Judith (26 page)

Dearest Judith,

You know we had planned to have the baby at home – with soft lights and sweet music, the world is good and loving, that sort of thing? Well, as the time approached it was found
that the baby had the most enormous head: it had got the cord wrapped round its throat; like the clown at the circus; like the person trying to lift himself up by his own bootlaces; that sort of thing.

All this happened when I was away: we had known I would have to finish work on the filmscript. But Lilia was told she would have to go into hospital: she did not want to go to hospital: she was told she would have to have a Caesarian operation: she had said she would rather die than have a caesarian operation. And so on. One can't really argue these things.

I had planned to get back with a week or so in hand: but the baby started. Perhaps she made it start early: perhaps it was one of those instances (guess why) when people have to muddle up the dates so they can say – It's started early. Anyway, there it was: and where was I? and there was that telegram. Well, there was no chance of my getting back in reasonable time.

When I did get back I found Lilia had been already a day or so at the hospital: you know how in hospital things get taken out of your hands: you are out of the human network (soft lights and sweet music) and into the machine. In the hospital I found a man in a white coat biting his nails in the passage. I said – I'm the father. He said – I'm the doctor. Then – You do realise, don't you, it's either your wife or your child?

When I found Lilia she was tired; she was in pain; she said – Promise you won't let them make me have an operation. The doctor said – I've told you it's too late to have the operation. Lilia said – Then promise you won't let them hurt the child.

Now I am very weak, reasonable, when it comes to things like hospitals: if I had arrived a day or two earlier, would I not have had to insist on her having the operation?

The doctor said – The baby's head is too far down.

Lilia said – What were you doing in that hotel?

Well what was I doing in that hotel? It was true, of
course, that I had wanted to look at the Garden.

The doctor kept on tapping me on the arm and taking me to one side: the baby's head was too big: the baby's head might have to be crushed: the baby's head would probably be crushed anyway.

You can assure yourself, can't you, that you are ready to die (like God): this is not much help to you or to other people.

The doctor said – You want your wife to die?

I said – You do not know she will die?

Well, it is a cold night, isn't it, on the north face of the Eiger: your loved one – the one you are committed to – dangles from the end of a rope. Either you cut the rope and one of you dies, or both of you will.

But this is a child!

The doctor said – I will not be responsible.

I thought – Why had we got married in the first place?

So what do you do – jump up and down with your arms above your head for, certainly, more than ten minutes?

You think one can't make a joke of this? In this sort of life, did you not say, can one not make a joke of anything?

Lilia was in a good deal of distress now: the problem has always been, hasn't it, human suffering: you can't bear it: not just your own, but sometimes other people's. There is also human guilt. I was holding her hand. There was the doctor, the anaesthetist, and an enormous black nurse who might, one felt, given a chance, conjure up strange spirits out of the forest. The doctor came and went: others – sisters or students, I suppose – piled in every now and then. We waited. I thought – What is going on elsewhere: what happens if you say – I cannot bear that I cannot bear it?

Then some time in the middle of the night – I suppose I had not been there more than about two hours – your old friend Bert appeared at the door: he said ‘Oh you're here!' and then, as if I were not there, to Lilia – ‘I've found her!' An old lady with black hair and bright-blue eyes came in. I did not know her. Do you know her? I mean she does not quite give the impression of being old: she is more like someone
who has lasted a very long time and so is young in the sense of when she started. She went up to Lilia and said ‘Now!' Lilia said Thank you!' Behind her in the doorway appeared your other old friend whom you call the Professor; he looked rather sheepish: I said ‘Do come in!' He said ‘Thank you.' Do you know that Marx Brothers film in which more and more people pile into a small ship's cabin? It is very funny. The doctor was saying ‘Who are these people?' The old woman with black hair said something to the huge black nurse in a strange language; the nurse seemed to light up; they chattered away in this language; they began doing things to the bedclothes and taking hold of Lilia. The Professor said ‘She used to be my wife.' The doctor said ‘I don't care a damn if she used to be your wife.' Then – ‘And who are you?' The Professor said ‘I'm Professor Ackerman.' Bert was leaning with his hands in his pockets against a trolley of instruments which began to move: the doctor shouted ‘Get these people out of here!' The Professor said ‘Just give us five or ten minutes.' Then he said to me ‘Forgive us, we didn't know where you were.' I said ‘That's all right.' The old woman was telling Lilia what to do with her breathing; she held her wrist; she put her other hand round the back of Lilia's neck and raised it and seemed to squeeze; it was as if she were playing a musical instrument. Lilia's breathing became more rhythmical; but it began to make a tearing sound; as if something were being undone like a wrapping. The black nurse was handing round face-masks; the doctor had gone out of the room; the Professor had his back against the door; Bert was at the foot, and I was at the head of the bed. The woman with black hair put a hand over Lilia's mouth: she spoke to the nurse in their strange language; the nurse began rubbing Lilia's legs, strongly. For some time now there had been between Lilia's raised legs something like a plug, a lid, a landfall: it was smooth and brown: I realised now that this was in fact the baby's head. It was trying to get out; it could get no further. Lilia's body seemed to be beginning to undergo some sort
of earthquake: the old woman said something to the black nurse: then she took her hand away from Lilia's face, raised the knee of Lilia's right leg and held it with her right hand just above the ankle. She seemed to press very hard with her thumb. She was also still pressing at the back of Lilia's neck. Lilia's mouth opened as if something like a snake was trying to come out: but there was no cry. Then the nurse came and stood beside the old woman by the bed and she took hold of the little toe of Lilia's right foot between her finger and thumb and she seemed to press very hard there; it was as if the two of them were hard at work with music; then Lilia's body seemed to take off: I mean to rise in the air almost: there was something transporting her like unheard music. Then it became apparent that the baby was being born. It emerged in a sort of whoosh; as if without much regard for the mechanics of it. The nurse put out a hand as if to stop it from continuing right over the edge of the bed. Lilia still did not cry out; I wondered if she would ever take another breath; the old woman put her face down against Lilia's very gently. After a time Lilia did seem to breathe again. The baby was there. The nurse was doing to it the usual things, I suppose. The doctor put his head in at the door.

