A Garden of Trees (17 page)

“And you hit him . . . ”

“There is a fear which is of damnation. When a person is a person no longer there is death in his place. As he sat on the rocks crouched heavy like a devil it was as if he were a mirror and I was he and there was nothing between us except what was going outwards into what was not bearable. All that he had said and had not said was hollow like a skull. What it meant was nothingness. It was not then that I hit him. He dived into the sea and swam away from the moonlight.”

“And you went out onto the sand . . . ”

“When he came into the room I did not expect that there it would follow me. He came in with the thing that was not him and the death and the corruption and when I cried he shouted to drown me but it was not him that I wanted to kill. I ran for the door and he slammed it in front of me and it was then that I hit him. Whatever it was that was taking me into eternity and would have taken me if I had not run it was not that that I could kill but rather myself before it could take me. When love is nothingness and words are empty and what you have trusted is a lie there is nothing else to be done. I went out onto the sand where the sea was crying.”

“And you shot yourself . . . ”

“Living as we had done what else could I do? With one of us mad and nothing but the two of us I only wanted to end it. There was nothing but the two of us in the whole of the world. With emptiness there is terror and you cannot escape it. Outside it was raining. Everything was a shadow and the shadow was a lie. That is what you must remember when you talk about love. By the sea there was a wind and I was not good at it.”

“The wind had stopped,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “The wind had stopped. The rain was soft and heavy with tears.”

“And is this true?” I said.

“True?” she said. “I have told you that what is true cannot be told. This is a story of love and Marius.”

As we sat the sounds from outside from very far away had grown and the slow disintegration of the tomb had scattered the dust trickling and sliding inwards and downwards piling gradually in particles around our feet expelling the web that had held us for centuries, the airless stillness falling to nothing as the earth came crumbling mounting up on us our eyes our hands our tongues crushed in on us so that now when there was light there was also no shape and the achievement of the pick looked down upon a desert. “What is there now?” I said.

“Now?” she said. “Is not that for you to tell me?”

“Yes,” I said. I sat in the shape of a thought that has been forgotten.

“And can you tell me?”

“No,” I said.

“Perhaps you do tell the truth,” she said. “Perhaps that is why Marius brought you.”

“Yes,” I said.

The light from the room was white like an arc light: time had come in on us like an awakening into snow. The eyes emerging out of darkness and birth were pained and blinded by the weight of the sky. I looked towards the door beyond which shadows ran softly. “I will tell you tommorrow,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said.

I stood up. Her face was still like paper and her hands like shells. “Goodbye,” I said.

“Goodbye,” she said.

Outside it was raining and the wind had stopped.

Marius was standing beneath a lamp post at the end of the street. I joined him. “Let's walk,” I said. He followed me round the corner to where the road ran down like a switchback. “Why was it not love with her?” I said.

“Because she was afraid of it.”

“Why?”

“Because it is frightening.”

“That is not the point,” I said.

“No,” he said. When he spoke he spoke quickly as if his life depended on it.

“Then why was it with her?”

“Because to her there was nothing else except the two of us.”

“That is what she said. Have you then worked it out and arranged it like a plea all stamped and docketed and legal?”

“And are you prosecuting me?”

“Yes,” I said. We walked beside the buses that crawled like something wounded.

“I did nothing,” Marius said. “I just stood there.”

“And to you there was something else besides the two of you?”

“That is not for me to say.”

“That is what she said. And if you had not stood?”

“What?” he said. “And what should I have done?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I don't know at all.”

“Neither do I,” he said.

At the bottom of the hill there was a crossroads in which the buses were wedged like lice. “Would you have stopped it if you could?” I said.

“That is no question,” he said. “It happened. I stood there and she destroyed herself.”

“Did not you destroy her?”

“I tell you again, it happened.”

“Then tell me,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“Oh nothing, nothing . . . ”

“I tell you,” he said, “I had been thinking. For months I had been thinking. Don't other people think?”

“Oh yes,” I said.

“And I discovered something. Well?”

“And she destroyed herself!”

“Yes.”

“Why do you put it like that? Is it necessary to defend yourself?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

“Then I hate you for it.”

We walked in silence. It seemed to me that I was destroying everything.

“Listen,” I said. “I am not saying that you destroyed her. I am saying that what you had discovered did.”

“What does this mean?” he said. “Some men are destroyed when they look on death. Is that death's responsibility?”

“You cannot talk about death's responsibility,” I said.

“All right then.”

“But what happened was wrong. And you can talk about man's responsibility.”

“All right.”

“And you are a man.”

“How comforting!” he said. I suddenly realized how much he was suffering.

“So that it is your responsibility,” I said. “And are you trying to say that it was worth it?”

“I will not use your words,” he said.

“Then what words will you use?”

“None,” he said.

“You have used them to justify yourself.”

“Because you were attacking me.”

“I am attacking you now,” I said.

We walked on. “What is it that you are asking?” he said.

“I am asking whether you hold yourself responsible for the effects that you have on others.”

“I hold myself responsible for my actions,” he said, “but not for what I am.”

“And you define your actions rather easily,” I said.

“It is not a difficult definition.”

“It is a limited one. And why do you not hold yourself responsible for what you are?”

“Because I believe in God.”

“God?” I said. “Why not the devil?”

“Because the devil is concerned with actions.”

“And what you are is the concern of God?”

“Yes,” he said, “fundamentally.”

“That must give you comfort,” I said.

