The Book Against God

by James Wood

  “Did that bother you?” I said, looking at both of my parents.

  “What?” said my father.

  “That she mentioned all faiths rather than one faith?” I saw that Mother was about to say something, but Peter broke in:

  “Why would it?”

  “Well, because one of her job titles is ‘Defender of the Faith.’ The faith. Anglicanism. She can hardly defend all faiths. And in fact, by definition, ‘all faiths’ cannot be defended by anyone.”

  “Oh, those other faiths can look after themselves pretty well, said Father very amiably, and I knew that he was refusing to take my challenge, which I had intended less as a strike against the queen than against the notion of many competing faiths. Peter, of course, wanted the last word. Looking around at Karl and Jane he said:

  “You know the old joke about the Catholic who wished that the papal encyclical had been entitled Cum grano salis, ‘with a grain of salt’? I take the queen’s religious pronouncements, such as they are, cum grano maximo salis.” He looked at me with what I felt was arrogant finality, and added: “So should you.” I felt Jane, tense, pressing against my leg, saw my mother with her head lowered, her customary position when my father and I were stalking each other like this, and I let it drop.

  That evening, Jane and I quarrelled in our bedroom. I can’t remember how it started. I do remember—I can see her in my mind—that she was wearing expensive sky-blue Jermyn Street pyjamas (bought by me as a gift), and reading Berlioz’s Memoirs. At some moment I accused her of having stopped communicating with me.

  “You don’t think it could possibly be the other way around?” said Jane.

  “No, I don’t,” I said firmly. “What do you think you do all day at the piano? Speak to me by vibration?”

  “Why do you imagine I stay so long at the piano? Because at least the piano speaks back to me. At least I get a sound.”

  “That isn’t fair, Janey. I long for you to come in to the kitchen or the bedroom and interrupt my reading and stop that damn practising. Every day I listen for that music to stop, so you might be on your way down the corridor. But it never stops, you go on and on.”

  “That ‘damn practising,’ as you put it, is everything to me, more than life!” said Jane with disdain. “And it pays our bills. You want me to come and minister to you. Never the other way around. It never crosses your mind that I might be lonely at the piano, that music is everything to me except that it is not my husband! When have you ever come through to interrupt me, when did you last ask me about a piece I was playing? And yet I have to buzz around you, I have to calm your anxieties, and deal with your family, and tell you that, yes, you can do your Ph.D., yes, you can continue with your stupid nonsense book about God, which will never be finished.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Tom, I didn’t mean that. I can’t always help you, Tommy. I won’t be able to do that. I need your help, too, I can’t be the single strength doing double time for us, paying the bills and keeping the household in order and earning the salary, and replacing the toilet paper and thinking responsibly while you think irresponsibly. Do you even notice me? Do you even realize that money is finite? When did you last go shopping for anything? I mean, for groceries, not for expensive shoes. You know, I stand by the side of the washing machine holding one of your shirts and I think: What does he do for me? What does he do?”

  We lay on our backs, and I took Jane’s hand. There was a long silence. I thought that it might repair our intimacy if I confided in Jane, and so I told her that in the last few months I had been doing very little work on the Ph.D. and had instead been writing entries in my Book Against God. To my great surprise, perhaps tired from arguing, she was sympathetic, kindly even, and suggested that perhaps I could turn the BAG into something publishable and academically respectable. I think, now that I look back at that time, that Jane was protecting herself by refusing to become too involved in my wreckage. I can’t say that she already knew what would happen, that she knew she would leave me. But she had her own important work, and she wasn’t going to allow her concentration to be invaded, and so she refused to be drawn in too deeply, saying that of course she had “known all along” that I hadn’t been doing my work (she was almost certainly lying, but I let it pass), that it was no surprise to her—and clearly, she said, I would get on with my thesis when I really wanted to, or had to.

  This was a clever strategy on her part, because it forced me to become angry with myself, forced me to become the one disappointed with myself rather than let others become disappointed on my behalf. Jane forced me to reply to her that I did really want to get on with my work, that I really had to finish it, that now was the time, and if I could not finish it in the next few months I might as well abandon it, abandon teaching and consider another kind of employment. But again, Jane refused to be drawn; she had heard all this before. She merely replied that she believed me, believed in me.

  Lulled by her softness, I decided that this was the moment to discuss the previous night, and the question of children. Could I tell her the truth? Could I? I suppose that I wanted Jane to be sorry for me, I wanted her to bring me round to the idea of children, or to say that she, too, had her worries and doubts, but that together we could manage it. Something to reassure me. So I began.

  “Do you worry about having children?” I asked her.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you fear it?”

  “Yes, I have fears about us, about how we are.”

  “Is this a metaphysical fear? By ‘us’ you mean me,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you mean by that phrase, ‘metaphysical fear.’ I mean that the responsibility frightens me, and it certainly ought to frighten you.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “It doesn’t frighten me. A child simply needs love and an absence of religion, and all will be well—to paraphrase Schopenhauer.”

  “Well, you can get Schopenhauer to breast-feed it then, and bathe it, and rock it to sleep.”

