The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

  Now he had closed his book and was thinking about his singing teacher, Mr Hanway. Emma and Mr Hanway had been together for several years, but their relations had remained formal. Emma called Mr Hanway ‘Sir’, never by his first name which was Neil, and Mr Hanway called Emma ‘Scarlett-Taylor’. The formal pattern of their dealings did not however prevent Emma from suspecting, it went no further than suspicion, that Mr Hanway felt for him a love which exceeded the natural affection of a teacher for a gifted pupil. Sometimes, as it seemed, through the conventional gauze of their converse, Mr Hanway’s eyes blazed momentarily at Emma with some involuntary signal of emotional need.

  Emma was not unduly disturbed by this suspicion. His moral temperament was fastidiously reticent and agnostic, devoid of the eager curiosity which often masquerades as benevolence. In any case, music made a holy world within which Emma and Mr Hanway could lead safe intelligible lives, making sense of each other through the bond of a transcendent necessity. When Emma sang to his teacher, or when they sang together, they were joined in a communion which was not only more spiritual than any alternative but more satisfying. Sometimes when Mr Hanway criticized his pupil or chided him for carelessness or laziness or forgetfulness of precept, Emma felt an emotion which resonated far away at the back of Mr Hanway’s calm pedantic tones. But Emma felt sure that Mr Hanway did not want to change anything, suspecting as he must that no change could better him, and finding perhaps a satisfaction, which went beyond anything which Emma could imagine, in the state of affairs as it was. Thus their relationship could have gone on and on, as such relationships between singers often do; only now Emma had come, in a terrible way, to question the value and doubt the future of his own talent.

  It was not that he was tired of singing. The physical joy of that strange exercise still transported him, and the sense of absolute power with which it filled him was undiminished. Singing, the creation of sound by a disciplined exercise of mind and body, is perhaps the point at which flesh and spirit most joyfully meet. There is a travail and a bringing forth as a purified sound enters the world. The perfected cry of an individual soul. Somewhat of this did Emma think and feel. Nor did he undervalue his endowment and what he had made of it. But it was just beginning to seem, since he could not give his whole life to it, pointless to go on. His discouragements were in part his own, personal and metaphysical, and in part those which he shared with other counter-tenors. (Mr Hanway had, of course, other pupils, but arranged the timetable so that Emma, at least, never met any of his fellows. When he was with his teacher it always seemed that Mr Hanway had endless time to spare for Emma alone. Of course this impression may simply have arisen from his being a good teacher.) The counter-tenor voice is a highly developed falsetto, not a boy’s voice nor a castrato’s. (Purcell was a counter-tenor.) It has a narrow range, and the counter-tenor repertoire is small and perceptibly finite. Emma had pretty well been its rounds. He had sung many English lute songs; the gloomy sadness of Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry and music suited him well. He sang Purcell and Handel. He and Mr Hanway had combed the ‘early music’ offerings, and the formal love-banter of the eighteenth century had been for them a natural tongue. Now Mr Hanway was taking Emma through the part of Oberon in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, singing the other parts himself with his remarkable voice which was able to become so many ‘other voices’, as his piano was able to become an orchestra. Mr Hanway (a tenor) had been an opera singer once; but he never spoke of those days.

  Of course Mr Hanway wanted Emma to become a professional singer. Emma did not now talk about his work at the university. On the subject of the further future they had both become cowards. Mr Hanway was always suggesting occasions, urging the necessity of public singing as part of Emma’s ascesis. During his first year in college Emma had sung with a consort, and also contributed a solo, at a student musical evening. The amazed congratulations of his fellow students embarrassed rather than pleased him. His unusual talent was by now becoming a guilty secret. He had sworn Tom to secrecy as far as Ennistone was concerned. He continued to practise, but gradually less. At Ennistone he had got up early on two mornings and crossed the common, beyond the gipsy camp, to practise; but had simply felt ridiculous as if he had lost confidence in the whole operation. What was the point? He could not be a historian and a singer, and he wanted to be a historian. Why go on and on training an instrument which he could not use? The sad thing that Emma had lately realized was that if he ceased to keep his voice at its very best he would not want to use it at all. Since that was the future, had he not better embrace it at once? To become a professional singer was out of the question. So he must make up his mind to stop taking lessons. Normally he went every week to Mr Hanway. Now he had cancelled two weeks. He would have to go to Mr Hanway … and tell him … that he would not ever be coming … for another lesson. Which would mean that they would never meet again, since they had no other bond.

