An Accidental Man (17 page)

Ludwig was red again, perhaps because he realized that Garth had overheard the conversation. ‘Whisky?'

‘A little. Has my father got a job yet?'

‘I don't think so. Not unless he has today.'

‘How's Dorina?'

‘I haven't seen her. Why don't you go?'

‘I can't,' said Garth. He must not go near Dorina. He wondered how much Ludwig understood of all that. ‘When are you getting married?'

‘September. It's a big do, I'm afraid.'

September. Ridiculous.

‘Say,' said Ludwig, ‘when I'm married we'll still be friends, won't we?'

‘Yes.' But it was unlikely. Marriage made people worldly. Even now Ludwig seemed to have less edge to him. Garth stared at Ludwig's greyish furry head, close cropped again now, his earnest long-lipped face and often-blinking puzzled doggy-brown eyes. Why had this chap once seemed so important?

‘Have you seen your Uncle Matthew yet?' said Ludwig.

‘No. I don't suppose I shall. I'm not going to be at the Buckingham Palace garden party. Why?'

‘He sounds an interesting guy. I'd like to meet him.'

‘He is an interesting guy,' said Garth. He had already decided to keep clear of Uncle Matthew. Uncle Matthew knew too much. And look what he had become. ‘But he's a false prophet.'

‘A false prophet?'

‘He's an entangler. He'll entangle you if he can. He's a fat charmer, charming his way to paradise. He's the sort of person who makes everyone tell him their life story and then forgets it.'

‘You seem to feel strongly about him,' said Ludwig.

‘I don't.' Garth was about to tell Ludwig that if Ludwig fell in with Matthew he would have to fall out with Austin, but he decided not to. He could not set up as his father's keeper, it was a false role. And some things must be left to Ludwig's intelligence. ‘I haven't seen him for years, actually.'

‘Gracie seems to be very keen on him,' said Ludwig.

Garth said nothing.

‘Say, did that bag of yours ever turn up?' said Ludwig.

‘No.'

‘Austin said there was a novel in it.'

‘Yes, but it's not important. I would have torn it up anyway. It was a false sort of thing — personal muck — you know. I'm not a novelist.'

‘What was it about?'

‘Well — it was about a chap who saw somebody stabbed in the street and felt it meant something absolutely important to him, and kept trying to explain this to everybody, to his parents and his girl and his teacher and so on, and nobody understands and then they think he's mad and imagined it all and in the end he commits suicide.'

‘It sounds jolly good,' said Ludwig.

‘Don't be silly, Ludwig,' said Garth. ‘You must have developed softening of the brain since you came to England.'

‘Don't bite me. I can't conceive of anything you wrote not being somehow good.'

‘I'm not a writer, that's the point, not an artist. You may know a truth but if it's at all complicated you have to be an artist not to utter it as a lie. Almost everything uttered is lies.'

‘What about philosophy?'

‘That's the worst lie of all, because it's so gentle.'

‘Gentle? Why did you give up philosophy?'

‘Because I saw a man stabbed in the street.'

‘So the novel was about you?'

‘Yes, in a trivial way. The hero was me, I suppose all first novel heroes are the author. But it didn't express the point, not
the
point.'

‘Who was the guy who was stabbed, I mean the real one?'

‘I don't know. A negro. He was done in by a couple of thugs. He may have been a thug himself. It was late at night, no one around. He shouted for help. I watched. Then I walked on.'

‘I guess I'd have walked on too. But you feel guilt?'

‘No, I don't,' said Garth. ‘Part of the point is that I don't feel guilt.'

‘I would,' said Ludwig. ‘I feel guilt about everything. But if you don't feel guilt why is it so all-important?'

‘Oh don't —' murmured Garth — ‘don't —'

‘You know, I've so much wanted to talk to you about my situation.'

‘You mean your engagement?'

‘No. My not going back home to fight.'

‘Oh that. What about it?'

‘You're the only person I can tell this to really. My parents feel ashamed of me. They think I'm ungrateful, they think I'm scared, they hate my breaking the law. They don't want me to stay here, they think I'll be extradited. And of course they don't really want me to fight either. They're all mixed up. I'd like you to read their letters.'

