CHAPTER TEN

 

Barcelona had fallen.

      But even if it had not fallen, even if it had never been besieged, what then?

      Like every other community, Barcelona was part machine, part sub-human organism, part nightmare-huge projection and embodiment of men's passions and insanities - their avarice, their pride, their lust for power, their obsession with meaningless words, their worship of lunatic ideals.

      Captured or uncaptured, every city and nation has its being on the plane of the absence of God.  Has its being on the plane of the absence of God, and is therefore foredoomed to perpetual self-stultification, to endlessly reiterated attempts at self-destruction.

      Barcelona had fallen.  But even the prosperity of human societies is a continual process of gradual or catastrophic falling.  Those who build up the structures of civilization are the same as those who undermine the structures of civilization.  Men are their own termites, and must remain their own termites for just so long as they persist in being only men.

      The towers rise, the palaces, the temples, the dwellings, the workshops; but the heart of every beam is gnawed to dust even as it is laid, the joists are riddled, the floors eaten away under the feet.

      What poetry, what statues - but on the brink of the Peloponnesian War!  And now the Vatican is painted - just in time for the sack of Rome.  And the Eroica is composed - but for a hero who turns out to be just another bandit.  And the nature of the atom is elucidated - by the same physicists as volunteer in war-time to improve the arts of murder.

      On the plane of the absence of God, men can do nothing else except destroy what they have built - destroy even while they build - build with the elements of destruction.

      Madness consists in not recognizing the facts; in making wishes the father of thoughts; in conceiving things to be other than they really are; in trying to realize desired ends by means which countless previous experiments have shown to be inappropriate.

      Madness consists, for example, in thinking of oneself as a soul, a coherent and enduring human entity.  But, between the animal below and the spirit above there is nothing on the human level except a swarm of constellated impulses and sentiments and notions; a swarm brought together by the accidents of heredity and language; a swarm of incongruous and often contradictory thoughts and desires.  Memory and the slowly changing body constitute a kind of spatio-temporal cage, within which the swarm is enclosed.  To talk of it as though it were a coherent and enduring 'soul' is madness.  On the strictly human level there is no such thing as a soul.

      Thought-constellations, feeling-arrangements, desire-patterns.  Each of these has been built up and is strictly conditioned by the nature of its fortuitous origin.  Our 'souls' are so little 'us' that we cannot even form the remotest conception how 'we' should react to the universe, if we were ignorant of language in general, or even of our own particular language.  The nature of our 'souls' and of the world they inhabit would be entirely different from what it is, if we had never learnt to talk, or if we had learnt to talk Eskimo instead of English.  Madness consists, among other things, is imagining that our 'soul' exists apart from the language our nurses happen to have taught us.

      Every psychological pattern is determined; and, within the cage of flesh and memory, the total swarm of such patterns is no more free than any of its members.  To talk of freedom in connection with acts which in reality are determined is madness.  On the strictly human level no acts are free.  By their insane refusal to recognize facts as they are, men and women condemn themselves to have their desires stultified and their lives distorted or extinguished.  No less than the cities and nations of which they are members, men and women are for ever falling, for ever destroying what they have built and are building.  But whereas cities and nations obey the laws that come into play whenever large numbers are involved, individuals do not.  Or rather need not; for though in actual fact most individuals allow themselves to be subjected to these laws, they are under no necessity to do so.  For they are under no necessity to remain exclusively on the human level of existence.  It is in their power to pass from the level of the absence of God to that of God's presence.  Each member of the psychological swarm is determined; and so is the conduct of the total swarm.  But beyond the swarm, and yet containing and interpenetrating it, lies eternity, ready and waiting to experience itself.  But if eternity is to experience itself within the temporal and spatial cage of any individual human being, the swarm we call the 'soul' must voluntarily renounce the frenzy of its activity, must make room, as it were, for the other timeless consciousness, must be silent to render possible the emergence of profounder silence.  God is completely present only in the complete absence of what we call our humanity.  No iron necessity condemns the individual to the futile torment of being merely human.  Even the swarm we call the soul has it in its power temporarily to inhibit its insane activity, to absent itself, if only for a moment, in order that, if only for a moment, God may be present.   But let eternity experience itself, let God be sufficiently often present in the absence of human desires and feelings and preoccupations: the result will be a transformation of the life which must be lived, in the intervals, on the human level.  Even the swarm of our passions and opinions is susceptible to the beauty of eternity; and, being susceptible, becomes dissatisfied with its own ugliness; and, being dissatisfied, undertakes to change itself.  Chaos gives place to order - not the arbitrary, purely human order that comes from the subordination of the swarm to some lunatic 'ideal', but an order that reflects the real order of the world.  Bondage gives place to liberty - for choices are no longer dictated by the chance occurrences of earlier history, but are made teleologically and in the light of a direct insight into the nature of things.  Violence and mere inertia give place to peace - for violence is the manic, and inertia the depressive, phase of that cyclic insanity, which consists in regarding the ego or its social projections as real entities.  Peace is the serene activity which springs from the knowledge that our 'souls' are illusory and their creations insane, that all beings are potentially united in eternity.  Compassion is an aspect of peace and a result of the same act of knowledge.

