by Iris Murdoch
‘Here, take mine.’
She buried her face in his large white handkerchief, still stiff with its laundered folds, but already smelling of his pocket, warming it with her breath and wetting it with her tears. She had been let off some terrible fate, which had for a moment looked at her.
‘Will you stay to supper?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Gerard, ‘but don’t make anything.’
A little later after they had been in the kitchen together and Gerard had opened a bottle of wine and Rose had taken two aspirins and opened a tin of tongue and a tin of spinach and set out some cheese and apples and a plum cake, and they had talked a little about Gull and Lily, and Tamar and Violet, and Annushka who was thank God not seriously ill, they sat down at the round table, which Rose had covered with raffia mats, with the food and drink before them and confronted each other as for a conference. They were both very hungry however.
‘Rose, you said that “for some reason” it’s all unbearable. Can we get at the reason?’
‘Do you think we should go on with that? I want to talk about you.’
‘It’s true that you haven’t asked me how I am and what I’ve been doing, except for a ridiculous impertinent innuendo on the latter point.’
‘I’m sorry. How are you and what have you been doing?’
‘I will tell you, but I’d rather wait a bit.’
‘Gerard, it’s not anything awful?’
‘Not exactly – awful – but – I’ll tell you, only let’s remove these other things first.’
‘You mean the things I said?’
‘And the things I said, and why we both – evidently – feel in a sort of crisis. Of course there are some obvious reasons.’
‘You mean Jenkin –’
‘Yes. That. As if the world has ended, and – for all of us it’s the end of one life and the beginning of another.’
‘For all of us,’ said Rose, ‘you mean for both of us.’
‘I can’t help feeling there are a lot of us still. Well, there’s Duncan, but I don’t know –’
‘I think we’ve lost them,’ said Rose.
‘I hope not.’
‘But what is it, this beginning of another life – isn’t it just a sense of our own mortality, can it be anything else?’
Gerard murmured, ‘There’s work to do…’
‘When Sinclair died we were young – we felt then, too, that we were to blame.’
‘Yes. We felt we hadn’t looked after them properly, either of them – but that’s superstition. Guilt is one way of attaching a meaning to a death. We want to find a meaning, it lessens the pain.’
‘You mean saying it’s fate or –’
‘Making it into some kind of allegory, dying young, the envy of the gods – or dying as a sacrifice, giving one’s life for others, somehow or other, accepting their punishment, a familiar enough idea after all.’
‘Oh – heavens –’ said Rose, ‘you’ve thought of that too – a perfect oblation and satisfaction –’
‘Yes, but it won’t do, it’s a blasphemy, it’s a corrupt kind of consolation – it’s what feeling we’re to blame leads to – I mean irrationally feeling we’re to blame.’
‘So that’s not our new beginning.’
‘A redemptive miracle? Of course not! It’s the accidental-ness we have to live with. I’m not sure what I meant by a new beginning anyway, perhaps just trying to live decently without Jenkin.’
‘You said there was work to do.’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t think Crimond murdered Jenkin?’
‘We must stop asking ourselves that question.’
‘Would you ever – ask him?’
‘Ask Crimond? No.’
‘Because you do think it conceivable –’
‘We’ve got to live with that mystery. But, oh Rose, it all hurts me so – you’re the only person I can say this to – just Jenkin being dead is so terrible, his absence. I loved him, I depended on him, so absolutely.’
Rose thought, I can never tell Gerard why I feel so particularly that Jenkin’s death was my fault. But of course I’m mad. I don’t think Crimond killed him. That’s another – what Gerard called an allegory. Do I imagine that somehow the accident came about because of something in Crimond’s unconscious mind, because of his resentment against me? Oh if only I’d behaved differently to him, more kindly, more gratefully. Gerard thought, I can never tell Rose just how much I loved Jenkin and in what special way I loved him, and how he laughed at me! That’s a secret that isn’t tellable to anyone. But it’s a relief to mention his name to her. I shall often do that.
