The Birth of Love

by Joanna Kavenna

  ‘Some wine, sir?’ said the waiter.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Michael Stone, and watched as wine was poured into his glass. Then the waiter twisted the bottle, and moved away.

  ‘Michael,’ Sally was saying. ‘This is Roger Annais, who was speaking about your book this morning on Radio 4. Roger, I haven’t yet been able to hear the programme but I’ve been told you were excellent.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Roger Annais, a man with black hair, a sunken face, as if his features had been carved from wax, and were melting slowly. ‘I was just trying to voice my genuine admiration. It’s often easier to demolish something than praise it, I find. One can at least be wry when something is bad. Admiration can start to sound a little … dull …’

  ‘Thank you for doing that,’ said Michael Stone, in his very soft, dry voice, which, though he cleared his throat, would not resonate, sounded merely like dead leaves crackling. ‘I really am … most grateful.’

  ‘No need for gratitude. You wrote it, it’s my job to comment on it,’ said Roger, firmly. He took a sip of wine. Michael noticed his veins bulged on his arms, as if he was malnourished. But he was more likely a driven, energetic man. He imagined him, rushing from the studio to his office, his day portioned into meaningful segments. Always he must have an eye on the clock; he must move swiftly, purposefully; a radio interview and then a lunch, and then – Michael wondered what this man would do later. But he was looking back at Michael as he put down his glass, so Michael said, ‘I have been … in recent days I have been a little nervous. I keep wondering if … perhaps … I should not have published this book at all …’ as Sally shook her head.

  ‘Ah, the misgivings. The opening-night jitters,’ said a man Sally had introduced as ‘Arthur Grey, reviewer and friend …’ And Arthur Grey continued – resting his stocky arms on the table and speaking slowly, careful in his phrasing, as if he was dictating a letter – ‘With my first published book, a novel, I woke at dawn on the morning the first reviews were due. I pulled on my clothes, dashed out, bought all the papers. Dashed back, heart pounding, ha ha! Read through them, couldn’t find a word about it, finally found the briefest imaginable review in The Times. “Not so much a promising beginning as a horrible threat that further carnage may be yet to come …” Ha, ha …!’

  And the table laughed. Michael joined in, a false laugh because the story only made him more afraid. If that could happen to Arthur Grey, if this compelling man could be so emphatically dismissed, then what did he think he was doing? But they were lifting up their throats and laughing together, and he didn’t want to show them how he had lost his nerve. So he laughed and tried to swallow some wine.

  ‘The best review I ever wrote, the most honest, began: “By Mary and the blessed saints, this is a dreadful book”,’ said Roger Annais, and they laughed again.

  *

  On his right-hand side was Sally Blanchefleur, his agent, co-director of Blanchefleur and Scott, wearing a deep-green dress, gaunt and beautiful, striking at fifty or so, more striking than anyone else in the room. She drew attention away from Michael, with her beauty and her deep-green dress. Just some of the glare, directed towards her elegance; that was a relief. On his left, his editor Peter Kennedy, who had taken up his book, rescued it – he was meant to call him his saviour, he knew. And then an order of the just around him, like a secret society. In recent days he had been ushered around, people gripping his arm, directing him. Shielding him from something – he was not sure what it could be. One moment he felt revived, better than he had in years, and then he simply wanted to run. He didn’t want to be at the centre of anything, felt it might even have been a bad idea, to write books, only tenable when your works were never read. If they printed them up, distributed your efforts – that was a different matter altogether. And then he wondered what it had been for, all those years of suspense and futile endeavour, and being knocked back a hundred times; he wondered why he had bothered with it all. Why had he persisted, and raged against his detractors? He had been so urgent and angry about it all. For years he could hardly read a book, because he was not published. He could not really take pleasure in anything, and then he had grown so angry with his family – really his mother – because she was so foul about it all, told him he was wasting his time, that he would never achieve anything worth the years he had taken over it all. And his father and the callow rest of them backed her up, stood firm against him, as if he was an enemy they must vanquish. A few years ago he wrote a novel in the depths of his rage, hurled everything he could at their piety and hypocrisy, and – even though that novel sank without a trace, like all the others – they never spoke to him again.

  *

  He had almost stopped thinking about his mother, until that phone call from James. That had been unexpected, a little disturbing, because James had sounded upset, and he was usually so quiet and cold. He had talked about dementia, how their mother had been diagnosed with it, ‘a bad case of it,’ James added, as if there might be another, better sort of dementia. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Michael had said. But he was surprised to discover he felt nothing at all. It was as if they were discussing a distant relative. A month later, James had called again, saying that it would be ‘nice’ if Michael went to see her. ‘She won’t be at home much longer. She has a nurse but soon she’ll have to go into a home.’

  ‘She’ll hate that,’ Michael had said.

  ‘She barely knows where she is. She may not notice.’

