After a while a number of people came to look at him from a distance. At last someone (it was Dominic Wiggins) approached him to say that Rozanov was not now at Hare Lane, but had gone to live in the Ennistone Rooms. George got up and set off slowly toward the Institute. As he walked, it began to rain. He did not go into the Baths, but entered the Rooms by the street door where there was a porter in a glass box. There was also a board listing the names of the occupants and the numbers of their rooms and also whether they were in or out. George saw with a tremor but without surprise that Rozanov’s room was number forty-four. Rozanov was said to be in. George went on into the furry-carpeted corridor. Here the sound of the waters was considerable and their smell sulphurous. George knocked on Rozanov’s door, but could hear no answering call. He opened the door.
Rozanov, fully clothed, was sitting at a table by the window writing. There were books on the table. Rozanov frowned when he saw George, and drew one of the books over the paper he had been writíng on.
John Robert’s room retained some remnants of past splendour, surviving in the form of a meaningless gloomy pretentiousness, suggestive of an abandoned night club. Three walls were covered with sheets of a brittle black material, cracked in places. The wall opposite the door was papered with a zigzag pattern of silver and light green. A tall thin chest of drawers of a black shininess which declared itself neither as wood nor as metal, and a tall thin matching wardrobe with a tall thin elliptical mirror stood about with the awkwardness of huge ornaments. The carpet continued the silver and light green pattern, varied with wavy black lines. A low light green sofa with fat flat arms embraced a lot of small black cushions. A chintz armchair and an office-furniture-style plastic-covered table and chair had entered as aliens to represent in their humble way utility and comfort. A little steam crept through the wooden louvred doors of the bathroom. The room was warm, and full of the water noise which so soon became inaudible.
George said, ‘Nice place you have here,’ and sat down on the chintz armchair, but rose again, finding it too low. He stood near the tall thin wardrobe and saw himself in the tall thin silver ellipse of the mirror. He thought, that’s the man I was following. (He looked dirty and unhappy.)
John Robert said, ‘I’m busy now.’
‘Writing your great book?’
‘No.’
‘I remember you used to talk about seeing thoughts like Melville’s whale far below. What’s in the sea now? Monsters?’
‘I am busy, please go away.’
‘Will you talk to me?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? I was your favourite pupil once.’
‘No.’
‘You lie, I was. Why should it worry you anyway if I say I was your favourite pupil? Are you so vain that you feel ashamed of me?’
‘Please — ’
‘Everything I said to you last time was wrong. I demeaned myself, I crawled, that was a mistake. You know what I want. I want to be justified, you can justify me, I want to be saved, you can save me. I am just stating facts. Other minds, other minds, how we used to worry over that one! I want to know what you think of me.’
I don’t think anything about you.’
‘You do, you must.’
‘You keep imagining I think about you, I don’t.’
‘You thought enough about me to destroy me. Or did you do it by accident, without even noticing?’
‘I didn’t destroy you, George,’ said John Robert with a sigh.
‘You mean I am destroying myself?’
‘I don’t think so. You are just disappointed.’
‘What about you? Aren’t you disappointed? Everything went wrong since Aristotle, you used to say. That’s a long time. And big you were going to sort it all out! Have you? Of course not. No one reads your books now. What are you worth? Have I wrecked my life for a charlatan?’
‘That’s enough.’
‘You flayed me, you took away my life- Illusions, you killed my self-love.’
‘I doubt that,’ said John Robert, ‘but if I did kill your self-love I am very much to be congratulated and so are you.’
‘You know what I mean. Without self-love there is nothing but evil. I wish I’d never met you.’
‘What you call evil is simply vanity. You have lost your self-esteem for some reason which does not interest me, and you are suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Go and scratch your sores somewhere else.’
‘You suggest I go home and pull myself together?’
‘No, I suggest you go to Ivor Sefton and he will tell you a story about yourself which will cheer you up.’
‘You don’t know what these hurts are like.’
‘You mean loss of face.’
‘Loss of face, loss of soul, loss of child. You know nothing of real pain. But I don’t want to talk to you about that, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve never loved anybody in your life, not a single being. You only married Linda Brent to spite my mother, because she wasn’t interested in you.’
‘George,’ said John Robert, ‘I know quite well that you are only saying these wild things to annoy me so that — ’
‘You were mad with spite because you weren’t invited to the grand houses!’
‘To annoy me so that I shall become angry and my anger will make a bond between us, but you will not succeed. You simply don’t interest me enough.’
‘We’re alike, you know. We’re both demons, you’re a big one and I’m a little one, the big ones make the little ones scream. You hate me because I’m a caricature of you. Isn’t that so?’
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘How can you treat another human being with such contempt? And I was your pupil, and does that not mean anything to you? Can’t you even react? You’ve lost all your fire!’
‘I wish — ’
‘Did I push the car? Doesn’t that interest you?’
‘What car?’
‘The car with my wife in. If I pushed the car does that mean I intended to kill her? What was I thinking at just that moment? Did I intend to drive the car into the canal? Now I’ve killed my wife, all is permitted. Someone in Dostoyevski thought that if he killed himself he could become God.’
‘Well, go and kill yourself somewhere else.’
‘But wouldn’t it be a better way to become God to kill someone else? That’s harder than killing yourself.’
‘You are as restless and peevish as ever. It’s a sign of stupidity.’
‘Peevish! Now you really are trying to provoke me.’
‘I assure you I am not - I just want you to go away.’
‘You told me long ago to draw in my horns. But I can’t. My horns are permanently out and my eyes are staring forward into the dark.’