Eyeless In Gaza (42 page)

Anthony opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. In front of Gattick, and with Mary obstinately determined to be only ‘civilized,' how could he say what he really felt? And if that were what he really felt, why (the question propounded itself once more), why had he told her the story? And told it in that particular style – as though he were a vivisecting comedian? Vanity, wantonness; and then, of course, the fact that he was in love with her and anxious to please, at any cost, even at the cost of what he really felt. (And at the moment of telling, he was forced to admit, he hadn't really felt anything but the desire to be amusing.) But, again, that couldn't be put into words. Gattick didn't know about their affair, mustn't know. And even if Gattick hadn't been there, it would have been difficult, almost impossible, to explain it to Mary. She would laugh at him for being romantic – romantic about Brian, about Joan, even about herself; would think him absurd and ridiculous for making tragic mountains out of a simple amorous mole-hill.

‘People will insist,' she used to say, ‘on treating the
mons Veneris
as though it were Mount Everest. Too silly!'

When at last he spoke, ‘I don't do it,' he confined himself to saying, ‘because I don't want to do it.'

‘Because you don't dare,' cried Mary.

‘I do.'

‘You don't!' Her dark eyes shone. She was thoroughly enjoying herself.

Booming, but with a hint of laughter in his ponderousness, the Lord Chancellor let fly once more. ‘It's an overwhelming case against you,' he said.

‘I'm ready to bet on it,' said Mary. ‘Five to one. If you do it within a month, I'll give you five pounds.'

‘But I tell you I don't want to,' he persisted.

‘No, you can't get out of it like that. A bet's a bet. Five pounds to you if you bring it off within a month from today. And if you don't, you pay me a pound.'

‘You're too generous,' said Gattick.

‘Only a pound,' she repeated. ‘But I shall never speak to you again.'

For a few seconds they looked at one another in silence. Anthony had gone very pale. Close-lipped and crookedly, Mary was smiling; between the half-closed lids, her eyes were bright with malicious laughter.

Why did she have to be so horrible to him, he wondered, so absolutely beastly? He hated her, hated her all the more because of his desire for her, because of the memory and the anticipation of those pleasures, because of her liberating wit and knowledge, because of everything, in a word, that made it inevitable for him to do exactly what she wanted. Even though he knew it was stupid and wrong.

Watching him, Mary saw the rebellious hatred in his eyes, and when at last he dropped them, the sign of her own triumph.

‘Never again,' she repeated. ‘I mean it.'

At home, as Anthony was hanging up his hat in the hall, his father called to him.

‘Come and look here, dear boy.'

‘Damn!' Anthony said to himself resentfully; it was with an aggrieved expression, which Mr Beavis was much too busy to notice, that he entered his father's study.

‘Just having a little fun with the map,' said Mr Beavis, who was sitting at his desk with a sheet of the Swiss ordnance survey spread out before him. He had a passion for maps, a passion due in part to his love of walking, in part to his professional interest in place names. ‘Comballas,' he murmured to himself, without looking up from the map. ‘Chamossaire. Charming,
charming!' Then, turning to Anthony, ‘It's a thousand pities,' he said, ‘that your conscience won't allow you to take a holiday and come along with us.'

Anthony, who had made his work for the research fellowship an excuse for staying in England with Mary, gravely nodded. ‘One really can't do any serious reading at high altitudes,' he said.

‘So far as I can see,' said Mr Beavis, who had turned back to his map, ‘we ought to have the jolliest walks and scrambles all round les Diablerets. And what a delicious name
that
is!' he added parenthetically. ‘Up the Col du Pillon, for example.' He ran his finger sinuously along the windings of a road. ‘Can you see, by the way?' Perfunctorily, Anthony bent a little closer. ‘No, you can't,' Mr Beavis went on. ‘I cover it all up with my hand.' He straightened himself up and dipped first into one pocket, then into another. ‘Where on earth,' he said, frowning; then suddenly, as his most daring philological joke came to his mind, he changed the frown into a sly smile. ‘Where on earth is my teeny weeny penis. Or, to be accurate, my teeny weeny
weeny
 . . .'

Anthony was so much taken aback that he could only return a blank embarrassed stare to the knowing twinkle his father gaily shot at him.

‘My pencil,' Mr Beavis was forced to explain. ‘
Penecillus
: diminutive of
peniculus
: double diminutive of
penis
; which as you know,' he went on, at last producing the teeny weeny
weeny
from his inside left-breast pocket, ‘originally meant a tail. And now let's attack the Pillon again.' Lowering the point of the pencil to the map, he traced out the zigzags. ‘And when we're at the top of the Col,' he continued, ‘we bear north-north-west round the flank of Mont Fornettaz until . . .'

