Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

She heard a faint sound and two figures, dark against the snow, walked into her motionless picture, Gerard and Jenkin: Gerard moving with his rhythmical yard-long stride, Jenkin hurrying beside him. They were not talking. Rose, kneeling, a tense watching animal, saw through the cloudy exhalations of' her breath, the pair pass out of the orchard, climb over a stile, and set off along the footpath. She did not watch them out of sight.

'What will you talk about?' said Jenkin, breaking the spell of the snow silence at last.

They had abandoned the footpath, which would, as Gerard had wordlessly decided, bring them to the village too soon, and were walking along the Roman Road. They walked in the middle of the road, along which no car had passed since thu snow fell. Far in front of them and far behind the road stretched on empty and white.

'We won't talk,' said Gerard.

'How do you mean?'

'I shall just ask him to say something about the book.'

'Describe it, say when it'll be finished?'

'If he wants to. I certainly won't press him.'

'If you don't engage him in conversation he won't say anything!'

'That's up to him. I won't have a long discussion with the blighter.'

'That's not what the others want,' said Jenkin.

'What's not what the others want?'

'Rose and Gulliver, they want something definite, some thing we can act on, they want a scrap.'

'And you?'

'I want – communication.'

'Between me and Crimond?'

'Between us and Crimond.'

They walked on, more harmoniously in the rhythm of talk, Gerard a little more slowly, Jenkin lengthening his stride, breathing the pure bitterly cold windless air, warm insido their big overcoats. Jenkin's big winter cap came down ovci his ears. Gerard was bare-headed. The snowy fields were quiet and desolate round about them, enchantedly still, and thr snow-light was yellower and denser, dark, as if the day were already darkening to nightfall. `There's nothing to act on,' said Gerard.

'So you're just going through the motions to please them.'

`Yes.'

'But they won't bepleased.'

'Damn it,' said Gerard, `what do you all want me to do? We don't like Crimond or his book but we're stuck with both. Better just forget it and get on with other things.'

'Pay up and don't think.'

'Yes. Don't you agree?'

Jenkin was silent for a bit. He said, 'He does work, you know. He's read and read and thought and thought.'

'He's read and thought himself into a blind alley. He used to have a few rational followers, now his stufriust inflames the crazies and a few adolescents. Jenkin, you know what Crimond believes, and that it's absolutely opposed to what we believe. You don't want me to encourage him, do you?'

Jenkin did not answer this. He said, 'One might be interested all the same, even if it's only in the phenomenon. There's so little respect for learning these days -'

'You mean miners don't read Marx any more!'

'Learned people, intellectuals, have lost their confidence, their kind of protest is being esoteric. And at the other end it's smashing things. There's a gap where the theories ought to be, where the thinking ought to be.'

'I'm not sure,' said Gerard, 'all right, maybe we need another philosophical genius – but meanwhile we may be better off without theories, particularly that kind. Any nonentity who wants to feel himself remarkable and licensed to kick what he can't understand is "against the bourgeoisie". There are times when only pragmatism is honest. What they call opportunism. Crimond's material is no good, his whole background is rotten. He read State and Revolution at an impressionable age and then fell for the Frankfurt School. It's for thrills. All that is old hat, all those people are living in the nineteen thirties, it's not new, it's just the old emotions rigged out as thinking. They've seen Soviet socialism, but they can't get rid of the idea that there's something wonderful hidden oway in the old package.'

`All the same,' said Jenkin, 'Marxism hasn't gone away. And you must admit there were good things in the package which we've simply helped ourselves to.'

`Marx changed our view of history, but only as one way of looking among others. Jenkin, wake up, you're dreaming about this stuff! Marxism claims to be a science, even Marx thought so in the end, all those pathetic simplifications expressed in that revolting jargon are taken to be the fundamental principles of reality! All right, the top cadres see through it, but that just proves that Marxists are either naive fools or cynical liars!'

`Well, yes, but – if it could only liberate itself into being moral philosophy!'

`That's been tried, and either it's the same old rubbish, or it refutation of Marxism!'

`All right, all right. I can't picture Crimond's book, I must say I'm curious. At least he's trying to put it all together. I see him as a sort of religious figure, someone right out on the edgy of things, expecting some sort of general change of being.'

`I'm sorry to hear you romanticising this rotten magic!'

`Hope is something, perhaps even a virtue. I suppose every age thinks it's on the edge of an abyss – one has to think outward, onward, into the dark.'

`Only as far as one can see. After that it's fantasy. We can't imagine the future. Marxism is attractive because it pretends it can.'

`So we decide the future must look after itself, we've given enough, we'll just be kind to our friends and enjoy ourselves.'

Jenkin, you make me sick! You were the one who said that it's not only our destiny but our duty to be powerless!'

`That's not quite what I said, but never mind. You may be right – but one can feel restless.'

`And is your restlessness soothed by thinking that someone still believes in a system and has all the old illusions?'

`Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.'

`That's the trap all liberals fall into. Are you really such a tame helpless pessimist?' `So much of our thought is going to be smashed, it's got to be smashed, God for instance -'

`As if that mattered!'

`I think it matters what happens to religion, I don't mean supernatural beliefs of course. We must keep some sort of idea of deep moral structure.'

`Which Marxism denies!'

`People have talked about "demythologisation", but South American and African Christianity will put all that stuff through the shredder.'

`So long as Plato and Shakespeare don't go into the shredder too!'

`Oh, they will. Or they'll have to go to the catacombs together with God and the Holy Grail! Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe nothing matters except feeding hungry people.'

`Well, that's certainly not what Crimond thinks, he's given up political action, he's only interested inhis own thoughts, he's not concerned with real human miseries.'

`Yes, but -'

, You are beginning to exasperate me.'

`Sorry, I'm just thinking about your meeting him. The thing about that man is that he's a puritan, he's a fanatic, his ancestors were Scottish Calvinists, so he's got a huge sense of sin and death-wish, he believes in hell but he's a perfectionist, a utopian, he believes in instant salvation, he thinks the good society is very close, very possible, if only all the atoms could shift, all the molecules change, just very slightly – maybe this could happen, maybe it won't, everything is changing, deeply, terribly, like never before, and maybe it's hell ahead, but he dunks it is his job to say it's possible to accept it all and sacrifice almost everything and somehow make the new thing into a good thing, and that's -'

Jenkin, stop this,' said Gerard. 'Just stop it.'

They walked on in silence, now, as the words ceased, noticing their surroundings, the hedges thickly encased in snow, the brown fuzz of old man's beard appearing here and there, the straight road like a white river, streaking onward, dipping from view and rising further on, the snow surface brittle and frozen now, the snow soft and woolly beneath as they achieved their footprints. The light was changing becoming whiter, lighter, almost misty. The sky was a uniform white-grey, not hinting sun, but with an intense soft glare, as if snow particles, almost invisible, were crowding suspended in space. Then far away ahead of them upon the road a black thing appeared, a motor car. They looked at it with amazement. It dipped down out of view, then reappeared closer to them, moving very slowly, until they could hear the soft sibilant sizzling sound of its black wheels in the snow. They stood aside. As it passed them the people in the car waved and they waved back.