“It is the one thing. . ”
“It is the one thing that you hate, I know. It is what you call being egocentric. But everyone is egocentric, it is a condition of being human. If you take it to stand for anything more than this then the word is meaningless.”
“It isn’t,” she said. “Don’t you trust your instinct? Your instinct is love, and being egocentric is when there is no love.”
“You do not answer me. You never answer me. Peter makes the same complaint, that there is no love. It is a failure for which you are as much responsible as he. In fact you are more responsible, because you claim the means of love. Your words are meaningless if there is this failure. Your religion is meaningless if there is this failure. I am no puritan, I do not know what is right, but I say this, that what is wrong is that which contradicts itself. And I say that this is a contradiction, that you condemn a person for being egocentric when everybody is egocentric, that you do not judge actions when it is only actions that are judgeable, and this most of all, this failure is a contradiction. You claim to have found the means of salvation and now, as a result of it, there is less love than there was before. There is now no love between you and Peter, there is no love between you and Marius, there is no love between you and. . ” I stopped, on the brink of some great evil; “Why were you happy at tea?” I asked her.
There still was no answer. She was talking almost before the question was put, saying, “It is Peter’s fault, Peter only hates, moralizing always turns to hate when there is no faith to guide it. Oh can’t you see, can’t you see this, that we talk and talk and talk and never do anything, that love is a performance and not a feeling, that all the time last year we were judging things by ourselves as if we were so important and we were not important, not at all, and that was why things went wrong, it was then they went wrong, I told you, didn’t I tell you? and now we are trying to live as if we were not important, quite simply, as if we just had a duty…”
“We?”
“Yes, we, why are you looking at me?”
“Why are you crying?”
“Because you are so bloody, you will think of nothing but yourself, you will not admit this, that love is a performance…”
“That is what I have always admitted.”
“You have? Then why do you hate me?”
“Can I ask you to marry me?” I said.
“Oh damn you,” she said, “damn you,” and she ran away across the grass.
I could see Peter approaching. He came through the trees like a weary lion. “Listen,” he said, “listen, there is nothing to be done.” Annabelle went fluttering like his wounded prey. “I tell you it is no use talking, I have done all the talking, they have all gone mad.” She slowed down, walked, went steadily away from us. “There is no truth any more, they are different people, there is no means of approaching them.” She turned, disappeared, and the morning died. In its grave I listened to Peter. “Their words mean different things, their faces mean different things, it is no use fighting them. You can’t fight them, it is like fighting Medusa, out of every head you cut off two new ones grow in its place. They have an answer to everything, an excuse for everything, they have different memories about what has happened. They make their own truth, they make their own history, they are lunatics in their certainty. If you charge them with their failures they say that they are human, if you question their claims they say that that they are gods. There is nothing to be done, I tell you, it is either they who are mad or we are. Come back and have lunch with us and you will see again what I mean. Either they are mad or we are. You have got to face this, come back and have lunch, I have got to know if I am mad. Doesn’t it interest you that you may be a lunatic? You can’t have lunch? No? Then where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was going to have lunch with Marius, but it already seemed that I might be a lunatic.
In the restaurant I found Marius sitting with an enormous negro, who as I approached arose as if to go. “Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me.” He was bowing politely in several directions. He was dressed quite simply in ordinary clothes, but as he turned I saw by his collar that he was a priest. This vision, after the funeral morning, appeared so ludicrous that I wanted to laugh. It was as if there had suddenly sprung up in the world a geometrical progression of clergymen — a multiplicity which, like some nightmare mathematical problem, might lead me to infinity before I knew where I was. I walked carefully, as if on tombstones. “Hullo,” Marius said. The enormous man was swaying round the back of his chair, a graceful elephant like in a Disney cartoon, an elephant that dances and floats on its toes. “I shall now leave you,” he said. “I shall leave at once.”
“Don’t go,” Marius said. “Why don’t you stay and have lunch with us?”
“I fear I am intruding.”
“Of course not, no, do sit down.” Marius introduced him to me as Mr. Palmerston.
Because I wanted to laugh, and was afraid that if I did he would think I was laughing at him, I did my best to like him. I remember it starting like this, that I was sorry he might misunderstand me.
He sat down and spread his hands on his knees. “You must forgive me,” he said. “I happened to meet our friend Marius on the sidewalk, and he prevailed upon me to come and sit with him. Naturally I was honoured.” He spoke meticulously, with a faintly foreign intonation.
“I am very glad,” I said.
“I knew our friend when he was a child.” He leaned towards me. “I was intended to be his teacher, and I discovered that it was he who was teaching me.” He raised one eyebrow so that his forehead furrowed into a thousand tiny wrinkles.
“What did he teach?” I said.
“Life,” Mr. Palmerston said. “Life!” He began to sweat, and his face was like the night sky with a moon reflected on his cheek-bone. “I was very ignorant,” he said.
Marius ordered lunch with a professional assurance.
“And now he is coming back to teach us again,” Mr. Palmerston said. “I am very glad. In my country he is a much needed man, a very much needed man indeed.”
“What do you do?” I said to Marius.
Mr. Palmerston waited for him to reply and then answered for him. “He does everything,” he said. “Everything. He is the goose that lays the golden egg.” He smiled dazzlingly and then leaned towards Marius. “I intend nothing personal,” he said. His concern was enormous, as if he were going to cry.
“Nothing,” Marius said.
“Oh he is a great benefactor. Great indeed. He gave me a kitchen for my church.” Mr. Palmerston began to mop his face with a crimson handkerchief. “And a great deal besides. For my school, and for my poor people who do not trust. There is so much to be done.” I could not understand why he was sweating when he must have been accustomed to the heat. It was as if he were being roasted. “It is quite frightening,” he said.
“It is for you it is frightening,” Marius said.
“No, I do no more than follow my nose. And if I sneeze, I am a priest, and I have my handkerchief.” He waved it comically in front of his face. “It is for you I am afraid, if you catch cold.” Tears came into his eyes so that he could dab at them with his sleeve.
“Don’t worry,” Marius said.
“Worry?” He said. “Of course I worry. See!” He held out above the tablecloth a hand that was trembling.
We watched his heavy, heavy hand with the backs of the fingers knobby like wood and then he turned it over so that we were looking at his palm. It was pink as if it had been scraped and bleeding. “Tell me,” he said, “do you go to Church?”
At first I did not realize that he was talking to me, and then I said “No.”
“Oh I am sorry,” he said. “I am so terribly sorry.” He turned his huge agonized face towards me so that it was like a dark pool in which my own was drowning.