by Iris Murdoch
He lay down on his bed. Five minutes later, relaxed and smiling, he was fast asleep.
Supposing one lacked the concept of suffering, thought Cato, sitting in his bedroom waiting for Beautiful Joe to arrive. Supposing one just suffered like an animal without thinking all the time: I’m suffering. Is it a sophisticated concept? He was not sure. Christianity hands it out even to peasants. Christ suffered, that is the whole point. But what a pointless point. It’s such a selfish activity, suffering. Buddhism treats it with contempt.
Cato wondered if in order to stop himself from thinking and suffering he ought to go home to Laxlinden and dig the garden. But he could not confront his father, his father’s sarcastic politeness, his father’s anger with him for reasons which were already old. He would have to act a part at Laxlinden. ‘Going on holiday’ was unthinkable. He could go and stay with Brendan, who lived in meticulously spartan luxury in a small flat in central London. But Brendan would exhort him, bully him a little, comfort him, speak eloquently to him of the ‘dark night’, subtly attempt to alter the whole pattern of his terrible dismay. And Cato would want to accept, would half accept, would perhaps yield, when he was with him, to Brendan’s so magnetic persuasion. No. If he was to lose it all he wanted to lose it in his own particular individual way, just as he had found it in his own particular individual way. He was a convert and he had a convert’s sense of inferiority, but also a convert’s pride. He must sit alone at his own doorway until it should be finally closed against him.
The need to pray remained obsessive, profitless, like an illness, like an organ which goes on producing what the body can no longer assimilate or use. Sweet Christ, help me. It was so simple. It was the simplicity of prayer, its naturalness, not its awful difficulty which indeed struck him at these times. Of course prayer was the best way out of thought, but he could not move that way; and the simplicity which should most have helped him, came to seem to him like an obscene childishness, a gabbling of spells. He felt so tired. The God of darkness and emptiness and dereliction peopled his mechanically praying mind with brittle images. Recordare quod sum causa … He could not, any more, get through, the faith that had once taken him on into that fecund darkness was no longer there. The absence of God was not now the presence of God. And his head was full of pictures of the boy, and he could not use the method of prayer to render them harmless. Sometimes the sense of spiritual deprivation was so positive that he thought: perhaps Christ is actually leaving the planet and this is what I am experiencing.
Floods of tenderness were in him for that child. Suppose I were to stop playing a part, thought Cato, if that’s what I’m doing? Suppose I were simply to put my arms around him? What does it matter whether God exists or not when there is a lost child to love? It happens, quite by accident and without any merit, that I am the bond, the connection, perhaps the saviour, for this boy at this time. Perhaps it was just for this that I was born, for this that I was converted? Perhaps even Christ is just part of a mechanism which brings me to Joe, with the kind of pure irresistible mechanicalness which makes the swallows migrate when the summer ends? Why bother about Christ when there is Joe? Why bother even about sin?
But some deep craving in him for order forbade this. It was not a matter of ‘disapproving’ of homosexual love. Cato did not disapprove. The case before him was far too complex, far too concrete, for any such categories. He just knew that his ability to help Joe depended on a concealment, on the absolute inhibition of wild barrier-destroying tenderness. There were, here, and for him, abysses of corruption, there was depravity, the transformation of love and courage into instant travesties. Even if he could keep a pure and clear intent in such a tempest he knew that Joe could not, and it would be a final wickedness thus to try him. It would be a betrayal of a peculiar and specialized trust which existed simply because Cato had once believed in God. And even if God could not now make Cato into a priest, Joe made him into one. So there was sin after all, or something like it. The question of Joe’s ‘loving’ him scarcely arose. Joe would love power. What might yet save him was, in all ways, its erasure. Cato did not seriously contemplate embracing the boy. That was far off. The revelation of love was the revelation that must not be made. But could not the work of love go on?
