by Iris Murdoch
Stuart heard Edward’s window below open, then close. He sighed, and began to think about Edward. He already knew intuitively about the terrible untouchable sufferings of others. But upon the horrors he did not dwell. He could picture Mark Wilsden dead, and his tutor Plowmain who had blown his brains out. Stuart had never met Mark, and did not like Plowmain or know why he had killed himself. Interested people wondered whether this violent death had ‘influenced’ Stuart. It had not, it did not concern him. These bloody casualties were for him sad static things, like tombs, upon the road into the whiteness of his own future, a whiteness which was like a different kind of death. His attitude was that of an unreflective soldier, perhaps not likely to survive for long. Of course he could bleed, he could weep; and if it had been his duty to bury the dead he would have done so. But there were grievous and awful things which must remain externally related to his thought, as if in relation to them, he could always only be concerned as an instrument or servant. Stuart pictured the Good Samaritan as being intently reflective at suitable intervals about the man he had helped, so long as he could continue to help him (for instance by sending the innkeeper some more money), but as otherwise dismissing the matter from his mind. Anything in the nature of drama, of brooding or gloating or re-enacting, was alien to Stuart, as was also joyous or gleeful anticipation. In a way he did not want to reflect too much; and was perhaps in this sense, as Harry had said, lacking in imagination. These peculiarities made of his present task of disposing of his life a curiously cramped and narrow problem. He wanted to find a job, some sort of plain service job, white, blank, like the blankness of time as it continually streamed towards him, getting as it were into his eyes; yet also it must be his job, since he retained a sense of vocation, of being called to some work suited to his talents, not his old talents, but his new talents, the talents of his new life, which had to be begun soon: for whatever it was, it was to be won or lost now. That much was clear to him, and that much of a drama, he sometimes felt it was too much, gave structure to his reflection. In another context and another time, traditions and institutions might have upheld and guided him. Now, as he was forced to think about himself, the very emptiness of his thought, which he so much valued, made it difficult for him to plan and make decisions.
Stuart had sometimes put it to himself that what he wanted was a (but the right) cage of duties. And now at any rate there was a clear duty, to which he had not needed to have his attention drawn by Harry, to ‘do something’ about Edward. Did he love Edward? Of course: Stuart did not propose to stumble over that question, any more than over the question of whether some twinge of old jealous resentment might not even now make him the tiniest bit glad that his popular brother was in trouble. His connection with Edward was absolute, and as for base thoughts and feelings, he was used to thrusting them down, as if drowning them, with no misgivings about ‘repression’. His talk with Edward had not been a success. He had done it as an act of will, something no longer to be put off. He had never before offered anybody so much advice, or put into words and uttered things which he so profoundly believed in. But these things had not reached Edward. Stuart was aware, and here he did seem to stumble, that only love could have winged his words, such words, so as to make them reach that objective. Only in a context of love could talk of sin and guilt effectively take place; and that was Edward’s trouble, was it not? So he should first have convinced Edward of his love. But how could he have done it? Edward was evidently capable, in this emergency, of regarding Stuart as an enemy. It all remained separated, ‘abstract’, a word which Harry had used, the absolute existence of his brother, his affection for him, his well-intentioned admonitions. Of course Edward was a special case; on the other hand, if he failed in this case would it not be significant? Was this perhaps a crucial test, a kind of entrance exam, the sign for which he had been waiting? Will it always be like this, Stuart wondered, and if it is, does it matter, does it matter for my plan? He could not clearly formulate this troubling query, which seemed part of the ‘narrow’ problem of his task. Supposing he were simply not gifted for his chosen mission? Was it like some totally unmusical person deciding to devote his life to music? Suppose it should turn out that he could never really communicate with other human beings at all? He had so far communicated very little. So did he now envisage himself talking to people in the future, advising them? Could something like this be learnt or did it have to be a natural endowment? Supposing he were dumb, would it be different or the same? He thought, with Ed, I’ll work on it. Stuart had of course always been aware of his father’s preference for Edward, which had left those little scars of jealousy; it had pained him, but not as much as Harry or Thomas imagined. Stuart’s capacity to detach himselfdated back a long way. ‘A cold aloof little boy,’ people had said. This coldness was part of Stuart’s problem. Was it coldness? Sometimes the very same thing seemed to him like a passion.
