The Green Knight

by Iris Murdoch

  Clement pulled Louise to her feet and led her to the window. Low down above the sea, the sky was filled with large majestic clouds, rounded like piles of bubbles, moving in slow procession, pure white above, golden below. The sea, a pallid glitter at the horizon, nearer where the forms of the waves were discernible a darkening grey, crested with flutters of foam as it neared the shore and hurled itself choking among the rocks.

  ‘Look, Louise, the sea, and all your birds, the cormorants flying in formation, and the black-headed gulls, and the oystercatchers and the terns, and there is a heron flying back inland. And there is Moy among the rocks, you can see her blue dress, she is looking into a pool, and there, just coming over the hill, is Bellamy, and Anax running in front of him toward the house – ’

  Louise, holding Clement’s hand, surveyed the scene. ‘Yes, yes – all the same I’m worried about Moy.’

  ‘Perhaps we should get her a cat?’

  ‘No, she loved Tibellina so much, I don’t think any other cat would do. And I’m worried about Sefton and Harvey.’

  ‘They promised they’d wait a year before getting married. They will wait a year, and they will get married. They’re all right.’

  ‘Yes. But I made them promise. That may not have been wise.’

  ‘I told them it was an ordeal! That amused them, they are so romantic – and they are so much in love, they know that doesn’t matter, they are for eternity.’

  ‘I hope nothing awful will happen to them in Italy. I wonder where they are now, at this very moment.’

  At this very moment Sefton and Harvey were on the bridge, the long high famous bridge which so many persons, including some distinguished ones, had committed suicide by leaping from. The sun was shining from a cloudless sky upon the deep valley, the slopes densely covered with cypresses and umbrella pines, the dark awful chasm, the glimpse far on of the river and the ruined Roman bridge. The immobility, the silence, the solitude. The two observers were alone on the bridge. Harvey had informed Sefton (who knew all this already) about its date, its suicides, the town, its duomo, its handsome square, its war damage and its connection with Crivelli. They had reached the town by a linkage of buses that morning, established themselves at a hotel, and then come straight to the bridge. As for the promise to delay their own marriage for a year, they gave it readily. (A ruling about chastity would have been another matter.) They were so intensely happy with each other, what after all was a year in the eternity of their love. They were also very satisfied with the acquisition of Clement. Sefton had worried very much about Louise’s particular grief about Aleph, into which Sefton saw more deeply than others. Sefton had her own grief about Aleph and her own anxiety about Moy. She had had discussions with Harvey about Moy, and they had decided henceforth, tactfully, to look after Moy. It almost began to seem then that Moy was their child. Other children they talked of too.

  They had walked across the bridge to the far side and were looking down at the trees below, the rounded green balls of the pines, and the elegant darker green spears of the cypresses which seemed almost black in the fading afternoon light. They had been discussing suicide, why on earth people did it and how they did it. This was a subject which always made Sefton think about Lucas. She had made the connection, instinctively, when first occasionally, then more often, she came to him for tutorials. Studying her teacher she discerned something extreme to which she could not easily give a name, something ruthless or reckless, something desperate. Of course she heard him much spoken of, but when her opinion was asked she had little to say. Very early in her dealing with him she grasped what was required of her. She was to sit quietly, to listen attentively, when asked a question to answer carefully, not to say anything hasty, vague or muddled, but to give a clear and definite reply, daring, if need be, to be in the wrong. When, in speaking to her, Lucas paused, Sefton was to intuit whether this pause was an interval in his thinking or an invitation to her to speak. When castigated (for a ‘howler’ or evident stupidity or failure to do her ‘prep’) she was not to exclaim ‘So sorry!’ or ‘Oh dear!’, but simply to lower her head slightly. No laughing was to occur, and of course no chat or general or personal remarks before, after, or during the session. An ironical remark by Lucas, if not a reproof, might elicit a faint smile. An equally brief smile might appear at departure, not arrival. When coming and when going Sefton bowed and Lucas nodded. During this period between them, that is on her side, a vast absolutely secret structure of unspoken emotion and repressed joy and fear had come into being. Herein Sefton had built up a picture of Lucas’s character, or part of his character, a profound part. About his sex life, if any, she did not reflect. Not that she assumed there was none, but it was not her business. She felt a deep sorrow, a deep wound within him. When he had said to her, at the end of their last meeting, ‘I shall be going away for a time,’ she instantly conjectured that he might mean that he was going to kill himself. But she spoke of this to no one. She treasured, and would always treasure, the only endearment she had ever received from him. ‘Goodbye, dear Sefton.’

