Remember Me (23 page)

It was raining slightly. The rain was not cold, but warm. He took a large umbrella and an overcoat and stepped outside. In front of them walked the guard, and behind them two keepers. It was somewhat painful to have to listen to Gudden calmly. The man was utterly fatuous. He seemed eager to explain just how he had trapped the King. No doubt Grashey was watching from the windows upstairs. Gudden was confident: he told the keepers to walk farther behind.

To that silly little man, merely to open his mouth was an immortal truth. Gudden seemed to be enjoying
himself
. It took little prodding to persuade him to take a second walk after dinner. Ludwig was disappointed. Who would play chess against an opponent so
incompetent
?

Shortly before dinner Grashey was despatched to Munich. Ludwig was relieved. He found he wished the man well. He had no desire to see him disgraced.
Competence
should be honoured and not disavowed, for it was rare.

He refused to have Gudden dine with him, but
fortunately
Gudden did not have the impertinence to
suggest
it. He dined alone, with a keeper instead of a
footman
, but the wine was excellent, a pale traminer which grew warm in his throat. The night was chilly. Though it was summer, the long twilight got lost among the dark trees along the lake, and the shadows were confused and slippery. It was a quarter to six. He had a demi-tasse with a glass of brandy. Then he rose, called for his umbrella and coat, and had word sent to Dr. Gudden that he was ready for his stroll. It was quite true. He was.

At six-thirty he stood waiting in the vestibule. Dr. Gudden came down the stairs. No doubt he had some nugae of daily wisdom to dispense, and was glad of the royal audience. Ludwig turned to the keeper and had his umbrella refurled, so that it should be slim and dandified and tight. He was helped into his overcoat. The overcoat was shabby, but that did not greatly matter.

It became apparent that Gudden was by no means sure of protocol in the matter of doors. Ludwig smiled and stepped out on to the south garden front.

There was a fountain there. It was not so large as that at Linderhof, being merely a crystal willow tree, but at least it provided the sound of running water. Ludwig looked at it with approval, listening intently. Behind him he heard Gudden tell the keeper that he need not follow them. He stared at the fountain, pleased. It was both kinder and easier that way, and it was as he would have wished. He listened to the small insect noises of the garden, which were very sweet. Then they walked across the lawn to the path which skirted the lake. The evening was agreeable, the stars lustrous. Gudden, however, was clearly not a country man. He seemed to feel that a stroll had a therapeutic merit only. That was a pity. That way he missed so much.

They walked on and entered the wood, the path
pushing
through it like a tunnel to the other side. There were movements in the wood, the furtive, stealthy, contented sound of growing plants. No doubt to-morrow there would be more flowers in bloom beneath the tree roots than there were to-day. There was something touching about the assurance of small flowers nodding in the security of a tree. They had the frail innocence of
children
.

All too soon they came out of the wood. Ludwig looked for a while at the shore. The water lapped at
consciousness
. The lake seemed very large, and Gudden hesitated, looked uncomfortable, and then followed him. He was talking busily. He did not notice what was around him.

Ludwig glanced at the silent, breathlessly waiting wood. Even the insects were still. There was only the lapping of the water. He had always regretted that his body was so large, so clumsy, and so big, but now that had advantages. He grasped Gudden from behind,
cutting
him off in mid-sentence, and rushed him into the water. It did not take much strength to hold him down. The little man was only an appearance, and had no real vitality. Ludwig straightened up. He knew now who was the executioner who always seemed to wait for him. The executioner was himself.

He left Gudden in the water and went back to the bank. He still had his umbrella crooked over his arm and it was still properly furled. He laid it on the grass, with his hat, his jacket, and his overcoat. Acceptance is final. Rejection alone may be revoked, but this he had accepted. A cool breeze stirred. He turned and walked slowly into the water. For some, their whole life grows towards one opening, and this at last was his. The body longs for survival, but the self longs to be free. It is the self that
wins. There was no time for words, but he seemed to feel a presence around him, and the presence was familiar.

