Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda

"Indeed."

But he did not tell her. Instead he bent over his soup bowl and went at it with speed. Once, halfway through, he looked up and raised an eyebrow. Lucinda felt that mixture of irritation and affection so well known to Wardley-Fish.

"There," he said, wiping his mouth with a fastidiousness perhaps induced by the quality of the napkin, "now I can speak without my soup going cold."

"You are a practical man," she laughed. She felt a little unreal-a thrumming sensation behind her eyes.

"In some respects, yes, I am, " he said. "How does your correspondent enjoy his living in Boat Harbour?"

She shut her eyes against the question's slap. She was shocked to feel its cold hostility. And even though hostility was not intended, she was not mistaken in detecting it. She straightened her cutlery. She said: "Well enough.",«-;

"And does he have a church built yet?" &S-*i

She thought: Fool, fool, do you think I care for Hasset? ',

She said: "They hold service in a room aboVe a cobbler's. They thaiv? his predecessor into the river." — "-;-1

"Oh dear."::;:

"Perhaps," she said, "they will do the same with him." Oscar looked up sharply, but Lucinda was finishing her soup. When he at last saw her face it was like a room swept clean of meaning.

A waiter took away their bowls.

Oscar said: "Mr Hasset should have a church."

She did not wish to discuss Hasset. She said nothing.

°scar did not like to think of Hasset either. It was the first time he had spoken the name out loud. When he said it he saw a hoe or a

Oscar and Lucinda

mattock, neither of them implements he had any fondness for. and yet he must say the name for he had an idea involving it, an idea that involved such a dreadful laceration of his own feelings that it is really hard to credit. And yet it was all born out of habits of mind produced by Christianity: that if you sacrificed yourself you would somehow attain the object of your desires. It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice, but also one of great beauty, silvery, curved, dancing with light. The odds were surely stacked against him, and had it been a horse rather than a woman's heart he would never have bet on it, not even for a place.

"And what would his feelings be, do you imagine," he said, "if, when Mr Hasset awoke one morning, he looked out of his window and saw a church?"

Lucinda opened her mouth to reply.

"Made of glass," said my great-grandfather. (See! This is the sort of man I am!) It was at this point that the waiter brought the flounder. They said yes or no to tartare sauce, watched vegetables being spooned on to their plates, accepted spinach, rejected squash, and hardly knew what they were doing. All their emotions were fused together in this glass vision in which they saw that which cannot be seen-wonder, joy, the transparent traceries of angels dancing. They were smiling at each other in such a way as to be almost indecent and the chef poked his head around the door to see what he had heard reported by the waiter. The fish's flesh was white and moist. She lifted it carefully from its skeleton, and then replaced it.

"But what would one intend?" she asked, her voice very level and cautious. "What would one intend with such a gift?"

He hardly knew what he intended. That he be a perfect friend to her, that he show himself above jealousy, that she employ him, that he help her assemble this flawless thing, that he possess it in some way, that he be permitted to be a party to the manufacture of a prism, a prayer to God, that the prayer be made from glass and she would, therefore, because of it, love him. He could not see this glass church in his mind's eye without smiling. It had a force of its own. He looked at it as I once saw my own father, standing in a shiny-floored corridor in the Sydney Museum of Arts and Science, staring at a china cup inside a case.

"It would be a lovely thing," he said.

"Yes, I see that."

* He would not look her in the eye. '• "Such a gift," she said, "would not be personal?" she meant personal

Oscar in Love

as having to do with her and Hasset. So preoccupied was she with this problem that she did not even imagine the possibility of ambiguity. "Oh, no," he said, "not personal." He thought she meant personal as between him and her; he was embarrassed to have his scheme so clearly apprehended. "Oh, no, most definitely not." "Do we understand each other?"

"Yes." He looked her straight in the eye and she saw, then, the strength in him. He was so light and frail, so soft in his manner, that it was always a surprise to see this, the steel armature of his soul. She thought about kissing and then she pushed the matter firmly from her mind. She would not frighten him away.

"Yes," she said, "it would be a lovely thing." She had never dared to imagine anything so commercially senseless. She would be laughed at by all the whiskered sages of church and business. She thought: He is mad; I am mad. But when she objected, what she said was not in tune with her spirit which skipped impatiently ahead like a reckless little stone sent dancing across a river. "But it is hardly practical, Mr Hopkins."

"It is a dangerous word," he said, smiling, entranced by her upper lip. "Which word is that?"

"Practical. It is the word they use in Sydney when they wish to do something damaging to the spirit. Excuse me, you must think me rude." "No, no, although you must not hold me responsible for Sydney." "I never struck the term so much at Home. But here, you know, it is a word dull men use when they wish to hide the poverty of their imagination. But would you say it was

'practical' to sing hymns, to give glory to God, to pray, to fast? And what is the practical purpose of a church? For if it is only to provide shelter for Christians — and my dear papa would take this view-then it is better to have your congregation gather in cobblers' rooms. But if your church, no matter how small, is also a celebration of God, then I would say I was the most practical man you have spoken to all year."

"And there would be nothing personal in its intention?" "Do I appear a rogue?"

"No," she smiled, "you do not," and because he made her smile she did not think it a puzzling answer to her question. "Your fish…" She meant that his fish was cold, uneaten, although he still held a knife and fork as he had from the beginning.

"My fish does not matter. My fish is dead, but we are alive. We are gamblers in the noble sense. We believe all eternity awaits us. And am I wrong in supposing that you could pack a church in crates and

Oscar and Lucinda

transport it by cart? It is like the stairs at the library. It is what they call prefabricated. It comes in pieces. It has nuts and bolts and so on."

"Or by ship?"

"You could transport an entire cathedral and assemble it across the mountains. Can you imagine a glass cathedral?"

She could. She saw its steeples, domes, its flying buttresses, motes of dust, shafts of light. "Mr Hopkins, we are mad to think of it."

"Not mad, I pray not mad. But the sheer joy of contemplating it is hard to contain." She thought: I cannot separate love from glass; I must be just a little mad. He said: "I think it is this feeling that you are tempted to call madness, but there is a more accurate description. . but I will embarrass you…"