A Garden of Trees (8 page)

“He will be wasting his time,” Annabelle said.

“Why?”

“Because he won't know whether or not he has done it.”

“I knew a man,” Marius said, “who tied himself to a towel-rail.”

“When you try to lift yourself there is nothing to judge it by, you will end by pretending and not knowing that you pretend.”

“What happened to him?” I said.

“He was burnt,” Marius said.

“What is there to judge it by? Pretending is a disease, you do not know when you have got it. Does it matter so long as you try?”

“Disease can be cured.”

“How?”

“By other people.”

“Oh love, love, you are always talking about love. Will you cure me, Annabelle?”

“Yes,” Annabelle said.

Peter took off his shoes and socks and sat down on the parapet with his back to us so that his feet were in the water. He began to sing, and then stopped. He said: “The world is diseased, the disease is infectious, the infection is pretence. Should one not isolate oneself from infection? Everywhere there is madness. The people in the streets are no less mad than the people in palaces. The world must be changed or be renounced.”

“What do you remember?” Annabelle asked.

“Man must be changed or be destroyed. If he is not changed he must change himself. If he is not destroyed he will certainly destroy himself. I remember the future.”

“I remember the present,” Marius said.

“One day something will happen. We will get off the ground for a moment. It is only a moment that matters. Then we will be changed. It is the future that matters.”

“In the future,” Marius said, “we will break our backs and die.”

“There are four of us,” Peter said. “We will put strings under each other's feet and pull. We will stand at the four corners of a circle and we will build a totem pole in the middle and the pole will have pulleys and we will raise ourselves. Is that what you call love?”

“Yes,” Annabelle said.

“You are right,” Peter said. “We must have a pole. The world has given up its totems, that is why it is on the ground. The world is too solitary. Will you tell us when our pole is built and we can pull?”

“If it were we who built it we still should not know where we were going.”

“You would,” I said.

“We still should not know what we were.”

“You would,” I said.

“We never know about ourselves.”

“A totem does not work unless a sacrifice is made to it,” Marius said.

“Then make a sacrifice,” Peter said. He looked to the sky. “One day I will jump off that roof and will either fly or be a sacrifice.”

“You know about yourselves,” I said.

“There are sacrifices in the present, always,” Marius said. “Then tell us when to honour them. The world must be changed. Annabelle, what do you judge things by?”

“By not judging,” she said.

“How do you know what you are without pretending?”

“By not knowing.”

“How do you know where you are going?”

“By believing.”

“And that is what you judge things by. Now, now, a star, and then it is you who we can believe in.”

“We are still children,” Annabelle said.

“Will you tell us when to begin?”

“Yes,” Annabelle said.

We all looked to the sky, but the stars had become veiled with clouds. It was as if we were alone on top of a mountain. Peter splashed, the water touched us, it might have been rain that fell upon us equally. I felt, suddenly, that I might have been any one of them. “I must go,” I said.

“Must you?” They looked at me.

“Yes,” I said.

“You will come back and see us?” Annabelle said.

“You will come back and stay?”

“I will come back soon,” I said.

“Good.”

I left them. I walked away hurriedly. I hoped that they would understand. I walked up flat rectangular streets without seeing anything. I had nowhere else to go and no one was expecting me, but I felt that if I had stayed with them much longer I should have either lost what I had found or else found something which at the moment would have been too great for me.

II
CHILDREN

4

Emotion is not describable. The words have all been used, and they are tired. What I felt about Marius and Annabelle and Peter I thought was a new feeling, but I suppose it was really as old as the words with which I could not describe it. But every experience seems new to the person who experiences it, while the words are old to everyone. So the words can only explain.

When children are children they are either on their own or in company, but wherever they are they are not faced with the problem of solitude. To the child the problem is either unknown or it is an agony, and an agony cannot last for long. It is cured by unconsciousness or comforted by love, and there are a million mysteries by which its pain can be diverted. Children are never religious and they are never hypocrites, and religion and hypocrisy are two of the answers to the problem of solitude.

When children are no longer children they become conscious of solitude. Then, if there is love, it is all the answer that it was when they were children; but if there is no love, then there is fear, because unconsciousness has gone and mysteries have become fearful instead of diverting. Then the fight against solitude begins, and it may be fought by either denial or remedy. Denial is hypocrisy and remedy is faith. There can always be the attitude of not fighting it at all, but that becomes a descent into non-existence.

The world chooses denial because denial is easier. Denial is the easiest thing imaginable, because it does not even require imagination. And few people have imagination, so that hypocrisy begins.

