Dear Jason,
That’s why you wrote it like that? To say – You think if you say something can’t be said, you haven’t said it?
– What is a work of art if not a bomb that does not go off: a riddle at the centre of the maze?
In the spring of this year, in England, there were demonstrations at American airbases where missiles with nuclear warheads were deployed. The concern about these missiles coincided with a failure of communication about them: on the one hand it was supposed, reasonably, that the existence of such bombs made self-annihilation likely; on the other hand it was argued that their presence alone made large-scale war improbable. Each position could be defended with logic and with passion. The arguments did not touch, because they remained on different levels.
One level was to do with the effect of bombs: the other was to do with what might happen now there is knowledge about the effect of bombs.
Of course, you know all this. But you? We have been through the question of who it is to whom one is talking when one writes: it is oneself, and whatever face one might recognise in a maze.
When I arrived back in England this year (yes, when I came back after our second visit to the hotel by the sea) there were these demonstrations at the airbases where missiles were deployed; each side had become entrenched on its side of the wire: people know, do they not, where they are in time of war. They build shelters and defenceworks from words and arguments like old shell-cases: they do not pay much attention, except in so far as it enables them to remain entrenched where they are, to what is in fact happening on the other side of the wire.
I wanted to go to one of these demonstrations, to try to see as if into that box with the lid taken off. Also, I knew two or three of the people I cared about most in the world would be there.
When I got out at the local railway station there was one of those English streets like an illustration to a toy-town: a grocer’s and a butcher’s and a post-office and a policeman: all life-size: why are toys, dolls, sometimes sinister? They are all-of-a-piece: they are not looking at themselves? They are like those people taken over by Andromeda?
I had brought my bicycle with me on the train; I rode past the church and the hotel and the signposts on the village green. There is a theory, is there not, that if one travels no faster than the speed of one’s own power one remains in contact with – well – whatever there might be round some corner?
There was a long straight road through pine trees. It was like a stretch of water on which stones might skim. Do you know this part of East Anglia? (I mean, do you?) There was a time when this landscape was the most populated part of the country: it is the place where traces of earliest human habitation have been found. There was such poor soil that predatory animals could not survive here; so humans came here to be safe from predators and because they had learned how to be intelligent about soil. The earth contained flints: the humans dug out the flints with which they could kill whatever predators there were; also with flints they tilled the soil. Intelligence, I suppose, is to do with learning to take advantage of seeds that land on stony ground.
Later, when humans had established themselves as the most successful of all predators, this area became one of the least populated parts of the country: humans, taking advantage of destructiveness, had moved on to richer soil. Then later again, because the land was so empty, the airbases moved in. There was an irony here: the drive to extinction had made humans return to an area where human society began.
Of course, there is always the chance of such a return, and such irony, being the occasion of something further being learned. I mean – What might be the advantages of being able to have a look at the story of flints, and of destructiveness, and of good and bad soil?
I had a map which Bert had drawn for me which showed the road that went out past the church and the hotel and the signposts on the village green; then there were dotted lines to indicate distances in which nothing much occurred. In the top left-hand corner of the map there was a cherub with his cheeks blown out: in the bottom right-hand corner, as if it were some signature, there was what seemed to be a Virgin and child.
The road ran between pine trees. Cars skimmed past like stones. How is it that one stays upright on a bicycle, do you know? Is it just that as one moves one makes small horizontal adjustments to the front wheel – or is it to do with the nature of gravity?
Some miles out of the village with the railway station there was a track going off the road to the left. There was a notice at the side of this track saying NO THROUGH ROAD and PRIVATE. On Bert’s map there was the track and the notice and beyond it a drawing of what looked like Noah’s Ark. Outside the Ark there was a queue of five or six people. I tried to go on my bicycle down the track but the ground became too rutted. I thought – On a tightrope, you cannot make horizontal adjustments to the front wheel: you hold your arms out like wings to get in touch with gravity?
There were thin trees around me like antennae; like notations for music. I thought – Gravity is a music we do not hear?
The track through the wood led to a farm-type gate with a wire fence going off on either side. On the gate was a single strand of barbed wire and a notice saying BATTLE AREA KEEP OUT and beneath this a sign of the skull and crossbones. Beyond the gate was another notice saying DANGER OF UNEXPLODED BOMBS. There was a path going off to the right on the near side of the fence.
I should have explained (for you) that in addition to the airbases there had also moved into this landscape, because it was so empty, a battle-training ground for soldiers – a huge area, some thirty square miles. No one was allowed in here except, occasionally, soldiers to play their games – to get their tanks and guns out of the nursery toy-box. This battle-area was a short distance from the airbase where there was to be the demonstration: it was not used very often now; nursery games had become electronic and technological.
On Bert’s map there was the fence and the skull and crossbones, and an arrow pointing along the path going off to the right. Within the battle-area at the far side of the fence he had done a drawing of a mermaid with what looked like an olive-branch in her hand.
