Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

”You know, you’re not a bit like what I expected.”

”What did you expect?”

”Oh something-well, it’s hard to say-“

”Miles’s description of me was unflattering?”

”No, no, no, it wasn’t that. I thought you’d be older, and not so-“

”Handsome?” They both laughed. The room was a variegated brightly coloured room, full of plump little rounded armchairs covered in chintz. There was a tall white art nouveau mantelpiece scattered with glistening china. The yellow and white striped walls were covered with a miscellany of small late-Victorian oil paintings and silhouettes and miniatures. It was a self-conscious eclectic room, a made-up room, a room which might have existed in Cambridge in nineteen hundred, full of cold light from the fens and an atmosphere of rather severe hedonism.

The girl, for so he immediately thought of her, was wearing a blue woolen dress without a belt, very short. She was plump inside the sheath of the dress, rounds of breasts, stomach, buttocks, well suggested and smoothed over. Her eyes were a rich unflecked brown, and her longish straight hair, now the sun was shining on it, gleamed a metallic silvery gold. She had a straight decisive nose and an intent faintly hungry enigmatic expression. Danby apprehended at once a certain sense of drama, a sense of her initiative. A nervy magnetic girl such as he did not often meet now. A rather severe hedonist.

”And am I like how you expected?”

”I’m afraid I didn’t really think much about you at all. But I shall think about you now.”

”You are polite.” They both laughed again. “Have a drink,” said Diana. “Miles has given up. Isn’t it awful?” She took bottles of gin and vermouth and sherry and small cut-glass tumblers out of a white cupboard.

Danby took the drink gratefully. The ritual of drinking, the time of day, the encapsulated moment of the first evening drink, always produced for him a rush of pure happiness along the veins. This occasion seemed, with its element of surprise, peculiarly perfect.

”I like a drink at this time of day, but I don’t like drinking alone.”

”Then I’m glad I called to provide you with a drinking companion!”

”I’m glad you called! Miles is so clammed up about his family.”

”Family, yes, I suppose I count as a family connection.”

”I think family ties are so important.”

”Depends on the family rather. What do you do, Diana?”

”What do you mean what do I do? I’m a housewife. I know what you do.”

”I’m a businessman I suppose. Or a printer. I never really think what I am.”

”I never really think what I am either. But I imagine that’s because I’m not anything.”

”You don’t go out to work?”

”Good heavens no. I’m unemployable.”

”You dust?”

”The char dusts. I garden, I cook, I rearrange the ornaments.”

”Creative.”

”Don’t be silly. Have another drink.”

”When’s Miles coming?”

”Not till late. He’s at some office gathering he couldn’t get out of. He hates it.”

”I don’t imagine Miles is very social.”

”He isn’t. He hates people.”

”You obviously rather like them.”

”Well, I’m a good deal matier than Miles is. Can I come and see Bruno too?”

”Of course. He’s longing to meet you.”

”Is he? I didn’t imagine he conceived of my existence.”

”Of course he does. He’s all agog.”

”You make me feel quite nervous. I’ll let Miles have first go. I’ve always so much wanted to meet you and Bruno. Is Bruno very ill?”

”Yes and no. He’s not in pain and he’s quite rational. He’ll like you.”

”I’ll like him.”

How stupid of me, thought Danby. It never occurred to me that there might be, like this, a girl. And what luck for Bruno. She would know how to deal with the old man. Girls had so much more sense. He looked about the room again. A girl who did nothing. Who sat in plump chintzy chairs and read. He saw a book on one of the chairs. Jane Austen. A woman who was perhaps a little bored. Who waited.

”I’m so very glad we’ve met at last,” he said.

Then, oh God, he thought, what awfully sexy music. What is it? It was something familiar. “What is that thing on the gramophone?”

She turned it up. It was a slow foxtrot, formal, dignified, intensely sweet, bringing with it again that precise and yet unplaceable sense of the past. Danby’s feet sketched a movement, sliding, catching, upon the close-woven carpeted floor.

Then the next moment he had sidled forward, slid his arm around her waist, and they were dancing in silence, advancing, retreating, circling, their slow precise feet patterning the floor and their mingled shadow climbing over the furniture after them.

The music stopped and they moved apart. Blue eyes stared at brown eyes and brown eyes dropped their gaze.

”You dance beautifully, Diana.”

”So do you.”

”I think the slow foxtrot is the best of all dances.”

”Yes. And the most difficult.”

”I haven’t danced in years.”

”Nor I. Miles hates dancing.”

”I won a dancing competition once.”

”So did I.”

”Diana, will you come and dance with me, some afternoon, at one of those dance halls, you know, one can dance there in the afternoons.”

”No, of course not.”

”Miles wouldn’t mind would he?”

”Danby, don’t be silly.”

”Diana, slow foxtrot?”

”No.”

”Slow foxtrot?”

”No.”

”Slow fox?”

”No.”

Barefooted Nigel squats beside a railing looking down. His feet are muddied, his hands red with rust. A man passes by him on the pavement in the darkness, turns and pauses, stares. Nigel smiles without moving, flashing his white teeth in the half dark, catching a ray of light from a distant lamppost. The man hesitates, retreats, flees. Nigel still smiling returns to gaze. He sees through a divided curtain a man going to bed in a basement flat. The man is stepping out of his trousers. He leaves his trousers in a coiled mound upon the floor and goes to urinate into the washbasin. The tail of his shirt is ragged. He pulls off his shirt and scratches under his arms for some time, each hand busy scratching inside the opposite armpit. He stops and with intentness smells his fingers. Still wearing his cozy dirty vest he puts on crumpled pajamas and crawls heavily into bed. He lies a while vacant, scratching, staring up at the ceiling, then switches out the light. Nigel rises.

These are the glories of His night city, a place of pilgrim age, a place of sin, a place of shriving. Nigel glides barefoot, taking long paces, touching each lamppost as he passes. He has seen men prostrated, writhing, cursing, praying. He has seen a man lay down a pillow to kneel upon and close his eyes and join his two hands palm to palm. All through the holy city in the human-boxes the people utter prayers of love and hate. Unpersoned Nigel strides among them with long silent feet and the prayers rise up about him hissing faintly, like steam. Up any religion a man may climb. Along the darkened alleyways the dusky white-clad worshippers are silently carrying the white fragrant garlands to lay upon the greasy lingam of great Shiva.

Nigel strides noiselessly, crossing the roadways at a step, his bare feet not touching ground, a looker-on at inward scenes. He has reached the sacred river. It rolls on at his feet black and full, a river of tears bearing away the corpses of men. There is weeping but he is not the weeper. The wide river flows onward, immense and black beneath the old cracked voices of the temple bells which flit like bats throughout the lurid black air. The river is thick, ribbed, curled, con vex, heaped up above its banks. Nigel makes offerings. Flowers. Where was the night garden where he gathered them? He throws the flowers down upon the humped river, then throws after them all the objects which he finds in his pockets, a knife, a handkerchief, a handful of money. The river takes and sighs and the flowers and the white handkerchief slide slowly away into the tunnel of the night. Nigel, a god, a slave, stands erect, a sufferer in his body for the sins of the sick city.