Looking downwards, to the ground, I saw Marius step out of the entrance to the building and walk sedately into the middle of the road. He gazed on either side of him and circled slowly like a weathercock. I dared make no sound. He was a tiny figure distorted by the distance. Then he stood still, facing the building, and looked up, and saw us.
We were the three corners of a triangle. I had an extraordinary desire to jump myself. Marius stood with the traffic running past him. I wanted to jump so that there would be communication between the sky and the world. The white light waited. Then Marius raised his arms and shouted, “Peter, Peter, there are always shooting stars!”
His voice came to us clearly as an echo from stone. There were so many memories. Salvation, I thought, and the catching of grapefruits. “Throw him your tennis ball,” I said.
For a while Peter made no move. The spaces were between us. Then he picked up the ball in one hand and the racquet in the other and he threw the ball up into the air and lashed at it with the racquet and the ball shot away into the sky like a star. “He will never catch it,” he said.
“He will,” I said.
Marius began to run. I had never seen him run before. He ran fast and steadily through the raging traffic with a car hooting and skidding at him his long legs wandering a bicyclist lurching and a crowd turned to watch. By the side of the road he stopped, beneath a tree. There he stood while the ball fell for millions and millions of years and then he leaned backwards with his hands clasped in front of him and the ball bounced against a branch of the tree and he caught it as if he were making love.
“There!” I said.
Marius held the ball up so that it was whiter than the evening. There were no more spaces. Then he put the ball in his pocket, turned, and walked away from us. We watched him grow smaller and smaller until he disappeared behind the trees. It was the last time that I saw him in England.
“Romps!” Peter said. “They are still a credible concept.” He had stuck his feet out straight in front of him and was smiling at his knees. “But I am facing the wrong way,” he said. He swung his legs over the parapet and waited there, still smiling. Then he stood up and walked across the roof. He did not look at me. I saw him go through the door and down the steps into the building. He never saw Marius again. I looked down from my height upon the old iron of the world and felt tired. I remembered Annabelle.
21
On the landing I met Alice. “You?” I said. “Marius telephoned me,” she said. Father Jack opened the door to us and she went through with the furious assurance of a professional. Father Jack was making enquiring faces so I told him, “She is a nurse.”
Peter was not there. Alice had gone through to the bedroom. We could hear her talking to Annabelle. When she came back Father Jack said, “Can I be of any assistance, nurse?”
“I’m not a nurse,” Alice said.
She rang up for a doctor. She took everything into her hands. She appeared to be in a rage that made all other efforts seem trivial. I knew that at the moment there was nothing more to be done about Annabelle.
“Can I help, Alice?”
“By keeping out of the way,” she said.
I could not bear to stay with Father Jack. In his presence I felt an irritation that drowned even my anxiety about Annabelle. I went out into the street to recover my anxiety.
Once before I had stood on the steps of a doorway and there had been nowhere I had wanted to go. Then I had gone nowhere. Now, in the same situation, I chose to go to the right, and went.
The rage that was in Alice seemed to have entered into me. I found, with surprise, that I did not recover my anxiety. I continued to be irritated by the image of Father Jack, by thoughts of the scene in which I had just taken part, by memories of absurdity that seemed to stretch through the whole of my life. I felt as if I dragged behind me a string of tin cans that clattered against my ankles;—cans of falseness and sentimentality and the dregs of everything trivial. There were also, on another string, a trail of responsibilities—the pain of Annabelle, the insanity of Peter, the waste which was myself. It was this that was uppermost, the knowledge of waste. And yet I felt no emotion about it except a determination that it should stop. I jerked savagely at my memory so that the tin cans rattled.
Passing on the corner an old man selling evening papers I saw upon his placard the latest reminder of disaster. I bought a paper and read it as I walked. There was the inevitable news of misery and madness and the fiddling of politicians in the face of death. I found with less surprise that this did not worry me either. I stopped, so that the cans should not divert me, and tried to think what was happening.