  He could not do it. He knew that he would go on as usual and say nothing and lie and avoid seeing the anxiety in his teacher’s eyes. Nor could he indeed, for himself, make such a terrible choice, surrender such a joy, such a gift. Not to sing again? It was unthinkable. So there was perhaps no decision to be made after all.

  Tom McCaffrey had laid aside his verses and had stood for some time at the window. He could see, not far away, a street lamp making lurid greens among some pine trees in Victoria Park. Beyond was the darkness of the Common on one side and the Wasteland on the other. The feeling of universal love which had so uplifted his heart in the Meeting that morning was still with him. He felt, as he looked out over the sleeping city, the tautness and strength of his youth being as it were dedicated, transformed into a kind of wisdom. He felt like a healer, one who has perhaps only lately become aware of a divine gift, and holds it in reverent secrecy among a people in need. Soon his mission would begin. Some unconquerable feeling, expressing itself as joy, wrought in his body and made him tremble. He remembered Emma’s words, ‘If I had a brother like George I would do something about him.’

  Tom pulled the curtains upon the remaining lights of Ennistone and took off his shirt. Looking in the mirror he saw the bruise upon his arm which plainly showed the marks of George’s fingers. He thought, George is drowning, and he held on to me. And Tom felt that the very next day he would go to George and just sit in his presence and utter some good thing, some simple thing which he would be inspired to say; and George would suddenly see that there was one place in the world where there was and could be no enemy. Of course he may curse and chuck me out, thought Tom, but later he’ll reflect and he’ll understand. It must be so. He thought, I’ll see George and I’ll see Alex and I’ll tell them - what - oh it’s like conversion, being changed, being saved, what’s the matter with me? I’ll do them good, I must do, it will simply flow out of me like electricity, a life ray, I’m changed like after an atomic explosion, only it’s all good. Is it something that Mr Eastcote did to me? Not just that, it can’t be. Mr Eastcote was just a sign, it’s God existing, ought I to kneel down?

  Tom took off his shoes and socks. He did not kneel down but stood slightly swaying as if yielding to a shaft or stream of force which was coming up from below like bubbles rising blithely through water. He took off his vest and put on his pyjama jacket. He took off his trousers and pants and put on his pyjama trousers. Was he, after this revelation, this showing, this transformation of his flesh into some pure transcendent substance, going simply to bed, to sleep? Looking at his bed, he felt all of a sudden very tired as if he had been walking, working, travailing for a long time, and he knew that if he went to bed he would be asleep in a second. He thought, I won’t sleep, I’ll prolong it. I’ll go and tell it all to Emma.

  When Tom got to the door of his room he felt his energy taking the form of an agonizing sense of urgency. He flew across the landing and burst into Emma’s room. Emma, with his bedside light on, had returned to his reading. As soon as he saw Tom’s face he took off his glasses.


  Tom said, ‘Emma - oh - Emma.’

  Emma said nothing, but he drew the bedclothes aside. Tom, still in the swift impetus of his wafting, came to his friend, and for a moment they lay breast to breast, holding each other in a fierce bruising clasp, their hearts beating with a terrible violence; and so they lay in silence for a long time.

