by Iris Murdoch
An almost cynical remorse was part of his suffering. So, she had gone so fast. If he had dreamed that she wanted a man, wanted declarations of love and passion, would he not have given them to her, and not only on his knees? Could a woman be like that, could that woman be? How stupidly, it now seemed to him, he had concealed his love! Yet, with a lover’s double-think had he not often imagined that she must know how much he loved her? How can one think all the time about someone without their somehow knowing? Or had she, could she have, mistaken his tact, his gentlemanly honour and decorum, for a cool and rational affection? Some cruder clutching had attracted her attention when she was in the mood for being held. That she should have turned to Tim Reede. The Count had always liked Tim, but he measured now how much contempt his liking had contained. A patronizing attitude had somehow constituted and facilitated the liking. There was nothing of the rival about Tim, nothing of the equal. Nothing of the rival, he had thought. And now - tormented imagination animated a Gertrude how alienated, how changed, how irrevocably spoilt and lost.
The Count suddenly leapt up from his quiet radio set and ran out into the kitchen. He took down from the wall Tim’s picture entitled Three Blackbirds in a Treacle Well. He stared at it. It was a horrible picture. He was about to smash it into the rubbish bin when some unseen hand prevented this exhibition of blind rage. His heart was beating violently. He went into his bedroom and opening a deep drawer thrust the picture away into the bottom of it. As he did so his hand came into contact with a soft roll of stuff which he recognized as being the Polish flag which was one of the few mementos he had carried away from his childhood home. Ready to weep, he prepared himself for bed. He would not sleep. Tonight was the first night of his absolute loneliness, the first night upon the dark road which led now straight on to death.
The Count did sleep, however, and had a nightmare which it seemed to him (only he was not sure) that he had had many times before. He dreamt that he was a Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto. It is wartime and the Germans are occupying Warsaw. The ghetto is closed. Every day more Jews arrive, from other parts of the city, from other parts of the country. Every day the area of the ghetto grows smaller and smaller. The Jews fight like overcrowded rats for diminishing space, for diminishing food. Affliction does not make men brothers. Yet gradually too, after the first shock, there is comfort, comfort of order, comfort of survival. The Jews are together now without Gentiles, together in their own place. Inside the ghetto they are enclosed and safe, they can look after each other in peace. Their Jewishness is purified, justified. There is music, theatre, literature, a way of life. If only they can be left alone how well they will manage, how quiet and orderly they will be, each one knowing in his heart that he will survive. After all, there is enough food. There is work to do, work it is true for the Germans, but is not this work itself a guarantee of survival? The Count has found himself a corner in a room. Others are kind to him and he has his place. He has learnt what to do. If only people will be kind and orderly everyone will survive. What miracles of patience and endurance the Jewish people can achieve. Through such endurance they have survived and will survive. Against so much provocation, so great a tolerance and fortitude. Never hit back. Avoid the occasion of offence. Be invisible. Be silent. Wait. The Count feels safe. No one threatens him, no one sees him. The ghetto is at peace. Has it not its own Jewish authorities? Safety lies in order, in coming back to the corner in the room and living in amity and helping the sick and the weak. So few Germans can control so many Jews because the Jews are sensible and wise. They are a rational people who have seen much trouble. Be still my people, it is your destiny to suffer quietly. Sometimes Jews go away. There is a farmland at Treblinka where they go to work. The life is good there, there is more food. Someone has seen a postcard sent by someone’s friend. There are rumours from Wilno but no one will believe them. Someone has said the Germans will kill all the Jews, but no one believes this. It would be madness to believe such a tale. The Jews are quiet, the Jews are useful, the Germans are a civilized people. Someone has told a story about gas chambers, about death by gas, but this is an invention, it is science fiction. Is it true that no one has returned from Treblinka. But people have seen