Kevin appeared hurt by that “yet”, and replied defensively, “Not at all. I am just as much of a Marxist as I ever was. Perhaps more so. It’s just that I see no point in riling people and ruining my career. How is that going to help socialism? We don’t live in a free society where you can say and do as you please. We have to get wise and leave all that childish seventies stuff in the past.”
Garry noted that at that time Kevin defined himself as a Marxist rather than a socialist, and that very probably marked him out as someone persuaded by political science and not the great injustices of this world. Of course these great nineteenth-century thinkers are an excellent starting point. Lochrie has always thought that the difference between Marx and Nietzsche was that Nietzsche was wrong about the big things and right about the small, while Marx was wrong about the small things and right about the big.
Although Kevin had once enjoyed political debate with Garry, he now only comes to endure it. Garry is soon off on one of his favourite subjects: “Intellectuals are drawn to revolutions, because they are theatres of ideas, in which for relatively short periods of time, great speeches are made, fantastic utopias are constructed out of words of fire, and, it seems, the great thirst for justice is finally going to be slaked. But they are wrong; they should stay with the past revolutions that live in books, and shun the real thing with its lack of nuance, the cruel settling of real and imagined scores, the rule of rhetoric and, worst of all, the necessary repositioning of corrupted and disloyal souls who shamelessly use a small and costless act of contrition to justify a fearful and unswerving crusade against their former selves or rather their former friends, in order to establish a dictatorship of the converted. And as we know, the converted can never really understand their new faith and usually reinterpret it in terms of the one they have just reneged.
“But it is not only the lack of revolutionary ‘masses’ that makes revolution impossible, at least in the West; it is also that revolution is flawed for many reasons: violent revolutions are the product not of an evolving society but of a society that has resisted change for far too long; revolutions do not change their own societies as much as they do the societies that surround them, and those external changes move in two diametrically opposed directions; revolutions polarise; revolutions use violence; violence corrodes even the fighters for the best ideals; and above all revolutions create new types of conformism and the dreaded ‘finger-pointers’. Only non-violent revolution can create the degree of change that balances continuity with discontinuity – that accepts that parts of every regime are functional or in any case cannot be improved simply by central decree. Non-violent revolution is the only one that can work because the technology of power has become so sophisticated and so pervasive. Power cannot be challenged with cyclostyled leaflets and soapboxes, or indeed the invisible ink so beloved of the conspiratorial. Power can only be defeated by acting in accordance with a genuine morality which is itself the end and not the means – a morality that is primarily founded on the truth. Power cannot be defeated by those who become a mirror image of itself in the exultant moment of their success.”
Kevin wearily lets Lochrie’s speech wash over him like a jumble of words. His protégé has a habit of doing this, and he has long since learnt that any objection merely leads to a tiresome argument and other lengthy diatribes from the man he really wants to help. “So we’re agreed for once: socialist revolutions are a bad thing, and all we need to keep alive our socialist values is to enact them through the free market.”
“Did I say anything as trite and as stupid as that?” retorts Lochrie while dramatically slamming his glass down on the side table and splashing orange-brown liquid over the already ruined surfaces of ring stains and cracked veneer. Alcohol is transforming into aggression his exasperation at not being able to present a mildly complex political argument in our new land of certitude and unprecedented – some might say superfluous – affluence of the many rather than the few. It is an affluence of trash.
