Bethany (27 page)

But why should the soul, being truth, dream this lie?

This is the question at the centre of the universe. There is not the remotest possibility that I shall be able to answer it.

On the other hand, perhaps we are all capable of answering it. If this question is at the centre of life, it is also at the centre of each living creature. We all contain, locked up in us, the answer. Perhaps the seeking for the answer is the motive-force of the universe.

Of course it is.

The seeking for the answer, that is life.

Life is the product of truth's seeking for itself.

How beautiful, the dance. The eternal movement towards the always elusive goal, the lover circling the beloved.

So that is what we are doing.

And Alex too is part of this dance.

And I dare not tell her so, for she will use the knowledge to escape from her necessary pain, her necessary purification, not seeing that her soul has dreamed a nightmare in which it will suffocate if it is not cut free.

I must remember why I am here.

The scene must be run until it is complete.

Simon talks about the house. He says that Alex's ownership of the house puts her in a special position in the group. He says that this would not matter if the responsibilities of that position
were faithfully discharged, but they are not. It is as if the house belonged to a child.

He talks about Alex's behaviour in the group. It is disruptive, he says. She undertakes to do things and does not do them. She starts things and does not finish them. This confuses people. She is always going away. This weakens the unity of the group. It is as if she does not want the group to succeed. If Alex were any other member of the group it would not be difficult to deal with this. But in Alex's case it is more complicated. Because Alex is the owner of the house.

I admire, yet again, the sure sweep of his approach, the inevitability of his logic, the elegant shape of his argument. Twin propositions, mutually dependent, equally unassailable.

He is saying that the group will offer Alex three alternatives. We discussed them, he says, while Alex was in London, and no one could think of a fourth alternative. This is true. What I did not say then, and do not say now, is that it won't work. Alex will not play ball.

Alex does not understand these civilised games of ‘Either … or'. She was brought up in the woods and she has the instincts of a wild animal. If you try to drive her into a corner she will make a break for the open, and she will always get there. She has to.

Why do I not say this? Because one must never speak for others, never interpret, particularly before the event. And because I realise that I am still making allowances. For Alex is not a wild animal, she is a human being. She is not a child, she is a woman of thirty-eight. If she has not learnt the rules of civilisation, it is time she did. For her own sake as well as for that of the society in which she lives, Alex must stop expecting, and getting, special treatment.

Simon lists the alternatives. ‘The first alternative is that you remain here but not as the owner of the house. I will offer to buy it from you. The second alternative is that you leave. The third is that you be allowed to have exactly what you want.'

The third alternative probably means that the group will break up. With it will go Alex's last chance.

‘Do you understand the alternatives?'

‘Yes,' says Alex. She looks at the floor. ‘If I choose the second alternative, how soon must I leave?'

‘At once.'

Harsh. Logical: what point in her staying once she decides to go? But it will not come to that. His resolution will break, he will find a way out.

Alex says, ‘I choose a fourth alternative.'

The group stirs. Simon's eyes darken.

‘There is no fourth alternative. The group has been unable to find a fourth alternative.'

‘I do not accept the group's alternatives.'

So might Lucifer have said before the throne of light, ‘I do not accept your decision.' Until that moment there had been no alternative. Evil is a misunderstanding of the nature of the rules.

And I see that the misunderstanding is deliberate.

‘The alternatives the group is offering this member cover all possibilities,' says Simon. ‘She can choose to go away from the group. If at some time in the future she undergoes a change of heart, she may ask to be re-admitted to the group. Meanwhile she can go wherever she likes. She might like to go abroad.'

Alex probably does not have the price of a gallon of petrol in her pocket. And why, when the other day we were discussing Alex in terms of a being lost almost beyond the point of recovery, is he now talking like a college principal giving a student permission for a Sabbatical?

‘Or,' continues Simon, ‘she can sell the house to me and continue living in it. I have no desire to own this or any other house, but I am willing to buy it if that will help.'

This alternative has surprised me. I thought he had no money. Perhaps Gordon will lend it to him.

‘Or,' he says, ‘if she will not accept either of these alternatives,
there remains the third alternative, which is to let her have what she wants.'

At the spiritual level to which Alex has sunk, a being has stronger orientation towards death than towards life. They will leave her to complete her self-destruction.

And I, what shall I do?

Alex says, ‘If I go away, I would like a little time to put things in order.'

‘How long a time?'

‘Three days.'

Simon's eyes scan the group, and see on every face the same thought: that this distressing situation cannot possibly be allowed to prolong itself another three days.

‘Your request is not granted,' he says. ‘If you go you must go at once.'

I can see that even as Alex appears to be thinking she has made up her mind.

‘I choose a fourth alternative,' she says.

It is confirmation, if any were needed, of her utter perversity. Alex cannot and never could do anything straight. Presented with three simple, inevitable alternatives, what would she do but reject them and prefer a fourth of her own?

Simon says there can be no fourth alternative: all logical possibilities have been covered in the three offered. Nevertheless the group will listen to Alex's idea of a fourth alternative.

‘My alternative is to stay here for a short time, and to leave when I am ready,' she says.

It is a compromise between going and not going. It is, like everything Alex does, messy, inefficient, selfish and dishonest.

Simon does not look at her as he gives his judgement.

‘You are beyond help,' he says.

No, Alex could never submit to a set of rules, even when she had formulated them herself. I have seen her refuse to do a thing for no other reason that that she had previously decided to do it.

She thinks freedom is a matter of not being bound by rules;
and she does not see that the thing she is protecting from the supposed chafing of these rules is the monstrous, tender abscess of her ego.