letters, the food is good there, the work is not too hard. The Count feels fear in his heart. He banishes hatred as if it were a fatal disease. He banishes anger and the desire for revenge because he knows that these things mean death, and he wants so much to live, that he should survive it all and tell it later as a story. He does not want to die in the ghetto. He does not want to hear of any heroic legend. He does not want to be told what happened at Masada. But now he has seen young men with guns in their hands and insane red flames of rage darting from their eyes. Mad criminal young men who will be the death of us all. Oh let this pass. They are shooting in the ghetto. He has seen a dead German lying in the roadway, a dead German. The Count tries to hide, only where is there to hide? Now everywhere there is a sound of gunfire. Which way to go? A man in uniform appears, holding a gun and carrying a Polish flag. He waves to the Count and seizes him by the hand and shouts to him to follow. It is Jozef who did not die after all. Shells are bursting and in their light the Count sees Jozef’s face, so beautiful, so like his father’s face. Over a pile of rubble Jozef disappears into a cloud of smoke. A shell bursts. The Count does not follow, he runs away. But there is nowhere to hide. The sewers are full of gas. The ghetto is in flames. People are screaming and crying and jumping from windows. In some place high up two flags are flying together, the red and white Polish flag, the blue and white Jewish flag. Beside them there is a machine gun, the only one in the ghetto. The machine gun speaks. The ghetto burns. The Count runs. The machine gun is silent. A voice is speaking in Hebrew. ‘Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.’ But it is too late for such wisdom, and there is nobody left to hear it. The gunfire ends, the flames subside. There is silence. The ghetto does not exist any more. They have taken the Count and put him onto the train for Treblinka. Warsaw is judenrein.
‘You mean you want to call it off?’ said Tim.
‘No!’ said Gertrude.
‘What then? I haven’t understood you.’
‘I don’t understand myself. I’ve been invaded by misery. I feel half mad.’
‘Please don’t feel like that.’
‘I think we should wait.’
‘We’ve already agreed to wait.’
‘Yes, but wait - more - differently.’
‘How, differently?’
‘Put it in cold storage.’
‘Cancel our vows? And don’t say we haven’t made any vows.’
‘Tim, please help me, don’t be hostile.’
‘Gertrude, I love you, I’m hostile to what you’re saying because it’s killing me.’
‘I don’t know what I’m saying. I love you. But I just-I just can’t love myself at present. I’ve never felt like this. My mind, my being, has become impossible. I can’t exist as I am. I’ve got to change.’
‘But what must change and why? And can we not change together? Gertrude darling, you’re frightening me to death, I’m terrified. Please put this madness away, just rest with me, let me make you quiet and keep you safe.’
‘You can’t, you’re part of the trouble. I’ve got to be alone for a while. We must undo it.’
‘You want me to go away and never return?’
‘No! But we must postpone - undo - our engagement.’
‘Engagement! We’ve never been “engaged”. Oh Gertrude, you can’t even talk to me properly any more, you’re - you’re alienated - you’re taken over. You’re ashamed of me.’
‘Tim, don’t talk offensive rubbish.’
‘That’s what it comes to. You can’t acknowledge me in front of them, you shudder at the thought. You feel you’ll lose face. I don’t blame you. I daresay they’ve guessed, someone’s been getting at you, someone’s been saying - Oh I can imagine what they’ve been saying! Oh Gertrude,
everything’s spoilt-I was so afraid of this -’
‘Tim, wait - please don’t say things -’
‘You’re saying things! You say you want to cancel the “engagement”, send back the ring, only there’s never been a ring! I just love you, I want to marry you like you said, that was the most wonderful thing anyone ever said to me, I want us to be husband and wife and live in the open. We’ve been special to each other, you know that, no one could understand what we are to each other or see into it at all. Can’t you be brave enough to be true to what we know, we two, just us - ?’
‘Darling, dear heart, please don’t just cry out at me, I’m in such pain. We must have a space, I must have anyway. Tim, love me enough to give me this time, this interval. I don’t know myself. It isn’t the others.’
‘It is.’
‘Or if it’s anyone it’s Guy.’
‘Oh well,’ said Tim, ‘Oh Christ-I can’t fight with Guy. I do understand. I’ll go away.’
‘No, no, don’t go -’
‘It’s better, Gertrude. You’ve made a mistake.’
‘No, I just need time -’
‘Oh God, if only we could sleep for six months!’
