Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [5]
‘We could make a bonfire.’
‘Too near the solstice.’
‘Something else then?’
‘A sacrifice.’
‘What sort?’
‘One in Harmony.’
‘Like Fiona’s shirt?’
‘Yes.’
He did not laugh. He did not even smile. This affirmative somehow inhibited further comment in a frivolous tone, imposing acquiescence in not treating things lightly, even Fiona’s shirt. At the same time I was uncertain whether he was not simply teasing. On the face of it teasing seemed much more likely than all this assumed gravity. Nevertheless uncertainty remained, ambivalence of manner leaving one guessing. No doubt that was intended, after all a fairly well recognized method of establishing one sort of supremacy. The expressed aim – that things should be in Harmony – could not in itself be regarded as objectionable. It supported the contention that Fiona’s latest set of friends held to stringent moral values of one sort or another. How best to achieve an act of Harmony was another matter.
‘Harmony is not easy to define.’
‘Harmony is Power – Power is Harmony.’
‘That’s how you see it?’
‘That’s how it is.’
He smiled. When Murtlock smiled the charm was revealed. He was a boy again, making a joke, not a fanatical young mystic. At the same time he was a boy with whom it was better to remain on one’s guard.
‘How are we going to bring off an act of Harmony on a Saturday afternoon?’
‘Through the Elements.’
‘What elements?’
‘Fire, Air, Earth, Water.’
The question had been a foolish one. He smiled again. We discussed various possibilities, none of them very sparkling. The other three were silent throughout all this. Murtlock seemed to have transformed them into mere shadows of himself.
‘Is there water near here? I think so. There is the feel of water.’
‘A largish pond within walking distance.’
‘We could make a water sacrifice.’
‘Drown somebody?’
He did not answer.
‘We could go crayfishing,’ said Isobel.
Since demands made by improvisation at a moment’s notice of the necessary tackle for this sport were relatively onerous, the proposal marked out Isobel, too, as not entirely uninfluenced by Murtlock’s spell.
‘The crayfish are in the pond?’
‘In the pools of the brook that runs out of it.’
He considered.
‘It can’t be exactly described as a blood sport,’ I added.
I don’t know why inserting that lame qualification seemed required, except that prejudice against blood sports could easily accord with an outlook to be inferred from people dressed in their particular style. If asked to rationalize the comment, that would have been my pretext. Aggressive activities against crayfish might be, by definition, excluded from an afternoon’s programme devoted to Harmony. Who could tell? Harmony was also Power, he said. Power would be exercised over crayfish, if caught, but possibly the wrong sort of Power. He pretended to be puzzled.
‘You mean that without blood there is no vehicle for the spirit?’
‘I mean that you might not like killing.’
‘I do not kill, if not killed.’
He seemed glad to have an opportunity to make that statement, gnomic to say the least. It sounded like a favourite apophthegm of a luminary of the cult to which they all belonged, the familiar ring of Shortcuts to the Infinite, Wisdom of the East, Analects of the Sages. For some reason the pronouncement seemed also one recently brought to notice. Had I read it not long before in print? The Murtlock standpoint, his domination over Fiona and the others, was becoming a little clearer in a certain sense, if remaining obscure in many others.
‘I don’t think we’ll be killed. Deaths crayfishing are comparatively rare.’
‘You spoke not of death, but of killing.’
‘The latter is surely apt to lead to the former?’
‘There is killing – death is an illusion.’
This was no help so far as deciding how the afternoon was to be spent.
‘The point is whether or not you would consider the killing of crayfish to be in Harmony?’
Once more his smile made me feel that it was I, rather than he, who was being silly.
‘Not all killing is opposed to