I wonder if I ought to have forgiven Edward, Stuart said to himself, absolved him. Luther said all men were priests. Of course he knew that the idea was perfectly ridiculous, but it did not occur to him to think it presumptuous. After all, he had long known that life was about salvation, and had known for some time that it was his destiny to live alone as a priest in a world without God. His rejection of God went far back into his childhood. Finding himself already baptised, he had refused the sacrament of confirmation, which young Edward took with vague emotional cheerfulness in his stride. ‘God’ had always seemed to Stuart something hard and limited and small, identified as an idol, and certainly not the name of what he found within himself. Christ was different, a sort of presence, not quite a mystic person. Christ was a pure essence, something which, as it were, he might have kissed, as one might kiss a holy stone, or the soil of a holy land, or the trunk of a holy tree: something which was everywhere, yet simple separate and alone. Something alive; and he himself was Christ. The identification was unanalysed and instinctive, something obvious, where ‘not I but Christ’ was interchangeable with ‘not Christ but I’, experienced sometimes as a transparency and lightness, the closeness, even the easiness, of good. This progressive absorbing of the Holy One, as if after a while Stuart might forget his name, went on of course without reference to ‘Christianity’, and Stuart never ‘went to church’, though he sometimes sat alone in churches. It was clear that nothing was worthy of this except a total dedication, something lived and breathed, without intervals. Truth was fundamental, his life-oath. Certainty was there, honeydew was there, but meanwhile the dedication remained as a task, cumbersome, detailed, where every minute contained the likelihood of failure. How could such a paradox be lived? Not, for him at any rate, in the academic world. He needed simplicity and order, a quiet monotonous private life. He wanted to be able to be a place of peace and space to others, he wanted to be invisible, he wanted to heal people, he wanted to heal the world, and to get into a situation where this would be something simple and automatic, something expected and every day. He knew how awkward and conspicuous he was, how he embarrassed people, exasperated them, unnerved them, frightened them. He lacked charm. He was often aware when he entered a room how much he disturbed the atmosphere and broke the tempo. This made it important to find a place where he need have no persona, and awkwardness would become something unimportant, taken for granted. Perhaps it would pass off, he was young and could learn. Besides all men are mocked, Christ was mocked.
Stuart’s dislike of modern society was made much of by those who wished to explain or interpret his behaviour, especially his attitude to sex. Stuart certainly detested sexual promiscuity, vulgar public sex, the lack of privacy and reticence, the lack of restraint and respect, the lack of reverence, the lack of inwardness. He was afraid of the future, of a world without religion, of crazed spirit without absolute. He was afraid of technology, and of the decay of human language and the loss of the soul. But these reactions were not the prime movers of his asceticism. He was perhaps nearer, though he laughed at it and gave it no force, t
o Harry’s charge of a ‘higher hedonism’. How high can it go? He wanted to love the world and not to be caught in traps, to have a calm lucid consciousness and an untroubled conscience. In Stuart’s conception of his ‘task’ celibacy held a central place, not just because of the mucky sex life of people he knew and heard of, but because of some more positive conception of innocence. Why start? Stuart said to himself. To love without entanglement, that, for him at any rate, meant celibacy. Many others in the past had seen it so, and in this at least he was not alone. He was sorry now that he had, through answering a direct question put to him by Giles Brightwalton, let his resolve become public, a matter for speculation and jokes. His ‘innocence’ was to be something private and simple, to be like a lonely animal in its lair at night, or as he had sometimes felt at happy times in his childhood, secure in bed, hearing Harry moving about downstairs. That such a picture might seem dull, or suggest a retarded or childish personality, did not dismay him. Perhaps he just was a little childish, and perhaps this was no great matter, even a good thing. The effect upon him of his mother, ‘the girl from far away’, was something more complex. She had indeed figured in his child mind, and even still, more dimly, as an angel. He could scarcely remember her, his images of her hovered between memory and dream. Her mystic form had been a refuge from a thoughtless stepmother and a neglectful father and a brother preferred by both. She knew about love, about how he lacked it. Her name was Teresa Maxton O‘Neill, a Catholic, born in Dunedin of Irish immigrant parents. She had seen the great ocean seals basking on golden seaweed at the end of the world. She had seen the albatross.
