The Limits of Vision

by Robert Irwin

  And what is mould but death to Kate or Nan?

  What is Mould but Death of man?

  & what does a Hoover with a broken fan?

  ‘Mucor has been sporting with you,’ he continues, ‘but when your husband returns, its pipe-play shall cease, yet your body will dance in pain in the wine presses of the mould. Marcia shall be sunken and Mucor risen. Your husband is a man of commonplace reason, and I fear he will think you mad. I hope he will comfort you, yet I prophesy some London hospital’s mind-forged manacles and cage. My wild Angel shall be ensnared and when Mucor comes down the ward hissing with delight –’

  Mucor, below, hisses with delight. I stamp on him with my heel.

  ‘– you shall be transformed into an Angel of Darkness!’

  Now there is a giddy moment when I think Blake is trying to trip me up. It turns out that he wishes to scrutinize the spore-print on my heel. Every fungal spore-print is different. This one is of course household mould. He has got me worried.

  ‘Come off it, William. I’m not mad.’

  ‘You see too much and yet not enough,’ he replies gravely. ‘Too much for Philip and the doctors, not enough for the Truth. You must see deeper. Your visions should be minutely articulated beyond all that mortal and perishing nature can produce.’

  He scrapes something from the wainscoting.

  ‘Look at this atom dancing in my palm.’

  I look at the inert speck of dust.

  ‘Can an atom be envious? Are the stars chaste? Are there galaxies that are gluttons? Morality is a matter of scale. Come closer. See smaller. The Gates of Heaven and of Hell open into one chamber. What is dust but atoms? What is a duster but atoms? Dirt and cleanser are one in this Infinite Littleness. The living and the dead are one in this Infinite Littleness. The atoms of the Dead dance as swiftly as the atoms of the Quick and both their dances are holy.’

  So then, as I looked on amazed, I saw that the speck was not inert, but it constantly vibrated with the running and the crashing of the electrons and the neutrons, and, seeing that I had seen, the poet recited:

  ‘There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find,

  Nor can his Watch Fiends find it; ’tis translucent and has

  many Angles,

  But he who finds it will find Oothon’s palace; for within

  Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven.

  But should the Watch Fiends find it, they would call it Sin.

  ‘Mucor’s kingdom is not indivisible. So be cheerful, but wary. Is it time for tea?’ he breaks off.

  ‘Not yet. Almost an hour to go.’

  ‘Oh. In that case I will be back later. Be Undressed and Ready, My Angel.’

  ‘Goodbye, William!’ I cry.

  It is always good fun to be with Blake. His visions are quite interesting. But I wish that I understood the half of what he is on about.

  CHAPTER TEN

  My coffee morning friends did not even stay long enough for me to get the washing up finished. I am on my way to do it when I notice some grease on the hall wallpaper. The oldest simplest remedies are often the best. I hurry into the kitchen to find some soft white bread and return and set to rubbing at the grease-mark with the bread. Working on a wall, staring close up at it can give a person funny ideas, when they are not concentrated on what they are doing. Young Adolf Hitler was a house-painter. I presume he saw his visions of a Thousand Year Reich in Europe while he toiled over his coats of paint. Since learning about Hitler’s early employment, I have worried a bit about the men I let into my house – plumbers, electricians, men to repair the washing-machine, those sort of people. One or two of them have seemed a bit odd to me. No walls to paint: no Hitler. I reckon that walls, drains, biscuit tins, armchairs and pelmets are as much European culture as the grand ideas. The great European novels are inconceivable without ordinary things which we take for granted but which other more primitive parts of the world simply do not have.

  I think of the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov. Its English title is The Life of a Great Sinner. At the end of The Brothers Karamazov a jury has found Dmitri Karamazov guilty of the murder of his father, Fyodor Pavlovich. However the reader has been left with the impression that the murder was actually committed by Smerdyakov, son of Fyodor by Stinking Liza. (Smerdyakov was therefore the step-brother of Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha.) Smerdyakov confessed the crime to Ivan and claims to have done the deed under the intellectual influence of Ivan. Then it seems that Smerdyakov hangs himself.