Annabelle was ill and I did not worry. The world was dying and I did not worry. What would happen would happen anyway. What would happen had happened already. This was not important. What was important was the condition in which I would see what would happen anyway. What was important was what I did. I walked again and my tin cans rattled and I cursed them. I stopped.
Nothing mattered. Once we had had the fact of freedom without searching for the illusion of it, and then we had found the illusion and lost the fact. Now we had neither fact nor illusion. We had lost all powers. We simply had, at every moment, a choice. A choice that was given, to the right or to the left, like in a maze. We were at the centre, and the object was to get out. The maze was there, mankind was there, there was no question of freedom. One walked, and there were a million junctions, and every time one must choose. One did not know if one chose right or wrong, if one went outwards or inwards, it was only true that one went. Freedom was choosing right and death was choosing wrong, but one did not know until the end where one had gone. So it did not matter. Where one goes one would have gone anyway. I walked, and my tin cans tripped me, and I laughed.
Moving thus, alternately walking and stopping, laughing and cursing, in the manner of a man with his feet in a sack, I found myself at the entrance to a large hotel. I went in, so that I could rest, and I observed the world that I hated. Upon the walls and the chairs the upholstery bulged with the fatness of fruit gone rotten in a warehouse; and the people, taking their cue from the decorations, paraded faces like wax apples, clothes like banana skins, buttons and brooches like cloves in a suet pudding. Old men were like slugs, young tufts like caterpillars, and the dried hobbled women like sticks of liquorice. I sat down and watched them. I thought, These are the godless people I have to love, the ugly people who are beautiful. And then I remembered my own trail of garbage, my feet in the sack.
I thought—It is easy to love the horror and the suffering, it is easy to think beautiful the child with cancer and the hangman’s rope, but it is not easy to adore this rottenness. This smell has nothing to do with eternity.
Eternity. If life is a maze and time is a moving staircase then you can run against the moving staircase, that is the easiest thing in the world, you can go back, you can begin again, you can undo what you have done, every action of the present can wipe out consequences of the past and once the consequences have gone then the actions of the past do not exist. You can absolve wrong choices, creating your own absolutions. I am responsible for everything that I have done in the whole of my life, I am responsible for the causes of what I have done and the consequences, I am responsible for the death of Marius’s wife, for the loneliness of Peter, for the pain of Annabelle. If what I have done has been in honour of this responsibility—if the pain is lessened, the loneliness gone, the death made beautiful—then I have created my own absolution. But I have not. The past is around my ankles, my feet in the sack. Whatever I have done my feet are still hobbled. What is time?
I am responsible for not only what has affected me, I am responsible for everything that has happened in every part of the world for ever. Whatever I have done this is what I cannot alter. Whatever I do I cannot move. The maze is around me and I cannot move. What is time?
It is necessary that I move. It is necessary that I get rid of this garbage. It is necessary that I l
ove. And then I thought, What have Annabelle and I to do with time?
What if Annabelle should die?
Thus, in the hall of the great hotel, among the perfumes and the cigars and the odourless flowers, I answered the question. It was necessary that Annabelle should live. If Annabelle died in the night, of her illness, it was still necessary that she should live. The first time that I saw her two years ago, when I talked with her and gave her up, when I held her last night and was terrified, it was absolutely necessary that these moments should live. And they did, that was what love meant, it was irrefutable. Annabelle would live because that is what love meant, and time was eternity.
And if time is eternity then you cannot go back, you cannot undo what you have done, your mistakes are always with you. You can only move by asking for an absolution which is beyond you. Eternity is beyond you, and this is what makes nothing matter and then when you have realized this, it makes everything matter. This is not a paradox. Things are on different planes, the part and the whole, what becomes and what is completed, the maze as you see it from within and the maze as it exists from without. The part on its own does not matter because it is helpless. The whole on its own does not matter because it is finished. What does matter is the relationship between the part and the whole. What is important is what you do in relation to the whole. And this relationship is possible because eternity exists, there is the possibility of apprehending it because what is becoming is part of it. There is to every man, either in the sky or in the heart, or somewhere between them, a reflection of the whole. There is a periscope to eternity. It is possible to outwit the helplessness of the part, to achieve the whole by mirrors. The mirrors have been given.