      Walking at sunset up the castle hill, Pete kept thinking with a kind of tranquil exultation of all the things Mr Propter had said to him.  Barcelona had fallen.  Spain, England, France, Germany, America - all were falling; falling even at such times as they seemed to be rising; destroying what they built in the very act of building.  But any individual has it in his power to refrain from falling, to stop destroying himself.  The solidarity with evil is optional, not compulsory.

      On their way out of the carpenter's shop Pete had brought himself to ask Mr Propter if he would tell him what he ought to do.

      Mr Propter had looked at him intently.  'If you want it,' he had said, 'I mean, if you really want it ...'

      Pete had nodded without speaking.

      The sun had set; and now the twilight was like the embodiment of peace - the peace of God, Pete said to himself, as he looked across the plain to the distant mountains, the peace that passes all understanding.  To part with such loveliness was unbearable.  Entering the castle, he went straight to the elevator, recalled the cage from somewhere up aloft, shut himself up with the Vermeer and pressed the highest of the buttons.  Up there, at the top of the keep, he would be at the very heart of this celestial peace.

      The elevator came to a halt.  He opened the gates and stepped out.  The swimming-pool reflected a luminous tranquillity.  He turned his eyes from the water to the sky, and from the sky to the mountains; then walked round the pool in order to look down over the battlements on the further side.

      'Go away!' a muffled voice suddenly said.

      Pete started violently, turned and saw Virginia lying in the shadow almost at his feet.

      'Go away,' the voice repeated.  'I hate you.'

      'I'm sorry,' he stammered.  'I didn't know ...'

      'Oh, it's you.'  She opened her eyes, and in the dim light he was able to see that she had been crying.  'I thought it was Sig.  He went to get a comb for my hair.'  She was silent for a little; then suddenly she burst out, 'I'm so unhappy, Pete.'

      'Unhappy?'  The word and her tone had utterly shattered the peace of God.  In an anguish of love and anxiety he sat down beside her on the couch.  (Under her bathrobe, he couldn't help noticing, she didn't seem to be wearing anything at all.)  'Unhappy?'

      Virginia covered her face with her hands and began to sob.  'Not even Our Lady,' she gasped in an incoherency of grief.  'I can't even tell her.  I feel so mean ...'

      'Darling!' he said in a voice of entreaty, as though imploring her to be happy.  He began to stroke her hair.  'My darling!'

      Suddenly there was a violent commotion on the further side of the pool; a crash as the elevator gates were flung back; a rush of feet; an inarticulate yell of rage.  Pete turned his head and was in time to see Mr Stoyte rushing towards them, holding something in his hand, something that might almost have been an automatic pistol.

      He had half risen to his feet, when Mr Stoyte fired.

      Arriving two or three minutes later with the comb for Virginia's hair, Dr Obispo found the old man on his knees, trying, with a pocket-handkerchief, to stanch the blood that was still pouring out of the two wounds, one clean and small, the other cavernous, which the bullet had made as it passed through Pete's head.

      Crouching in the shadow of the battlements, the Baby was praying.  'Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God-pray-for-us-sinners-now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen,' she repeated, again and again, as fast as her sobs would permit her.  Every now and then she would be seized and shaken by an access of nausea, and the praying would be interrupted for a moment.  Then it began again where she had left off '...us-sinners-now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen-Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God ...'

      Dr Obispo opened his mouth to make an exclamation, then closed it again, whispered 'Christ!' and walked quickly and silently round the pool.  Before making his presence known, he took the precaution of picking up the pistol and slipping it into his pocket.  One never knew.  Then he called Mr Stoyte's name.  The old man started, and a hideous expression of terror appeared on his face.  Fear gave place to relief as he turned round and saw who it was that had spoken to him.

