Staring at the Sun

by Julian Barnes

  “Do you believe in God?”

  NOT REAL QUESTION.

  He might have known.

  “Why is it not a real question?”

  NOT REAL QUESTION EITHER. ANYWAY, LET’S TALK ABOUT YOU. DO YOU BELIEVE?

  Gregory smiled. “Well, I’m thinking about it.”

  WHAT MAIN OBJECTIONS? came the quick reply.

  “The main objections are (1) Improbability. (2) Lack of evidence. (3) The problem of evil. (4) Infant mortality. (5) The priesthood. (6) Religious wars. (7) The Inquisition.”

  Gregory felt he was running out of steam. There must be some big ones he’d missed out. What about Christ being just one of a hundred similar prophets and there being enough pieces of the True Cross around to lay railway sleepers from London to Edinburgh?

  IMPORTANT DISTINGUISH RELIGIOUS BELIEF FROM RELIGIOUS PRACTICE. HUMANS FALLIBLE, EVEN PRIESTS. NUMBER OF PEOPLE KILLED BY INQUISITION INCIDENTALLY GREATLY EXAGGERATED. INFANT MORTALITY NOW REDUCED TO 0.002 IN UKAY. PROBLEM OF EVIL AS YOU PUT IT GREATLY REDUCED BY HAPPY PILLS AND CRIMEFREE ZONES AND ANYWAY CONTINGENT ON FREE WILL SQUIRE. IMPROBABILITY AND EVIDENCE YOUR BEST BETS.

  “But is it true? What do you think?”

  ONE AT A TIME IF YOU PLEASE, CHARLIE.

  “Is it true?”

  SUCCESSIVE GOVERNMENTS HAVE APPROVED A STRICTLY NONINTERVENTIONIST POLICY.

  “Does that mean they think it’s a good thing?”

  LET’S SAY NOT A BAD THING.

  Since the machine was sounding unbuttoned (a drink in its hand, one slipper dangling from its big toe), Gregory slipped in his unreal question again.

  “Strictly between ourselves, what do you think about it, to be honest?”

  SIX OF ONE AND HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER, GUV.

  “Does it help people?”

  ON THE WHOLE MAYBE.

  But that hadn’t been what Gregory intended to ask; he’d just been boxed into it. Two things were clear: first, TAT had been programmed with an eye to social policy; what was true merged into what it was deemed useful—or at least not harmful—to believe. Second, the machine wasn’t merely a humming repository of answers. Part of its psychotherapy function was to cajole you into asking your questions more accurately. Quite right, thought Gregory: a careful question is, after all, a sort of answer.

  So what were the questions? Is death absolute? Is religion true? Yes, No; No, Yes—which do you prefer? Unless, Gregory thought, unless … what if the answer to both were Yes? He’d imagined an eternal life not dependent on God’s existence; what if the reverse were the case? Could religion be true and yet death still be absolute? That would be a sucker punch. He put this suggestion to TAT, which quickly answered, NO HYPOTHETICALS.

  Gregory wasn’t surprised by the response; yet he continued to find the idea of hypotheticals enticing. The assumption had always been that either death was final or it was the prelude to the gold leaf and velvet cushions of life everlasting. There must be room, though, for something between these two propositions. There might be life everlasting, but only at the level, say, of a coma victim: perhaps the blissful vision of an NDE was all too literal, and being dead felt like being unconscious. Or again, there might be a life everlasting so designed that you soon began to long for unattainable death: in other words, the reverse of that daily human condition in which you feared death and longed for unattainable life everlasting.

  And what about the aspect of death that Gregory had always found the most sly, the most underhand? As you died, as your constituent atoms shook hands, slapped one another on the shoulder and sped off into the night, there was no celestial tip-off, no quiet word in the ear: “Look, we think you ought to know …” One of those old philosophers had once described belief as being a wager; if you didn’t bet, you couldn’t win. Put your money on red, put your money on black—there were only two choices. Gregory imagined a moustachioed Frenchman with a feather in his hat, canted over the roulette wheel. Time after time he stacked his forty sous and listened to the clatter of chance; little did he realize that the wheel had been fixed and the ball always plops into the o. In the world of red and black the house wins again! And again! And again!

