The Only Poet

by Rebecca West

  ‘But it is not going to be easy,’ said Egon.

  ‘It is not going to be easy or difficult,’ said Nils. ‘It is going to be not so much the thing one does as the thing that life does to one.’

  But Elisaveta found the winter after the coming of the Nazis easier to endure than the one before. She no longer felt so empty for lack of David. It was more as if she were working her way to him. Materially, of course, life in Copenhagen was hard enough. As one who had polluted her race by marriage to a Jew, she could not see many of her friends. Old Sven, she knew, was actually frightened lest she come to see him, though he sent her loving messages. By the invention of new taxes and by levies for special purposes the Nazis took possession of the better part of every citizen’s income; and this looting was carried out more thoroughly when the citizen was Jewish. She had not been extravagant, and had taken her manager’s advice about investments, and consequently had fancied she would never be in want, but she would have gone hungry now if she had not been able to eat with Egon and Nils whenever she needed.

  She was able to help herself by going around to the few Jewish households in the city and giving the children, who were now debarred from all but a single unsanitary school, lessons in foreign languages and elocution. That pleased her. The Jewish parents felt an inordinate concern because their children’s education had been interrupted, and when she listened to their complaints she was reminded of David’s intellectual greed. What with these lessons she had not much time on her hands.

  Egon and Nils were still allowed to live in their houses, though their defiance of the invaders was uncompromising, but most of their servants, except the very old ones, who were now in a state of collapse, had been taken away to wait on German officers in their billets; so Elisaveta could be of real service to her two friends by sometimes helping the old women with the cooking and mending.

  The great physical discomfort was cold, of course, because the Germans had taken all the fuel, but everybody was suffering that alike, and one did not feel that one was being cold because people did not like one enough to share their warmth with one.

  Elisaveta might almost have described herself as happy with this new, narrow, and impoverished, but glorious way of living, had she been sure that it was going either to continue until the English won, which she thought unlikely, or to end in the simultaneous annihilation of herself and her friends. But Egon and Nils denounced the invaders and their doings not to their fellow townsmen, whom they refused to involve in their activities, but to the Nazi officials and German officers.

  They constantly visited the law courts where townsmen were being tried for offences against the invaders and afterwards they made protests to the authorities and plagued the tax collectors with complaints against irregularities. Indeed, whatever was left of legality in the country they fearlessly exploited. On days that had been kept as national festivals they went through the streets carrying flowers which they laid before the statues of great men which the city had taken pride in placing in its most beautiful squares and esplanades.

  It was said that the Germans had not imprisoned Egon and Nils because of their great reputation in the United States; but it seemed certain that that slight strand of consideration would presently break under the strain they both put on it. Elisaveta did not know how she would be able to go on if the Nazis took Egon and Nils as they had taken David. Nor did she know how she would be able to go on if she saw any more horrible things. Once she started to cross the Clocktower Square on her way to a Jewish pupil and, noticing the upward stare of horror on the faces of the people about her, followed it with her own eyes to its sources, and saw six young men hanging from electric standards.

  Thereafter she went about the city carefully, watching the people in front of her as she came to any public place, in case they came to a sudden halt. But one Sunday morning she forgot her carefulness. She was hurrying down to Egon’s house to help Johanna cook a goose which some peasant had smuggled down to the city under his coat as a gift to the man who, as was known all over the country, was keeping the habit of its freedom alive. Egon had asked some of his friends to share it, and Nils was going to send along some of the last of his French wine. Wrapped in a big cloak she had once worn in a historical play and bought afterwards because it was so becoming, she turned the corner of the quay where Egon and Nils lived, with her head down, butting the February winds. She was thinking what good things they would be able to cook for days to come with the goose fat, when she heard a yelled word of command, raised her eyes, and had just time to cover her ears against the sound of the shots. Ten young men, some of them blindfolded, were standing at the end of the quay, where the little light tower was. At the other was a party of soldiers with raised rifles. The ten young men all fell forward on their faces. Near her was another crowd of young men, surrounded by soldiers, who prodded them with bayonets to make them look at the ten figures lying face downwards on the cobbles. She ran to Egon’s house and brought the knocker down rattling on the door until Johanna opened it.

  They sat together, the two women, talking about how they should cook the goose, in the great airy kitchen, which looked out on a little garden where in summertime tall roses bloomed between the dark savoury kitchen herbs. Now the roses were sticks tied up in sacking, and the herbs were stumps level with the ground, and a light miserable snow was falling.

  Suddenly old Johanna burst into tears. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Elisaveta, ‘it was terrible, it was terrible; however, one must go on.’

  When the goose was in the oven Elisaveta went up into Egon’s study. It was right at the top of the tall house, just below the attics. He was sitting at the window, looking out at the angry sea and the distant pine-black islands. His desk was littered with sheets of manuscript covered with unfinished paragraphs, thrown down in a disorder usually alien to him, and when he greeted her he was careful not to turn his face towards her. She went and stood beside him, looking out at the dark skies and the darker waters.

  ‘Did you see it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I walked straight into it. Why was it done? Who were they?’