And then, beginning to walk, you find you can walk freely. When love is honoured there is absolution, when nothing seems to matter it is possible to decide what matters, when there is a glimpse of eternity there is guidance through the maze. At once, in a double stroke, the past is cut loose and a thread is given to the future. You walk, thus, leaving the refuse behind you: you go, step by step, and there are stars to guide you. The stars are there, as light, between the world and eternity. With mirrors you can see them, above the dark walls of the maze. There is everything to be done and all life is a learning: the mirrors of the heart have to be focused to the sky. There are instructions for this, to be read most carefully. I will read them. But now, at the centre, at the beginning, I can walk. Aware of the end, the outside, a step can be taken. It is love that has turned me, the beginning and the end. There are things to be done. And finally, in the hotel, among the scented wreaths dissimulating corpses, I looked round, curiously, for the last time, and thought—All right you goats, be Gods and Goddesses.
I rang up Alice. “How is she?” I said.
“You keep away,” Alice said.
“I know,” I said.
“It was bad enough with that blasted priest.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. But how is Annabelle?”
“I don’t know,” Alice said. “Is her father in Paris?”
“Yes.”
“And her mother?”
“Her mother is away.”
“Has she got any relations beside that blasted brother?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Does she want relations?”
“No,” Alice said. “No, she doesn’t.”
“Thank you, Alice. I really want to thank you.”
“She’s all right,” Alice said.
“She’s sure to be all right. You ring up again in the morning.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Alice, you have been right all the time.”
“In the morning,” Alice said.
Around the grass of the square there had been erected a small wire fence to discourage trespassers. I stepped over it and took my seat beneath the statue. This was a familiar place, as well as being one from which I could intercept Peter. I looked up and saw a light in the window which I thought was Annabelle’s. I prepared for the night.
It was now quite dark. I hummed a tune. It was funny, I thought, this finding oneself at the centre. The night made a noise as if the world were humming. It was funny the way things returned to their beginnings just as I had returned to sit beneath the statue. A drunk man passed: we exchanged salutations. There was no regret, since excursions could not be avoided, and everything happened over and over again. It was possible, I believed, that everything could be dealt with better each time it arrived.
At some period of the night I had a sudden vivid memory of Marius’s wife. I was thinking of the last time I saw her in hospital and was trying to remember the things she said. There was something that eluded me, and the harder I thought of it the further away it got. Then it seemed that she was very close to me herself and was trying to tell it to me. In the silence I became startled and spoke to her out loud. I must have been half asleep because the noise of my cry woke me, and then it seemed that I had been speaking to Annabelle. I wanted very much that I could take upon myself what Annabelle was suffering, that I could get close to her. I thought that if I tried hard enough I might be able to. It was necessary and possible that I should. And then I knew that what had been suggested to me was not what Marius’s wife had said, but merely that I should try this about Annabelle. I tried to carry her sadness.
And then, in the night that had become the universe, it was as if this were the purpose and the justification of everything. The world was one, suffering was indivisible, what was carried by one took the burden from another. Whatever would happen in the rest of our lives—if Annabelle should die, if I should fail her—still there was this oneness by which the whole might be revived. In all time all people were responsible for one another. These were the ghosts that I remembered, the ghosts that had to be laid. Whatever would happen, however agonized the future, there was always this communion by which meaning was given over. After this night, I thought, when we go out into the morning, we will know this, and remember this, and nothing will not be worth while. Love is its own justification, and so is suffering. We can all go into eternity and die there for ever. It still will not matter. What matters is the whole, for which we will have died. In the early morning a policeman came to turn me out of the garden and I talked to him and he went away.