It was the first time, Anthony was thinking, that his father had ever, in his presence, made any allusion to the physiology of sex.

‘DEATH,'
SAID
Mark Staithes. ‘It's the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing. Not from any lack of the desire to do so, of course. We're like dogs on an acropolis. Trotting round with inexhaustible bladders and only too anxious to lift a leg against every statue. And mostly we succeed. Art, religion, heroism, love – we've left our visiting-card on all of them. But death – death remains out of reach. We haven't been able to defile
that
statue. Not yet, at any rate. But progress is still progressing.' He demonstrated the anatomy of a smile. ‘The larger hopes, the proliferating futures . . .' The bony hands went out in a lavish gesture. ‘One day, no doubt, some genius of the kennel will manage to climb up and deposit a well-aimed tribute bang in the middle of the statue's face. But luckily progress hasn't yet got so far. Death still remains.'

‘It remains,' Anthony repeated. ‘But the smoke-screen is pretty thick. We manage to forget it most of the time.'

‘But not all the time. It remains, unexorcizably. Intact. Indeed,' Mark qualified, ‘more than intact. We have bigger and better smoke-screens than our fathers had. But behind the
smoke the enemy is more formidable. Death's grown, I should say, now that the consolations and hopes have been taken away. Grown to be almost as large as it was when people seriously believed in hell. Because, if you're a busy film-going, newspaper-reading, football-watching, chocolate-eating modern, then death
is
hell. Every time the smoke-screen thins out a bit, people catch a glimpse and are terrified. I find that a very consoling thought.' He smiled again. ‘It makes up for a great deal. Even for those busy little dogs on the acropolis.' There was a silence. Then, in another tone, ‘It's a comfort,' he resumed, ‘to think that death remains faithful. Everything else may have gone; but death remains faithful,' he repeated. ‘If we choose to risk our lives, we can risk them as completely as ever we did.' He rose, took a turn or two about the room; then, coming to a halt in front of Anthony's chair, ‘That's what I really came to see you about,' he said.

‘What?'

‘About this business of risking one's life. I've been feeling as though I were stuck. Bogged to the neck in civilized humanity.' He made the grimace of one who encounters a foul smell. ‘There seemed to be only one way out. Taking risks again. It would be like a whiff of fresh air. I thought perhaps that you too . . .' He left the sentence unfinished.

‘I've never taken a risk,' said Anthony, after a pause. ‘Only had one taken for me once,' he added, remembering the bumpkin with the hand-grenade.

‘Isn't that a reason for beginning?'

‘The trouble,' said Anthony, frowning to himself, ‘the trouble is that I've always been a coward. A moral one, certainly. Perhaps also a physical one – I don't know. I've never really had an opportunity of finding out.'

‘I should have thought that that was a still more cogent reason.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘If it's a case of changing the basis of one's life, wouldn't it be best to change it with a bang?'

‘Bang into a corpse?'

‘No, no. Just a risk; not suicide. It's merely dangerous, the business I'm thinking of. No more.' He sat down again. ‘I had a letter the other day,' he began. ‘From an old friend of mine in Mexico. A man I worked with on the coffee
finca
. Jorge Fuentes, by name. A remarkable creature, in his way.'

He outlined Don Jorge's history. Besieged by the revolutionaries on his estate in the valley of Oaxaca. Most of the other landowners had fled. He was one of the only men who put up a resistance. At first he had had his two brothers to help him. But they were killed, one at long range, the other by machetes in an ambush among the cactuses. He had carried on the fight single-handed. Then, one day when he was out riding round the fields, a dozen of them managed to break into the house. He had come home to find the bodies of his wife and their two little boys lying mangled in the courtyard. After that, the place seemed no longer worth defending. He stayed long enough to shoot three of the murderers, then abandoned his patrimony and went to work for other men. It was during this period that Mark had known him. Now he possessed his own house again and some land; acted as agent for most of the planters on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca state; recruited their labour for them in the mountain villages, and was the only man the Indians trusted, the only one who didn't try to swindle them. Recently, however, there had been trouble. Don Jorge had gone into politics, become the leader of a party, made enemies and hardly less dangerous friends. He was in opposition now; the state governor was persecuting him and his allies. A bad man, according to Don Jorge; corrupt, unjust – unpopular too. It shouldn't be difficult to get rid of him. Some of the troops would certainly come over. But before he started, Don Jorge wanted to know if there was any
prospect of Mark's being in the neighbourhood of Oaxaca in the immediate future.

