A white, bright room, with flowers. A lot of painted steel, painted girders, like the cabin of a ship. A high bed, hard yet somehow crooked, and a whiteness, a terrible whiteness, like snow.
And the woman in the bed was part of it. She was hard, stiff, quite motionless, white skin against the white pillows; silent, and lined, and erect; nothing of the old man’s decay, crumbling; no shuffling, flip-flap shuffling, no age, softness; just hard and white and a creaking, somehow, with the tension of being alive. The being-alive creaking against the not-being.
Her hair was black, and her eyes were black; still no colour. Blackness was only the intensifying of whiteness, and whiteness remained. A young face, petrified; a terrible thinness stretched over bones like a sheet over iron spikes. Arms and shoulders covered, draped; just the neck fluted like a pillar and the fragile, staring, breakable china face. Such a beautiful face. And one hand curved up on the counterpane like a sun-dried, brittle, fossilized shell.
“I have brought a friend,” Marius said. “Do you want us?”
Her eyes moved, and her head slightly, and she whispered, “Yes.”
“Here is a chair,” Marius said. I sat on it. Marius leaned on a table by her bed.
“It is kind of you to come,” she said to me, whispering; the fragile, unblinking black eyes staring at me. Then her eyelids closed, for a moment, with an almost imperceptible movement, like the falling of a drop of water, and when she spoke again her voice was clear, defined, like the echoes of a flute. “You are a friend,” she said. “I have not seen you before.”
“No,” I said; “I am sorry.” I did not know what I was saying.
“Marius has brought you,” she said. “I do not see many people now.” She spoke liltingly, with great precision. She blinked again. Then her white, cockle-shell hand fluttered up towards Marius. “Marius,” she said; “why have you brought him?”
“Would you like to talk?” he said. “Shall I go?”
“Yes,” she said. “For a minute.”
And Marius went.
In the quietness I could hear the distant, cavernous sounds of the traffic of London. There was no sound from the building, no sound at all. Facing the white blinding stare of the woman amongst the pillows I felt that I was dead.
“Tell me,” she said, “when you first met Marius.”
I told her of our meeting, and after.
“And was he alone?” she said.
I told her of Annabelle.
“Tell me more about her,” she said.
I told her. And then I told her about Peter, and the flat, and what I knew of them.
“Thank you,” she said. She lay for a while, not heeding me. Then she moistened her lips, and I saw how incredibly strong her teeth were, a young woman’s teeth, like lilies. “Do you always tell the truth?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“Perhaps you do. I am sorry to ask you so many questions. There are just one or two things I wish to know, you see, that Marius cannot tell me. The truth anyway is not something that can be told.”
“No,” I said.
“I am dying,” she said. “Has Marius told you that?”
“No,” I said.
“Has he told you anything about me?”
“No,” I said.
“Perhaps that too is something that cannot be told. And what do you think of Marius?”
“I think . . . ” I began. My voice sounded thick, artificial, like a buffoon. It rose upon the air like some inflated condescension. My throat would not obey my ears, and I could not bear it. “I think a great deal,” I said.
“Do you?” she said. She seemed to frown, as if in embarrassment. Her hand fluttered up towards her eyes. “I want to know that Marius will not be destroyed,” she said.
It did not seem that there was anything now that I could say. The room had become like a box in which bodies are preserved for centuries. Around us hung the dust in the shapes that life had given it, the eyes and hands and tongues that are moistened into movement, that are dried again in tombs until a breath can collapse and shatter them. In front of our throats stretched a tension of gossamer that only the note of a reed could pierce. When she spoke her voice was clear as a needle: it did not harm. But for me, I could not speak as men speak, with their faces, because the noise of impurity would have scattered the dust. But there was something that had to be said, and when I heard it it was not as if it had come from me, but rather from outside, from where men, in another age and another existence, seek to ravage the tomb with the clink of their axes. I said, “What was it that happened to you?”
“Has Marius ever talked to you about love?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“And did you agree with it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And then again, as an echo, as the sound of a pick in the stillness where dead men have not heard a sound for centuries, I said, “What was it that happened to you?”
“Me?” she said. “Shall I tell you?”
I looked away from her. The sounds were clearer now. Sand began to fall between the corners of the girders, a trickle like an hour-glass when the earth is rocked. “Yes,” I said.
“I said that it was something that cannot be told. I shot myself. Is that what you want?”
“No,” I said.
“Marius came into the room and I hit him. Marius was a shadow. There is nothing to believe in when people are shadows. Is that what you have found?”
“No,” I said.
“There is a futility that is deathly. The weight of it kills you and there is nothing to be done. It was that with Marius.”
“With Marius?” I said.
“I have told you,” she said. “I went out onto the sand.”
“The sand?” I said.
“We lived there, did you know?”
“Yes,” I said.
“My hand waved in the wind. I was not good at it. What else shall I tell you?”
“Tell me why you hit him.”
