Iris Murdoch - The Black Prince

«Bradley, I think it's swaying.»

«It can't be. I believe it does sway a little in the wind. But there's no wind tonight.»

«There might be a wind up here.»

«Well, there might be. Yes, I think it is swaying.» How could I tell? Everything was swaying.

Of course I had merely pretended to eat. I had drunk very little wine. Alcohol still seemed a complete irrelevancy. I was drunk with love. Julian had both eaten and drunk a good deal, indiscriminately praising everything that passed her lips. We had talked about the view, about her college, about her school with the measles, about how soon one could tell whether one was a poet, about whether the novel, about why the theatre. I had never talked so easily to anyone. Oh blessed weightlessness, oh blessed space.

«Bradley, I wish I'd understood that stuff you spouted about Hamlet.»

«Forget it. No high theory about Shakespeare is any good, not because he's so divine but because he's so human. Even great art is jumble in the end.»

«So the critics are just stupid?»

«It needs no theory to tell us this! One should simply try to like as much as one can.»

«Like you now trying to like what my father writes?»

«That's more special. I feel I've been unjust. He has huge vitality and he tells a good story. Stories are art too, you know.»

«His stuff is awfully ingenious, but it's as dead as a door nail.»

«So young and so untender.»

«So young, my lord, but true.»

I was nearly on the floor at that moment. I also thought, in so far as thinking occurred, that she was probably right. Only I was not going to utter any harsh thing that evening. I was mainly now, since I had realized that I could not keep her with me for much longer, wondering about whether and if so how I could kiss her on parting. Kissing had never been customary between us, even when she was a child. Briefly, I had never kissed her. Never. And now tonight perhaps I would.

«Bradley, you aren't listening.»

She constantly used my name. I could not use hers. She had no name.

«Ought I to read Wittgenstein?»

What I wanted to do was to kiss her in the lift going down should we chance to have that momentary love nest to ourselves. But of course that was out of the question. There must be no, absolutely no, show of marked interest. She had, as young people with their charming egoism and their impromptu modes so felicitously do, taken it quite calmly for granted that I should suddenly have felt like dining on the Post Office Tower and should, since she had happened to ring up, have happened to ask her to come too.

«No. I shouldn't bother.»

«You think I wouldn't understand him?»

«Yes.»

«Yes, I wouldn't?»

«Yes. He never thought of you.»

«What?»

«I'm quoting again. Never mind.»

«We are full of quotations tonight, aren't we. When I'm with you I feel as if the whole of English literature were inside me like a warm stew and coming out of my ears. I say, what an inelegant metaphor! Oh Bradley, what fun that we're here. Bradley, I do feel so happy!»

«Good.» I asked for the bill. I did not want to ruin what was perfect by any hint of anxious hanging-on. An overstayed welcome would have been torture afterwards. I did not want to see her looking at her watch.

She looked at her watch. «Oh dear, I must go soon.»

«I'll see you to the tube.»

We had the lift to ourselves going down. I did not kiss her. I did not suggest that she should come back to my flat. Ao we walked along Goodge Street I did not touch her, even «accidentally.» I was beginning to wonder how in the world it would be possible to part from her.

«Well, then-Well, then-«

«Bradley, you've been sweet, thank you, I've so much enjoyed it.»

«Oh, I quite forgot to bring your Hamlet.» I had of course done no such thing.

«Never mind, I'll get it another time. Good night, Bradley, and thanks.»

«Yes, I-let me see-«I must run.»

«Won't you-Shall we fix a time for you to come-You said you had some-I'm so often out-Or shall I-Will you-«I'll ring you. Good night, and thank you so much.»

It was now or never. With a sense of moving very slowly, of executing some sort of precise figure in a minuet, I stepped a little in front of Julian, who was turning away, took her left wrist lightly in my right hand, thereby halting her, and then leaned down and pressed my judiciously parted lips against her cheek. The effect could not be casual. I straightened up and we stood for a moment looking at each other.

Julian said, «Bradley, if I asked you, would you cometoCovent Garden with me?»

«Yes, of course.» I would go to hell with her, and even to Covent Garden.

«It's Rosenkavalier. Next Wednesday. Meet in the foyer about half past six. I've got quite good tickets. Septimus Leech got us two, only now he can't come.»

«Who is Septimus Leech?»

«Oh he's my new boy friend. Good night, Bradley.»

She was gone. I stood there dazed in the lamplight among the hurrying ghosts. And I felt as a man might feel who, with a whole skin on him and a square meal inside him, sits in a cell having just been captured by the secret police.

A common though not invariable early phase of this madness, the one in fact through which I had just been passing, is a false loss of self, which can be so extreme that all fear of pain, all sense of time (time is anxiety, is fear) is utterly blotted out. The sensation itself of loving, the contemplation of the existence of the beloved, is an end in itself. A mystic's heaven on earth must be just such an endless contemplation of God. Only God has (or would have if He existed) characteristics at least not totally inimical to the continuance of the pleasures of adoration. As the so-called «ground of being» He may be considered to have come a good deal farther than half-way. Also He is changeless. To remain thus poised in the worship of a human being is, from both sides of the relationship, a much more precarious matter, even when the beloved is not nearly forty years younger and, to say the least of it, detached.

On the second day I began to need her, though even «anxiety» would be too gross a word for that delicate silken magnetic tug, as it manifested itself at any rate initially. Self was reviving. On the first day Julian had been everywhere. On the second day she was, yes, somewhere, located vaguely, not yet dreadfully required, but needed. She was, on the second day, absent. This inspired the small craving for strategy, a little questing desire to make plans. The future, formerly blotted out by an excess of light, reappeared. There were once more vistas, hypotheses, possibilities. But joy and gratitude still lightened the world and made possible a gentle concern with other people, other things. I wonder how long a man could remain in that first phase of love? Much longer than I did, no doubt, but surely not indefinitely. The second phase, I am sure, given favouring conditions, could continue much longer. (But again, not indefinitely. Love is history, is dialectic, it must move.) As it is, I lived in hours what another man might have lived in years.

The transformation of my beatitude could, as that second day wore on, be measured by a literally physical sense of strain, as if magnetic rays or even ropes or chains were delicately plucking, then tugging, then dragging. Physical desire had of course been with me from the first, but earlier it had been, though perceptually localized, metaphysically diffused into a general glory. Sex is our great connection with the world, and at its most felicitous and spiritual it is no servitude since it informs everything and enables us to inhabit and enjoy all that we touch and look upon. At other times it settles in the body like a toad. It becomes a drag, a weight: not necessarily for this reason unwelcome. We may love our chains and our stripes too. By the time Julian telephoned I was in deep anxiety and yearning but not in hell. I could not then willingly have put off seeing her, the craving was too acute. But I was able, when I was with her, to be perfectly happy. I did not expect the inferno.