The Book and the Brotherhood

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘We can agree on that.’ Gerard ventured a faint smile, but Crimond was glaring at the surface of the table which he was beginning to scratch intently with his finger nail. Gerard decided not to stop him. ‘But, Crimond, if, as you say, you’ve cut yourself off from ordinary practical politics and become a lone wolf, how can you talk about a programme of action? You claim to be a Marxist, so you know that politics is very fine work, you’ve got to be inside it all the time, pushing and pulling, to get anything done at all. Or do you imagine that you can institute a revolution by propounding a theory?’

  Crimond stopped scratching the table and stared at Gerard with his blue eyes wide open and his thin mouth thrust forward. His long nose, his whole face, pointed fiercely at Gerard. Perhaps he’s really a bit mad, Gerard wondered, I never seriously thought that before. As Crimond did not answer his question Gerard went on, speaking quietly and patiently. ‘A reflective book can be very valuable and can do more good. So if what you call your “programme” is all wrapped up in ideas, so much the better.’

  ‘Hernshaw,’ said Crimond, ‘I am not, as you seem to imagine, mad, I am not a megalomaniac –’

  ‘All right!’

  ‘I just happen to believe that I am writing a very important book.’

  The door of the dining room opened abruptly and Patricia put her head in, then entered. ‘Hello, you two, would you like some coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Gerard, then to Crimond, ‘would you? No? Pat, you remember Crimond, you met ages ago I think. My sister Patricia.’

  Crimond, who had risen, and clearly did not remember her, bowed slightly.

  ‘Or tea, or some sherry? Or biscuits?’

  ‘No. Pat dear, do leave us alone!’

  The door closed. Crimond sat down. Gerard was wondering what thread to pick up when Crimond, who had returned to inspecting the table, threw back his head and ruffled up his reddish hair and said, ‘I gather you’ve retired, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Write,’ said Gerard, irritated by Crimond’s brusque tone.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Plotinus.’

  ‘Why? You’re not a historian, and you can hardly call yourself a philosopher. You probably stopped thinking long ago. What you did in the civil service wasn’t thinking, you could do that job in your sleep. Thinking is agony. Your book on Plotinus will turn out to be an article on Porphyry.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Gerard, determined to keep his temper. Was there going to be a row after all?

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘Of course not!’ said Gerard.

  ‘You do, you know. You’ve felt superior all your life. You think you’re saved by the Idea of the Good just because you know about it. The planet goes down in flames but you and your friends feel secure. You attach too much importance to friendship.’

  ‘If this is to become a slanging match it had better end here. I wanted to get an impression of you and your book, and I’ve got it.’

  ‘You’ve never really cared for anything except your parrot.’

  Gerard was astounded. ‘How on earth did you know –?’

  ‘His name was Grey. You told me about him on the very first occasion when we met, when we walked back from a lecture and we went into the Botanical Garden and into the greenhouse. Do you remember?’

  Gerard did not remember. ‘No.’ He was amazed and upset. ‘I never told anybody. I certainly don’t recall telling you.’

  ‘Well, you did. I’m sorry, don’t get angry. And what I said just now was nonsense, just spite. I do want to talk to you though. Our second innings, perhaps, to use Raffles’s terminology.’

  ‘I see no parallel,’ said Gerard, recovering. ‘We never had a first innings. But go on.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten that too. A second innings is always played differently. Never mind. Another of your troubles is that you’re afraid of technology.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t mind the idea of a world without books?’

  ‘It’s inevitable, so it must be understood, it must be embraced, even loved.’

  ‘So after all you turn out to be a historical materialist! What about your book?’