Some mutation, do you think, that might be at home here?
I walked with my bicycle along the path on the near side of the fence. Did you see that film (did you?) about a police state with a forbidden area into which individuals are not allowed to go; but they do go, at their peril, in order to find out something about themselves.
These images are in the mind. They are also in the area beyond the fence – other people having gone in there.
On Bert’s map the path along which I was pushing my bicycle came to a wall in which there was a doorway. The wall was one of three sides of a rectangle which enclosed a space in which Bert had drawn what seemed to be a tomb. There was a tree growing out of the tomb in the branches of which there was a bird. All this was at the very right-hand edge of the paper on which Bert had drawn his map. There was no fourth side to the rectangle containing the tree and the tomb because Bert’s pencil, or the hand he was making the drawing with, seemed to have fallen over the edge.
I had not been here before. You have not been here before?
In this strange landscape, one might fall into a different dimension?
The path along which I was walking dipped down towards a wall that was indeed like the wall in Bert’s map – at right-angles to the path and of the kind that might once have surrounded, for instance, the kitchen garden of some large country house: it was high and overgrown: it made an intrusion into the battle-area as if it were some lump under the skin. Set in the wall, at the end of the path, there was indeed a small door of a kind that there might be in fairy stories – where do they come from, these images; what do you do with them, where are they going? Beside the door there were notices saying PRIVATE and OUT OF BOUNDS TO TROOPS. I tried to work it out – This is a forbidden area within the forbidden area: so, of course (this is easy!), it is where one has to go?
I u
se ‘of course’ to mean – There are signs like these chalked on trees on one’s way through the maze.
The impression is of people watching you. You are in a story-book. There are cherubs on clouds.
Through the door there was indeed an area which must once have been a kitchen garden: there were high brick walls with ivy and dead fruit trees; nothing much lived now except nettles and grass. At the centre of this space there was, yes, a tomb. It was an elaborate tomb with pinnacles and spires like a model of a gothic chapel. There was an iron railing round it through which brambles were entwined.
You are conscious of the present: there are threads here and there to the future and the past.
A path had been trodden roughly from the doorway to this tomb: there was also a path from the doorway to a patch of cut and trampled grass by the end wall on the right. Within this clearing was an orange-and-blue tent. The front flaps of the tent were closed. In front of the tent were the remains of a fire and some pots and pans. There did not seem to be anyone in the area of the tent – nor indeed within the rectangle which contained the old kitchen garden and the tomb.
I propped my bicycle against the wall inside the door. What do you do where there are too many images: do you see beyond the walls of shadows: is the bright light of fusing, the sun?
I went to the space in front of the tent and put my rucksack on the ground and sat on it. I thought – Once, so many years ago, I sat on my rucksack and my old friend Lilith welcomed me from the gate of the Garden.
Hullo, hullo, all you images! all you people as if in a picture doing your own thing: you have become your own suns, your own shadows?
There was another pathway trampled from the tent to a door in the wall opposite the one through which I had come. This was the wall for which there had been no room on Bert’s map – where he, or his pencil, had fallen off the edge of the picture. There was no pathway cleared from this doorway to the tomb. I thought – But too much of this sort of thing becomes ridiculous.
You move here and there like a bird looking for land: sometimes you settle with an olive-branch in your mouth.
I want to say to you, Jason, now, before Bert arrives – Thank you for our time in the hotel by the sea!
Bert came in through the door in the wall opposite the one against which I had left my bicycle. He seemed taller and thinner. He began walking towards the tomb; he made scything movements with his feet as if to clear a pathway there. When he reached the railings he stood on tiptoe, as if he wanted to see over the top of, and into, the tomb. By the wall opposite there was my bicycle.
Bert appeared both more substantial and more frail. It was only a few months since I had last seen him. He had grown a small blond moustache. I thought – I did not want him to suffer! but he is like someone now at home from, having come to terms with, the First World War.
Then – How could I ever have thought he might be like Desmond!
I might say – Hullo –
– Hullo –
– I wondered if you remembered me? –
I suppose he saw my bicycle. He lowered his head, and stood like some guardian of the tomb.
I could say – You did ask me to come here!
He could say – But that was some time ago –
– and you have been in another country.
There is that ballet, do you know it, in which people sit, and stand, and move across the stage, and just come to rest perhaps against a ruined pillar: the music is the slow movement of a symphony: the dancers seem to be trying to do just what would show honour to the music. Bert left the tomb and came towards me through the long grass. There is an effect that you can get in a film of someone walking through grass as if on water.
He said ‘Hullo.’
I said ‘Hullo.’
He said as if he did not now mind what might hurt him ‘Did you have a nice time?’
I said ‘Yes, it was quite nice, thank you.’
He stretched out a hand and put a finger on my forehead. I thought – Why do people when they cannot think of anything else to do, put a finger on my forehead?
