Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [105]
for reasons known to psychoanalysts. I did, however, dislike the dim light, and on the second day provided, at my own expense, a more powerful electric light bulb: which was confiscated on the third day by Stitch and the dim one put back again. There I sat, perusing the Evening Standard, and, as I read, the rumours of the outside world came to me like distant cries or the sounds of battles far away in time and space. Lefty's name occurred quite often; and once a whole editorial was devoted to him, couched in terms designed to suggest simultaneously that he was a serious public menace and that he was a petty street-corner agitator who was beneath contempt. I noticed that a grand meeting was to be organized by the Independent Socialists in West London in a day or two, and it was apropos of this that the editor was calling on the optimates to exercise this peculiar blend of negligence and strong measures. Homer K. Pringsheim had held a press conference in London at which he had said that the British and American film industries had much to learn from each other, and had departed for the Italian Riviera. Others names which I looked for were not there. I enjoyed this part of the day too. By this time I could combine a considerable feeling of tiredness with a feeling which was almost entirely new to me, that of having done something. Such intellectual work as I have ever accomplished has always left me with a sense of having achieved nothing: one looks back through the thing as through an empty shell; but whether this is because of the nature of intellectual work as such, or whether it is because I am no good, I have never been able to decide. If one no longer feels in living contact with whatever thought the work contains, the thing seems at best dry and at worst stinking; and if one does still feel this contact the work is infected through it with the shifting emptiness of present thought. Though it may be that if one had any present thoughts that were at all considerable they would not have this quality of emptiness. I wonder if Kant, as he conceived his Copernican Revolution, said to himself from time to time, 'But this is nothing, nothing'? I should like to think that he did. I had decided to wait for the weekend before making another attempt to contact Hugo. The sense of my own destiny, which had so curiously deserted me during the days when I had been lying on Dave's camp-bed, had now returned, and I felt sure that whatever god had arranged for me and Hugo to have deeply to do with one another would not leave his work unfinished. On this matter I felt for the moment a certain calm. I was more anxious about letters from France, and perhaps most anxious of all about Finn, of whom there was still not a breath of news. Dave had said that we ought to start making inquiries, but this was impossible for the simple reason that there was nowhere where we could inquire. Finn had no friends in London, so far as we knew, except ourselves, and concerning his present whereabouts we could not even get as far as framing a theory. Dave had suggested going to the police, but I was against this. If Finn was drinking himself to death somewhere, that was Finn's business, and it would be my last sad act of friendship to leave him to it. This worried me all the same, and I thought a lot about Finn during those days. The other unsolved problem which I had upon my hands was the problem of Mars, and about this I worried in fits and starts. Sadie and Sammy had still made no move, and their silence was beginning to get on my nerves. I felt tempted at times to go and see Sadie and talk the whole thing over. But I felt afraid of this too, partly because, au fond, I was a bit afraid of Sadie, especially now when I had put myself in the wrong, and partly because I didn't fancy the idea of Mars being taken from me. I didn't want Mars, in his old age, to fall into the hands of someone, viz. Sammy, whom I suspected of having little enough respect for an unexploitable life, even if it were a human one. So I did nothing and waited. A day or two passed, and