  ‘It will perish with the rest. Plato, Shakespeare, Hegel, they’ll all burn, and I shall burn too. But before that my book will have had a certain influence, that’s its point, that’s what I’ve been striving for all these years, that little bit of influence. That’s what’s worth doing, and it’s the only thing that’s worth doing now, to look at the future and make some sense of it and touch it. Look, Gerard, I don’t think I’m God, I don’t think I’m Hegel, I don’t even think I’m Feuerbach –’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  ‘I just belong to now, I’m doing what has to be done now, I’m living the history of our time, which you and your friends seem to be entirely unaware of –’

  ‘All right, what about what has to be done now? What about poverty and hunger and injustice? What about practical politics and social work?’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me –’

  ‘And please don’t scrape the table with your finger nails.’

  ‘Sorry. Of course we have to deal with poverty and injustice. People like you donate money to charities and then forget it all. As for social work you’ve never been near it in your life, it’s something which other inferior people do. One has to think radically about these problems –’

  ‘You believe in revolution, in violent revolution?’

  ‘All revolutions are violent, with or without barricades. There will be revolution so we must think revolution.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ve reached the stage where you can tell me why you don’t believe in parliamentary democracy?’

  ‘It’s obvious. As a form of authority it can’t survive. The world in the next century is going to look more like Africa than like Europe. We’ve got to have the courage to try to understand the whole of history and make genuine predictions. That’s why Marxism is the only philosophy in the world today.’

  ‘But there’s no such thing as history! Your theory is based on a mistake. All it comes to is wreck the nearest thing and imagine something good will automatically come about! You combine irrational pessimism with irrational optimism! You foresee terrible things, but you also think that you can understand the future and control it and love it! Marxism has always “saved” its extremely improbable hypotheses by faith in a Utopian conclusion. And you accuse me of believing in God!’

  ‘Yes. Absolute pessimism and absolute optimism, both are necessary.’

  ‘Is that what’s called dialectical thinking?’

  ‘You’ve always been too frightened of talking nonsense, that’s why you could never really do philosophy. I am not a utopian, I don’t imagine that the state will wither away or the division of labour will cease or alienation will disappear. Nor do I think that we shall have full employment or a classless society or a world without hunger in any future that we can conceive of now. It’s the wasteland next. Of course I think this society, our so-called free society, is rotten to the core – it’s oppressive and corrupt and unjust, it’s materialistic and ruthless and immoral, and soft, rotted with pornography and kitsch. You think this too. But you imagine that in some way all the nice things will be preserved and all the nasty things will become less nasty. It can’t be like that, we have to go through the fire, in an oppressive society only violence is honest. Men are half alive now, in the future they’ll be puppets. Even if we don’t blow ourselves up the future will be, by your nice standards, terrible. There will be a crisis of authority, of sovereignty, technology will rule because it will have to rule. History has passed you by, everything happens fast now, we have to run to stay in the same place, let alone get a step ahead to see where we are. We’ve got to rethink everything –’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Gerard. He felt his heart beating faster, he felt hot and took off his jacket. ‘You say men will be puppets and technology will rule, but surely, whether you call yourself
a Marxist or not, you must be working against such a society, not for it! All right, the present is imperfect and the future looks grim, but we must just hold onto what’s good, hold onto our values and try to weather the storm. You say rethink everything, but in the light of what? We must be pragmatic and hopeful, not in love with despair! We can’t know the future, Marx couldn’t predict the future, and he was looking into one a good deal steadier than ours. We must defend the individual –’

  ‘What individual?’

  ‘Come off it,’ said Gerard.

  ‘The bourgeois individual won’t survive this tornado, he has already disintegrated, he has withered, he knows he’s a fiction. I am not in love with despair, I am in love if you like with a good society which doesn’t yet exist. But one cannot even glimpse that society unless one understands the collapse of this one.’

  ‘I suppose you see yourself as a commissar in a world state of puppets who can’t read or write! The elite would have the books, the rest would be watching television!’

  ‘We won’t be there, we are trash, we deserve nothing not even whipping, of course we are in pain, we are living through our own dissolution, all we can do –’

  The telephone began ringing in the hall. Patricia opened the door. ‘It’s Rose, wanting you.’

  ‘Oh hell,’ said Gerard, and went out closing the door behind him.

