Under the Net

by Iris Murdoch

  I looked up at Hugo. He stood like a man in a trance. I swivelled round, turning my back on the meeting and looking behind me into the streets of the ingenious city which excess of light made to glow with excess of colour. Behind it, all seemed dark. I sighed. Then I looked at Hugo again. My despair began to give way to exasperation and I felt coming upon me that nervous impulse to act at any price which so soon overtakes me in periods of frustration. I let go of Mars. Behind us a pair of double doors opened into the temple. I satisfied myself with a glance that they were real doors and that the temple had a real interior. Then I began to study Hugo’s stance. These rapid preliminary studies can be very important in Judo. Notice where your opponent’s weight is placed and at what point a pressure will mostly readily upset his balance. I ran over various moves in my mind and decided that the most appropriate would be some version of the O Soto-Gari throw, as we term it. Then in a leisurely way I rose to my feet.

  I stood on the top step beside him. ‘Hugo!’ I said sharply. He half turned towards me. As he did so I took hold of his right arm between the wrist and the elbow and forced it strongly away to my left, so drawing him to face me. At the same time I hooked my right leg behind the bend of his right knee. As one firm unit my body swung smoothly round my left hip joint, while my right hand grasped Hugo’s belt and drew him into the circle of my movement, pushing and lifting at the same time. As he began to collapse I took two or three steps backward and we fell together through the double doors, and went rolling into the interior of the temple. The doors closed behind us, but not before Mister Mars had squeezed through and sat down in front of them as if on guard.

  Hugo and I picked ourselves up, Hugo rubbing those parts of his anatomy which had suffered in transit. The inside of the temple was dark, lit only by light which filtered through a narrow grating under the angle of the roof. It was empty, except for a wooden box on which after a moment or two Hugo sat down. I joined Mars by the door and sat cross-legged. We looked at Hugo. Mars clearly wasn’t quite sure what sort of attitude he ought to adopt towards him, and kept looking at me for a cue. He growled softly every now and then as if to try to keep the situation under control without giving any serious offence. I took out my cigarette packet, selected a cigarette and lit it. I waited for Hugo to say something.

  ‘Why did you do that, Jake?’ said Hugo.

  ‘I told you I wanted to speak to you,’ I said.

  ‘Well, there’s no need to be so rough,’ said Hugo. ‘You nearly broke my neck.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing.’

  ‘What did you want to tell me?’ said Hugo. He seemed quite resigned to being kept a prisoner.

  ‘A great many things,’ I said, ‘but first of all this.’ And I told him rapidly what I knew of Sadie’s plans.

  ‘Thank you for telling me this,’ said Hugo. He didn’t seem very surprised or even very interested.

  Then he added, ‘I see you’ve got Mister Mars with you.’ He didn’t seem surprised at that either.

  I was about to reply when an enormous din began to break out behind us.

  The sound of stampeding feet mingled with confused shouts and cries. The ground shook and the building shivered about us.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. Mars began to bark.

  ‘The United Nationalists said they were going to break up the meeting,’ said Hugo. ‘That’s probably them arriving. The next thing will be the police.’

  As he spoke we heard a whistle shrilling in the distance. ‘Let’s go out and look,’ said Hugo.

  We emerged together. A wild scene met our eyes. The crowd which a few minutes before had been so orderly was split into a chaos of struggling groups. Everywhere we looked a fight seemed to be in progress. The whole mass swayed to and fro like a vast Rugby scrum, into the midst of which every now and then a man would leap from the scaffolding or from one of the camera cranes scattering friend and foe alike. Out of this undulating pile of punching, kicking, and wrestling humanity there arose a steady roar in which cries of pain and anger were inextricably merged. Upon this scene the arc lamps blazed with unabated fierceness, costing the Bounty Belfounder Company some considerable sum of money per hour, and showing us with an astonishing clarity the enraged faces of the combatants. In the distance we could see Lefty, still mounted on his chariot, still gesticulating, his mouth opening and shutting, while round about him, as about the body of Hector, the battle raged to and fro with particular ferocity. Nearby the long banner which said SOCIALIST POSSIBILITY rose and fell upon the surge. Now one end of it descended as the standard bearer fell before an onslaught, and now the other, but eager hands soon raised it once more to flutter its thoughtful message above the scene.

  The police whistles were sounding now at the very entrance to the studio. There was no time to lose. Even when I don’t know which side I am on I hate to watch a fight without joining in; but on this occasion I had no doubt of my sympathies nor did it occur to me to question Hugo’s.

  ‘Which ones are which?’ I asked Hugo.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no way of distinguishing them,’ he said.

  Since this was clearly the case the most sensible thing to do was to go and defend the one person whose identity we were sure of, and that was Lefty. I told Hugo this, and set off, keeping a close grip on Mars, who was beginning to look as if he wanted to bite somebody. Hugo followed me. We made our way with difficulty through the battle in the direction of the chariot. The din was appalling; and behind us there stood out against the gathering night the brilliantly illumined skyline of the Eternal City, swaying very gently to and fro as the ground trembled under a thousand stamping feet.

