The Time of the Angels

by Iris Murdoch

  The drone of music filtered through the lighted crack, sleepy, enticing. Muriel got her two hands firmly on to Leo’s forearms and her face brushed the soft fur of his head, fragrant of hair and boy. He said very clearly but almost totally inaudibly into her ear, “You brought me here. Don’t drive me mad.”

  “She may be undressed,” said Muriel. They were traitor’s words. She was losing the struggle with herself.

  “Well, you look first and see.”

  Pattie’s movements could still be heard in the corridor. Muriel knew now that she had to look, it had become impossible not to. Was it after all so grave, to steal this illicit glimpse of her cousin? Why was she trembling? Yet she knew that it was grave. Elizabeth was a secret thing whose dignity and separateness was a peril. Elizabeth was taboo. But Muriel was drawn irresistibly now by some concentrated siren ray and she felt awed and afraid as one who faints outside a sibyl’s cave.

  “You will obey me?”

  “Yes, yes, but look.”

  Leo, hot and shivering, seemed glued like a parasite to her side. He was uttering a continuous very soft hissing buzzing sound. Muriel thrust him away and turned her shoulder to him. Now the murmurous strip of light was before her face. It seemed to Muriel that she too was uttering a soft sibilant noise. She knelt quietly with one knee on the floor and leaned upon the shelf, shifting the linen which obscured the lower half of the crack. She thrust her head further forward.

  The crack was thin and not easy to see through. Muriel approached until her nose was almost touching the partition wall, and shifted about a little trying to focus her eyes. At first she could see nothing but darkness and a sharp dazzle of empty light. Then she began to see through into the room beyond.

  It was like looking into clear water and it took Muriel a moment to realize that she was looking straight into the big French mirror. Light seemed to fall like a faint concealing veil between her and the mirror. She stared through the arch of the glass trying to fix her gaze upon the dimmer gauzier forms of the reflections which seemed to lie in some reserved and further space beyond the near familiar brightness of her cousin’s room. The image of the alcove began to take shape for her and the head of Elizabeth’s bed.

  Muriel felt a touch on her shoulder. She twitched herself away, trying to recompose the fragile image which was quivering now like water disturbed. She concentrated her vision at last into a small circle of perfect clarity. She saw the end of the chaise-longue close up against its mirror double. Beyond it in the mirror she saw the heaped and tousled bed. She began to see Elizabeth, who was on the bed. She saw, clear and yet unlocated like an apparition, Elizabeth’s head, moving, half hidden in a stream of hair, and Elizabeth’s bare shoulder. Then there were other movements, other forms, an entwining suddenly of too many arms. And she saw, slowly rising from the embrace, beyond the closed eyes and the streaming hair, white and dreadful, the head and naked torso of her father.

  Muriel moved back from her spy-hole. She moved quite slowly, with the strength and precision of a steel machine. She got up to her feet and stood there in the dark room, immobile as a tower rigid, full. Time waited while she slowly, precisely, took complete consciousness of what she had seen. She became aware of Leo, who seemed to have been pawing at her for some while. Another train passed below.

  “Let me look now.”

  “She is naked,” said Muriel.

  “Let me look.”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to.”

  Leo began to push her out of the way. Muriel pushed back, pressing square against his shoulders. Leo, whispering something, pushed harder. Muriel clasped his waist with one arm and thrust the other across his neck, straining his head back. Her legs entwined with his and he began to overbalance backward across her knee. With an immense crash they fell struggling to the floor. A bright light was turned on in the room.

  “I am so sorry,” said Marcus Fisher.

  Framed in the doorway, with the dusky anxious face of Pattie behind his shoulder, Marcus stood holding a brown-paper parcel and a bunch of chrysanthemums. Leo and Muriel, now frantically pushing to come part from each other, rolled over again upon the floor.

  “I am so sorry,” Marcus repeated. “I am terribly sorry.”

  Muriel began to get to her feet.

  “I am so sorry,” said Marcus. “So stupid of me. I was looking for Elizabeth’s room. Of course it must be this one next door.” He began to back out.

  Muriel saw him move back into the corridor and heard the agitated voice of Pattie saying something. As Marcus moved again, Muriel got herself to the doorway. She took a gasping breath. Holding on to the edge of the door she called out with all the voice she had, loudly and clearly, uttering her father’s Christian name for the first time in her life. “Carel! Carel! Carel!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “CAREL! CAREL! CAREL!”

  Marcus Fisher, still stunned by the sudden and unexpected vision of Leo and his niece embracing each other on the floor of what appeared to be a large linen cupboard, was thrown into total confusion by this loud ringing utterance of his brother’s name. The inexplicable cry, a cry both of fear and menace, died away and left Marcus paralysed and amazed, standing frozen in the corridor, the flowers trailing from his hand on to the floor.