  When The Life of a Great Sinner opens we find that fifteen years have passed and the three brothers have taken very different paths. Dmitri had been condemned to twenty years’ penal servitude in the mines of Siberia, but, as was planned, his guards were bribed and he and the former prostitute Grushenka succeed in escaping to America. In California, Dmitri finds his fortune as a gold prospector. He and Grushenka become deliriously wealthy.

  Grushenka is rather fascinating. I have never knowingly known a prostitute – if you see what I mean – but I gather that it is quite common among suburban housewives. I wonder how one gets started? Maybe one eases into the job by seducing the plumber or the man who has come to look at the washing-machine. I might have asked at the coffee morning. Someone might have known all about it, but it would probably have turned out to be another of those taboo topics …

  Alyosha has remained true to his decision to leave the monastery and enter the world. To everyone’s astonishment, including his own, he marries the young cripple, Lise Khokhlakova. They move away from Skotoprigonyensk and they set up a school for little boys outside St Petersburg. Lise rapidly shows her delight in maltreating and even torturing her charges; in the abasement of his love for her Alyosha is powerless to stop her. However, when the novel opens, Lise has been dead for over a month. (She managed her suicide by throwing a rope over the roof-beam in the schoolroom and, when the noose was secure around her neck, she pushed her wheelchair away from under her. Though her feet still rested on the floor, she spun on the rope, slowly strangling herself. The dvornik – that means janitor – finds her in the morning. It seems to be one of the hazards of the job in Russian novels. He has a fit. I mean, really. He has an epileptic fit.)

  I must say that I feel a lot of sympathy for Lise Khokhlakova, even though she was a sadist and a child-molester. I sometimes pretend that I am a cripple when I am doing the housework – particularly if there is something to get me going. For instance, if I have got pins and needles in one leg or if I can’t see because peeling and cutting an onion have made me cry. Also I sometimes try and do all the washing up one-handed. When I do things like that, the whole house takes on a different shape and things that I had never noticed before become helps or hindrances. Then again I sometimes imagine that the whole house is upside down, and I walk upon the ceiling, and to clean the carpet I stretch on tiptoes and push the hose of the Hoover to its fullest extent, and I have to be careful not to bump into the rigid flex that supports the light bulb. Such things get me out of myself. I gather that the housewives who take up prostitution do it not so much for the pin-money as for the adventure. I identify more with Lise than with Grushenka.

  Anyway Lise’s suicide. What a terrible thing to have to write about! All very well for a professional novelist like Dostoevsky, but what about Alyosha who has to write round to all his friends and relatives explaining what has happened? One of the people he has to write to is of course brother Ivan, and Ivan has written back from Switzerland telling Alyosha to expect his arrival imminently. Ivan has been touring the spas, scientific institutes and casinos of Europe – the graveyard of culture – and he has had extraordinary meetings with Baron de Rothschild and the French Jesuits.

  But, surprise, surprise, it is Dmitri and Grushenka who are first to reach Alyosha and offer him some comfort in his agony of mind. Dmitri has changed his name, grown a beard and masquerades as an American. When Ivan arrives a day later, the three brothers agree that they will go back to their father’s
house – abandoned but unmolested all these years – and clean the place up. Then they will discuss what must be done in the future. It would be tedious to recall all that happens in the intervening chapters. We now come to the final chapter, called ‘Besporyadok’, which some translate as ‘Chaos’ and others as ‘Bad Housekeeping’.

  Dmitri pushes at the door of their father’s house. It is stiff but gives way slowly. Once inside Dmitri kneels and kisses the carpet in the hallway. When he rises from the floor the other brothers notice that his mouth is ringed with dust. The whole house is coated in dust, the dust of Holy Russia. The brothers are resolved that the house shall be set to rights on the morrow, but tonight they are hungry. They have purchased food in Mokroe and, pausing only to give the dusty plates quick wipes with their sleeves, they lay out a feast. During the feast Dmitri gets very drunk and lachrymose. He speaks of Russia’s mission to cleanse the world. The Slavs shall sweep over the atheistic West as an apocalyptic cloud of locusts, and the Jews, liberals and Freemasons shall perish in the purging fire of God’s furnaces.