  It took us some time to reach Lefty. It was necessary more than once, in defence of our right to proceed, to deal violently with some person or persons who disputed this right. So we lashed out, hoping that our blows were falling by and large upon the unrighteous. I got through more or less unscathed, but Hugo received a blow in the eye which seemed to enrage him considerably. As we approached the chariot, Lefty, who had been resisting the attempts of the enemy to drag him down, suddenly leapt with a yell of fury on top of one of his foes, and the two rolled on the ground. At the same moment two toughs, clearly friends of Lefty’s antagonist, closed in upon them — and it would have gone hard with Lefty had not Hugo and I dashed forward and flung ourselves upon the heap with the abandon of swimmers entering a summer sea. Mars, whom I had let go of some time ago, pranced around the outside of the skirmish, nipping the legs of this and that person rather indiscriminately. The struggle, in the course of which I was able to put in some good ground work, and use one or two particularly rare and exquisite leg locks, lasted only a few minutes. Lefty was fighting like a wild cat, while Hugo, looking more than ever like a bear, was standing erect, his feet wide apart, and his arms whirling like a windmill. For myself, I prefer to get my opponent on to the ground as soon as possible. The enemy fled. We picked up Lefty, who looked a little the worse for wear.

  ‘Thanks!’ said Lefty. ‘Hello, Donaghue, nice to see you. I didn’t know you were here.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew Lefty,’ said Hugo.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew Lefty,’ I said.

  But there was no time to discuss these interesting discoveries. ‘Look!’ said Lefty. We turned towards the studio entrance and there, advancing upon the battle, which still raged with undiminished fury, was a large force of police, some on foot and some on horseback.

  ‘Damn!’ said Lefty. ‘Now they’ll arrest everyone within sight, especially me — which will be pretty inconvenient just now. Is there a way out at the back?’

  We retreated into the streets of Rome, which were already invaded by a small number of combatants who were, however, more concerned with mutual assault and battery than with the possibility of escape. We passed under a brick archway.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any way through,’ said Hugo. ‘It all ends at the wall.’

  The city was reall
y much smaller than it had appeared to be on my first view of it. In a moment or two we had reached the city wall, a high structure of spurious red brick which was surmounted at intervals by watch towers and gave the impression of tremendous thickness. It swept round behind the buildings in an unbroken semicircle. Lefty struck it with his fist.

  ‘No use!’ said Hugo. It was as smooth as a chestnut and too high to climb.

  ‘We’re trapped!’ said Lefty. The din in the arena had taken on a new note and we could hear the police shouting instructions through loud-speakers. We looked round us frantically.

  ‘What shall we do?’ I said to Hugo.

  He was standing there with his eyes glazed. He turned his big head towards me slowly. The noise was coming nearer and already one or two policemen were to be seen hurrying under the archway.

  ‘Leave it to me!’ said Hugo. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a small object.

  ‘Belfounder’s Domestic Detonator,’ he said. ‘Invaluable for shifting tree roots and clearing rabbit warrens.’ The object ended in a point, which Hugo plunged into the base of the wall. Then he brought out a box of matches. In a moment there was a fierce sizzling sound.

  ‘Stand back!’ cried Hugo. A sharp explosion followed, and like magic a hole about five feet in diameter had appeared in the wall, through which in the early darkness we could see a ragged field scattered with corrugated-iron sheds and bounded by a low fence and a Bovril advertisement. Beyond it was the railway. As I took this in Lefty had already passed us and like a circus dog going through a hoop sped gracefully through the hole, and we could see him a moment later leaping the fence and diminishing across the railway lines under the twinkling red and green lights.

  ‘Quick!’ said Hugo to me. But something else was happening. The shock of the explosion must have dislocated something in the fabric of the city. For now suddenly the whole structure was beginning to sway and totter in the most alarming fashion. I looked up and saw as in a dream the brick and marble skyline vacillating drunkenly while there was a slow crescendo of cracking and splintering and rending.

  ‘Damn, that’s torn it!’ said Hugo. ‘It’s all right,’ he added. ‘It’s only made of plastic and Essex board.’

  We seemed to be surrounded by shouting policemen. In the distance I could see columns heeling slowly sideways, and triumphal arches crumbling and sagging and finally collapsing like opera hats. There was a menacing sound like an earthquake tuning up. For a moment I watched petrified; then I turned towards the hole in the wall. But it was already too late. Directly above us the wall began to lean inwards. To see what looks like fifty feet of solid brickwork descending on you is an unnerving sight, even if you have been told that it is only made of plastic and Essex board. With a sickening roar it began to fall. I threw Mars to the ground and hurled myself down, one arm clutching the dog and the other protecting the back of my neck. Next moment, with an apocalyptic clatter, the whole thing was on top of us.

  The world blacked out and something struck me violently on the shoulder. I had made myself so flat I almost bored into the earth. Somewhere the shouting and the splintering continued. I tried to get up but something was pinning me down. I became panic-stricken and struggled madly, and then I found myself sitting up with the remains of the wall, in pieces of various sizes, scattered round me. I looked about wildly for Mars, and soon saw him crawling out from under a pile of debris. He shook himself and came towards me with nonchalance. No doubt his film career had familiarized him with incidents of this kind. We surveyed the scene.

