The Furnished Room

by Laura Del-Rivo

  ‘You don’t believe I will?’

  ‘What does it matter? I don’t care whether I get the pound back or not.’

  ‘But I will pay you back! I will, I will! I don’t want to owe you anything.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’ve made your point.’

  She looked at him, pushing the hair back from her forehead. Then she said: ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  She stilll hesitated. Then she made a sudden dash for the radio and turned the volume on full. The next second she was out of the room with the door slamming behind her and the sound of her high heels clattering down the stairs.

  The music blared. Something about Señore and Amore. He turned it off. The illuminated panel no longer pleased him; he had a general sensation of tastelessness. He noticed that her cigarette had burnt out on the mantelpiece, blistering the paint. Her lipstick, with the cap off, was beside the mirror.

  He noticed a pocket diary on the floor. He must have missed seeing it when he retrieved her belongings. The entries, in her neat office-girl backhand, stated that she ‘Went to jazz club. Wore new check shirt and tight jeans’, or ‘Bought sweater from Marks & Sparks, as was payday’, or ‘Had coffee in Troubadour with Katey’. She had listed the records she had bought and the films she had seen with comments ‘not bad’ or ‘v. good’. Drawings of a bottle beside the written entries denoted the days on which she had got drunk.

  Looking for references to himself, he found ‘Went to cinema,’ and ‘Went to bed’.

  Over the days of her holiday in Sussex she had scrawled ‘FOUL TIME!’

  The last entry read: ‘Met a boy called Larry. He is dark, he has a black sweater over a red shirt. He is keen on B. Bugloss (like me!). We went to bed.’

  Beckett found the remains of a wrapped sliced loaf in the cupboard, and made a sandwich with cheese and a hunk of raw onion. He sat in the armchair, eating, and dropping crumbs down his bare chest. His thoughts were not of Ilsa, but of Dyce, whose proposition was always present at the back of his mind. It was a constant factor, like a headache.

  The next evening he had still not arrived at a decision. Sometimes he knew he would do it. At these times he imagined his future supplied with a private income. It would be a pleasant modest life, devoted to study and research into the nature of existence, and made extraordinary by the secret of the crime he had committed. It was an attractive prospect, but it was immediately destroyed by the knowledge that he would not do it. At the times when he knew he would not do it, he felt relieved, as if he had thrown off a burden. Yet soon the idea of the crime became attractive again, and he started rebuilding his ideal life. These two states, knowing he would do it and knowing he would not, succeeded each other endlessly.

  He decided to visit Gash. He was admitted by the landlady, who again thanked him for paying for the window. Beckett hardly heard what she said. His replies were so strange and incoherent that she asked him whether he was ill.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. Then added: ‘It’s the heat, you know. It’s been terribly hot these last weeks.’ He wiped his brow.

  ‘It gets you down. I thought the thunderstorm would clear the air a bit, but it’s got just as bad again.’

  Beckett gabbled some sort of reply, then knocked on Gash’s door.

  Gash greeted him with: ‘I’m pleased to see you.’ Behind his old man’s, womanish face, with its aureole of hair, the new window-pane shone clean like steel. He held up his hand in blessing.

  Beckett was reminded of Father Dominic’s hand holding the chess piece. ‘I met an acquaintance of yours recently. He’s a priest now, but you knew him when he was at school. His name’s Dominic.’

  ‘Yes, I remember the Dominic boy. He was very clever for his age. It was a great occasion when he was elected president of his school debating society. He worked all night in the bedroom, writing his speech. Poor Mrs Dominic couldn’t get him to go to bed. And the motion he was proposing was astonishing — “that falsehood is preferable to truth”.’ Gash was quite excited. ‘I remember it all clearly. The charming parents, the pale, serious boy. His bedroom, which he used as a study, was a holy of holies to him. His parents were not admitted except by special invitation. He invited me up once, for the purpose of an argument whereby he tried to convert me to Catholicism.’