I must get away, thought Cato, I must stop living here like a criminal, simply looking forward to seeing him. In this torment, how can I know what I ought to do about the priesthood? I’ve got to get away, but I cannot just abandon Joe, I cannot leave him to bottomless cynicism and perdition, he hasn’t got anybody but me. I must create some sort of framework to hold him when I’m gone. If only I could make him learn something. But can he learn? He’s lived in a dream world of his own all his school days. Who can teach him now and where is the motive that could make him try? If only I could bribe him to learn. He is perfectly able, he is clever, if he could only start. But that’s impossible, there is no money, I have no money, and I can’t ask them for any now.
But even as he reflected about how he could leave Joe, and how he might somehow persuade him to go back to his studies, Cato was thinking: I shall see him, he will soon be here, I cannot leave him. I cannot leave him ever. It’s as bad as that.
There was a soft sudden urgent knocking down below and Cato bounded to his feet. He sprang down the stairs and through the kitchen. It was early, still daylight, not yet time; but he was certain that it was Joe as he dragged the door open.
The cold evening light revealed a thin young man with a small prettyish face and a lot of curly dark hair. He was wearing a brown macintosh with the collar turned up.
‘Hello, Padre!’
Cato stared at him, finding him familiar.
‘Cato, don’t you know me?’
‘Henry!’
Cato felt pleasure, then dismay. He must somehow get rid of Henry before Beautiful Joe arrived.
‘Come in! However did you find me?’
‘I rang up your famous HQ and some Frenchman told me of your whereabouts. He said your ’phone was cut off.’
‘That would be de Valois. Gome upstairs. I’m afraid this place is in chaos, it’s just being dismantled.’
‘Oh, why?’
‘They’re going to pull the house down.’
‘They seem to have pulled half the neighbourhood down. I came across a place like the end of the world. I saw a hawk there.’
‘A hawk?’
‘Yes, a kestrel.’
‘Symbol of the Holy Ghost.’
‘Your familiar.’
‘One does occasionally see hawks in London. Do sit down, I’m expecting a visitor, but—’
‘I can’t stay long anyway, I’m catching a train back. I came up to buy a car but I can’t have it till Thursday.’
‘What did you buy?’
‘A Volvo.’
‘They’re beautiful cars.’
‘You got one?’
‘A car? No, of course not.’
‘I see. No possessions. Lucky you.’
Cato sat on the bed, Henry on a chair, and they looked at each other. They had been school friends, then, more vaguely, student friends, though they had gone to different universities and Cato was a little younger than Henry. They had corresponded for a short while after Henry’s departure, then stopped. Detached from each other, two very private little boys, circumstances had made them allies, against fathers, against Sandy. Mutually harmless, neither had led the other. Childhood had made a strong bond. There was no great locking of temperaments or meeting of minds. They would not especially have sought each other, but were now glad to meet, interested, enlivened, curious.
‘I was so very sorry to hear about Sandy,’ said Cato. ‘I wrote to your mother. What an awful thing.’
‘Yes, awful,’ said Henry. He looked about the room. ‘So you’re leaving here. Fancy your being a priest. What does your father think?’
‘He hates it.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know.’
�
��What was this place? Your Frenchman called it “the Mission”. Are you converting people?’
‘Hardly! Just welfare work.’
‘Will you try and convert me?’
‘A cynic like you?’
‘So you help people. That’s good. You know, I envy you in a way.’
‘What are you going to do? Are you going to be a country squire?’
‘Don’t sneer.’
‘I’m not. Why shouldn’t you run the place, it needs running. What have you been doing all these years? I don’t even know where you went after Stanford.’
‘I went to a nowhere in the middle west. I’ve been teaching mindless beautiful American kiddies about art history.’
‘Not married are you, Henry?’
‘No. I’ve been living à trois with a married couple. Do I shock you? I suppose priests can’t be shocked. You know I can’t get over seeing you in that black skirt. I thought your lot wore smart suits.’
‘Most of them do. I’m eccentric. Written any books?’
