A Garden of Trees (37 page)

At some period of the night I had a sudden vivid memory of Marius's wife. I was thinking of the last time I saw her in hospital and was trying to remember the things she said. There was something that eluded me, and the harder I thought of it the further away it got. Then it seemed that she was very close to me herself and was trying to tell it to me. In the silence I became startled and spoke to her out loud. I must have been half asleep because the noise of my cry woke me, and then it seemed that I had been speaking to Annabelle. I wanted very much that I could take upon myself what Annabelle was suffering, that I could get close to her. I thought that if I tried hard enough I might be able to. It was necessary and possible that I should. And then I knew that what had been suggested to me was not what Marius's wife had said, but merely that I should try this about Annabelle. I tried to carry her sadness.

And then, in the night that had become the universe, it was as if this were the purpose and the justification of everything. The world was one, suffering was indivisible, what was carried by one took the burden from another. Whatever would happen in the rest of our lives—if Annabelle should die, if I should fail her—still there was this oneness by which the whole might be revived. In all time all people were responsible for one another. These were the ghosts that I remembered, the ghosts that had to be laid. Whatever would happen, however agonized the future, there was always this communion by which meaning was given over. After this night, I thought, when we go out into the morning, we will know this, and remember this, and nothing will not be worth while. Love is its own justification, and so is suffering. We can all go into eternity and die there for ever. It still will not matter. What matters is the whole, for which we will have died. In the early morning a policeman came to turn me out of the garden and I talked to him and he went away.

22

Peter came when it was light. He stood beside me, tired, requiring information. “How is Annabelle?” he said.

“She is all right,” I said. “I am going to ring up soon.”

“I must see her.”

“Wait till I telephone.”

“I'm going to Paris to-day.”

“I will be telephoning soon.”

The sun had not yet warmed us. We were dry, brittle, with the weight of consciousness heavy like sand. Peter was blinking his screwed-up eyes and my body was stiff so that if I moved I thought I would break it. We were both like men hung from parachutes above a desert. We waited.

“How do you know she's all right?” Peter said.

“Alice is with her. And a doctor.”

“A doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Why a doctor?”

“Of course there is a doctor. Wait till I ring up.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

As the heat started it seemed to rise from the stones like a mist. There was a gradual melting of stiffness and time began to tick like water dripping from a cracked pipe after a thaw. Peter stirred uneasily.

“I must go in,” he said. “I must see her.”

“I will ring up,” I said.

“I am going to Paris to join my father. I won't be back for some time.”

“Wait,” I said.

There was a call-box on the corner. Walking was a mechanical business like exercises. As I moved the heat was ruffled and I shivered. Alice's flat undeviating voice answered me.

“How is she?” I said.

“She's all right,” Alice said.

“Good,” I said. I didn't know how to put it. “And the child?” I said.

“There is no child,” Alice said.

“Oh.” It was extraordinary how the sun still shone and the traffic moved and the news had made no difference. I watched a fly which lay on its back on the ledge of the window faintly moving its legs against the light. “I don't know about these things,” I said. “How bad are they and how bad was she?”

“She was all right,” Alice said. “They can be bad but it didn't happen too bad to her.” The fly was waving its tentacles in death.

“Can I come round?”

“Yes,” Alice said.

“Peter is here too.”

“He can't come.”

“Why not? Why not if I can?”

No answer from Alice.

“He's going away to-day. He won't be coming back.”

No answer.

“He's all right now,” I said.

“He'll only stay a minute.”

“All right,” Alice said.

I went back to Peter. “She's not bad,” I said. “Would you like to see her?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

We went in and walked to the lift. It was as if there were a lot of people watching us. On the landing Alice opened the door to us and Peter said, “Thank you,” and then he went quickly along the passage. Alice was staring at me with her hard tired eyes.

“Well,” she said, “there you are, it's over, and are you now going to grow up?”