They were both silent for a while, Gerard intently peeling an apple, Rose dissecting her cheese into smaller and smaller pieces which she had no intention of eating. She was beginning to feel in a sad but calm way that the evening was reasonably, safely, over. Later, she knew, she would accuse herself of having said things, not unforgivable, for she knew they were already forgiven, but stupid and perhaps memorable. There had been no catastrophe. Yet were they not, these things and the sense in which they did not matter, proof of a distance between her and Gerard, of an impossibility which had always existed and of which she was only now becoming fully conscious? She was indeed a slow learner! Was she learning to be resigned, was that what being resigned was like, to shout and wave in the street as the prince passes, and realise he does not know or care whether you are cursing or cheering – and will smile his usual smile and pass on. What a ridiculous idea, thought Rose, I feel so tired, I must be falling asleep, that was almost a dream, seeing Gerard passing by in his coach! If only he would go now, I know I could go to sleep quickly. My toothache is better. She stared at him and her stare seemed to hold him, his strong carved face set out in light and shadow, the few gleaming lines of light grey in his curly hair. She felt her own face becoming heavy and solemn and her eyes closing.
‘Rose, don’t go to sleep! You haven’t asked me an important question!’
‘What question?’
‘About the book!’
‘Oh, the book.’ Rose felt like saying, damn the book. She just wanted the book to be over, she had had enough of it. Perhaps that was resignation too.
‘You haven’t asked what I thought of it. After all, what do you imagine I’ve been doing all this time?’
‘Well, what do you think of it? That it’s no good, it’s nonsense? Gerard, it doesn’t matter now – that at least is finished with, isn’t it?’
‘Oh dear.’ He said it ruefully, like a boy. ‘Rose, let’s have some whisky. No, don’t get up, I’ll get it. I say, let’s get drunk, I want to talk to you so much, I want to talk and talk. Here, drink this, it’ll wake you up.’
When Rose took a sip of the whisky she did suddenly feel more alert.
‘You’re the first person I’ve talked to, the first person I’ve seen since I finished it, that’s why I haven’t answered the telephone or been anywhere, I had to be by myself, to read it carefully and slowly, I just had to stay locked up with that book.’
‘But is it any good? It must be a crazy book full of obsessions.’
‘Yes, in a way it is.’
‘I knew it – all that time and all that money to produce a madman’s fantasy. It must have been dull, madmen’s fantasies always are.’
‘Dull? No, it nearly killed me. It will nearly kill me.’
‘What do you mean? You’re frightening me. I thought somehow it would hurt you –’
‘Dangerous magic? Yes.’
‘What do you mean yes?’
‘Rose, the book is wonderful, it’s wonderful.’
‘Oh no! How awful!’
‘Why awful? Do you mean I might die of envy? You know, I think I might have done, at the beginning, when I began to see how good it was, I had such a mean contemptible feeling of being disappointed!’
‘You hoped you could dismiss it, throw it away – I wanted you to do just that.’
‘Yes, yes, I
felt put down – you know we got so used to thinking of him as crazy, unbalanced, and of course bad, unprincipled – cruel, like the way he treated Duncan at the dance.’
‘You mean taking his wife?’
‘No, I was thinking of his pushing Duncan into the Cherwell – that was something so ugly and gratuitous – not that we know what happened of course – Rose, do you remember how Crimond danced that night?’
‘I didn’t see him.’
‘He was like a demon, it was like seeing a god dance, a destructive, creative powerful thing. We’ve all been so obsessed with closing our ranks because of the harm he did to Duncan – ever since the business in Ireland we’ve undervalued Crimond. We’ve thought of him as unsuccessful and shabby, and surly, like a dog prowling around outside – and then as our politics diverged so much, and that really did matter –’
‘And still matters.’
‘Yes, I’ll come to that in a moment, we began to add up Crimond to be generally no good, wrong morals, wrong politics, irresponsible, vindictive, a bit dotty – How could such a person write a good book?’
