Iris Murdoch - The Black Prince

I woke with a clear head, a slight headache, and the knowledge that I was completely done for. Reason which had been-where had it been, during the last days?-somehow absent or dazed or altered or in abeyance, was once more at its post. (At least it was audible.) But in a rather specialized role and certainly not in that of a consoling friend. Reason was not, needless to say, uttering any coarse observations, such as that Julian was after all a very ordinary young woman and not worth all this fuss. Nor was it even pointing out that I had put myself in a situation where the torments of jealousy were simply endemic. I had not yet got as far as jealousy. That too was still to come. What the cold light showed me was that my situation was simply unlivable. I wanted, with a desire greater than any desire which I had ever conceived could exist without instantly killing its owner by spontaneous combustion, something which I simply could not have.

There were no tears now. I lay in bed in an electric storm of physical desire. I tossed and panted and groaned as if I were wrestling with a palpable demon. The fact that I had actually touched her, kissed her, grew (I am sorry about these metaphors) into a sort of mountain which kept falling on top of me. I felt her flesh upon my lips. Phantoms were bred from this touch. I felt like a grotesque condemned excluded monster. How could it be that I had actually kissed her cheek without enveloping her, without becoming her? How could I at that moment have refrained from kneeling at her feet and howling?

I got up but was suffering such extreme local discomfort that I could hardly get dressed. I started making tea, but its smell sickened me. I drank a little whisky in a glass of water and began to feel very ill. I could not stand still but wandered distractedly and rapidly about the flat, rubbing against the furniture as a tiger in a cage endlessly brushes its bars. I had ceased groaning and was now hissing. I tried to compose a few thoughts about the future. Should I kill myself? Should I go at once to Patara and barricade myself in and blow my mind with alcohol? Run, run, run. But I could not compose thoughts. All that concerned me was finding some way of getting through these present minutes of pain.

Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins. It is at once one of the ugliest and one of the most pardonable. In fact, in relation to its badness it is probably the most pardonable. Zeus, who smiles a lovers' oaths, must also condone their pangs and the venom which these pangs engender. Some Frenchman said that jealousy was born with love, but did not always die with love. I am not sure whether this is true. I would think that where there is jealousy there is love, and its appearance when love has apparently ceased is always a proof that the cessation is apparent. (I believe this is not just a verbal point.) Jealousy is certainly a measure of love in some, though as my own case illustrates not in all, of its phases. It also (and this may have prompted the Frenchman's idea) seems like an alien growth-and growth is indeed the word. Jealousy is a cancer, it can kill that which it feeds on, though it is usually a horribly slow killer. (And thereby dies itself.) Also of course, to change the metaphor, jealousy is love, it is loving consciousness, loving vision, darkened by pain and in its most awful forms distorted by hate.

The idea that one recovers from being in love is, of course, by definition (by my definition anyway) excluded from the state of love. Besides, one does not always recover. And certainly no such banal would-be comfort could have existed for a second in the scorching atmosphere of my mind at that time. As I said earlier, I knew that I was completely done for. There was no ray of light, no comfort at all. Though I will now also mention something which dawned upon me later. There was of course no question now of writing, of «sublimating» it all (ridiculous expression). But the sense remained that this was my destiny, that this was… the work of… the same power. And to be pinned down by that power, even liver, was to be in some terrible sense in one's own place.

To speak of matters which are less obscure, I soon of course decided that I could not «run.» I could not go away to the country. I had to see Julian again, I had to wait through those awful days until the appointment at Covent Garden. Of course I wanted to ring her up at once and ask her to see me. But I somehow kept blindly thrusting this temptation away. I would not let my life degenerate into madness. Better to be alone with him and to suffer than to pull it all down into some sort of yelling chaos. Silence, though now with a different and utterly unconsoling sense, was my only task.

Somewhere in the middle of that morning, which I will not attempt to describe further (except to say that Hartbourne rang up: I replaced the receiver at once) Francis Marloe came.

I went back into the sitting-room and he followed me, already staring at me with surprise. I sat down and started rubbing my eyes and my brow, breathing heavily.

«What's the matter, Brad?»

«Nothing.»

«I say, there's some whisky. I didn't know you had any. You must have hidden it jolly well. May I have some?»

«Yes.»

«Would you like some?»

«Yes.»

Francis was putting a glass into my hand. «Are you ill?»

«Yes.»

«What's the matter?»

I drank some whisky and choked a bit. I felt extremely sick and also unable to distinguish physical from mental pain.

«Brad, we waited all evening for you.»

«Why? Where?»

«You said you'd come to see Priscilla.»

«Oh. Priscilla. Yes.» I had totally and absolutely forgotten Pris– cilla's existence.

«We rang up here.»

«I was out to dinner.»

«Had you just forgotten?»

«Yes.»

«Arnold was there till after eleven. He wanted to see you about something. He was in a bit of a state.»

«How fs Priscilla?»

«Much the same. Chris wants to know if you'd mind if she had de^1^"treatment-«

«You mean you don't mind? You know it destroys cells in the brain?»

«Then she'd better not have it.»

«On the other hand-'

«I ought to see Priscilla,» I said, I think, aloud. But I knew that I just couldn't. I had not got a grain of spirit to offer to any other person. I could not expose myself in my present condition to that poor rapacious craving consciousness.

«Priscilla said she'd do anything you wanted.»

Electric shocks. They batter the brain cage. Like hitting the wireless, they say, to make it go. I must pull myself together. Priscilla.

«We must go-into it-« I said.

«Brad, what's the matter?»

«Nothing. Destruction of cells in the brain.»

«Are you ill?»

«Yes.»

«What is it?»

«I'm in love.»

«Oh,» said Francis. «Who with?»

«Julian Baffin.»

I had not intended to tell him. It was something to do with Pris– cilla that I did. The pity of it. And then a sense of being battered beyond caring.

Francis took it coolly. I suppose that was the way to take it. «Oh. Is it very bad, I mean your sickness?»

«Yes.»

«Have you told her?»

«Don't be a fool,» I said. «I'm fifty-eight. She's twenty.»

«I don't see that that decides anything much,» said Francis. «Love is no respecter of ages, everyone knows that. Can I have some more whisky?»

«You don't understand,» I said. «I can't-before that-young girl-make a display of feelings such as I-feel. It would appal her. And as I can envisage-no possible relationship with her of that kind-«

«I don't see why not,» said Francis, «though whether it would be a good idea is another matter.»

«Don't talk such utter-It's a question of morals and of-everything. She cannot possibly feel-for me-almost an old man-it would just disgust her-she simply wouldn't want to see me again.»