  ‘Just ten young men of all sorts who had not seemed amenable,’ he answered. ‘The beasts read out their offences, but it was all very vague. I didn’t recognize them all. There was the son of an orchestra conductor, and the son of the Greek professor up at the University, and Dr Brand’s son, and the boy who used to serve ice-cream sodas in the pastry cook’s by the Cathedral. And there was old Sven’s nephew.’

  ‘Oh, poor old Sven!’ she wept. ‘But, Egon, such children!’

  ‘Such children,’ he agreed. It came back to her, what she had seen: the ten bodies lying lumpishly like amateur actors practising a fall, on the familiar, pretty cobbles, the crowd of boys looking at their dead comrades with eyes that did not dare grow bright with rage and pride, that were like the eyes of defeated old men.

  ‘Do you mind if I cry?’ she asked Egon.

  ‘I am crying,’ he said.

  They sat silent for a time.

  ‘I am trying to think out something that Nils and I are going to write together,’ he told her. ‘Something in quite a new style for us. Much more concentrated, much more impressive. It will have to tell stupid and wicked people what their stupidity and wickedness are, in quite a few words.’

  ‘It is to be about this?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, be careful,’ she mourned, ‘be careful!’

  ‘We are being careful to do what we must do at the right time for the sake of our city,’ he said.

  It was in her mind to cry out, ‘But then what will become of me?’ That would have been, however, wholly disgraceful.

  ‘I hope’, he said, ‘you have not brought trouble on yourself by associating with us. You must certainly not come near us tomorrow or the day after.’

  They were silent for a moment, and then he muttered a phrase, repeated it, repeated it again, and then broke off with an ex
clamation of annoyance. ‘It won’t do,’ he said. ‘It’s not the sort of thing I’m used to doing, and, anyway, it’s very difficult in our language. It would be easier in English or in French.’

  ‘I do so admire you for knowing what you want to say,’ she said. ‘To be so certain of what should be said you must see quite clearly the meaning of this event, how it fits into the scheme of the universe. That’s what I don’t know, and I feel lost for want of knowledge.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand you,’ he said. ‘Whatever Nils and I know, you know it better. There’s nobody with greater moral sensitiveness than yourself. I can’t imagine you doing a dishonourable or cruel action.’

  ‘You speak too well of me,’ she said, ‘and, anyway, I am not the keeper of my own conscience. My father and my mother taught me that certain things were wrong, and I have always feared to do them and feared the people who did them. Also the other way of behaving is more happy and cheerful. There is really no choice between them for a sensible person. But, indeed, there I often fail. You would be surprised if you knew how horrid I am. But this is not what I mean. You have some knowledge about the universe which I have not got. That is shown by the fact that you are going to write something about what they did to the boys on the quay this morning which is going to explain it to people, which is going to move them to do something. I wish you would tell me what it is.’ Her tears broke out, but she spoke through them. ‘Because it would make me able to bear what happened to those ten boys, it would make me able to bear what happened to David. You must tell me, Egon, because I cannot go on like this, seeing evil lording it everywhere, seeing good and wise and pleasant people done to death. What does it mean? Why is God doing this to us?’

  Egon said slowly, his eyes looking far out to sea, ‘The problem isn’t easy to formulate, but one knows where one is, I think. There are certain things in life which are beautiful. If there is a God they would please Him. If there is no God they would still represent ultimate values. That is proved by our assumption that they would please Him, for if He does not exist He is the embodiment of our dreams of what is highest. So one must give one’s life to preserving these values, to letting love, and justice, and truth have their way with men.’

  She twisted her fingers in and out, acting her perplexity. ‘But the boys on the quay were innocent.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘But they are dead. Nothing will make them live again. What is there in existence that makes that right?’

  ‘We must pit ourselves against those who killed them.’

  ‘But that will not give them back their lives. It won’t bring David home to me.’

  ‘If there is a God,’ said Egon, ‘then we shall all of us live again, and you shall be reunited with David. If there is not a God, then it will still be well with us. It is well with the boys on the quay because they died on the side of virtue. It will be well with you and me and Nils because we too kept our integrity. You must try to remember, Elisaveta, that defeat such as Europe has suffered at the hands of the Nazis is not of real importance. You cannot reverse the meaning of an abstract noun by an event on the material plane. Love and justice and truth remain what they were before Hitler came to power, and we are participants in their unchangeable glory. Forgive me’, he added shyly, ‘if I sound priggish, but I am a writer of comedies and it is not my trade to write expressions of faith. But that, my dear, is what I believe.’

  ‘It is a very beautiful belief,’ said Elisaveta. She crossed her knees and swung her foot backwards and forwards, staring at it. It came into her head how much she had disliked Rome. She had liked the country outside it, she had enjoyed eating at wayside inns under vine pergolas and going to see the waterfall at Tivoli; but she had hated those great columns which were everywhere, either lying about on the ground or standing up in quite insufficient numbers to make a comfortable building. She saw love and justice and truth as just such columns.