“Because I was afraid.”
We sat side by side like monuments, our hands folded, our eyes in front of us with the blindness of marble. “Why?” I said.
“Why is one afraid? I do not know. Do you? It is a place that is much older than its people. Perhaps that is what makes one afraid. Have you been there?”
“Yes,” I said.
“We lived under the sun. A large house, by the sea, where the wind blew. We saw no white people, only fishermen and servants. Marius sat on the rocks and did not do anything. We loved the place. I did. I have never loved any other place.”
“Love?” I said.
“I will tell you,” she said. “I have never told it to anyone before. Marius talks about love. We talked about love when we were married. I was rich, and a European, and Marius was not. I hated Europe, I always have done, and I married Marius. When the war came we stayed there. I would not have minded. Europe could have destroyed itself. When we talked about love it sounded something new.”
“And it was not?”
“Marius sat out beneath a palm tree. It is wrong to talk about it. It is easier to talk than to believe. When you talk there are only shadows and they deceive you. Have you found this?”
“No,” I said.
“The men built Marius a shelter from the wind, and he had a table in front of him on which he wrote. When the war came he folded the paper into a dart and sent it floating through the trees like a bird. I remember how I watched it. He sent the war floating away from us. It was like the dove that went out of the ark, and we were alone.”
“And you were not?”
“We never talked about the war, nor about Europe. We thought that there were other things to talk of. Marius tore up the paper that was left beneath the palm tree, and he dropped it into the water where the fishes came to nibble at it like bread. When we had no more to say we said nothing. That is what happens. Why are you frightened, do you know?”
“No,” I said.
“Mar
ius went out each day onto the rocks, and I watched him. He was quiet as a rock himself, and he let the sea come up to him and wash him. There was nothing to do. Then he stayed out at night even, sleeping on the beach where the crabs ran, and I came out to join him, and the house was empty, behind us, with the servants running it, quite silently, as they do, and us on the rock in front of the palm trees.”
“And Marius?” I said.
“Then he went away from me, searching for something. I did not know what was happening. When you have put your trust in shadows there is nothing that is real. Have you found this? He went with the fishermen in their boats as they sailed after the flying fish, he went with them into the hills and stayed in their villages. They treated him as their god, their personal god, but he did not do anything. That is what happens when nothing is real. The nothingness destroys you. The weight of it grows. The estate was mine, a huge rotting estate with sugar-canes and fruit trees, but it was he who became part of it, who decayed with it, who felt it. He sat with them in front of their huts and ate their food and watched them. He sat for hours with his hands among the grasses and there was a silence about him like death. He never did anything. I did not see much of him then. In the evening it grew cold and I went back to the empty house where no fires were laid and I sat there. There was a futility that was timeless, that was worse than death. I felt sometimes that it would strangle me. I remember the sounds that came down from the hills.”
“The sounds?” I said.
“I remember them. There was a day when the wind stopped. Marius came down and sat with his back to me, on the verandah, in the darkness. It was an evening of unusual heat. I waited for him. There was a futility that was deathly. Love, I remembered. Then he went away from the house towards the sea and I followed him. He sat on a rock and dropped stones into the water and he watched them become silver and seem to burn beneath the surface. ‘That is the phosphorous,’ I said. I sat down beside him. ‘What are you going to do?’ I said. He put his arm into the water so that it shone like something molten. ‘Who am I?’ he said. I thought he was mad, then. I am sure I thought him mad. This is what happened.”
“What happened?” I said.
“If he did not know how could I persuade him? There was a despair that crushed me. The moonlight was behind him and his eyes went black. ‘I am nothing,’ he said, and he lifted his hand out of the water so that it dripped like a baptism.”
“What happened?” I said.
“I tried to know what he was feeling. Why are you frightened, do you know? It is the emptiness that kills you. His shape in the darkness was like wings, like animals, and it was not he, had he not said so? I am not, he had said. And that is what I knew, that he wasn’t, in the darkness.”
“And you hit him . . . ”
“There is a fear which is of damnation. When a person is a person no longer there is death in his place. As he sat on the rocks crouched heavy like a devil it was as if he were a mirror and I was he and there was nothing between us except what was going outwards into what was not bearable. All that he had said and had not said was hollow like a skull. What it meant was nothingness. It was not then that I hit him. He dived into the sea and swam away from the moonlight.”
“And you went out onto the sand . . . ”
“When he came into the room I did not expect that there it would follow me. He came in with the thing that was not him and the death and the corruption and when I cried he shouted to drown me but it was not him that I wanted to kill. I ran for the door and he slammed it in front of me and it was then that I hit him. Whatever it was that was taking me into eternity and would have taken me if I had not run it was not that that I could kill but rather myself before it could take me. When love is nothingness and words are empty and what you have trusted is a lie there is nothing else to be done. I went out onto the sand where the sea was crying.”
