Progress of Stories

by Laura (Riding) Jackson

  And so, until the end of the book is reached, in a little while, much wishing and as much patience as wishing. Holger Danske may come in many shapes. Barbarossa waits under a mountain of patience. And every hero armed with a wish is a Dane, but every Dane is a child of patience. Canute the Great made himself Canute the Small by the tide at Westminster. And the dark metal pig in the little cross-street near the Piazza del Granduca in Florence? That carried its rider round to all the beauties of the city without stirring from its own humble stand? Why, that's only to say, "And away we go!" while poor time that carried us stays behind. And is that anything to cry over —is a metal pig anything to cry over? Why, yes, if in crying over it you forget. What's a metal pig but a thing to forget, and what better service can you do it? But suppose it brought you away: is that gratitude? Why, what better gratitude than to say, "And away we have gone!"—the truth of which you can only prove by forgetting it.

  And then there's the crown you find on your head. It seems —yes it seems—a golden crown; and indeed the metal pig was no golden pig. Was it even a silver-plated pig? Oh, no! And yet—and yet, if you try to remember it, your forgetfulness shines like silver, polished silver, over the hidden base metal of memory, hollow within. But your crown is a golden crown. Is it all a simple matter of alchemy, after all? But have we the time to go into that? Oh, no, we have no time at all. What, not a moment? No, not a moment, except this one. So you see we must hurry on; for if we stop for a moment, to wonder about how it has happened, it will never happen. There's no looking back on this moment: there's only a looking towards it. There's no stopping if our wish is not to leave matters there. Our wish is to leave matters here—where the book begins to be not a story-book. Our wish was to get at least as far as that. Was not that your wish?

  We began with a purpose to put a crown on Hans Andersen —all of us together, in the name of Queen Story. This is what I now think: suppose we postpone the crown, for the moment, by way of leaving matters here, and go on as we have been going on, lest we do something on which it may be possible to look back and so leave matters there. You know how one tends to belittle whatever one can look back on; and there are many aspects of this question of putting a crown on Hans Andersen which, frankly, would arouse in ourselves all our most snobbish feelings—as hard-headed literary people—if we paused to think what we were doing, what we had done. Let us rather—as hard- headed literary people—go on with our somewhat inhibited writing (or reading writing, which is surely not very different from writing reading) in the confidence that in a little while everything will seem perfectly natural. For the truth is, we are all, like Hans Andersen, rather shy—though for very different reasons. I, for example, because I want to do nothing of which anyone can complain—since complaints are a sign that one is befriending the wrong people, which means, in turn, that one is neglecting the right people. For, of course, there are right people? I mean, does one not owe it to the general situation to behave as if, undoubtedly, yes? Concealing one's uncertainty about what must in a little while be clear, finally, behind a screenwork of ambiguous courtesies (with a crown for Hans Andersen as a sincere device thereupon)? In the certainty, at least, that mere nakedness never advanced the course of truth as never the course of love?

  V: More Stories

  IN THE BEGINNING

  IN the beginning there was only a large rock, apparently good for nothing important, and a little girl who could not think of anything important to do. "I will turn the rock into a cave," she said, "and go to sleep in it for a little while." While she was asleep in the cave things began to grow on the outside of the rock: silken moss and furry ferns and vines spangled with berries—and, in the very middle, a garden with an absurd variety of flowers, tended by an absurdly large but faithful bee. The smell of the flowers woke the little girl up and she came out of the cave—as it happened, not to go back again, except for a frivolous reason, as we shall see. She was rather irritated by what she saw, and said, "It is all very beautiful, but is it important?" And the beauty became a tangle round the inner triviality of the garden. To the bee she said, "You are much too large." So instead of one large bee there were many small ones, which came and went purely in their own selfish interests. She tended the garden herself now—more from a feeling that there was nothing more important to do than from any real love of flowers—and the bees concerned themselves exclusively with honey, which they made and stored in the abandoned cave. Their love of flowers was, from her point of view, a madness, centred as it was in an unimportant by-product of flowers.

  Nevertheless, by-products were fascinating. Often, while the bees were at work in the garden, she would go into the cave and steal some of the honey; but if they caught her they stung her.

  EVE'S SIDE OF IT

  IT was not at first clear to me exactly what I was, except that I was someone who was being made to do certain things by someone else who was really the same person as myself—I have always called her Lilith. And yet the acts were mine, not Lilith's. For Lilith did nothing. She had no body. Nor could I feel that I was Lilith's victim any more than a hand feels itself the victim of the person who makes it do certain things. The hand does these things as if it were doing them itself. It keeps count. And so I have kept count. There have been a great many things to do. I cannot say exactly how many, although I have kept careful count, because I have never added them all up. I have only said to myself "another" and "another" as time went on, not wishing to behave like a slavewoman grudgingly numbering her tasks. That, of course, is all over now. There is no more counting to be done. And since it is all over, I am ceasing to exist. There is no longer an Eve who is as the body of Lilith, no longer a Lilith who is really the same one as myself. There is a new one who is neither Lilith nor myself, yet no one else.

