Babel Tower

by A. S. Byatt

  “When did you last have intercourse?” asks the doctor.

  “With my husband. Only with him, since I got married.” As this fact establishes itself, guilt is transformed to rage. A vision of the contents of the case in the wardrobe flashes across Frederica’s inner eye. She moves her uncomfortable thighs together and feels pain, irritation, discomfort, separate feelings, that accompany all her movements as she walks.

  “I see,” says the doctor. “You do not seem to have married very wisely.”

  And Frederica feels a perverse desire to defend Nigel against this easy judgement, even though her own rage does not abate. Or perhaps it is only to defend herself, for having chosen unwisely. She says, “Things turn out different from what you expect.”

  “They do. Now you trot along to the Middlesex and get analysed before you get any worse. And keep off sex.”

  “I can’t imagine ever wanting—any such thing—again.”

  “You’ll be surprised,” says the doctor, with cheery resignation.

  “Hullo,” says the plangent voice, affable and unpleasant. “Daniel the parson-person, Daniel the Vicarious, Daniel the Representative of a dead preaching-man. Are you well?”

  “Little you care. Yes, I’m well. And yourself?”

  “I am battered and bruised, my friend, bleeding in invisible places. Last night I went to preach my message, as I make it my duty to do—a man needs to make himself a pretty fantasy of a duty to inhabit human society every now and then, and I thought a modicum of human society was in order, a taste of the honey of human intercourse, sweet Daniel, invisible Daniel—I yearned weakly, dear Vicarious, to improve at least one person’s understanding. So off I went to my local to preach my little preachment. I told them:

  “Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!

  “Thus spoke the Devil to me once: ‘Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.’

  “And lately heard him say these words: ‘God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.’

  “So be warned against pity: thence shall yet come a heavy cloud for man!

  “But mark too this saying: All great love is above pity: for it wants to create—to create what is loved!

  “ ‘I offer myself to my love, and my neighbour as myself’—that is the language of all creators.

  “All creators however are hard.

  “Thus spoke Zarathustra.”

  “It’s better in German, but I don’t suppose your education included the language of the ex-enemy, O parson-person, you don’t sound like a man of great European culture.

  “So I cast these pearls before the locals in my local and they took me by the hair and by the seat of my trousers and inflicted much local damage on my person with their boots, sweet Daniel, their boots and a bicycle chain and a broken pint glass, you would e’en have wept to see it, were you human, which I do often doubt, for you are so unsweet to me, so heel-dragging in the matter of soothing my sores as your dead Master bids you to, for I am the afflicted, O parson, O person, I am your work whether you like me or not, if I understand you rightly.

  “Are you asleep, O Yorkshireman? Could you not watch with me one little hour?”

  “I am not asleep. I am watching with you. You ought to talk to Canon Holly. He reads Nietzsche. He does Death-of-God theology. It sounds to me as though you and Canon Holly could have a fine debate. I am sorry you got bashed, but you do seem, if I may say so, to have asked for it. Indeed, I quite often feel like bashing you myself, if I ever set eyes on you.”

  “Ah, my sweet friend, my dear Judge come to judgement, at last a moment’s true understanding, a moment of rapport, worked for incessantly since I began to infiltrate my voice into the passages of your reluctant and unready earhole. I do most deeply, my temporary love, desire to be bashed, as you put it, to be bashed to smithereens and shards and molecules and pulp and broth, and if you are ready to oblige me I will manifest myself. In the alleys of Smithfield I sought you and I found you not, among hatchets and saws I perceived you not, I turned aside the red robes of justice and saw fearful implements of torture and belabouring but my sweet Daniel, my chastiser in surplice and soutane, I found not, although my fessae ached for him, also my lower gut and my labile tongue …”

  “Listen, you. I do not want to chastise you. Or anyone. I don’t wear a surplice or a soutane if you happen to like those things, I wear boring cords and a jumper, so come off it. Shall I get Canon Holly to talk to you about Nietzsche and the Death of God?”