It was that part of him that had never been corrupted, and was like a star wandering about with him and
flaming
up from the depths. It was that part of him no bigger than a thumb that was one with Eternity and sat in the ordinary self, mute, dumb, observant, irrefragable,
beyond
the other selves he knew. It was that part of him that was capable of salvation, because incapable of sin.

He knew now how great houses die. They die only when the shrine they protect is empty. They die when they must, when faith is dead, for they are the
embodiment
of the faith that dies and lives again, in that
otherwhere
where nothing but faith is. He had lost nothing. He was ready for the voyage.

It was quiet on the shores of the lake. In the dimness the mountains bowed and danced, making their eternal prayers against the sky. And through the meshes of the star net wriggled and swam the little souls of time, like boring worms, squirming away from the impenetrable soul of God. Out there in all directions they swarmed towards destiny, spermatozoa, of whom but few would penetrate the world egg. The trees were dusty and
fragrant
. The birds sounded sleepy, and sang like clockwork birds. Ludwig turned to glance at the limp bloated body of Dr. Gudden, absurdly deferential face down in the water, hobbling close to shore. But he had done with Dr. Gudden. He had done with everything. He was astonished to find that he felt happy, and he had not been happy for a long time. It must be because everything was over.

He stood up to his thighs in the lake. The water eddied gently against the cloth of his trousers, which in turn nibbled against his flesh like fishes. He stared across the
waters. Behind him the glow of the lights of Berg rose above the trees, but he saw another glow, the Alpenglow. Then, almost soundlessly, he slipped into the water and lay face down, watching the strange patterns of
consciousness
below him, like a tourist in a glass-bottomed boat, over a coral garden. And he was glad the night was cool. He had the feeling that he was going home. He felt young again. Slowly the water bubbled around him. It was time.

For death, too, has its fashions. The Romans of the early Empire had the consolation of a civic act, performed with decorum. The Christian Church dangled before us the skyhook of salvation. Science, which can also be merciful, assures us that in the process of natural death the threshold of consciousness is so lowered that the nervous system becomes anaesthetized, so that we
cannot
fully realize the terms of our extinction.

But suicide by drowning is another matter; deliberate suicide by drowning in a few feet of water when one swims well is not so swift. Subjective time lengthens
endlessly
. The long corridors stretch interminably, suddenly the sewers of Constantinople, or that underground water temple in which the Egyptians re-enacted the progress of the soul boat. Nor do we, like the heroes of Greece, bound into the heavens of the sky family and twinkle in the stars. For us the stars are farther off than that.
Consciousness
is wilier than that and more complex.

Slowly the strands of living break under the strain of our final moral act. The great lake is shrouded in a low, coiling mist, that hovers above the waters. The waters themselves are grey. And slowly, as the wooden dugout pushes forward on the outward journey, it breaks the weeds, it clears a passage, as the green strands break their roots. Slower and slower goes the boat through the reeds;
the dead filaments of consciousness eddy in the pewter water.

And there is time, as the immense weights of
exhaustion
close in like sliding walls, for one last question: what is love?

And far off, at the very end of being, the Self, cold, salt, alone, but again part of the One, far beyond the reaches of speech, has still one last muted power of thought.

Love is stoicism.

Love is dignity.

And love is death.

I
stood on the bridge above the Iser. The swan was dying. I had never seen a swan die before. I did not want to see it now. And yet I had to do so, for the self is something we sit in, a borrowed chair nailed to the floor, from which we are compelled to watch. It seemed to me, too, that I also was being watched, as the little wild brain of the fox watches from the hedge, afraid to be seen, yet impatient to see how much we know of him.

The swan was dead. I furled my umbrella and I walked away, through the ruins of Munich, in the soft October rain. In the echoes of the rain I caught the whisper of a strangely friendly voice, and the presence of something infinitely gentle all around me, and it said:

Do not mourn uselessly. Remember me.

München-Saddlebag,

October
1953—
February
1956.