Well, that's nearly all, isn't it? Except that when I was thanking the old woman, who is called Eleanor, I said ‘It wouldn't have happened like that – I mean you wouldn't have been here, would you, if I had been here from the very beginning – would it?' The old woman said ‘No, I suppose it wouldn't – would I.' Then she smiled, and put her fingers against my face.

So that is all, isn't it?

Well – What did you think we were doing in that hotel?

The baby has got the most enormous head.

Perhaps it will be able to say, one day, or not need to say, the things that can't be said.

With love from Jason

*

From where I am sitting as I write this there is the lawn, and the swimming-pool, and the fairy lights in the palm trees; beyond is the view to the sea and the beach in front of the sand-dunes. You write about the past from the present: the present goes as you write about it. There are these lightning-flashes. It is seven years since the events I have been recalling. I mean – Jason and I have come back here after seven years.

I have been copying out Jason's letter. At what hour, of what day, did these events jointly, or separately, occur? Did the birth take place when I was in God's inner garden?

The baby's head coming through the back of the canvas.

It is not necessary, I suppose, to see coincidences in time: there are, after all, other dimensions.

Yesterday Jason and I walked to where the Garden used to be: the perimeter fence and the concrete floor of the enormous hall are still there. Most of the prefabricated buildings have gone. There is a new concrete block that is an agricultural college.

Did the roof of the enormous hall finally rise like a chariot-balloon to heaven?

Jason said – Do you copy my style, or do I copy yours?

Today Jason has gone to look at those churches in the hills.

He did not have time to look at them the last time he was here.

I said I would get on with my writing.

The scene round the swimming-pool has not changed much in seven years. They have built a bar at which you can drink while sitting half under water. Do you think this is equivalent to babies in soft lights and sweet music?

Last night Jason read part of my story. He said – People may want to know one or two things: what happened to Anita Kroll?

I said – Well what did happen to Anita Kroll?

He said – What happened to God –

I said – How would you write about what happened to God?

He said – All right, yes, you'd better get on with your story.

After our walk to where the Garden had once been we went on down to the estuary. There are still the remains of fires where bodies have been burned. I said – Well, it might be
asked who was the man with the red-haired girl in the flat next door –

He said – I told you, I didn't know her then.

I said – But you know her now.

He said – Wasn't it the Professor who knew her?

I thought – So what does it mean, you mean, this being dead and coming alive? You know it about yourself: do you need to know anything else – about other people?

How do you think we appear to people now? As if we are floating; have no feelings? I sometimes think – Feelings were those shadows on the walls.

Sometimes it is so beautiful! There are those colours, that you live in beyond the canvas of a picture.

Jason said – Of course it is as if we are in occupied territory: there are people with arrows, to get us posed against a wall.

I said – You mean, we sometimes do pose for them?

He said – I think we see each other as much as we want to.

We walked back along to the promontory where we had once climbed over rocks to the grand hotel. This had always seemed to be a garden in occupied territory.

I said – Was that why you wrote it like that?

He said – Like what?

I said – As if we all know each other, but make out we don't know each other, because we are agents in occupied territory.

Jason has just come back from his day up by the churches.

He had taken part of my story with him.

He says – You told the Professor about our night in the hotel!

I say – I didn't tell the Professor about our night in the hotel!

I thought he might say – You think that if you say something in inverted commas you haven't said it?

Do you think I will ever send out on the waters this story I am writing, these so-called letters?

Jason sits in a deck-chair by the swimming-pool with his hat tipped over his eyes. He goes on reading my story.

I want to say – Things pop up in the mind like targets at a
fun-fair shooting-range: you know this; you let them go; you look at your story.

God has in fact popped up again in California. It is not clear whether or not he is mad. Or perhaps he might be pretending to be mad – like Nietzsche – to protect himself from people wondering whether or not he is mad.

God is still not speaking much. The quotations he likes passing on to his disciples are one from Nietzsche –

– Supposing truth to be a woman, what? Is the suspicion not well founded that philosophers, when they have been dogmatists, have had little understanding of women? –

– and the one when Jesus says that he talks in parables to his disciples lest people should understand and their sins should be forgiven them.

Jason says – It's still a matter of aesthetics.

I say – What is a matter of aesthetics?

He says – Life: looking after this and letting go of that.

I thought I might say – Women do this! –

– All those sperms, like worms, or words, battering at the old tin can –

– Not you: not you: is it you?

Around the swimming-pool there are the soft brown bodies: a new shanty town has sprung up on the outskirts of the village.

This morning I went to look for Shastri. His uncle told me he had gone to England.

I say to Jason – But still, some bomb may have to go off –

He says – Oh well. What does God mean by inverted commas?

I thought I might say – Or the child?

He might say – What about the child?

I am trying to continue writing this in our room, sitting by the window. Jason has remained with my typescript by the swimming-pool.

I might say – I mean, it doesn't matter if one doesn't know who the father is?

He might say – I know what you mean!

I would say – What if I were going to have a child?