He said ‘You found your way.’
I said ‘Yes, thank you for the map.’
He said ‘Da da di dum dum; da da di da.’
I said ‘I’m sorry.’
I thought – Because I have the mark of Cain? Then – But Cain needed comfort!
Bert kneeled and undid the flap of the tent. Inside there were a groundsheet and a sleeping-bag and one or two blankets. There was also a jumble of cameras and film equipment.
I said ‘Tell me what’s happened.’
He said ‘About this or that?’
I said ‘Both.’
Bert crawled inside the tent. He was like one of those elephants going into that cave to get minerals, to get comfort, do you remember?
He said ‘Well, there’s this demonstration, as you know.’
I said ‘Yes.’
He said ‘They’ll be at the airbase tomorrow.’
I said ‘What are they going to do?’
I thought – There is a fence between us as we talk, like the one around the airbase.
He said ‘They’ve been doing this sort of thing for years, as you know. The more they demonstrate, the more the other side feels at home. You knock a ball over a net: if the other side isn’t there, you haven’t got a game.’
He was rearranging the film equipment inside the tent; pushing it to one side, spreading out the groundsheet as if to make a larger bed.
He said ‘It’s like the Western Front in the First World War. Everyone’s dug in. There’s a women’s camp outside the fence. Every now and then they expose their breasts to the men inside the fence, and the men inside expose their arses.’
I said ‘But nothing happens.’
He said ‘But nothing happens.’
I said ‘Except a bomb may go off.’
He said ‘Except a bomb may go off.’
When he crawled out of the tent he would not look at me. I thought – All right, why not kick me: drag me around the stage.
Then – We are trying to build, or break down, with our talk, a fence like the one around the airbase?
He said ‘Lilia took an overdose, did you know?’
I said ‘Yes.’
He said ‘I suppose she wanted to do more than make a protest: about you and Jason: set a small sort of bomb off.’
I thought – You mean, this was a valid form of protest of Lilia’s? Some sort of bomb may have to go off?
He took my rucksack and carried it into the tent.
I thought – You think you need not even ask me whether or not I will stay?
He said ‘I wrote an article for their magazine – I mean, the magazine of the women outside the airbase. I said it was no good simply to go on demonstrating: this only encourages those within. I said that if they were to get anything of what they wanted, then some sort of bomb would have to go off. Then people would experience reality, and not just be reinforcing themselves with words. It is words and gestures that are counter-productive.’
He lay on his back inside the tent with his hands behind his head. I thought – Well, what happens now: you think we have grown up, do you, Holofernes?
I said ‘And did they publish it?’
He said ‘No.’
I thought – So you are not responsible.
Or – But you know, don’t you, that I feel responsible for myself!
He put his hand on the sleeping-bag beside him as if inviting me to join him.
He said ‘I told them the exact time and place – the sort of bomb that should go off. I mean not a big bomb, which they couldn’t get anyway; but an old-fashioned bomb, with some radioactive material around it.’
I thought – This is mad. But you have said, haven’t you, that words are counter-productive?
He said ‘I told them there was this Easter demonstration at the American airbase and that just next door there was this enormous battle-area where no one ever
comes. I mean, no one anyway would be here on Easter Saturday. I said they could let the bomb off here. Then people could see what it was like; but no one much would be hurt, except possibly military men, who like practising this sort of thing anyway.’
I said ‘But you made it clear it was a joke.’
He said ‘Yes, but what is a joke.’
I said ‘Exactly.’
I thought – You mean, might not some old god have quite often behaved like this?
He said ‘And now they’re said to have got hold of some radioactive material.’
I said ‘Who are said to have got hold of some radioactive material?’
He said ‘I don’t know.’
I thought – You mean you don’t know, or you won’t tell me?
He said ‘Of course, they might just be saying it.’
I said ‘Yes, they might just be saying it.’ Then – ‘But then that would be counter-productive.’
He said ‘Yes, that would be counter-productive.’
I thought I might crawl into the tent and put my head on his knee.
Behind me was the long grass, the tomb, the walls on which fruit trees had once grown.
I wondered – Why did you draw the tree growing out of the tomb?
He said ‘The whole thing is ridiculous.’
I thought I might say – Yes, the whole thing is ridiculous.
I said ‘But you mean, even if people did explode such a bomb, they wouldn’t be able to control it?’
He said ‘Yes, they might not be able to control it.’
I said ‘But that, presumably, would be part of what you were trying to show.’
He said ‘Yes, that would be part of what one was trying to show.’
I crawled into the tent and put my head against his knee. He was trembling slightly. I thought – If he were pretending to tremble, it would not be so effective?
I said ‘And how is Lilia now?’
He said ‘She’s all right.’
I said ‘And the child?’
He said ‘All right.’
I said ‘You think you should not even have put the idea into words?’
He said ‘I am not saying what anyone should or should not have done.’
Judith Page 22
