The Green Knight (19 page)

‘How kind! Hang onto it. I may need it for some extreme act later on.'

‘How does it feel?'

‘It's burning, it's swelling. I may have to rush it to the hospital again tomorrow. It's like an evil alien thing which has been attached to my body. I can't attend to anything else. I've stopped reading, I've stopped thinking.
You
are working away I see! Everyone calls Sefton the swot, but you do it discreetly just as much. I even suspect you are cleverer than me.'

‘Oh no! How can you say that!'

‘You think you would stop caring for me if you believed it?'

Aleph laughed and clinked the crutches together. ‘Well, one must work, what else is there, what other meaning is there in life?'

‘You've got that
ewige Wiederkehr
feeling again.'

‘Nothing so interesting.'

‘So you're not a romantic any more, youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm, not even the Magus Zoroaster?'

‘Oh do not speak of him. So you contemplate an extreme act?'

‘No, I wish I could. We have been so much loved, I can't give life any other meaning, am I supposed now to create new meanings?'

‘We have been so much loved, yes. You agree that you have been too – '

‘Aleph, don't separate me from the enchanted circle.'

‘You know nothing about enchantment.'

‘Don't talk death to me, sometimes you do. All right, my father and my mother both ran away. I was left abandoned in the forest. But I was found – '

‘By Louie and Aleph and Sef and Moy. Well, that can't go on, the dream must end.'

‘All right. And I know I shall never be happy as I once was. But there is a standard to be carried on, I meant a flag but in the other meaning too. Don't be a nihilist to me just when I need courage to go on.'

‘You are thinking of your leg, but that will mend.'

‘No, that's just a symbol, a reminder – I may or may not be lame forever – but it makes me see the rest – the horror – '

‘We are pampered children,' said Aleph, ‘we don't know
anything
about the horror. For us it's just an exciting bogy.'

‘You are cut off from me today. It hurts.'

‘Oh
silly
– it's just my old sick soul! Yet night approaches, better not to stay.'

‘I feel so senseless and contingent and unmade.'

‘That's simply the youth disease. Brace up, Harvey boy!'

‘If only I had gone to Florence. Now I shall never go. I did it on purpose and I deserve it all. I love you, dear Aleph.'

‘I love you.'

‘Yes, but that's like ordinary responses in church. I love you but I don't deserve you, I can't really conceive of you, apprehend you, I have to go through some ordeal before I am worthy – '

‘You have an ordeal, you have damaged your leg.'

‘That's just a stupid accident.'

‘You mean the gods didn't send it? Sefton says you are like Philoctetes.'

‘What a perfectly beastly comparison! No, don't tease me. This contingent nonsense isn't the ordeal – '

‘Whatever will count as one then?'

‘I don't know, but I feel it's
there
, if only I were brave enough to reach it – '

‘Perhaps it is I who am to have the ordeal.'

‘Yes, like the girl chained to the rock.'

‘No,
not
like the girl chained to the rock.'

‘Sorry, you're the one on the horse with the sword – '

‘You were always to be young Lochinvar.'

‘Only he arrived in time – '

‘Dear Harvey, perhaps we have to love each other, and to find each other run the risk of not finding each other!'

‘You're not serious, you just make it all run away into the sand! Never mind, we'll try again another day! How's Clement, have you seen him since Lucas came back? I suppose he's seen Lucas.'

‘I don't know, I suppose he has. He was here when Bellamy brought the news.'

‘I know, Bellamy told me. Clement comes here a lot, doesn't he, so Bellamy thought he'd find him – '

‘Unfortunately Anax heard Bellamy's voice and he started to howl terribly. Moy was very upset.'

‘I'd have been upset too. I must go and see Lucas.'

‘Oh – why?'

‘I just have to, it's a compulsion.'

‘Better be careful. What's the compulsion?'

‘I just want to spend a friendly ten minutes with him so that I can dismiss him from my mind. Without that he haunts me.'

‘He can haunt people.'

‘He used to come to tea with you all. And he gave Sefton tutorials! I bet she was terrified.'

‘It must have been a strain, but she says she learnt a lot.'

‘Learning is her thing, she's
docile
, I wish I was. And you're really a scholar too though you put on that act.'

‘What act?'

‘Oh world-weariness, older than the rocks among which you sit, and so on. It comes of being so beautiful.
Tu ris de te voir
. I'm lucky to know you. You haven't started yet, and neither have I. Aleph, I'm a
fool
, forgive me!'

‘My dear!' she reached out to take his hand. The crutches fell to the floor.

