Олдос Хаксли: Those Barren Leaves

‘How wonderful life is!’ said Mary Thriplow. ‘Life … ’

‘Cranmer’s hand,’ Calamy went on, ‘had done an ignoble thing. The hand is part, not merely of a living being, but of a being that knows good and evil. This hand of mine can do good things and bad things. It has killed a man, for example; it has written all manner of words; it has helped a man who was hurt; it has touched your body.’ He laid his hand on her breast; she started, she trembled involuntarily under his caress. He ought to think that rather flattering, oughtn’t he? It was a symbol of his power over her—of her power, alas, over him. ‘And when it touches your body,’ he went on, ‘it touches also your mind. My hand moves like this, and it moves through your consciousness as well as here, across your skin. And it’s my mind that orders it to move; it brings your body into my mind. It exists in mind; it has reality as a part of my soul and a part of yours.’

Miss Thriplow couldn’t help reflecting that there was, in all this, the stuff for a very deep digression in one of her novels. “This thoughtful young writer … ” would be quoted from the reviewers on the dust–cover of her next book.

‘Go on,’ she said.

Calamy went on. ‘And so these,’ he said, ‘are some of the ways—and there are plenty more, of course, besides—these are some of the ways in which my hand exists and is real. This shape which interrupts the light—it is enough to think of it for five minutes to perceive that it exists simultaneously in a dozen parallel worlds. It exists as electrical charges; as chemical molecules; as living cells; as part of a moral being, the instrument of good and evil; in the physical world and in mind. And from this one goes on to ask, inevitably, what relationship exists between these different modes of being. What is there in common between life and chemistry; between good and evil and electrical charges; between a collection of cells and the consciousness of a caress? It’s here that the gulfs begin to open. For there isn’t any connection—that one can see, at any rate. Universe lies on the top of universe, layer after layer, distinct and separate … ’

‘Like a Neapolitan ice,’ Mary’s mind flew at once to the fantastic and unexpected comparison. “This witty young writer … ” That was already on her dust–covers.

Calamy laughed. ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘Like a Neapolitan ice, if you like. What’s true in the chocolate layer, at the bottom of the ice, doesn’t hold in the vanilla at the top. And a lemon truth is different from a strawberry truth. And each one has just as much right to exist and to call itself real as every other. And you can’t explain one in terms of the others. Certainly you can’t explain the vanilla in terms of any of the lower layers—you can’t explain mind as mere life, as chemistry, as physics. That at least is one thing that’s perfectly obvious and self–evident.’

‘Obvious,’ Mary agreed. ‘And what’s the result of it all? I really don’t see.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Calamy, speaking through an explosion of melancholy laughter. ‘The only hope,’ he went on slowly, ‘is that perhaps, if you went on thinking long enough and hard enough, you might arrive at an explanation of the chocolate and the lemon by the vanilla. Perhaps it’s really all vanilla, all mind, all spirit. The rest is only apparent, an illusion. But one has no right to say so until one has thought a long time, in freedom.’

‘In freedom?’

‘The mind must be open, unperturbed, empty of irrelevant things, quiet. There’s no room for thoughts in a half–shut, cluttered mind. And thoughts won’t enter a noisy mind; they’re shy, they remain in their obscure hiding–places below the surface, where they can’t be got at, so long as the mind is full and noisy. Most of us pass through life without knowing that they’re there at all. If one wants to lure them out, one must clear a space for them, one must open the mind wide and wait. And there must be no irrelevant preoccupations prowling around the doors. One must free oneself of those.’

‘I suppose I’m one of the irrelevant preoccupations,’ said Mary Thriplow, after a little pause.

Calamy laughed, but did not deny it.

‘If that’s so,’ said Mary, ‘why did you make love to me?’

Calamy did not reply. Why indeed? He had often asked that question himself.

‘I think it would be best,’ she said, after a silence, ‘if we were to make an end.’ She would go away, she would grieve in solitude.

‘Make an end?’ Calamy repeated. He desired it, of course, above everything—to make an end, to be free. But he found himself adding, with a kind of submarine laughter below the surface of his voice: ‘Do you think you can make an end?’

‘Why not?’

