The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch
‘Better be careful. What’s the compulsion?’
‘I just want to spend a friendly ten minutes with him so that I can dismiss him from my mind. Without that he haunts me.’
‘He can haunt people.’
‘He used to come to tea with you all. And he gave Sefton tutorials! I bet she was terrified.’
‘It must have been a strain, but she says she learnt a lot.’
‘Learning is her thing, she’s docile, I wish I was. And you’re really a scholar too though you put on that act.’
‘What act?’
‘Oh world-weariness, older than the rocks among which you sit, and so on. It comes of being so beautiful. Tu ris de te voir. I’m lucky to know you. You haven’t started yet, and neither have I. Aleph, I’m a fool, forgive me!’
‘My dear!’ she reached out to take his hand. The crutches fell to the floor.
At that moment the sound of the piano came from the Aviary. ‘That’s Sefton.’ They listened. ‘Let’s go down, Harvey, I want to sing.’
My dear son,
I write in haste to reply to important points and queries in your last letter. Let me repeat that the solitude which you seem to be imposing on yourself is not wise. Long periods of self-imposed solitude are only advisable in the context of some orderly spiritual discipline. Otherwise they may tend to degenerate into self-indulgent fantasy. I suggest once more that you go out and serve your neighbours. You have had experience of such service in the past and are now well placed to find out those in need. I would also advise you not to proceed with what appears to be your cult of archangels! The worship of angels is an idolatry against which we are cautioned. I connect this observation with your wish, expressed some time ago, for a revelation or sign. You must be humble enough to do without these luxuries. May I further urge you not to picture Our Lord as a soldier. This sort of ‘dramatisation’ of what is holy is, in your case, a form of egoism. See in Christ poverty, humility, service, love. Galatians 3.20, said by some to be what Browning had in mind, is of interest in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity, this could more profitably be discussed later on. Meister Eckhart was not excommunicated, nor was he, though inconclusively tried for heresy, ever declared to be a heretic during his lifetime. Certain of his writings were condemned as heretical in 1329 shortly after his death. These judgments were revoked in 1980. Please excuse a short letter. Work and pray, pray always, be earnest in your endeavours, consider seriously where your vocation lies. Yours humbly in Christo,
Damien
My dear Father Damien,
Thank you for your letter, you are very kind to answer my letters so promptly. I take note of all your admonitions. I have been to Mass and to confession and discovered a fine young priest in this locality. I have also, rather less successfully, made some excursions in the service of others. As you rightly say I have had plenty of experience – but organised ‘social work’ is unlike the solitary enterprises of the ‘self-employed’! (I remember we once discussed whether I would not be happier as a Franciscan.) About angels and archangels, of course I realise they are not to be worshipped like God and Christ. I read in a book that physical pain can cure mental pain, body silences mind and God can enter. I see them as God’s justice, purgatory, cum vix iustus sit securus, I would like to feel I had a stern and austere guardian angel, I desire to be struck down like St Paul. All this I connect with my own notion of dark night against which I know you have warned me. Please forgive these rambling thoughts which it relieves me to pour out to you. By the way (I hope this is not improper!) I went to a nearby Anglican Church which runs a soup kitchen for poor vagrant people and attended a service during which God was persistently referred to as ‘She’. Is it wrong to be horrified? After all, God is beyond human distinctions of sex and changing the traditional He to She raises a senseless problem, bringing God down to the level of a human. You see what I mean. (I do not intend to connect this with my earlier hesitations about the worship of Our Lady.) As for women priests, that is quite another matter, and I am well content to follow the teaching of the Church. Please write to me again soon, your letters are as manna in the desert. Yours ever in obedience, your loving son,
Bellamy
P.S. Is it possible that these are the last days of the world and we are to look for an anti-Christ?
Bellamy usually enjoyed writing to Father Damien, letting his doubts and exclamations flow free as to an old friend. He had been rescued by that kind and worthy priest from a state of depression which had been more alarming than usual. He had been directed to Father Damien by a priest to whom he had at last randomly confessed in a church in north London. Anax, who had sat patiently outside the confessional, had been made much of by the priest after Bellamy’s gloomy recital was over, and it was after that they had sat down in the empty church and talked in a more personal manner. Bellamy had spoken wildly about death and leaving the world, and the priest had mentioned Father Damien. Since then Bellamy had developed his intense filial, almost childish, relationship with his secluded mentor, whom he had visited with trepidation at the lonely abbey in Northumberland. Bellamy immediately loved the place, its ancient grey walls conspicuous at the end of the valley, its solitude, its silence, its unworldly purity, its absolute and tranquil discipline, its evident benign existence as a prison. One thing disappointed him: he had expected to converse with his spiritual director dimly through the bars of a grille, but in the modern manner Father Damien had met him in a bright neat modern parlour with stiff shiny furniture and prints of local views upon the walls. The priest, not an old man, in his black and white robes, was pale, etiolated as if deprived of light, his faintly wrinkled face, and his long thin hands which lay stretched out motionless upon the table, were preternaturally clean. His straight dry hair was grey, his attentive clever eyes were light blue. He spoke quietly in a clear cultivated ‘academic’ voice, smiling at intervals a thin gentle smile, asking Bellamy a number of questions. His presence in the room was expressive of some infinitely great authority. Bellamy’s voice trembled as he answered the questions. Beyond their conversation lay a vast silence, broken once by a bell. Bellamy, breathing in that silence and apprehending that authority, felt I have come home. He felt, here is purity and truth and love, and by those I desire to be consumed. The meeting lasted forty minutes, at the end of which Bellamy asked to be admitted to the order.
