The Book and the Brotherhood

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘She had a sort ot crush on me when she was seventeen –’

  ‘I come in and find you undressed and her undressing.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy! I wanted her to try on one of my dresses!’

  ‘You would let her contaminate your dress with her baby milky body! Can’t you understand that I find all this disgusting, repulsive?’

  ‘Oh stop it, stop it!’

  ‘I won’t have spectators. You sent Lily Boyne here to tell me about the dance. You talked to her about me. You invited that girl, you probably talked to her too.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t send Lily! And of course I didn’t talk about you to Tamar! Crimond, we must believe each other. Come back to reality! I believe every word you say. I don’t start imagining things! If I couldn’t believe you I’d go mad – if we can’t believe each other we’ll both go mad.’

  ‘If you lie to me I’ll kill you.’

  ‘I won’t see Tamar again. I’ll tell my father to send her a cheque. Just calm down! I can’t bear it when we lose contact with each other like this, it’s like dying if I lose that contact for a second. I live you, I breathe you –’

  Crimond looked down at the floor, then looked up. His cold angry face that gleamed like metal, his deadly pain-giving face, was gone. His thin lips were parted, his mouth drooped a little, he had a tired almost wistful air. He looked at her, then looked away and breathed deeply. Jean knew it was over. She had been standing before him. Now she came and sat beside him on the divan and he put an arm round her shoulder, a quiet tired comforting arm.

  ‘I live and breathe you,’ he said. ‘I believe what you say. It was unpleasant seeing that girl here. I don’t like little girls.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come back for supper. You decided to skip the meeting?’

  ‘It was cancelled. I bought some necessary books. I didn’t waste time.’

  ‘Will you marry me?’ Jean sometimes asked this question. She wanted the marriage bond, Crimond did not.

  ‘Why are you so insecure? You don’t need a guarantee.’

  ‘I know. But I’d like us to be married.’

  ‘I can’t see why. If you want a divorce go ahead.’

  ‘You said you didn’t want me to divorce.’

  ‘I don’t want you to see that man.’

  ‘I needn’t. My father’s lawyer in London would do it all.’

  ‘Do what you like.’

  ‘Then would you marry me?’

  ‘Jeanie, don’t bother me about this!’

  ‘I want us to live in France.’

  ‘My work is here.’

  ‘You have all those people you go to see in Paris. Couldn’t we have a flat in Paris?’

  ‘No. We couldn’t afford it.’

  ‘Perhaps when your book’s finished we could travel together, all round Europe, you could give lectures, you’ll be famous then – Oh I do want us to go away together, to be away together.’

  ‘One day we’ll go away together – perhaps into death.’

  ‘And I wish you’d spend my money. I wish you’d let me spend our money.’

  ‘Don’t let’s have that argument again. You’ve bought two pretty dresses. Falcon, falcon, don’t fret, little falcon. You must work, you must study, you are wasting your mind. You must find something to do.’

  ‘I want to help you.’

  ‘You must find something of your own to do, sokolnitza. Come now, let’s go downstairs.’

  When Jean had come to Crimond on the morning after the dance she had come without any clear idea except that she must be in his presence, and if possible stay there forever. A little later she proposed that she should help him in his work, co-operate with him as she had done before. Crimond replied that he needed no help, she would not understand, he would simply waste time trying to explain to her what he wanted her to do. Crimond did not type and wrote his thoughts down in longhand with a fountain pen. (He could not conceive of any other method of serious thinking.) Jean suggested that she might helpfully learn to type, or even to use a word processor. Crimond said that he used an impersonal efficient typing agency, could not have stood the sound of a typewriter in the house, and found the idea of a word processor revolting. He lectured her on how she must find some employment, chided her for not using her talents. The idea was mooted, by Jean who thought it would please Crimond, that she might do some social work; she made a few investigations and decided she would not be suited to social work, and Crimond agreed it would be a waste of her time. He was more anxious that she should use her academic skills, do a degree, take a course, study a language. Crimond himself was a good linguist and could read (though he could not speak) French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian. He also retained his Latin and Greek and often opened books of classical poetry. Jean, wishing to be useful to him, wondered if she should learn Chinese, but it was agreed that this would be unlikely to yield dividends in the near future. It was debated whether she should learn Greek, but Crimond turned out to be hostile to this idea. Jean’s only effective foreign language was French. She bought a German grammar but could not interest Crimond in her progress. Her Oxford degree in history was now remote and she felt no inclination to try to make herself into a historian or a school teacher. She would have liked to do a degree in English, but did not like to suggest this as it might seem frivolous. She suggested a short course in computer science, but Crimond did not like computers. He was also very firmly against her trying to learn any philosophy. Another difficulty was that he did not really want her to be away from the house.