Kevin often wonders why he bothers to come. He carved out the time for this meeting with a useless drunk from a busy schedule. He has just come from a difficult meeting in which he rescinded a contract with a small central heating firm. He had good reason, because they were clearly in breach of contract, but it was very convenient that they were, as this opened the way to a much more price-efficient deal with a massive concern, which is likely, moreover, to invite him onto their board some time in the not-too-distant future. And in an hour’s time, he will lie in the youthful arms of one of his lovers, a true soulmate whose ambitions first opened his way to her vigorous, tanned and reasonably athletic body. He helped her on her way to success, and she lowered her white, white pants with just a hint of feminine frill, down over her light brown, flexing thighs. The primitive economy of barter never dies and is the foundation for all the greater things. But what he loves about her is her lack of hypocrisy. She never demands that he play the tiresome role of the misunderstood husband. There is no pretence at unhappiness: neither his with his wife nor hers with her partner, a computer expert and health fanatic who suffered a nervous breakdown a year ago. He only heard of this through a colleague and he slightly wondered at her loyalty to someone he would define as a loser; it suggested something in her he had never imagined or wanted. He loves her for her uncomplicated sex, but is happy that this happy state is maintained when afterwards they each rush back into their busy lives with little more acknowledgement between their now reclothed bodies than a squeeze of the hand or a peck on the cheek.
The visit to Lochrie is therefore an act of extreme charity, but although Kevin never consciously admits it to himself, he does feel better about himself when, having completed this weekly ritual, he finally gets out of the dingy flat heavy with the smell of sweat and alcohol. The Lochrie project is the one indisputably selfless act in his life, and he leaves as a Catholic leaves his church after mass and a particularly severe sermon from the priest. Something niggles, but he feels purified by the spiritual exercise of self-discipline. He can now return to the business of life with renewed vigour.
Of course, Lochrie is entirely unaware of Kevin’s sacrifice; indeed he believes that his own tolerance of a friend fallen into a corrupt life is itself a good act. And he knows that all he can get from Kevin is company, the occasional bottle of whisky and a certain amount of mild irritation. In fact, he often finds these regular dialogues of the deaf somewhat noxious, and he broods in silence. He despises the crass, and as he gets older, this nausea becomes more pungent. Kevin is the kind of man who would once have tripped out that old cliché about revolutions being the “locomotives of history”. But history, like everything else, is the sum of its parts. Who can tell which are its vital organs and which are not? Revolutions are imperfect and inefficient ways of bringing about change, which in a perfect world should be gradual, but there is nothing gradualist about human nature – a volatile mix of greed, altruism, fury, love, fashion, an hysterical herd instinct and a little common sense. Communism is rightly criticised because within its love it carried great oceans of hate that kept flooding the fertile terrain of its rational redistribution. But shouldn’t we judge Christianity just as harshly? – the persecuted religion became the persecutor once it was the established religion of the Roman Empire. The Christian crowds stole, plundered and killed until no trace of the ancient religion was left. The ruthless and ambitious then controlled the new religion just as they had the past ones, and we might reasonably ask what had changed, except perhaps a few underlying ideas. Did martyrs die for that? And die again as the new powers depicted them as lifeless, characterless figures in a Christian-realist art? And yet who can deny that again and again the primitive wonders of the Christian ethic are rekindled in new forms not by the powerful, but by the humble and the poor for whom it was intended. And of all the Churches, the Catholic one most expresses the divergent spirits of real existing Christianity. And so it was with communism. The persecuted became the persecutors, thereby losi
ng their souls and then their reason, but the socialist ethic is destined to reappear precisely when it appears to have been completely obliterated. Given the behaviour of Christians in power, Julian the Apostate may have been one of the more honest emperors, and the pain he inflicted on Christianity may have done it some good, although not for long. Socialism will learn from this bleak period, but whether it will be capable of retaining those lessons when things move in its favour again is an entirely different question. Most probably in this as in everything else, human beings are destined to repeat the errors of the past, not because they are inherently evil but simply because they are incapable of sustaining good political practice; the power-hungry minority will always find a way to corrupt and render void the best and most wisely constructed laws. The rule of law is the third utopia after socialism and democracy. It should be sought after and something approximate to it can be achieved, but it will never last. Nothing ever does, and particularly not the good, the useful and the beautiful. The dyke can be built, and it is hard work to maintain, but one day, hopefully in the distant future and not the near one, it will break and the waters of violence and confusion will flood through the breach.