‘Books? What are they? Well, I’m writing one. On a painter called Max Beckmann. All right, you’ve never heard of him. It’s called Screaming or Yawning, there’s an early drawing—never mind. So you’re a priest.’
‘You never used to like painting.’
‘I’ve changed, America has unmade me. Do you think I’ve got an accent?’
‘An American accent? Well, faintly—’
‘My mother said—Did she reply to your letter?’
‘No, but Lucius did.’
‘Lucius. Christ. Never mind. I hate art actually, I hate all the old grand stuff, so confident, so pleased with itself, Beckmann’s the end of it all, when the yawns turn into screams. I like being at the end, the scene of destruction like round the corner here. I’m the hawk watching it all. Cato, I’m so glad I found you, I haven’t been able to talk to anybody. I can’t tell you how horrible it is at home, it’s horrible.’
‘Your mother’s—grief— yes—’
‘And it’s all mixed up with—oh that bloody scrounger Lucius Lamb—and the whole place—it’s too big—I’ve been feeling sick ever since I got back, sick.’
‘How long have you been back?’
‘Three days, four days. She keeps watching me to see what I’ll do. I think she wants me to go back to America.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘I’m obscene, I’m so alive, and I’m so un-Sandy.’
‘She loves you, she must need you terribly.’
‘Well, that’s worse.’
‘Henry—forgive my asking—but how do you really feel—about Sandy?’
Henry was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I feel delighted, absolutely delighted.’
‘Henry, you can’t—’
‘No priest’s stuff, please.’
‘For your own sake and—’
‘How do I know what I feel? I could say that I feel free for the first time in my life, but what the hell would that mean? Of course I’m pleased. But it’s not even important. I feel I’m going to explode, there’ll be some great conflagration, some great act of destruction. I’ve killed Sandy. Who shall I do next?’
‘You need time,’ said Cato. ‘You’re still suffering from shock. There must be so many practical things. And you must comfort your mother, and damn your feelings.’
‘O.K., damn them. But she’s not easy to comfort. We can’t even talk.’
‘But you will stay here? You could go on teaching—’
‘I’d never get a teaching job here, not a hope in hell, I’m no good. I suppose I could sit in the library at Laxlinden and think. Except that I can’t think.’
‘There’s your book.’
‘Yes. Except that—really, it’s not a book, it’s a painter, it’s not even a painter, it’s a man, and he’s dead years ago. I’m nothing.’
‘That’s the beginning of wisdom.’
‘Your wisdom, not mine. I’m like the chap in Dostoevsky who said “if there’s no God, how can I be a captain?” And I’m not even a captain. But, say, do you really believe in the Resurrection and worship the Virgin Mary? It’s like a visit to the past.’
There was a soft sound on the stairs and the door was partially opened. It was Beautiful Joe.
Cato blushed, jumped up. ‘Come in, this is—Come in—This is Joe Beckett, one of my—Joseph Beckett, Mr Marshalson.’
‘Hello, sir,’ said Joe, with an air of youthful simplicity and deference.
‘Hello,’ said Henry, smiling, appreciating.
Cato had never heard Joe call anyone ‘Sir’ before. It was presumably a joke. ‘Joe, could you wait downstairs? Mr Marshalson is just going and—’
‘Certainly, Father.’ Joe retired quietly, closing the door after him and padding away down the stairs.
‘It’s nice to be back where they’re polite,’ said Henry. ‘The kids back home are so bloody familiar.’
‘He’s not polite. He’s going to the devil.’
‘That nice boy? How?’
‘Crime. It’s an occupation, it’s a world. He’s in it already.’
‘But he’s so young—’
‘Henry, you know nothing—’
‘I’m fascinated. In America the good guys and the bad guys don’t meet socially, at least, not at my level. But you’re trying to help him, to save him from—?’
‘Yes, but I can’t. Good will is no use here, one would need money. I can’t help any of them really.’
‘Money?’ said Henry. ‘I can supply that.’
