I said ‘Hullo.’
We stood side by side looking at the picture. I thought – You mean, you have nothing to say to me?
– Then who is it that I talk to?
I looked up at a corner of the ceiling.
After a time the Professor said ‘Now come along here.’ He took me by the arm and led me through the gallery.
He went past the St Sebastians like dart-boards and the Virgin Marys on their thrones. I thought – You mean, they pose for those who need them to be posing?
We came to rest in another room in front of a picture which was a small Filippo Lippi of the Annunciation. I had not noticed this before. The Virgin Mary, on the right, is in a courtyard on a chair over which something like a towel has been placed; she is not on her throne; she is leaning forward with a hand beneath her breast: she is facing the angel, to the left, who is kneeling in a small garden. Beyond and between them is a doorway to a staircase down which there has flown a small bird; its passage is marked by a spiral of light. At the top of the picture, almost outside the frame, is a hand with two fingers pointing down. The bird has stopped in the air and is gazing intently at Mary’s middle. Mary and the angel are watching the bird.
I thought – You mean, they too are not posing? They are getting on with whatever it is they are to be doing –
– That bird: that finger coming down –
– They are from just outside the painting?
The Professor said ‘Now this.’
I thought – I want to sit down.
He said ‘Only one more.’
He led me through other galleries. I felt I might be going to faint. Once the Professor seemed to lose his way. He stopped and looked around, humming. I thought – He is waiting for that bird, that finger to come down?
He said ‘Here.’
He stopped in front of a small picture by Giorgione of the Adoration of the Magi. There was the usual group of Mary and the child and St Joseph on the left –
I thought I might say – I’m not well.
I said ‘I’m sorry.’
He said ‘That’s all right.’
There are Mary and the child and St Joseph on the left; the three wise men and various worshippers and onlookers on the right. Mary and Joseph and two of the wise men are gazing not at the child but at a place on the ground just in front of him: this space is quite empty except for some faint marks which might once have been a nest containing something like four stones. The child has a finger up to his mouth and is looking out of the picture to the left: also looking in this direction is a donkey.
I thought – You mean, they are intent on something that is both within, and without, the framework of the picture?
The Professor led me to one of the upholstered seats in the middle of the room. We sat down. He said ‘Phew!’ He seemed to be exhausted.
I thought – All the lights have come on in the auditorium of the theatre?
I said ‘They’re watching what they themselves are doing: they’re not reacting; they’re not posing: they are listening.’
He said ‘Yes.’ Then – ‘What are you on, any of the hard stuff?’
I said ‘In that battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs, they’re all posing as if for a photograph.’
He said ‘You’re finding it difficult to get off?’
I said ‘I can get off.’
He seemed to hum. He tapped his foot up and down. Then he said ‘Well, let’s have lunch then.’ I thought – I can’t have lunch.
I said ‘What are they looking at in that empty space on the ground?’
He said ‘Put your head down. There.’
I said ‘I think I’m going to faint.’
He said ‘Well, I want a large whisky.’
I thought – The faun had one hand on her shoulder –
– The finger, then the bird, coming down –
– The nest, where it laid, is now empty?
There was a bright light as if the curtain had come down and all the audience were leaving the theatre.
I thought – You mean, we can get on with whatever it is we are to be doing?
He said ‘Rum tiddle di um, tum, tum tum.’
I said ‘I’ve got to get some air.’
He said ‘Meet you in the square in five minutes.’
I wanted to say – But why me?
It was as if we were sitting in that picture, in the courtyard. He had his hand on my shoulder. He might say – Now now, Mary!
I would say – I didn’t mean –!
I said ‘Whereabouts in the square?’
He said ‘By the right-hand fountain.’
I thought – Right as you look at it?
He said ‘Right as you look at it, not right as you look back from the square.’
I thought – Oh, but would they not, indeed, have been blinded, those people, when they looked out from their cave, into the sun!
I said ‘Perhaps what they were looking at was light.’
He said ‘Perhaps what who were looking at was light?’
I said ‘Those people in the farmyard.’
He said ‘God Almighty.’ Then – ‘Take your time.’ Then – ‘I’m getting my whisky.’
There is something, I suppose, I ought to put in here: as a rest from the light: as if it were a glass of whisky –
There had been recently an evening in the house in North London when Oliver had done more than he usually did: he had staged, or helped to stage, some performance.
It is difficult to write about these things because, again, a description seems more affecting than a performance. A performance seems often not much to do with you at all. Words are not good – are they? – at showing the silliness of shadows.
The performance was trying to make shadows flesh on a wall: what would a dreamer see – what would happen to a dream – if the dreamer saw it enacted?
At first I was to move as before among the guests (five or six) in my usual form as hostess. I distributed sweetmeats and smoke: I was this desirable thing, but untouchable. I was the one because I was the other: the sacred sacrifice: the virgin nymph with the horn of plenty: why do you think there are these images?
Oliver had the idea that what people wanted from queens and goddesses was (of course) sacrifice: there had to be immolation: then desires could come together and burst like slime-mould on to the floor.