  Jean was not without occupation however. She was finding herself, now that she was with Crimond, simply more and more in love. She was living upon love. When she was alone, she would for long times shudder and tremble with it. She had never experienced presence so vividly before, the total connection with another being, the interpenetration of bodies and souls, the intuitive absolute of mutual self-giving, the love of two gods. The obliteration of self, the dazzling blindness of the love-act which was both part and all of their lives, constituted a mystery or ritual with which she lived in a continuous present of anticipation and remembrance. The silences together, the sleep together, made her weep with joy or sob inwardly with tenderness. Part of her security was Crimond’s absolute sovereignty in all matters. It was he who decreed the times and details of their going to bed. Though intensely passionate, Crimond was also in many ways extremely puritanical. He did not speak about sex, used no coarse words, scarcely any words at all. He never let Jean see him undress; she also undressed quickly and discreetly, being seen as far as possible either totally dressed or totally undressed. (The scene with Tamar annoyed him, Jean knew, partly because of a breach of this rule.) Their relationship, or mode of being, was now, they were agreed, quite different from what it had been in Ireland. There, their furtive love-making, which had seemed so wonderful, had been shadowed by fear, not only of Duncan’s discovery, but also of the anticipated end of something which seemed accidental and too good to last. In Ireland they were homeless, and that had involved a kind of restless freedom which had really flawed their love. They had, as it seemed, looking back, been searching for happiness, at least Jean had been. Now they were living in an ecstasy to which happiness was irrelevant. Once when she had told Crimond that she was happy he had seemed surprised as if he was to note this as one thing among others. She thought, he has the concept of ecstasy but not of happiness. Happiness was not what this was for. When Jean, waking while he slept beside her, or waiting for his return home, felt, breathing slowly and deeply, the quietness, the cosmic reality of this joy which now had no term, she thought that surely it was occupation enough to fill the days and hours of her whole life. She had been re-created, given new being, new pure flesh, new lucid spirit. She could perceive the world at last, her eyes were cleared, her perceptions clarified, she had never seen such a vivid, coloured, detailed world, vast and complete as myth, yet full of tiny particular accidental entities placed in her way like divin
e toys. She had discovered breathing, breathing such as holy men use, the breathing of the planet, of the universe, the movement of being into Being.