  *

  He thought it was odd, that his mother was finally passive, an invalid, to be shunted from one place to another, on the advice of doctors. It was hard to imagine. The only time he felt truly sad about it all was when he received the first copies of his book. Beautiful in their dust jackets, his name on each spine in bold letters. It was an extraordinary moment, and there was no one apart from him who cared. So he sent a copy to his mother, one to his brother. He bound them up, spent a long time writing his mother a little note. Then he took the note out. He put a press release in with each copy, so they might think a functionary had sent them, some hard-working publicity person, not him at all. He hesitated in the post office, then he handed the parcels over.

  He had received no response.

  *

  Yet this morning he was rushing to the door when the phone rang. He grabbed it, thinking it might be Sally, but then he heard James saying, ‘Ah Michael, I thought you might not be at home.’

  ‘I’m just about to leave …’

  ‘I was just sent a copy of your book,’ said James. ‘For which, my thanks. I see that today is the date of its official publication. You must be busy …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael, wondering why his brother was always so formal, but then he supposed he was too. ‘How is our mother?’

  ‘She is being moved into a home in a few weeks’ time.

  I’ll send you the details of her address when she has settled in.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Then if you want to visit …’

  ‘I don’t think she would …’

  ‘She’s very different now. You’d see if you came.’

  *

  The call made him late, so then he had been forced to hurry to the Underground, sweating and certain he would offend them all, but everyone was late, apologising to each other, and it hadn’t mattered. They had drawn him into a private room in an expensive restaurant, where there was a waiter at his elbow, asking would he like the fish or the lamb.

  Lamb, he said.

  For the question must be answered.

  Sally was saying something to him, and he turned to listen. ‘The first reviews,’ she said. ‘I have them in my bag. I must warn you …’ and she leaned closer to him, dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘They are not marvellous. Not quite what we hoped for. But there are many more yet to come.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  She shook her head at him. ‘I’ll show them to you later. Dismiss them from your mind
. Now, Michael …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Drink up. We’ve a long day ahead.’ And she clinked her glass on his.

  *

  Briefly he panicked, felt his heart fluttering in his breast, thought how difficult it was even to breathe, to lift the chest, fill the lungs and empty them again – he sat there, looking at his hands, paying careful attention to the rising and falling of his chest, and after a few minutes he was able to lift his head. Someone was speaking, but not to him. ‘I liked your programme about George Lamott,’ a woman was saying. Alice Mortimer, he remembered now, a woman with auburn hair, tiny arms wrapped in silver. She was speaking to Roger Annais, who was nodding back at her as she said, ‘One element which has become apparent during this episode is that we are losing any sense of values worth fighting for. Because we have no sense of these values, we are constantly buffeted by the values of others, or by our perceptions of these values. We are over-conciliatory, imagining these values to be more and more absolute the more confused we become.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Roger Annais, nodding still. ‘When the religious tell us that their “beliefs” must be respected, we acquiesce carefully. We don’t dare to ask “Why?”’

  ‘The funny thing is, that even on your programme, Roger, they were so reluctant really to discuss the heart of the matter. I was amused to see how nervous they were, how they censored themselves even as they debated the issue of self-censorship,’ said Alice Mortimer.

  ‘George Lamott’s point is very simple, as I understand it,’ said Arthur Grey. ‘He argues that it has become usual to fudge the whole thing. Instead of being prepared to say, “No, this is wrong, it is simply wrong-headed to find any of this offensive,” we say, “Well, there may be those who misinterpret these words, and thereby, we cannot proceed.”’

  ‘It’s not entirely their fault,’ said Roger Annais. ‘Things sometimes do get blown out of proportion. Suddenly, the thing becomes a cause célèbre. Perhaps someone says something misguided in an interview, irritates someone or a group of people.’

  ‘Nonetheless we are losing our grip,’ said Alice Mortimer, with a wave of her arm, so her bracelets chimed and sparkled. ‘So many ideas are mediated for people. So you can have a small enclave – a highly intelligent enclave – deliberately misrepresenting something, in order to get people fired up. They know that these people won’t ever read the original. They will just respond to the call to anger, in essence.’

  ‘It’s the way of elites everywhere. The ordinary people never know what’s really going on,’ said Arthur Grey.

  *

  Michael listened, though he wasn’t sure what they meant. He had a sense of drama, something they all regarded as significant. They leaned towards each other; they had forgotten him. It was right, too, that he should be so easily forgotten. He had sequestered himself for too many years, he had never heard of George Lamott. They had opened the door to him – just a crack – he had squeezed himself through. He had crawled into this elegant lunch, because the door was slightly open, and he had been hammering on it for years.

  *

  ‘It will be interesting to see whether this type of affair becomes quite common, whether publishers will continue in this vein,’ Arthur Grey said.