  George had once witnessed a brawl in a pub in London. A thug had attacked a man and knocked him down. Now the thug was kicking the head of his victim who was lying on the floor. No one intervened. Everyone stood spellbound, including George who watched fascinated. (He could still recall the sound of the kicking.) Then a girl ran forward and shouted, ‘Stop, stop, oh stop.’ The thug said to the girl, ‘Give me a kiss then, and I’ll stop.’ The girl went to him and he kissed her, dragging brutally at her hair. Then he said, ‘Undress!’ The girl began to cry. ‘Undress, or I’ll kick him again.’ The girl pulled herself away and ran out of the door, and the thug kicked the fallen man again. George, who was near the door, followed the girl out. She was walking along the street audibly crying, wailing. Was she a prostitute who knew the thug, or a friend of the victim, or else a brave bystander? George didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to speak to the girl, he just followed her for a while, excited by the scene, then slowed down and lost her. About a year later he saw her again, in another part of London, and the coincidence gave him a curious kind of fright. He did not follow her on this occasion. Now, yesterday, here in Ennistone, he had seen the girl for the third time. It was near twilight, and George was walking from the library towards Druidsdale, when the girl turned out of a side road and began to walk on ahead of him. George followed her and fear came upon him in the form of a compulsion to run to catch her up and speak to her, although this also seemed impossible. When she turned a corner ahead of him he slowed down. When he reached the corner he saw her walking on the other side of the road. Only now, between him and her, there was another man, a familiar-looking man wearing a black mackintosh. George realized with a coldness which made him almost faint that this other man was himself, and that if he ever saw the face of that man he would fall down and die. George turned and ran back in the other direction, running and running through the darkening streets of the town.

  Now in the morning this seemed all like an evil dream, something he desired to dismiss absolutely from his mind without even wondering whether it was fantasy or ‘real’, whatever these terms might mean. He thought he had heard a continued screaming in the silence of the night, composing the silence. He had heard the pigeons saying ‘Rozanov, Rozanov’ in the early dawn. A kind of beastliness possessed George now, a wanton slovenliness, which was necessary to his way of life. The place where he slept downstairs, on a sofa in the sitting-room, had become dirty and smelt like an animal’s lair. He no longer undressed to sleep, simply took his shoes off. He shaved occasionally, not often enough to prevent his face becoming bluish and dark. He rose each day as to a mysterious programme, which misery and bitterness made it impossible to execute. He wanted to see Diane, yet felt that her sentimental pity and her sheer stupidity would make him want to kill her. Sometimes, for a second, he thought about Stella as of something remarkable but unreal: clean, shining, made of metal. He walked round to Hare Lane and knocked on John Robert’s door and, receiving no answer, sat down on the pavement.

  After a while a number of people came to look at him from a distance. At last someone (it was Dominic Wiggins) approached him to say that Rozanov was not now at Hare Lane, but had gone to live in the Ennistone Rooms. George got up and set off slowly toward the Institute. As he walked, it began to rain. He did not go into the Baths, but entered the Rooms by the street door where there was a porter in a glass box. There was also a board listing the names of the occupants and the numbers of their rooms and also whether they were in or out. George saw with a tremor but without surprise that Rozanov’s room was number forty-four. Rozanov was said to be in. George went on into the furry-carpeted corridor. Here the sound of the waters was considerable and their smell sulphurous. George knocked on Rozanov’s door, but could hear no answering call. He opened the door.

  Rozanov, fully clothed, was sitting at a table by the window writing. There were books on the table. Rozanov frowned when he saw George, and drew one of the books over the paper he had been writíng on.

  John Robert’s room retained some remnants of past splendour, surviving in the form of a meaningless gloomy pretentiousness, suggestive of an abandoned night club. Three walls were covered with sheets of a brittle black material, cracked in places. The wall opposite the door was papered with a zigzag pattern of silver and light green. A tall thin chest of drawers of a black shininess which declared itself neither as wood nor as metal, and a tall thin matching wardrobe with a tall thin elliptical mirror stood about with the awkwardness of huge ornaments. The carpet continued the silver and light green pattern, varied with wavy black lines. A low light green sofa with fat flat arms embraced a lot of small black cushions. A chintz armchair and an office-furniture-style plastic-covered table and chair had entered as aliens to represent in their humble way utility and comfort. A little steam crept through the wooden louvred doors of the bathroom. The room was warm, and full of the water noise which so soon became inaudible.

