The Philosopher's Pupil (60 page)

At that moment in his reflections the telephone bell rang. It was Gavin Oare, asking if he had any comment to make on today's issue of the
Gazette.
When Tom said that he had not seen today's issue, Gavin Oare chuckled and said that he had better go out and buy one. Tom ran from the house.

Pearl saw the paper on Monday morning when she went out shopping. She ran back at once and then could not bring herself to tell Hattie who was quietly reading. However, with Pearl so upset (and the more she thought the more upset she became) concealment proved impossible. The girls, in tears, agreed that now there was nothing to be done but wait. (Hattie did try to write a letter, but soon gave it up.) John Robert Rozanov did not catch up until Tuesday. On Monday morning he went early to the Institute (he had spent the night at Hare Lane where he was sorting out some papers) and swam in the Outdoor Pool before retiring to his den in the Rooms, where he worked all the morning and had a sandwich lunch brought to him. He soaked in his hot bath, then had his sleep as usual. He worked on till late in the evening and went to bed. No one, during that time, dared to approach him. When he woke on Tuesday morning he found that a copy of Monday's
Gazette
and of Tuesday's
Swimmer
had been thrust under his door.

George, shut up in his house in Druidsdale and oblivious of articles in newspapers, had decided to give John Robert another chance. He had phrased it in his mind as ‘a last chance', but he could not bear those words and changed them. For no reason that he could have thought of, had he decided to reflect about it which he did not, a warm spring-like breeze of hope was blowing in his soul. It was not a desire for happiness. George had never, even as a young man, allowed himself a desire for happiness. It was something involuntary, mechanical, a primitive self-protective jerk of the psyche. It now seemed to George that he had been seeing his situation in an entirely irrational light, and that he had built up an entirely false picture of his old teacher. In a way, thought George, egoism is the trouble, I'm just being too much of a solipsist. I imagine John Robert thinking a lot about me and hating and despising me in quite an
elaborate
way as if this were a major activity in his life creating a vast complex barrier between us. But it isn't like that. He doesn't think about me all that much. After all he's got other troubles. And what did he always think about nearly all the time anyway? His work. I'm a minor problem. So is everybody else,
everybody
else, it isn't just me. So I mustn't attach too much importance to the peevish hostile things he says when I arrive and interrupt him. Of course I've been very tactless, I've even been aggressive. John Robert is a tremendous one for his dignity. No wonder he was sharp with me. In a way it's a sign he cares for me, he cares how I behave. Well, I'll behave better. I'll write him a very careful letter, I'll write him an
interesting
letter. John Robert always forgives people who interest him.

The evening at the Slipper House had already been mercifully worked upon by the chemistry of memory, and even his defeat at the hands of the singers appeared with a difference. He retained most vividly an impression of Hattie, her breathing closeness to him, her fragile crushability, her
crunchability.
He recalled too with appreciation her large gesture at the window. And he remembered the running, the escaping pursued by a crowd. This image was now not displeasing. To hear the vulgar outcry and outrun it and then to be alone: that was a picture of life. The histrionics beside the canal made no sense and had dropped into oblivion. The recent past appeared as a kind of show, an interlude, unconnected with the pressing duties which now composed the significance of his life.

So it was that on Monday afternoon George sat down at the polished but dusty table in the sparsely elegant dining-room in Druidsdale, ‘he was still living downstairs, he had not gone upstairs since his excursion to find the netsuke) and wrote as follows:

My dear John Robert,

I have been thinking about you. I feel I have been ungracious and unfair and I want to apologize. I know you care little about apologies and other such ‘posturing', a word which you used, years ago, to describe a similar
demarche
on my part. I know too that you understand the strategic psychological purpose of an apology, which is to put the apologizer once more upon a level with his
adversary,
the offended person! My aim, as it has always been, is clarification, one which you surely share. We have known each other a long time and have been more than once in the place we are in now; a consideration which makes me the more confident in addressing you. There are various ways in which our relationship might be pictured, but fundamentally it is that of teacher and pupil, a relation which,
prima facie
at any rate, imposes a lasting obligation upon the teacher. You must know from experience how lively and how durable such a connection can be, and it is not your ‘fault' any more than it is mine that we are in this way eternally connected. It is because you are a great man and a great teacher that this is so. These are facts in the light of which my being ‘a nuisance' or ‘impolite' must show as superficial. You
know
that my ‘tiresomeness' is an expression of love, and one which perhaps at a deep level you would be sorry to be without. You know also, and I need not stress it, how I
crave
for your kindness. This may sound servile, but I offer it as another fact, and in no spirit of servility. You know me well enough to know how little I am given over, even where you are concerned, to any form of slavery.

I have been reflecting about philosophy of late, in a somewhat ‘existential' mood (sorry, I know you loathe that word, but it has its place), and it has occurred to me (not actually for the first time) that you and I are alike. How is that? you will ask. I will tell you. We are both free men. I remember you said once (my God, how many sayings of yours are stored up in my head!) that the idea of being ‘beyond good and evil' was and could only be a vulgar illusion. I think we had been discussing Dostoevsky. All right. Those who claim to be ‘beyond' this familiar dualism are lying cynics or irresponsible victims of semi-conscious will, or eccentric or perverted enthusiasts who elevate some virtue (courage, for instance) so far above the other virtues as to make these invisible. Or if one attempts to draw a more spiritual picture, is not this simply morality itself at a more intense level? The adept who ‘prefers knowledge to virtue' is either a vulgar magician or else a kind of ‘scholar', whose selfless application we may admire, while we deplore his neglect of simpler duties! I seem to hear the echo of your voice here! (Did you not also speak later on, I seem to recall the phrase of a possible ‘conceptual dissolution of morals'? Perhaps that is part of the secret doctrine!) But, John Robert, is there not a much less arcane sense of this ‘freedom', closer to home, closer anyway to
our
home? Do we, you and I, fall into any of the categories I have enumerated? I think not! We have simply ‘cut free', and what we have done is not really so mysterious (or so grand) after all. There are many aspects to our freedom. One is certainly an absence of vanity (I speak of course in a neutral sense, and not as claiming a merit) which expresses itself as a complete indifference to ‘what people say'. We are outside the power of censure, as I believe
very few
people are. Schopenhauer says somewhere that virtue is simply an amalgam of prudence, fear of punishment, fear of censure, apathy and a desire to be liked! Can we not simply proceed by eliminating these one by one? And when they are all gone, have we not reached a place which some deny exists? Not by a dramatic leap, or by the development of some narrow specialized super-virtue, but by a simple movement of escape, like an eel slipping out of a trap. We are
outside,
you and I, and are we not, in this unpopulated open space, to shake each other's hands?
I
think you understand me.

I would like to talk to you about these and other matters. I won't try to see you just yet. Indeed, I don't mind whether we talk here or in California. But we
will
talk. I feel, I cannot express to you how I know it, sure of that.
We are bound together.
I have sometimes behaved to you like a vulgar fool and I am sorry for it. But I know that you know that I am not a vulgar fool. Between now and the end, I am to be reckoned with.

I want in this letter to make peace with you. The sense of our being ‘at odds' has troubled me. Let there be peace, John Robert, for both our sakes. Don't trouble to answer this, but
receive
it, think about it please, let it be in your mind. I will communicate with you again. Ever, indeed forever, your devoted pupil,

George McC

George wrote the letter rapidly, straight out, in a state of excitement as if inspired. When he sat back and read it through he felt relieved, almost happy. It was wise not to suggest a meeting, better to indicate a vague future which, being peaceful, would in its due time bring forth a meeting. George felt sure that
this
letter would charm the philosopher. At worst it would amuse him. But George meant every word of the letter and hoped that its seriousness would impress. The sending of it would be a magic act which would restore to its tormented writer peace, and time.