  I know this because, although I feel myself ceasing to exist, I still am. I do nothing, there is nothing more for me to do, I am no longer myself. Yet I still am. I am this new one; who is, however, not I. And Lilith is also this new one; who is, however, not Lilith. Lilith is no longer bodiless; she no longer does nothing. Yet she has not become Eve, nor have I become Lilith. She, too, has ceased to exist, yet still is. We have both become a new one who is neither Lilith nor myself, yet no one else. I cannot give you a more intelligent description of this new one because I am only Eve—I haven't what they call 'a good mind'. But I can tell you more, at least, than Lilith can; for Lilith cannot talk. I can talk about myself, and about Lilith, and about men—until I have actually ceased to exist. And in this way I bring you very close to the new one who I become, along with Lilith, in ceasing to exist. I do not mean that I am superior to Lilith any more than a hand is superior to the person who owns it because it can do things that the person cannot without her hand. I only mean that Lilith could never tell about things. It may be that Lilith is in some ways superior to me; it may even be that the new one who is neither Lilith nor myself is more like Lilith than me. But I, and only I, am capable of telling in so many words how it was before there came to be a new one. For I alone was there.

  I have sometimes thought of Lilith as my mother. This, of course, is a foolish way of thinking about her. It is true that Lilith made me, but I had no father. I was entirely her own idea. And I was never a child; I did not grow; I have never been different from what I am now—or rather from what I was just before I began ceasing to exist. Lilith made me, so far as I can make out, because she was irritated with herself. And she was irritated with herself because she was so good. Lilith knew everything that was going to happen. She also knew that it would be better for these things not to happen. She knew that there were going to be men, and that they were doomed creatures—creatures with hopeless ambitions and false thoughts. Yet she could not prevent their being. They wanted to be; and to have opposed their being would have meant hurting them in their ambitions and thoughts. This she could not do because she was so good. They must hurt themselves. They must learn from themselves, not from her, that their ambitions were hopele
ss and their thoughts false. She had to let them be. So she made me to take her place—not wanting to watch herself playing the fool all those thousands of years. And I freely confess that I have played the fool: I have been far too patient.

  What were their ambitions, and what their thoughts? They wanted to make more than there actually was—many and many and more things. For they thought that what actually was was no better than nothing. "Where is it?" they asked. "What is it? Who is it?" Naturally Lilith was not the sort of person to answer: "It is here, it is this, it is I." Lilith was everything, but she was also nothing in particular. And she was not only incapable of inflicting pain on anyone; she was also incapable of telling lies. She could not say to these creatures who wanted to be: "I am everything." For she could not honestly have used the word 'I' about herself, even if she had been capable of talking. Or I might say that she could not talk because she could not honestly use the word 'I' about herself, or in any other way refer to herself. She had no self—at least, there was nothing definite you could point at and say, "That is Lilith." And so she could do nothing to prevent from being these creatures who wanted to be.

  They were not even creatures at that stage. They were, like herself, dumb: they could not say 'I'. They were a dumb feeling of antagonism—dumb, blind, ignorant, helpless. I suppose that when something is as completely everything as Lilith was it is inevitable that there should be a feeling of antagonism to it. And the feeling would be only a sort of joke at first, a sort of joke of Lilith's with herself, a sort of way she had of smiling at herself for being so completely everything, or of making light of what was really a tremendous situation. There would be, that is, a sort of mock-outside of herself. And then 'one day' she would suddenly find that, by having failed to establish as a hard-and-fast rule that there was nothing outside of herself, she was surrounded by a vague feeling of antagonism, or contradiction, which insisted on being taken seriously, as something outside of herself, although it was merely a rhetorical effect. Lilith was at once too proud and too gentle a person to argue and answer rhetoric with rhetoric. And so it happened that she let herself be treated as nothing by what was actually nothing itself.

  When Lilith saw that the result of all this would be for a time the creatures whom we call men, she decided to do nothing about it (that her nature prevented her from doing anything about it) and to withdraw to the very inside of everything, where she would be quite safe from challenge or argument. When she did this everything became, to all appearances, a vacancy that the men who were to be could fill in as they liked; and this vacancy men have called space. But in thus withdrawing to the very inside of everything and, so to speak, hiding her head in herself so that she could not see what was going on (although she knew very well beforehand the sort of thing that was going to happen), she was bound to leave something behind to correct the anomaly, which otherwise might have easily been interpreted as a lie on her part; and Lilith, as I have explained, was the soul of truth. In short, she left me behind. My function, which all men have misunderstood, has been to observe. And in order to observe living creatures, I too had to live.