“God, you can be superior, Garry! Just listen to yourself. Trite, stupid. So damn superior. You think that I have given up on all my ideals, but what about yourself? What do you believe in now? Nothing at all. At least I believe in humanity.”
As always Garry is irritated and disappointed with the direction of the conversation – with the way Kevin never analyses anything but always trumpets his “I believes”, and when he comes up with “I still believe in socialism”, Garry knows he is in for an extravagant display of repulsive sophistry. In Garry’s somewhat puritanical mindset, a man who has betrayed himself is sick in his soul, because now he only has the present. What he doesn’t understand is that Kevin is very happy with the present. The present makes him feel good.
Garry has no choice but to let himself be guided by the logic of a dialogue in which each participant interprets the key words in an entirely different manner. “Of course, I believe in humanity, but I also know the power of evil and the evil of power. The powerful fear the ‘mass’ because they believe them to be very similar to themselves, which is a partial truth, as we humans are made up of the same things and differ only in their proportions. The powerful want to believe that the powerless are depraved and dangerous, that their souls are as ragged as their clothes. They do everything they can to make this prejudice become a reality by depriving them of good diet and good education. They scoff at the awkwardness of the beaten and the troubled, and consider their own advantages innate, rather than products of an unfair society. In spite of this, the human spirit is such that the powerless prevail and gain a kind of superiority.”
“Very classist,” says Kevin, unable to conceal his distaste. “And I suppose we are to believe that the only thing innate about the rich and powerful is their greed and their cruelty.”
“Not at all. It is often the case that the greediest and cruellest people are the powerless who have just become powerful.”
“Oh. So it’s the turn of the nouveau riche to get it in the neck. I might take this personally – but I know that I do much good with my wealth. Your ideas are all a little formulaic – so dated, so blind to what we now know. The right has won the economic arguments.”
“Well, please don’t take it personally. It was not intended as such,” Garry does not want to offend his friend, although most Sundays he manages to do exactly that. “Everything is, I agree, a great deal more complex. Look, it is often said that nothing breeds success like success, and this is perfectly true but success breeds many things besides: cruelty and greed there is no doubt, also self-obsession and a crippling fear of losing that success, and perhaps worst of all an inability to be oneself in this world – in relationships with others. Total failure is equally crippling, but only in the extreme does it undermine our humanity in a similar manner.”
“I see. Sackcloth and ashes. Have another whisky, Garry, and pour me one too. You’re ruining my Sunday afternoon. Remind why I come here to listen to your drivel?”
“Because it’s good for you.”
“And why would that be,” says Kevin more irritably.
“Because we all enjoy dipping into other people’s lives, and besides no one with a brain wants to have everyone around them agreeing with them all the time.”
“Oh, so I do have my uses, then,” Kevin laughs, but Garry ignores him and simply passes him his whisky. Now Kevin feels uncomfortable and attacks on what he believes to be his strongest ground. “I noticed that you didn’t object, when I said the right has won all the economic arguments.”
“The reason was simply that I know it to be pointless to discuss such things with a man of fashion like yourself. And the dismal science always was the most fashion-conscious of the social sciences. You know that there aren’t just economic cycles; there are cycles of greed and folly, of intolerance and war, of collectivism and hard work with a variable degree of unpleasant Puritanism.”
“So basically, we’re fucked.”
“In a word.”
“You talk such shite,” says Kevin, quickly finishing his drink. “I’ve had my fill for today and I’m off.”
“Quite right, and as ever, it was nice to see you, Kevin.”
“Yeah, yeah! See you next… if I’m feeling suitably masochistic.”
Garry laughs, and the door closes behind Kevin.
