Judith (22 page)

I said ‘You can believe what you want to believe: which is what people do anyway. There's no way of proving or disproving such a story. If there was, you wouldn't have a choice.'

He said ‘A choice of what?'

I said ‘Attitudes.'

He said again ‘But what do you think is true?'

It was true, yes, that I had thought that this might be one of God's jokes: one of the jokes which, of course, he said might truly express what is true.

I said ‘I think it's a symbol.'

He said ‘A symbol of what?'

I said ‘Of people's attitude to the story: to what is dead coming alive. A symbol of a symbol.'

I thought – Well this may indeed be a joke: with luck, people won't understand it.

He said ‘You don't think it's a symbol of a charlatan deceiving a pathetically gullible audience?'

I said ‘If you like.'

The people round the swimming-pool seemed to have had some sort of ash scattered over them. They glistened and were dry at the same time. I thought – Why do rich people glisten? They want to be preserved? They want to be just the same in a thousand years?

He said ‘Where is Anita Kroll now?'

I said ‘She is supposed to have left the Garden.'

He said ‘You do see the connotations!'

I said ‘What?'

He said ‘Christ does a miracle: he orders his disciples not to spread it abroad. This, of course, means it is enormously spread abroad. The people are ready for the next miracle – guess what? – God himself dying and coming alive?'

It is true that I had thought of this – of course, this is what God has been saying: in order to free people, do you not have to die and come alive?

I said ‘It could be a joke.'

He said ‘A joke!'

I said ‘There are a lot of jokes in the Garden.'

I suddenly had the impression (oh yes! as I quite often had at this time) that something quite different was happening – where? – round a corner: down some staircase: someone coming into the hotel perhaps (well, it might have been you! had you not laughed that first time I met you and put your finger on my forehead? did I not need some ally in my battle with Eccleston?).

I said ‘What did Anita Kroll look like?'

He said ‘She looked rather like you, as a matter of fact; except that she had fair hair.'

He took a brief-case from the floor, opened it, and looked through some papers. Then he handed me a photograph.

I thought – Oh dear God, I have known this, have I, for the last two hours?

The girl in the photograph, Anita Kroll, was the girl, it seemed likely, whom I had seen painting God-and-Lilith in God's inner garden. I mean this was possible, but not of course certain, because what can one tell from a photograph?

– So what would it mean then that this girl had died and come alive?

– This would, indeed, be a joke –

– And something one would wish to be kept secret? I thought – But this is ridiculous.

Or – One day, of course, I will have to get out of the Garden.

There was too much light coming down. Some of it was slightly frightening. I could not bear to go on talking to Eccleston. For something to say, I suppose – as an actor might
ad lib
if there had been a small explosion in a theatre – I said ‘How is Desmond?'

Eccleston was silent for so long – I was still looking at the photograph – that I thought the curtain had come down and perhaps everyone had left the auditorium.

Then when I looked at him his face had lost its supercilious look. I thought – What, he too is frightened?

He said ‘Desmond –'

I said ‘Yes.'

He said ‘Desmond's dead.'

I thought – Now look –

He said ‘I thought you knew.'

I said ‘No.'

He said ‘He fell out of a window.'

Why did you not tell me it was Desmond who had died? Why did you let me think it was Oliver?

Of course it makes a difference. How can I put into words what the difference is?

Oliver was part of me: Desmond was not.

Or did you not know I thought it was Oliver? Or did you think it would be easier for me if I thought it was?

I suppose I remembered what I wanted to remember. And there were the effects of dope. But why should I have wanted to remember it like this? I wanted to punish myself – for what I had been with Oliver?

At the time, I was not much responsible for Desmond: what was he doing there? Of course, if you wish, I had once wanted to pick him up: but I had tried to discourage him from coming into that part of my story.

What is there to say about feelings – they are the stones that people put in their pockets as they walk into the sea?