‘Are they leading you to change your mind?'

‘No, of course not. But I feel sometimes that I'm in a dishonest position. To go back and resist is OK. To stay away and resist — well, it's not resisting, it's having the best of all worlds and leaving the suffering to them.'

‘Bosh,' said Garth. ‘You'll suffer, you'll see to that. As for being lucky, why shouldn't you be? On the other hand, if you feel so unhappy about it why don't you go back?'

Ludwig looked miserable. ‘I don't see why I should,' he said. ‘I'm no politician. I'm a scholar.'

‘Stay here then. What do you want me to say?'

‘Garth, you don't understand. The war's wrong. We agree on that? Now —'

‘Not all that again,' said Garth. ‘Of course the war's wrong, in an abstract sort of way. But even if you were to go and fight it, that wouldn't matter. Do that, if you so much want to please your parents.'

‘You haven't got it! I feel it's dishonourable to do what's right in an easy way, and yet — you see I keep thinking and thinking about that war and all the suffering, the bombs, every day, at this very moment, and the kids and the women —'

‘I daresay you do think about it. Thinking about the misery of the world is a favourite contemporary occupation. And if you can't think the television set will think for you. I keep thinking about that chap being knifed and about those students I saw having their heads battered. I daresay those chaps are sitting it out in some brain-damaged twilight at this very moment. But so what? The mind is a mechanical sort of cinema show with a rather small number of reels.'

‘I feel it's dishonourable not to go back and be martyred and yet to go back would be totally irrational. And by staying I do what's objectively right, in that I refuse to fight in that war.'

‘So you have to choose between unreason and dishonour. All right. The only thing that's certain is that you will choose.'

‘You're not being very helpful,' said Ludwig.

‘You want total reassurance. I can't give it.'

‘I don't. You didn't talk like this at Harvard.'

‘At Harvard I couldn't see. Now I can. At least I can see more. The point is, it doesn't really matter very much what you do. What you do will be decided by causal factors in your nature which in a way are deep, and in a way are utterly superficial. Deep because they're mechanical and old. Superficial because their significance is, in relation to the real you, trivial. In a way nothing matters very much, though in a way everything matters absolutely. It needn't matter what you do, though it can matter a good deal how you do it. Meanwhile virtue is just a necessary illusion.'

‘It matters whether I act rightly or not,' said Ludwig doggedly.

‘Not really, and not in the way you mean. You and I are conditioned anyway to do what's normally thought of as right. Any of the acts you are capable of contemplating will be “right”. So why worry about that?'

‘What should I worry about then, according to you? Politics?'

‘Good Lord no. Or yes, maybe, if it's one's job. It isn't yours or mine. Strictly politics ought to be done at the ground level where your whole being is testimony and there isn't anything abstract any more and nothing in it for you, especially anything interesting or personal. And at that level distinctions break down and it isn't really politics. One should do simple separated things. Don't imagine you
are
that big complicated psychological buzz that travels around with you. Step outside it. Above all don't feel guilt or worry about doing right. That's all flummery. Guilt is the invention of a personal God, now happily defunct. There is no Alpha and no Omega, and nothing could be more important than that. Remember I once quoted to you that thing of Kierkegaard's about metaphysics, that in order to sew you must knot the thread? Well, that's wrong. You don't have to knot the thread, you can't knot it, you mustn't knot it. You just keep pulling it through.'

‘I'm not with you,' said Ludwig. ‘What are you going to do with yourself? What does all this amount to in practice?'

‘I'm not sure yet. I used to think I had a special destiny. But I've made a discovery. Everybody has one. So I don't feel so bloody anxious now about mine. Thank God I lost the novel. It could have been a temptation.'

‘I thought on your curious view there wouldn't be temptations any more,' said Ludwig.

‘Oh there are temptations, there are trials, there are even goals.'

‘Mention one.'