‘But you think he has.’
‘Rose, it’s an extraordinary book, I’m quite carried away – I’m sure I’m not wrong about it.’
‘And not envious?’
‘A bit, but that doesn’t matter, admiration overcomes envy. One should be inspired by something good even if one disagrees.’
‘So you disagree?’
‘Of course I disagree!’
Gerard was not exactly tearing his hair but pulling his hands through it as if he wanted to straighten out its glossy curls lock by lock. His face, shining with light as it now seemed to Rose, was like a beautiful comic mask. She was touched, but more deeply disturbed and frightened, by his emotion, which she could not yet understand.
‘So it’s good, and of course, you disagree, but at least it’s finished. You’ve read it – and there we are.’
‘No, we aren’t there – not where you think –’
‘I don’t think anything, Gerard. Do calm down. Will you review it?’
‘Review it? I don’t know, I don’t suppose anyone will ask me, that’s not important –’
‘I’m glad you think so. Have you told Crimond you like it, have you seen him?’
‘No, no, I haven’t been in touch with him. That doesn’t matter, now, either.’
Rose felt some relief. She was disturbed by this excited talk about that dangerous book. All her old fears of Crimond were alert, that he would somehow damage Gerard, that the book itself would damage him, at the very least because he would be made unhappy by envious regrets. There was also, and she felt it now like the first symptoms of a fell disease, her fear of some amazing rapprochement whereby Crimond would revenge himself on her by making friends with his enemy and taking Gerard away. She wanted the book episode to be over; for Gerard, moved by his generosity from envy to admiration, to discuss the thing, and praise it, and then forget it, and everything to be as before, with Crimond, the surly dog, at a safe distance.
‘I imagine not everyone will like the book.’
‘No, they won’t, some will hate it, some I’m afraid will love it.’
‘You evidently don’t hate it as it seems to excite you so! I can’t believe it’s all that interesting, a book on political theory. After all there are hundreds of them.’
‘Rose, it’s brilliant, it’s all that we thought it might be when we decided it was worth financing it. It’s all we hoped – it’s also all we feared, later on that is. It will be immensely read, immensely discussed, and I believe, very influential. It’s odd, I can remember now, which I’d somehow forgotten, what we felt about Crimond all those years ago when we thought what a remarkable man he was and how he’d be able to speak for all of us, for us. Of course it isn’t at all what we expected then, it’s more than that, and it’s not what we want to hear now, though we have to hear it.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep talking about “we” – just speak for yourself – you keep on imagining there’s some kind of brotherhood, but we’re scattered, we aren’t a band of brothers, just solitary worried individuals, not even young any more.’
‘Yes, yes, dear Rose, how well you put it –!’
‘You’re interested in the book because you know about it, because you know Crimond, because you financed the thing. If it was by someone you’d never heard of you’d ignore it. What’s so good about this horrible book?’
‘Why do you think it’s horrible? You mustn’t. It’s not just another book about political theory, it’s a synthesis, it’s immensely long, it’s about everything.’
‘Then it must be a mess and a failure.’
‘But it isn’t. My God, the man’s learning, his patience, what he’s read, how he’s thought!’
‘You’ve read and thought too.’
‘No, I haven’t. Crimond said I’d stopped thinking, that what I’d been doing all my life wasn’t thinking. And in a way he was right.’
‘That’s absurd, he’s an absurd man. What will he do now the book’s over, fade away? Go off to Eastern Europe?’
‘Oh he won’t go to Eastern Europe, he belongs here. Maybe he’ll write another equally long book refuting this one! He’s quite capable of it! But this volume will take a lot of digesting. I didn’t know one of them could produce such a book now.’
‘Who are “they”?’