I had got Oliver back from the dead: I should not have wanted him to die again. (If I sometimes did, this is no contradiction.)
Oliver was of the dark, deep: we were accomplices in the town of Bethulia.

Desmond was so obviously bright; like Holofernes.

Does anyone understand? – it is the black horse that drags you towards perdition: it is on the back of the black horse that you get on to the road to the gods again. You have grown wings. If you understand this, perhaps you stop it happening?

When Plato wrote his myth it was so difficult to understand; this did not stop it happening?

Desmond wrote his simple stories for
Die Flamme
magazine: on his white horse, could one say he was like Icarus?

I am so sorry about Desmond. Oliver has two or three children somewhere, hasn't he?

Of course, that morning, you said all the right things.

– Each person is responsible for himself: you are no more responsible for the other than the other is responsible for you –

– You learn from things going wrong: what do you learn from things going right?

– The choice is: are you to learn or are you not?

I suppose I have not described what was marvellous about Oliver: I could not do this, could I, in my letter to Bert. (Do you think I used to see Bert somewhat like Desmond? it is of this I am afraid?) There were times when Oliver and I laughed so much (I have tried to say this): he freed me from that part of me that thought I was omnipotent. Of course, yes, this involved some going down towards perdition.

When Oliver and I walked through streets and Oliver would do one of his funny acts (have I not described these?) there would be that sort of lighting-up of laughter all around such as there sometimes was in the Garden. Of course, you could say this luminousness was like that of flesh under the sea.

Did you go, that night or morning, to see Oliver? Of course, I never asked you. What was he like?

Yes, I will learn from this.

Do you think this is terrible, what I say?

Thank you for having helped me. Well, shall I come back and look after you one day?

From where I am sitting I can see the estuary. I will be your brown dog? Who will be your faun?

That girl with the red hair – you helped her to grow wings, did you?

What I imagined then – what I imagine now – is that you will always when it is needed send me a message coming through a doorway like a bird!

When I left Eccleston at the grand hotel I met Shastri on the road outside; he had put on a jacket to go with his dark trousers; I said ‘I thought you would not be seen dead in this hotel!'

He said ‘I'm having dinner with your friend Mr Eccleston.'

I said ‘I know you're having dinner with my friend Mr Eccleston.'

I tried to remember what Eccleston and I had talked about after he had told me about Desmond. There had been that white light: memories like bats, like an audience, flying out of the cave. I had wanted to get away; to be on my own.

Shastri said ‘You are not coming too?'

I said ‘No.' Then – ‘Watch out he doesn't bugger you.'

Eccleston had been interested in what was the local opinion about the Garden. I had said to him – Doubtless you will find out from my friend Shastri. He had said – He is coming to dinner. I had said – I know he is coming to dinner.

Shastri said ‘He wants information.'

I said ‘Well see that he pays you.'

Shastri said ‘For buggering me?'

I said ‘Shastri, I love you.' I kissed him.

I thought – But yes, I am afraid of imagining people are like Desmond!

Shastri said ‘Perhaps it is best if you are not present. You are not interested in politics.'

I said ‘He writes articles full of lies in an English magazine.'

Shastri said ‘He wishes to expose hypocrisy and corruption.'

I thought I might say – Of course, these are often the same thing.

Some time later that night – I had gone walking on the beach: I had swum in the white waves – I thought I must go back to the grand hotel; to see Eccleston perhaps; to see what Eccleston was up to with Shastri; to find out more about Desmond and Oliver, do you think; oh yes, to find out more about Oliver. I did not really want to go back to the hotel: I had to go somewhere: sparks were flying off the ground as I walked to my hut; my mind had to get rid of electricity. I thought I would walk along the side of the estuary to the rocks of the promontory; like this I might seem not to make up my mind whether or not I would go to the grand hotel: if I could find a way up from the rocks, I would; if I could not, I would not. So you keep all your chances up in the air, do you? Is this a characteristic of what is called detachment, being hollowed out: or is it being a witch above a battlefield with seaweed in your hair?