Peter had opened the door of Annabelle's room and I could see the corner of her bed beyond him. He went up to it soundlessly like a man going to fetch something and then he went down on his knees and knelt by the side of the bed and put out his hand across the covering. I did not hear either of them speaking. His hand was towards her where I could not see and his face was turned to the ground so that he was not looking at her. There was only his arm, stretched out, like a branch; and she, somewhere distant, touching it. They remained there. Then he rose with a quick single movement from his knees as if a wind had lifted him and he came out of the room quite soundlessly still and went into his own room next to hers. Her door remained open, a straight continuation of the passage leading to a mirror which reflected the passage straight back again to where I stood, and there was just the one straight line with myself at either end of it and Annabelle in between. I could hear Peter in his room moving ceaselessly and precisely like a tiger in its cage, and as I stared at myself along the passage I was a dangling figure at one end and a small darker replica at the other, myself seeing myself not from either end but both and from the middle where Annabelle lay beyond the one blind corner of the bed. Then Peter emerged carrying an enormous suitcase into which he had packaged all his belongings for a month, and he came up the passage momentarily blocking the view, moving still precise and still ceaseless and he went past me and past Alice and then stopped at the door. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” Then he went out. And the passage remained.

“There,” Alice said, “there now, and have you finished?'

I walked along the passage. In the room I met myself. Annabelle was crying. She was veiled with her tears like a moon. “Annabelle,” I said.

The windows were stained with curtains. A blue light dripped down from the morning, the room was blue with light like water, the water flickered, and we were beneath the water, swimming. I thought, When I am with her I shall always think of the sea. “Annabelle,” I said.

“Yes?” she said.

“I am so sorry,” I said.

“I have lost the only thing that I shall ever love,” she said.

In the sea we should have been made silver. I should have liked to have rested there.

“I know,” I said.

VII
ETERNITY

23

It was at a political meeting that they killed Marius. We were there when it happened. We had gone out to the West Indies, to stay with Anna-belle's father, and Marius was shot. He had been mixed up in a strike of the sugar-cane workers, and when he died the strike was broken and everything went on as before. He would not have been surprised.

Annabelle had said she wanted to die, but she didn't. She got well slowly although she cried much of the time. We went to the sun to try to get her laughing. It was very hot, and we lay in bed with a fan whirring continually.

On the way out we saw Peter in Paris. There was a strike there, too, of transport workers, and we had to walk from the station. People were standing about on the corners of the streets and occasionally they ran out into the road to try to stop a car which went past them. There were a lot of soldiers being carried around in American trucks and the traffic had to stop for them. The people watched the trucks go past and then they began running out into the road again.

Peter was sitting in the hall of a big hotel, drinking whiskey. He tried to pretend that he was glad to see us. He had big rings under his eyes and he kept on looking round the hall of the hotel as if he were about to be arrested. A girl came to join him and she carried a big bag like a drum and her earrings clashed like cymbals when she turned her head. I tried to think where I had seen her before, and then I remembered. When Peter was with her he was rather like a dog.

We had dinner, the four of us, and the girl kept talking in a hard hysterical voice using strange slang phrases that required no answer. Peter echoed them for conversation and called her darling and laughed very quickly whenever she stopped. When he looked at her his eyes were watery, but he never looked at Annabelle or me. The waiters treated him with great respect and the girl made eyes at them to impress us. The restaurant was full of old men having dinner with younger men and their faces were artificial as if held together with spirit gum. In front of them were a lot of little bottles and plates like those on a dressing table, and hands fluttered over them as if they were choosing jewels. The young men sat very straight and obedient and sometimes the old men helped them to wine.

Later in a café we came across more of Peter's friends. It was a small airless place like the crypt of a church and we drank brandy that tasted of syrup. There was a man playing a guitar and the girls chattered so much that he could not be heard. Peter was enjoying himself and repeated everything that was said and a girl came and sat on his knee. At midnight there was a cabaret in which a very old woman appeared in a bathing dress. She sang dirty songs and did a dance holding a carrot. Everyone clapped and cheered and Peter kissed the girl with the earrings. For a while he seemed happy and talked louder than anyone else, and then he became drunk and did not talk anymore. We took him back in a taxi and his face looked dead.