  ‘You have comforted me greatly, Egon,’ she said. But the feeling of bleakness in her bosom was so absolute that she got to her feet, anxious to go somewhere where she need not think of this desolate faith and see the dreary winter sea. ‘I must go down and baste the goose now.’

  She would have been glad if Johanna had wanted her help; but the old woman was querulous and asked it to be remembered by all parties concerned that she had been cooking geese long before anybody else in the house was born. So Elisaveta wandered into the great sitting-room on the ground floor, where the ships were, and the pictures of great sailors and their wives. There the table had been laid for the lunch-party, and at the sight of the gleaming table silver, it occurred to her that the rest of the silver in the room, the candlesticks and the French winetasters which were used as ashtrays, was less bright. So she went to Johanna and asked if she should polish it, and Johanna said that she might, so she sat down by the fire, which was larger than usual, for Egon and Nils had been saving up their fuel for the party, with a candlestick on her lap and a soft cloth in her hand and a saucer full of polish. She was busy rubbing away and crying her eyes out when Nils came in with a basketful of decanters in each hand.

  He set them carefully down on the floor and went over to her and knelt before her. When she covered her wet face with her hands he took them in his own and made her look at him.

  ‘Were you thinking of David?’ he asked. ‘Or of what happened today?’

  ‘Of neither,’ she sobbed, ‘of the world. Of life. Oh, Nils, it is all so dreary.’

  ‘So dreary?’ he repeated. ‘Do you mean what we are going through, the lack of food, the darkness, the cold, those brutes? Dear heart, it will not last for ever.’

  ‘That is not the point,’ she cried, ‘for even if it goes, even if it does not come back in our lifetime, it will come back some time. History is full of suffering. And I have asked Egon what it all means, and he tells me it has no meaning except that love and justice and truth are beautiful things, and that we must serve them always, and that if there is a God, He will let us into heaven as a reward for our service, and if there is not we will have the satisfaction of having done the right thing. And it is so dreary. It is like going to school for ever. Nils, it is so dreary!’ She put down the candlestick on the floor and wept into the crook of his arm.

  ‘Hush,’ said Nils, ‘hush. That is what Egon thinks; and it has taken him a long way. There is obviously much in his creed, because the way it has taken him is all in the opposite direction from barbarism. But I do not think like Egon.’

  She drew back from him and looked into his face. ‘What is your belief?’

  He was disconcerted. ‘My belief,’ he said, ‘my belief … why, Elisaveta, it is written behind all my plays, as yours was written behind all your performances. I do not know how to put it into words directly. But I must try …’ Abruptly he lifted her out of the chair and held her by the shoulders, facing him. ‘Run away and put on your cloak. There’s no use merely talking about these things. They must be made visible. We of the theatre know that. I’ll take you somewhere where you’ll see what I mean. I intended to go there anyhow, and finding you has made me forget it. Hurry, or we will be late.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked in the hall, as he wrapped the cloak around her.

  ‘If I told you,’ he said, ‘it would not be true, the words would give you a false picture of what we are about to do.’

  The day was so harsh that when they got outside the door they ducked as if they had been shot at, and Elisaveta moaned. But he said, ‘It is not far,’ and he took her up one of the steep alleys leading off the quayside.

  ‘But this only leads to the St Sebastian Place,’ she said, ‘and there is nothing there but the church.’

  ‘Trust me, trust me,’ he said, ‘and hurry, hurry, we must hurry.’ When they came to the square he guided her straight across it to the church, but she hung back.

  ‘But surely we are not going to church. I cannot go to church, I am an unbeliever, I have not been to a service f
or many years.’

  But he said, ‘Hurry, hurry, this is such a service as there has never been before, and as for unbelief, there is more to be said on that subject than we used to think.’

  And indeed the old red church, which was not large but very noble, having been built at the time when the fishermen were simple yet rich, held such a gathering as she could not have conceived coming together in real life. All the people in the village were listening to the service, all the people she had known for many years, and they all looked changed as by a long illness. She could not have imagined such a uniformity of appearance save as the result of make-up under common instructions. Yet they did not look weak. On the contrary, a strong pulse seemed beating through them, and in the eyes they turned to the altar there was a fervour as if there was great acting about, and they were all exalted by it, as often happens in a theatre when a genius is playing. But it was not the pastor who was that genius, for he was in the same state as his flock, and had he been among them he would have been undistinguishable from them. He, like they, seemed astonished by the words of the service as they left his mouth. They seemed to linger in the air before him that spoke them and those that listened to them, like the spray that rises from a great waterfall and hovers as if considering the greatness of the leap and slowly rejoins the stream below.

  Elisaveta did not wonder why this talk of God and man and giving His only son should have moved her deeply, for it had nothing to do with her troubles; it was impossible to work out from it any way of regarding what had happened to David as anything but an undeserved suffering. But sometimes a play whose total effect was true was made up of lines that, taken by themselves, carried no great significance. Certainly the total effect of the service was true. As she stood among the pale and anguished but not passive people she felt her courage like an eagle in her breast, she felt herself capable of going on tunnelling until the earth crumbled and she was with David.