So I was to move among these people dressed as – what? – Isis, Artemis, Judith, Jezebel. Was there not a time when women had been goddesses? And arms had reached up adoring, adoring them: and how happy had been their slaves! So in the sand-dunes, in a temple, might it not be a female child that is dismembered (you know this story?) and then partaken of: to be eaten, and redeemed?
I might suggest – I am sorry, my time has come; I must go to my mother; and so on.
There was an alcove in one of the Moorish rooms that was curtained off as if it were a stage. Within this alcove there was a cage in which there was trapped – well, what do you think? – suffering humanity. Suffering humanity was represented, in this case, by Edwin, a large black man from an agency in Hertford Street. I mean Edwin himself was not really so large; but he had the rare and remarkable (do you not think?) attribute of being able to make himself large (if you see what I mean) at will; even if apart from this ability he was a rather unsuccessful middleweight boxer. Edwin used to do knitting behind the stage. Well, I said – didn’t I – that these things usually go on below the level of sensible description. But where do they come from: where are they going. Anyway, there I was, with shadows around me that yearned to find a home on a wall; how can humanity both get and not get (in order to keep?) what it needs as unobtainable? You can get it vicariously, can’t you? This is the role of dreams: but dreams search for a home to be made flesh; to be raised at will; like the accomplishment, as it were, of Edwin the middleweight boxer. Anyway, when the curtain went up there was this black man in his cage – wrongly imprisoned, of course: on the eve of his execution pe
rhaps (are we not all likely to be blown up?), or even as that rich man Dives straining agonised arms up from hell.
Humanity, indeed, cannot get out of its cage, can it – that cage of desire, of consciousness, of where-are-we-from-and-where-are-we-going. So what can a goddess do about this? except to condescend, of course, vicariously. I had two Thai boys to help me (it was now I who was Holofernes with his handmaidens?). Edwin, of course, could do no more than poke out of his cage. And there were all the guests, the armament manufacturers, watching like drops of oil – about to touch some deep surface at last and spread. For them this had to be vicarious; how else could they also remain their compact, immune, all-of-a-piece globules? So I had to be helped (so fragile was I: such was my care!) on to their representative, their shadow in the cave or cage – Edwin their great vicar from Hertford Street. I had to smile sweetly as I was lifted on the arms of my acolytes; on to, as it were, my throne, my consecration. I could do this quite well: what do you think it is that makes an actress? And Edwin would bang and roar against the bars of the cage: he was quite good at this too: he said he used to imagine he was one of his uncles who had swallowed a serpent in Port au Prince. And the two Thai boys went so delicately: getting the hook as it were, on to the worm at the mouth of the cage. And it was the audience who were caught – by Edwin as suffering humanity; by the Thai boys with their dexterity and control: and by myself, of course, above all – as the drop of oil, their queen, bursting in their minds and spreading.
If a woman were to be the sacrifice, do you think the satisfaction for men would be just the nails having gone in?
That’s enough, Princess Salome! Blot her out!
There are shafts between the conscious and the unconscious: they are like bars of light.
(Did not you, Bert, once make a film like this? A new-born baby lies on the edge of a bed –)
What I remember is the audience becoming very still. I looked amongst them: I was saying – Is it you; is it you?
You can paint the sacrificed god: could you paint the sacrificed goddess?
Would she not be watching you? Looking down –
That is why you would not want her to be on top?
Edwin, I think, at the end had to pretend to be garrotted: he could not be allowed out of his cage. One of the Thai boys had to nip round behind.
You know what happens when a man is garrotted?
Oh, the remaining Thai boy and myself could make quite a prettily posed picture! a cherub at the feet of my throne.
In the end, yes, I would come down.
I would move about amongst my audience like a vicar shaking hands on Easter Sunday.
Of course I am real! Of course you can touch me!
A little blood, a little shit, do you not think?
(Don’t you call this contempt?)
That is also what you came for, isn’t it?
*
I said to the Professor ‘What work are you engaged on at the moment?’
He said ‘I’m on a committee in Whitehall to do with chemical and biological warfare.’
I said ‘What can you do about such things?’
He said ‘You can’t unknow what you know. You can’t do away with primitive emotions. You can learn a new way of looking.’
I said ‘Such as.’
He said ‘What is beautiful, and what is simply boring.’
We were sitting on a parapet of a fountain in Trafalgar Square. The basin of the fountain was empty. Pigeons flew about like spirals of dust in a courtyard.
I said ‘Do you know Kleist’s story of the puppet-master?’
He said ‘Yes.’
I said ‘He said humans were not viable because they were neither puppets nor gods.’
He said ‘He also said that humans would be viable, if they went right round the world and into the Garden of Eden again by the back way.’
I said ‘I didn’t know that.’
He said ‘Didn’t you?’
There were some young men in white shirts and grey flannel trousers unloading equipment from a van at the edge of the paved area of the square. They carried wooden planks and rolled-up banners to the plinth at the bottom of the column in the centre.