I helped him to bed in his small ornate room and he lay face downwards in his pyjamas. I thought he was asleep and was about to leave him when he put out his hand and said, “Don't go,” and held me. The room was very hot and was padded with black silk like the inside of a coffin. Peter had covered his face with a pillow and he pulled at it and said, “Oh God, God,” several times out loud. Then he sat up in bed and lit a cigarette and smoked it with the ash crumbling off onto the sheets. “What day is it to-morrow?” he said. “Sunday,” I said.

Peter had got a job with a newspaper and he had been doing it for two months when we saw him. He had not come back to England when Annabelle and I were married. We had heard news of him from time to time and it was always suggested that he was being a great success. The opinion was that he had settled down, had grown up, had got over an awkward stage in his career. As I watched him sitting in the bed he somehow reminded me of Alice. His hand holding the cigarette drooped and burned a hole in the blanket. When I left him he asked me to tell the concierge to wake him early in time for church.

We were with him for one more day and we saw him being successful. He spent the afternoon in the bar of the big hotel with two blonde Italian girls who looked like madonnas. They sat on either side of him and he appeared very small between them. There were a lot of pansy men at the bar who seemed to be keeping clear of him, and Peter was fluttering his hands incessantly at the girls as if he were doing some penance to them. They were very serious with him, and seemed to be trying to protect him when later his pansy friends came up and surrounded him. He grew smaller and smaller between the two big motherly madonnas until he was quite drunk again and then he did not seem to exist at all. We left him then. I wondered who would win. They were all very fond of him.

Later we had a letter from him saying how happy he was and how he loved Paris because it was the only place where one could have fun any more. He had changed his address and was living with one of the Italian girls and was thinking of becoming a Roman Catholic because she was one. His letter was full of words like divine and heavenly, and indeed he spoke of all his friends as if they were gods and goddesses.

We had heard about Marius, too, from time to time, and about his successes. There had been riots on his island in the West Indies, and whenever the news crept into the papers Marius's name was mentioned. The workers in the sugar-cane fields were striking for higher pay, and all the landowners were holding out against them except Marius who was on their side. He spoke for them at their meetings and had become an unofficial head of the trades-union that was running the strike. Most of the workers on the island had come out in sympathy with the strikers and Marius was much hated by the other landowners. Sometimes his meetings were broken up by the police and sometimes by parties organized by the landowners. Annabelle's father had been governor of the islands at the time when the strike began and he had tried to settle it and had not been able to, and then he had resigned. Afterwards he lived in this small private house on the island and we heard that he had been ordered home and had refused to come and that his career was finished, but we did not know about this. We went out to stay with him and we arrived at the end of the hot season in the rains.

We went into the town one evening and saw the people standing on the corners of the streets. There was no traffic and nothing to move for, and it seemed that the wooden buildings were material for a bonfire waiting to be set alight. Even the sea was oily, so that it seemed that the water might burn. A group of policemen came down the street with a man handcuffed in the middle of them, and there was no sound except the tread of their marching. Women hung out of the windows of upper storeys as if they were bodies about to arise from graves. It was as if the whole town were waiting for the coming of the devil.

Marius was sitting in the bar of a small hotel, drinking whiskey. There were two young negroes on either side of him who treated him respectfully, like disciples. His voice had a strange accent in it, and when he saw us he came over and was polite. His friends waited for him while he spoke to us, and then he rejoined them and they began talking again. The people at the bar kept clear of him as if the young men were his bodyguard. Marius looked very young, like the captain of a schoolboy's football team. Presently he stood up and left the bar and the young men followed him out in a line.

On the day of the meeting there was a hot wind blowing from the sea and dust hung in the air like ash from a volcano. It clung to mouths and nostrils, and skin became dirty where it collected on sweat. It was a day on which the body becomes horrible. People wore handkerchiefs round their necks and tried to keep still so that their clothes should not rub them. We heard the crowd moving up to the top of the town and the day became heavy so that perhaps one would not have minded dying.