He turned on me furiously. “Listen,” he said, “There are things in which you believe, in your inmost soul you believe, and they are the concern of God. If you have searched into your soul and have found something, if you have reached and can reach no further, then there, what you have found, that is God. You cannot deny that. You cannot deny that God. You may be wrong, for you may not have reached far enough, and you may forget what you have found, but if you believe something honestly then that is your God for you, and you can never deny it, never, no matter what may be its effects and its catastrophes.”

“Is it not by its effects that you should judge it?”

“I do not judge,” he said. “How can I judge it? There is a law and a truth that is beyond judgment. What you are trying to make me say is that my belief is a belief of the devil because a person was destroyed when she looked on it. You hold responsibility as a judgment against my belief. And I am saying that I accept responsibility for every decision at every time, but with judgment I am not concerned. The belief is God's and the judgment is God's, and the catastrophes are just what happen.”

“What then is your responsibility when your wife is destroyed?”

“My responsibility is that I will not tell you, but it is not to deny my God.”

“Why will you not tell me?”

“Because you would sneer.”

“And are you frightened of that?”

“I am not frightened for myself but for you.”

“Are you frightened for me when you would destroy your wife and pray to your God all in one breath and in the name of love?”

“Yes I am frightened, and yes then that is my responsibility to pray to my God, and I will tell you this, that you do not know what love is, you have no conception of what love is, you do not know about love at all.”

“Do you?” I said.

“Ask someone else,” he said.

“Your wife?”

“Yes,” he said; “Ask her, ask my wife,” and he turned away from me and walked off violently into the crowd where he disappeared like a bubble in a swirl of water.

I stood at the crossroads. I thought: There is madness, now. Outside the playground there is nothing but madness. Secrets should never be told. Secrets should never be told. I repeated this, endlessly.

The world went past me. What Marius has talked about is madness. The secret is horror, horror is at the centre, there is nothing but horror. Perhaps it is myself who is mad.

The rain was green as if the world was drowning. All this has happened too quickly, things do not happen so quickly as this. Out beyond the railings, across the waiting world, time has foundered like a wreck on the rocks. They say that to a drowning man time is speeded so that all his life is in one second. What is it that he remembers? Marius said it was eternity. Perhaps, after all, he only remembers what has been left undone.

What is Marius? He said it was tragedy. He said that nothing can happen until there was tragedy. Once there were no conflicts and now that there is a conflict what can happen now? Perhaps conflicts are of the imagination, like the games of children. That is one thing I should have learned, from the sense of madness.

So there is tragedy. A conflict is irrelevant, because I do not know. I do not know what I am feeling. Emotion is not like this, it is what is known. Get rid of the conflict and then I shall know. This is the one thing I have learned. Now, at every moment, there is something to do.

I rang up Annabelle. The glass was broken in the window of the call box, so that the noises of the street came in in waves. “Hullo,” she said.

“I want to ask you something, something about Marius.”

“Where are you?”

“When Marius told you about him and his wife, what did he say?”

“Can't you come round here or can I meet you?”

“I don't think so, I'm sorry, I have to get back . . . ”

“Are you there now, at the hospital?”

“I have been, I have to . . . ”

“Can't I see you?”

“No.”

A pause, then: “He told me that when . . . ”

“I am sorry, I can't hear you.”

“Surely it is not what happened then but what happens now,” she shouted.

“What?”

“I said surely . . . ”

“I hear you. But what can I do now when I do not know what Marius is?”

“Don't you know what Marius is?”

“No,” I said.

“You do, you do, and you must not . . . ”

“I can't hear you.”

“I said you must not take a failure . . . ”

“Did he say it was a failure?”

“Of course he did. Wasn't it a failure?”

“He seemed to think . . . ”

“Is not everything both a failure and not a failure, and what has that got to do with it?”

“Everything . . . ”

“No nothing, nothing, surely, you know what you feel about Marius, you know what Marius is, you cannot judge . . . ”

“If I cannot judge what can I do?”

“Do? Can't you do what you have to do and it is not a quibble over words that will decide you?”

“What have I to do?”

“What you feel and what Marius is to you, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I'll see you.” I went out of the call-box and walked among the streets.

A green day. Emotion is not describable. But if I cannot judge what is a failure and what is not a failure what is there to judge and what to know? And if I cannot know what is a disaster and what is not a disaster can I judge what is right and wrong just by looking inwards to the inmost soul, he said, but we can never know about ourselves, she said, and what is there to do? But can we know about others then, what to do at least and thus to everyone yes everyone but Marius especially who is close to me and who has helped me and who has given to me these days and this part of him this whole of him and this should I, I know, but can I? And what is this failure except that everything both is and isn't, and to him what am I to do but give—he who has been five years with a dying wife, who saw her die, who saw her kill, who saw him kill, five years looking inwards to ask a question that cannot be answered, a question like that, too, was it or was it not, am I or am I not, O God, and what can he do except pray to his God O God if it was then it was and I did, and if it wasn't then it wasn't and I did, and the prayer is the same whether it was or wasn't. And forgiveness is the same, too, so that it doesn't matter except that he asks to be forgiven, which he does, from his God, and from me too, from me, and who am I to walk about the streets asking a question that even his God does not answer because it is not necessary to be answered but only to have something done about it, and this is what I can do here and now because I have seen this suffering and hers too and it is not for me to ask about it but only to help it. This I accept and must do although I do not know how and I do not know why and I do not even know if it will be right or wrong, but that doesn't seem to matter any more, I don't know why, it is the doing that matters, and for the how and why and right and wrong I trust to luck and whatever there is between us and whatever there is between everyone in the world and that indeed he has given me. What they have done for others I can do for them. It is a green day. I must do for what he is and what he requires.