  About all that there was no doubt at all. It may be wondered whether and how Jean also, at times, remembered her husband and his grief, and her friends who regarded her as a traitor and whom she could now never see. Rose never wrote; Jean did not expect her to. It was better so. Such thoughts did appear, swift as black passing swallows in the clear bright air of her love. She did not either question or suppress these reproachful blurs and streaks, she let them pass, consigning her sin, if such it was, to some objective record, some spirit perhaps, whereby it could be contained in the totality of her new world, not dissolved or hidden but placed. Her duty, as her passion, was now Crimond’s. Her surprise at Tamar’s appearance (she had almost forgotten who Tamar was) was the shock of realising that the two regions which she had so resolutely separated could actually communicate. Someone could come from over there. Gerard, in reckoning upon some such (as he hoped salutary) jolt, had been thus far prescient. The ‘virgin priestess act’, in which he had also had faith, was not entirely without efficacy; Jean, seeing Tamar, did feel, at least for seconds, that she had left a mess behind. This impression soon passed however, and Jean’s dismay at Crimond’s arrival was her instant preview of what he was likely to say and did say. Of course she did not imagine that Crimond really regarded Tamar as involved with Jean in any plot or special relation; but she knew how much he must detest any sense of being judged or spied on by them. They must be deemed to be non-existent. The fact remained (and Jean reflected upon this paradox also) that they paid Crimond’s salary. Crimond refused absolutely to touch Jean’s money. This was in spite not only of Jean’s constant urging, but of an extraordinary letter which Jean’s father had lately written to Crimond. Jean’s father, who had had an orthodox Jewish childhood in Manchester and now lived in New York, was a moralist, a liberal Jew, an observer of festivals, who had sent his daughter to a Quaker school. He could tolerate mixed marriages but disapproved of broken marriages. On the other hand, he rather liked Crimond whom he had met in Dublin in the earlier part of the Irish episode. He knew of Crimond’s political activities from the days of his early fame, and after meeting him read some of his articles and pamphlets. Joel Kowitz, capitalist and maverick radical with a taste for the picturesque, had found Duncan Cambus rather a tame match for his marvellous daughter and only child. He had hoped that Jean would marry Sinclair Curtland, and was not indifferent to the title. He did not mind Sinclair’s evident homosexuality which he thought of as a natural, even perhaps necessary, phase in the development of upper-class Englishmen. Now, although he disapproved of fugitive wives, he could not help liking Jean’s new choice, of which she informed him immediately after her flight. Joel saw in Crimond a man of power and spirit, a fascinating eccentric, not unlike himself. After some reflection, and convinced after a passage of time that Jean was not having second thoughts, he wrote a very careful letter to Crimond, implying acceptance of the situation, and expressing hopes for Jean’s welfare and happiness, towards which, in her new circumstances, her financial resources could materially assist. He hoped in short, though he did not put in quite so bluntly, that Crimond would spend Jean’s money. Jean had not of course suggested that Crimond might be unwilling to do this, but Joel had rightly judged Crimond’s character. Crimond showed Jean the letter, asked her to thank her father for it, and without further comment continued to refuse to touch her money. Jean, reading between the lines of her father’s touching and unusual letter, could see something else, more important and more tragic. Joel Kowitz, banker and believer in miracles, had always wanted a grandson. He assumed that Duncan was, in this respect, the one who had failed, and he hoped that, with another mate, Jean might yet be capable of some last-minute success. He could not help regarding her as eternally young. Jean, who did not discuss other changes in her life with her father, knew that a miracle would indeed now be required. She reflected, and this was another dark blur or pain-point in her new life, that if she had stayed with Crimond in Ireland she might have borne his child. Crimond had said then very positively that he did not want children. But a fait accompli might have changed his mind. It would also have made it impossible for Jean to go back to Duncan.

  The fact certainly remained that, apart from a little discreet use by Jean of her funds upon her own clothes and little household extras, the spending money of the ménage came mainly from the Crimondgesellschaft. Crimond still earned a little from journalism, but he shunned lecturing or talking on television, and refused lucrative invitations to America. They lived frugally. Crimond occasionally travelled, briefly and alone, to conferences, seminars, meetings, in Paris, Frankfurt, Bologna. He also went to Scotland to see his father. Jean would have liked to meet his father, but Crimond would not allow this. He gave money to his father, and also to the old half-blind Polish lady who occupied the upstairs flat. He gave Jean a housekeeping allowance. There was no ‘entertaining’ except at the level of cans of beer which Jean was instructed to bring in when, not often, some ‘associates’ were coming. Crimond himself did not drink, and Jean had managed, helped by love and by the reproaches of her lover, to give up alcohol. Jean did not meet the ‘associates’ who argued with Crimond in the Playroom (as he called his workroom). Crimond seem to have a variety of connections but no friends. Once a gang of gaily dressed young people turned up and asked if one of them could take a photograph of Crimond out on the steps, surrounded by the others. Crimond agreed to this affably and seemed even to be gratified; this touched Jean, and also made her sad. He was lonely now, who had once been such a folk hero. The major expense was travelling, which Crimond seemed to have no difficulty in meeting; in fact there seemed to be, in his way of life, no place for the lavish expenditure of Jean’s money, and Jean had to comfort herself by the thought that she and her father were, there was no doubt, the major donors to the Gesellschaft. Only Gerard actually knew how much everyone gave. But it was certainly not comfortable to think that the ‘delinquents’ were being supported by people, including her husband, who now had double reasons for disapproval. There was, as Jean knew from earlier discussions, no likelihood of the stipend being withdrawn. The ‘Friends of Crimond’ had agreed to finance the book until its completion. They might however, as Jean also knew from these discussions, become restive, ask for reports and predictions, even ask to see the text and somehow call Crimond to account. Jean shuddered when she imagined what this might be like.

