Judith (16 page)

‘There is a story by Heinrich von Kleist about humans not being viable in the way that animals and gods are viable: in order to stay alive, humans have to go right round the world and into their garden again by the back way.'

I was sitting with my back against one of the pillars at the edge of the enormous hall. There were the bodies precisely and at random scattered and ordered on the floor.

I thought – We have been tipped over on to this strange level like those sticks, or dice, which you throw and then observe: through what has been by chance, you think you have a glimpse into the ordering of the future.

Bodies fall this way or that; they fly, or land on pavements out of windows.

I wondered whether the woman with the fair round face had waited for me. The voice had stopped. People in ones and twos began to leave the enormous hall.

I did not know what to do. That white light had come down. Where do you go when you see there is nowhere to go that is not a theatre?

The hook that had been for so long tugging at my throat had got me, it seemed, to the foot of this voice from the ceiling: I now lifted my head: gritted my teeth: it was as if, yes, the hook was being taken out: I seemed to be having a small fit. There was cold air coming in through the holes of my wounds: I opened my mouth: there was some sort of scream: I thought – or is this like music? Or I was one of those pieces of sculpture being discovered in the stone but it was being hit and hit by the chisel and was making its protest to the sky; do not sculptors love figures making their protest to the sky! I did not want to move: I did not want to do whatever it was to grow and become human: there seemed some obscenity even (was this
what the voice had suggested?) in the business of survival. There had been a time in my childhood when I had been left alone in the house after my parents had tricked me into not taking me somewhere with them: I had heard my father say – She'll get over it. But I had said to myself – I will not. I will stay in the dust for ever.

I did not know what I was doing in this enormous hall. I was the child on the edge of a bed; the cold air was like fire: there were figures in white coats advancing with sticks to push into your throat; your eyes.

Why should I not be one of the bodies spread on the pavement; to be picked up and put in a barrow?

The woman with hair that was like an aura of light came and sat cross-legged beside me on the concrete floor. She arranged her golden robe across her knees. It was as if she were preparing some space for me. She put her arm round me and pulled me towards her; but this time she went on pulling me, as if there were some task to be done, something almost mechanical on the workshop floor of the enormous hall. She seemed to be trying to get me on to her lap: this did not seem possible; I was too large. I was an old body, dangling, being pulled and bumped up a rock-face. After a time I found myself half on and half off her lap. I lay there quite easily. I had my knees up by my chin; my head against her legs. I thought – You mean, this is no obscenity? There was that hard rather violent taste and smell. It was in my mouth, like a finger. I held my mouth open. She still did not speak.

Just in front of my face, where it lay on her lap, was one of her feet, where she sat cross-legged. I thought – Her toe is like one of those toes of a Pope or a Buddha which people crawl to lick or to suck –

– Of course, a toe is like a breast.

She said ‘Go on. You do what you like.'

People who came to the Garden had usually suffered some catastrophe in their lives; how else would they have been tipped out of the particular niches of their minds?

I was taken to one of the thatched huts in the scrubland between the Garden and the sea. The hut was round, with mud-brick walls, like a hut in any tropical country. Inside there were three double bunks; stools and a low table and a charcoal brazier by the door.

Living in the hut into which I moved there were four other girls and one man; we did not come to know each other well; one of the points of the Garden was that it was ourselves we should try to come to know. We were told – Many of the catastrophes in our lives had been caused by our taking to be people what were shadows of our own projection: we could not get to know other people until we knew ourselves.

The four girls in the hut into which I moved were called Ingrid, Samantha, Gopi and Belle. Ingrid was a German who had been on the fringe of some terrorist group; she had spent time in jail. Samantha was an Australian who had had cosmetic surgery which had gone wrong and one of her breasts was rock-hard and larger than the other. Gopi was a small American girl who wore headbands like a Red Indian. Belle was Irish and pregnant, and had one or two children being looked after by her mother at home.

The man, or boy, was called Sylvester: he was Scandinavian: he had long fair hair and looked like the figurehead of a ship. It was usually he who did the cooking. He would sit by the brazier half in and half out of the door and would sing sad songs in his gutteral language. (Well, why is it women who are the figureheads of ships?)

When I was first taken to the hut there was no one there and it was, yes, like the mock-up of some nest: there were clothes and blankets over the floor: there was that smell which seems to be a mixture of fish and stale bread. One of the bottom bunks seemed to be free; it was used as a shelf for tins and plates. I thought – I shall lie on the tins like a fakir to demonstrate my goodwill: or would this be seen as self-destructive?

How shall I describe life in the Garden, and in the hut: one of the purposes of the Garden was that not much should seem to be going on. Growth occurs, doesn't it, when nothing seems
to be happening: drama is to do with violence and death. You can describe easiest what is to do with destruction: language is not for what goes on quietly, behind one's back, in the dark.

How much do you know about this sort of thing – this Zen thing, Buddha thing, Tantra thing, Tao thing? (I mean you or you: I know about you!)

You have to become emptied, hollowed out, like a flute: then God can play you.

People have been saying this, yes, for centuries: they've also been saying it can't be said.

God is there, inside you, outside you: you get rid of the barriers of the ego, and you become part of the whole.

Put it into words and it is not quite there: do not try to put it into words and how can it be known?

So you make shots at it, don't you, and let them go. Every now and then you look round; and one or two are on the target.