  “You leave it to me,” I said, ironically, and gave Jane a smiling sidelong glance.

  “I’d rather not, actually,” she said, and she smiled, too.

  It was now quite late. It had rained all evening, and had apparently just stopped; in exchange there was a liquid silence beyond the bedroom window. I felt tired, and very weak suddenly.

  “Janey, I have something to confess.” Jane was still.

  “When don’t you?” she murmured.

  “Haven’t we sort of drifted into trying to have a child?”

  “No, Tom, if you remember we had long talks about this. And by the way, ‘trying to have a child’ is overdoing it. We’ve had sex successfully, at the optimal time, about three times in the last year. Not trying to have a child might be better.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Tom, darling, is this your confession? Do you think I’m so thick that I don’t realize what your impotence has been about? I know you quite well! I know that, of all people, you would be anxious about having a child, and perhaps more than anxious—afraid, hesitant. If you could, you would put off every major adult responsibility forever. Unfortunately, this is one of those areas in which you are temporarily indispensable.”

  “So you’ve already intuited what I’m going to say.”

  “Well, darling, I don’t know exactly what that is.”

  “I have a kind of horror at the thought of bringing a child into the world.”

  “Oh, grow up. Please, Tommy.”

  “And I have been sabotaging your attempts to conceive.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous. Sabotage is a big word for something you haven’t been able to control. And what about last night, anyway? It went fine.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I said.

  “Trying to tell me?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that it didn’t go fine.”

  “Tom, you’ve utterly lost me.”

  “Last night
didn’t go fine,” I said, sluggish in deceit, incapable of progressing beyond this foolish dance of repetitions.

  “How, how?”

  “Janey, it didn’t go fine—are you forcing me to say the words?”

  “Yes, because I can’t follow you.”

  “Last night, I lied to you when I said that I had come. I withheld, I held it back—”

  I could not speak. Slowly Jane went rigid, and turned to look at me. I turned away. “Oh Tom, you aren’t saying … you aren’t saying that last night, that—look at me! So I was right when I asked you if you had come? … What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m trying to be honest with you,” I said. “I have a problem about the idea of a child.” I went to embrace her, and she shook me off.

  “Trying to be honest! You disgust me,” she said quietly and slowly. “I have to go now, I can’t stay.”

  “You can’t go, it’s the middle of the night, and we’re here for two more days.”

  “I have to go now, don’t you dare hold me back, I’m going now.” She got out of bed and began putting on her clothes and saying again and again, as if reciting a mantra, “You don’t exist, you don’t exist, you don’t exist.”

  “Stop saying that! You can’t leave,” I said. “What will I tell my parents?”

  “Let me out of this house now. Let me out. I don’t know you, you don’t exist, you disgust me.”

  She sat down on the bed. The excitement diminished. “All right, I can’t go now. This is the favour I will do to your parents. I will go tomorrow, though. It’s up to you to come up with the appropriate lie for your parents. You’ve had lots of experience.” Jane continued to sit on the bed.

  “Why do you have to get away?” I asked, after a minute’s silence.

  “I can’t breathe in your presence.”

  “Well, if that’s your way of saying that you have been very peculiar and heartless with me since September, it’s pretty feeble. Can’t breathe! What is that?”

  “Tom, you fool, don’t you see that it isn’t working? Jesus, Max can see this but my own husband can’t.”

  “Max—Max?”

  “Yes, Max can see it. Max took pity on me. He could see that I was totally neglected.”

  “This is news! Took pity? What the hell does that mean? When did he take pity?”

  “Tom,” said Jane. She stuck her chin out at me. “Calm down. Yes, if you want to know, I think Max is actually in love with me, though he’s only hinted at it, and very obliquely.”

  “What do you mean by ‘took pity’?”

  “In September, when you were up here, Max and I had a drink in London, and we talked a bit about you and me. That’s all. I found him very sympathetic. That’s all,” repeated Jane, as she saw me staring at her.

  “September, September. I see, everything makes sense now. And don’t tell me, you are really in love with Max. You probably took pity on him.”

  “Don’t insult me. I can tell you with absolute truthfulness—which is more than you can ever muster—that I have never, ever found him attractive. And in case you didn’t notice Fiona yesterday, Max is very happily involved with someone at the moment.”

  “Oh Christ, why are we even talking about Max! Max has nothing to do with this!” I shouted.

  “Keep your voice down. I agree with you. I just said that your best friend is more perceptive than you are.”

  “Why do you think Max loves you?”

  “I just do. Certain hints. In September he said something rather awkward, which I shan’t share with you. I just have a certain sense.”

  “Which means, really, that you must love him.”

  “It does not. If you insist on inverting everything, then I’m sure you can prove that black is white and that you play the piano and I am a philosopher. Give me at least my honesty. If I say I don’t love Max, do me the honour, give me the respect, of believing me.”

  “All right,” I said grudgingly. “But you … can’t breathe with me around.”

  “Not at the moment, no. Don’t you see that your lies are repulsive to me. And this lie.” As Jane spoke, she waved her hand across the bed, as if “this lie” were located there. “I can’t even begin to think about what you are trying to do to our marriage with this lie. You must be trying to end our marriage. It’s the only possible conclusion. You are killing our baby.”