  ‘Did he? Well, he’s still at it. He tried to convert me, too.’

  ‘With any success?’

  ‘No, I can’t be reconverted. But he made me feel more interested and friendly towards the Church. Also he surprised me by agreeing that actions are determined and therefore there is little freedom.’

  ‘Little free will,’ Gash corrected him. ‘There is still freedom.”

  ‘Aren’t they the same?’

  ‘Not at all. It was thought that there was an immaterial tenant of the material brain. The tenant was called the mind, the personality, the I, or what you will. Then determinism announced that there was no such tenant, and that the brain was a sort of automatic signal-box without an ‘I’ at the controls. But however much the tenant is planed down, it cannot be entirely abolished. It still remains in the form of consciousness. Consciousness is the seat of freedom.’

  Beckett scratched his head, trying to follow.

  Gash went on: ‘Man is the intersection point between the God dimension and the human dimension; between timelessness and time. That point of intersection is consciousness. It is there that we receive the God-force with its qualities of freedom and timelessness. That is why I believe we have freedom, in spite of our limited free will.’

  The room smelt of thug cat and Dettol and the stale smell of insanity. Here Gash half starved and slept on the floor, and talked of the God force.

  Gash continued: ‘It wouldn’t occur to young Dominic — to Father Dominic — that we have this freedom, for unless he is much changed since I knew him, he is no mystic. With him, everything is an intellectual problem. However, I’m surprised that he overlooked the most vital doctrine of his Church: that man is the temple of the Holy Spirit.’

  ‘Mr Gash, do you mind if I ask you an impertinent question?’

  ‘Not at all. I don’t think I should find it impertinent.’

  ‘Well, I heard you were once in a mental home, and I wondered if it was true.’

  ‘Perfectly true. I was sent there because it was thought that I was incapable of taking care of myself. My sole preoccupation was to concentrate the force inside me. The force that can be called the God force or the life force or the Holy Spirit or what you please. I practised the concentration of this force until I could live in a state of ecstasy which would be unbearable to the normal man. Consequently, I grew careless about the routine business of life: crossing roads, carrying on conversations, eating food, and such things. Finally it was decided that I was in need of control and protection, with the result that I spent the next year in a mental hospital.’

  ‘How terrible for you.’

  ‘The hospital was excellent; very well run. I had no complaints, except that leisure was discouraged and we were supposed to fill our time with all manner of trivialities known as occupational therapy. Unfortunately, the whole treatment was designed for the sick; whereas I suffered, not from sickness, but from excess of health.’

  ‘I see.’ Beckett looked at the new glass. A million pinpricks of light dazzled him. He picked up one of Gash’s books and glanced at the title on the spine. Then he faced Gash, and said: ‘I asked, not because I think I’m going mad, but because I’d like to go mad and can’t.’

  ‘An interesting affliction.’

  ‘Look. Last time I was here, you talked about the moments of assent, of affirmation of life. I’ve had that experience, but I also suffer from its opposite condition.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I remember once, when I was a child, my mother gave me a book of noble lives to read when I was convalescing from flu. One was Pasteur, I remember. Another was Father Damien, who founded a leper colony. In this chapter
it mentioned the fact that a leper can’t feel hot water. I mean if a leper immersed his hand in hot water, he wouldn’t know it was hot.’

  Beckett looked at his own hand.

  Gash nodded, to indicate that he was following. ‘You can imagine a leper immersing his hand in hot water. They tell him that it’s hot, and that he should have certain reactions to heat. He accepts what they say as correct, but it’s meaningless to him. The word “hot” draws a blank with him. He has no reaction; he feels nothing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am a spiritual leper. I am told that there is a point in life, but “point in life” is as meaningless to me as “hot” is to a leper. I lack the correct feelings and reactions, the correct convictions. If a leper has an impaired physical sense of touch, I have an impaired spiritual and emotional sense of touch. My sense of touch is dead.’

  Gash asked: ‘What are you going to do about this problem?’

