I Hear Voices (20 page)

Later he seems glazed and deflected, and, when I catch up with him near some fruit, he tries to explain gently and
truthfully
about this false métier.

“I should be such and such—have been—if I hadn’t—”

But the tendrils of the night are waving affectionately. These tendrils stem from a façade that glares with emerald and silver lights. Gore begins to shake his head and to look around, trying to pluck the tendrils from his ears where they have wound themselves in steel-strong bands of muttering temptation. He seeks to remain long enough to set me on the right road. He derides the Commissioner. And then, his restraint bursting suddenly, he whistles away back to Dolly, swearing that he must have “a word—a word with her—and then—”

And I return to my egg.

At once everything sinks away, the Commissioner, Gore, the part I have been playing in events, and I find myself sitting up in bed, hunched forward slightly over a cracked tray, alone and forgotten in a small room. Susan comes to the top of the stairs outside my room and remarks to some relative or female visitor.

“No, he’s no better. No, he never gets up—well, I do my best and take him his meals and such like but I don’t know how long—”

And the female visitor says, “Terrible. Terrible thing for you—yes —”

And then they go down again.

With a great effort I uncap my egg and listen for the sound of hunger. My stomach says, “You are hungry. You may eat,” but a moment later it contradicts itself and says, “Why should you eat? Why should you eat
their
food? They produced it. It’s the result of their unpleasant behavior. Why should you eat their food?”

“Why should he eat
their
food?”

“Why should he obey
their
voices?”

“He is narrow today.”

“Doing nicely.”

I shake my head unhappily, angry with the voices for telling me no more than I have realized already. I am also angry with them for trying to make me see too much at once. They never help me. They only criticize. No, they don’t criticize. What they really want is to make everything impossible, everything equally impossible. They’ve driven me here and they still drive me, although they’ve already forbidden all possible destinations. Demon voices! Devil voices! What do you want of me?

“We want you to sing.”

“We want you to make a good job of it.”

What, for example, do they want me to do with my eyes? Do they want me to see what I now see? I see a blur of shadow and objects and a bright slit between the curtains. Do they want me to see this room? Do they want me to see it only shadowy and dark as it now is? Or would they rather I saw it flooded with light? And will they stick up an August sun and melt the curtains so that I can see it radiant with light? And when I’ve seen it this way or that brighter way, do they want me to stay in it, or shut my eyes and seal in that dullness or brightness forever? Or do they want me to go out, one way, left
or right, and see what next comes? And do they want me to see it the way it comes or some special way? Which way? Only concerning my eyes now, only vision, voices, which way must I see?

“He must go on looking, isn’t that right?”

“I think that’s quite right.”

What is right? Voices? What is right?

But the voices have gone back into their box. I realize this quite clearly, and am on the whole more pleased than sorry. I look out through the slit of light and see part of a house and the ancient sky. Very little of the sky, at least from side to side, is visible and my human eyes do not penetrate very far. I am now quite alone in an alien room with only a morsel of house and sky. Each man is a prince attended by innumerable servants called molecules. But none of my attendants is here. Each man is a bladder of fire scraping through pumice stone.

I ask Radcliffe, the last of my molecules, to bring me a model and he brings me a model of a world. It is too large to be held conveniently and so he sets it on a stand in front of me. I look at it without interest at first and then, peering closer, I see that the only living thing on its surface is one bad boy who runs rapidly all about, imagining that he is trying to escape from an angry parent or master. As his distress abates, however, he begins to look about him and slowly to realize that he is rushing about on the surface of a model and that no one is in pursuit. When he has finally admitted this situation to himself, he sits down and looks terrified and then, bursting into fresh tears, he wishes that a parent or master were, in fact, pursuing him.

I thank Radcliffe and he removes the model. When he
returns
, I ask him if he conveyed my message.

“Oh yes,” nods Radcliffe, managing to infuse the affirmative with a curious and possibly insolent significance.

“And what did the Holy Father say?”

“He received me,” narrates Radcliffe, for it is his peculiarity as a menial to assume the manner of a great sage and prophet, “in a chamber decked for a celebration. About this chamber, pausing before the likenesses of his sanctified predecessors, he paraded for some time with great solemnity so that I was silent with bowed head imagining him to be preoccupied with matters dear to the spiritual aspiration of his holy office. Finally, after he already remained long before a narrow shrine or altar, erected in a sweet and airy alcove, I drew near, hoping,
perhaps
, to hear murmured and fragmentary reflections on the terrible origin and turbulent history of the macabre relics there displayed. However, ‘old bones’ the gaunt and olive pontiff was complaining, ‘and Irish linen. How bad the flies are.’ Then, not formally acknowledging my presence for the first time, but rather in the casual and sudden way that one long unfamiliar with other than reverent audience receives another into his mental world, he addressed me:

“‘Are not the flies bad?’

“But immediately a parched smile flickered across the august features as the tender voice amended, ‘No, it was yesterday—and in another place.’

“Then, nodding his head slowly, as if to affirm that, beneath shelter of these irrelevancies, he had been earnestly and profoundly considering that question which had been the subject of my mission, he slowly, gravely and yet—unless it was only in the ears of my loyalty that some subtle note of this last quality sounded—hopefully spoke once more.

“‘No words—I have no message for your master.’”

