Judith

by Nicholas Mosley

  I locked the door. I went to the basin and washed my face and stared down into the water. I thought – So what do you think you are: on your own: with no more images?

  There were voices from people outside in the passage. There were noises from people in the street below.

  The handle of the door by the washbasin moved. I thought I might say – Just a moment: I’m just getting off the lavatory.

  A woman’s voice said ‘Who’s there?’

  I thought I might say – Judith.

  – Judith who?

  – D’you know what happened to Holofernes?

  I said ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

  The woman’s voice said ‘Who is it?’

  When I did open the door – I had draped a towel round me and arranged my hair: those gods and goddesses should make an effort, should they not, before they collapse like burned paper – there was a red-haired woman in the passage. She had her back against the wall. I thought – Hullo, hullo, this strange landscape.

  I said ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I wonder if I could use your telephone?’

  The woman said ‘Of course.’

  I said ‘Thanks.’

  My voice sounded as if it were coming from somewhere behind me. I thought – Sooner or later, I must look back?

  There was a telephone on a table in the passage. The wallpaper had ships and fish and mermaids on it. I thought – There is something different about gravity in this strange landscape?

  The woman put out a hand as if to help me. I sat on a chair by the telephone. I thought I heard the sound of an ambulance. I thought – But what if I cannot bear this?

  After a time the woman said ‘Can I do anything?’

  I said ‘I’m trying to remember the number.’

  I thought – There are things one can’t do, aren’t there, when people are watching.

  The woman went back into the room in which, I imagined, there was the piano. I thought – This is extraordinarily kind of you.

  She left the door ajar. There were people’s voices.

  I thought – Oliver came out on to the parapet?

  After a time the woman came out into the passage again.

  I said ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t remember the number.’

  She said ‘Oh.’

  I said ‘It’s the highest score in first-class cricket and the date of the Second Reform Bill.’

  She said ‘The highest score in first-class cricket and the date of the Second Reform Bill.’

  I said ‘Yes.’

  She said ‘Just a minute.’

  She went back into the room with the piano. There were voices.

  I thought – I was wrong about the sound of an ambulance? A man’s voice, loudly, came from the room with the piano. He said ‘Four five two?’ I said ‘No.’

  The man’s voice said ‘It used to be.’ The woman’s voice said ‘It doesn’t matter what it used to be.’

  I thought – Perhaps the man is staying out of sight because if he does he might be one of those particles that will prevent the sound of the ambulance arriving –

  The man’s voice said ‘Four nine nine.’

  I said ‘Yes, four nine nine.’

  The man poked his head round the corner of the passage. He had a strong, bony face. I thought – But I have seen him before!

  The woman with red hair appeared to pull him back into the room.

  I thought – I am responsible for your story: you are responsible for mine –

  There was the woman’s voice saying ‘And the date of the Second Reform Bill?’

  The man’s voice said ‘It was something to do with Gladstone.’

  There was the sound of an ambulance arriving in the street below.

  The man’s voice said ‘Eighteen sixty? Eighteen sixty-seven?’

  The man came out into the passage: he was holding the red-haired woman by the hand.

  I thought – Oh thank you!

  I said ‘Yes eighteen sixty-seven.’

  The man said to the woman ‘I must go.’

  The woman said ‘Yes.’

  The man said ‘I love you.’

  The woman said ‘I love you too.’

  There had been that cry, had there not, of a body falling to the street below.

  The man turned to me: he said ‘Good luck.’

  I thought – You mean, Coo-ee?

  – But is everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds –

  – If this is, at last, rock bottom? I said ‘Thank you.’

  The man went along the passage and out of the door of the flat.

  I thought – There was that loose bit of parapet, was there not, outside Oliver’s bathroom window.

  The woman said to me ‘Would you like to lie down? Would you like some tea?’

  I said ‘Could you possibly dial that number for me?’ She said ‘Yes.’

  I said ‘And ask for the Professor.’

  She said ‘The Professor.’

  I said ‘And just tell him I’m here: Judith.’

  I thought – I did manage, didn’t I, to say thank you – I mean say it so that it would be there, as if in a painting, and not just in words flying away.

  Some time in the middle of the night (I remember having got as far as that bed) I awoke and there were people sitting by me. I had been having a half-waking, half-sleeping dream about the bottom falling out of the maze; there you are with your hands and back pressed against the wall; you are quite still; but what can you do? what is gravity? It is different in this strange world. Then I was on the grass with the flowers like small trees and the trees like flowers: the faun and the brown dog at each end of me. They had been talking when I had been asleep and now they were not talking: I supposed they were watching me. I tried to remember what had happened before the fall: I mean, before the bottom had dropped out of my maze: and I found of course that I did not want to remember. I prayed – But I need time in this strange world.

  – If I have cut the rope, and a body has fallen to the ground, might not the rope have been from an umbilicus?

  Then when I seemed to be going to sleep I heard the voices begin again.

  Does anyone ever remember what people say, literally?

  It was, I suppose, as if we were in that painting.

  The Professor and the woman with red hair are at the head and foot of my bed. Their sounds drop down like notes of music.

