden pheasant went up like a bright rocket in the evening light, and the dogs barked. Then it was tranquil again. He must put this history away from his mind and look at the page before him, that green page of the lawn under the golden lamp of the sun. It was something like this he had pictured at Barrington when he had got engaged to Muriel. She would come up by the woodland with the golden summer in her, as she was coming up now. In God’s name, why hadn’t it gone like this? It was pleasant now to forget the fretful Sahara of the past ten years and at least imagine paradise, and let his eye meditate upon her as she came up in the glow...