  Dmitri’s extraordinary outburst leads naturally into an argument about who should do the washing up. Alyosha begs to be allowed to do it. ‘It shall be the first of my acts of contrition,’ he says, but Dmitri and Ivan tell him to sit down. They are determined that Grushenka must do it. Grushenka leans back in her chair.

  ‘I will not. No, never. I want to be so much more than a housewife!’ she cries. ‘– And so much less. If there were a moujik sitting opposite me, yes, even a moujik far gone with leprosy, I swear to you that I would kneel before that moujik and clean his feet – yes, even with my tongue! But washing plates! No, gentlemen! Washing plates is soul murder. A cleaning woman must be hired. I could be that cleaning woman certainly, but does that make me a dog who cleans the plates for no reward beyond an animal delight in cleaning plates? If you want those dishes done you must pay me.’

  Ivan cynically wonders if it might not be more revolting if the moujik had syphilis. Alyosha tries to reason with Grushenka, pointing out that no task is demeaning if it is done in full mindfulness of God.

  ‘My little Alyosha, you have not understood, have you? My point is that washing dishes is not demeaning enough!’ Grushenka replies scornfully.

  Dmitri has said not a word. Instead he has gone out into the garden and cut himself a branch of birch wood. When he returns he pulls Grushenka to her feet and sets to flogging her. Alyosha tries to interpose himself but is flung brutally aside. Grushenka lies moaning and bleeding on the floor. Ignoring her moans, the brothers settle down to a game of cards. They are all rich – Dmitri from his gold prospecting, Alyosha from his Academy and Ivan from his writings – but they are all agreed that money is so much filth and they gamble madly. Then suddenly they notice that Grushenka has stopped moaning and that she is dead.

  Ivan and Alyosha promptly forgive Dmitri and give him the kiss of peace. (They each get a mouthful of carpet dust in exchange.) Then they point out that he must make his escape as soon as possible. They in the meantime will endeavour to erase all traces of the crime and of their meeting – the corpse, the blood stains, the wine spills, the greasy dishes, all shall vanish. Ivan agrees to let Alyosha do the washing up. Dmitri lurches drunkenly out of the door. Ivan is a bit vague about where the broom-cupboard is. Can Alyosha remember? Yes, but first Alyosha must tell him of a vision he had on the night of Lise Khokhlakova’s suicide.

  That night Alyosha thought that he stood in the Garden of Gethsemane and he stood with two women in front of Jesus. The women have mistaken Jesus for the gardener, since he is coated in earth. They reach out to ask him directions but Jesus gently replies, ‘Noli me tangere.’ In the horror of his vision Alyosha realizes that Christ in his infinite humility is concerned lest these silly women get the soil of the grave on their fine clean robes. There is a terrible smell in the Garden. Christ points Alyosha to its cause. Everywhere the dead are on the move, some corpses carrying others. The astonished Alyosha sees Smerdyakov carrying the body of Fyodor Karamazov, and the holy monk Zosima carrying the body of Lise. Zosima’s body is far gone in corruption and gives off a smell of sulphur – which is the smell of the human soul. Alyosha attempts bravely to assist Zosima with his load, but Zosima offhands him.

  ‘It is because men are mortal and corruptible, that they can have children. If the grain does not die, it cannot bear any harvest. Have you not heard? We are all maggots in the rotting corpse of God the Father. So now, let the dead bury their dead.’

  It is only when Alyosha has finished speaking that the two brothers notice that there is indeed a terrible stink in the house. Incredibly Grushenka’s body has started to decompose. It is rotting even faster than Zosima’s did in the previous novel. It is time to act. They need a sack and some brooms. Ivan and Alyosha rush out into the hallway. The oil lamp swings crazily in their wake. They do not even reach the broom-cupboard, for in the hallway they find Dmitri stretched out dead. They promptly accuse each other of poisoning him. Alyosha thinks Ivan wanted Dmitri’s money, and Ivan thinks that Alyosha wanted Grushenka. After furious recriminations they each forgive the other for the crime that they are sure the other has committed. They exchange the kiss of peace, and some residue of carpet grit moves once more along with the saliva.