A disinterested observer might have wondered why Stuart so ardently rejected God, since he did not simply sit and meditate, he also knelt down, sometimes even prostrated himself. Once again, Stuart, recognising no problem, instinctively resolved apparent contradictions. Meditation was refuge, quietness, purification, replenishing, return to whiteness. Prayer was struggle, reflection, self-examination, it was more particular, involving concern about other people and naming of names. Harry had said that Stuart wanted to be like Job, always guilty before God, an exalted form of sadomasochism. Stuart’s rejection of God was, in effect, his rejection of that ‘old story’, to use Ursula’s words, as alien to his being. His mind refused it, spewed it out, not as a dangerous temptation, but as alien tissue. Of course he wanted to be ‘good’; and so he wanted to avoid guilt and remorse, but those states did not interest him. Towards his sins and failures he felt cold, no warmth was generated there. So little did he feel himself menaced from that quarter that in prayer he would even say (for he used words) dominus et deus, without attaching the old meaning to those dread sounds. (Perhaps it was important that the words were Latin, not English.) He knew there was no supernatural being and did not design to try to attach the concept in any way to his absolutes. If something, ‘good’ or something, was his ‘master’, it was in no personal or reciprocal relation. His language was thus indeed odd as when he sometimes said ‘forgive me’, or ‘help me’, or when he commended others, Edward for instance, to the possibility of being helped. Stuart understood the phrase ‘love is only of God’; his love went out into the cosmos as a lonely signal, but also miraculously could return to earth. His belief that his supplication for Edward, his concern for Edward, could help Edward was not a hypothesis about actions which he might, as a result of well-intentioned thoughts, later perform for his brother (though this aspect of the matter was not excluded); nor of course was he resorting to some paranormal telepathic form of healing. He simply felt sure that the purer his love the more efficacious it would be in some ‘immediate’ sense which put in question the ordinary pit-pat of time.
Stuart’s ‘hedonism’ was an instinctive craving for nothingness which was also a desire to be able to love and enjoy and ‘touch’ everything, to help everything. To this end, celibacy and solitude appeared as essential means. This reasoning seemed to him obvious. Of course when Harry had said of Stuart (as he said, understood differently, of Edward) that he was in love with death, he had meant something more banal, a commonplace of popular psychology. Stuart certainly wanted happiness, his own particular brand of that which we are told all men pursue. He was however well aware, however much his deepest feelings might deny time, that he was not living in a timeless world. He had certainties so tremendous that he was not even concerned about the sin of pride, which he regarded as a low personal matter. But he was also aware that he was young and inexperienced, clumsy and often stupid, and in need of a job. Like everyone else, he must settle down, and earn money. He had not yet been tested. Can a man live with no evil, no shadow, no ego? Has any man ever lived so? He knew his present failings, and that he would descend further into it all, into the mess and muddle of wrong-doing, like everyone else. He was certainly not, as Harry had conjectured, waiting for the perfect romance with the virgin princess. But he was, in all his more mundane fumblings, waiting for something. He had abjured, he thought, all superstition. Yet still, in some way, he was waiting for a sign.
Edward Baltram was crossing Fitzroy Square. It was raining.
It was the day following Stuart’s homily and Edward’s discovery of the card about the seance. It was a Thursday, half-past four in the afternoon. Edward was going to hear the dead speak.