22
Peter came when it was light. He stood beside me, tired, requiring information. “How is Annabelle?” he said.
“She is all right,” I said. “I am going to ring up soon.”
“I must see her.”
“Wait till I telephone.”
“I’m going to Paris to-day.”
“I will be telephoning soon.”
The sun had not yet warmed us. We were dry, brittle, with the weight of consciousness heavy like sand. Peter was blinking his screwed-up eyes and my body was stiff so that if I moved I thought I would break it. We were both like men hung from parachutes above a desert. We waited.
“How do you know she’s all right?” Peter said.
“Alice is with her. And a doctor.”
“A doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Why a doctor?”
“Of course there is a doctor. Wait till I ring up.”
“Yes,” Peter said.
As the heat started it seemed to rise from the stones like a mist. There was a gradual melting of stiffness and time began to tick like water dripping from a cracked pipe after a thaw. Peter stirred uneasily.
“I must go in,” he said. “I must see her.”
“I will ring up,” I said.
“I am going to Paris to join my father. I won’t be back for some time.”
“Wait,” I said.
There was a call-box on the corner. Walking was a mechanical business like exercises. As I moved the heat was ruffled and I shivered. Alice’s flat undeviating voice answered me.
“How is she?” I said.
“She’s all right,” Alice said.
“Good,” I said. I didn’t know how to put it. “And t
he child?” I said.
“There is no child,” Alice said.
“Oh.” It was extraordinary how the sun still shone and the traffic moved and the news had made no difference. I watched a fly which lay on its back on the ledge of the window faintly moving its legs against the light. “I don’t know about these things,” I said. “How bad are they and how bad was she?”
“She was all right,” Alice said. “They can be bad but it didn’t happen too bad to her.” The fly was waving its tentacles in death.
“Can I come round?”
“Yes,” Alice said.
“Peter is here too.”
“He can’t come.”
“Why not? Why not if I can?”
No answer from Alice.
“He’s going away to-day. He won’t be coming back.”
No answer.
“He’s all right now,” I said.
“He’ll only stay a minute.”
“All right,” Alice said.
I went back to Peter. “She’s not bad,” I said. “Would you like to see her?”
“Yes,” Peter said.
We went in and walked to the lift. It was as if there were a lot of people watching us. On the landing Alice opened the door to us and Peter said, “Thank you,” and then he went quickly along the passage. Alice was staring at me with her hard tired eyes.
“Well,” she said, “there you are, it’s over, and are you now going to grow up?”
Peter had opened the door of Annabelle’s room and I could see the corner of her bed beyond him. He went up to it soundlessly like a man going to fetch something and then he went down on his knees and knelt by the side of the bed and put out his hand across the covering. I did not hear either of them speaking. His hand was towards her where I could not see and his face was turned to the ground so that he was not looking at her. There was only his arm, stretched out, like a branch; and she, somewhere distant, touching it. They remained there. Then he rose with a quick single movement from his knees as if a wind had lifted him and he came out of the room quite soundlessly still and went into his own room next to hers. Her door remained open, a straight continuation of the passage leading to a mirror which reflected the passage straight back again to where I stood, and there was just the one straight line with myself at either end of it and Annabelle in between. I could hear Peter in his room moving ceaselessly and precisely like a tiger in its cage, and as I stared at myself along the passage I was a dangling figure at one end and a small darker replica at the other, myself seeing myself not from either end but both and from the middle where Annabelle lay beyond the one blind corner of the bed. Then Peter emerged carrying an enormous suitcase into which he had packaged all his belongings for a month, and he came up the passage momentarily blocking the view, moving still precise and still ceaseless and he went past me and past Alice and then stopped at the door. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” Then he went out. And the passage remained.
A Garden of Trees Page 30
