Christopher Isherwood - A Single Man

George has sometimes asked himself: Would I ever, even in those days, have wished this on her?

The answer is No. Not because George would be incapable of such fiendishness; but because Doris, then, was infinitely more than Doris, was Woman the Enemy, claiming Jim for herself. No use destroying Doris, or ten thousand Dorises, as long as Woman triumphs. Woman could only be fought by yielding, by letting Jim go away with her on that trip to Mexico. By urging him to satisfy all his curiosity and flattered vanity and lust (vanity, mostly) on the gamble that he would return (as he did) saying she’s disgusting , saying never again .

And wouldn’t you be twice as disgusted, Jim, if you could see her now? Wouldn’t you feel a crawling horror to think that maybe, even then, her body you fondled and kissed hungrily and entered with your aroused flesh already held seeds of this rottenness? You used to bathe the sores on cats so gently and you never minded the stink of old diseased dogs; yet you had a horror, in spite of yourself, of human sickness and people who were crippled. I know something, Jim. I feel certain of it. You’d refuse absolutely to visit her here. You wouldn’t be able to force yourself to do it.

George walks around the screen and into the room, making just the necessary amount of noise. Doris turns her head and sees him, seemingly without surprise. Probably, for her, the line between reality and hallucination is getting very thin. Figures keep appearing, disappearing. If one of them sticks you with a needle, then you can be sure it actually is a nurse. George may be George or, again, he may not. For convenience she will treat him as George. Why not? What does it matter, either way?

‘Hello,’ she says. Her eyes are a wild brilliant blue in her sick yellow face.

‘Hello, Doris .’

A good while since, George has stopped bringing her flowers or other gifts. There is nothing of any significance he can bring into this room from the outside, now; even himself. Everything that matters to her is now right here in this room, where she is absorbed in the business of dying. Her preoccupation doesn’t seem egotistic, however; it does not exclude George or anyone else who cares to share in it. This preoccupation is with death, and we can all share in that, at any time, at any age, well or ill.

George sits down beside her now and takes her hand. If he had done this even two months ago, it would have been loathsomely false. (One of his most bitterly shameful memories is of a time he kissed her cheek – was it aggression, masochism? oh, damn all such words! – right after he found out she’d been to bed with Jim. Jim was there when it happened. When George moved toward her to kiss her, Jim’s eyes looked startled and scared, as if he feared George was about to bite her like a snake.) But now taking Doris’s hand isn’t false, isn’t even an act of compassion. It is necessary – he has discovered this on previous visits – in order to establish even partial contact. And, holding her hand, he feels less embarrassed by her sickness; for the gesture means, we are on the same road, I shall follow you soon . He is thus excused from having to ask those ghastly sickroom questions, how are you? how’s it going? how do you feel?

Doris smiles faintly. Is it because she’s pleased that he has come?

No. She is smiling with amusement, it seems. Speaking low but very distinctly, she says, ‘I made such a noise, yesterday.’

George smiles too, waiting for the joke.

‘Was it yesterday? ’ This is in the same tone, but addressed to herself. Her eyes no longer see him; they look bewildered and a bit scared. Time must have become a very odd kind of mirror-maze for her, now; and mazes can change, at any instant, from being funny to being frightening.

But now the eyes are aware of him again; the bewilderment has passed. ‘I was screaming. They heard me clear down the hall. They had to fetch the doctor.’ Doris smiles. This, apparently, is the joke.

‘Was it your back?’ George asks. The effort to keep sympathy out of his voice makes him speak primly, like someone who is trying to suppress an ungentlemanly native accent. But Doris disregards the question – she is off in some new direction of her own, frowning a little. She asks abruptly, ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly three.’

There is a long silence. George feels a terrible need to say something, anything:

‘I was out on the pier the other day. I hadn’t been there in ages. And, do you know, they’ve torn down the old roller-skating rink? Isn’t that a shame? It seems as if they can’t bear to leave anything the way it used to be. Do you remember that booth where the woman used to read your character from your handwriting. That’s gone too —’

He stops short, dismayed.

Can memory really get away with such a crude trick? Seemingly it can. For he has picked the pier from it as casually as you pick a card at random from a magician’s deck – and behold, the card has been forced! It was while George and Jim were roller-skating that they first met Doris. (She was with a boy named Norman whom she quickly ditched.) And later they all went to have their handwriting read. And the woman told Jim that he had latent musical talent, and Doris that she had a great capacity for bringing out the best in other people —

Does she remember? Of course she must! George glances at her anxiously. She lies staring at the ceiling, frowning harder.

‘What did you say the time was?’

‘Nearly three. Four minutes of.’

‘Look outside in the hall, will you? See if anyone’s there.’

He gets up, goes to the door, looks out. But, before he has even reached it, she has asked with harsh impatience, ‘Well?’

‘There’s no one.’

‘Where’s that fucking nurse?’ It comes out of her so harshly, so nakedly desperate.

‘Shall I go look for her?’

‘She knows I get a shot at three. The doctor told her. She doesn’t give a shit.’

‘I’ll find her.’

‘That bitch won’t come till she’s good and ready.’

‘I’m sure I can find her.’

‘No! Stay here.’

‘Okay.’

‘Sit down again.’

‘Sure.’ He sits down. He knows she wants his hand. He gives it to her. She grips it with astonishing strength.

‘George —’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ll stay here till she comes?’

‘Of course I will.’

Her grip tightens. There is no affection in it, no communication. She isn’t gripping a fellow-creature. His hand is just something to grip. He dare not ask her about the pain. He is afraid of releasing some obscene horror, something visible and tangible and stinking, right here between them, in the room.

Yet he is curious, too. Last time, the nurse told him that Doris has been seeing a priest. (She was raised a Catholic.) And, sure enough, here on the table beside the bed is a little paper book, gaudy and cute as a Christmas card: The Stations of the Cross. . . . Ah, but when the road narrows to the width of this bed, when there is nothing in front of you that is known, dare you disdain any guide? Perhaps Doris has learned something already about the journey ahead of her. But, even supposing that she has and that George could bring himself to ask her, she could never tell him what she knows. For that could only be expressed in the language of the place to which she is going. And that language – though some of us gabble it so glibly – has no real meaning in our world; in our mouths, it is just a lot of words.

Here’s the nurse, smiling in the doorway. ‘I’m punctual today, you see!’ She has a tray with the hypodermic and the ampoules.

‘I’ll be going,’ George says, rising at once.