The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [244]
We sat on drinking for a while. James poured water into his wine and I followed suit. Then I got up to heat the stew. (I had thrown it together that morning as an emergency ration, it keeps well.) As I did so I reflected that the machine which I had ingeniously constructed to separate myself from my cousin forever did not seem to be working very well.
‘Bread?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Hell, there’s no bread, only biscuits.’
‘OK, anything.’
We settled down to the stew.
‘When are you coming back to London?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about Hartley?’
‘What about her?’
‘Any news, views?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve given up?’
‘No.’
‘Seen her?’
‘I had tea with her and Ben.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Polite. More wine?’
‘Thank you.’
I was afraid that James was going to pester me with more questions, but he did not, he seemed to have lost interest. With an air now of generalizing he said, ‘I think you’re nearly through, out of it. You’ve built a cage of needs and installed her in an empty space in the middle. The strong feelings are all around her—vanity, jealousy, revenge, your love for your youth—they aren’t focused on her, they don’t touch her. She seems to be their prisoner, but really you don’t harm her at all. You are using her image, a doll, a simulacrum, it’s an exorcism. Soon you will start seeing her as a wicked enchantress. Then you will have nothing to do except forgive her and that will be within your capacity.’
‘Thank you—but as it happens I don’t love her image, I love her, even what’s awful.’
‘Her preferring him to you? That would be a feat.’
‘No, wreckage, carnage, what’s in her mind.’
‘Well, what is in her mind? Perhaps she was simply bound to your memory by a sense of guilt. When you released her from it she was grateful, but then her own resentment was set free, her memories of how tiresome you were perhaps, and after that she could revert to a state of indifference. Any cheese?’
‘James, you understand absolutely nothing here. And I have not given up, nor am I nearly, as you put it, out or through!’
‘It may even be your destiny to live alone and be everybody’s uncle like a celibate priest, there are worse ends. Any cheese?’
‘I’m not ending just yet I hope! Yes, there is cheese.’ I set out the cheese and opened another bottle of wine.
‘By the way,’ said James, ‘I hope you believed what I said to you about Lizzie?’
I filled our glasses. ‘I can believe it was all her idea and you had to be a gent about it.’
James sat for a moment concentrating. I guessed that he was wondering whether to start again on details about how often they had met and so on. I decided it didn’t matter. I believed him. ‘It doesn’t matter. I believe you.’
‘I’m sorry it happened,’ he said. It was not exactly an apology.
‘OK. OK now.’
James returned to making patterns on the table and I felt embarrassed again. I said rather awkwardly, ‘Well, tell me about yourself, what are you up to?’
‘I’m going away—’
‘Aha, so you said, you said you were going on a journey. To where there are mountains maybe, and snow maybe, and demons in and out of boxes maybe?’
‘Who knows? You’re a sea man. I’m a mountain man.’
‘The sea is clean. The mountains are high. I think I am becoming drunk.’
‘The sea is not all that clean,’ said James. ‘Did you know that dolphins sometimes commit suicide by leaping onto the land because they’re so tormented by parasites?’
‘I wish you hadn’t told me that. Dolphins are such good beasts. So even they have their attendant demons. Well, you’re off are you, let me know when you’re back.’
‘I’ll do that thing.’
‘I can’t understand your attitude to Tibet.’
‘To Tibet?’
‘Yes, oddly enough! Surely it was just a primitive superstitious mediaeval tyranny.’
‘Of course it was a primitive superstitious mediaeval tyranny,’ said James, ‘who’s disputing that?’
‘You seem to be. You seem to regard it as a lost Buddhist paradise. ’ I had never ventured to say anything like this to James before, it must have been the drink.
‘I don’t regard it as a Buddhist paradise. Tibetan Buddhism was in many ways thoroughly corrupt.