Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

He was, as he came near to Jenkin's house, beginning to feel very damp and cold. He had, in coming to live in the little house, intended something, perhaps symbolic but also marking some deep change in his mode of existence, some giving up of worldly goods, some kind of liberating simplification. He had indeed sold many of his possessions, while reflecting ironically that it is not exactly asceticism to sell what you have and put the money in the bank. He had lately begun to feel false in Jenkin's house, as if he were playing at something. The neighbours knew it, perhaps the house knew it too. It was not even a part of his mourning, seeming sometimes even a desecration of it. There was a kind of futile unmanageable pain in living with Jenkin's things when Jenkin was dead. He had not intended to speak to Rose of a house, though the idea had been for a short time in his head. Now he began to feel an interest in living, not where he had been before, but not here either. He needed to create some entirely new scene, and he did not have to play at austerity now he had suddenly acquired such an awesomely demanding aim in life. He did not think that he had overestimated Crimond's book, but whether he had or not he now had to write his own. He could now, thanks to Crimond, see the book that he had to write. He thought, I may indeed be carried away, but I must try my damnedest to get it all clear. As he thought this he suddenly thought of Levquist, of what it had been like to get clear some appallingly difficult piece of Greek, and recalled, and felt now in his guts, that almost sexual shudder with which, arriving at Oxford, he had found himself confronted with an impossibly high standard. He recalled too some words of Valery which Levquist used to quote: a difficulty is a light, an insuperable difficulty is a sun. Well, more often no doubt an insuperable difficulty is an insuperable difficulty. In attempting now to `answer' Crimond he must be prepared for what he wrote to seem, perhaps even to be, merely a commentary on someone else's book. Perhaps indeed all that awaited him was a long and final failure, a dreary fruitless toil, wasting his energy and his remaining time to produce something that was worthless. The words of Augustine quoted by Father McAlister came back to him: before the countenance of God my soul shrivels like a moth. Perhaps he would have nothing in the end but a broken heart, not even contrite!

As he reached the little house it was beginning to rain again, and as he pressed the key into the lock he experienced a feeling of intrusion, as of making an unexpected and perhaps unwelcome visit. The house was extremely cold. jenkin had never entertained the idea of central heating. Gerard turned on the lights and pulled the velveteen curtains and lit the gas fire in the sitting room. He decided he was still hungry, he had been too excited to eat properly with Rose, too anxious to tell her of something great. Of course he had quite failed to convey the book, how right it is, how wrong it is. He thought, it's right because it's about suffering, it's wrong because it's about being true to a future good society. That's the main idea, what the book depends on really – but there's no such thing. Truth can't reach out into the future in that way, as Rose said, we can't imagine the future – and there can never be a perfectly good society – there can only be a decent society, and that depends on freedom and order and circumstances and an endless tinkering which can't be programmed from a distance. It's all accidental, but the values are absolute. That's the simple point about human life with the long explanation. Suppose Rose's 'cold water' were just the beginning of general dismissal of Crimond's book? Of course nothing that happened to that book could affect his. But Gerard realized that he would be dismayed if he got only bad ones! He went out to the kitchen and poured a tin of soup into a saucepan. He found some sliced bread and buttered it while the soup was heating, then brought soup and bread back into the sitting room where Crimond's galley proofs were piled high on the sidebomol guarded by the Staffordshire dogs. He put the plate and the mug of soup on the green tiles by the fire, and as he turned to close the door he saw some letters lying on the mat in the hall He recognised Duncan's writing. He brought the letters in, tearing open Duncan's envelope.

My dear Gerard,

You will have seen Levquist's obituary in the Times. Whoever wrote it didn't praise him enough. That kind of greatness is not the fashion these days I dare say! I feel extraordinarily sad and felt I must write to you. I know you saw him at that terrible dance last summer, and maybe you have seen him since. He was a kind of saint ofscholarship, a special kind of example. Perhaps his life ending made me wonder what Pvr made of mine. What a mess it's all been, and how short the business is really, a topic I've heardyou mention. I conclude that what really matters is friendship, not that overrated love business, but one's closefriends, the really close people who are one's comforters and one's judges. You have always been both to me. May I express the hope that, in all the recent shambles, we haven't lost each other. It seems, here, infinitely far from London. We have bought a house, but address at present is this hotel.

Hope you are writing something. I've given up thought.

Yours

Duncan

Gerard had not seen the Times obituary. So Levquist was gone. He recalled the long room, the big desk covered with books, the window open to the summer night, Levquist's great grotesque beautiful head, Levquist saying 'Come again, come and see the old man.' He had not been again. He had never kissed Levquist's hands and said he loved him. Levquist saying, 'I saw young Riderhood. He was quite stumped by that piece of Thucydides!' 'Oh God, oh God,' said Gerard aloud, and sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs by the fire and hid his face in his hands. A cloud, a presence, of dark unhappiness was suddenly beside him. That was the night when his father died. Levquist, who had also been his father, was dead too. And ,Jenkin was dead; and the presence in the room was that of Jenkin, Jenkin sad, Jenkin as sadness, Jenkin as incurable torturing grief. Why did you have to die, when I loved you so? Gerard said to Jenkin. And it was terrible, terrible to him, as if the shade of Jenkin were weeping and holding out its strengthless hands. It wasn't my fault, said Gerard to the shade, forgive me, forgive me, I am bereaved, I am punished, I am poisoned. Why are you weeping these awful tears? Is it because you were murdered and I have befriended your murderer? Oh Jenkin, how can we have so lost cacti other, how can we be so changed, you an accuser and I paralysed by a poisonous drug!

Gerard stood up and actually looked around the room, searching for something, some little thing, for that was what the awful accusing shade had now become, something like a little box or a black mechanical toy. There was nothing but the room itself, awkward and graceless and accidental and empty. With a sudden gesture Gerard hit the pile of neatly stacked proofs knocking them onto the floor. As they fell they took one of the Staffordshire dogs with them. The dog was broken. Gerard picked up the pieces and put them on the sideboard.

He thought, I'm poisoned all right, I'm haunted, I'm cursed, I'm mad. The destruction of the dog had brought tears to his eyes at last. How can I write this book, he thought, when I can't help thinking that Jenkin was murdered? What do Crimond's thoughts matter? Why did I talk to Rose about a house or being together? Let her go to Yorkshire. I'm under a curse, I'm condemned to a haunted solitude. Crimond's book made me feel I had some thoughts, but it was an illusion. Levquist said I had no hard core, Crimond said anything I wrote would be beautified and untrue, Rose said it was vanity. I haven't got the energy to write a long book. I see now it's not important. I'll get out of'here though. I don't want company any more, whether it's humans or ghosts. Oh God, I'm getting old I've never felt this before. I'm old.