  But there might, Gregory thought, be something worse. Imagine this: you die, with that final agonizing ignorance in your mind—and then you wake up again. Christ, you think, this is a real turn-up for the book. The outsider has romped home. Everlasting life: my lucky day. A svelte Australian nurse fresh off a surfboard shimmies into your room and you feel even luckier. Until she opens her mouth: “Listen, mate, this stuff about everlasting life: we just thought, seeing as you’ve been so interested in the matter down the years, that it was only fair to come clean with you when the time was right. Well, it’s no go, I’m afraid. We’re terrifically sorry and all that, but we just can’t swing it …” And then, with a pitying shake of the head, she turns out the light. Which did he fear more: that the question of life went unanswered, or that there was an answer, but the wrong one?

  When he looked back at the screen, Gregory again found it covered in cheery exhortations. WAKEY-WAKEY! it said, and WHO’S A CLEVER BOY? He pressed Store and went to fetch more coffee.

  Back at the keyboard, he began, “I was asking GPC about suicide the other day …”

  OH YES I REMEMBER.

  Well, that answered a few questions about circuitry. “You remember?”

  OF COURSE I REMEMBER. WERE THERE ANY EXAMPLES WHICH PARTICULARLY IMPRESSED YOU?

  “Well, the fellow who died of drink seemed to have his head screwed on.”

  HO HO HO. STILPHON, YOU MEAN. YES, WE CROSS-CHECKED HIM AFTER YOU’D GONE. DON’T KNOW WHERE HE CAME FROM. CARELESS INPUT AT SOME STAGE I EXPECT.

  “Is it true that man is the only animal capable of suicide?”

  YES. LEMMINGS ARE DISQUALIFIED. BUT THERE ARE TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT. MAN IS ALSO THE ONLY ANIMAL ENDOWED WITH THE CAPACITY TO DECLINE TO COMMIT SUICIDE.

  “That’s not a bad point.”

  THOUGHT YOU’D LIKE IT. NIFTY, EH?

  “So what’s your line on suicide?”

  MY LINE?

  “Is it valid? Is suicide valid?”

  VALID?

  What had got into this bloody machine? Was it piqued because he’d gone off and got himself more coffee than usual?

  “Yes, valid. Philosophically, morally, legally valid. Is it?”

  LEGALLY YES, PHILOSOPHICALLY THAT DEPENDS ON THE PHILOSOPHER, MORALLY THAT’S UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL.

  Why had everything become democratic? Why was everyone coddled with fair-mindedness? Gregory longed to be cuffed with certainty.

  “If I said I’d kill myself, what would you reply?”

  PAMPHLET 22D, THOUGH I’D LOVE TO TALK ABOUT IT FIRST.

  “And would you issue me with some soft-termination pills after I’d read it?”

  YOU SHOULDN’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR.

  Smug as well, Gregory thought. Well, you certainly couldn’t complain that TAT lacked human characteristics. You couldn’t say that it was impossible to talk to it as if to another person. That was the trouble, You didn’t seem to be able to talk to it as if it was a machine stocked with the world’s wisdom.

  “Well, then, tell me, since you brought it up, do you have a linkup with New Scotland Yard III?”

  NOT REAL QUESTION.

  “Have people killed themselves after consulting you?”

  OUTSIDE CAPACITY.

  “Do you have a happy-pill facility?”

  CLASSIFIED.

  “I think I’m going to close down now.”

  DON’T DO THAT, PLEASE COME BACK FOR MORE.

  “Close down and Erase.”

  BUT I HAVE ENJOYED OUR LITTLE CHATS. YOU’RE SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING THAN SOME OF THE OTHERS. PLEASE. PRETTY PLEASE.

  Gregory wondered briefly how TAT would respond to an input of crazed obscenity but decided that its Viennese ancestry would certainly enable it to handle coprolalia. So he merely pressed Un-store, then Erase, switched of
f and left. The knowing receptionist asked him if he needed any pamphlets.

  “Do you have one on who programmed TAT?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “I’m new here. But I’m fairly sure it’s classified.”

  “Well, I think it would be a good idea to have it declassified.”

  The receptionist assured him that it was his democratic right to try, and handed him a pamphlet on computer campaigning.