And so, because she did not like the rules, she scuppered the Ark. Never mind who else was on board at the time. Never mind who might have needed to come on board later. None of these things mattered in face of Alex's need to be free. And so Alex's ego is free and Alex's soul, smaller and paler, is back in its cage.

It is no use being angry. The damage she does to other people is as nothing to the damage she does to herself. They can find their way out of what she has done to them: she cannot.

I must help her find her way out. That is why I am still here. It is my responsibility. How odd, and how fitting, that at the end of the long quest which I began with that word, I should find myself faced with the most awesome responsibility a human being can be asked to bear.

Yet, what has she done?

It is as if a child had been murdered by its mother. For it was Alex who brought the group to birth. It could not have happened in the city: this was the place. Why did she do it? I remember the evening when she asked them to come here, how hesitant she was, as if half-frightened by what she was saying. Was she aware then of some deep duplicity in her motive?

Simon believes so. In his final despair he called her corrupt.

‘I choose a fourth alternative,' says Alex.

Her perversity is endless. So is her blindness. She rejects truth itself.

Simon looks drawn. Life has been taken out of him.

‘You are totally corrupt,' he says. ‘There is no hope for you.'

Alex sits silent. There is a wall around her. Thus the dark thing protects itself.

With a movement of his arm Simon beckons all of us to look at Alex. Alex cross-legged on the floor.

‘Look at her,' he says. ‘Look, and remember. This is how a being looks when it is totally corrupt.'

We look.

If there had been any doubt in my mind, it would have been extinguished by what I saw then.

The wall around Alex is impregnable. She appears to feel nothing, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her features are composed, her hands still. It is a total, silent defiance, mocking even in its serenity. There is something blasphemous about it.

Simon feels it: it has goaded him to a display of emotion I have never seen.

‘Corrupt!' he says, pointing his finger at her, inviting us to share his perception of her evil so that we may learn, and remember. There is no need: we see it clearly, the dark wall that grows out of her.

Simon is on his feet, pacing the room, his beautiful lean body angular with pain, the blaze in his eyes dulled by misery.

‘I loved you!' he exclaims.

Oh yes, he did: he loves her still, I can see him fight to rid himself of his love.

Many people have loved Alex. It has not helped her.

What I saw then was a ring of darkness so concentrated that no communication could pierce it. What I saw was a withdrawal from communication of such intensity that it had become a psychic force. Until that moment I had not fully understood that love and communication are identical; that withdrawal of love and withdrawal of communication are identical; and that withdrawal of love is evil.

I saw Alex protected by a wall of evil. I was awed by it.

Simon was torn apart by it.

Simon, on his feet, catalogues Alex's crimes. But not in his
normal way, measured and lucid. Distress makes his speech disjointed, almost violent, although he has barely raised his voice.

‘Deceiver. Confuser. Manipulator. Schemer.'

The words spill out of him.

‘She says she will do things, and she doesn't do them. People are confused, they are hurt. What does she care? She's off doing something else. She won't finish that either. She'll leave it for someone else to finish. This is a human being who gets other human beings to do things for her.'

He paces the room. The children are fretful. Alex is still.

‘She charms people. That is why they do things for her. What is charm? – it's making people think you love them. She doesn't love them. It's a lie. Everything she does is a lie.'

My mind races through seven years' memories. I can find no defence. Alex charms. Alex manipulates. Alex lies. It is all true.

‘She pretends to help people. She has never helped anyone in her life. It's a confidence trick. She doesn't help because she can't help. She has nothing to give. But she goes through the motions of helping, and people believe it. They're grateful. They respect her.'

True. Wretchedly true. All those people who came to Alex hungry went away hungry, but never knew it. A plate had been put before them: in their desperation they didn't see there was nothing on it.

‘All those people,' says Simon. There are tears in his voice, whether for them, or for himself, or for Alex, I cannot tell. ‘All those beings who have trusted her, and have been lied to and betrayed and abandoned. People, animals. Hurt and betrayed. What a trail of destruction. How terrible.'

His voice breaks. A sigh, almost inaudible, goes up from the group. Alex bows her head. Will she speak?

Simon wheels round on her. ‘It's true,' he says. ‘Every word is true. If it were not true there is someone here who would defend you.'

But there is no defence.

Very well, it is treachery. The very thing Alex has always feared people would do to her; the very thing I have fallen over backwards for seven years not to do.

What does she think, for seven years, I have been doing? Killing her slowly, letting her soul suffocate in lies. What does she think loyalty is, but a refusal to face the truth which has been cynically elevated to the status of a virtue?

Can't she see that this is the greatest act of love, perhaps the only act of love, I have ever performed for her?

If I had defended her, knowing the truth of Simon's accusations, it would have been the cruellest treachery of which any human being is capable. It was not enough that she should hear the truth from Simon's mouth: she could too easily have dismissed it. She had to see that I, who know her and have always defended her, shared his perception.

And even that proved not enough. Driven to accept that something really was terribly wrong, her mind has resorted to spinning fantasies which can explain the event in terms of a trivial misunderstanding. Simon's resignation from the partnership: utterly irrelevant. Completely mad. I do fear for Alex's sanity. But I must not follow that line of thought because it will lead me into compromise, and that is exactly where she wants to lead me. Simon has opened my eyes to the fact that what I always took to be a mental instability in Alex is a moral one: the demon is not madness, it is badness. And it is very clever.

She will try to destroy me. Spiritually. She will try to drag me down. They always do. And she can do it. If I let her confuse me, even for an instant, I shall lose my clarity, and that will be the end of me.

I have so much to understand, so far to go. The journey is endless, and I have barely started. I cannot let her stop me.