“You never escape from anything which totally captures your imagination—and the Empty House totally captured mine when I was a child. It became a symbol. That is, it became something to which I related experience—something which interpreted experience. It symbolised Suffering. When I was a student in Paris, I believed that the crucial moment in every life is the first glimpse of the Empty House—the house of crime and death. Later, it seemed to me that the whole world is an Empty House. And now, God knows, the whole world is an Empty House—a house of crime and death.”
At last I went over to him and said:
“You realise, of course, that this is the confession of a romantic.”
“What’s a romantic?”
“A romantic is one who faces the facts—but denies their ultimate validity. One who admits all the nightmare facts—but asserts that they are created by nightmare values. One who dreams in the Empty House—with his eyes open.”
Then I went on:
“Anyhow, romantics will probably soon be extinct. Power has been elevated above Life, so those who refuse to worship the new Moloch will be—liquidated. Incidentally, what an apt word for murder, in a commercial age! Every nation is striving to make unconditional surrender to the Machine-Moloch, so it seems pretty certain that those who value Life more than Power—those sensitive to beauty, wonder, mystery—will be unable to endure the pestilential atmosphere created by envy, fear, murder. Only toughs will survive. And they will celebrate their triumph by blowing themselves and the whole earth to smithereens.”
“That’s true enough, Max—by the surface evidence.”
“I’m talking in terms of surface evidence. The power-pattern is being inexorably established—despite the shrill protestations, and the falsetto enthusiasms, of sentimentalists. It seems rather unfortunate that men should possess almost unlimited power at the precise moment when they have ceased to believe in God—in themselves—or the devil—but there it is.”
I took a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece, then sat down.
“I wish I’d known you, Max, when you were a student in Paris.”
“A student, in love with an imaginary Fredrika! A student, who believed that the artist-tribe to which he belonged was destined to exorcise the Empty House! A student who, despite these idealistic aspirations, maintained a secret entente with the underworld of sensation! Why on earth do you wish that you’d known him?”
“That student wasn’t far wrong. Only the artist, in the deepest sense of the word, can exorcise the Empty House. And, what’s more, you still believe it.”
“I probably should, if I were still an artist.”
“Surely there’s plenty of evidence that you are?”
“There’s none. And hasn’t been, for years. I’ve done nothing since Enigma. I’ve seen nothing since then. There was something I thought I wanted to do, but it never came to anything.”
“What was it?”
“Moving crowds on the pavement—in the depth of the black-out. An endless column of people, fugitively and dimly revealed, from ever-changing angles, by momentary flashes of torches. Groping indeterminate people—like bewildered hosts of anonymous dead.”
After a pause, I went on:
“That haunted me for a time, but inner compulsion was evidently lacking, or I shouldn’t be talking about it. I should have done it. Anyhow, I’m not a non-stop artist. It’s only during ‘Fredrika moments’ that I’m one at all. Moments when all things are revealed in their unique individuality. Moments when you know nothing, and are everything. Moments of pure contemplation, when you realise that the street at which you are looking will never present this aspect again. Once, once only, in the whole of its history, will there be these people—those shadows—that cloud. You are confronted by a uniquely-occurring, swiftly-vanishing scene. You are confronted by a fugitive once only—in the never-ending flux.”
“You’ll be an artist to the day of your death.”
“Most artists die twice. And the second death is the less tragic. To paraphrase a well-known sentence, I’d say that it is with artists as it is with snakes: those who cannot cast their skins—die. I’d rather stop altogether than become repetitive. Unless there is ever-deepening inner development, which is reflected in an artist’s work, he has died the first death. And that remains true, even if he continues to produce work after work of great—stationary—merit. That only means that he’s lying-in-state—which doesn’t alter the fact that he’s dead.”
A few minutes later, I rose, then said:
“You know that I came to-day against my will?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“I’m going now. I shan’t come again, if I can help it. You’ve heard the first instalment of a confession. I hope to God there won’t be a sequel! But, before I go, is there anything you want to tell me?”
“Only that you were right about Mrs. Norton. You said she wouldn’t last long and she—won’t.”
“What’s happened?”
“She had a collapse about ten days ago. She’s been in bed since and looks like a spectre.”
“I can’t talk about her.”
When I reached the door, I stopped and said:
“Anything you want to ask me?”
“Only this: When you were here last, you said you were going to find out everything about Carol. Have you found out—everything?”
“Quite enough to go on with. Incidentally, the night I slept here, you said you knew I liked being read to. Only Carol could have told you that. Perhaps she told you—everything.”
He said nothing, and a moment later I left him.
Chapter Five
IN THE EARLY HOURS
Two o’clock in the morning.
I had gone to bed at eleven, intending to read, but switched off the light before midnight, although I knew that I should not sleep. . . .
There are psychological landslides no less than physical ones. In the same way as rocks and stones secretly form an unstable partnership which, collapsing, hurls them downward with a roar: so is there a clandestine grouping of thoughts and emotions which, more and more precariously poised, finally fall and overwhelm the mind—obliterating old beliefs, and creating strange transfiguring perspectives.
Since Carol’s death I have made many discoveries about her—isolated discoveries on different levels and, therefore, seemingly unrelated. Perhaps the first was the extent of her physical dominion, but—more important, and more surprising—was the realisation of my psychic dependence on her. Had I been told a few weeks ago that her presence had become essential, that Sundays spent at her flat satisfied a deep psychological need, it would nave seemed a travesty of our apparent relations. Even now, it is difficult to believe that pride obscured the truth of those relations so completely that nothing less than her death could have compelled its recognition.
Every detail of our meetings presents a new aspect in retrospect. For instance, when I telephoned her, it was always to ask if I could go to her flat immediately and, on no single occasion, did Carol say that she was engaged. As I did not know then the number of her friends and acquaintances, this did not surprise me, but now it seems remarkable. And it seems equally extraordinary that, whenever I wanted to spend a Sunday at her flat, she was always available.
Everything presents a new aspect. It is as if her spirit is compelling me to recognise the significance of all I ignored when she was alive.