  “Of course I’m not. Don’t be hysterical. I can’t defend my action. I don’t know why I did it. But for once, I’m trying to be honest with you. Give me some credit for that.”

  “Credit—so if you are honest with me now, that somehow absolves you of the disgusting lie you are being honest about? I don’t think so. It is repellent to me. I have to be alone, I have to be without you for a while. I don’t trust you. You’ve thrown my trust into the bin.”

  The next day I told my parents that Jane had to get back to London to meet someone about a possible future concert. They were very disappointed and in return I said that I would stay up there a little longer. After lunch, Jane got into our car and calmly reversed (she has always been a methodical, safe driver). The car bristled away over the gravel—that luxurious substance that bears no impress, retains no memory of wear.

  22

  I DIDN’T STAY a few days. I stayed a few months at the vicarage, and I can’t really say why. Was it some ancient instinct, some internal forewarning? Practically, the reason is that I had nowhere to go. Jane said that she didn’t want me to return to Islington, and she owns the flat. She needed to be apart from me, she said. At first we spoke every night on the phone. I apologized repeatedly for my many lies. What hurt me most was not Jane’s anger, but the sense I had that she was glad to have expunged me from her daily business. I kept on returning to the idea of Max, calmly, slowly, patiently analyzing our marital situation in some winebar in Islington. And after the drink, what happened then? What was the “awkward” declaration he made to Jane? Where did Jane and Max go after this awkwardness? To our flat? In my heart, I knew that Jane was telling the truth. She was not attracted to Max, and Max was far too decent, whatever his secret feelings, ever to act on them, at least as long as I was married. But in my need to work up a case against her, I tormented myself with the painful fantasy that perhaps Jane was not telling the truth, that something more than a sympathetic drink and a rushed awkwardness had taken place. She, for her part, told me that she had been “horribly hurt” by my action on Christmas Eve, and that the “wound” would take a long time to heal.

  But after two weeks or so alone, she seemed refreshed by London, or so it seemed to my suspicious ears, and cured by distance from me. She was almost jovial. One evening she said:

  “God, Tom, you’d be no use in a war.” And I, mockruefully, said:

  “No use at all? Not to anyone? What would I do in a war?”

  “You’d steal bread for the underground resistance. You’d be a thief!”

  After a month apart, we stopped speaking regularly. I found myself in easier spirits when not talking to Jane. My parents, unlike her, did not make me feel guilty for my poverty and my inability to earn anything. Once Christmas was over and Karl had left, I began to do some good work on the BAG, continuing the account I had started of my childhood. As on paper so in reality: wifeless, I fell back into the old rhythms and dependencies of childhood. I moved from the guest bedroom to my old bedroom, and slept soundly in my single childhood bed, whose ropy innards now felt like the smoothest suspension. In the morning I stayed in bed reading (and once heard my father downstairs complain, “Ridiculous—it’s like having a bally invalid in the house”) and in the afternoon I worked on the BAG and then went for walks. In the evenings I looked into The Stag’s Head. I like the atmosphere. In winter there was a cheery, jumpy fire in the grate, and the air seemed to be so dropleted with alcohol that at any moment a spark might explode the room, which was usually amazingly quiet. Terry Upsher was there quite often, and I longed to ask him what he had meant when he had said that God had not d
one his father any good, but even Terry was silent in the pub, as if slightly awed, and I obeyed his silence. I sat at my table, felt the greasy, time-waxed wood under my fingers, and watched my cardboard beermat, softened by the wet glass, slowly surrender its integrity—like that of the humans in the room. Mr. Deddum stood behind his tall ale-levers, which now, to my adult, jaundiced eyes, looked less like toy soldiers than poles carved in the shape of women, with long slender necks and bottle waists and the little crescendos of the hips.

  For a while I went every day to The Stag’s Head, and spent quiet afternoons reading my philosophical heroes while Mr. Deddum’s black labrador, Pin, lay at my feet sleeping. Her long gentle snout, the mouth closed raggedly as if loosely sewn, rested against my shoe. And I joined the simple, pastoral rhythms of my parents’ lives. I heard them rise in the morning—Father first, promptly; Mother next, driftingly; I heard them chime plates and mugs at breakfast. Father went out on his “rounds,” and then there was lunch, and Mother went in the car to get groceries, and Father retired to his study. As Jane’s piano had driven me out of the house, so now the silence of those afternoons drove me out. That silence was terrible, as if everyone had died. Father sat in his room, and I sat in mine, and I felt stunned by our wordless proximity. The pressure was intolerable. That is when I would go walking, have a drink or two, and often come back to find Father listening to Elgar, and Mother reading in the sitting room. And then began the slow protocols of evening. Supper always seemed to amble into life, the bowls and plates appearing gradually on the table. Before supper, the radio was turned on for the news—how well I remember Peter standing next to the radio, his right hand on the kitchen counter, his handsome bald head held down, forlorn and solemn as if he were being rebuked by world events, while a cigarette trivially fumed in his fallen left hand.