‘Suppose I don’t allow you to?’ Did she imagine, then, that she wasn’t in his power, that he couldn’t make her obey his will whenever he desired? ‘I don’t allow you,’ he said, and his voice quivered with the rising mirth. He bent over her and began to kiss her on the mouth; with his hands he held and caressed her. What an insanity, he said to himself.

‘No, no.’ Mary struggled a little; but in the end she allowed herself to be overcome. She lay still, trembling, like one who has been tortured on the rack.

On their return, somewhat low–spirited, from Montefiascone, Mrs. Aldwinkle and her party found Mary Thriplow alone in the palace.

‘And Calamy?’ Mrs. Aldwinkle inquired.

‘He’s gone into the mountains,’ said Miss Thriplow in a serious, matter–of–fact voice.

‘Why?’

‘He felt like that,’ Mary answered. ‘He wanted to be alone to think. I understand it so well. The prospect of your return filled him almost with terror. He went off two or three days ago.’

‘Into the mountains?’ echoed Mrs. Aldwinkle. ‘Is he sleeping in the woods, or in a cave, or something of that kind?’

‘He’s taken a room in a peasant’s cottage on the road up to the marble quarries. It’s a lovely place.’

‘This sounds most interesting,’ said Mr. Cardan. ‘I must really climb up and have a look at him.’

‘I’m sure he’d rather you didn’t,’ said Miss Thriplow. ‘He wants to be left alone. I understand it so well,’ she repeated.

Mr. Cardan looked at her curiously; her face expressed a bright and serious serenity. ‘I’m surprised that you too don’t retire from the world,’ he said, twinkling. He had not felt as cheerful as this since before the dismal day of poor Grace’s funeral.

Miss Thriplow smiled a Christian smile. ‘You think it’s a joke,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But it isn’t really, you know.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t,’ Mr. Cardan made haste to protest. ‘And believe me, I never meant to imply that it was. Never, on my word. I merely said—quite seriously, I assure you—that I was surprised that you too …’

‘Well, you see, it doesn’t seem to me necessary to go away bodily,’ Miss Thriplow explained. ‘It’s always seemed to me that one can live the hermit’s life, if one wants to, in the heart of London, anywhere.’

‘Quite,’ said Mr. Cardan. ‘You’re perfectly right.’

‘I think he might have waited till I came back,’ said Mrs. Aldwinkle rather resentfully. ‘The least he could have done was to leave a note.’ She looked at Miss Thriplow angrily, as though it were she who were to blame for Calamy’s impoliteness. ‘Well, I must go and get out of my dusty clothes,’ she added crossly, and walked away to her room. Her irritation was the disguise and public manifestation of a profound depression. They’re all going, she was thinking, they’re all slipping away. First Chelifer, now Calamy. Like all the rest. Mournfully she looked back over her life. Everybody, everything had always slipped away from her. She had always missed all the really important, exciting things; they had invariably happened, somehow, just round the corner, out of her sight. The days were so short, so few now. Death approached, approached. Why had Cardan brought that horrible imbecile creature to die in front of her like that? She didn’t want to be reminded of death. Mrs. Aldwinkle shuddered. I’m getting old, she thought; and the little clock on the mantel–piece, ticking away in the silence of her huge room, took up the refrain: Getting old, getting old, getting old, it repeated again and again, endlessly. Getting old—Mrs. Aldwinkle looked at herself in the glass—and that electric massage machine hadn’t arrived. True, it was on its way; but it would be weeks before it got here. The posts were so slow. Everything conspired against her. If she had had it before, if she’d looked younger … who knew? Getting old, getting old, repeated the little clock. In a couple of days from now Chelifer would be going back to England; he’d go away, he’d live apart from her, live such a wonderful, beautiful life. She’d miss it all. And Calamy had already gone; what was he doing, sitting there in the mountains? He was thinking wonderful thoughts, thoughts that might hold the secret she had always been seeking and had never found, thoughts that might bring the consolation and tranquillity of which she always so sorely stood in need. She was missing them, she’d never know them. Getting old, getting old. She took off her hat and tossed it on to the bed. It seemed to her that she was the unhappiest woman in the world.