A Garden of Trees (34 page)

“He may be. They say you know where he is if you go on long enough. But then one only thinks one knows.”

“It's better to think one knows than know one doesn't.”

“It is? Only because not to know is unbearable.”

“Then that is a good reason to think one does, especially if it is true that for us there is only one way of thinking it.”

“And is it true?”

“It is beginning to look like it,” I said.

We lay in the darkness and I began to imagine I could see her. She said: “But look at our lives, that is what I mean by triviality, we live in a tiny circle on the edge of idleness, we have never come close to touching any of the passions that move those who have to struggle, we have nothing to do with war or peace or justice or enslavement, we are in a backwater drifting like leaves towards death.”

“I do not think so.”

“I should like to go into the real world and do something passionate.”

“There is only one real world.”

“It is not ours.”

“It is what we have a chance of.”

I spoke not knowing at all whether or not it was true. “Reality is a condition, it is not a matter of where you start from or what means you use to achieve it, we have as much chance as any one else of our generation, no less and no more. You think that we are useless because with us the issues are all on the surface, we live surrounded by questions and failures, and this makes us very unpleasant and perhaps very dull, but it doesn't make us trivial. It will only do so if it continues.”

“Supposing it does?”

“It won't.”

“Will the world then be real?”

“It might be. It either will or it won't. We shall think it.”

“And what will be the difference?”

“If it is we shall be true to something outside of us, and if it is not we shall think we are being true to ourselves. In either case the world of events will be secondary. Most of the world lives in shadows, as we have done, and it does not matter much which way the shadows fall.”

“It matters to the plants that die beneath the shadows.”

“You cannot move the shadows. And you cannot move the sun. All you can do is move the objects that cast shadows upon the ground. To do this you have to know the objects. You have to have eyes.”

“And hands.”

“Then you will have hands.”

“And is it only ourselves that cast the shadows and not ourselves that can move us? Is it you who are now trying to convert me?”

“If you like.”

“Why do you do this?”

“For my sake, not for yours.”

“Something is going to happen,” she said.

We lay a long way apart from each other and nothing happened.

“What I mean is this,” I continued, “that we ourselves are of no value, no value at all, it is only by fitting into reality that we become of value. We cannot tell when we have done this by examining our motives, we can only tell when we have fitted by a realization that comes from outside. Then we shall not have been true to ourselves but to our not-selves. Being true to oneself is the saddest behaviour in the world.”

“We shall always cast shadows until we are one with the sun.”

“Then we shall become one with the sun.”

“We shall be nothing.”

“No, I think we should be something.”

“Why?”

“Because to think of it now is so frightening,” I said.

“Something is going to happen,” she said again.

I began to shiver although I was not cold.

“Do you know what are the two most frightening things in the world?” I said. “To hear a confession and to be praised.”

“Is that harder than to confess and praise?”

“Yes,” I said. I felt rather sick. I began, “It is I who have betrayed you because I have loved you and have not been true to it.”

“No,” she said.

“Once we lived in a garden and love was something we did not have to think about. Then we thought about it and it was myself who made this happen. It was I who took upon myself the appearance of decision and who tried to decide what love should be. Then we were out of the garden and I tried to recreate the garden and I created a wilderness.”

“It was not your fault,” she said.

“In the wilderness we betrayed each other. It was my betrayal. I thought once that it was I who was true because I remembered the garden and would not come to terms with the wilderness, but this was only my conceit. I am the betrayer of my own remembrances. It is I who caused destruction because I thought the world could be trodden by a man with only memory. I betrayed even the memory and that is how I know that I am wrong.”

“It was not yourself,” she said.

“If it was not I was not even true to it. What happens is caused by the man whom it happens to. I am both the cause and the disaster. When we knew that we were in the wilderness it was I who undertook to come to terms with it and who still walked boldly as if the terms were of my own arranging. This is the sin of it. If Peter or you had died it would have been I who had killed you.”

“You are the one who has always been true,” she said.

“I am not, Annabelle, because I had made myself a victim. All that I have given you is the guilt for what has happened, and the guilt is mine, for having caused it. Listen, I have loved you and have done nothing for you, this is what is most terrible. It is I who have set up false idols to whom I did not give but from whom I take, and having done this I find myself with nothing. My gifts have been nothing but monuments to my pride and when I got nothing back I would have hurt you. You were closest to me, who had got things back. This is what I have got to tell you, that you must have no trust in me because I have never been trustworthy, that I would have sacrificed you jealously on the altars of my monuments. I have been true to myself but never to you, and this is what matters. You are that part of me to which I should have been true, and it is my failure that is the disaster. I tried to save myself and have lost you. I only realize now that it is myself that is lost because it is only you who could have been the whole of me. And all I ask now is that it is you who shall be saved because that is my love for you. The rest of me is deadly and I pray it may go to extinction.”

“It will not,” she said, “because it has been true for others.”

“Annabelle, Annabelle, nothing of me is true, nothing is not wicked, there is nothing good I have done in the whole of my life and no evil I have not attempted. I must tell you this and you must believe me. Nothing will be saved unless you believe me. In a moment I shall not believe it myself, but at the moment I believe it. You must help me to believe it because a moment is not enough. You must believe that you cannot trust me.”

Pray God, I thought, that I have said this truly.

“You are the best and most generous person in the world,” she said.

Pray God, dear God, that I meant it. Pray God that it was not a lie.

“You are the only person who is true, who has had something not yourself to be true to, who does not cast shadows.”

Pray God that I believe it.

“You are one with the sun,” she said.

