Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

He knew, and knew it in fear and trembling, that good art comes out of courage, humility, virtue: and in the more discouraged moments of his long vigil he had felt his continued failure to be simply the relentlessly necessary result of his general mediocrity, his quiet well-bred worldliness and love of ease. There was a barrier to be surmounted which he could not surmount, and the barrier was a moral barrier. Was it still possible somehow to cleave his heart in twain and throw away the worser part of it? Miles knew that such a thing could never be simple, could scarcely be conceivable. A human being is a morass, a swamp, a jungle. It could only come from somewhere far beyond, as a dream, as a haunting vision, that image of the true love, the love that accepts death, the love that lives with death.

Lisa, he thought, Lisa, I cannot and I will not give you up. But how, oh how, was it all to be lived, and could that vision ever come to his aid, could it reach out into the final twisted extremity of his need? Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison . Help me, help me, Miles prayed, pressing his hands desperately against his eyes. He did not feel at that moment that his cry was unheard. But he knew, with a deeper spasm of despair, that the diety to which he prayed was his own poetic angel, and that that angel was without power to help him now.

Danby was walking down Kempsford Gardens. It was about ten o’clock on Sunday evening. The rain was pouring down, appearing suddenly in the lamplight, dense, sizzling, glittering like gramophone needles.

Danby walked in a state of abandon, his mackintosh unbuttoned, water soaking his hair and pouring down his neck. He had spent the day in a mounting frenzy, unable to eat, wanting to be sick and unable to be sick. He had been driven wild by missing Lisa’s last visit and he could scarcely hear the old man speaking so placidly about her without groaning. He had posted her two more letters. He had not seen Adelaide, the thought of whom’ now inspired both guilt and fear. He had felt relief at tapping on her door in vain. He had written her a note saying that he hoped she felt better, and later found it torn into small pieces on the stairs. In fact on both Saturday and Sunday, since Lisa had told Bruno she would not come, he had been absent almost all day, leaving early and returning late, wandering aimlessly about and spending every possible moment in the pubs. He was by now thoroughly drunk.

Sitting in the Six Bells in the King’s Road he had attempted to write a letter to Diana. He had written,

Dear Diana,

You will think me crazy but I am in love with your sister. I can’t explain this. It’s something absolute. Please forgive me for having played about. It wasn’t serious and it should not have happened. This other thing is serious.

Forgive me and forget me.

Danby

He stared at the letter for some time, making rings upon it with his glass. Then he tore it up. He could not write thus to Diana. It sounded too shabby. He could not ask her to forget him, that was simply silly. Then something even more important occurred to him. Supposing Miles saw the letter? Miles already thought ill enough of him without this further intimation of Danby’s tendency to play about, and what is more to do so with Miles’s own wife. With any luck Miles might never know about that episode. Miles doubtless regarded Lisa as his sister, and would be just as opposed to Danby’s suit in this context as he had been in the earlier one, and for the same reasons. And he’s quite right too, thought Danby, he’s quite right; but I do love her and somehow that makes all the difference.

Yet what was the difference? His love could hardly make Danby more eligible, more presentable, more sober. How could he ever make it plain that it had cured him of frivolity? If only Lisa had not seen him kissing Diana! But in truth the letter to Diana sounded shabby because the facts were shabby. In an agony of humility Danby surveyed himself as he walked through the windy rainy streets waiting for the evening pubs to open. His impertinence in loving this girl was fantastic. He had no attributes which could possibly interest her. He had remained absurdly vaguely confident of his ability to charm long after even his more vulgar attractions had begun to fade.

Because poor Adelaide had loved him he imagined that he could obtain all women by crooking his finger. He was an obese elderly man with white hair and a face coarsened by drink. He was ridiculous, he was pathetic, he stood no chance, his suit was meaningless, and by not admitting instant defeat he would merely prolong a useless agony.

Yet love has never for a second lent an ear to arguments of this kind, and Danby’s humility coexisted strangely with a lusty confidence. Danby could not but feel himself, especially after the evening pubs had been open for an hour or two, at the beginning of a wonderful and hopeful adventure. This sense of adventure, heightened by yet more drinks, had now led his feet in the direction of Kempsford Gardens.

Danby stood in the rain swaying slightly while he checked and rechecked the number of the house. There were no lights on in the front. They could hardly have gone to bed. He was a little vague about the time, but the pubs were still open so it could not be very late. He went up the steps to the door and laid his hand upon it. Now that he was actually here fear and emotion sobered him a little. What in the world did he think he was doing? He stooped down and peered cautiously through the letter box. There was a line of light somewhere ahead from a closed-in lighted room. Danby straightened up and began to stroke the smooth painted surface of the door. He lifted his hand but could not bring himself to touch the knocker.

He thought, I think I won’t try to talk to her after all. I’m too drunk. I would just disgust her, appearing like this. Be sides, there’s Miles and Diana. More deeply he thought: Let her have a little more time to reflect about me. I’ll wait until she has answered my letters. More deeply still he thought: As things are now I can still hope and imagine. If I see her she may kill hope. He turned away from the door. But the sense of her proximity arrested him magnetically like a jerked-upon rope. He would not talk to her. But he could not go away.

He stood a moment in puzzlement. If only he could see her without being seen.

The houses in Kempsford Gardens formed a terrace with no gaps between. Danby began to retrace his steps towards the Old Brompton Road. There must be some way round the back. He walked down beside some garages and surveyed the back of the terrace, scattered with lighted windows, curving away into the flickering rainy dark. The walled gardens ran down to meet their opposite numbers in Eardley Crescent. There was no pathway, there were no back gates. Danby gauged the height of the nearest wall. At the next moment he was on the top of it. As he felt just then he could have swarmed up the side of St. Paul’s. He slid rather muddily down, tramped across a dark garden and got himself up onto the next wall. He sat astride it for a moment. What was he supposed to be doing? Oh yes. But he ought to be counting the houses. He had lost count already. Somebody behind him opened a window and he fell down into some extremely thick and prickly foliage in the next garden. He pulled himself out, hearing his trousers ripping quietly. A long thorn seemed to be imbedded in the soft flesh of his thigh. He blundered clear and stood for a moment retrieving his sense of direction. Straight on, where an uncurtained window lighted a tract of green rain-beaten grass, another wall, or was it two walls, three walls.

An increasing amount of bricks and rubble seemed to be coming off the tops of the walls and weighing him down, lodged in his shoes and in his pockets. As he stumbled forward his leg came into contact with something which, as it keeled over and subsequently broke, he recognized to be a leering red-capped gnome. That couldn’t possibly be in Miles’s garden. Where was he? Panting now a little he negotiated the next wall, taking off from a stout branch of wisteria which cracked loudly under him. He was suddenly feeling very weak and tired and the St. Paul’s sensation had quite gone. There was a throbbing pain in his left knee, which he must have knocked rather badly without noticing it. He stood in the middle of the lawn, breathing deeply and trying by sundry jerks and wriggles to dislodge the thorn, which still seemed to be piercing the inside of his thigh. Then in the dim light from the next-door house he recognized the yew archway, the humpy mounds of small shrubs, and the gleaming expanse of wet pavement. The thorn came away.