The town was built on a hill with a square at the top where the church and the official buildings lay. The church was a fat square box like a toy with imitation doors and windows and a removable steeple. Steep cobbled streets led down from the square on two sides towards the harbour. On the other sides there was the one motor-road and for the rest just rock. The cobbled streets were so steep that it was sometimes necessary to hold on to a doorway to prevent oneself from sliding. Before the meeting began the police had cut off the motor-road so that the crowd had to climb up the cobbles, and we could see them sweating jerkily through the greasy heat like raindrops running strangely in reverse. Some were carrying banners, and every now and then the bearers slipped and the banners went down in the dust like a sheet falling into an enormous ashtray.

We could not see Marius when we arrived. There was an old negro on the platform and the crowd was making too much noise for him to be heard. Individuals seemed to be shouting quite indiscriminately and yet there was a peculiar solidity about the gathering as if each separate movement was a tentacle spread from the body of the whole. The jerking of a head as it spoke or the clenched raising of a fist seemed to shiver the limbs around it almost physically, and yet one did not know what caused the solitary impulse at the beginning. It was like watching a shoal of fish hanging massed in clear water, the impulse and the effect of the sudden switches of tension were indistinguishable. The crowd was tight, and yet moving, the whole square seemed to crawl. I could see a one-legged beggar beating his crutch ceaselessly against a lamp-post, and the people around him nodding in rhythm to him as if they were dancing. When Marius appeared the bodies switched to him as if he had magnetized them, and he was both the cause and the effect of the impulse. The voices closed into a steady harmony and there was a whistling in the air as if the dusty wind was blowing through the trees. Marius spoke and they listened to him and I do not know if they understood. His voice came clearly through the heavy air and he was saying that there must be no violence, that there was work for many on his estate, and that there was food for all. He said that they would win their fight for better conditions if they stayed together quietly and were patient. He spoke with no rhetoric and with a simplicity that held them. They became calm, and solid, and he had power over them. I did not think it mattered if they did not understand. For a moment, in an emotion of peace, I thought that Marius might be the saviour of the world.

A group of white men, or half-castes, had formed in one corner of the square slightly behind the platform. They wore white shirts and grey trousers and belts of a precisely similar pattern. At a sign from their leader they began to chant, and I remembered the day when I had first seen Marius in London. There the singing had been a thin tuneless wailing in despair against graves: the crowd had not been solid and the air was cold. Now, in the heat, beneath the ash of the volcano, the crowd turned instinctively as if it had been stung. The white men were leaning forwards chanting with a queer artificial jerking of their arms. I had the impression that they were dolls attempting to be sick. They were singing that Marius was a nigger.

Marius heard them and turned to them and I suppose it would not have been right for him to ignore them. He shouted in a voice which carried over the rising hum, “Listen to them and see if they have anything to say worth listening to,” and the chant went on with a thousand black heads turned craning towards it: “A dirty nigger, a dirty nigger,” and a thousand pairs of yellow eyes coming round in hate. “If I am,” Marius shouted, “then what does it matter and is that worth listening to?” One of the white men stretched out a finger and shouted something that was inaudible but which from its gesture was evidently an obscenity. I was reminded of the old woman in Paris dancing with her carrot.

The point of magnetism to which was drawn the direction of the dusty-headed filings of the crowd had now switched from Marius to the group in the corner where the mechanical dolls leaning forwards were vomiting. But Marius still held them back with his voice that charmed and placated, sinking them back into quietude against the spray of hate, and letting the hate wear itself out on the heat of dustiness. The flow of yellow eyes was no more than a murmur, after all the heads were static. He would have held them like this and saved them if the bells of the church had not started ringing.