“Annabelle!”

The shivering that was in my body had gone into the room and I sat up saying “You must not say that Annabelle for God's sake that is not what you must say,” and there was a violence in the room like a wind and I wanted to die. I had never been frightened till then and then I was frightened and I got out of bed against the wall so that I could die there. It was an impact against the mind like an agony of the body and I did not know what to do, I did not know what to do against it, I wanted to die. Everything was going out of me into the room and the black walls were breathing and there was a strain in the darkness like the sweat of stars. It was as if I were at that moment conscious of all that had happened in the whole of time, of all that was happening, each instant spread to enormity and exploding before my eyes. The room could not hold it, I could not hold it, I was fighting against the sky. I found myself kneeling beside the wall and there was no noise, no noise at all, just my life projected fighting into the heat of eternity, the world created and ended, an atom of the night. Then there were words going through my head which I had forgotten and which I thought I had remembered, forgotten words running like oil on a scorched machine. The fear stopped. I found that I was praying. In the calmness I knew that I had lied and that now I was not lying. My head was close to Annabelle's shoulder.

“It happened,” she said.

“Did it happen to you?”

“Yes,” she said. Her body where I held it was wet with sweat. “I am afraid I could not move,” she said.

“It did not need to happen to you.”

“It did,” she said.

“You know what you mean and what you don't mean.”

“I do not,” she said.

“That is the hardest thing.”

“Don't you begin,” she said. She tried to laugh. “I haven't meant much this evening.” She laughed again. “Until now, at least, and I don't have to say anything now, do I?”

“No,” I said. “Not now. Not now it has happened to both of us. That is all that will matter to us always.”

19

In the morning I went out before she was awake. The sun was like water. I shopped among the fruit stalls and bought bread that was warm. The streets were glistening as if they had been washed. I walked with my arms full of parcels and a grapefruit like a globe. I remembered Marius's story about the grapefruits, how he had caught them as they fell from a very great height. I threw mine up in the air and it spun like the sun and I caught it. There were wrinkles on its skin like mountains.

Annabelle had woken. I made her stay in bed while I brought her what she needed. We cut the grapefruit and ate it and drank milk in bowls. She had tied her hair into a knot at the back of her head, and her face was transparent like spider's-silk on roses. The sunlight shone in a shaft across the room and it was like a skin beneath which fluttered the veins of our temples. I had a machine which made coffee, sending small airy bubbles bursting softly against a dome. It was made of silver, with a flame at its base, and Annabelle said it was like a thurible. I did not know what a thurible was. It smelt of nuts. When we had finished she sat with her arms around her legs and I watched her. Below us in the street there were two men in top-hats with a guitar and a trumpet, and they played sad jazz music that rang against the stones. I leaned on the edge of the window and Annabelle watched me.

When Marius rang up he said that he had met Peter and had talked with him. He thought that I should go to Grosvenor Square because something was happening. I told this to Annabelle and it was she who insisted on going with me. When we were ready we went out and the two sad men were still playing on the corner. One of them took off his hat and held it out to us and then bowed to us gravely. We did not go to Grosvenor Square until the evening because there seemed so much to be done.

Peter stood in the middle of the room holding a tennis racquet. “Are you better?” he said.

“Much better,” Annabelle said.

He looked at her slily and then twirled the tennis racquet around in his hand. “I'm sorry I couldn't produce Father Jack for you,” he said.

“I didn't want him.”

“I thought you did,” he said.

“No.”

I wished that Annabelle had not come. I was afraid that she was still more ill than she admitted. Our day had gone quickly and I did not believe that there was any need to worry about Peter. In fact I found it difficult to care about Peter at all. He was swishing at the flowers with his racquet.

“I saw Marius this morning,” he said.

“Did you?”

“I met him in the street. Does he know Father Jack well?”

“Quite well.”

“He is coming round this evening to say good-bye. He should be here soon. He is going away to-morrow. Father Jack will be back too. It will be quite a party.”

“Peter, do be careful with that racquet.”

“Racquet!” He knocked the top off a daffodil. “Father Jack is a hypocrite,” he said.

“Is that what Marius told you?”

“Marius said Father Jack doesn't like me at all. That is very wrong of him, you know.” He said this in a off-hand way that was almost arch. “Silly of him to think that and not to tell me.”

“What didn't he tell you?”

“I had a talk with him, do you remember, that day after breakfast, and I thought I'd be nice to him as he is after all an awful bore, so I said what I thought quite pleasantly and he simply lapped it up, at least he said he did, and he told me to go ahead, it was all right by him, so he's a liar. I suppose they have to be nice to you if you're nice to them.”

“I suppose they do,” Annabelle said.

“Well they shouldn't. He's an old hypocrite. A silly old gardener leading fools up the garden path.”

“Did Marius say he was leading you up the garden path?”

“He used absurd language. That was what he meant. ‘Knowing well that there would be thistles on the way,' Marius has become like a guidebook, one can simply hear the capital letters. As if fools cared!”

The room was hot. I felt that Peter's indignation was enormously trivial. He was trying to hit the broken head of the daffodil through the open window.

“Are you going to play tennis?” Annabelle said.

“Definitely.”

“Who with?”

“Father Jack,” Peter said.

I think it was the day that Annabelle and I had spent together that left us unprepared for the scene in the evening. Emotion is never trivial to the person who feels it. I should have known this. But we forgot it, and did not know that Peter was desperate. We did not manage the scene well.

“When is Marius coming?” Annabelle said.

“Soon. I didn't know you'd be here. I hope you don't mind.”