After lunch you went to the university to make enquiries about Bruno. I went back to Melvyn's rooms and lay on the bed. I felt lost and sad. I thought — Human beings are required to be something too difficult if they are to create, to break things up, to create. After a time I went to Melvyn's desk and opened it and on the top of a pile of letters — placed there, it seemed, so that anyone who opened the desk would immediately see it — was a letter from Caroline to Melvyn which had been written, I could tell, a year and a half ago from Barcelona. It began -
You wouldn't believe it, but M. has gone off to the front! Oh what a relief! He was becoming such a bore. You'd like my new friend, though. Do you remember what you once said about some boy? — Wherever you kiss him, it's like kissing his beard.
I put the letter back and closed the desk. I thought — Well, I was sad and depressed anyway -
— What do you do, fart at the Devil?
— But I have known that long ago I should have made some contact with Caroline.
I tried to remember the telephone number of Caroline's aunt: I found it in the telephone book. I got through, and asked if Caroline
was there. Caroline's aunt said 'She'll be back this evening.' I tried to explain to myself what I was doing. I thought — Explanations are ridiculous.
Then — It is knowing that things are ridiculous, that will get us round and round the world on our journeys from and to the Garden of Eden?
I skimmed through some of the volumes of Melvyn's pornographic library. I thought — All this pain, this violence, it is what kills people; without it they would not survive?
When you came back in the evening you were with Bruno: I was sitting at the window looking out. You both seemed so young; you came skipping down the pavement — you with your long legs and hips like a pestle and mortar; like one of those animals down from the skies. I thought — It is when I have been away from you that I can see you once more like this; pounding at my heart from anywhere in the universe.
You said 'You remember Bruno?'
I said 'I remember Bruno!'
Bruno said 'You were the character in that play by Brecht who wandered on to the stage and stole our darling daughter Elena!'
I said 'It took me some time.'
Bruno said 'Ah, the timing is not our business.'
I thought — You and Bruno and Trixie, when you were young, when you visited Kleist's grave, you knew what was your business?
I said 'You're teaching philosophy?'
Bruno said 'No one has heard of Heidegger in this happy country! And now I learn from Wittgenstein that there is nothing anyway to be said.'
I said 'But there are still beautiful ways of saying this.'
Bruno said 'Ah that is why Heidegger has become silent!'
You were looking so pleased, with your hands clasped in front of you, like a mother proud of her children.
I said 'You two go out by yourselves to dinner tonight.'
You said 'You come too!'
I said 'No, you have a lot to talk about.'
Bruno said, 'Sir, are you casting aspersions on my dishonour?'
When you and Bruno had gone — talking, talking; skipping on the pavement as if on hot coals in a game that fakirs or children play — I rang up Caroline's aunt's house and this time Caroline answered the telephone and I said 'This is Lazarus come from the dead, come back to tell you all; I shall tell you all.' Caroline said 'Good God,
I'm not talking to you!' I said 'Meet you behind the gasworks, twenty minutes.' This was a phrase I had used when years ago we were arranging to meet in the pub. I rang off. I thought — Well, this may not work. Then — But after all it is quite fun. And what was that other phrase — Shall we sin, that grace may abound?
— And the answer was God forbid!
In the pub there were one or two of the people who had been there that morning. When Caroline came in she looked much more grown-up and assured. I thought — Well God, if you want to, forbid! She said 'I'm really not going to talk to you!' I said 'You mean, we can skip the preliminaries?' She said 'I thought you were dead.' I said 'I very nearly was.' She said 'Then we were told that you'd gone over to the Fascists.' I said 'I think your friend with the beard wanted to have me shot.' She said 'Well, you've perked up, haven't you!'
I wanted to send some message to you — Don't worry, this is all right, my angel, my loved one.
I said to Caroline 'I should have got in touch with you before, but I did hear from Melvyn that you were all right.'
Caroline said 'Melvyn says that you're now with some Fascist tart holed up in the north.'
I said 'She's not a Fascist tart, she's an agent in occupied territory.'
She said 'She is?'
I said 'She saved me when I was going to be shot; I mean, not by your friend, but by the other side.'
Caroline said 'It doesn't seem you were very popular.' Then 'But I never believe anything you say, you see.'
I said 'But you were all right?'
Caroline told me how she had made a great success of her reporting from Barcelona in the early days of the Civil War; her reports had been taken up by a national newspaper in England. She had come home, had gone out to Spain again in 1937, had been in Barcelona for the fighting between Stalinists and Trotskyites. She had, in fact, got a scoop because she had been with her boyfriend, the man with the beard, when he had been arrested by Stalinists. While Caroline talked she leaned towards me and I found that I was leaning slightly away from her: it was as if she were wearing scent to cover up some quite different smell.
I said 'Then you're on your way to becoming a top-class journalist.'
She said 'I am a top-class journalist!'
I said 'That's good.'
She said 'When you can't think of anything else to say, you always say "That's good"!'
I thought — Well, that's quite witty.
She told me a little about her life in Barcelona with Buenaventura, the man with the beard. I watched her mouth as she talked. I thought — People feed on the violence of war as they feed on Melvyn's pornography; then they spew it out again, chewed, like sick, to feed others.
Caroline was saying 'He did the most fantastic things with the co-operatives, he got them working round the clock.'
I said 'Did he hang little tassles on them?'
She said 'On what?'
I said 'The co-operatives.'
She said 'You are disgusting!' Then 'I'm not going to stay with you if you're still like that!'
I thought — Then good, it will be — God forbid.
She said 'And anyway what about you and Spooks?'
I said 'Why do you call her Spooks?'
She said 'Melvyn calls her Spooks.'
I said 'Do you still see Melvyn?'
She said 'Now don't start that again!' Then — 'Do you and she roll about in the snow in the frozen north?'
Caroline and I got rather drunk. I told her a fanciful version of the story of the battle I had been involved in in Spain — And there was this castle! And there was I like Jack on the beanstalk! I felt, as I listened to myself- But I am making myself sick. I found that I did not tell her of my shooting of the man with the machine-gun. I thought — This is not because I am ashamed: it is too heartfelt to be brought up as sick.
She said 'All right, let's go back to Auntie's.'
I thought — You mean, you want to make love at Auntie's?
Then — Well God, come on then -
Caroline put her head on my shoulder. She said 'As a matter of fact, I think he did want you shot!'
I said 'Who?' I thought — But you can't say that!
She said 'Buenaventura!' She giggled.
I felt I had to get out of the pub. On our way out we passed a group of people by the door. One of them was Mullen. I had not seen Mullen since I had been with him in the picture gallery in Moscow. There he had stood with his back to the painting of the