‘To give up the world. To have nothing, not even hopes. To make life holy. You remember in the
Iliad
when Achilles' immortal horses weep over the death of Patroclus, and Zeus deplores the sight of deathless beings involved in the pointless horrors of morality?'

‘Is that “holy”?'

‘Yes. Gods can't really grieve. Men can't understand. But animals which are godlike can shed pure tears. I would like to shed pure tears. Zeus sheds none.'

‘Are you on drugs?'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Ludwig.'

‘This stuff is beyond me. Have some more whisky?'

‘No, thanks. And another thing —'

‘I'm not sure I can stand any more.'

‘I went to see Charlotte today.'

‘Aunt Charlotte? Yes.'

‘I annoyed her, hurt her. Never mind. One can't get everything right. Could you tell Gracie something?'

‘Gracie? Yes.'

‘From me. Tell her she must at once and very humbly beg Charlotte to stay on in that house. I mean obviously Gracie isn't going to turn her out. But Charlotte's so bloody miserable, if everyone isn't careful she'll just take off, and then she'll be very much harder to help. Gracie must beg her to stay, and say she'll make a flat specially for her or something. It's not easy, I mean to get the right tone and all that. But it's urgent, it's a matter of days and hours. Tell Gracie that if she's got any love for Charlotte, Charlotte needs that love in action and in evidence right now. OK?'

‘OK,' said Ludwig, rather expressionlessly.

‘You think I'm an interfering bastard?'

‘No. I think what you say is, to use one of my old-fashioned words, right. Say, how did you know Gracie had inherited the house?'

‘I read it in your letter, the one to your father that's lying on the desk. I read it when I came in, just before I heard you and what's-her-name talking in the kitchen.'

‘So reading other people's correspondence is not incompatible with holiness?' said Ludwig.

‘No, I don't think so. I must be off. I say, could you give me a pound to help me through tomorrow. Give, if you don't mind, I never take loans. Thanks a lot. Goodnight. And don't forget. No Alpha, no Omega. So it doesn't matter.'

What a load of balls, thought Ludwig after his friend had departed, is he nuts or what. All the same, he's a remarkable chap. He's got thinner and crazier since Harvard.

Ludwig looked at his letter to his father which was still lying on the desk.

Had he thought that the news would console his parents? Yes. And why not. All the same.

He tore up the letter.

‘One should do simple separated things. Don't imagine you
are
that big complicated psychological buzz that travels around with you. Step outside it. Above all don't feel guilt or worry about doing right. That's all flummery. Guilt is the invention of a personal God, now happily defunct.'

Austin Gibson Grey, standing outside the door, heard his son's precise slightly staccato voice holding forth and ground his teeth with rage. Should he, he wondered, bound suddenly into the room, hissing and grimacing like a Japanese warrior? No. He went slowly back up the stairs. He was hurt that Garth, whom he had hardly seen, should come to visit Ludwig and so evidently avoid him. And he was ready to scream with incoherent irritation at Garth's moralistic eloquence. Whatever it was all about, it certainly wasn't about that. And it wasn't
like
that either. Life was misery and muddle, it
was
misery and muddle.

He stopped outside Mitzi's door. He could hear her crying quietly inside, grieving for her lost health and strength, grieving for her youth, grieving about heaven knew what, him perhaps. The weeping was sing-song, a soft long wail in a descending octave, a few sniffing breaths, a whimper, then the wail again, very soft, mechanical. Should he go in and comfort her? She was drunk and would be wet and sentimental. He said sharply outside the door ‘Stop that!' There was silence. He went on into his own room.

He took off his jacket and shirt and trousers and put on his pyjamas over his vest and pants. He removed his glasses and lay down on the bed. At once the demon asthma was present. A stifling pad was pressed over his face, a steel cord tightened about his chest. He sat up again, leaning forward and breathing regularly. It was all so familiar and it would never leave him as long as he lived. He stared at his right hand and tried to flex it. With his left he reached for his tablets. They gave him nightmares, but they drove away the demon for a time. He shook up his pillow. Dust came out of it. He coughed and fumbled for a cigarette.