  “There is so much more pleasure in talking about those things to someone who can’t bear to contemplate them—so much more skill and difficulty to overcome for the proselytising Prophet. Talking to your Canon sounds like preaching to the converted, a doddle, with no kick to it.”

  There is a noise in the stairwell of the crypt. Heavy feet descend the spiral stair, quick, sure, hurrying. Behind Daniel, Ginnie Greenhill rises to her feet, holding her knitting needles defensively before her.

  A voice, sharp, deep, well-bred. “Is Daniel Orton here? I was told to look for him down here.”

  “He’s working. On the whole we don’t see clients down here; there is a sitting-room upstairs, where you can have tea.”

  “I’m not a client, you silly woman. I’ve got to see him urgently. It’s private.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “I can hear shouting,” says Steelwire’s tremolo. “You are distracted. I shall lie down and lick my poor wounds. Think of me licking them, my reluctant friend. Think of a tongue-tip touching blood.”

  “There is nothing worse,” says Daniel, “than people trying to stir your imagination with what doesn’t stir it.”

  “Ah, you are touché, I can hear it. How can you be a Christian person and not be stirred by the flow of blood, the taste of blood, my dear reluctant friend?”

  “Is that Daniel Orton?”

  “You can see he’s talking.”

  “A moment of your time, Mr. Orton.”

  “How exciting,” says Steelwire as Daniel replaces the receiver. Daniel turns to consider his visitor. A dark, heavily built man, his own height, with well-cut hair, a suit, a silk tie, a blueing chin. Heavy brows, a heavy frown.

  Daniel puts out his hand. “Can I help?”

  “I think you are hiding my wife from me. I’ve been looking for her, and I think it might be you who’s hiding her. I want her back.”

  “We don’t betray professional confidences—”

  “You don’t know me. We’re related, not really, but in a way. I’m Nigel Reiver. My wife’s Frederica. I’ve not met you but I know about you. You married my wife’s sister, who died. I know about you. I think she might have come to you. It’s been two months now, and I’ve been looking, but I’ve had trouble finding you, too. I’ve thought it out, she would have come to you, of course. You wrote to her, I saw the letter. I don’t want to hurt you, or her, I just want her back. And my son. He ought to be with me. His life is with me. So please, tell me where she is. Tell me where she is. I don’t want to hurt her, I want her back.”

  “I don’t know where she is. I didn’t know she’d gone.”

  “I don’t believe you. You must know where she is.”

  “I don’t.” Daniel adds, unfortunately, “Which looks like a good thing.”

  Nigel Reiver steps back and punches Daniel in the face. Daniel staggers, and puts up an arm to protect his head. Ginnie Greenhill presses a panic button which starts up a loud angry bell, at earth level above them. They are frequently attacked by clients and have discovered that this bell is enough to deter most of them from further violence. There is also an understanding with the local police that if they hear it sound, they will “look in” to make sure all is well. In this case, the loud noise seems to have a maddening effect. Nigel takes another lunge at Daniel and lands a sideways blow on his ear. There is a sound of ripping inside Nigel’s expensively built suit. Daniel thinks briefly of Steelwire, who would be sorry to miss the crunch of bone on skin, the red wet flo
w of blood. He tries to be a sort of pacifist, but it is not good for people to get away with hurting other people. He advances on his brother-in-law and takes a grip on the knot of his tie.

  “Listen, you. I don’t tell lies. If I say I don’t know where she is, then I don’t know where she is. You’d better try to understand that, it’ll save time.”

  He wants to hurt Nigel. His blood drips from his swelling nose on to Nigel’s nice shirt. Nigel thinks. Nigel brings up his right hand and slaps Daniel very hard across the untouched ear. Daniel understands that this is all he can do. He must strike out. He is overwrought. The bell jangles and howls. A policeman appears at the head of the staircase. Daniel, a little breathless, says it is all all right, thank you, there has been a misunderstanding.

  “If you’re sure, Mr. Orton,” says the policeman.

  “A complete misunderstanding,” says Daniel.