  The swift paths of thought had, in a few seconds, led Sefton far away from the bridge, away from Harvey, into the now so utterly intensified and unfathomable mystery of Lucas. She was looking away back across the bridge where still no one had appeared to join them. She became aware of a movement beside her, a shadow fell. She turned sharply. Harvey was above her with one knee upon the parapet. For a black moment she thought that he was going over the edge. He drew up the other knee, and pressing upon the parapet with his right hand, stood up. Sefton remained perfectly still, not uttering a sound. He began to walk. She watched paralysed, icy. Then she began to walk, at his slow pace, about ten paces behind him, so as not to be visible from the corner of his eye. About the middle of the bridge he stopped for a moment, put a foot forward, then hesitated. Sefton stood still, aware of her open mouth, her trembling, the violence of her heart. He continued to walk, slowly. She followed. Time passed. The pines and cypresses on the far side, which had been invisible, came slowly into view. She thought, or remembered later thinking, he will fall at the last moment, he will not be able to get down, he will fall. The woodland came closer, the terrible presence of the chasm receded, the end of the bridge was in view. At last, though still before him, the trees were nearer. When he reached the end of the parapet he stopped. Sefton moved forward, taking long quiet strides, then began to run. As she reached him he bent his knees and put one hand on the parapet. She thought he was going to spring; but he sat, and then slithered down the wall into her arms. They walked in silence off the bridge, onto the path which led back into the town. There was a seat. They sat down. Sefton leaned forward, holding her head in her hands.

  ‘Sefton, I’m sorry, don’t be cross with me – ’

  Sefton lifted her head, now pressing her hands to her tearful eyes. ‘Never, never, never do anything like that again!’

  ‘Of course I won’t, there isn’t anything like that to do anyway. You’re not going to faint, are you?’

  ‘You are – I don’t know what you are – ’

  ‘A wicked monster. I’m sorry!’

  ‘Did you plan it beforehand?’

  ‘No. I imagined it beforehand. But I didn’t intend to do it till I did it, and then I had to.’

  ‘You didn’t have to because Bellamy dared you. And now to impress me – ’

  ‘It was rather to impress myself. It was a kind of homeopathy.’

  ‘You jumped down. You must have hurt your foot again.’

  ‘You held me, it didn’t knock the ground, it’s been getting better and better. I felt if I did this it would complete the cure.’

  ‘You are mad. You nearly destroyed yourself and me.’

  ‘You know – I’ve only just thought – if I hadn’t taken Bellamy’s dare I would have been in Florence all that time, and I might never have discovered you – ’

  ‘Oh shut up. Let’s get away from here.’

  They walked back slowly ar
m-in-arm. ‘There won’t be a passeggiata , I’m afraid, not in this weather, but we can sit in the café and admire the square. You do forgive me?’

  ‘I’ll think it over!’

  But Harvey was wrong, there was a passeggiata. The people of the little town were walking together, round and round the square. Quickly, his arm round Sefton’s waist, he pulled her into the slow crowd. They moved slowly, as in a march, as if in a great demonstration or a religious procession, carried along by the flow of people, by their physical pressure, pushed, brushed, gently jostled. There was a soft murmur of voices, like distant birds, like the sound of silence. Some resolute stalwarts walking in the opposed direction stared, smiled, sleeves brushed sleeves, hands brushed hands. Beautiful faces appeared, joyful faces, inquisitive faces, friendly faces, dejected bitter faces, faces like masks with round empty mouths and eyes. Harvey held Sefton closely to him, his thigh against her thigh, as if their adjacent legs had grown together. Harvey had cut his curling yellowish hair a little shorter, Sefton had grown her wild reddish hair a little longer. She was almost as tall as Harvey. They felt that they resembled each other, they were twins, as, crushed together, they turned and gazed into each other’s faces, their lips parted in a dazed smile of joy. Some Germans, sitting in the café, voted them the handsomest couple.