  ‘Your vision was nothing,’ says Ivan laughing nervously. ‘I have had many worse. For instance two years ago in Bad Godesburg when I lay in a hotel room sick with a tubercular fever, I found myself gazing at the wallpaper, an endlessly repeating pattern of foliate diamond shapes enclosing flowers in flowerpots – a horrid fancy French or English wallpaper. I found my eyes being pulled this way and that by the silly pattern. The lines flickered like little devils’ tails and my right eye wanted to follow them to the right, but my left eye pulled to the left. My head shook with it all. Here was a diamond and there was a diamond and there another! What did it all mean? I ranged this way and that over the wallpaper and in my fever found it to glow and pulse. Then – I do not know how I can explain this to you, Alyosha – I suddenly became aware of something that I am always aware of. No, that’s extraordinary! Confound it, you will understand me. There was a whistling sound in my head which I am always aware of without being conscious of it. That is the sort of paradoxical fellow I am!’

  Alyosha assures him that he loves him for it.

  ‘No, but let me finish!’ cries Ivan. ‘Then your love will surely turn to contempt and pity. This whistling was devilish loud and I found that I could hear a pattern to the whistling and that pattern, my dearest brother, was one of flowers in flowerpots enclosed by diamonds. There was nothing in the universe but those infernal flowerpots and diamonds. It all pulsed in my head, the wallpaper and the whistles. The pulses went in and out, each time further in and a little less further out, and I saw that it – that I – pulsed round one small black thing, so small that it could have been a piece of grit, yet so large that I thought that it encompassed the whole universe. With each pulse, against my will, I was being drawn towards that small black thing. It was smaller than me and dirtier than me, but infinite in its dull evil. It promised an eternity of dullness. Surely I am more interesting than all this little dullness, I thought in my fever, but I was certain that it would in fact consume me …’

  Here Ivan breaks off, for he has noticed at last that he is talking to himself. Alyosha still sits beside him but Alyosha is dead. Looking down the hallway Ivan sees that a trickle of blood has dribbled out of Dmitri’s mouth and stained the carpet. In the midst of the bloodstain Ivan notices something small and dark. Perhaps it is the body of a squashed cockroach. It seems to Ivan that there in the body of this crushed insect is the source of all the deaths – Grushenka’s, Dmitri’s, Alyosha’s certainly, but also Fyodor’s and Smerdyakov’s. It will be the end of Ivan too. Ivan recollects something which Alyosha has told him of the teachings of Father Zosima:

  ‘God has planted seeds from other worlds in our world and everything that could grow in it does grow in it
– but those things are alive only through the sustenance afforded by the seeds from those other mysterious worlds.’

  Looking down on the carpet, it seems to Ivan that he does indeed gaze down on one of those mysterious worlds. It is ruled by its own laws and they are laws which shall forever be hidden from common humanity. His heart beating wildly, Ivan looks down on this carpet like God contemplating His Creation. He does not like it. It is filthy and bloodstained. ‘What is Hell?’ he muses. ‘It is, I now maintain, God’s suffering at being unable to love His own Creation.’ Detachedly he observes that even within the entrails of the long-dead cockroach there is a tiny growth of mould. Crazily he addresses this mould:

  ‘And who are you?’

  The reply comes back from the floor:

  ‘Mucor Karamazov, the fifth and most sinful of the sons of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov.’ Then, even as Ivan tumbles towards it, it adds as an afterthought, ‘Down with the Karamazovs!’

  I must say I rather agree with Mucor. When I was a student I read these cockamamie Russian novels, like lots of my friends, and I spent weeks at a stretch under their influence wondering why I shouldn’t commit suicide. (I only wish that I had the time now – to think of committing suicide, or for that matter to read a long Russian novel.) What I enjoy reading these days, when I have the time, are those books which tell you how to be a wonderful housewife. I do think that my friends have a rather narrow idea of what literature is; novels, plays, poetry, anything apart from that is not literature. Not of course that I think all the manuals on how to run a home are great literature, but some are definitely underrated.

  I think that I know the list of simple do’s and dont’s given at the beginning of M. Baxter’s Adventures in Housekeeping by heart. Here they are, as well as I can remember them:

  1. Enjoy your work; the work is easier to do if you enjoy it. If you do not find that you are enjoying cleaning your house ask yourself if you are doing the right job.