  George said, ‘Nice place you have here,’ and sat down on the chintz armchair, but rose again, finding it too low. He stood near the tall thin wardrobe and saw himself in the tall thin silver ellipse of the mirror. He thought, that’s the man I was following. (He looked dirty and unhappy.)

  John Robert said, ‘I’m busy now.’

  ‘Writing your great book?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I remember you used to talk about seeing thoughts like Melville’s whale far below. What’s in the sea now? Monsters?’

  ‘I am busy, please go away.’

  ‘Will you talk to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? I was your favourite pupil once.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You lie, I was. Why should it worry you anyway if I say I was your favourite pupil? Are you so vain that you feel ashamed of me?’

  ‘Please — ’

  ‘Everything I said to you last time was wrong. I demeaned myself, I crawled, that was a mistake. You know what I want. I want to be justified, you can justify me, I want to be saved, you can save me. I am just stating facts. Other minds, other minds, how we used to worry over that one! I want to know what you think of me.’

  I don’t think anything about you.’

  ‘You do, you must.’

  ‘You keep imagining I think about you, I don’t.’

  ‘You thought enough about me to destroy me. Or did you do it by accident, without even noticing?’

  ‘I didn’t destroy you, George,’ said John Robert with a sigh.

  ‘You mean I am destroying myself?’

  ‘I don’t think so. You are just disappointed.’

  ‘What about you? Aren’t you disappointed? Everything went wrong since Aristotle, you used to say. That’s a long time. And big you were going to sort it all out! Have you? Of course not. No one reads your books now. What are you worth? Have I wrecked my life for a charlatan?’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘You flayed me, you took away my life- Illusions, you killed my self-love.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said John Robert, ‘but if I did kill your self-love I am very much to be congratulated and so are you.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Without self-love there is nothing but evil. I wish I’d never met you.’

  ‘What you call evil is simply vanity. You have lost your self-esteem for some reason which does not interest me, and you are suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Go and scratch your sores somewhere else.’

  ‘You suggest I go home and pull myself together?’

  ‘No, I suggest you go to Ivor Sefton and he will tell you a story about yourself which will cheer you up.’

  ‘You don’t know what these hurts are like.’
r />   ‘You mean loss of face.’

  ‘Loss of face, loss of soul, loss of child. You know nothing of real pain. But I don’t want to talk to you about that, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve never loved anybody in your life, not a single being. You only married Linda Brent to spite my mother, because she wasn’t interested in you.’

  ‘George,’ said John Robert, ‘I know quite well that you are only saying these wild things to annoy me so that — ’

  ‘You were mad with spite because you weren’t invited to the grand houses!’

  ‘To annoy me so that I shall become angry and my anger will make a bond between us, but you will not succeed. You simply don’t interest me enough.’

  ‘We’re alike, you know. We’re both demons, you’re a big one and I’m a little one, the big ones make the little ones scream. You hate me because I’m a caricature of you. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘I don’t hate you.’

  ‘How can you treat another human being with such contempt? And I was your pupil, and does that not mean anything to you? Can’t you even react? You’ve lost all your fire!’

  ‘I wish — ’

  ‘Did I push the car? Doesn’t that interest you?’

  ‘What car?’

  ‘The car with my wife in. If I pushed the car does that mean I intended to kill her? What was I thinking at just that moment? Did I intend to drive the car into the canal? Now I’ve killed my wife, all is permitted. Someone in Dostoyevski thought that if he killed himself he could become God.’

  ‘Well, go and kill yourself somewhere else.’

  ‘But wouldn’t it be a better way to become God to kill someone else? That’s harder than killing yourself.’

  ‘You are as restless and peevish as ever. It’s a sign of stupidity.’

  ‘Peevish! Now you really are trying to provoke me.’

  ‘I assure you I am not - I just want you to go away.’