by Iris Murdoch
Yes, he thought, that was it. A sense of possession, a sense of being clothed, which he ought long ago to have surrendered had remained to him because of the icon. That object had seemed to concentrate, to keep with him somehow symbolically, all that he had lost, his dear ones, the years of his life, Russia. So long as he had it these things did not seem utterly gone. Yet should he not have known it, then and all along. That he was a man who had lost everything? There was nothing reserved or kept. What he had loved and valued had ceased entirely to be. What feebleness in him had deferred the message till now? Let it go, let it go. Now he was a stripped man and the better for knowing it. So he told himself; but he could not yet really think in this way. The icon had travelled so far and so long with his family, like a dear good animal. He kept grieving about it, pitying it, pitying himself and wanting consolation.
Pattie had supplied some of this. Her exclamations of distress were constantly renewed on his behalf as with raised hands she bewailed his loss. He had talked to her incoherently about the icon and had gone on to tell her more about his family, about his mother, about his sister. He had said things which he had thought could not be said or told any more. This bound Pattie to him. Some of his substance had passed into her. Of course she could not understand. She could not be an ageing Russian emigre with Europe in the bowels. But she knew about deprivation, and she looked at him with her dark reddish eyes all round and moist with concern and she smiled and nodded out of her drift of black hair and leaned sighing towards him as if so much sympathy was a physical pain.
He had tried to make her talk about herself, and she had told him a little about her early childhood. But she had said she had forgotten herself as a child and that as an adult she had had no history. She said once, “I haven’t begun to exist yet.” I will make you exist, Eugene had said to himself confidently. He had begun to want to touch Pattie. He did touch her, not only in hand-shakes, but in fugitive secretive ways, acting as if he were unaware of himself, tapping her arm as he told a tale, stroking her shoulder when he offered her some tea. He had plans for touching her hair. These touches made a sort of physical pattern in the room, a tantalizing incomplete Pattie, magnetically present and inviting. Inviting too he sometimes felt were her urgent eyes, blood-red in their corners, dark red somehow even in their blackness, passionate in their mute confused questioning of him. The idea came to him that he was falling a bit in love with Pattie, and when he thought this he calmed himself at once by a repetition of the things she so often repeated herself: I’m here, I’m in the house, I’ll be back soon. There was plenty of time for him to get to know Pattie. Meanwhile she was necessarily, consolingly, easily there.
“Oh, hello.” Leo had put his head round the door.
“Come in, come in.” Leo’s visits were rare. Eugene jumped up. He felt physically awkward in the presence of his son as if some electrical discharge had disabled and diminished him. He jerked himself away past the bed and dangled against the wall.
“I’ve been trying to see you for ages. I thought that female would never stop yapping.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk in that ugly way,” said Eugene automatically, wearily. He had said this to Leo so often.
“Well, it doesn’t hurt her, does it? All right, sorry. Won’t you sit down? You look so odd over there in the corner.”
Eugene sat down. He contemplated his tall slim son with a surprise that never diminished, a surprise at seeing him so grown-up, so large, so handsome, so impertinent. With the surprise came timidity and the muddled pain of an inexpressible love. Always they blundered at each other, there was no technique of contact, no way of taking hold. On Leo’s face Eugene read the equivalent of his own amaze: a look of uncertain apprehensive boldness. They were present to each other in the room as unintelligible, unmanageable objects. Eugene hunched himself.
“What is it?”
“I’ve got something to tell you. ‘Confess’ I suppose is the word.”
“What?”
“It’s about that old thing.”
“What thing?”
“That icon thing.”
“Oh. Has it been found?” Eugene forgot his physical distress. His body filled out again.
“Not exactly. But I know where it is. At least I think I do.”
“Where, where?”
“Not so fast,” said Leo. “It’s long story. Do you mind if I get on to the bed?” He crawled into the lower bunk and crouched there on his knees, peering out.
“Where is it, what’s happened to it?”
“Well, you see, I took it, in a manner of speaking.”
“You took it?”
“Yes. I needed some money, so I took it and sold it. I imagine it’s still in the shop I sold it to.”
Eugene was silent. He felt an immediate and intense pain of humiliation. He could not look at Leo, it was as if he himself were ashamed. He stared at the floor. Leo had taken the icon and sold it. It was not the clean loss that he had imagined and tried to make terms with. It was something muddled and ugly and personal, something twisted back into him, something that disgraced him. He drooped his head and continued to be silent.
“Well, aren’t you going to be angry with me?”
With an effort Eugene looked at the crouching boy. He felt no anger, only the shame and discomfiture of someone who has allowed himself to be hopelessly hurt and worsted. He felt the old shame of the years in the labour camp present like stripes upon his body. He said at last. “Get off that bed and let me see you properly.”