      'Thank God it's you,' he said; then suddenly remembered that this was the man he had meant to kill.  But all that had been a million years ago, a million miles away.  The near, immediate, urgent fact was not the Baby, not love or anger; it was fear and this thing that lay here on the ground.

      'You got to save him,' he said in a hoarse whisper.  'We can say it was an accident.  I'll pay him anything he likes.  Anything in reason,' an old reflex impelled him to add.  'But you got to save him.'  Laboriously he heaved himself to his feet and motioned Dr Obispo to his vacated place.

      The only movement Dr Obispo made was one of withdrawal.  The old man was covered with blood, and he had no wish to spoil a ninety-five dollar suit.  'Save him?' he repeated.  'You're mad.  Look at all the brain lying there on the floor.'

      From the shadows behind him, Virginia interrupted the sobbing mutter of her prayers to scream.  'On the floor,' she kept wailing.  'On the floor.'

      Dr Obispo turned on her savagely.  'Shut up, do you hear?'

      The screams abruptly ceased; but a few seconds later there was a sound of violent retching; then 'Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God-pray-for-us-sinners-now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen-Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God-pray-for-us-sinners ...'

      'If we're going to try and save anybody,' Dr Obispo went on, 'it had better be you.  And believe me,' he added emphatically, throwing all his weight on his left leg and using the toe of his right shoe to point at the body, 'you need some saving.  It's either the gas chamber of St Quentin for life.'

      'But it was an accident,' Mr Stoyte began to protest with a breathless eagerness.  'I mean, it was all a mistake.  I never wanted to shoot him.  I meant to ...'  He broke off and stood in silence, his mouth working, as though he were trying to swallow some unspoken words.

      'You meant to kill me,' said Dr Obispo, completing the sentence for him and smiling, as he did so, with the expression of wolfish good-humour which was characteristic of him in any situation where the joke was at all embarrassing or painful.  Secure in the knowledge that the old buzzard was much too scared to be angry, and that anyhow the gun was in his own pocket, he prolonged the joke by saying, 'Well,' sententiously, 'that's what comes of snooping.'

      '... now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen,' Virginia gabbled in the ensuing silence.  'Holy-Mary-Mother ...'

      'I never meant it,' Mr Stoyte reiterated.  'I just got mad.  Guess I didn't really figure out what I was doing....'

      'Tell that to the jury,' said Dr Obispo sarcastically.

      'But I swear it: I didn't really know,' Mr Stoyte protested.  His harsh voice broke grotesquely into a squeak.  His face was white with fear.

      The doctor shrugged his shoulders.  'Maybe,' he said.  'But not knowing doesn't make any difference to that.'  He stood on one leg again to point an elegantly shod foot in the direction of the body.

      'But what shall I do?' Mr Stoyte almost screamed in the anguish of his terror.

      'Don't ask me.'

      Mr Stoyte initiated the gesture of laying his head imploringly on the other's sleeve; but Dr Obispo quickly drew back.  'No, don't touch me,' he said.  'Just look at your hands.'

      Mr Stoyte looked.  The thick, carrot-like fingers were red; under the horny nails the blood was already caked and dry, like clay.  'God!' he whispered.  'Oh my God!'

      '... and-at-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen-Holy-Mary ...'

      At the word 'death' the old man started as though he had been struck with a whip.  'Obispo,' he began again, breathless with apprehension, 'Obispo!  Listen here - you got to help me out of this.  You got to help me,' he entreated.

      'After you did your best to do that to me?'  The white-and-tan shoe shot out again.

      'You wouldn't let them get me?' Mr Stoyte wheedled, abject in his terror.

      'Why wouldn't I?'

      'But you can't,' he almost shouted.  'You can't.'

      Dr Obispo bent down to make quite sure, in the fading light, that there was no blood on the couch; then, pulling up his fawn-coloured trousers, sat down.  'One gets tired of standing,' he said in a pleasant conversational tone.

      Mr Stoyte went on pleading.  'I'll make it worth your while,' he said.  'You can have anything you care to ask for.  Anything,' he repeated without any qualifying reference, this time, to reason.

      'Ah,' said Dr Obispo, 'now you're talking turkey.'

      '...Mother-of-God,' muttered the Baby, 'pray-for-us-sinners-now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen-Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God-pray-for-us-sinners-now ...'

      'You're talking turkey,' Dr Obispo repeated.