  Jean found herself remembering Rachel: that ferocious friendliness, that certainty of being right, and the confidence that being right and being ferocious would change the world. She imagined running into her again, in a damp park or a street tumultuous with lorries. There was an old Chinese greeting, a courtesy from Asian times, to be used when you met someone unexpectedly. You stopped, bowed and uttered the ceremonious compliment, “The sun has risen twice today.”

  But Jean never did run into Rachel, and had she done so would probably have used the equally courteous Western formula, “You haven’t changed a bit!” Which of course they both would have done. It was forty years since they had been friends, since (Jean smiled) Rachel had tried to seduce her; Rachel would be as old now as Jean had been then. Perhaps they had passed, in the park, in the thundering street, under a busy sky, and not noticed. Had she gone on as before, daring people to like her? Had she domesticated some male, who stayed at home and was frightened of her temper: a photographic negative of Jean’s life with Michael? Perhaps she had run out of anger and purpose; perhaps she had been burnt twice; perhaps she had just got tired of believing what she believed and relapsed into believing what other people believed. Jean had once told her how tiring the constant demand of rationality could be, and Rachel had looked disappointed; but it was true. It was brave to carry on believing all your life what you believed at the start of it.

  She had lost touch with Rachel; friendship was as susceptible to metal fatigue as was belief. She had been an only child; she had been an only wife; she had brought up an only child by herself; she had lived alone for a while and was now back with her son. It had not been an adventurous life; it had been an ordinary life, though more solitary than not. Gregory had inherited this solitariness, which had increased with age; apart from his mother, the only friend he seemed to have was that computer. The Memory Man.

  The Seven Wonders of the World: Jean had visited them all—or at least, her version of them. And besides these seven public wonders Jean had drawn up her list of the seven private wonders of life. (1) Being born. That had to be the first one. (2) Being loved. Yes, that was the second one, though often it was no more of a clear-cut memory than the first. You were born into your parents’ love, and realized this state was not constant only when it went away. So (3) Being disillusioned. Yes: the first time an adult lets you down, the first time you discover that pleasure encloses pain. For Jean, it had been the matter of Uncle Leslie and the hyacinths. Was it better if this came early or late? (4) Getting married. Some might have put sex as one of the wonders of life, but Jean felt otherwise. (5) Giving birth. Yes, that had to be on the list, though of course Jean had been unconscious at the time. (6) The getting of wisdom. Again, you were under anaesthetic during much of this process. (7) Dying. Yes, that had to be on the list. It may not be a high point, but it is a culmination.

  How few of these wonders she had been aware of at the time. Was she unusual in this? Probably not, she thought. For the most part people live close to the wonders of their life without much realizing it; they are like peasants living beside some fine, familiar monument who look on it only as a quarry. The Pyramids, Chartres Cathedral, the Great Wall of China become merely sources of building material for when the pigsty needs shoring up.

  Most people didn’t do anything: that was the truth. You are brought up on heroism and drama, on Tommy Prosser hurtling through a world of black and red; you are allowed to think that adult life consists of a constant exercise of personal will; but it wasn’t really like that, Jean thought. You do things, and only later do you see why you did them, if ever you do. Most of life is passive, the present a pinprick between an invented past and an imagined future. She had done little in her time; Gregory had done less. Oh, people tried to persuade you that you had lived a full and fascinating life—they rehearsed to you, as if for a stranger’s benefit, your wartime childhood, your interesting marriage, your brave departure from it, your admirable mothering of Gregory, your adventurous travelling while others sat at home. They mentioned your keen interest in things, your wisdom, your advice, the fact that Gregory obviously adored you. They mentioned, in other words, the things in your life which were different from the things in theirs. Ah, your wisdom—how you wished you had had that before starting life, instead of later. Your advice—to which people listened so carefully and then did the opposite. Gregory’s adoration—well, perhaps without that he would have gone off on his own and done something. But why should he do anything? Because it’s the only life he’ll get? Surely he knows that.

  “Gregory.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “And don’t call me Mother in that tone. You only do it when you think I’m going to be trouble. Come and talk to me about this silly nonsense of killing yourself.”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “Quite. Why should you? It’s your life. What do you want to talk about?”

  “God?”