  The two men glare at each other. Nigel makes a conciliatory effort. “I know about your wife. I know how hard you took that. My wife has gone off with my son. I want them.”

  Daniel sees the dead face, unprepared, unexpecting. His mind reddens. He plunges forward and hits Nigel in the mouth. More blood splashes and drips.

  “Christ!” says Nigel thickly. “I’m sorry. I said that wrong. What a godawful mess. Can we sit down?”

  “If you insist.”

  “I told you, I’m sorry, I know I said that wrong, I was trying to—trying to—you know what—and I made it worse. Look, I was the one who comforted Frederica. I held her while she cried. Don’t hit me again, I’m just saying—you and I—we know each other and we don’t. I know it’s private. She cried and cried in my arms, Frederica. I want her back.”

  He is saying, says Daniel’s red mind, that he married Frederica because of that, because of Stephanie. He looks at the floor. He scowls. They both scowl. Ginnie Greenhill notes a fleeting resemblance: dark men like dark bulls.

  “I’m stepping in deeper, trying to make it better,” says Nigel. “Have a hanky, I carry several. They’re clean.”

  Daniel mops blood.

  “OK. I accept you don’t know where she is. Where can I go? I ought to go after those sodding friends of hers with the Land Rover but I can’t remember their sodding names. I just wanted them out of my house and out they went. Now I want them, I don’t know where to start. I want my boy. He’s my boy, he’s my blood, I love him. A father can love a boy, a father should be with a boy—and a boy with his father. That’s true isn’t it?”

  Daniel drops his head. His son is in Yorkshire. Nigel’s son is with Frederica, about whose maternal instincts Daniel, even Daniel, does not feel automatically hopeful. He has never wholly liked Frederica. Part of him does not even want to think of her crying for Stephanie. Who was his. Who was his.

  “Every day,” says Nigel, “I think, today she’ll get in touch. And she doesn’t.”

  “I’ll look around. I don’t say I’ll find her, I don’t say I’ve any idea where to start either. I’ll try and give her the message. To get in touch. Then it’s up to her.”

  “I went up to Yorkshire. I smashed the old man’s head in a door. I didn’t mean to. I’ve got a temper. I don’t mean anything by it.”

  Daniel laughs.

  “What’s funny?”

  “That’s what he always said himself. He didn’t mean anything by it. I do advise trying to get her back by peaceful means.”

  “I love her,” says Nigel.

  “Love,” says Daniel. His work has given him a professional horror of the word. He says to Nigel, guiding him up the stairs, “You’ve ruined my professional life. You’ve bashed in both my ears. All I can hear is humming and interference and random noise. Horrible. My work is listening.”

  “It’s funny work. I expect it gets you down. Other people’s agonies, nothing you can do?”

  “It does, a bit. It does.”

  “How the other half live,” says Nigel, emerging. He gives Daniel a card. “In case you hear anything.”

  “I told you, my ears are out of action.”

  They part.

  “Our great Projector,” said Colonel Grim to his almost-crony Turdus Cantor, “is to turn his attention to those tender young sucklings in our midst, to the children whose pretty babble enlivens our dark corridors and sweetly disturbs our contemplations.”

  “He has none himself,” said Turdus Cantor. “None that he acknowledges, none that are known of.”

  “That has never prevented an enthusiast from pronouncing on the subject. And you must consider, Turdus, my friend, that we were all children once, we are all experts on that state.”

  “And what we propose for others we derive from our own fears and hopes in that distant time. And so the race goes on.”

  “But Culvert, save his soul, means to make a new race of children and a new race of men to follow.”

  “He may do good. Men—and women—love him. They will listen for hours together to his speaking. They would not listen so to you or to me. They would not do as we asked.”

  “In the old days, which are departed, they did as I ordered.”

  “But, my dear Grim, the bad old days are departed, indeed.”

  “And if a man promises happiness, and it is not forthcoming, the people may hate him.”

  “Or if he has taught them wisdom, they may understand, nevertheless.”

  “Have you ever known that?”

  “No. But hope is a pleasant human failing. Let us go and hear our Projector’s blueprint for the liberation of the babes at the breast.”