  Jean did not question Crimond about the book, and of his long hours in the playroom asked only, ‘How did it go?’ She looked at, but did not open, the piles of notebooks. Once or twice she inspected a current page left open on the desk, but found the subject matter obscure and Crimond’s tiny inky writing hard to read. She shopped, she cooked, she looked after the house but did not venture to prettify it. She gave up drink, but did not entirely give up buying clothes which was a natural function. She was used to wearing new dresses. At first she ‘dressed’ on occasional solitary visits to central London, to art galleries and matinees. But she feared to meet someone she knew, and these jaunts soon began to seem pointless and out of place. She wore her pretty clothes on some evenings for Crimond who, though disapproving of extravagance, humoured this diversion. Perhaps he felt she must be allowed to retain some small symbol of her former splendour; perhaps that image of the splendour enriched his sense of possession. Crimond had a car, a Fiat, which he occasionally used to go to meetings in the Midlands. He never drove into central London. Jean, soon after her arrival, had fetched her own car, a Rover, to Camberwell, but had hardly ever driven it since. Her Rover and Crimond’s Fiat lived outside on the street, sometimes close, sometimes apart, according to the Fiat’s wanderings. Crimond no longer used his bicycle, which remained in the hall. Jean had suggested that she might get a bicycle too and they might go riding, but this had not proved a fruitful idea. She did not mind having no jaunts and no society, an
d after a while the idea of ‘social life’ began to seem impossible and abhorrent. Sometimes, encouraged by Crimond, she went to tea with Mrs Lebowitz, the old Polish lady upstairs, who reminisced about the Warsaw Rising. Crimond rose early and worked all day on the book, taking a cup of tea (he never drank coffee) for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch. About six or seven he stopped and they had high tea in the kitchen. Then they watched television in the front room, the news and political debates in which Crimond vociferously joined, often amusingly, sometimes furiously. They talked easily and continuously at such times, about politics, about books, about pictures, about their childhoods, about places they had been to, especially about cities (Crimond hated ‘the country’, he had had enough of that when he was a boy), about Ireland, about the history of their love. They did not talk about people they knew. They drank chocolate and ate creamy and sugary cakes (which Crimond liked) at eleven, then went to bed on the big divan in the playroom. On some days, though not often, Crimond knocked off at three and they spent the afternoon making love.

  Crimond did not like music, but he enjoyed literature and painting, about which he knew a great deal. He was particularly fond of poetry. All his old college books were on the shelves in the television room, which he called the library, and sometimes he read Greek and Latin poems to Jean and translated them, sometimes he treated her to Dante and to Pushkin. Jean, whose Latin was rusty and her Italian poor, and who knew no Greek or Russian, did not attempt to follow these performances, but watched his animation with intense pleasure. He avidly perused book catalogues, was excited when they arrived, and did not only purchase ‘work’ books. He had been athletic at Oxford, he cared about fitness, he did exercises before his breakfast tea. His only visible ‘hobby’ was guns, which he collected, and could use, as she had seen in Ireland, but in which he did not attempt to interest Jean. Her worries about whether he would be irked by her continual proximity soon vanished. He said, ‘I work so much better now you’re in the house.’ On one or two evenings he asked her to sit in the Playroom, not near him but at the far end where he could see her, and read or sew. She had learnt that he liked to see her sew. When he was tired he sometimes cried out, ‘I can’t rest, I can’t resl!’ He would call Jean to him and she would stroke his head, back from the brow and down onto his neck, or ‘draw’ his sallow freckled face, smoothing his cheeks and his closed eyes and passing her fingers down his long nose. Then he would begin to work again. His industry was terrifying. ‘We’re crazy people,’ he would sometimes say, ‘it’s like Kafka.’