Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

What contributed yet more to the numinous aura with which the patients were surrounded was the fact that although I was close to them all the day I never saw them except in their full dignity of sick people, lying there solitary and silent with idle hands, privately communing with their pain. That at other times they were washed and fed, used bed pans, and had bloody and pus-soaked dressings removed from their shaven heads, I knew only at second hand by inference from the dirty dishes and other less savoury objects which entered more directly into my day's work. When the nurses and doctors were engaged on their priest-like tasks the doors of the rooms were religiously closed and notices displayed forbidding entrance. It was only occasionally that I would pass in the corridor one of the patients being wheeled to or from his bed on a trolley; and whenever I heard the dull rumble of the trolley wheels, with a heavy sound of rubber on rubber, I would contrive to emerge from wherever I was and catch a glimpse perhaps of some new arrival, whose face and newly bandaged head, still fresh with astonishment from the outside world, would convince me that after all the patients were men like myself.

After I had cleaned the rooms there was an interval in my work, during which I would retire into my cubby hole where there is just room to sit, and read the evening papers by a dim electric light. There was no window in the cubby hole, and as all the walls were covered with people's coats hanging on pegs, it was rather like the inside of a wardrobe. I didn't mind this, as the insides of wardrobes have always had, since childhood, a peculiar fascination for me, no doubt for reasons known to psychoanalysts. I did, however, dislike the dim light, and on the second day provided, at my own expense, a more powerful electric light bulb: which was confiscated on the third day by Stitch and the dim one put back again. There I sat, perusing the Evening Standard, and, as I read, the rumours of the outside world came to me like distant cries or the sounds of battles far away in time and space. Lefty's name occurred quite often; and once a whole editorial was devoted to him, couched in terms designed to suggest simultaneously that he was a serious public menace and that he was a petty street-corner agitator who was beneath contempt. I noticed that a grand meeting was to be organized by the Independent Socialists in West London in a day or two, and it was apropos of this that the editor was calling on the optimates to exercise this peculiar blend of negligence and strong measures. Homer K. Pringsheim had held a press conference in London at which he had said that the British and American film industries had much to learn from each other, and had departed for the Italian Riviera. Others names which I looked for were not there.

I enjoyed this part of the day too. By this time I could combine a considerable feeling of tiredness with a feeling which was almost entirely new to me, that of having done something. Such intellectual work as I have ever accomplished has always left me with a sense of having achieved nothing: one looks back through the thing as through an empty shell; but whether this is because of the nature of intellectual work as such, or whether it is because I am no good, I have never been able to decide. If one no longer feels in living contact with whatever thought the work contains, the thing seems at best dry and at worst stinking; and if one does still feel this contact the work is infected through it with the shifting emptiness of present thought. Though it may be that if one had any present thoughts that were at all considerable they would not have this quality of emptiness. I wonder if Kant, as he conceived his Copernican Revolution, said to himself from time to time, 'But this is nothing, nothing'? I should like to think that he did.

I had decided to wait for the weekend before making another attempt to contact Hugo. The sense of my own destiny, which had so curiously deserted me during the days when I had been lying on Dave's camp-bed, had now returned, and I felt sure that whatever god had arranged for me and Hugo to have deeply to do with one another would not leave his work unfinished. On this matter I felt for the moment a certain calm. I was more anxious about letters from France, and perhaps most anxious of all about Finn, of whom there was still not a breath of news. Dave had said that we ought to start making inquiries, but this was impossible for the simple reason that there was nowhere where we could inquire. Finn had no friends in London, so far as we knew, except ourselves, and concerning his present whereabouts we could not even get as far as framing a theory. Dave had suggested going to the police, but I was against this. If Finn was drinking himself to death somewhere, that was Finn's business, and it would be my last sad act of friendship to leave him to it. This worried me all the same, and I thought a lot about Finn during those days.

The other unsolved problem which I had upon my hands was the problem of Mars, and about this I worried in fits and starts. Sadie and Sammy had still made no move, and their silence was beginning to get on my nerves. I felt tempted at times to go and see Sadie and talk the whole thing over. But I felt afraid of this too, partly because, au fond, I was a bit afraid of Sadie, especially now when I had put myself in the wrong, and partly because I didn't fancy the idea of Mars being taken from me. I didn't want Mars, in his old age, to fall into the hands of someone, viz. Sammy, whom I suspected of having little enough respect for an unexploitable life, even if it were a human one. So I did nothing and waited.

A day or two passed, and it was some time in the late afternoon. In about half an hour my day's work would be over. Owing to my exceptional diligence it was virtually over now, only although there was nothing further for me to do I could not leave the building until six o'clock had struck. In a few minutes, I was thinking to myself, I would go and mop the kitchen floor; one could never mop round that kitchen floor too often. But for the moment I was in no hurry. I felt very tired; and it was becoming clear to me that this was indeed the main drawback of this otherwise fascinating job, that it was extremely tiring. At some time in the future, I decided, I would arrange the work, whether here or elsewhere, only half-time. Then in the other half of the day I might do some writing. It occurred to me that to spend half the day doing manual work might be very calming to the nerves of one who was spending the other half doing intellectual work, and I could not imagine why I had not thought before of this way of living, which would ensure that no day could pass without something having been-done, and so keep that sense of uselessness, which grows in prolonged periods of sterility, away from me for ever. But all this was for the future. Just then I had no idea but to continue with my tasks and wait for my destiny to catch up on me. That it would do so I felt confident; though as I idly turned the pages of the Evening Standard, standing up because the light was so bad, I had no notion how fast it was galloping at that very moment to overtake me.

I saw from the paper that Lefty's great meeting had taken place earlier that day, not without considerable disturbance and the final interference of the police. There were several pictures of mounted policemen controlling crowds. Someone had thrown a magnesium flare and two women had fainted. Lefty had made a speech which, so far as I could see, was filled with harmless and boring remarks about the technicalities of affiliating left-wing organizations to each other. A well-known Trade Union leader who was a member of Lefty's party had made another speech, also a woman M. P. who was not a member but very pretty.

As I was looking this over I heard the swing doors which led on to the main corridor being opened, and then the rumble of the trolley wheels. A new patient was being brought in. Through the glass door of the cubby hole I saw The Pid pass by, and heard her black heels click away down the ward corridor. I opened the door and held it ajar, standing just inside. Stitch was pushing towards me the trolley on which, under the red blanket, a figure lay prostrate. Stitch caught my eye and jerked his head angrily to indicate that I had no business to be hanging around and watching. He did not speak to me, in accordance with an unwritten rule that hospital servants do not speak while they are wheeling patients along corridors; but his eyes spoke volumes. I returned his look with all the insolence I could muster. Then I lowered my eyes to the face of the man on the trolley, which was at that moment passing in front of me. The man on the trolley was Hugo.