  Something shot past him. Leo reached the top of the stairs and seemed to fly down them in a single bound. His pounding receding feet merged into the subterranean growl of a train. The house shook. The image of Muriel assembled in front of Marcus. She was near to him, facing him and leaning against a closed door, her face was like an ancient embalmed face, strained and smooth, the lipless mouth opening in a senseless slot. Behind his shoulder Pattie was pouring out a scolding gabble in which he could hear no words. He turned round, shrinking away from the women, and put the flowers down upon a table. He noticed that the top of the table was made of various inlaid marbles, brown and green and white. The light was bad in the corridor. He looked back toward the stairs, expecting to see the tall form of his brother advancing upon him.

  The brown-paper parcel which Marcus was still holding under his arm contained the icon of the Trinity represented as angels. He had had to pay three hundred pounds for it at the antique shop. He had never, of course, been in any doubt about his own intentions. As soon as he knew about Leo’s curious plight it was evident what his heart had decided for him. He felt about the whole matter a not altogether unpleasant shame. He knew that he should have been sterner with Leo, much more austere and dignified and above all distant, and knew too what weakness it was in him which set this austerity beyond his power. He had been manipulated by the boy, and they were both well aware of it. Yet the very weakness was a pleasure.

  Marcus had also been glad, in a quite immediate way, to have a practical occupation, and one which was connected with the inhabitants of the Rectory. He needed desperately to see his brother again, to see the face which had been veiled at their last meeting and which he had dreamed of as disfigured, a demon’s face. It was necessary to lay this ghost, to let a mundane and simple reality put such disturbing visions to flight. This was becoming, in the case of Elizabeth, even more urgent. The image of Elizabeth had altered in him in a way quite independent of his rational thoughts. The innocent and sweet girl that he remembered was in danger of becoming in his imagination a Medusa. He must see Elizabeth, the real Elizabeth, soon and arrest in himself a process which seemed to be endowed with an uncanny vitality of its own.

  The recovery of the icon provided a simple reason for a visit and even perhaps the authority for an entrance. Marcus had intended to ask for Eugene and to enlist the Peshkovs as helpers before proceeding further. However he had been startled into greater boldness by having the door of the Rectory opened for him pat on his arrival by a departing electrician. As in a dream he walked in. There was no one about. He knew, or thought he knew the position of Elizabeth’s room; he had already worked this out in the course of his nightly prowlings round the forbidden hous
e. It was impossible then not to mount the stairs and attempt, with a dreadful quickness, to confront the harmless thing which had begun so absurdly to frighten him.

  “Well, Marcus.”

  Carel had come. Marcus looked at the buttons of the black soutane and then raised his eyes to his brother’s face. Carel’s face gleamed like enamel, like porcelain, and Marcus realized for the first time how very blue his brother’s eyes were, blue with a blue of skies, of flowers. The eyes looked at him through the pale structure of the face. The dark hair was sleek, like feathers of a bird.

  “Come, Marcus.”

  Marcus followed his brother, carried along magnetically in his wake. Muriel and Pattie passed through his field of vision like idle bystanders caught by a camera, and disappeared. He followed Carel closely, almost treading upon the movement of the soutane, down some stairs, up some other stairs, and through a doorway. A shaded light shone upon an open book and a glass of milk. A door closed behind him.

  “I’m sorry,” said Marcus.

  There was a silence. Then Carel uttered a low sibilant sound which might have been a laugh.

  “It’s all right, brother. Sit down, brother.”

  Marcus found that he had automatically picked up the flowers again from the marble-topped table. He laid them down, together with the brown-paper parcel, upon the desk. He smelt the rather stuffy odour of the brown and yellow chrysanthemums. He sat down upon an upright chair beside the desk.

  “Marcus, Marcus, Marcus, I told you to leave us alone.”

  “I’m sorry. You see I—”

  “Think of us as dead.”

  “But you aren’t dead,” said Marcus. “Besides Elizabeth—”

  “You have no duty to Elizabeth.”

  “It’s not that,” said Marcus. He felt crazed and eloquent enough to be exact. “It’s not a matter of duty. I’m just getting thoroughly upset about Elizabeth. I keep thinking about her in such an odd way. I’ve just got to see her. I can’t work, I can’t do anything.”

  “What do you mean, thinking about her in an odd way?”

  “I don’t know, it’s ridiculous, I have nightmares about her, as if she’d been changed.”

  “Mmm.”

  “So you see I’ve got to see her just for my own peace of mind.”

  “Later on perhaps. We’ll see. Elizabeth is far from well.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t believe a word you say any more,” said Marcus. He felt strangely exhilarated. He peered at Carel, who was standing in front of him now, just outside the direct light of the lamp.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Carel followed the words with a long sigh which turned into a yawn.

  “Don’t say that. Carel, I want to talk to you properly, please.”