  The Professor is saying ‘No, don’t talk: just wave perhaps every now and then.’

  The woman is saying ‘At the coincidences –’

  ‘Yes at the coincidences.’

  ‘But you say she fought –’

  ‘Oh yes, you fight!’

  ‘But what happens then?’

  ‘I think I’ll try to get her to a place in India.’

  And I am thinking – But I never told him about that place in India! How does he know about a place in India!

  The woman says ‘But what if they find out?’

  The Professor says ‘They won’t find out. He won’t want anyone to know.’

  The woman says ‘You’ll tell her?’ Then – ‘You’ll tell him about her?’

  The Professor says ‘I’ll tell anyone what they want to know.’

  And I am thinking – These wounds at my throat and wrist; they are where I have been trying to destroy myself: they are where I am now dangling, as it were, from a hook –

  The woman says ‘There was a film about two people who sat up all night talking about how to cover up for a girl.’

  The Professor says ‘It wasn’t in the film, it was in the book.’

  The woman says ‘I work in films.’

  The Professor says ‘Yes I know you do.’

  I am thinking – There are no noises now, are there, from the street below.

  The woman says ‘Do you sleep with her?’

  The Professor says ‘No of course I don’t sleep with her!’

  The woman says ‘Well you might do.’

&
nbsp; There are no more noises of any sort for some time. I think – On that beach, with the blue and silver hills, the faun and the brown dog – they are lovers?

  The Professor says ‘Can I sleep here?’

  The woman says ‘You mean, there’s only one other bed?’

  I think – There are people who are like this? They will go away when I open my eyes?

  When I did open my eyes I saw that the Professor was sitting at the edge of the bed and the woman with red hair had come and stood by him. She had her hand on his shoulder. He had put his arm around her.

  The Professor said ‘All states of grace are by-products.’

  The woman said ‘“With love from Judith!”’

  Part II

  Dear Professor,

  Do you think people write letters for them to be left lying about; so other people can bump into them?

  Then there will be sharp corners as well as threads as you go through the maze.

  When I first came to this place I did imagine, yes, that I had come to the inside of that painting: the estuary with the green and gold beach and the birds flopping down; the flowers like small trees and the trees like large flowers. But the faun and the brown dog, where were they? You had got me here: what was I to do: how was I to survive?

  The bus from the airport went as far as the town at the far side of the estuary and left me there. I was rowed across the water by an old man in a boat. The images sometimes go back to front: you are rowed away from hell, are you, as well as towards it. These boats were the easiest way to get to the Garden from the town. I am going to call this ashram the Garden because that is what most of the inmates called it at the time. This was partly a joke – as were so many things to do with the Garden. But did you not say – In order to return to the Garden of Eden you have to go right round the world and in at the back way?

  There was a track up to the Garden from the beach at the far side of the estuary. People were on either side of the track selling trinkets – metal jewellery, inlaid boxes, embroidery with beads. These people were mostly local; there were also a few from the Garden trying to raise money for their stay. Those who came to the Garden were Europeans and Americans and a few Japanese: they had travelled at least half-way round the world on their way through the maze.

  As I went up the track an Indian boy followed me. I thought I might say – But I am getting away from all this! do you not see the wounds at my hands and throat? The gates into the Garden were an elaborate wooden construction like the entrance to a Chinese pagoda: there was a high wire fence going off on either side. A small crowd, mostly of men, were hanging around outside the gates: they were smoking cigarettes among bicycles piled like dead flies. I learned later that there was no smoking of any kind allowed inside the Garden, so people went just outside to smoke, as if they were pickets or angels with tiny flaming swords.

  There was a road in front of the Garden at right angles to the track. I sat down on my rucksack at the opposite side of the road. The Indian boy came up to me. He said ‘Where are you from? England? Germany? America?’

  I thought I might say – But the wound in my throat, you see, means that I cannot speak to you.

  The men outside the gates wore white or yellow smocks and loose white trousers. They laughed, and put their arms round each other’s shoulders. They were like people congratulating each other about who had come through after some contest.

  The Indian boy said ‘I can offer accommodation, at a reasonable price, at the house of my uncle.’

  There was a woman standing just inside the gate looking out. She had a wide round face and short fair hair which gave an aura of light around her. She seemed somewhat larger than life. I thought – She is like that painting of the Madonna with all the children of the world under her skirts like chickens.

  The Indian boy said ‘There is no accommodation left in the Garden.’

  I had not known what I would find when I arrived at the Garden: I had not tried to imagine anything beyond the gates. I thought – How is it that you get within, and then do you ever get out of, the framework of a picture?

  The Indian boy said ‘You speak English?’

  I thought I might explain – People who talk to me are apt to die; to fall from windows; to have their heads chopped off.

  The woman standing just inside the entrance gates wore a long loose dress like the lines of a Greek statue. She held her arms straight by her sides. I thought – She is like one of those archaic statues who walk forwards with mad smiles on their faces: but she has stopped: she has come to the edge of the picture?