Leo got up promptly and stood before his father, bringing his heels together with a little jump. His long mouth turned involuntarily upward at the corners, almost like a caricature of a happy person. His pale freckled face was attentive and expectant.
“Why did you do that, what did you want the money for?”
“Well, you see, I know it’s rather awful, but I suppose I’d better tell you, I embezzled some college funds. It was the kitty of a club I was treasurer of. I spent the money on all sorts of things, frittered it as you might say. And then I had to account for it.”
Eugene had a sense of being cornered which he had often had before. Leo was enacting a scene and forcing him to enact a scene too. Was there no way out of this, no means by which they could talk simply and directly to each other, no appeal or cry which could break through that so familiar flow of patter? He looked down at Leo’s pointed shoes. Anger might help, but he could not feel anger, only a miserable hangdog sense of defeat. He was a man derided by his son who could do nothing.
“It was a wrong thing to do.” The words as he uttered them seemed to Eugene totally meaningless. One might as well have said them to Hitler or a hurricane.
“I know, but I had to have the money.” Leo’s tone was explanatory and eager. “Otherwise I’d have been disgraced.”
“You are disgraced. Oh well, it doesn’t matter now.” Eugene wanted Leo to go away. He wanted the thing to stop hurting him in this way.
“Good heavens, you can’t say that. Of course it matters. Anyway, I’m going to get it back for you.”
“I don’t see how you can. If you’ve spent the money. Anyhow, I don’t want it back. I can live without it.”
“You mustn’t let me off like this!”
“I’m not letting you off. I just don’t want to talk about it any more. It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, please don’t be so sort of quiet. You ought to be furious with me. You ought to box my ears.”
“I can hardly start now,” said Eugene. He looked up, frowning like a dazzled man, into the pale eager face. He added, “Now please go away.”
“But I haven’t said I’m sorry.”
“You aren’t sorry.”
“Well, it’s just a state of mind, you know. There’s nothing to it.”
“It’s enough that you’ve stolen my icon,” said Eugene. “I don’t want to listen to your half-crazy chatter too. I don’t understand you. I never have.”
“That’
s better. You’re getting cross. It’ll do you good. Perhaps it’ll do me good. Look, I am sorry, you know. It wasn’t one of my better ideas. But I will get it back. I expect I’ll just have to steal it again.”
“If you steal it,” said Eugene. “I’ll hand you over to the police.”
He rose to his feet. He felt quite suddenly the release of anger. It came as a relief, a sense of contact. It was if he had taken a grip upon Leo at last.
“But you want the thing, don’t you?”
“Not any more. You’ve spoilt it. You’ve spoilt everything. And you’ve done it deliberately. You sicken and offend me. I’ve tried to bring you up properly and you’re a liar and a thief.”
“Well, maybe I didn’t have much of a chance.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never lived in a real house. How can I have any sense of property?”
“I did the best I could for you, I did everything for your sake,” said Eugene. The plaintive tone came naturally, then anger again. How could he be so taunted?
“We’ve just camped out all our life. You’ve never wanted to do anything.”
“I’ve worked as I can, and I’ve supported you. I’m still supporting you.”
“No you aren’t. And you haven’t even tried to be English.”
“I couldn’t try. Anyway why should I try? I’m Russian. So are you.”
“No I’m not. I’m not anything. I can never make you understand it’s all meaningless to me, it’s nothing.” The playful tension had gone from Leo’s face. His mouth drooped, his eyes were screwed up, he looked like a threatened almost tearful child.
“You can’t deny what you are.”
“I’m not that. I hate it all. I hated that bloody icon too. You’ve made a little Russia all round you. You’re living in a dream world. All you ever really wanted was a bolt hole.”
“Stop shouting at me!”
“I’m not shouting. And you’ve forgiven the Soviet Union.”
“I haven’t forgiven the Soviet Union. Well perhaps I have. I can’t alter history. Why should I hate my country?”
“It isn’t your country. You haven’t got a country. And you’ve made me not have one either. God, I wish I were American!”
“That’s the most dreadful thing I’ve ever heard you say. And keep your voice down. They’ll hear you in the Rectory.”
“What do I care if they hear me in the Rectory? Let them hear. We’re as good as they are, aren’t we? You with you ‘Miss Muriel’ and your ‘please sir’, like a bloody slave.”
“Stop speaking to me like that, and get out of this room. You’ve never respected me. You’ve never loved me as you ought to.”
“Why should I love you? You’re my fucking father.”
“Please, please, please,” said Muriel, who had just come in the door.
Leo immediately turned his back and put his hands up to his face. Eugene stared at her stonily, still rigid with his fury. He was intensely upset at the intrusion and extremely angry that Muriel had overheard.
“I’m very sorry,” said Muriel. “I did knock, but you were both talking so loudly you couldn’t hear.”