I went along the sand at the edge of the estuary. There was an almost full moon. This was where the girl with the wound in her throat might have lain: there were the remains of an enormous bonfire. This was also where, people had told me, they had built a funeral pyre to burn the body of Anita Kroll (she had been such a long time dead? but, of course, it was all a story!) or had they built a bonfire in celebration of her being alive? Well, how can you think of this: what is enlightenment, what is illusion? There were bright, metallic flowers by the ashes of the bonfire: this was some other bonfire: I thought I would ask my friend who was like Lilith about Anita Kroll. But you can only be told what things are not, can't you, not what they are. I walked on towards the rocks and the lights of the grand hotel: these were in the distance like those of an ocean liner. I thought – And I am an iceberg come to – what? – stroke gently against your sides. I did not know what on earth I wanted to find out about Oliver: in what way it might seem that he was all right. Or was I hoping for that further message? I had thought I might come across a pathway up from the estuary to the grand hotel: but who would want to move between the grand hotel and the water? those people would not be baby
turtles to run towards the sea. I set off across rocks that were black and sharp; there were thorn-bushes growing from cracks; there were gullies between the estuary and the grand hotel. It suddenly became quite dark: the moon had moved behind clouds: I was in a small chasm of thorn-bushes, somewhat torn and bleeding. I thought I might say – All right, God, find some other sacrifice! Lights suddenly came on which lit up brightly the perimeter fence of the grand hotel; the scene was like that of some prison. I thought – The lights have come on because they know someone is trying to break in: someone has come right round the world – and so on. A joke! Then – But you mean, I am getting the habit of confusing the Garden with the grand hotel? I climbed on over a few more rocks and bushes – I had forgotten exactly why I was doing this – and I came to the perimeter fence which was about seven or eight feet high: it was lit at various points from inside by lights on poles. I thought – Well, indeed, it is this anti-Garden which is guarded. Along the branch of a tree that reached out over the fence there was a shape – it might be a leopard? on its stomach, stretched out – oh well, yes, perhaps it was a snake (not a bird?): in this state of mind, perhaps anything. Then I saw it was a man. He wore white trousers and a dark-blue shirt. He seemed to have been pulling himself along the branch of the tree; to have stopped when he heard me coming. He looked at me, and then he said ‘Coo-ee!' I thought – Dear God Almighty, you cannot say – Coo-ee! Then – So this is the message sent to me? He was a middle-aged man, long and bony: he started to laugh. He said ‘I'm trying to get into the garden.' I thought I might say – So I see. He said ‘You're from the Garden.' I said ‘Yes.' He said ‘I mean the Garden with a capital G.' He went on laughing. He nearly fell off the branch. I thought – I know what he will do: he will pull himself along so that when he laughs again he will fall off inside the garden. He said ‘It would take too long to explain why I am here.' I thought – But I know exactly why you are here; you are doing the same as me: you happened to be walking along by the estuary and you thought you would try to find a short cut, or
a back way, into the grand hotel. He said ‘In the morning, will you show me around the Garden, I mean the Garden with a capital G?' I said ‘Yes.' He seemed to slip, and fall, and he hung by his arms from the branch of the tree. He was inside the fence. He said ‘Aren't you coming in?' I said ‘No.' He said ‘Why not?' He let go of the branch and dropped. He came and we stood facing each other through the wire. I said ‘Because it's all a bit much.' He said ‘Yes.'

I said ‘Are you the man who knew the highest score in first-class cricket and the date of the Second Reform Bill?'

He said ‘No.' Then – ‘I know the highest score in first-class cricket but I don't know the date of the Second Reform Bill.'

I said ‘I'll meet you at the gates at ten to six in the morning.'

He said ‘I'll be there.'

I thought – He has come to rescue me from my haunting by Eccleston?

– Then tonight it will indeed be necessary to make my mind a blank, a hollow; there will be no fuse, no bright light coming down; that might separate this time from that.