  “Whatever about, my dear Marcus? Do you want to reminisce about our childhood?”

  “No, of course not. I want to talk about you, about what you think and how you are.”

  “A difficult subject, too difficult for you.”

  “Are you aware that some people think you’re insane?”

  “Do you?”

  “No, of course I don’t. But you do behave strangely, seeing nobody and all those things you said to me last time. Is it really true that you’ve lost your faith?”

  “You use such an odd old-fashioned vocabulary. Do you mean do I think there is no God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, yes, I think it. There is no God.”

  Marcus stared up at the calm tall figure in the half dark. The words had an extraordinary ring of authority. They were words which he himself had always regarded as common-place. But uttered now they startled him.

  “So you weren’t pretending last time, you weren’t pulling my leg?”

  “I wouldn’t trouble to jest with you, Marcus, any more than I would trouble to deceive you.”

  “But Carel, if you really don’t believe, you shouldn’t go on being a priest. Your vocation—”

  “My vocation is to be a priest. If there is no God it is my vocation to be the priest of no God. And now, my dear Marcus—”

  “Please, Carel, just a moment, I do wish you’d explain—”

  “Be silent for a minute.”

  Carel had turned and was pacing up and down. Marcus sat hunched and stony still, fascinated.

  After a little while Carel said, “Well, perhaps I will talk to you, why not. Last time I gave you the vulgar doctrine. Now shall I tell you how it really is?”

  Though he had denied it, Marcus was near again to thinking that his brother was mad. He felt dread of him. Almost involuntarily he said in a low voice, “I’m not sure that I want to hear now.”

  “Nobody wants to hear, Marcus. It is the most secret thing in the world. And though I may tell you, you will not retain it in your mind because it cannot be borne.” Carel was still pacing the room, not with a steady stride but as if wafted rather irregularly to and fro. The cassock rustled and swung, was checked and swung again.

  Carel went on, “You cannot imagine how often I have been tempted to announce from the pulpit that there is no God. It would be the most religious statement that could be conceived of. If there were anybody worthy to make it or receive it.”

  “It’s not exactly new —”

  “Oh yes, people have often uttered the words, but no one has believed them. Perhaps Nietzsche did for a little. Only his egoism of an artist soon obscured the truth. He could not hold it. Perhaps that was what drove him mad. Not the truth itself but his failure to hold it in contemplation.”

  “I don’t see anything so dreadful about it,” said Marcus. “Atheism can be a perfectly humane doctrine—”

  “It is not as the German theologians imagine, and the rationalists with their milk-and-water modern theism, and those who call themselves atheists and have changed nothing but a few words. Theology has been so long a queen, she thinks she can still rule as a queen in disguise. But all is different now, toto caelo. Men will soon begin to feel the consequences, though they will not understand.”

  “Do you understand?” Marcus murmured. His hand touched something on the desk and he picked it up. It was a paper dart.

  Carel went on, “It is not that all is permitted. To say that was the reaction of a babbling child. No one who had enough spirit to say it ever really believed it anyway. What they wanted was simply a new morality. But the truth itself they did not conceive of, the concept of it alone would have killed them.”

  “But all the same morality remains—”

  “Suppose the truth were awful, suppose it was just a black pit, or like birds huddled in the dust in a dark cupboard? Suppose only evil were real, only it was not evil since it had lost even its name? Who could face this? The philosophers have never even tried. All Philosophy has taught a facile optimism, even Plato did so. Philosophers are simply the advance guard of theology. They are certain that Goodness is there in the centre of things radiating its pattern. They are certain that Good is one, single and unitary. They are sure of this, or else they deify society, which is to say the same thing in a different way. Only a few of them really feared Chaos and Old Night, and fewer still ever caught a glimpse— And if they did perhaps, through some crack, some fissure in the surface, catch sight of that, they ran straight back to their desks, they worked harder than ever late into the night to explain that it was not so, to prove that it could not be so. They suffered, they even died for this argument, and called it the truth.”

  “But do you yourself really believe—?”

  “Any interpretation of the world is childish. Why is this not obvious? All philosophy is the prattling of a child. The Jews understood this a little. Theirs is the only religion with any real grimness in it. The author of the Book of Job understood it. Job asks for sense and justice. Jehovah replies that there is none. There is only power and the marvel of power, there is only chance and the terror of chance. And if there is only this there is no God, and the single Good of the philosophers is an illusion and a fake.”

&
nbsp; “Wait a minute,” said Marcus. His voice sounded sudden and harsh and crude in the room, as if Carel’s words had not been spoken, but had been noiseless agencies entering the mind by telepathy. “Wait a minute. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with this. But ordinary morality goes on, ordinary decent conduct still makes sense. You speak as if—”

  “If there is goodness it must be one,” said Carel. “Multiplicity is not paganism, it is the triumph of evil, or rather of what used to be called evil and is now nameless.”