‘No, no, I didn’t mean—’
‘Of course you didn’t, but why not? Now that it’s come up it’s obvious. My dear Cato, I’m so impressed by this scene, no I’m not being sarcastic, I mean this place, this frightful little room with the broken window, your poverty, your, if I may say so, perfectly filthy old cassock, what you’re trying to do for these people. I want to help you. You’re leaving this set-up, perhaps you’ll have another one like it. Couldn’t I come and work with you? Why not? Would God mind?’
Cato’s eyes widened for a moment. Then he laughed.
‘God wouldn’t mind. But you’d hate it. It’s nasty. The people are often nasty. Or else they’re boring. Do you really want to go visiting old age pensioners?’
‘I’ve never tried. I’ve taught pretty boring pupils in my time. I think you do these people an injustice—’
‘Yes, of course. But the work is tough and—’
‘Isn’t that spiritual pride? Couldn’t I do what you do?’
‘I don’t do it.’
‘But you—Oh, I see, God does it.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that. Maybe I just need a break.’
‘Sure—But aren’t you going to have another Mission?’
‘We—we can’t get another house—we got this one—’
‘I’ll buy you a house. Cato, I’m serious.’
‘It isn’t only that—I’m not sure what I—’
‘Of course I don’t believe in God, but it’s so nice that you do! I can’t tell you—oh I can’t tell you—how awful—how sort of unlivable—everything is now—like a great black wall in front of me—Something’s got to go smash—Oh all right, all right, you want me to go. I’ve got to go anyway. I’ll tell you these horrors another time. Will you be home?’
‘No, not—’
‘Well, I’ll come here again, or find out where you are. I must fly now to catch that train. Do think about what I said, and we’ll make a plan.’
Henry whisked out of the room and down the stairs. It had grown dark. Cato pulled the curtains and turned on the light. He had deliberately put in a weak bulb and the room was dim. Beautiful Joe had materialized noiselessly.
‘Who was that chap?’
‘A rich man,’ said Cato.
‘Is he a queer?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘He gave me quite a look. I’d like to be fancied by a rich queer. I can’t stand queers though. Hitler was right to
kill the queers and the gipsies. A gipsy woman just stopped me in the street selling heather. I spat right in her face. Did she curse!’
‘I wish you could learn kindness,’ said Cato.
‘Gipsies look dirty. And she put her hand on my arm. I can’t stand being touched.’
‘I wish I could teach you.’
‘You do.’ The boy sat down on the chair, Cato stood. ‘You do teach me. But I’ve had such a rotten life. People like me are a problem.’
‘You haven’t had a rotten life,’ said Cato. ‘I wish you’d speak the truth, you’re quite intelligent enough to be able to. You did well at school. You’ve got an educated mother and a decent home—’
‘You mean it was clean. All you saw was the table cloth. I was butchered. Life is a dumdum bullet. That’s another pop song I’m going to write.’
‘Why don’t you go on learning, get trained, get clever, that’s the way to make money and be famous if that’s what you want!’
‘You’re trying to con me, Father, they all do. We’ve had all this before. You don’t understand. I’d end up in the machine shop like the rest of them.’
‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with the machine shop, it’s better than being in prison.’
‘Who said anything about prison? You take me so serious. You’re doing your thing, why can’t I do my thing? I must be me even if I suffer for it. That’s religion, isn’t it?’
‘Why not try religion, then.’
‘I’ve had it all my life, Father, priests were beating me when I was six, I’ve been looking at Christ on the cross since I could see—and it’s a terrible thing to look at if you think of it, the nails and all that blood. If a gang done that they’d get ten years even if the bugger survived.’
‘Joe, don’t pretend that you don’t understand. You may be closer to Christ than I am. Anyway why speak of distances when we’re all a million miles from God.’
‘There, you’ve said it, Father. A million miles. A million million. So what is a man to do? You’ve got to fight for yourself, like fighting is self-expression. You got to have scars like real fighters have. He had scars, didn’t He? You should have heard the nuns going on, it made you sick.’