‘Poor old Jorge! He has a most touching belief in the soundness of my judgment.' Mark laughed. Thus to understate Don Jorge's faith in him, thus to withhold the reasons of that faith, sent a glow of satisfaction running through his body. He might have told Anthony of that occasion when the old ass had gone and let himself be caught by bandits, and of the way he had been rescued. A good story, and creditable to himself. But not to tell it gave him more pleasure than telling it would have done. ‘True, it's better than
his
judgment,' Mark went on. ‘But that isn't saying much. Don Jorge's brave – brave as a lion; but foolhardy. No sense of reality. He'll make a mess of his
coup d'état
.'

‘Unless you are there to help him, I take it. And do you propose to be there?

Mark nodded. ‘I've written him that I'll start as soon as I can settle my affairs in England. It occurred to me that you . . .' Again he left the sentence unfinished and looked enquiringly at Anthony.

‘Do you think it's a good cause?' Anthony asked at last.

The other laughed. ‘As good as any other Mexican politician's cause,' he answered.

‘Is that good enough?'

‘For my purpose. And anyhow, what is a good cause? Tyranny under commissars, tyranny under
Gauleiters
– it doesn't seem to make much difference. A drill-sergeant is always a drill-sergeant, whatever the colour of his shirt.'

‘Revolution for revolution's sake, then?'

‘No, for mine. For the sake of every man who takes part in the thing. For every man can get as much fun out of it as I can.'

‘I expect it would be good for me,' Anthony brought out after a pause.

‘I'm sure it would be.'

‘Though I'm devilishly frightened – even at this distance.'

‘That'll make it all the more interesting.'

Anthony drew a deep breath. ‘All right,' he said at last. ‘I'll come with you.' Then vehemently, ‘It's the most stupid, senseless idea I've ever heard of,' he concluded. ‘So, as I've always been so clever and sensible . . .' He broke off and, laughing, reached for his pipe and the tin of tobacco.

WITH HELEN TODAY
to hear Miller speaking at Tower Hill, during the dinner hour. A big crowd. He spoke well – the right mixture of arguments, jokes, emotional appeal. The theme, peace. Peace everywhere or no peace at all. International peace not achievable unless a translation into policy of inter-individual relations. Militarists at home, in factory, and office, towards inferiors and rivals, cannot logically expect governments which represent them to behave as pacifists. Hypocrisy and stupidity of those who advocate peace between states, while conducting private wars in business or the family. Meanwhile, there was much heckling by communists in the crowd. How can anything be achieved without revolution? With liquidating the individuals and classes standing in the way of social progress? And so on. Answer (always with extraordinary good humour and wit): means determine ends. Violence and coercion produce a post-revolutionary society, not communistic but (like the Russian) hierarchical, ruled by an oligarchy using secret police methods. And all the rest.

After about a quarter of an hour, an angry young heckler climbed on to the little wall, where Miller was standing, and
threatened to knock him off if he didn't stop. ‘Come on then, Archibald.' The crowd laughed; the young man grew still angrier, advanced, clenched, squared up. ‘Get down, you old bastard, or else . . .' Miller stood quite still, smiling, hands by side, saying, All right; he had no objection to being knocked off. The attacker made sparring movements, brought a fist to within an inch of Miller's nose. The old man didn't budge, showed no sign of fear or anger. The other drew back the hand, but instead of bringing it into Miller's face, hit him on the chest. Pretty hard. Miller staggered, lost his balance and fell off the wall into the crowd. Apologized to the people he'd fallen on, laughed, got up again on to the wall. Repetition of the performance. Again the young man threatened the face, but again, when Miller didn't lift his hands, or show either fear or anger, hit him on the chest. Miller went down and again climbed up. Got another blow. Came up once more. This time the man screwed himself up to hitting the face, but only with the flat of his hand. Miller straightened his head and went on smiling. ‘Three shots a penny, Archibald.' The man let out at the body and knocked him off the wall. Up again. Miller looked at his watch. ‘Another ten minutes before you need to go back to work, Archibald. Come on.' But this time the man could only bring himself to shake his fist and call Miller a bloodsucking old reactionary. Then turned and walked off along the wall, pursued by derisive laughter, jokes and whistlings from the crowd. Miller went on with his speech.