  The Theatre of Tongues was crowded to hear Culvert speak on the education of their children. The children themselves, of whom there were perhaps fifty or sixty in the Tower, were not present at this oration, for various ladies had voluntarily taken upon themselves to teach the little creatures the skills of the old civilisation, to wit, reading, writing, figuring, languages, dead and alive, sewing, plain and ornamental, drawing and painting, singing, dancing, playing on flutes, fiddles, tambourines and glockenspiel, making paper carnations, cooking little cakes, observing such humble creatures as spiders, lizards, flies, cockroaches, earthworms and mice; also the growth of beans and mustard seeds. All this activity was admittedly unplanned and haphazard but it kept the little people quiet, and satisfied their driving and exhausting curiosity and activity in what were felt to be reasonable, innocuous ways. But it was known that Culvert had proposals more rational, more profound and more searching for the employment of their long days. (“Who does not remember how long, long are the days of childhood, how the minutes creep, creep, and the hours and the days sink and sough like heavy velvet, and the months are unimaginably far, like other planets, like stars in the black, with dark dust between now and the now to come, perhaps to come?”)

  I will not give Culvert’s speech in toto, for although I can assure you that it was most charismatically delivered, that his audience swayed to his periods and parentheses like pink-eyed rats before a cobra, like the faithful at the feet of an inspired preacher, the truth is that on paper it is quite possible that the magnetic quality would be lacking from this oration, as is so often the case with spoken enchantments reduced to flickerings of black ink. And then, he had done so much work, had burned so much midnight oil, with Damian and Roseace bringing him sirops and stimulants, sweets and salts, that his thinking and speaking ran into diverticulated pockets of matter, like those pockets that develop in an overstimulated gut, and retain festering irritants. For he had thoughts on play, and thoughts on the learning of speech and reading, thoughts, most recondite, on the order and organisation of the secret sensual life of infants, which in his view should be uncovered and made public, thoughts on punishment (ah, such finely graded, such delicately apposite, such generously imagined thoughts on punishment), thoughts on group life, thoughts on solitude, thoughts on corruption and so on and so on, thoughts on stubbornness and thoughts on readiness to please, that to recount them all would take more time than any sane reader in this
fallen and trivial world would accord me. So I will somewhat brutally summarise his sayings, in order to speed my narration. It is true that the purity and beauty of his ideas were not wholly incarnate in their subsequent application, but I believe they may nevertheless shine through. He meant well, he meant well, Culvert, and maybe few of us can have a better encomium.

  Because the children were not present, many of the women of the Tower were not present, because they were “caring” for the children, as they believed.

  But Mavis, wife of Fabian, mother of Florian, Florizel, and the little Felicitas, was present, because she clung greatly to her little children, and feared that Culvert meant to sever their ties.

  And Roseace and Damian were there too, and could not keep their hands from each other’s body. Culvert had been astonished by the success of his theatrical device where Roseace out of good feeling enacted before the community, in the Theatre of Masks, a passion for Damian’s body, which Damian desired her to have and which in daily life she could not feel. And so, as I told you, wearing a sweet-smiling mask and a dishevelled wig, she had submitted in public to the passionate advances of Damian, who had chosen a warrior mask, a stern heroic mask, and achieved his desires to cries of encouragement and pleasure from the audience. But since that time Roseace’s flesh ached and yearned for Damian—and he, only a little less, for her—and so they coupled in Culvert’s bedroom as he wrote, separated to bring him sustenance, and then coupled again.

  This, Culvert believed, was a good result of his intentions.

  He had concluded, for himself, that Roseace’s breasts were crumpled in texture and that Damian’s buttocks were overweening and absurd.

  He had proved that a formal enactment of a feeling may lead to that feeling.

  He had never noticed that Roseace simpered.

  I am about to deflect myself from the summary of Culvert’s speech with a vicarious plunge into the pleasurable communion of Damian and Roseace. But I will reserve that for the sweetmeat to follow the meat of his discourse.