Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [70]
background, rising up in an explosion of colour and form, was a piece of ancient Rome. On brick walls and arches and marble pillars and columns there fell the brilliantly white radiance of the arc lamps, making the buildings stand out in a relief more violent than of nature and darkening by contrast the surrounding air into a haze of twilight. Nearer to me was a forest of wooden scaffolding festooned with cables in which were perched the huge lamps themselves; and in between, mounted on steel stilts and poised on cranes, were the innumerable cameras, all eyes. Most strange of all, in the open arena in front of the city stood a crowd of nearly a thousand men in perfectly motionless silence. Their backs were turned to me and they seemed to listen enthralled to the vibrating voice of a single figure who stood raised above them on a chariot, swaying and gesticulating in the focus of the blazing light. This doubtless was Catiline inflaming the Roman plebs. The unnatural whiteness of the light made the colours burn into my eyes and I had to turn my head away. At any other time I would have been fascinated to watch what was going on. At that moment, however, there was but one thought in my mind, that it was now almost certain that only a small distance separated me from Hugo. I began to move round behind the scaffolding, walking behind the beams of light as one walks behind a waterfall. I didn't want Hugo to see me first. And as I went the city seemed to unfold, revealing by some trick of the scene vista after vista of streets and temples and pillared market places. I went on in a stupor, just outside the circle of colour, with the cascade of radiance on one side and the twilight on the other. Even Mars seemed under a spell, a gliding dog whose jointed legs swung to and fro without touching the earth. The passionate voice continued, pouring out an unending flood of exalted protest and appeal. Some of the words which it was uttering began now to find their way into my ears. It was saying: 'And that, comrades, is the way to get rid of the capitalist system. I don't say it's the only way, but I do say it's the best way.' I stopped. For all I knew Marxism might rapidly be transforming the study of ancient history; all the same, this sounded rather odd. Then in a flash I realized that the speaker was not Catiline but Lefty. The voice ceased and the crowd started out of their immobility. In a murmur which rose to a roar and re-echoed from the facades of the artificial city they clapped and shouted, rustling and swaying and turning to one another. Here and there among them were togaed Romans, but the majority of the men were obviously engineers and technicians in blue overalls and shirt sleeves. On the far side of them I could see now, coming more fully into view as its bearers moved a little, a long banner stretched between two poles, on which was printed in enormous letters SOCIALIST POSSIBILITY. And at that moment I caught sight of Hugo. He was standing by himself a little apart from the crowd but in the full blaze of the light. He stood upon the steps of a temple on the edge of the city, looking towards Lefty over the heads of the people. In the many-angled radiance he cast no shadow and in the whiteness of the light he looked strangely pale, as if his flesh were covered with chalk. He was joining and unjoining his hands in a pensive gesture which might have been an afterthought of clapping. He stood in a characteristic way which I remembered well, his shoulders hunched and his head thrust forward, his eyes shifting sharply, stooping a little and his lips moving a little. Then he began to bite his nails. I stood rooted to the spot. Lefty began speaking again and a deep silence at once surrounded his voice. Hugo felt my gaze and turned slightly. Some fifteen yards only separated us. I moved from the shadow into the light. Then he saw me. For a moment we looked at each other. I felt no impulse to smile or even to move. I felt as if I looked at Hugo out of another world. Gravity and sadness fell between us like a veil and for a moment