  All was changed. The whole of Rome was now horizontal and out of its ruins an immense cloud of dust was rising, thick as a fog in the glare of the lamps. In the arena, like a formal picture of the battle of Waterloo, stood a mass of black figures, some mounted on horses, others standing on top of cars, and others on foot marshalling into neat groups. A voice was saying something blurred through a loud-speaker. The foreground looked more like the moment after the battle. The ground was strewn with legless torsos and halves of men and others cut off at the shoulders, all of whom, however, were lustily engaged in restoring themselves to wholeness by dragging the hidden parts of their anatomy out from under the flat wedges of scenery, which lay now like a big pack of cards, some pieces still showing bricks and marble, while others revealed upon their prostrate backs the names of commercial firms and the instructions of the scene shifter. As I shook myself free I saw Hugo rising like a surfacing whale and thrusting his monumental shoulders through the wreckage as if it had been cardboard. He rose to his feet, showering the fragments to right and left. For an instant he was outlined against the sky, and then he shot off in the direction of the railway and was to be seen in the dim light, leaping across the lines like a stampeding buffalo, and disappearing into the distance.

  I staggered up and was about to follow him when Mars created an unfortunate diversion. All about us, like a nest of disquieted wood-lice, policemen were crawling out from underneath pieces of boarding. Whether this stirred some memory in Mars’s simple mind I know not; but evidently some strong reflex was set off. He was doubtless so accustomed to rescuing people from predicaments such as this that the simultaneous sight of so many eligible rescuees was too much for him. He dashed at the nearest policeman and seizing him by the shoulder began to pull him vigorously into the open. This gesture, which I admit I may have misinterpreted, was certainly taken in bad part by the policeman, who seemed to imagine that Mars was attacking him, and fought back fiercely. I watched for a little while, until I began to be afraid that Mars might get hurt. Then I interfered and pulled him off, explaining as I did so to the policeman that, in my view, Mars’s intentions had been kindly, and not, as the other thought, aggressive. The policeman answered impolitely — and rather than prolong the discussion I turned, taking a firm grip on my necktie which was still trailing from Mars’s collar, and prepared to follow in Hugo’s footsteps, trains or no trains.

  Imagine my dismay when I saw that between me and the railway line, across the piece of waste ground from one side of it to the other, there now stretched a thin but regular cordon of police. To run the gauntlet of both police and trains was more than I could bear. The immediate requirement, however, was to get away from the vicinity of the attacked policeman, so I set off at a run with Mars, skirting the edge of the studio and hoping that I might find a gap where the studio wall ended before the police began. But there was no such gap; and I found myself coming back towards the front of the studio, where the erstwhile combatants now stood in docile groups, a mass of uniforms barred the exit, and a superhuman voice was saying NO ONE IS TO LEAVE. It then occurred to me that really the police could hardly be want-to arrest everyone, and as I had nothing on my conscience I might as well wait peacefully to be dismissed instead of rushing about the scene and drawing attention to myself. Then as I looked down at Mars it became clear to me on second thoughts that now was not the ideal moment to fall into the arms of the law.

  I stopped running and started thinking. As I thought I kept on walking in the direction of the front entrance, where the thickest mass of police were gathered beside the labyrinth of office buildings.

  I addressed Mars. ‘You got me into this,’ I told him. ‘You can get me out.’ I led Mars into the shadow of one of the buildings and looked about me. From that point I could see down one of the side lanes the gates of the main entrance. They stood open, and a troop of mounted police were just riding into the yard. Through the gates I could see a crowd outside who were peering in and the flashing cameras of newspaper men. In between, by the gate itself, was a small group of police to whom the battlefield was invisible because of the buildings, so that I could assume that they had not been witnesses of my recent antics. I turned to Mars. The crucial moment had come.

  I stroked him and looked into his eyes, to command his attention for something of the utmost seriousness. He returned my gaze expectantly.

  ‘Sham dead,’ I said. ‘Dead! Dead dog!’ I hoped that this word
was in his vocabulary. It was. In a moment Mars’s legs sagged and his body became limp and he slid to the ground, his eyes turning back and his mouth hanging open. It was terribly convincing. I was quite upset. Then I collected my wits and took a quick look at the gate. No one had seen us. I knelt down, and levering Mars from the ground I lifted him over my shoulder. It was as if he weighed a ton. The inertia of his body seemed to glue it to the ground. Bracing my hand against the wall I rose slowly to my feet. Mars’s head, with his tongue hanging out, lay swaying against my chest, and his hind-quarters were bumping the small of my back. I set myself in motion.

  A I approached the main gate I came into a focus of attention, not only from the police who were keeping the gate, but also from the crowd who were standing outside. As soon as we were well in view a murmur of sympathy arose from the crowd. ‘Oh, the poor dog!’ I could hear several women saying. And indeed Mars was a pathetic sight. I quickened my pace as much as I could. The police barred my way. They had their orders to let no one out.