  ‘There is something I could do. An action violent enough to shock myself back into life. But it’s drastic, criminal. I can’t tell you about it.’

  ‘You’re not a criminal. I don’t think you would belong in their world.’

  ‘No. That’s the point. I’d choose crime, I wouldn’t drift into it. Suppose a man has grown up with certain beliefs and values. Then he loses them. He will become intellectually a nihilist, and emotionally numb like the leper. But eventually it will occur to him that if there is no meaning in life, he is able to impose his own. If he wants to live for pleasure, he can do. If he wants to go anywhere on the face of the earth, he can do. If he wants to substitute a goal of his own for the overturned goals of religion and social morality, he can for instance set out to make as much money as possible.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And if he refrains from these things, it is either because he is blind or because his sight is so clear that it destroys everything he sees. The blind man has bandaged his eyes before the glare of his awful freedom. He won’t live for pleasure because he has self-imposed duties to society and his family. He won’t roam the world because he has limited himself to the area of his job, his place of residence, his timetable. He won’t make money because he is somewhat afraid of it, and considers it immoral. In short, he prefers to construct a safe pattern of living as a barricade against his freedom.

  ‘That was the blind man. Now the clear-sighted. He looks around at his possibilities: pleasure, travel, money, etc. But his wretched eyes act like a pulverizing gun. One blast from his eyes, and the thing looked at crumbles into dust. He sees in advance the futility of all goals, and so never attempts to reach them. Instead, he stagnates, seeing nothing worthy of his beliefs, nothing to make him move in one direction rather than another. The man thus paralysed is not free. But there is one course possible to him: if he can’t feel the normal human blood in his veins, he can inject himself with poison, with fever.’ When he had finished, Beckett could still hear his last words, in his flat assertive voice, hanging in the air. He thought with depression: People dislike me, as a clever prig student is disliked.

  Gash said: ‘When I was a young man of about your age I had everything I could desire. A good career, a wife whom I loved, and more money than I knew how to use. I was successful in business, society, and love, and I enjoyed myself enormously. Then I started to lose my taste for my manner of life. It was like losing one’s taste for food when one has a cold. Everything I looked at seemed tinged with futility and greyness, and I felt a permanent vague dissatisfaction which had, so far as I could see, no tangible cause. This condition worsened and I began to suffer from headaches. I tried a holiday abroad, which only brought temporary relief. I next toyed with various ideas, including, under the influence of the Dominic family, that of joining the Catholic Church. None of these mental fads lasted for long. Finally I took a drastic step. I resigned my position with my firm, parted from my wife, friends, and family, and went to join a small religious community who had a house in Scotland. These men practised disciplines for the attainment of spiritual ecstasy, which I still practise daily.’

  ‘I find your life story very interesting. But I could not do the same myself. So I hope you’re not advising me to become a monk.’

  ‘I was advising nothing,’ Gash said. ‘The point I wished to make was that freedom follows an act of rejection. I must add that, in my opinion, all men who are capable of greatness have to go through a preliminary trough of spiritual deadness. This deadness is the necessary preliminary to rebirth. I believe that the great are drawn from the ranks of the twice-born, from those who have undergone death and rebirth.’

  ‘What is rebirth?’

  ‘I could answer your question, and many other questions. I could chart your future spiritual development. But it would be of no use to you.’ As Beckett looked startled, Gash continued: ‘Don’t be alarmed, I’m not a charlatan, claiming to read your future! I meant that, from my own experience along the same path, I could chart the progress of the path for you. It would be useless because experiences cannot be given. You must undergo them yourself. When you have done so, you will make your own definition of rebirth and won’t have to ask me for mine.’ Gash put his hand on Beckett’s shoulder. ‘I have only one piece of advice. Don’t rush precipitately into some rash action which you may later regret, but wait for the experience of rebirth which will assuredly come to you sooner or later.’