‘Oh Marxists, neo-Marxists, revisionists, whatever they call themselves. I don’t know whether Crimond is “really” a Marxist, or what that means now, they don’t know themselves. I suppose he’s a sort of maverick Marxist, as their best thinkers are. The only good Marxist is a mad Marxist. It’s not enough to be a revisionist, you’ve got to be a bit mad too – to be able to see the present world, to imagine the magnitude of what’s happening.’
‘Well, I always said he was mad,’ said Rose, ‘and if the book is entirely wrong – headed –’
‘Yes, it is – but one has got to understand –’
‘Crimond believes in one-party government – one doesn’t have to go any farther than that.’
‘Well, he does and he doesn’t – his argument is much larger –’
‘I should think,’ said Rose, ‘that there is nothing larger than that matter.’
‘Oh Rose, Rose!’ Gerard suddenly reached his hand across the table and seized hers. ‘What a lovely answer.’ She held onto his warm dear hand which mattered so much more than any book, more than the fate of democratic government, more than the fate of the human race. ‘But, my dear Rose, we have to think, we have to fight, we have to move, we can’t stand still, everything is moving so fast –’
‘You mean technology? Is Crimond’s book about technology?’
‘Yes, but as I said it’s about everything. He said to me ages ago that he just had to do it all for himself, to explain the whole of philosophy to himself, alone. And that’s what he’s done, the preSocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, right up to the present, and Eastern philosophy too – and that means morality, religion, art, it all comes in, there’s a splendid chapter on Augustine, and he writes so well, it’s funny and witty, all sorts of people will read it –’
‘But if it’s all wrong that seems rather a pity!’
‘Yes. It could enflame a lot of thoughtless smashers. He thinks liberal democracy is done for. He’s a sort of pessimistic utopian. And of course we’re right, all right I’m right, and he’s wrong – but my rightness – needs to be changed – shaken, uprooted, replanted, enlightened…’
‘I think this book will be a nine days’ wonder,’ said Rose, ‘and then we can all relax! Even you may feel a bit more normal tomorrow morning. You’re drunk on whisky and Crimond!’
‘It may be that it’s directed simply at me.’
‘Surely you don’t think –?’
‘I don’t mean literally. There may be a small number of people who will understand the book and be ready for it, and they are the people it is for – so
me will agree, some will disagree, but they’ll have received an important communication. It may be like a signal by heliograph – there’s only one point where it’s received, and there it’s dazzling.’
‘It’s dazzled you anyway. But if it’s all about Plato and Augustine and Buddha I can’t see it as a political bombshell.’
‘It’s not all about – it’s an attempt to see the whole of our civilised past in relation to the present and the future, it’s pointed, as it were, at the revolution.’
‘Oh that! Oh really!’
‘Rose, I don’t mean the proletarian revolution out of old-fashioned Marxism. I mean the whole human global revolution.’
‘I didn’t know there was one. Neither did you. You’ve just picked it up out of Crimond’s book!’
‘My dear!’ Gerard began to laugh crazily, pouring himself out some more whisky.
‘You’re drunk. You said I was. Now we both are.’
‘My dear girl, yes, I’m drunk, and I didn’t “pick up” out of Crimond’s book something which of course I knew before, but which I now see in a new light.’
‘It’s an illusion. Everything is just a muddle. That’s what liberal democracy means.’
‘Rose, you see, you understand. But a popular illusion is a great force – and even the maddest prediction can reveal things one hadn’t dreamt of which are really there.’
‘What do you mean, technology, Africa, nuclear war –?’
‘Many many things which seem separate but are connected or will connect. The foundations are shifting, we’re about to see the largest, deepest, fastest change, the most shattering revolution, in the history of civilisation.’
‘I don’t believe those things connect,’ said Rose, ‘that’s mythology. I’m surprised at you! We have a lot of different problems with different solutions. Anyway, dear Gerard, we shall not see this exciting cataclysm. I hope and believe that in what remains of my lifetime I shall still be able to go out and buy half a pound of butter and a copy of The Times.’
‘Who knows? Think what’s happened already in our lives.’