Just as he feels the same sense of relief that Kevin feels as he swiftly moves down the stairs towards more entertaining ends – relief mixed with an acknowledgement of the friendship that always grows from regular acquaintance and familiarity – Garry Lochrie hears once more the nagging persistence of Chris Cary. “I’m still here and have a right to some answers,” the voice insinuates itself as though it came from a source of moral integrity, and maintains a tone that is both flattering and threatening. “You wish to spurn me, your wonderful fictional character, the creation of your awkward, scattered imagination, to make way for the real, the petty preening Chris Kray who is settled in his emptiness. I am your son, the echo of your brain. Why do you do this? So that you can become just another misery memoirist?”
“No, Cary,” says Lochrie, now tired beyond measure. “You are more real to me than the fading, diaphanous phantom of my past. You are made of rational and emotive arguments that settle in the brain and fertile blossom there in tangled chaos. These things are real enough, even though you cannot feel their surface – rough or smooth – or squeeze the juices of their tender life.
“I cannot write of those events, and thus of you I have no more to say, but that you were here,” and Lochrie taps his head, “and kept me company.”
“How very sweet…” Cary purposefully pauses and wanly smiles, “you spineless shit.”
“I’m sorry, Cary, what can I say?”
“What can you say? You bastard with a head so full of words you never stop. You let that arsehole dictate your life, forty years after the event? Stand up and shout it out, and do it not with him, who has no conscience and no conscious self, but use me! A devious bastard whose cruelty is tempered by a cunning and inexplicably erratic mode of thought that reflects a tortured soul – this is the stuff of which stories are made.”
“Of course, all this makes you more culpable, more interesting and perhaps less real. I’ve told you: I will not write of him, nor of you, now that I can see his role – what he has done and could still do. He has not provided literary material, but he has made me, sure enough, and now he’s made me see how the human spirit struggles ceaselessly in its Manichaean strife against a few empty souls that are scattered in our midst. Kray represents all that I despise, but if I were to hate him, denounce him and take some revenge, then I would turn into him, become an echo of his distasteful self. I walk away from all these thoughts – from him and you.”
“You cripple.”
“A crippled consciousne
ss is consciousness indeed.”
“I’ll give you that, but only if you have the will to overcome your infirmity – and fight. Goddam it, what is it with this passivity, this endless attentiveness to the purity of the soul. You accuse him of preening, but look at yourself. In your different way, you too seek an image of yourself, and don’t think of what hurt you cause when you go off in search of it.”
“I know. You have a point. At our age, we look back upon the devastation of our lives: the shattered dreams and, worse, the dreams that did not shatter but became half true. What you can never understand and I can never explain in words – not in words, you hear – is how he changed me, made me who I am. That cowardly youth put me through a process that removes the self and did it with so little – just banal and senseless acts of cruelty that merely raised a smile and sat within their days with other trivial pursuits like games of cards or drinking illicit booze. On the victim, such events leave an unstable sediment within the geology of life, and as the other layers build up, they start to shift under the pressure and make their presence felt by buckling into passive will-lessness.”
“You say that Kray made you who you are, but Kray never made anything; he was made. Empty activism has no creativity, just as conscious passivity changes and animates all that surrounds it; I’ll give you that.” Lochrie smiles at Cary as a teacher acknowledges a good student. “He justifies his war,” Cary continues, “by the word ‘communism’; yet he has no idea what that word means.”
“Of course not. It simply means ‘bad thing that challenges my world’. He did not consciously make me – that was done unconsciously by his idea of sadistic kicks. He could never have thought about the outcome of his actions – he would not have consciously set about making communists, just as the war the British fought in Dhofar was not with the conscious intent of turning the rebellion from a secessionist one into a communist one. Once it did, they changed their tactics – demonstrating that the collective imperialist is more intelligent than the individual one. That’s what I wanted you for, Cary – I wanted you to represent the intelligent and unscrupulous imperialist, who manipulates even the best values in his pursuit of this aim. But after all, I think they are right when they say that literature should not be political – should not be committed to anything.”
Can the Gods Cry? Page 22