  Rose’s voice was anxious and apologetic. ‘Oh, my dear – are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right!’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry I didn’t ring sooner, I’m away from the flat – I’ve had a rather odd morning, I’ll tell you later. I would have rung sooner only I couldn’t find a telephone box. How did it go?’

  ‘How did what go?’

  ‘Your talk with Crimond!’

  ‘It’s still going on.’

  ‘Can’t you get rid of him? Is it –?’

  ‘Rose, could you ring later on sometime? Sorry, I must go now.’ He put down the telephone and hurried back into the dining room.

  Crimond had got up and was studying one of the pictures representing a geisha in a boat.

  ‘Don’t go, David. Do sit down.’

  Crimond was looking more relaxed. Enlivened by the argument he looked younger and less tired. ‘Did Rose think I’d done you a mischief?’

  ‘She was anxious!’

  ‘I hope I’ve dealt an intellectual wound.’

  ‘Not yet!’

  ‘I have to go soon –’

  ‘Sit down.’

  They sat down. There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘You were saying all we can do –’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crimond, ‘we’ve got to understand suffering, express suffering, see it, breathe it –’

  ‘“The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together – until now.”’

  ‘Yes –’

  ‘You don’t imagine you can abolish suffering!’

  ‘You should reflect upon the assumptions which underlie that remark!’

  ‘All right – not all, but most?’

  ‘Most, much – we’ve got to think about the whole of history, about all the people who went under and were trodden on, and think of it as part of what’s happening now wherever people are crushed or frightened or hungry –’

  ‘This is self-indulgent rhetoric,’ said Gerard. ‘And as for Marxism, it may not make them hungry, but it certainly makes them frightened!’

  ‘That’s a cheap point. We have to try to see further and hope more. Right thinking is difficult in a wrong world. We have to think in terms of an entirely new person, a new consciousness, a new capacity for happiness, a kind of happiness the human race hasn’t yet dreamt of. The individual you rate so highly, best personified of course in yourself, is just a cripple, half a person, well, he was half once, now he’s just a whining sliver – and he’s one of the lucky ones. There are immense sources of spiritual energy which are completely untapped –’

  ‘Your theory is schizophrenic, you talk about a crisis of authority and men being puppets and going through the fire, and the next moment it’s spiritual energy and new people with new happiness – But what happens in between? Your ideas lead straight into tyranny – and you imagine you can see the ideal society just beyond it! You said you weren’t a utopian –’

  ‘The utopian impulse is essential, one must keep faith with the idea that a good society is possible –’

  ‘There is no good society,’ said Gerard, ‘not like you think, society can’t be perfected, the best we can hope for is a decent society, the best we can achieve is what we’ve achieved now, human rights, individual rights, and trying to use technology to feed people. Of course things can improve, there can be less hunger and more justice, but any radical change will be for the worse – and your dreams will only make us lose what we have –’

  ‘Do you seriously mean,’ said Crimond, ‘that you cannot conceive of any social system which is better than western parliamentary democracy?’

  ‘No. I cannot. Of course there can be –’

  ‘Yes, yes, little improvements, as you say.’

  ‘Large improvements. And of course tyrannies can keep people alive who would starve under freedom, but that’s a different point. A free society –’

  ‘I don’t think you know what freedom means. You imagine it’s just economic tinkering plus individual human rights. But you can’t have freedom when all social relations are wrong, unjust, irrational – when the body of your society is diseased, deformed – we must clear the ground –’

  ‘A democracy can change itself –’

  ‘Can you see this bourgeois democracy changing itself? Come! We’ve got to see it all, Gerard, we’ve got to live it all, we’ve got to suffer it all, we’ve got to see how disjointed it all is. You think of yourself as an open-minded pluralist – but you’ve got a simple compact little philosophy of life, all unified, all tied up comfortably together, a few soothing ideas which let you off thinking! But we must think – and that’s what’s such hell, philosophy is hell, it’s contrary to nature, it hurts so, one must make a shot at the whole thing and that means failing too, not really being able to connect, and not pretending that things fit when they don’t – and keeping hold of the things that don’t fit, keeping them whole and clear in their almost-fittingness – oh God, it’s so hard –’

  ‘You mean your book –’ said Gerard. He had been on the point of becoming angry and was restraining himself. The return to the book was an escape route.