There was a pause. Eugene looked at the wall. He felt disgust with himself, disgust with Leo, disgust with everything. His body relaxed into hopelessness. Leo had composed his face and turned now to look at Muriel. He looked at her blankly and dully as if waiting for guidance. Muriel was gazing at him with fastidious distaste.
“You oughtn’t to speak to your father like that,” said Muriel. “I think you’re loathsome.”
Leo looked at her still for a moment as if he were very tired and could scarcely understand her. Then he smiled. “A reptile. Is that it?”
“Oh, get out!” said Muriel.
Leo half turned towards his father, but without looking at him, made a quick gesture as of throwing something away, and then left the room closing the door sharply behind him.
Muriel dropped her eyes before Eugene. She was dressed in her tweed overcoat upon which pinpoints of snow still glittered here and there. There was a sugary white ridge upon each shoulder. Under her arm she was clutching a small brown-paper parcel. Eugene looked at her short hair, damp and darkened and stringy at the ends, and at her thin clever face, and he hated her English alienness, her absolutely unconscious superiority, and the fact that she had dared to order his son out of the room. His scene with Leo should have run its course. Perhaps he and Leo understood each other after all. He had felt it just now as Leo went away. Even the anger and the shouting had been a connection, like an embrace, something which brought them closer together. They might have worked out a meaning between them. Now the impertinent intervention of this girl, and what she had witnessed, had made it all jagged and ugly, simply shameful for them both. He breathed deeply with misery and resentment.
“I’m terribly sorry to butt in,” said Muriel, looking at him at last. She seemed a little breathless. “But I just couldn’t listen to him saying those things.” She seemed very embarrassed but her gaze was intrusive, almost aggressive.
Well, why didn’t you go away, thought Eugene. He said, “Yes.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Muriel.
Eugene was silent. He could not forgive her for what she had overheard.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Muriel went on, “Mr Peshkov—Eugene—may I? I hope you—don’t mind—” she dropped her eyes again and began to fumble with the brown-paper parcel she had been carrying.
“What is it?” said Eugene.
“Please forgive me,” said Muriel. “I’ve brought you a little present. A Russian present. I was so terribly sorry about your icon. I know this can’t be a substitute. But I thought it was very pretty, and I thought it might, well, cheer you up a bit. I do hope you like it.”
The wrappings fell to the floor and Muriel held out something small and brightly coloured towards Eugene. He took it automatically and stared at it. It was a painted Russian box of the familiar traditional kind. The figures of Russian and Ludmilla stood out in glossy red and blue against a very black background.
Eugene looked at it with anguish and puzzlement. It reminded him of something, something dreadful; and for a moment it was as if some awful shaft of memory were about to open wide. Where had he seen just this before, very very long ago? The veiled memory was dreadfully present with some content of unutterable pain and loss. But it did not declare itself. He continued to stare at the box. Then tears came up into his eyes and overflowed. He tried to check them, to conceal them with his hand. He bowed his head over the box, weeping. He could not stop the tears and he still could not remember.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“THOSE WHO THOUGHT to rescue the idea of Good by attaching it to the concept of will intended chiefly to prevent the corruption of that sovereign value by any necessary connection with specific and ‘too too human’ faculties or institutions. Since a good conceived of as absolutely authoritative was deemed an insult to human freedom, the solution in terms of action was tempting. If goodness resided in a movement or in a pointing finger its very mobility would preserve it from degeneration. I have already argued that such a theory commits the fallacy it professes to avoid by proving to be but the covert praise of a certain type of personality. Will, choice and action are also the names of the ambiguously human. I come now to a more serious and thought-provoking objection. If the idea of Good is severed from the idea of perfection it is emasculated and any theory which tolerates this severance, however high-minded it professes to be, is in the end a vulgar relativism. If the idea of good is not severed from the idea of perfection it is impossible to avoid the problem of ‘the transcendent’. Thus the ‘authority’ of goodness returns, and must return, to the picture in an even more puzzling form.”
Marcus surveyed his latest paragraph, the opening of chapter five, soberly and, he trusted, objectively. There was a prophetic tone in what he wrote which he had at first attempted to eliminate. He had conceived of the book as s
omething very cool and hard, composed of a series of extremely simple propositions. But his prose, as it were expropriating his thought, was increasingly producing a kind of stuff which was distinctly rhetorical and persuasive. The temperature was rising. Perhaps this was inevitable. The sheer complexity of the argument could not but produce, as it were by friction, a certain heat. Could philosophy really be passionless? Should it be? Marcus, with a profounder satisfaction, answered no. But it was important to be crystal clear. He did not intend his book only for the philosophers. He had his responsibilities to the age. Le Pascal de nos jours. He smiled.
