Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

”You say we exaggerate things. Perhaps we exaggerate this thing about Diana. Perhaps she’d be all right, better off-“

”You’re married to Diana, she’s given you her life. It’s not just a calculation.”

”Oh God, I know it’s not just a calculation-“

”You see the case for me now. If we went away together you’d see the case for Diana.”

”It’s that I can’t face it, Lisa, now it’s come. I didn’t believe it before, that was why I allowed you to argue in that way, saying it was all inevitable. Now that there’s something quite unendurable to endure I just know that the argument must be wrong. There must be an alternative. I feel you just can’t be going away, all that terrible long way away-“

”Believe it, Miles, believe it. Look, here is my airplane ticket. London-Calcutta.”

Lisa opened her bag and took out the red airplane ticket. She displayed it, holding it up with her two hands.

”When?”

”It’s better you don’t know. Miles, I love you desperately, I love you more in this moment than ever before. I could faint with it. I love you so much now when I can see that you are beginning to believe that I am going. We must keep this love uncontaminated even if we kill it. Don’t you see?”

”Love and death. It doesn’t seem very romantic to me, Lisa.”

”It’s not romantic, Miles. This is real death. We shall forget each other.”

”No, no, no. You are sacrificing-for Diana and me-too much-“

”I am not sacrificing anything for Diana and you. I make the sacrifice to my own love. I can’t, with so much love, do anything else.”

”You mean accept any compromise?”

”Accept any compromise. The only thing is the impossible thing-if I had only met you before-“

”Oh God, oh God, before, first-Why is it impossible, it can’t be impossible-“

”I won’t be here anymore.”

”We shall meet again.”

”We shall not meet again.”

”You’re going to Parvati’s country.”

”I’ve always wanted to.”

”And there really is this job?”

”Yes. I fixed it all up with the Save the Children Fund people. I’ll be at their office in Calcutta and then somewhere out in the country. I shall have to learn Hindi. I shall be terribly busy.”

”I shall not be busy. I shall be here with grief. I shall be yearning for you.”

”You will be writing poetry. Oh believe it, Miles, see it, accept it.”

”I can’t. It wouldn’t change me, Lisa. I just feel completely crippled by this.”

”You have gods, Miles. They may reward you.”

”They don’t give rewards for this kind of thing.”

”You can’t know that.”

”Will you write to me?”

”No.”

Miles stretched out his hand towards her, drew his fingers along the mackintosh sleeve to the warmth of her wrist. Then quite slowly he took her in his arms. She stood limp in his embrace, only inclining her head onto his shoulder. She said into his coat, “It was my fault, Miles, for coming here at all. I ought never to have come. There are secrets that can’t be kept.”

”I love you. It wasn’t just your secret.”

”I infected you with love.”

”It’s not leprosy. Oh Lisa, this won’t get less. Have some mercy-“ He began to kiss her brow and her cheeks.

She pulled gently away. “We shouldn’t have had this conversation, Miles. You will try to help Diana, won’t you. This will be your task so you won’t be idle. You’ll have to help her positively. She has her pain which is different from ours. Only I mustn’t speak of that.”

”Lisa, don’t talk in that awful tone as if you were condemning us to death.”

”Now I really must go. I’ll call Di.”

”No, no, no, not yet, please-Oh Lisa, there must be more to say-we haven’t arranged anything-I don’t know where you’ll be-we’ll meet again in a few days, when we’ve had time to think things over. I can’t just let you go.”

Lisa opened the door and called, “Diana.”

Diana came slowly down the stairs. She was carefully, even smartly, dressed in blue tweed. She was wearing earrings. She had been crying.

”I’m just going, Di. Don’t be cross with me. And don’t for get to go and see Bruno.”

”Bruno, also, wants you, not me,” said Diana in a strained voice, staring at her sister. “He’ll soon want you. Just hold his hand and stroke him, I mean really stroke him-“

”All right, all right.”

”Di, will you just walk with me as far as the station? No, Miles, don’t you come. Di will just see me to the station. Get your mac, darling, it’s still raining a bit.”

Lisa went across the hall and Diana followed her slowly without looking at Miles. He stood in the doorway and watched them. The hall door was opened revealing the street full of blue rainy light.

”Good-bye, Miles.” The door closed. They were gone. Miles returned to the drawing room and sat down.

He thought, it’s not final. Now I’ve simply got to think. Hope stirred in him, lessening the pain. He looked out through the window into the soaking garden where a little rain was falling through the bright air. She would not say where she was staying, but he could find out. Perhaps Diana knew. Any way he could always fly to Calcutta. She was not really dying, she was not really going away forever. No, no, no, he thought to himself, I will not accept Lisa’s sentence of death.

Bruno was asleep. His huge head, made even larger by the ragged undipped beard, lolled uncomfortably sideways, his mouth open, a moist lower lip showing amid the dull grey growth. He drew his breath in and out with a long shuddering sigh. His dark spotted hands with their swollen knuckles trembled and clutched a little on the yellowish-white surface of the thin counterpane. Diana wondered if he was dreaming.

He had asked for Lisa. Diana had told him Lisa was away. He had asked when she would be back and whether Miles was away too. He seemed to imagine that Lisa was married to Miles. Diana had answered vaguely. He had been peevish and abstracted and twice said aloud, as if unconscious of her presence, “Poor Bruno, poor Bruno.” At last she had managed to induce something like a conversation, and they had talked, about the various houses he had lived in and about the merits of different parts of London. They talked about how London was changing, and whether it was as handsome as Rome or Paris. Bruno showed a little animation. Diana could not bring herself to stroke him as Lisa had enjoined, but, a little self-consciously, she had taken his hand, which he let her hold, squeezing her fingers rather absently from time to time. She felt rather less physical horror of him, but the smell was hard to bear and she had a terrible intuition of his inward parts and of his pitiable mortality. There was something so strange and pathetic about the thin wispy emaciated body, so scarcely perceptible under the bedclothes, as if it were doing its best to shrivel right away leaving nothing but the head. An hour of the afternoon had passed in something like talk. She did not want to risk meeting Danby, whom she did not yet feel quite ready to encounter, and had just begun to say that it was time to go, when Bruno had suddenly, still holding her hand, fallen asleep.

Diana had been disconcerted and had immediately wondered if he was dying. She released her hand cautiously from his and stood up. His breathing seemed to be regular and steady. Even as she was moving the chair and rising to her feet she was able to measure the intensity of her attention to Bruno by the sudden violence of her misery at remembering about Miles and Lisa. She stood for a while looking down at Bruno until he became ghostly and almost invisible. Then as she began to make her way to the door she saw, clear and separated like a detail in a Flemish picture, a big bottle of sleeping tablets which was standing upon the top of the marble-topped bookcase. She knew what they were, because Bruno had mentioned them in reply to a question of hers about how he slept. Diana stood still again, staring at the bottle of tablets.