  Moy had secretly carried with her, in a large bag in Clement’s car, the big conical stone with the golden lichen runes upon it. As soon as she had heard that Bellamy had not sold his cottage and that she was to go and stay there with Clement and Louise, she had planned to have another try, perhaps a last try, to bring the lichen stone back to its place on the hillside beside its friend the rock from which she had so unkindly separated it. She had lately, just before the news about their visit to the cottage, had a dream about the stone, that it had escaped from the room and was walking down the stairs, that she had followed it and found it scratching at the front door. She had opened the front door and watched it walk away down the street. After that, in her dream, she had terribly regretted letting it go out alone into the streets of London, and had run out trying to find it, running to and fro through all the nearby streets in vain.

  Clement and Louise had gone on saying to Moy and to each other how very much she was going to enjoy being beside the sea. She was given the pretty attic room with the loveliest view. She had rocks to climb on, pools to investigate, stones to pick up. There might even, she was told, be seals. All this, thought Clement and Louise, and Bellamy, would divert her mind from recent shocks and sorrows. However, it was not so. Of course she did climb over the rocks and look at the tiny creatures racing about and hiding in the pools. She also looked at the stones, but so far (Bellamy noticed this) had not picked up any to bring into the house. The presence of so many things which ought to have delighted her and been her friends brought home to Moy how little delight she could now feel and how alienated she now was from all the beings to which she had once felt so close. She had already noticed before leaving home that the curious powers which had once alarmed her had now been withdrawn. The stones in her bedroom no longer moved, there were no more rebellions, or things coming obediently to her hand. They lay now inert, her things, no longer related to her by mysterious ties. Moy connected the fading of her fey powers with something natural in her growing up. She was not surprised. But she was also distressed, even frightened, by the loss of contact with innumerable entities whose relationship with her she had taken for granted. Perhaps this ‘dead’ feeling was also brought on by an intensification of her old secret sorrow. Perhaps one day this sorrow might end. But she did not think it would end or see how it could end.

  Sleeping up in the attic she had bad dreams. She dreamt about the swan. She had hurt the swan, broken its foot, the webbed foot hung, half-severed from the leg, red with blood. The swan was hopping on its one leg. Only now the river had turned into a shop, a poulterer’s shop, where the swan, still alive, was hanging from a hook. She dreamt about the black-footed ferret, that it was stuffed in a glass case in the Natural History Museum, and when Moy came to look at it she saw it opening its little mouth to say something to her, only as she watched a keeper came and hand-cuffed her and led her away, and all the lights went out. She dreamt about the little house where the spider lived and that she had become very little and was in the house with the spider, and the spider was frightened and kept saying to Moy ‘Save me, save me!’ and Moy was crying and saying, ‘I can’t save you, I’m too small, I’m too little.’ She dreamt about Colin her hamster and how an evil cat was carrying him away into a wood to kill him, and how she tried to run after the cat, but could only move very slowly, and the trees and the bushes were reaching out their arms to hinder her. She dreamt about Tibellina the Good Cat, and how she had lain on her death-bed and Moy had stroked her and she had looked up at Moy so piteously and could not even mew. She dreamt she was the little dragon whom Saint George was about to behead. She dreamt she saw the Polish Rider passing slowly by and he was weeping and she called out to him, but he turned his head away. She dreamt that she was drowning in the pool of tears.

