Judith (37 page)

There were to be two or more frames within the screen in which quite separate events were to be seen occurring: separate in place, that is: perhaps in time: the point was – in effect, what is separate and what is not? One frame kept nudging into the other. There was some crusader, was there not, who was away at war: he was in combat with an enemy: his sword was raised; he would either kill or be killed. In the other frame his wife, left at home, was about to take a lover. Something bulged out from one frame to the other: the lover's foot, perhaps, knocked against the elbow of the crusader so that it was he, unbalanced, who was killed. Or the crusader's hand, struggling for a hold, pushed against the wife so that for an instant she turned away on the bed: she had some memory, perhaps, of her husband: how sad she became! perhaps she pushed away, even, her lover on the bed. This was, was meant to be, like life: why does one do things, do you know? One is nudged by shadows; which one cannot talk about, because one does not know.

And it was like this, it seemed, in front of the fire. There was that rug: there were the things that you know and do not know: Bert's foot, perhaps kicking at us to make you go: well, why does one move this way rather than that? Why is one happy or sad? And then there was the Professor – why should I be telling you this now? because he might be dying? because he might be pleased at some nudge in honour of his life? I mean, I had come with the Professor once long ago to this cottage – the bodies piling up as if into that telephone-box – all those hands, feet, noses, pushing at one another; myself and you and Bert and the Professor: all going about our business of – what? getting out of the tin can? getting into and out of that box? helping each other up and out, might one even say, with an arm, a leg, a shoulder? There is always something wounding in love: if you are not wounded (that girl by the estuary) why should you want to get out (as you do)?

And what might be a father?

Is not this vision to do with what making love is – the acceptance of what might seem to be worms in a can; that by this vision, by its being beautiful, you may seem free? I mean, the acceptance is in the mind: so what would it be in reality? Well, there are those jostling, fighting, childish things, are there not: to gain identity, to lose it: sperms, to be accepted by the egg. But whether they are accepted, or are not, it is they who are lost: what is found, if anything, is the child. I mean something new might be born – anywhere. You take this chance, don't you? But the egg too is another dimension. You accept the bitching, the cheating, the pain, the betrayal – if you are the egg: if you are creating the child.

The room was still half in darkness. The curtains were not yet opened. I thought – It is not difficult to accept this.

Do you remember how you told me a story about Lilia – about the first time that you met her? She had said – I only go to bed with people I don't like: and you had said – Then that's all right, either we go to bed or else we like one another. Well, when I came to the cottage with the Professor he said – Shall I tell you a story about Lilia: the first time I met her she said – and so on. And I thought – Good: so what? and I think this
now. This makes me love Lilia. Here we all are, these worms in the box: you take the lid off: why should we not also be bits and pieces of light?

Of course, the child was not in the cottage. There did not seem to have been anyone in the cottage for some time. I thought – Why not: too many of us have been here?

– We are all now out in the sun!

Bert said once – I came down here to see Lilia when she was pregnant. She wanted to get rid of the child. I told her not to. I told her to marry Jason.

Is this true?

There is that empty nest in the dust.

I thought I would draw the curtains from the window. There would be the unmowed lawn, the hedge, the field across the plantation of fir trees. Beyond that was the battle-area. Of course, I had not gone into the battle-area when I had stayed here: I had only gone that once to the flint-mines.

I thought – So where is the child?

Did you not say that you had the impression, once, that he was looking down from a corner of the ceiling?

I drew back the curtains from the picture window. There was the lawn, the hedge, the field, the line of fir trees. Beyond that was the battle-area.

The window was made of plate glass. I could see behind me, half-reflected, the images of the room; not now only the shadows superimposed on the rug in front of the fire, but the chairs, bookcases, the dresser on the shelves of which bits and pieces of past lives were sometimes displayed – that pennant from the Spanish Civil War; Bert's machine for demonstrating Catastrophe Theory; the medallion you picked up from the sea near Masada. Also reflected in the plate glass was my own face: a face which seemed to contain – such was the effect – both the lawn and the hedge and fir plantations out in front and the room with its images of the past behind: containing these as if they were in some box, but now, indeed, with the lid half off; the light making everything semi-transparent, semi-opaque; but (again) what was light? I had been staring at my image in the window for some time.
There is a technique – do you know it? – to make your reflection disappear: you stare at yourself without blinking: you have arranged beside you a small source of light like a candle: after a while your face begins to take on shapes and sizes that you have never seen – those unborn might-have-beens of yourself, do you think, in their corners of the ceiling – and then in time you disappear: I mean your face in the glass disappears: in the place where it was there is simply nothing: or light. Well, I had been looking at myself like this for some time; and I had been thinking – You do not want yourself exactly to disappear! You say you love yourself: and now you love all those shadows in the room behind: so what you want, as usual, is to have everything all ways: to be yourself, to contain multitudes, and at the same time to get out. I thought – Well, all right, have I not said I accept just such proliferation? And the danger of being burned outside, as if by the sun – do I not accept this too? I made a joke – After all, is not fire light? And at this moment the window – now you will not believe this; there may be several things here you may not quite believe, but least of all this; I mean, I don't really know if I believe it – the window broke. I mean, there was pressure going in and out against my eardrums, eyeballs, mind: the impression of a musical instrument being played but nothing heard because what one was involved with was simply vibrations: the light itself, like something material, seeming to go in and out: and then the window disintegrated, collapsed outwards, in bits and pieces on the grass. I mean, there might have been explanations for other things that had happened this odd day: but not for just this moment, as I looked into the glass as if it were the wall of that cave containing shadows, and it dissolved so delicately, so precisely, like pieces of light. I mean, I had been thinking of that cave in which people were trapped and whatever it was stopped them from going out into the sun: and now – well, does there not have to be some chance coming in from outside? It became apparent quite soon, I suppose, that some sort of bomb had gone off: the glass had seemed to bulge outwards for a moment and then in
and then out again; it had been like water breaking (well, yes, a birth?) then bits of light fell very gently to earth. I did not know where the bomb had gone off. There had been the pressure, and then the bang sometime later: the bomb must have been at some distance away. I went on trying to explain this to myself. The pressure did not seem to have come from in front; how had the glass fallen outwards? but how could it have come from behind, since the doors of the room were closed. And so on. Unless it had come from (another joke!) my mind. But would not that indeed be (and in what sense?) how a person in the cave might get out? – to the lawn, and the hedgerow, and the battle-area beyond. I thought – Oh well, if it has been the fear of death that has stopped is getting out – it is too late now to worry, surely, even if (or because) there has been that bomb. If we are to survive, if we want to survive, do we not have to say – So what? – to those bits and chances of death; to those portentous figures on clouds even: you think they want not to want us to get out?