It was Wednesday morning. Tom, who had of course not returned to London, was ringing the bell at number sixteen Hare Lane. He had received by the first post a letter which read:

Dear Mr McCaffrey,

I shall expect you to call on me at Hare Lane at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

J. R. Rozanov

John Robert opened the door and made a gesture toward the back room. Tom entered past him. The day was cloudy and overcast and the room was dark, but Tom saw a copy of the
Ennistone Gazette
open on the table.

Rozanov came in and shut the door. He said in a husky voice, clearing his throat, ‘Have you seen this?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can you explain it? There's a report here too.' He slapped a copy of
The Swimmer
down on the table with a violence which made Tom shudder.

Tom had already thought out his speech which would consist simply of telling the truth. He said, ‘It's horrible, I felt sick when I read it. But you know what gossip columns are. It's all lies — '

‘Oh, is it?'

Tom was standing with his back to the window, Rozanov against the closed door. Tom realized that the philosopher was actually trembling and that there were frothy bubbles on his lips. Tom drew a deep breath. He was beginning to tremble too. He said, ‘Wait, listen, I'll tell you exactly what happened, it was all perfectly innocent, not like that - I was at those rehearsals at the Hall, then we all went to the pub, to the Green Man, and then when it closed I went to Belmont and they all followed me, I didn't want them to, I didn't invite them — '

‘Were you going to see Harriet?' John Robert was controlling himself, Tom could hear his slow deep breathing and the expulsion of his breath between his teeth.

Tom hesitated, then said, ‘Yes - but — '

‘So late at night? Had she invited you?'

‘No - it wasn't all that late - I mean — '

‘The Green Man closes at ten, ten-thirty?'

‘Well, all right, I wasn't going to call on her like, I just wanted to - to go there — '

‘To go there?'

‘I don't know what I wanted, I was drunk.'

‘I see.'

‘Then all the others followed, they thought there was a party.'

‘Had you arranged a party?'

‘No— '

‘Why did they think there was a party?'

‘Because I said so — '

‘You said so — '

‘Yes, but only sort of to put them off, to get away - I pretended I had to go to a party - and then - well, then there
was
a party - I didn't intend it - and once they were there I couldn't get them to leave. It wasn't my fault. I'm very sorry indeed about it all. I've been writing a letter of apology to Miss Meynell — '

‘Why are you apologizing if it wasn't your fault?'

‘Well, I suppose it was my fault because it was offensive but not intentionally — ' Awful unclarified feelings of guilt had been confusing Tom's mind. He seemed somehow to have brought about, and yet how, an absolute mountain of complicated events. He had wanted to run to see Hattie but did not dare to. He had been trying to compose a letter to her but found it too difficult. He was indeed only at that very moment realizing the full enormity of the situation.

The familiar process of question and answer had made Rozanov less agitated. At first he had hardly been able to speak. He said, ‘You brought George there, you introduced him into the house.'

‘I didn't, I swear it! I don't know how George came into it, he must have arrived by accident.'

‘Were you in the house?'

‘No.'

‘But he was.'

‘Yes, but I don't know how he got in - then we - we shouted at him and made him go.'

‘And were all those people there, Mrs Sedleigh and men dressed as women?'

‘Yes, well, one anyway, but it was just a lark — '

‘A
lark?
Are you in your right mind?'

‘I know it's awful but it
wasn't
my fault, all that other stuff was made up by the paper.'

‘Are you suggesting that they simply invented the idea that — ' John Robert leaned back against the door and opened his wet frothy mouth like an animal.

Tom was now almost crying with fear and distress. He said, wailing it out, ‘I did nothing wrong!'

Rozanov said with difficulty, ‘Are you suggesting that the newspapers
invented
the idea that I had - said that you might - that you and Harriet might - that I wanted you to be together?'

There was something pitifully awfully sad in the utterance of those words; and it was only at that moment that Tom fully realized what a terrible position he was in. He had been facing the philosopher, but now lowered his head. He mumbled, ‘I don't know what made them say that.'