Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

”You decide. Only get on with it.”

”What Will wants is the system where you measure out twenty paces in the middle and draw a line on each side. Then you each stand another twenty paces behind the lines. After I give the word you can walk forward as far as the line and fire at any point before you reach it, or when you reach it. No order of firing, just fire when you want to.”

”Look, Nigel, can’t we call off this farce?” said Danby in a low voice. “Couldn’t Will and I just have a talk? I know how he feels-“

”Do you want to apologize to him?”

”No! I just mean a sort of civilized talk-“

”It’s” impossible. You don’t understand. Will couldn’t talk to you, he couldn’t.” Nigel had laid his hand on Danby’s arm. Nigel’s teeth were chattering.

”It’s all perfectly insane-“

”Wait here. I’ll just report to Will.”

Nigel’s footsteps, crunching, sucking, moved away over the gravel and Danby could hear the murmur of voices. He felt light-headed, a sensation as at the onset of extreme drunkenness. The lurid detailed scene seemed to be tilting a little sideways. Nigel was back beside him and was thrusting something into his hand.

”Here. You know how to fire a pistol, don’t you?”

Danby lifted his hand, which was holding a rather beautiful duelling pistol with a long slim barrel. The handle, very smooth and already warm in his hand, was made of a rich rosy-brown wood with a curly grain. The barrel and the butt end of the handle were ornamented with a flowery silver inlay. Danby stared with fascination at the strange weighty object.

”You sight along the barrel. Better keep a straight arm. It doesn’t kick much.”

”I trust you and your brother are enjoying yourselves,” said Danby. “It’s loaded. If you don’t want to hurt him fire well wide. Remember you don’t have to walk as far as the line.”

”You ought to be in films!”

Danby, who was well acquainted with revolvers and had sometimes played with pistols, examined his weapon. It was indeed loaded. A blank of course, but loaded. It appeared that the twins were going to carry their theatre scene through to the end.

”I’ll drop a handkerchief, and after that you can fire when you like.”

”All we need now is a surgeon!”

Nigel gave him the ecstatic beaming stare, giggled, and glided away.

The light was growing. Will had moved away on the other side of the iron ladder. Danby watched Nigel pacing the shore, making marks with pieces of driftwood. A chilly breeze had begun to blow and the mist had receded a little without yet revealing the other side of the river. Danby turned up the collar of his mackintosh. He thought, supposing this were all real and I was perhaps going to die. He thought, Lisa, where are you now.

”Back here please,” said Nigel. He motioned Danby back behind a line which he had scored in the stony mud. A long way ahead of him he could see the figure of Will, rigid, up right, compact, small, a focused pellet of menacing significance. He could see a blotch of purple which must be Will’s scarf, perhaps his shirt.

”Sixty paces between you,” said Nigel. “The next line is there, marked with driftwood, which you mustn’t cross, but you can fire before you reach it.” His hand touched the sleeve of Danby’s raincoat, gathered up some of the stuff and fingered it.

”I’m sorry I pushed you into that lamppost,” said Danby. “I didn’t mean to.” A very fine misty rain had begun to fall. Nigel’s black hair was filmed over with glittering pinheads of rain.

”That’s all right. Good luck. If you fire first, stand side ways, there’s less risk. The light’s still a bit uncertain, he’ll probably miss you.”

Nigel moved away. This performance is designed to frighten me, thought Danby. They want me to break down, lose my nerve, beg them to stop, run away. It’s all ridiculous. But all the same he found that he was trembling.

Nigel had returned to the middle point, halfway between Will and Danby. He was flourishing a white handkerchief above his head. The two lines marking the twenty paces in the centre were plainly marked with wood. A boat on the river hooted distantly. The handkerchief fluttered to the ground.

Will had begun to walk very slowly forward, carefully lifting his pistol with outstretched arm and gazing along the barrel. Danby stared. Then as if compelled by a magnetic line of force stretched between himself and his opponent he began to move too. His heart seemed to be pounding and rattling at an incoherent speed. He put his left hand to his breast. It’s theatre, he said to himself, just theatre. But the power of the scene had already made him its actor and he found himself raising the pistol, feeling for the trigger. It was all idiotic, but it was also awful, a grotesquerie, a piece of obscene unworthy mumming. Get it over with, he thought. Instinctively he turned the gun away from the slowly advancing but still distant figure of Will, and lowering the barrel in the direction of the river he pulled the trigger.

The leap of the gun, the deafening noise of the report, over laid another event. A green glass bottle which had been lying upon the mud at the very edge of the water disappeared into fragments with a high splintering clang.

Danby stood quite still, the echoes of the report still roaring in his ears, and stared at the bottle. So the pistol had been really loaded after all.

He dropped the pistol, which was wreathed in white smoke, and it fell with a dull thump into the glistening greyish mud. He stooped to pick it up again and saw straight ahead of him in the enclosed dome of golden luminosity the still advancing figure of Will. Danby tried to think. He said to himself, I must do something quickly, I must stop him, it’s all a mistake. He tried to move, but his limbs seemed too heavy to stir. He stood paralyzed, watching with fascination as the figure with the pointing pistol grew larger. Yes, he was wearing a mauve shirt. A mauve shirt.

Danby thought, supposing this man kills me. He wants to kill me, he wills my death. I should have known it wasn’t play acting. But he must know that I’m harmless, I didn’t mean to hurt him, I must explain it’s a mistake, I mustn’t die by mistake. Who would understand? He raised his hand. He tried to move his foot but it seemed to be rooted in the mud. He stood there with a raised hand, like a signal, a totem. The rain was increasing.

Will had reached the line of driftwood and stopped, pointing the pistol with care. There were about thirty yards between them.

He must be stopped, thought Danby, I must call out to him. But his body had become rigid with fear and expectation of the impact of the bullet. His mind seemed to float above him in some other sphere. He saw himself lying dead on the bank of the Thames with Will’s bullet in his heart. He thought, I am dying for a girl I didn’t love, I am dying because I failed to love, I am dying just upon the brink of love. I was not worthy. He tried to will to move, to sidestep, even to stand sideways as Nigel had advised. But he could not stop staring at Will, who was still taking aim, clear and detailed in an ellipse of bright vision.

”No, no, no!” Something black had shot across the centre of the scene, something capering, agitated, Nigel waving, shouting, spreading out his arms. He capered in front of Danby, dancing in the gravelly mud, his feet spraying pebbles.

”Get out of the way, damn you!”

As Will shouted Danby rushed forward and seized Nigel around the waist. They swayed together. Over Nigel’s shoulder Danby could see the steady pointing pistol. Danby crooked his foot round Nigel’s ankle and threw him stumbling to the ground. Will shouted again and fired.

As Danby heard the bullet whistle past his head the explosion loosened his limbs and he sat down heavily on the stones. Nigel was lying full length. He gazed on Danby. Then his eyes closed and there was an expression of bliss upon his face. The echo of the shot died away and there was a curiously intense silence.