  Those were the tortures of the night. The tortures of the day consisted in pretending to eat, pretending to play, pretending to be happy, passing the hours, enduring the sympathetic looks and the loving remarks. Louise’s conjecture that Moy was going mad was now sometimes being entertained by Moy too. She had tried, walking about behind the house and along the shore, to remember where, in what fold of the grassy hills, was the rock to which the lichened stone belonged. She several times walked up into the hills, feeling for some sense of direction or god-given orientation, but none came. She recalled that the grass had been fairly long, there had been no trees, a bush perhaps – and it was in a little dip or dell. Had there been a stream? Near a path? She could not remember. Today (it was the day after Clement had shown Louise the sea and the beauty of the world), not in any hope but in order to do something, perhaps simply to ‘give up’, Moy had carried the stone down surreptitiously to the sea. At low tide it was possible to walk around the little headland into the next, also small, bay where there was a different vista of the hills. Moy had already tried this view in vain. What she wanted now was simply to be out of sight of the house. She walked down the beach to a line of low rocks and took the heavy conical stone out of its bag. Then climbing up a little, she placed it on top of a flat rock. Perhaps the stones could signal to each other? But could she interpret the signal? She climbed down and walked back and wandered about near the shore upon the grass between the stones and the hills but felt nothing and saw nothing. She wondered whether she should leave the stone here upon the rock, where it was rather conspicuous. Perhaps someone else would find it and take it home. Could that be a good thing or a bad thing? Or should she put it into the sea? Would it like the sea? It was not a sea stone. Yet, in hundreds and thousands of years it would become a sea stone, the runes would be washed away, its sharp cone would be softened into a hump and sea creatures would live upon it. She started to climb up the rock again to retrieve the stone, then decided not to. What did it matter? It was just a stone. It was nothing. She was nothing.

  Bellamy was sitting in his bedroom. Spread out beside him on the bed were all the letters which Father Damien had written to him. Anax was lying on the bed, partly on the letters, looking at Bellamy, blinking with his sly blue eyes, slightly stirring his bushy tail when his master looked at him. He had extended himself in an attitude which Bellamy loved, stretching out his long hind legs behind him. ‘Move over, Anax.’ Bellamy pulled the letters out and arranged them.

  He had decided at the last moment to bring the letters with him. Earlier, he had thought of destroying them, they upset him so profoundly. He thought: and he never knew Peter! Everything had happened so topsy-turvy. It was as if it would take years for him to understand what had happened. But what would he be doing during those years, how would he live, would he not simply forget? But then how would he exist, having forgotten? He would become some sort of
inert sleepy animal like a toad. He had had a terrible dream in which he was lying on the ground soaking wet, having become long and grey and without arms, and people were treading on him. This dream suddenly reminded him of some other old dream in which he had been ‘Spingle-spangle’. But who was ‘Spingle-spangle’, and how did he connect with the Archangel Michael, leaning on his sword, and looking down with satisfaction upon the suffering of the damned? Bellamy had brought a notebook with him, intending to copy out parts of the letters. But when he began reading them he was overcome by emotion, and found himself reading and re-reading certain sentences as if they composed part of a continuous litany, as if a distant clear voice were speaking them and he were murmuring the responses.

  You are deeply stained by the world, the stain is taken deeply, as the years go by, you cannot become holy by renouncing worldly pleasures, you must not look for revelations or for signs, these are mere selfish thrills which you mistake for adoration, what you take for humility is the charm of masochism, what you call the dark night is the obscurity of the restless soul, by picturing the end of the road you imagine you have reached it, you cherish magic which is the enemy of truth, you think of the dedicated life as a form of death, but you will be alive and crying, the way of Christ is hard and plain, it is a way of brokenness, we seek the invisible through the visible, but we make idols of the visible, icons which are made for breaking, the agonies of that pilgrimage may consume a lifetime and end in despair, your wish to suffer is a soothing day-dream, the false God punishes, the true God slays, the evils in you must be killed, not kept as pets to be tormented, do not punish your sins, you must destroy them, go out and help your neighbour, be happy yourself and make others happy, that is your path, not that of the cloister, be quiet, humble, know that what you can achieve is little, desire the good which purifies the love that seeks it, pray always, stay at home and do not look for God outside your own soul.