I said ‘No, I don’t know how to keep off dope. I don’t know how to get out. I don’t know where to go.’
He said ‘You will when you want to.’
I said ‘How will I want?’
He said ‘It may not be much to do with you.’
I said ‘What will it be to do with?’
He said ‘You haven’t hit rock bottom.’
The men in white shirts had propped two ladders against the plinth. They climbed up. They seemed to be preparing for a political meeting.
I said ‘I thought I had.’
He said ‘You may be carried off kicking. Who wants to be reborn?’
I said ‘There might be soft lights and sweet music!’ He said ‘Yes, indeed, there might be soft lights and sweet music’
At the side of the square there was a policeman and a policewoman who were watching the men in white shirts at the plinth. The policeman spoke into his two-way radio: the policewoman held hers to her ear.
I said ‘But why me?’ Then – ‘I mean, why are you helping me?’
He said ‘Why anyone?’ Then – ‘My girlfriend’s just left me.’
I thought – Is that true? Then – You’re too old to have a girlfriend!
There was another group of people coming across the square. They wore bowler hats; they carried cases that looked as if they contained musical instruments.
I said ‘Why shouldn’t some sort of Bomb go off, if you’ve got to hit rock bottom?’
He said ‘Indeed, why shouldn’t some sort of Bomb go off.’
I said ‘I thought you had something to tell me.’
He said ‘I’ve told you.’
The men on the plinth were setting up a microphone and loudspeakers. They hung wires over the stone lions at the corners of the plinth.
I thought – Again, what was it in those paintings: an empty space? a courtyard? a girl lying on a beach?
I said ‘Why has your girlfriend left you?’
He said ‘She’s having a baby.’
I thought – You mean the baby’s not yours? Then – This is ridiculous!
Then – You mean, it is like the baby in the picture? He said ‘And so I thought I’d do anything to get another girl –’
I said ‘That’s not true!’
He said ‘Of course it’s not true!’
I thought – You mean, I have to see why you said it?
The musicians were putting down their instrument-cases at the bottom of the plinth. They were taking off their jackets.
He said ‘She wants an abortion.’
I said ‘And you don’t want her to?’
He said ‘No.’
I thought I might say – Stop her then. I thought suddenly – Perhaps I will go to that old guru in India!
I said ‘The baby’s not yours –’
He said ‘I don’t know.’
I thought – That girl: the empty space: those two figures in the courtyard –
Then – I am responsible for my story: you are responsible for yours –
– You are responsible for my story: I am responsible for yours –
Two of the musicians had taken hold of the ladders which belonged to the men in white shirts on the plinth. They were climbing up them. They began to walk about on them as if they were stilts.
I said ‘I once saw a film about this: the foetus is drawn into a vacuum: it explodes: it can’t make a noise.’
He said ‘Oh yes.’ Then – ‘Thank you.’
I said ‘Of course you can stop her if you want to!’
He said ‘You see, you’re helping me.’ Then – ‘You’ve got my number: you can call me any hour of the day or night.’
I thought – You mean, you’ll help me to get to India?
The men in white shirts were looking
down from the top of their plinth. The men who had taken their ladders were walking about like clowns. One of them carried a flute which he brandished as if it were a sword.
I said ‘But you don’t want a new girlfriend.’
He said ‘Of course I want a new girlfriend!’
I thought – I don’t understand this way of seeing things, this way of talking, at all.
There was that physical sensation of cold air coming in. I thought – I am that foetus, trying to get out?
So what did become of that girl with the wound in her throat –
– The message like a bird –
– That empty space?
I said ‘What is the name of your girlfriend?’
He said ‘Lilia.’
I thought – Not Lilith? Lilia?
The two men on stilts confronted one another; they seemed, with their musical instruments, to be about to fight a duel. The men in white shirts had got down from their plinth and were going after them; the clowns on stilts began waddling across the square. The men in white shirts caught up with them and held the ladders; they were like people struggling to raise a flag.
The Professor said ‘It’s like an experiment I once did with my students.’
I said ‘What is?’
He said ‘This.’ Then – ‘Sometimes there are connections: sometimes not.’
One of the ladders, upright, was by the parapet of the fountain. As the men in white shirts struggled with it, it toppled, slowly, projecting the man at the top on towards a piece of sculpture within the fountain. There he landed, and clung, as if on a rock in a rough sea; while the other end of the ladder, the length of which had pivoted on the parapet, jerked up and caught one of the men in white shirts in the groin. This man sank to the ground, while his companions gathered round him.
The policeman and the policewoman were approaching across the square. The Professor got up and walked towards them. He stood in front of them and seemed to show them some card of identification. I thought – He is dissuading them from interfering with whatever it is that is going on: he is making out that he has been in control of some experiment all the time.
I thought – I must get away!
I got up and walked in another direction across the square. The Professor was standing with the policeman and the policewoman watching the scene as if they were appreciating some picture.
Judith Page 9
