• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1066 0

it, would be the key to that civilisation. It is probably to do with indoctrination or brain-printing. To my mind there is no explanation for the entirely arbitrary, casual, fragmentary nature of this heightening or accompanying music except that it must be part of the technique used by a hidden priestly or technically superior caste to control the plebs. If this is the correct explanation, then this culture is remarkably advanced in some ways, even if so backward in others. Have I mentioned that they are a deeply animistic culture, believing that animals and plants have human and sometimes magical characteristics? … Yes,” he said, “I can assure you that this is quite analogous to our methods in Turkey or in Africa or anywhere else. Now, if I had watched the television between eight o’clock and twelve, my conclusions would have been quite different, but of course, equally-emphatic …”

We went to a pub nearby, where I telephoned the person who was expecting me, to apologise for not coming. I could not leave Frederick then. He was, in fact, in a very disturbed state. It turned out that during the last few weeks we had had the same experience. In his case he could not remember a definite beginning to it all. He could not say: It all started because one evening I sat in a cold lecture hall listening to an enthusiast about education. No, but one day he realised that he was in a different state or mood. But he couldn’t define that mood. His work which he loves and usually puts before everything—even before his wife and family, as he readily admits—this work had become a routine, something to be done. He thought he might be ill. He even went to the doctor and was given a tonic. He found he was sleeping badly. He described it as the kind of sleep one has before a journey when you have to start very early, and you keep waking yourself up to make sure you don’t over sleep. He was offered a chance to do some work on a site in the Sudan, and though he had been wanting to work in Africa again, he said no. Yet he knew this was foolish, and might be a decision he would later regret.

Finally he said to himself that he was slightly mad, and perhaps this was due to discovering he was indubitably middle-aged! But he stopped caring about the whys and wherefores. He said everything had become heightened and alive, and it was like being in love, that condition when for hours, days, weeks, everything is soaked with the personality of the other person. Yet he was not in love.

And there was no other person. He said it was as if everything—person, place, tree, plant, building—was full of riches, promise, yet each turned away from him as he approached. “It was as if I approached a mirror and found it blank.” I know this feeling well. Do you? I told him of my experiences on “the night of the children” (which is now my label or catch-phrase for it). We stayed talking until the pub closed, and then went to my flat because we both had the same feeling—each to the other was a jar full of possibility, but a closed jar, sealed. But if we talked long enough, some revelation would emerge, some clue.

One trouble was that our lives have been so different, he always travelling, always finding new places and cities, and I have been a teacher and a housewife and mother seldom leaving England. Yet we did have this thing in common, the having been struck by a condition like extra wakefulness. Other people’s responses seemed slow. They seemed half asleep. Yet this condition was also an affliction, for it was a strain and a difficulty—a challenge it was hard to rise to.

I’ve written about that meeting with Frederick in detail, because it was like “the night of the children.” Now I’ll abridge things, and try and make some order.

Frederick and I met nearly every day—we have now reached early summer, end of May, beginning of June. As I said, I’ve retired, and he had left himself at a loose end. He is an energetic man and dislikes idleness. He set himself up for a couple of lectures about the site in Turkey. He has done a lot of lecturing. One evening he came to see