  I had for some time had this image of myself as the girl who had been caught, as it were, by some hook in her throat; lifted out of the tin can on to the beach – the images, as usual, became confused here – I was both the worm that had been placed on the hook and the prey that had swallowed the worm and had been landed. My insides were being drawn out; I would be lain where I could not breathe: God was the fisherman in thigh-length boots like a woman. Now there was this woman at the gates to the Garden at the opposite side of the road. She did not exactly look at me; she seemed to cast some line across the water. The light above the surface of the road shimmered. I thought – And I have swallowed whatever it was she has thrown – swallowed it perhaps all those days and weeks ago – and now I am being drawn in, I cannot go easily, what happens when you are caught? are you not born, as you said, kicking?

  I nodded and smiled at the Indian boy. I wanted this to mean – I will talk to you later: do you not believe that I will talk to you later?

  I went with my rucksack across the road to the gates of the Garden. The Indian boy watched me. When I reached the gates the woman did look at me, and smiled. There was the impression of becoming involved in another element – I suppose that of air, from having been in water. The woman had extraordinary bright-blue eyes – the blueness of the sky at the back of white clouds in a painting. I spoke to her, and asked if I could stay in the Garden. My words seemed to be unnecessary, as if my voice were some sort of crying. The woman continued to smile; she put her arms round my shoulders; I thought perhaps she did not understand English. I did not know quite what was happening to me; it was as if my mind were being lifted, so that I could look down. I suppose I was tired. I had been travelling a long time. The fair-haired woman and I went to a hut just inside the gates of the Garden; we sat on a bench with our backs against a wall. The woman kept her arm around me. We faced the sun. I thought – We are at the inside of the picture looking out.

  Beyond the framework there were the men in their white robes laughing and lounging by their bicycles; the Indian boy was on his own in the middle of the road, watching; it was as if I were seeing them beyond a transparent wall. I thought – That line, thrown out, was from an umbilicus? I have come home?

  A girl came out of the hut and knelt in front of me and started to tell me about arrangements. It was true there was no more accommodation available in the Garden, but there were huts just outside, and one could come in for the activities each day. There was such and such a timetable; the costs were this and that; arrangements might be made if one had no money. The woman who had welcomed me kept her arm round my shoulder; I thought – This is to do with that second picture in the National Gallery: Mary and the angel facing each other across a courtyard.

  Then – I will learn, in this strange world, how things begin again as if within a picture? And God, in this dimension, is a woman?

  The girl kneeling in front of me said ‘All right?’ I nodded.

  She went back into the hut. The older woman went on holding me: she put her head down against mine.

  I thought – But where is that bird; that finger coming down?

  For some time I had been conscious of a sound, of a voice, as if it were something blown on the wind: not the chatter of the men with their bicycles outside the gates: not the information of the girl who had knelt before me in the dust: but something almost not there, how could you distinguish it? it wa
s when you stopped trying to pick it out that you heard it; when you concentrated on it it went away. It seemed to be coming from somewhere deeper in the Garden. The woman who had her arm around me pulled her head back from mine. When I looked at her she had this golden face with very fine wrinkles like something containing heat: like salt, like something you could lick. She had white teeth with a slight gap between the front two as if it were the opening into a cave. She looked away from me in the direction from which the voice seemed to come. She stood up. She held my hand. I thought – You mean you do not speak: you listen; you are led? We walked along a path together.

  There were oleanders, and hibiscus, and tall eucalyptus trees like feathers. Within them or arising out of them, there was the roof or low dome of an enormous hall. The voice seemed to be coming from the area of this dome: as if the dome were some device for receiving and transmitting messages between stars. I could not at first make out the words that the voice was saying: it had a strange sibilance, as if making use of uncustomary frequencies of sound. The building had no walls: the roof was supported on thin pillars past which air blew: the voice fell from loudspeakers in the ceiling. There were figures seated or lying on the floor of the enormous hall: they were quite still: it was as if they had dropped there like seeds; as if it were being seen (or heard, since this was to do with the voice coming down) whether or not they had landed on fruitful ground.

  The woman who was with me smiled: she seemed to indicate that I should join the seated and lying figures. I sat with my back against a pillar on the edge of the floor of the hall. I wanted to ask the woman not to leave me: but I thought that when I needed her she would be there, or would have come back; this would be one of the attributes, I felt, of being inside a picture.

  I don’t know how much you know (you, who bump into these letters, these messages, on your way through the maze) about this commune thing, this ashram thing, this Garden thing: you who presumably (or why are you here?) have some interest in ways within the maze. What was known as the Garden was an ashram, or commune, set up on the shore of this hot sea: a thousand or so people lived and worked here; they tried to find, to build, to heal themselves; having come half-way round the world and in as it were at the back way. The maze was in their minds; they had become lost; what distinguished them from others was that they had known they were lost: if you do not know this, how can you know that you are in a maze? People who came to the Garden were like dogs or cats who had had tin cans tied to their tails; they had gone round and round; the tin cans were echoes from their past such as, perhaps, the sounds of bodies falling from windows. You chase your own tail until – what? – there are small circles in the dust that might be nothing; or they might be the faint marks that are made by wing-beats, or stones.