  ‘Oh – the book –’ said Crimond. He stood up and began to rub his eyes. ‘Yes, it’s hell – one needs that last bit of bloody courage which takes you on past your best possible formulation into – oh –’

  ‘I look forward to reading it,’ said Gerard, rising too. He was feeling exhausted. ‘One thing does puzzle me though, why you want to call all this rigmarole Marxism. Of course I know that Marx’s early utopian ideas are all the fashion now – But why put yourself inside that conceptual cage?’

  ‘The cage – yes – the cage – but it’s not that cage – it’s not like you think. Well – well – I’d like to persuade you, I’d like to persuade you. I could teach you a lot of things. I haven’t many people to talk to now. Of course you’re not ideal because you know so little. But I find it easy to talk to you – perhaps for historical reasons.’

  ‘I wonder if you’d like to talk to the committee?’ This idea has just occurred to Gerard.

  ‘Would they listen? No – it’s not a good idea. I don’t mind talking to you, but –’

  ‘Think it over. Thank you for coming.’

  They went out into the hall and Crimond put on his coat and scarf. He drew a rolled-up cap out of his coat pocket and held it. There was an awkwardness, as if they were about to shake hands. Gerard opened the door, upon which, during their discussion, Patricia had hung a holly wreath. Crimond set off quickly and did not look back. Gerard closed the door and leaned against it.

  The ‘rather odd
morning’ which Rose had mentioned on the telephone to Gerard had been spent with Jean. In becoming more and more anxious about her friend, Rose’s feelings had been painfully mixed up. She did not write to Jean because Crimond might read the letter and somehow blame Jean. She could not just ‘call in’, risking an encounter with Crimond; nor did it make any sense to telephone for even if Jean answered, she could hardly talk to Rose with Crimond nearby, and if she was alone she might still not wish to talk, might be abrupt, even putting the telephone down, thereby upsetting Rose very much indeed. Rose did not want to force Jean suddenly to choose between rudeness to Rose and disloyalty to Crimond. Perhaps this precluded any approach at all. Quite apart from these more mechanical problems Rose was troubled about her own purposes and motives. Any communication with Jean might make difficulties at that end. Crimond was certainly suspicious, possessive, possibly violent. Rose would be taken to be an emissary of Gerard, perhaps of Duncan. It was such a delicate matter. Ought not Rose to be resigned to not seeing Jean and to knowing nothing? But Rose did not like knowing nothing. Was this because of concern for Jean’s welfare, or out of curiosity? Rose very much wanted to talk to Jean to find out what was going on. She wanted to see Jean, to look at the woman who now belonged to Crimond. She wanted inside information to pass on to Gerard. She wanted to assess the likelihood of Jean’s return to Duncan, and also to find out if there was any way in which she could help Jean. With Gerard she had imagined many possible situations, by herself probably every possible situation. Jean might need outside help to escape, or at least to be resolute enough to envisage escaping. She needed, surely, a signal from her friends, evidence of continued love, perhaps simply to be told that Duncan longed for her to come back. If the opposite were the case and she needed no such support and assistance, that was important too. Rose and Gerard would have to decide what, if anything, to say to Duncan. Also of course Rose wanted information because she wanted information, the whole thing was so interesting. What decided her at last to make a move was however simply her desire to be with Jean again, to take her in her arms and kiss her.

  The occasion was presented as soon as Rose knew that on a certain day at a certain time Crimond was to be with Gerard. Rose’s plan was to drive to South London early, find a telephone box near to Crimond’s house, and when she was sure Crimond must have left, to telephone Jean and say she was very near and could she drop in for a minute. The plan worked. Jean said curtly ‘Yes’, and a few minutes later Rose was in the house.