‘Tim, please -’
‘ “Let’s just be friends for a while”.’
‘Yes, yes -’
‘I was making a joke. We can’t be friends.’
‘Tim, be sane, be rational, let’s think. The secrecy, and living like this, it’s impossible. We’re in a jungle of lies. I must be alone and suffer alone, or I’m unclean. I must just go away for a while and be by myself. Let’s both be - separate - like in retreat - still loving each other - and meet again later -’
‘How much later, months later, years later? Don’t pretend Gertrude, it’s all finished, you’ve simply changed your mind, why not? I knew this would happen. I knew it in France. As soon as you see me here you realize you’ve been temporarily insane! Let me go now, my heart, my queen, don’t maul me, I can go, I can walk, I’ll live, we’ll both live. Don’t make a tragedy of it, don’t make a bloody slaughterhouse. Oh don’t cry so. God, this is breaking my heart!’
‘I don’t know what to do!’
‘Neither do I. Your friend Anne has ruined it all. I knew she would. I’m sure she’s guessed.’
‘It was your idea to meet her.’
‘I wanted to meet people with you, I wanted to stop being a guilty secret! You say we’re in a jungle of lies. We can just come out of it hand in hand. Only you don’t want to. It was stupid of me to move in here, obviously you can’t stand seeing me here. I’ll go. Let’s forgive each other and - I’ll - go -’
Gertrude had said to Anne that she had been possessed by devils. But the real devils had come now. She felt incapable of managing her mind. It was as if her mind were drunk, reeling about, lurching to and fro in crazy sudden movements which made her physically sick. Anne had moved out, Anne was in a hotel. That fact alone, Gertrude felt, was enough to craze her. Tim was living with her at Ebury Street, they were living a secret life, not answering the telephone. Gertrude had told Janet Openshaw she was going away, none of this made any sense.
‘Nobody knows that he lies there but his hawk and his hound and his lady fair. His hound is to be hunting gone, his hawk to fetch the wild fowl home, his lady’s ta’en another mate . . . Many a one for him makes moan, but none shall know where he is gone. Over his bones when they are bare the wind shall blow forever more.’ Yielding to what seemed almost like a vicious temptation, Gertrude had looked up the ballad which Guy had quoted. Guy had quoted it when he was telling her to be happy after he was dead. But what a bitter terrible poem it was, and how could it have been other than bitter in the mouth, in the heart, of a dying man. Guy, noble, brave, and good had said to Gertrude what he felt he ought to say, and had refused the pain-killing injection so as to be able to say it when he was most himself. But those heroic words masked, and masked even for Guy, though only for a moment, the black hateful solitude of death. No wonder Guy had become a stranger in the land of the living, withdrawn, and speaking a different tongue. His warm and loving wife could comfort him no more, nothing could comfort him any more.
Gertrude had become possessed, as if a cloud-demon had swept her up, by a terrible pity for Guy. Death, which defeats the earthly Eros, had made her vulnerable and mad. Her love for Guy invaded her, it raced through her veins like a fierce drug, she was sick with this hopeless love. She dreamed of Guy every night. She stretched out her arms towards his ambiguous and elusive shade. She wanted to be alone so as to indulge this terrible love, yet also she feared to be alone. And she was not alone, Tim was there like some extraordinary accident. She looked at him with amazement, she saw him with a new clear vision, a slight man with ginger hair and nervous timid apologetic blue eyes. Tim, like a lodger, like a student, like a sort of helpless dependant, like a child. And she pitied Tim too, and she had not stopped loving him.