Edward did not exactly believe that this would happen. He was impressed by the strange way in which the card had suddenly appeared on the floor of his room. He had of course later realised how it had come there. He remembered that on that terrible night Sarah Plowmain had said something about a seance, and that it would be ‘fun’ to go to one. No doubt she had slipped the card into the pocket of his jacket, and he had pulled it out accidentally without noticing. Nevertheless he felt he could recognise the hand of fate, and fate was just what, at that moment, he needed in his life more than anything, some significant compulsion, even if the significance were dark. To be under orders, to have something he must do. He felt weak and fatalistic. But suppose the dead did speak, and in terrible tones, the message of Mark’s mother spoken by Mark, denouncing him as a murderer? Might not that drive him into madness? Even then it would be fate, it would be part of a fated punishment, it would be a step upon a road, which might lead perhaps in the end to some better state, would at any rate lead somewhere. The sense of nowhere-to-go, no space, no time, no movement, was a part of his utter and deep misery. He did not really hate Stuart and Harry. He had even listened to Stuart sufficiently to recall some of his advice. When that morning Edward awoke from drugged nightmares to see that the daylight had returned, and to hear the birds singing in the garden, and after he had passed from the moment of not-knowing into the agony of yes, it happened, that happened’, he also remembered what Stuart had said about holding onto the birds and keeping them away from the blackness. He tried to do this. He felt at once the pressure of a huge black irresistible force. His effort lasted for a microsecond; then grief blotted out the sound and he returned to his mechanical conversation with Mark and his wailing regret that he could not change the past: oh if only that vile girl hadn’t rung up, if only I had come back sooner, if only … So little needed to be changed for it all to be different.
I’m so alone, he thought, no one helps me, no one can help me, I don’t even want anyone’s help. But what is to become of me, would I not be better dead? I am simply cumbering and fouling the earth. I am dead, I am the walking dead, people must see that, why don’t they run away? They do run away, everyone shuns me. No voice can reach me. I won’t be able to think again, I won’t be able to work again, I am permanently damaged. I have no free thinking mind any more, my mind is totally poisoned, clogged up with black poison. I am a little machine, no longer a human soul, my soul is dead, my poor soul is dead. He wished that he could shed tears over his soul, his face screwed up for tears, there was a little moisture in his eyes but not the streams that he desired. Yet while he thought these thoughts, explicitly worded, indeed composed, in his mind, his feet were automatically le
ading him toward a street which he had looked up on a map to be sure that he knew where it was. Even the name, Mrs Quaid, was in his head as he walked, as he marched, for he was a suffering robot.
He consulted the card again, although he clearly remembered the number, and stopped outside a tall brick terrace house, the kind of house of which there are so many, some grand, some dingy, in that part of London. This house, was one of the dingy ones. A card similar to the one he was holding was pinned to the side of the door, with the message First floor hand-written upon it. There was a bell beside the door but Edward saw no point in ringing it since the door was open. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes to five. He wondered if he should walk around for a bit, but decided it was psychologically impossible. Besides, he had come without an umbrella and his hair and his mackintosh were already rather wet. He went in, mopping his hair with his handkerchief, and climbed some shabbily carpeted stairs. On the first floor there was one door, standing ajar, with a hand-written notice on it saying SEANCE 5 p.m. Please walk in. Edward walked in.
He was in the corridor of a flat, with various closed doors and very little light. There was a rather unpleasant dusty sweetish smell which could have been old cosmetics or some kind of dry rot. He felt his heart-beat, holding his breath, and after listening for a moment, coughed. A door opened and in the still dim light he saw a woman covered in jewels. That at least was his first impression. Then he saw a small woman with a fat neck wearing a dark red and blue robe and some sort of turban on her head and a great many necklaces. Some of the necklaces were short, cutting into her flesh, others were longer and hung down in rows as far as her waist. She also wore long earrings which glittered and swung. The necklaces clicked a little and tinkled. The woman spoke, ‘You’re early, dear. But come on in then.’ She spoke with a slight Irish accent. Edward followed her.