No one knew why they started or who was ringing them, but when they began there was nothing that could be heard, nothing that could hold them—the direction and the magnetism of the afternoon were scattered and chaos came like the roll of lava through the ashes. It happened quickly—after the first numb intrusion—the crowd breaking up with a strange silent sibilance and the group of white men disappearing and Marius standing alone and important while the mechanical sound rolled on without tune and without order. Fighting began instinctively, immediately, not directed specifically against the white men but just arising spontaneously like the quivering of springs when the tension is broken. It began in groups, like whirlpools, spreading slowly through the square. Then there were soldiers coming up the road carrying rifles and they spread out in a line in front of the church and there was a rush up the steps as the bells beat on and on and the rush went back as it hit the breaker of bayonets. Marius stood with this arms raised to quell them but there was no power any more, no force to stop them, in the sea of black ashes there was no tide and no direction just the boiling of the surface as the spray blew wildly and the line of soldiers came down the steps to clear the square. It was then that the group of white men appeared again, they had got round the back of the crowd and were close to the platform and they were fighting in a wedge getting nearer to it. The line of soldiers went past them and left them driving deeper and deeper in towards Marius, and I went out in the square to see what could be done. I left Annabelle in a doorway, and as I walked I could see her father in front of me punching his way through the crowd with his cigarette-holder jutting up from his mouth and an unlighted cigarette in it, a small dapper man in a panama hat fighting and fighting and making no headway against the arms and legs and fists that surrounded him. I walked through as Marius had done once before, and I saw the white shirts and grey trousers getting up to the platform and pushing at it so as to overturn it and arms stretching upwards to tear at the banners and Marius swaying as if he were walking on water. Then the crowd gathered itself for the last time screaming and broke through the line of soldiers and reached the platform which now seemed to rise up bodily into the air above the black and white heads and the heads were going down beneath the wind of arms and Marius was rising. Then a second line of soldiers spread out by the church and there was an officer giving an order while the white shirts went down and down and the white heads were sinking beneath the black stabs of spray and then the soldiers raised their rifles and fired into the air. For a moment everyone was quiet, they were all kneeling, and as I looked for Annabelle I could see her walking above their bodies like a nurse. She reached the steps of the church as the crowd rose yelling and there was suddenly a crush that seemed to squeeze the last breath out of the daylight and then the soldiers fired again. There was a woman screaming and screaming repeatedly very close to my ear and I could not move my arms and then it seemed that I and those around me were lifted off our feet and carried, unresisting, by the panic of the waves. We were moved in an effortless limp block like flotsam towards the steep cobbled streets that led to the harbour, and as the first people began to go down the screaming rose in a crescendo that fought against the bells and the noise became enormous like a furnace. We went down hill backwards and there were fingers tearing at the woodwork of doors and a sound of cracking as when trees are felled, and always some people coming on top of us like the weight of a glacier. I got my hand round a pillar which supported the front of a house and I clung there with my feet off the ground and bodies moving beneath me and a line of faces jerking close to my own, smooth dirty sweating faces snarling with gold teeth and twisted mouths and breaths like something solid. There was a man beside me clinging to the pillar who had a gold chain round his neck and the chain had been seized by a woman behind him and the metal was cutting into his throat as if he were being hung. His head went back inch by inch and there was a small gold crucifix on the chain which stuck out straight from his Adam's apple like the point of a sword. Then the chain broke and he let go his hold on the pillar and clutched at his throat gurgling and he fell backwards against the woman and they went down on the ground with the crowd going over them. There were bodies on the cobbles crawling and being kicked and then the wave seemed to break and they were all facing downwards and they gave up struggling and were flung forwards wildly like surf. At the bottom they scattered sideways or were pushed or ebbed into the sea. As the last rush came past me the pillar of the house broke and I fell against the woodwork. It seemed that the sky came down in a dust of fire and darkness and then it was quiet. When I picked myself up I saw the house wrecked with a hole in the wall as if a tank had been through it, and at the bottom of the hill by the harbour the muddy water writhing like a vision of hell. But from the square there was silence.