They made love, like addicts, but afterwards wanted metamorphosis and flight: to sleep, or else to rise quickly and dress and look at each other in a good light with puzzled frightened tender looks, and to drink. They were both drinking a good deal. Gertrude felt how provisional, how precarious it all was. It was no better than that hasty horrible love-making in Tim’s studio, lying ‘as if on a scaffolding’ and listening for feet on the stairs. Here they listened for the door bell, which they breathlessly ignored, or for the telephone whose buzz they could not entirely silence even though they had pushed several screws of paper in to jam the bell. Leaving the house separately, they vanished into London every day. They had a festival lunch and a festival dinner. They showed each other things. They went to the museums and art galleries which Gertrude admitted she scarcely knew. The idea of simply visiting these places had never occurred to her. Tim took her to funny out-of-the-way pubs. They explored obscure seedy places along the river. They were not pretending to enjoy themselves, they actually did, by some miracle, enjoy themselves, although hell was loose in Gertrude’s mind, and she sometimes thought in Tim’s too. His head, his face had a particular puzzled vulnerable touchingness when he was naked, he looked so different then, and she pitied him with a deep possessive erotic pity and took refuge in the seekingness of his fierce embrace where she rested in an unexpected strength. They hid their eyes in each other’s shoulders and neither yet dared to speak plainly of the future. Their Eros had not left them, but at times it seemed a crazed doomed Eros. The sense of something provisional and clandestine was in the air that they breathed. But although their ‘new life’ had lasted only days, they told each other that they felt that they had lived together for a long time.
Anne’s departure had shocked Gertrude, although it was quite clear that Anne would and must depart. Anne had been very kind to Gertrude, as kind as gentle loving clever Anne knew how to be. She had spoken of the indestructibility of their love. She had said she would be always available, always near. They had not again discussed Tim. Anne packed her bags and departed to a small hotel in the Paddington area. She spoke of getting a flat. They said good-bye as for a longish parting and had not communicated since.
Gertrude had been shaken by Anne’s reaction, by her attack on Tim, by her ‘marry somebody good’. Of course Anne mattered more than them, but it was a foretaste of a public response to which she found herself not looking forward: she was not ‘ashamed of Tim’, it was not like that. But she felt, in relation to Anne, oddly and miserably ashamed of herself. And everything seemed both inevitable and wrongly done. Of course Tim had to come to Ebury Street. His studio lacked privacy and they wanted to be together. Of course they had agreed not to tell anyone yet. But this meant they were living like criminals.
All these thoughts made up a poisonous witches’ brew in Gertrude’s mind. Rising from dreams of Guy her instinct to ask for his help was stronger than her reluctant ability to compose a waking world. And now a separate and quite peculiar torment was making itself felt. It concerned the Count. Gertrude had vaguely told Jane
t Openshaw that she was probably going to be away for a bit, and assumed that she would send the news around. She had even said, with the instinctive talent for lying which even truthful people can quickly develop when they find themselves in a false situation, that she was going to see an old school friend in Hereford. (This person, called Margaret Paley, actually existed.) After this however she had felt a kind of odd special compunction about the Count. He was indeed special, and needed a special treatment, a special place, he was not just one of those who were to gather by a rumour that she had left London. She thought of telephoning him, but then on impulse sent him a note asking him round for a drink. She would then inform him that she was perhaps going away. She told all this to Tim, and it was agreed that Tim was to be present, then to leave, and this would contribute to the vague notion of their being, after all, pals. This was what Tim wanted; and Gertrude had not told him how disastrously this idea had worked out in Anne’s case. The Count was another matter. He would suspect nothing and ask nothing.
The Count replied by letter that unfortunately he was engaged on that evening. He wrote in his usual slightly formal but friendly style. Gertrude had never received many letters from him. But it was no oddity of style which now made her suddenly mad with a new and unforeseen anxiety. It was simply the fact that he did not come. Gertrude had always assumed in her heart that if ever she summoned the Count he would turn up, whatever else he might have to cancel in order to do so. Whatever the obstacle he would overcome it. His not appearing could surely only mean one thing. He knew. And if he knew perhaps everybody knew. Had Tim told anyone? He swore he had not. Had Anne? Impossible. But not even the thought of their ‘knowing’ worried her so much as the sudden appalling feeling that the Count condemned her, that he was terribly hurt, upset, alienated, shocked. That things would never be the same again ever between her and the Count. She began to feel that nothing in the world mattered so much as that the Count should have a good opinion of her. She had a violent desire to run round in the evening to his flat where she had never been. She wanted to see him, to see his gentle pale eyes, and to receive the reassurance of his esteem, his love. It was as if she had fallen in love with the Count! She who was already in love with Guy, and with Tim.