Hypocrisy is pretending that you like people when you don't, pretending that you are happy when you aren't, pretending you are doing things for others when you are doing them for yourself, pretending that you are getting somewhere when you are going round in circles. Hypocrisy is living negatively and pretending that it is positive. Hypocrisy works because for a large number of people it is the only thing that can work, and something has to work or else people cannot believe that they exist. Hypocrisy is not wrong, it is just unlucky. It is unlucky because under its terms belief in existence remains only a surmise and not a reality. But it is necessary because some belief in existence is necessary, and an unreal belief fulfills at least the necessary functions of a real one. Belief in existence is automatic, it has to be; and for some reason belief in existence cannot be maintained without love or religion or hypocrisy. That is a condition of being human.

In solitude one does not exist because one is not human. And so there is no real solitude, only the fear of it. If the fear becomes answerable by the usual means then one goes mad. But that, too, in its way, is an answer. Madness occurs when the normal means fail.

Of the normal means hypocrisy is the easiest even for those who have imagination because it is possible to recognize hypocrisy and loathe hypocrisy and yet still be a hypocrite. In fact for the majority of people who have imagination this is the usual condition because love and faith are difficult to come by. They know that they are hypocrites and yet they have no means of ceasing to be hypocrites. To exist in solitude is impossible and to go mad is undesirable. So in spite of themselves they are hypocrites and knowing it they are never quite at peace. For imagination contains the expectation of truth.

This is the human predicament. And a person who has imagination will find, if he remains in the predicament for long, that he loses his imagination. That is why older people will usually admit the predicament less readily than the young. For the mind which both condemns the notion of hypocrisy, and yet is aware of the unalterable existence of it in itself, is an uneasy mind; and if hypocrisy is thus recognized it will ultimately be defeated in its purpose. For the purpose of hypocrisy is the maintenance of belief—a peaceful belief even at the cost of truth. So that after a time the hypocrisy is no longer recognized, and the apparatus of the mind which once did recognize it becomes withered and dead. The imaginative awareness of solitude becomes, in time, like the acceptance of solitude, impossible: and the imagination dies.

But to those who are in the predicament and are fighting it and who cling to their imagination with an inherent desire almost as strong as that with which they cling to their belief in existence, there are the remedies of faith and love. But these remedies cannot be approached either intellectually or through an effort of will. If they are, then it is likely that the attempt will result in hypocrisy. One of the cruelest qualities of the predicament is the impossibility of intellectually discriminating between hypocrisy on the one hand and religion and love on the other. What is called religion is often a facet of hypocrisy, and so is what is called love. The intellect has no power to say, “This is or that is not hypocrisy,” because the intellect is concerned only with rationalisations after an assumption and not with the assumption itself. The intellect cannot stand outside itself and judge itself because it has nowhere to stand. But there is something that stands outside the assumption, and that is emotion.

Emotion is that which makes belief a reality. For, when the question is put, “Why should not emotion be a facet of hypocrisy?”, the question has lost its force. It has somehow become meaningless. It is not even frightening. Emotion is that which hypocrisy is not.

That is because emotion comes from outside a person and is not in its origins part of them. It is the only reality that is unchallengeable because it is objective. A person cannot make himself love and he cannot make himself hate, and he cannot give to himself the conviction that is religion. That is why an effort of will in this direction will often lead to hypocrisy. But although it is emotion that makes conviction possible, that stands outside the assumption and gives validity to it, it is for this very reason the most difficult thing to come by, because it is unpredictable and uncontrollable. The fact that it is in its origins outside a person is at once its triumph and its misery.

A man cannot make himself love. A man cannot give himself faith. He can only wait till the chance of love comes, and when it comes be ready to receive it. If it does come, he at least has the chance of it. If it does not, then he will have lost his battle. This is why hypocrisy can be called merely an unlucky position, and love a lucky one. Love and faith are really the same thing.

It is possible that love will come to everyone who is ready to receive it, but that, again, is an intellectual conjecture, and cannot finally be judged. It is impossible to know why love does or does not come.

It is thus that the problem of solitude stands at the centre of man's existence. It is the problem of life or death, and love is the only answer for those who would keep their imagination. Love is the only remedy to solitude, love is the only means to keep alive. For without love a man loses his imagination; without imagination a man soon ceases to be human: without humanity a man does not exist.

When I left Annabelle and Marius and Peter in the square I realized the force of this only dimly. All I knew was that I was feeling something that I had never felt before in my life and which in fact had seemed to turn me into a different person. I did not think about love and did not question it: I knew neither what it meant nor what it entailed nor even that it would last. But the feeling was that for the first time in years I was not faced with the problem of solitude. Before this I had fought with the problem and had found myself being beaten by it: I had even learnt, in some frightening way, the meaning of that phrase, “the descent into non-existence.” But now it was the problem that had ceased to exist. And I, perhaps, had begun to exist. It was the force of this that had made me leave them so suddenly. When one becomes a different person at the age of twenty-three it is a shock that has to be suffered apart from the cause of it.