He was told to be patient, he was told to wait. Their correspondence began. After several months Father Damien saw him again, but without uttering encouragement, rather suggesting caution. Meanwhile Bellamy was busy dismantling his life. As time continued to go on Bellamy began to fear that his beloved mentor, after at first taking him seriously had on reflection become disappointed, had perhaps ‘seen through’ Bellamy, perceived him as a romancer, a chronic idolater, hopelessly given over to ‘self-indulgent fantasy’. So, as such, he was being quietly given up. This doubt touched Bellamy at times with its cold finger hinting at a possible relapse into the old despair. Giving up his job and his flat, moving to the little room in Whitechapel, had for a time animated him, affording a seeming glimpse or vision of the contemplative life. But now more often the old stale hopeless weariness overcame him: the black sickness which almost no one else, certainly not his nearest dearest friends, could understand at all. The idea of giving up the world, which had given him for a time so much life-energy, appeared now as a sort of fake suicide, a ghastly play-image of his death. This fatal falseness-of-heart was what perhaps Father Damien, on further acquaintance, had now seen in him. The holy man now thought that service might be a cure, might at any rate arouse his penitent’s interest in the suffering of others and lead him out into some real, more genuine, open field. But Bellamy’s ‘solitary enterprises’ as he had described them, had been fruitless, it had been as if he were searching the neighbourhood for beggars and outcasts so as simply to sneer at them. Even the kind people at the Anglican soup kitchen did not want him. No one seemed to need him, everyone, like Father Damien
He became aware that a man was standing outside and tapping on the window, interrupting the straight courses of the running rain. He stared. It was Clement. He ran to open the door.
‘You were just sitting there like a statue, I couldn’t attract your attention. Your bell doesn’t work, you know. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes, I was meditating. Why, you’re soaked.’
‘Of course I’m soaked, I came out without an umbrella. I’ve left my car on a building lot, I hope it won’t be attacked, everything around here seems to be being knocked down. Do you mind if I put my coat here and let it drip? This place smells, is the sink blocked? It’s hellish cold in here, no wonder you’re wearing two jerseys.’
‘It’s so kind of you to come and see me, I’m so glad you’ve come! What time is it?’
‘It’s three o’clock, in the afternoon in case you aren’t sure. Bellamy, sit down – ’
‘I’ll put something in the meter and turn on the fire – ’
‘No, no, I’m only staying for a moment, listen. Lucas asked me to tell you, it’s in the strictest confidence.’
‘What, what – ?’
‘That chap that Lucas killed, you know – ’
‘Of course I know!’
‘Well, he’s not dead. The doctors evidently thought he was dead and the press said he was dead, and Lucas thought he was dead, but he recovered and he turned up at Lucas’s place – ’
‘What, and Lucas didn’t know – ?’
‘No, it was a complete surprise.’
‘But, Clement, how marvellous, how wonderful, Lucas must be so glad, so relieved, he didn’t kill a man after all, it’s like a miracle – ’
‘Oh yes, it’s great – ’
‘It’s like Lazarus, how splendid, raised from the dead, and he liberates Lucas, doesn’t he, takes away that black cloud, when I saw Lucas he was so – I’d love to meet him, have you seen him, what’s he like?’
‘I haven’t seen him and I don’t know what he’s like.’
‘How kind of Lucas to send you to tell me – ’
‘Well, don’t tell the others please.’
‘I won’t tell anyone, but – ’
‘Why do you live in this awful dump, what do you do all day? Can’t you either get yourself into that bloody monastery or else live an ordinary useful rational life? Or do you want to be a freak living in a wood and picking up sticks like Tessa Millen? You’re such a hopeless muddler, always arranging to make yourself fail and be miserable – all right, I know, I know, I’m sorry – ’
‘Clement, do stay here, don’t go, let’s spend the rest of the day together, we can walk though the City and look at the churches – ’
‘In this rain? Anyway I can’t, I must rescue my car, anyway I’ve got to go to the theatre, I’ve got to rescue someone’s botched design, and arrange a bloody poetry reading, oh never mind – I’ll come another time, to see you I mean, if you haven’t been removed – ’
‘By men in white coats?’
‘No, fool, by your priest, or by God or – oh hell – ’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. It’s just the rain. Look, your window leaks, it’s coming in, it’s not just my mackintosh. Goodbye.’
‘You lost us some cards, I did too. I was taken by surprise.’
‘You mean we should just have denied it all or pretended not to understand?’
‘It’s still not too late to try, his memory may be hazy. Damn it, I haven’t time for this wretched business – he may be a fool after all, a weak man putting on an act, the thing is to settle him quickly, confuse him and send him packing. He must be sent away mystified.’
