Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

I am dying, he thought, but what is it like? Is it just this pain, this fear? For there was fear, fear of something. Would death, when it came, be some unimaginably more dreadful physical agony, would one experience death, would it be long? Yet it was not really this future thing that Bruno feared. He feared something that was present with him, the whimpering frailty of his being which so dreaded extinction. What moaned in the night was different and less terrible. There was something in him which was capable of a far more awful suffering and which he must somehow cheat out of a full awareness. He must, with a part of his mind, look always away from that, and not let the structure of his personality be destroyed by what it could not bear. Some old habit of uprightness must serve here, some habit bred to deal with quite different matters, and which must somehow be coaxed into helping him now. There were tears. Bruno did not mind the tears, they were a kind of contemplation. He wept as he looked at the slow movement of time and at the coloured pictures. This was not the terror. The terror must be kept in its corner. He must play the game of survival until the very end. That was one important thing.

There is another important thing, thought Bruno, or is it the same thing? What is the other thing? It’s something I’ve got to do. If God existed He would do it for me. Bruno had had a dream about God. God had hung up above him in the form of a beautiful Erisus niger , swinging very very slightly upon a fine almost invisible golden thread. God had let down another thread towards Bruno and the thread swung to and fro just above Bruno’s head and Bruno kept seizing it and it kept breaking. The light fragile touch of the thread was ac companied by an agonizing and yet delightful physical sensation. Then suddenly the Erisus niger seemed to be growing larger and larger and turning into the face of Bruno’s father. The face filled up the whole sky.

God would do it for me, but God doesn’t exist, thought Bruno laboriously. He began to think about the women. He saw Maureen sitting in the cafe with the chess board on the table in front of her, staring at the red and white pieces and moving one of them every now and then. She’s got eyes of blue, I never cared for eyes of blue, But she’s got eyes of blue, So that’s my weakness now . Maureen was wearing a little round red and white checked cloche hat pulled well down over her ears. Why had it never occurred to him before that the hat matched the chessmen? Had she done it on purpose? He must ask her sometime.

”Must ask her,” he said aloud.

”What’s that, Bruno?”

”Must ask her.”

The pale-haired woman came and sat on his bed and took his hand in both of hers as she often did. Her big oval ivory-complexioned face looked tired and sad. Twice he had seen her crying quietly when she thought he was asleep. Who was she? He wondered how old she was. Her face was quite unlined but it was not the face of a young woman.

”What is it, Bruno, dear heart?”

”Fly in the web,” said Bruno.

A big Araneus diadematus had made a very handsome orb web across a corner of the window outside. It was usually to be seen hanging head downwards at the hub of the web or else sitting in a crack at the side of the window, in a little bower made of threads, attached to the centre of the web by a strong signal thread. Bruno had been watching it for days. It had had no prey. Now a large house fly was struggling in the web and the spider was rushing towards it.

”Shall I rescue the fly?”

Bruno did not know whether he wanted the fly rescued or not. The spider had already reached the fly and cast a thread around it. Now the woman had opened the window and put her hand into the web, destroying its beautiful symmetry. The spider retreated. The captive fly dangled from a thread.

”Too late. Bring them here both. In the mug, the cup.”

The woman detached the fly into the mug and with more difficulty captured the spider in the cup. She brought them both to Bruno.

The fly was struggling feebly, moving its legs and its head. Its wings had already been crushed up against its body by the circling thread. The spider was agitated, trying to rush up the slippery side of the cup. The woman kept moving the cup with a light circular motion against the direction of the spider, so that it kept falling back again to the bottom. After a while it was still.

”Such a fat spider.”

”You’re not afraid,” said Bruno. “Most women are afraid.”

”I’m not afraid of spiders. I rather like them. I like flies too.”

”It’s a sad thing. Look at the cross, big white cross on her back. In the Middle Ages they said she was holy because of the cross.”

”Do you think we’d better kill the fly?”

Bruno considered. They had interfered with nature and were now at a loss. “Yes. And put the spider back.”

The woman dropped the fly onto the floor and stepped on it. She carefully reintroduced the spider to the web. The spider ran straight into its bower, cowering back so as to be almost invisible.

”Leave the window open, please.”

The warm early summer air filled the room. The smell of dusty streets, the special smell of the Thames, a sort of fermented rotting yet cool fresh smell, were mingled with a vague scent of flowers.

What do they feel, thought Bruno. Had the fly suffered pain when its wings were forced back and crushed by the strong thread? Had the spider felt fear when it was in the tea cup? How mysterious life was at these its extremities. And yet was the mystery less when one returned from the extremities to the centre? Perhaps if God existed He would look down upon His creation with the same puzzlement and ask, what do they feel?

But there was no God. I am at the centre of the great orb of my life, thought Bruno, until some blind hand snaps the thread. I have lived for nearly ninety years and I know nothing. I have watched the terrible rituals of nature and I have lived inside the simple instincts of my own being and now at the end I am empty of wisdom. Where is the difference between me and these little humble creatures? The spider spins its web, it can no other. I spin out my consciousness, this compulsive chatterer, this idle rambling voice that will so soon be mute. But it’s all a dream. Reality is too hard. I have lived my life in a dream and now it is too late to wake up.

”What was the other thing?” said Bruno.

”What other thing, my dear?”

”The other thing.”

If only one could believe that death was waking up. Some people believed this. Bruno stared at his dressing gown hanging on the door. He never used it now since he did not leave his bed, and it had hardened into folds which were every day the same. How well he knew those folds. It seemed to be getting taller, larger, darker. Even the sunshine did not dispel that darkness now. The pity of it all, thought Bruno. I’ve been through this vale of tears and never seen anything real. The reality. That’s the other thing. But now it’s too late and I don’t even know what it is. He looked round him. The sun shine revealed the terrible little room, the faded stained wall paper with the green ivy design, the dull puckered doorknob, the thin Indian counterpane with its almost invisible spidery arabesques, the row of champagne bottles getting dusty in the corner. He could not drink champagne any more now. And the dressing gown.

Tears came out of Bruno’s eyes and ran down over the bones of his face and into his beard.

”What is it, dear heart? Don’t cry.”

”I can’t remember, I can’t remember”

It’s something simple really, he thought. Something to do with Maureen and Janie and the whole thing. One sees now how pointless it all was, all the things one chased after, all the things one wanted. And if there is something that matters now at the end it must be the only thing that matters. I wish I’d known it then. It looks as if it would have been easy to be kind and good since it’s so obvious now that nothing else matters at all. But of course then one was inside the dream.