5

Alice rang me up the next morning. I had slept late, and was still in bed, and I went out sleepily onto the landing. Alice sounded cheerful. I could not concentrate upon what she was saying, but I agreed to have lunch with her. Then I went back to bed.

By the time I arrived at the restaurant I had remembered that my last meeting with her had not been successful. Marius and I had been rude, and she had left us angrily. I now wished to make up for this, and for more besides; because it struck me suddenly that in all my friendship with Alice there had been something degrading for both of us. I had liked being with her because as a character she fascinated me, and by watching her I thought I was learning about people as a whole. I liked listening to her oddities and contradictions—expressions of a character that seemed to exist so much on the surface, flashing out in different directions like the facets of a diamond, indicating a centre hidden and obscure. She seemed to behave with the unswerving superficiality of an older generation; and yet, being really of my generation, to be possessed by none of the older people's righteousness and cant. Thus I could both approach her and at the same time try to find out what this life on the surface meant—why it was necessary for so many energetic people to spend their energy like this—whether they recognized their oddities and contradictions and practised them purposely, or whether it was merely some instinct within them which made them function as they did. But in approaching her like this, as an object of experiment almost—to be observed and analysed as an excellent example of what I wanted to understand—I was treating her as a machine and not as a person, and it was this that was degrading. It was degrading for me because to treat people as machines is to become a machine oneself, and it was degrading for her because she tried, in her own way, to like me, and yet found me, I suppose, because my way was different from hers, unexpectedly dull and inhuman. It was this that I wanted to change.

Alice had arrived at the restaurant before me. She was sitting at the best table by the window and was ordering wine. When she saw me she waved, and as I sat down she put her hand on top of mine. “Darling,” she said, “how wonderful to see you.” Her eyes were the colour of a smart bright swimming-pool. “This is
my
lunch,” she said. “I am sure it is going to be a wonderful lunch.”

“It is very kind of you,” I said.

“How nice you look,” she said. Her hand as it lay on top of mine was pointed and thin with long smooth nails, and two silver bracelets jutted up from her wrist like hoops. I wondered why when she stood up they did not fall off. Her arm against the table-cloth was white like wax.

“You look very nice too,” I said.

“Darling,” she said, “you don't mean it, but still.”

“I do mean it, you know, but I can't say it,” I said.

“Why can't you say it?”

“Because it doesn't sound right when I say it.”

“Darling, if you meant it it would.”

“It somehow doesn't,” I said.

A waiter approached. He produced two menus the size of magazines. “I have ordered lunch,” Alice said. He flicked at the table languidly with a cloth. “And claret,” Alice said. “Can we please have it soon?” The waiter bowed to her and departed. “I hope you like claret,” Alice said to me.

“I do,” I said.

“I'm sure you really despise it, darling, but you should get to know about claret, you know.”

“Yes,” I said.

She took the skin on the back of my hand between her finger nails and gave it a pinch. It hurt considerably. I wanted to giggle, as I thought how funny it would be if I put my other hand on top of hers and we played the game of pulling the bottom hand out from underneath and slapping it back on the top of the pile. But I did not think that this suggestion would amuse her. I had to say something quickly, however, as the pain was becoming unbearable, so I said “Why is it, do you think, that we find it so difficult to talk to each other?”

“Darling I don't know,” she said, stopping pinching.

“I mean, what do you like talking about with other people?”

“With whom?”

“With your friends, your real friends, as you once said.”

“Darling, we just talk.”

“You're not going to get angry if I go on?”

“No,” she said, pleasantly, but taking her hand away from mine.

“Because, you see, you seem to talk about things that I could never say.”

“You're so young, darling,” she said, and I was afraid that she was going to withdraw from me again.

“I don't think it's being young,” I said. “What is it that you want from people when you talk?”

“To be amusing, charming, gay, surely.”

“I don't think I do, you see.”

“Why, what on earth do you want?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“To be serious?” she sighed tremendously. “Darling, don't you want ever to stop being serious?”

“I can't ever begin,” I said.

“Now I think you are trying to be clever,” she said.

The waiter brought soup. Then the claret arrived and there was the ceremony of opening the bottle and tasting it. I had a momentary fear that Alice was going to send it back, but she didn't. Her hesitation was only a successful ruse to impress the waiter. We sipped it appreciatively.

“I was wondering,” I said, “why is it that you and I mean different things by being serious and gay.”

“It really is being young, you know. I really can't explain it.” For the first time since I had known her she appeared to be entirely serious.

“Do explain it,” I said.

“Well, you see, I think life just becomes a business when you are older.”

“But you surely still feel things? Unbusinesslike things, I mean?”

“Darling, what you feel hasn't got much to do with life.”

“It has everything to do with it, surely . . . ”

“Not life, not living it,” she said. We drank our soup while I thought this over.

“Then you are like me,” I said; —“what you feel you can't express.”