  At first men were not what we now call men; they were merely a feeling of antagonism, or a dumb anger—a dumb, helpless anger. And that was also my principal feeling at the time—a feeling of dumb anger against them. Lilith, you see, did not really feel: she only thought. And I suppose you may say that I have never really thought, only felt. But there has always been Lilith there behind me, thinking. It would have been idle for me to be a thinker, too, since I had to deal with creatures who only felt. Men do not really think: they make thoughts out of feelings, and you cannot make very good thoughts out of feelings. And so, in order to observe them truthfully, I had to learn the language of their feelings. In the same way, men can tell the truth about themselves if they keep to their feelings. But when it comes to telling the truth about everything—when they try to think, that is—the safest thing to say is: "I do not know." I myself, though I have always had Lilith to fall back on for thinking, have always kept strictly to feeling—to details, you might say. When, in my dealings with men, I have found myself in the midst of thinkers, I have always tried to set them an example; I have always said, "I do not know."

  But in the beginning I had only this dumb feeling of anger. I was not really dumb, of course, for from the first I could talk. But I felt dumb because there was no one to talk to. There was Lilith, but one can't talk to Lilith. If you know Lilith at all you know exactly what's in her mind, at any moment. And if you know what's in her mind, this generally means that you are about to do something that she wants you to do. So there was no question of my talking to Lilith. I talked a great deal to myself in those early days; this is a habit which I have never quite lost. Even in telling about things here I am for the most part talking to myself. Men have often wondered what women do with themselves during the time when, presumably, they are doing nothing. They are, of course, talking to themselves.

  But in talking to myself in those early days I could only tell myself that I was angry. It was not clear to me exactly whom I was angry at. I knew vaguely that they were men, or rather were going to be men. But they were not men yet. They too were only, more or less, a dumb feeling of anger. If it had not been for me this would have been a feeling of anger against Lilith. Lilith was not, however, the kind of person one could be angry with. You can only be angry with someone who argues; and Lilith never argued. She merely withdrew. You cannot be angry with someone who withdraws—who isn't there. And this is where I came in, and what Lilith made me for. The men who were going to be were angry with me: it was my job to be, so to speak, a chopping-block for their anger. Lilith didn't want to deprive them of their anger, or of anything; and yet she didn't want to be there. So I did the dirty work. I was Lilith's eyes and ears and mouth, and then her whole body.

  You can easily imagine that I was very impatient for these creatures to be—as impatient as they were themselves to be. It is no fun to go on being angry, day after day, with something which isn't yet—especially when there are no real days but only an unbroken vacancy of waiting. In the same way it is no fun to be travelling, no matter how comfortable the hotels and the trains and the boats are. You are not really happy until you are there, even though you know that you are not going to be happy there. At that stage I was, you might say, travelling, and in the greatest possible comfort. I was not quite there yet, I was going to be there, I was nowhere else. I felt very large, as people do when they are travelling, and very light, and very care-free— altogether too care-free: I was not made to do nothing, like Lilith. I do not mean that Lilith is care-free: how could she be, knowing about everything? But if you do nothing and know nothing it is very dangerous to be care-free: you may easily forget about yourself, and die. I was anxious to live—to get it all over.

  In being impatient for these creatures to be—as impatient as they themselves were—I was undoubtedly putting myself in sympathy with them. But from what I have already explained it should be clear in what way I was in sympathy with them, and, from this, in what way women have, in general, been in sympathy with men. I wanted them to be, and they wanted to be, and to this extent we were, and always have been, in sympathy. But the reason why I wanted them to be was radically different from the reason why they wanted to be, and always has been. I wanted them to be because they were going to be, since Lilith was going to let them be; and because, if they were going to be, the sooner the whole affair was over the better. Lilith made me especially to see the whole affair through; I did not want to be hanging around with my work not even started—perhaps to die. Lilith made me, but she would not have made me again. Of course, there was no real question of my dying. Over and over again, when I have seemed to die, it was just extreme tiredness and pulling myself together again. But you cannot imagine how painful it has been to pull myself together each time, after I have been thoroughly exhausted by men. Well, naturally, I wanted at least to start fresh.

  Often I ha
ve been called a scold; and this is a harsh word, considering that it was all their fault, for starting things. Once they started things they couldn't leave them like that; they couldn't expect to be forever coming to the point—although I quite realize that this is what they did expect. Well, I couldn't be expected to go on being angry for nothing, when I knew that sooner or later there would be good cause for being angry —or, at least, Lilith knew. I hope this explains my behaviour in the Garden of Eden. It must not be thought that I was tempted by the Serpent. The Serpent was Lilith's way of encouraging me to do what I would have done in any case. I was fully aware that the fruit was unripe and therefore not good for the health. But things could not go on being lovely forever when they were going to be very difficult—to say the least. Indeed, the ripe fruit was going to be much worse for the health. Things had to begin somewhere to be somewhat as they were going to be. And it cannot be said that I didn't take the first bite. Or, whatever is said, I think it ought to be realized that all along I have had a point of view of my own about things; my side of the story is not merely that I have been unlucky in love. And this is my private reason for telling about things: to explain that I, for one, never had any illusions. I do not see how anyone can be either blamed or pitied who has never had any illusions. This is my point of view. At the same time, I should not like it thought that I expected men to have my point of view about things. They are bound to feel that I led them on. Of course I led them on.