At that moment the sound of the piano came from the Aviary. ‘That's Sefton.' They listened. ‘Let's go down, Harvey, I want to sing.'

Bellamy usually enjoyed writing to Father Damien, letting his doubts and exclamations flow free as to an old friend. He had been rescued by that kind and worthy priest from a state of depression which had been more alarming than usual. He had been directed to Father Damien by a priest to whom he had at last randomly confessed in a church in north London. Anax, who had sat patiently outside the confessional, had been made much of by the priest after Bellamy's gloomy recital was over, and it was after that they had sat down in the empty church and talked in a more personal manner. Bellamy had spoken wildly about death and leaving the world, and the priest had mentioned Father Damien. Since then Bellamy had developed his intense filial, almost childish, relationship with his secluded mentor, whom he had visited with trepidation at the lonely abbey in Northumberland. Bellamy immediately loved the place, its ancient grey walls conspicuous at the end of the valley, its solitude, its silence, its unworldly purity, its absolute and tranquil discipline, its evident benign existence as a prison. One thing disappointed him: he had expected to converse with his spiritual director dimly through the bars of a grille, but in the modern manner Father Damien had met him in a bright neat modern parlour with stiff shiny furniture and prints of local views upon the walls. The priest, not an old man, in his black and white robes, was pale, etiolated as if deprived of light, his faintly wrinkled face, and his long thin hands which lay stretched out motionless upon the table, were preternaturally clean. His straight dry hair was grey, his attentive clever eyes were light blue. He spoke quietly in a clear cultivated ‘academic' voice, smiling at intervals a thin gentle smile, asking Bellamy a number of questions. His presence in the room was expressive of some infinitely great authority. Bellamy's voice trembled as he answered the questions. Beyond their conversation lay a vast silence, broken once by a bell. Bellamy, breathing in that silence and apprehending that authority, felt
I have come home
. He felt, here is purity and truth and love, and by those I desire to be
consumed
. The meeting lasted forty minutes, at the end of which Bellamy asked to be admitted to the order.

He was told to be patient, he was told to wait. Their correspondence began. After several months Father Damien saw him again, but without uttering encouragement, rather suggesting caution. Meanwhile Bellamy was busy dismantling his life. As time continued to go on Bellamy began to fear that his beloved mentor, after at first taking him seriously had on reflection become disappointed, had perhaps ‘seen through' Bellamy, perceived him as a romancer, a chronic idolater, hopelessly given over to ‘self-indulgent fantasy'. So, as such, he was being quietly given up. This doubt touched Bellamy at times with its cold finger hinting at a possible relapse into the old despair. Giving up his job and his flat, moving to the little room in Whitechapel, had for a time animated him, affording a seeming glimpse or vision of the contemplative life. But now more often the old stale hopeless weariness overcame him: the black sickness which
almost no one else
, certainly not his nearest dearest friends, could
understand at all
. The idea of giving up the world, which had given him for a time so much life-energy, appeared now as a sort of fake suicide, a ghastly play-image of his death. This fatal falseness-of-heart was what perhaps Father Damien, on further acquaintance, had now seen in him. The holy man now thought that
service
might be a cure, might at any rate arouse his penitent's interest in the suffering of others and lead him out into some real, more genuine, open field. But Bellamy's ‘solitary enterprises' as he had described them, had been fruitless, it had been as if he were searching the neighbourhood for beggars and outcasts so as simply to sneer at them. Even the kind people at the Anglican soup kitchen did not want him. No one seemed to need him, everyone, like Father Damien, saw through him. Bellamy had been here before. Sitting now stiff with loneliness and fear in his cold little room he found himself tapping on the table. He thought, I am turning toward evil. This tapping is to summon it. I am crammed with darkness. Thrusting his letter aside he stared at the rain streaming down the window. He thought, tears, if I could only have the sweet warm gift of tears! But I am cold and hard as a stone. Oh if only I could have a visitation, an angel, a star, a lightning flash, a
sign
.

He became aware that a man was standing outside and tapping on the window, interrupting the straight courses of the running rain. He stared. It was Clement. He ran to open the door.

‘You were just sitting there like a statue, I couldn't attract your attention. Your bell doesn't work, you know. Are you all right?'

‘Yes, yes, I was meditating. Why, you're soaked.'

‘Of course I'm soaked, I came out without an umbrella. I've left my car on a building lot, I hope it won't be attacked, everything around here seems to be being knocked down. Do you mind if I put my coat here and let it drip? This place smells, is the sink blocked? It's hellish cold in here, no wonder you're wearing two jerseys.'