In our hut, in the evenings, we would go about our business as if we were denizens of some shrine – oil-lamps like fireflies flickered; there was the smoke perhaps of incense; what we were honouring, I suppose, was just a nothingness so that something that might be ourselves might grow in the dark. There is always a nothingness, is there not, within a holy of holies. Ingrid was a long lean German girl who would take her clothes off and lie on her stomach on her top bunk; she was like a leopard up a tree: she would let a paw hang down. Gopi would climb up like a monkey on to Ingrid's back; she would sit astride her to massage her; she would press on ribs and shoulders, getting flowers out of stone, her own small breasts like arrows pointing down. Samantha would do exercises on the floor, wrapping an ankle, or a knee, round the back of her neck so that she became like one of those puzzles which make globes or cubes out of bits of slotted wood. When Belle came in she was like blown leaves; lamps were apt to go out; there was the impression of cats being swept along by broomsticks. Sylvester, in the doorway, would hang on to the legs of his brazier until Belle had passed by: then he would continue with
his stirring, or poking about with forks, like someone trying to demonstrate a more practical form of witchcraft.

There was a plastic washbasin on a stand in the hut; a communal tap in the space between four or five huts. There was a building with latrines that people tried to avoid. We wandered off, with bundles of clothes to wash, down to the estuary.

There was one evening when Belle swept in with more violence than usual and one of the chains, or belts, that she wore round her skirts like grappling irons caught on the string of beads that Sylvester wore round his neck: Sylvester fell back, was dragged, like some victim behind a cart. The pan that he had been holding, containing hot oil, shot into the air: Gopi and Ingrid, on the top bunk, thrashed about like people attacked by bats. Samantha, enrapt in the lotus position on the floor, her eyes closed, did not see that a drop of hot oil had landed on her one large breast. Smoke arose from it: a black hole slowly appeared; we watched transfixed. I thought – For the seventh level of consciousness, it is best to have a plastic breast?

We were all trying not to be characters in the Garden: characters are what are formed by families and by society: characters are what stop you growing, like a shell. But then – in what way do you know people which is not to do with their characters? What do you know of a society of people trying to know themselves?

I thought – We have come to this cave: we know we are shadows –

– Those people who think they see substances, they do not have the substance to know they are shadows?

‘Hullo.'

‘Hullo.'

‘How are you?'

‘I'm sorry if I was rude.'

‘Oh that is all right.'

I had come across the Indian boy again a few evenings later
outside the gate of the Garden. He was sitting by a rug on which there were exotic shells for sale. The shells had spikes like crowns of thorns. It seemed already that I had been a long time in the Garden.

‘I didn't feel very well.'

‘Is this your first time in the Garden?'

‘Yes.'

‘How does it strike you here?'

I picked up one of the shells. I thought – Don't do this: put it down: I have been only a few days in the Garden.

I said ‘Did you collect these yourself?'

‘Yes.'

‘They're very beautiful.'

I thought – But you do not protect yourself here, do you, you are protected: and it is true that this shell is beautiful.

He said ‘It is not a good environment in the Garden.'

‘Why not?'

‘The sanitary conditions are not good.'

I thought – Good heavens, it is true that the sanitary conditions are not good!

He said ‘There is offensive behaviour, and drugs.'

I put the shell back on the rug. I thought – You give up, don't you; you let things go their own way, behind your back.

I said ‘No drugs of any kind are allowed in the Garden.'

‘But they are allowed outside.'

‘Yes.'

‘So what is the difference?'

I thought – You mean, you want me to tell you the difference?

He said ‘Will you come for a walk with me?'

He was tall; much taller than the Indian boy in London. He wore a white shirt and black trousers.

I thought – Oh well, what is the point of an experiment if you do not sometimes look, even in these early days, to see how it is getting on?

He said ‘What this country needs is agricultural techniques and machinery.'

I said ‘Have you always lived here?'

He said ‘I live in the village.'

We had gone a short way into the scrubland at the side of the track that went down the estuary. We stopped. I thought – Where are those three dogs that were playing in that picture?

I said ‘The local people don't like the Garden?'

‘No.'

‘It isn't doing any harm. It isn't stopping anyone bringing in agricultural techniques, and machinery.'

‘It spreads superstition. This country has enough superstition.'

‘But the Garden is against superstition. It is trying to make people look at what is actually happening.'

I thought – But, indeed, what is the use of words; did not that girl get the wound in her throat to tell her this about talking?

He said ‘You are clever. But you do not know what it is like to live in a country that is not clever. People want to go on as before.'

I thought – Supposing he were the snake: supposing Eve just gave up arguing, and stood with the snake by the track that goes down towards the river –

Then – You mean, this is the sort of projection I put on to people?

I said ‘But you are clever. You speak English very well.'

He said ‘I teach in the school.'

I said ‘What do you teach?'

He said ‘Mathematics, and English.'

I thought – And you will want someone to help you with your English in the evenings?

He hitched up his trousers and tucked in his shirt. There were bones jutting out of him as if he had once been wrapped too tightly, like a plant with wires cutting into it.

He said ‘You want to be careful. The police will come and clear you out.'

I said ‘You can't say – The police will come and clear you out!'

He stared at me. He had clear skin, and a small moustache. I thought – But still, projections are energy; they are like gravity; what is the relationship between good and evil? He said ‘I am sorry.'

I said ‘These people in the Garden are just the same as you: they have their fears, miseries, rages.' He said ‘They have more money.' I said ‘Some have more money.'

I waited. I thought – And enmity stirs up lust: or is it lust that stirs up enmity?

He took hold of my hand.

I thought – But if I know it makes no difference whether or not he takes hold of my hand –

He said ‘I was hoping to find someone who will help me with my English in the evenings.'

I said ‘Look, I will try to help you with your English one day. I can't do it now. I've not been well.'

He said ‘Thank you.' Then – ‘What has been wrong with you?'

I said ‘I'm all right.'

He said ‘Tomorrow?'

I shouted ‘No!'

I thought I might turn and run. But this, of course, would make things more interesting.