  ‘And then you will have authors censoring themselves before anyone else does,’ said Roger Annais. ‘Perhaps this is already happening.’

  ‘All you need is fear. You don’t even need legislation. You just need everyone a bit worried, glancing over his or her shoulder. It’s a marvellous way to change a society, without having to go through the boring process of campaigning for legislative change,’ said Alice Mortimer.

  ‘It will be interesting to see what the response of the reading public is. Whether they buy this book, simply to see what the problem was.’

  ‘I hope they do,’ said Alice Mortimer. ‘That would annoy a few people.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s fair to blame the religious in this. Not one of them has voiced any objections to Lamott’s book. This is not a question of religious extremists versus liberal democracy,’ said Sally.

  ‘… It is the suicide of liberal democracy. It’s self-annihilation by degrees …’

  ‘Like lemmings, we jump,’ said Arthur Grey. ‘We jump before we are pushed. There is no one around, even, but just in case someone appears, someone who might – or might not – push us – we jump.’

  ‘They are not liberal, in the true sense,’ said Alice Mortimer. ‘They are double agents, working to smash the edifice from within.’

  ‘Well, you don’t hear swathes of the religious denouncing the whole thing.’

  ‘That’s not true, some of them have.’

  ‘Not enough of them,’ said Roger Annais.

  *

  Their voices merged, as Michael sweated and twisted his fork in his hand. They said, ‘Naturally … One need hardly say … Of course …’ All that he did not understand was clear to them. They nodded at each other, ate with gusto, splashed wine into their glasses. They clashed vividly, or concurred suddenly – everything was emphatic, determined. Then it was as if they suddenly remembered they must include him, and so they issued a general murmur, ‘… but however … Let us not … We oughtn’t …’ Alice Mortimer nodded her auburn curls towards him. ‘… Now, The Moon …’ she began to say.

  And he nodded back at her.

  ‘Yes, I wanted to ask you about your title,’ she said, with a wave of her silver arms. ‘Odd title, I thought, considering the subject of your story. And then I wondered, is it la lune ne garde aucune rancune, the all-forgiving moon? Or Diana and the hunt? What did you mean by it, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I don’t mind at all,’ said Michael. In the silence that settled around him, he fumbled with his words. ‘I meant … well, something about madness of course, and then … something about … unknown mystery, something which is intuited but not … precisely … something which can’t show itself …’

  ‘Who intuits it?’ said Roger Annais.

  ‘I hoped that might remain … a little ambiguous …’ said Michael. They paused and nodded, as if to encourage him. Then Arthur Grey was saying, ‘I thought it was a most interesting book, but there was something I wanted to ask you about. This poor man Semmelweis – who I confess I had never heard of before – is opposed to one sort of dogmatism – the adamant beliefs of the doctors around him, their particular theories about childbed fever. This dogmatism is ruinous, we are made to see. But then he develops his own opinions, and though they are right, it turns out later, he is relentless in his arguments, dogmatic himself, one might say. He insults his opponents, bombards them with invective, and won’t submit to the rules of scientific experiment. Essentially he is as dogmatic as his foes, is he not?’

  *

  Michael lifted his head. They were waiting, expecting him to answer. Yes, he wanted to say. It is not coherent. Naturally when I began, I hoped my book would be lucid and true, and yet as I wrote it – even as I wrote it – I sensed it was spiralling out of my control. And then I thought perhaps it did not matter, that – like everything else I wrote – it would not be read, nothing would come of it. He wanted to say this; he wondered briefly about saying it, but then he wasn’t sure how it would sound to them, so he wiped his hands and said, ‘It is true that Semmelweis is very angry … Perhaps this anger loses him the argument … But somehow, to me, I think … Well, I think there is – surely there must be – a difference between the lone figure … and the many. The one and the confident many. Perhaps the many are so confident – dogmatic – only because they are among the many. Not because they have thought really – truly thought – about what they say. The solitary man must either say nothing … or shout to be heard …’

  *

  Michael took a gulp of wine, pushed his greying hair from his temple. There was a lingering pause, while they hesitated, not wanting to curtail him. And he tried to fill it, but something – his shyness, native anxiety, or Sally would hav
e told him it was stress – he didn’t know what it was, but something mangled his words. They waited, while he said, ‘Really … that was … I think that was what I meant …,’ and then they resumed.

  *

  ‘I felt Semmelweis was an anti-hero,’ said Alice Mortimer, briskly, as if trying to show him how easy it was, just to talk, to speak and be understood. ‘There is a distance between us and him. I felt he was essentially unknowable, as a man.’ That set Michael trembling again, because he thought they might want him to answer, and he wiped his palms together, but Roger Annais was saying something about a fatal flaw. ‘… Something quite classical about his downfall. Perhaps that’s what you mean, Alice; he isn’t a modern character, as we now understand characterisation. He’s too archetypal. But, I should really let Michael reply …’