“And was that all, Radcliffe?” I ask the emanation. “He said no more?”

“He said more,” corrects Radcliffe gently, “many things. He spoke of the destruction and distortion of many things. He spoke of straight lines incredibly warped by the stresses of
expediency
and desire. He spoke of continuity and lingered on its father memory. He picked out a yellow-petalled flower and, separately, a yellow-skirted gown. The butterflies and
gossamer
, he intimated, had long since blown as dust. A patch of sunlight, urine, the towers of an imperial city. He spoke of that sequence which linked his office to every office, the partition of affairs, and, as he dwelt on problems of conation, he seemed to be confirmed in his earlier conclusion for, if anything more vehemently, he now repeated: ‘no words, no—tell him
nothing
—tell him nothing—’”

Radcliffe then describes his departure and his journey back.

“And it is not the same man,” affirms Radcliffe, although cloaking the element of genuinely felt truth in the words in a facetious manner, “that returns to you as left. Anyway—” he goes on more soberly, “that’s the end, isn’t it? My contract’s been fulfilled—I’m a free man and I shall be going.”

I thank Radcliffe for his faithful service and it is not without a genuine feeling of regret that I see him depart. I lie back and close my eyes. I do not think about the message Radcliffe brought me: in fact, in a sense, I reject it and see it diminishing swiftly, fading back into a mere point. Instead, I open my mind, although not yet my eyes, to the grey morning that is rising outside my window. Then I do open my eyes. My head is on the pillow and I see only the dark room containing a few dark objects and grey, pale slits between the curtains. I lie quietly for a while, intensely grateful for the warm enclosure of the blankets, the warm tube of body-warmed air in which I lie. I do not think of Radcliffe’s message.
Radcliffe?
As I say the name, I can not help frowning and then smiling. I close my eyes and feel the warmth of the bed lulling me, musically, hushing me to sleep again. But I resist its persuasion. Instead, I get out of bed intending to draw the curtains and then go back to the warmth and watch the day arrive. Having got out of bed,
however, something immobilizes me. I stand still, one foot
advanced
, trying to still the trembling of my cooled limbs and less listening than wondering if the sign that I seem to be expecting will be audible. The cold of the floor begins to eat into my bare feet and then a curious problem manifests instelf. As I
contemplate
this problem, the contemplation of it seems to become one of its attributes and I seem to brood for a long time. The
problem
is to know how I will ever be able to tell, if I move, whether I shouldn’t have waited a little longer. I allow the problem to hang suspended for a while and then another aspect of it
presents
itself, how to maintain it in its present form and yet go on considering it. As these new facets present themselves it seems to become increasingly imperative that I move and so break the spell, but, to a degree that seems exactly to balance this impulsion, the prohibition against moving until I have
resolved
the matter also grows more powerful. It is with a faint shock, therefore, of both daring and disbelief, that I do step forward a moment later and walk to the window. Then, when I draw the curtains, a tide of joy, that I fight to attach to something in the prospect before me, or in the thoughts or experiences I have recently had, rises within me. I look out, biting the slippery, inner lip, and struggling to contain the joy, the reverence, the wonder that now seem to invade me with choking force. There is nothing, nothing really, I try to tell myself, or rather the blown whisper of these words just grazes my consciousness before being swept away on the gale. There is nothing, not even a star. The street, the row of houses darkening away down the street, a few curtained windows
raying
orange light as early risers begin to awake, a few young trees and a few vehicles but all, except the lighted windows, hueless in the neutral dawn beneath a sky that is low, cool and moist. As the brief possession begins to ebb, a knowledge that I must ask myself quickly, before, dissolving like blown smoke, it is
gone and I see only the street and the grey sky again, what it was, what it contained, how much had to be fused into one huge impression to create that glimpse of the possibility of love. But, other than finding my lips framing the word “beyond” as my eyes try to penetrate beyond the boundaries of the street, racing from dim steeple to distant gleam and “beyond,” I seem to lose it even as I grasp it, though not as if it were too tenuous to hold but rather as if our relative velocities differed so greatly that, in the very instant that my mind closed around it, it flashed beyond the range of thought.

And then I find that I am merely standing at the bleak pane watching the dawn of another suburban day and, no more than a few seconds later, as I still stir faintly to some after-sting of the experience, a new interest solicits my attention and rapidly becomes a formidable candidate. Between two dark boundaries of curtain, a narrow channel of light has just afforded a glimpse of Mrs. Groggins in her nightgown. I attach my glance to the tantalizing aperture but it suddenly expands rapidly as the
curtains
are drawn revealing both that Mrs. Groggins is not, in fact, clad in a nightgown but fully dressed and also that she is not Mrs. Groggins at all but someone who makes me think of celery. After having drawn the curtains, the nameless woman retreats, and then slides out of my area of vision. Almost
immediately
, the light in the room goes out leaving a dark eye.
Footsteps
sound, and, on the other side of the street, a man and a small parcel pass rhythmically down towards the railings. The patience of a draught is rewarded as my shoulders shrink
suddenly
from its persistent assault. My whole body now, having been apprised of its vulnerability, trembles with cold and I pad rapidly across the room and climb into bed.

There I lie on my side, as I had intended to do earlier, in order to watch the new, grey day arrive. But before very long I hear voices.