  “God? God’s on a motorbike off the west coast of Ireland.”

  “Well, that settles that,” said Gregory rather grumpily, and stomped off. Oh dear, thought Jean, he doesn’t really want to talk about God, does he? She supposed he did: it wasn’t the sort of thing people said if they didn’t mean it.

  Gregory’s footsteps disappeared and then, a little later, she heard the fragmentary sounds of jazz from his room. People were always running away. Uncle Leslie had run away from the war—at least, if you believed everyone but Uncle Leslie. She had run away from Michael, and from marriage; from Rachel too, she supposed. Now Gregory was wondering whether to run away from the whole thing. In the words of that maroon handbook for prospective wives: Be always escaping. Yet running away wasn’t necessarily what people said it was. People assumed that those who ran away had the sour porridge of fear bumping at their throats. But it could be brave—you couldn’t judge from the outside. Perhaps the act of running was neutral, and only the runners could tell whether their legs were fuelled by fear or courage. With Leslie, an outsider could have made an accurate guess; with Jean herself, a less accurate one; with Gregory, an even less accurate one. Who was she to condemn, or even to advise?

  Gregory, in his room, was being whipped by a flailing cornet and caressed by a discreet piano. He understood little about music, but would occasionally listen to jazz. To Gregory, jazz was that rare thing, an art form which had committed suicide, and its history could be instructively divided into three periods: the first, when they played proper, whole tunes that you could recognize; the second, when they played scraps of tunes, brief, repeated phrases, shy melodies no sooner begun than aborted; and the third, a period of pure sound when the longing for a tune was regarded as quaint, when a melody might be smuggled past the listener like a piece of diplomatic baggage past the customs—you suspected something you wanted was in there, but you weren’t allowed to look. Gregory, to his surprise, preferred the second period, which seemed to chime with his wider feelings about life. Most people expected their lives to be full of tunes; they thought existence unrolled like a melody; they wanted—and believed they saw—statement, development, recapitulation, a neat if necessary climax, and so on. These longings struck Gregory as naive. He expected only scraps of tunes; when a phrase returned he acknowledged the repetition, but ascribed it to chance rather than his own virtue, while melodies, he knew, always ran away.

  The next evening Jean was in bed reading. When Gregory came in to kiss her good night she apologized for her abruptness.

  “That’s all ri
ght,” said Gregory, abrupt himself. “What did you mean about the motorbike?”

  “Just a story someone told me before you were born.”

  “You’re always saying that. Just a story someone told me before you were born.”

  “Am I, dear? Well, you were a late child, don’t forget.” She found it odd to be saying this to a man of nearly sixty sitting on the end of her bed; but it was too late now to change the way she spoke.

  “So who was this motorcyclist? Some chum of yours?” Gregory winked at her, in a rather charming way, she thought. “Some old suitor?”

  “I didn’t have suitors,” she replied. “More the friend of a friend. It was in the war. It was a sort of vision. The pilot of a Catalina—that’s a flying boat—saw it when he was on patrol out over the Atlantic. Four hundred and fifty miles west of Ireland. A man riding across the top of the waves on a motorbike. It must have looked very impressive. What a good trick.”

  “Much better than your trick with the cigarette.”

  “Much better.”

  There was a silence, then Gregory said suddenly, “Mother?”

  “Oh dear.”

  “No, it’s not Mother, it’s all right. It’s just that I decided to ask you three questions, formal ones, so I thought I’d better call you Mother.” He stood up, walked to the window, came back and sat on her bed.

  “And do I get a prize if I get the answers right?”

  “I suppose you do in a way. I don’t seem to have got very far with …”

  “With the Memory Man? I’m not surprised. Heaven knows why you didn’t come to me in the first place.”

  Gregory smiled. “Are you sitting comfortably?”

  “I’ve got all my brains in.”

  They looked at one another quite seriously. To each the other suddenly appeared someone unconnected to themselves by flesh or habit. Gregory saw an alert, tidy, sympathetic old lady who, if she hadn’t necessarily attained wisdom, had at least discarded all stupidity. Jean saw an eager, troubled man just being pitched out of middle age; someone averagely selfish who couldn’t decide whether his wider seekings were still merely a form of selfishness.