“And you shot yourself . . . ”
“Living as we had done what else could I do? With one of us mad and nothing but the two of us I only wanted to end it. There was nothing but the two of us in the whole of the world. With emptiness there is terror and you cannot escape it. Outside it was raining. Everything was a shadow and the shadow was a lie. That is what you must remember when you talk about love. By the sea there was a wind and I was not good at it.”
“The wind had stopped,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “The wind had stopped. The rain was soft and heavy with tears.”
“And is this true?” I said.
“True?” she said. “I have told you that what is true cannot be told. This is a story of love and Marius.”
As we sat the sounds from outside from very far away had grown and the slow disintegration of the tomb had scattered the dust trickling and sliding inwards and downwards piling gradually in particles around our feet expelling the web that had held us for centuries, the airless stillness falling to nothing as the earth came crumbling mounting up on us our eyes our hands our tongues crushed in on us so that now when there was light there was also no shape and the achievement of the pick looked down upon a desert. “What is there now?” I said.
“Now?” she said. “Is not that for you to tell me?”
“Yes,” I said. I sat in the shape of a thought that has been forgotten.
“And can you tell me?”
“No,” I said.
“Perhaps you do tell the truth,” she said. “Perhaps that is why Marius brought you.”
“Yes,” I said.
The light from the room was white like an arc light: time had come in on us like an awakening into snow. The eyes emerging out of darkness and birth were pained and blinded by the weight of the sky. I looked towards the door beyond which shadows ran softly. “I will tell you tommorrow,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said.
I stood up. Her face was still like paper and her hands like shells. “Goodbye,” I said.
“Goodbye,” she said.
Outside it was raining and the wind had stopped.
Marius was standing beneath a lamp post at the end of the street. I joined him. “Let’s walk,” I said. He followed me round the corner to where the road ran down like a switchback. “Why was it not love with her?” I said.
“Because she was afraid of it.”
“Why?”
“Because it is frightening.”
“That is not the point,” I said.
“No,” he said. When he spoke he spoke quickly as if his life depended on it.
“Then why was it with her?”
“Because to her there was nothing else except the two of us.”
“That is what she said. Have you then worked it out and arranged it like a plea all stamped and docketed and legal?”
“And are you prosecuting me?”
“Yes,” I said. We walked beside the buses that crawled like something wounded.
“I did nothing,” Marius said. “I just stood there.”
“And to you there was something else besides the two of you?”
“That is not for me to say.”
“That is what she said. And if you had not stood?”
“What?” he said. “And what should I have done?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know at all.”
“Neither do I,” he said.
At the bottom of the hill there was a crossroads in which the buses were wedged like lice. “Would you have stopped it if you could?” I said.
“That is no question,” he said. “It happened. I stood there and she destroyed herself.”
“Did not you destroy her?”
“I tell you again, it happened.”
“Then tell me,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“Oh nothing, nothing . . . ”
“I tell you,” he said, “I had been thinking. For months I had been thinking. Don’t other people think?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“And I discovered something. Well?”
“And she destroyed herself!”
“Yes.”
“Why do you put it like that? Is it necessary to defend yourself?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“Then I hate you for it.”
We walked in silence. It seemed to me that I was destroying everything.
“Listen,” I said. “I am not saying that you destroyed her. I am saying that what you had discovered did.”
“What does this mean?” he said. “Some men are destroyed when they look on death. Is that death’s responsibility?”
“You cannot talk about death’s responsibility,” I said.
“All right then.”
“But what happened was wrong. And you can talk about man’s responsibility.”
“All right.”
“And you are a man.”
“How comforting!” he said. I suddenly realized how much he was suffering.
“So that it is your responsibility,” I said. “And are you trying to say that it was worth it?”
“I will not use your words,” he said.
“Then what words will you use?”
“None,” he said.
“You have used them to justify yourself.”
“Because you were attacking me.”
“I am attacking you now,” I said.
We walked on. “What is it that you are asking?” he said.
“I am asking whether you hold yourself responsible for the effects that you have on others.”
“I hold myself responsible for my actions,” he said, “but not for what I am.”
“And you define your actions rather easily,” I said.
“It is not a difficult definition.”
“It is a limited one. And why do you not hold yourself responsible for what you are?”
“Because I believe in God.”
“God?” I said. “Why not the devil?”
“Because the devil is concerned with actions.”
“And what you are is the concern of God?”
“Yes,” he said, “fundamentally.”
“That must give you comfort,” I said.
He turned on me furiously. “Listen,” he said, “There are things in which you believe, in your inmost soul you believe, and they are the concern of God. If you have searched into your soul and have found something, if you have reached and can reach no further, then there, what you have found, that is God. You cannot deny that. You cannot deny that God. You may be wrong, for you may not have reached far enough, and you may forget what you have found, but if you believe something honestly then that is your God for you, and you can never deny it, never, no matter what may be its effects and its catastrophes.”
A Garden of Trees Page 14