There are breaking-points to substances, are there not? These are almost unexplained: they are called catastrophes: they are to do with birth and death: why are you laughing?

I could now step out into the sun.

There might be, of course, a real danger of being burned as if by some sun; if it was that sort of bomb that had gone off.

There was a column of smoke going up from somewhere in the direction of the American airbase.

I thought – The column, drawn by six white horses, rose to a height of several thousand feet –

Let's have one more effort at practical explanation, shall we?

There had been an explosion, at some distance, because of the gap between the pressure and the sound. There was no evidence that the explosion had occurred in the battle-area (though no evidence that it had not): there was evidence from the smoke that it had come from the direction of the airbase. There was no knowing why this particular window had blown: you can break a glass by singing, can't you? Perhaps someone had sung: perhaps some finger had come down: had I
not been singing in my mind: you do not call such explanations practical? You used to say – I mean everyone who arrives in this sort of area is accustomed to say – that there are states which are best described by metaphors. I stepped into the sun through the jagged splinters of light which were like glass. I thought – Perhaps what I am stepping into is, yes, a painting, a picture; the realisation of a metaphor.

Hullo, hullo, can you hear me?

I thought I would walk across the lawn to the small gate in the hedgerow. Perhaps the child had come this way.

The sun is death: the sun is life. I am practising.

I thought suddenly – Lilia, Bert, will be all right by the airbase?

The lawn was unmown; the gate through the hedge was on rusty hinges. I thought I should go out of the gate, across the field, and into the wood. And thus into the battle-area. Of course, I was looking for the child.

I wanted to go back again over what had happened – but you must not look back, must you, now you are here.

The experience does seem to be aesthetic. Have you not often said – One should know what to do, or rather do without exactly knowing, in the same way that one knows, or at least does, about a painting or a piece of writing? I mean by looking at it, having learned, you know you should do this or that (you can't always) but it goes if you try to explain it.

I used to say – Is not this also a characteristic of a madman?

You had said – The fact that you can say that, is not a characteristic of a madman.

Between the gate of the hedgerow and the fir plantation was rolling, pitted ground – this was another of the places where primitive men had looked for flints. And had found – what? – that in order to stay alive you had to eliminate this or that, as in a painting? –

I thought – But how do you bear this?

In one of the hollows of old pits there was a child's bucket and spade. It looked as if he had been digging.

I thought – One day, with other humans, we will stay alive without killing: or if we do not, what is the difference?

I did not think that the child's bucket and spade meant that he must just now have come this way: but it did seem to be some sign, as if it were a note of music hung from a tree, that I was following him.

You know the message: this sort of thing is the code?

– A fossil, planted by God, to remind you that the world might be recreated each day –

– A feather, from the wings of the bird that went its own way with an olive-branch in its mouth –

– Someone trying to dig a deep shelter through to the antipodes?

I was crossing the field to the line of fir trees which, I knew, was the boundary of the battle-area. This part of the boundary was distant from the ruined façade and the garden with a tomb: it was also distant in the other direction from the American airbase. In the latter direction the column of smoke bulged in the middle like some genie released from its bottle; perhaps those figures reclining on clouds were giving it a puff every now and then. At the edge of the field there was a fence with the usual notices: KEEP OUT and DANGER OF UN-EXPLODED BOMBS: there were the signs of the skull and crossbones. I thought – You need courage, do you, if you are facing the blank canvas of a painting? There was an old farm gate: a single strand of barbed wire along the top. I thought – Perhaps those angels with flaming swords are just the fear of appearing to have no hold on what you are doing; but then, if you know this, perhaps the hold is there. I prayed – I hope to God those others are all right.

I climbed the gate. I thought – I am one of those humans or pre-humans not quite yet down from the trees, setting out on my journey to the plains. My new-found language would be – silence? But I would not be all right if those others were not all right.

The silence in the trees was such that it was more than if you could hear it. I thought – Perhaps it was because those men
could not bear silence that they invented speech; silence carried them like unheard music; it was this that did not seem to be in their control.

That tower that they were building up to heaven – the language of this had been silence? Speech had to come to imprison them: to give them the illusion of control?

I was over the gate and going through the fir plantation. I trod carefully: there were no paths: might there be tripwires?

– Supposing the American airbase was a place where were stored the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil (those missiles like snakes with death in their heads); of course here what we should now be looking for is the Tree of Life.