  The old man’s face was near his own; the smell of decay hung from the womanish soft mouth. Beckett felt sudden revulsion. He thought, rebelliously, that it was all very well for Gash to talk. Gash was even more divorced from the everyday world than he was. All the same, Gash’s voice had the ring of authenticity, like the voice of a workman who thoroughly knows his job.

  Gash removed his hand. ‘Well, go now. But come and see me again, any time you please.’

  In the doorway, Beckett said: ‘By the way, I asked you about the mental hospital because popular gossip says you were confined for a sex crime. I don’t know what you feel about this. Personally, I should be rather flattered at being considered the local sex maniac!’

  Gash said: ‘How amazing! I’m sorry to disappoint the gossips. But tell them that in my youth, although never actually qualifying for the status of sex maniac, I was very passionate and never ran short of beautiful, charming, and cultivated women.’

  ‘I’ll tell them!’ Beckett said.

  Chapter 12

  Beckett's money diminished rapidly. He lived cheaply, buying meat sold as pets’ pieces, and scavenging vegetables from the gutter in Portobello Market. He made his excursions in the evenings, when the stalls were closing and many vegetables were dropped. If he was too late the roadsweeper beat him to it, and swept up the vegetables into the Royal Borough of Kensington cart.

  He received a letter from Ilsa enclosing a fifteen-shilling postal order. Her writing style was flat and undistinguished, punctuated with exclamation marks. She related that Katey had caught a summer cold, that they had got a cute chianti-bottle lamp for their living room, that yesterday she had been to the cinema and the film was v. good; that she liked her new job but some of the customers were bloody mean about tips. There then followed complicated explanations why she was sending fifteen shillings instead of a pound. This made him laugh. It was somehow typical of Ilsa to fall just short of the mark.

  That evening he had an alteration of vision. It was as if the mechanism of his sight had been sharply jolted into a clearer and truer focus, so that he saw clearly instead of partially. He happened to be looking at the washstand at the time and suddenly all the objects on it looked different. Trying to define this difference, he could only express it as more intense being. The rose-patterned china bowl, the empty milk-bottles, his tooth things and the ball of socks to be washed, all existed more intensely. They no longer looked like their names, but like clusters of living electrons that formed perpetual-motion matter. Life was the sinews of these objects, these wrestling shapes and shadows that were twisted into the substance of th
e marble slab.

  He thought that there must be shutters on the human senses and capacity for experience. Generally the shutters were half closed, admitting only imperfect, lazy sense-impressions. On the few occasions when the shutters were raised, the world appeared, not fully, but at any rate more clearly than usual.

  Why then could not men always live and experience fully? Why were they shuttered, as if reality was so blazing that it could be seen only through a protective screen? Why did the state of boredom and depression, the polar opposite to vision, occur so frequently?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a rap on his door.

  The landlady called: ‘Mr Beckett... visitor...’

  He ran down the three flights. In the front hall stood his mother. She was wearing a fawn hat with a decoration like curled antennae on the front, a beige jacket, and her churchgoer best dress that she had bought three years ago from the High Street drapers. Her prayer-clasped hands were in net gloves, and from her right wrist dangled a navy holdall containing her handbag and her plastic mac.

  He said: ‘Hello, Mum.’

  ‘Darling boy…’ She held him tightly. ‘My darling boy.’

  He smiled at her.

  She smiled back.

  The landlady watched them stolidly with her grudging, dissatisfied eyes, and her arms folded on her chest like a garden-fence gossip.

  Beckett said awkwardly to his mother: ‘I live on the top floor. Come on up.’

  Passing the landlady on the stairs, his mother said: ‘Excuse me...’ fluttering a nervous smile.

  Beckett whispered: ‘Don’t smile at that old cow.’

  ‘What, dear?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I smile at her?’

  ‘She’s a lower form of life and should be ignored.’

  ‘Really, dear!’

  In the room, he said: ‘Well, this is a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you.’

  There was a hint of reproach in her voice. ‘Didn’t you, Joe?’