‘Suppose he wants to take you to court.’
‘Us, Clement, us. I don’t think it will come to that. I’m afraid he wants money. We must treat him like a poor confused creature who had a blow on the head. Perhaps that’s what he really is. Still, I can’t make him out, there’s something wrong. He seems intelligent and cultivated, yet he’s some sort of outsider, intruder – ’
‘He’s an immigrant, or his father was.’
‘It’s more than that, I don’t like him, he’s a cursed nuisance, I don’t care for ghosts, why couldn’t he die decently.’
‘Perhaps he just wants you to say you’re sorry.’
‘What for? Think, my dear, think.’
‘All right, all right. But he did want to make you say you didn’t believe he was a thief.’
‘Yes, but that’s a trifle. Well, we shall see what is to come. It is nearly six o’clock. I don’t want you in the room. He may turn out simply to be mad, that might be best provided he isn’t violent. Stay in the front room, but keep the doors open. There’s the bell. Let him in.’
Clement had let him in, smiling and saying nothing. The visitor smiled too and said nothing. He followed Clement to the drawing-room. Lucas, standing behind his big desk, bowed his head slightly and pointed to a chair placed facing the desk about ten feet from it. The visitor returned the bow. He pulled the chair forward and stood beside it, looking back at Clement who was still at the door. Clement raised a hand, then slid out through the door leaving it ajar. The visitor turned to Lucas. Lucas sat down and immediately began to talk.
‘Please sit down, Mr Mir, I expect you must be feeling a bit weak, after all I imagine you are still convalescent. If you remember you kindly told us your name. I must congratulate you on your recovery and I am glad to see you so alive and well. It is kind of you to visit me again. I am sorry that I cannot give you much time and we must have a brief, though I am sure pleasant, chat. What a blessing the rain has stopped. When did you leave the hospital, on what date?’
Mir had sat down and placed his umbrella and his trilby hat upon the floor. He was wearing a long black mackintosh of which he now undid the buttons. He replied, ‘I can’t remember exactly.’
‘I quite understand. A certain confusion must be part of such a condition, areas of the memory are lost. I hope you have good doctors. I expect they are still keeping an eye on you. Do you see them regularly?’
‘I have stopped seeing them.’
‘Surely that is not wise? I imagined you would still be having helpful therapy? Who was the specialist in charge of your case? I’m afraid I can’t remember what hospital you were in.’
Mir did not reply to this question, he simply shook his head slowly.
‘Well, all that is your affair. I am glad to see you again and to express my sympathy. I would like to be able to help you, but I am afraid I cannot see any way in which I could. This brief quiet talk is certainly in order, and may be, in its way, a relief to both of us. Let us be gracious to each other and be content with just this meeting, for which I can well understand your desire. There is little to say. Perhaps we have already said it. I say sincerely that I wish you well.’
Mir, who had been looking at Lucas with a slight frown, said, ‘Where’s the other chap, I mean your brother?’
‘The other chap is working in the front room, he assists me sometimes.’
‘I thought he was an actor.’
‘He sometimes acts. This does not make him an actor. I am sure your family must be very happy with your recovery. I expect you are staying with them.’
‘I have no family.’
‘Well, that too may be a blessing.’
‘You evidently thought so. Why did you want to kill him?’
‘I am afraid you are confused. I never wanted to kill anybody. I am very sorry for the damage and disturbance
‘I saw you trying to kill that man. You were holding a club. I think I saw it lying on your desk when I first visited you.’
‘You are talking wildly. Indeed you are dreaming. I fear our conversation is getting nowhere. Look, let us be reasonable, I do not want to waste your time any more than my own. I have agreed to see you again, I have spoken to you with sympathy. Your conjectures and your, perhaps unintentionally, portentous tone, are not assisting our discussion. Come, that won’t do! I am sure that you do not want, after your unpleasant experience, to land yourself in further fruitless complications which would only damage yourself and not me. Truly, I do not want to cause you any more harm. You spoke of restitution, but I think that is better forgotten. Perhaps you are short of money? It occurs to me that this may be what you want. But of course – ’
‘You are offering me money? I can assure you that I am not after money. I have plenty of money.’
‘That is just as well, as I have not. That being so, Mr Mir, I cannot see how I can assist you, and as I said I do not want to take up more of your time.’
‘Oh I have plenty of time, indeed I have nothing but time, since thanks to you I am now unemployed. What is your brother’s first name by the way?’
‘His name is Clement – ’
‘A good name. Would you mind if he were to join us? I imagine he is listening at the door in any case.’ Without waiting for Lucas’s gesture Mir rose and strode to the half-open door. Clement, standing outside, almost fell into the room. ‘Please come in, Clement, if I may call you so.’
‘Mr Mir is about to go’, said Lucas. ‘You sit there.’ He pointed to a chair near the door against the bookshelves. ‘By the way’, he said to Mir who was returning to his seat, ‘how did you know he was an actor?’
‘Well, I have, as I think I said, had plenty of time on my hands while I was waiting for you to reappear, some of that time I have employed studying your family and your friends, to whose houses after all, you might have returned.’