Judith (21 page)

The interior of this church into which I went was huge and cavernous like a riding-school: decorations had been taken down or had never been put up: walls were white and soft and peeling like acid on skin. There was one huge and battered crucifix at the back of the altar: one of the nails had come out-not from the hands or feet but from the wall – so that the whole contraption seemed to be swinging round to deliver some blow. I had moved into the middle of the church: someone was coming in at the door behind me. I felt I could not bear it if it was Eccleston: surely memories do not come down from their niches and pursue you? I thought I might take refuge behind the altar: swing round with that crucifix like a weapon in my hand – someone had come up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. When I turned it was my Indian friend, Shastri. Shastri had taken to waiting and following me outside the Garden. I have not really explained about this: one does not explain, does one, when things become too boring. I had been with him once or twice to his uncle's house: I would not go just when he wanted me. I suppose this was my fault: I suppose it was not my fault. Shastri said ‘What are you doing here?' I thought – Now Eccleston will come in, will he, and he will see me having some fracas with an Indian boy: we will be back at the hostel behind Victoria Station. Do you not see that this might be boring? Shastri said ‘You are meeting someone here?' Well this is the sort of thing that memories say, is it not. Shastri must have followed me all the way through the jungle. I said ‘No I'm not meeting anyone here.' Shastri said ‘Then why didn't you want me to come with you?' I thought – Because you say things like: then why didn't you want me to come with you. The door behind us opened and someone else was coming in. I thought – Now, it will be Eccleston: and he will not quite know, will he, what is real and what is memory: might we not be actors in the seventeenth century? Whoever it was began to walk very slowly up the centre of the church. I was sure it was Eccleston. Shastri remained holding me by the arm. I thought – Well, heigh-ho, let's see what happens this time. When Eccleston was half-way towards the altar he
turned and said ‘Hullo!' I said ‘Hullo!' He had this long knobbly face like a Jerusalem artichoke. He said ‘I wondered if it was you.' I said ‘Yes it's me.' I thought – Do you think this is how people greeted their memories in the seventeenth century? like Stanley, or whoever it was, later, in some jungle. Shastri said ‘Excuse me I am with this lady.' Eccleston had a way of looking at people as if he were enormously amused: I wondered how he would look if he were in fact amused. He said ‘I am so sorry, will you excuse me if I have just a quick word with this lady.' Shastri said ‘Go ahead.' Eccleston said ‘How are you?' I said ‘All right.' Eccleston said ‘I would like to talk to you: I wonder if you would come to the hotel this evening and have a drink?' Shastri said to me ‘You told me you were not meeting this man.' I said ‘I am not meeting this man.' Eccleston said ‘Can I just ask you one or two questions about the Garden?' I said ‘What story are you on?' I thought suddenly – But in this memory-theatre, would you know what story you are on? Shastri said ‘No.' Eccleston said to Shastri ‘But I'd be delighted if you came too!' He did some sort of flashing of his eyes with Shastri. I thought – You mean, Eccleston is homosexual? Then – But of course, he would want to get stories that were harmful to the Garden! Shastri let go of my arm. He said ‘Thank you.' Eccleston said to me ‘I knew you were here, but I didn't know how to find you.' I thought – Of course you would have known how to find me! Eccleston was smiling. I thought – But if you are in this theatre of memory, you have some message to tell me that is part of my story?

On my way back down the track with the cut-off claws of trees (I had begun by running: I had managed to get away from both Eccleston and Shastri) I tried to work out – What is it one is doing with memory? What falsifications result from the need for a story?

My mother and father, for instance (those old claws! those figures of autumn and winter popping in and out of doorways) –

How would I write about them if I started again: if I tried to see the way we make up stories?

My father in the front of the Land-Rover, talking and talking. Sometimes to illustrate a point he would take his hands from the wheel: we would be driving round corners where a lorry as wide as the road was likely to come: my mother would hold on to the sides of her seat as she sometimes did when she came across Japanese who reminded her of prison. My father saying – What distinguishes humans from non-humans is when they begin to use symbols; when they begin to use language. My mother said – Language is not symbols. My father said – Yes it is. My mother said – Look out! My father said – Before language, you just grunt and roar. My mother said – I am not grunting and roaring! My father said – I didn't say you were. And so on.

I was lying at the back of the Land-Rover among the pots and pans and camping equipment.

I would think – I will never be like this! I will be on my own, and make symbols I will talk to.

I was crossing the river by the road-bridge. I thought – One day I will forgive my father and mother: I will see them as if they are in a painting?

On my way back to my hut I walked along a path at the back of the Garden where the wire fence of the perimeter came to within a few feet of the fence around God's inner garden. The wire mesh of both fences was usually covered with climbing plants so that one could not see through; however, recently some of the greenery had died so that there were patches of brown. It seemed that if I pulled at one of these with my fingers gently I would make a peephole.

I thought – If this were the theatre of memory, I would be seeing behind the scenes?

Across a small lawn there was a loggia, with pillars, at the back of God's house. In front of this, half-facing me, was a girl, of about my own age, with long fair hair: she was standing in front of an easel: she appeared to be painting something just out of my sight near the hedge on my left. You
know those paintings in which the painter paints himself painting a scene which is reflected in a mirror in the background of the painting? – there is that huge one by Velázquez, in the Prado – it seemed to me that this girl, painting, might be some reflection of myself: it might be myself painting myself painting the scene: but still, what was it that was being painted? Behind the girl at the easel (she had fair hair; she could not, except by some trick of the light or the imagination, be like me) there was a plate-glass window; within this window in the loggia (the regressions might be endless) there was another image, I mean an actual reflection, which was of God, who appeared to be seated in a garden chair with his back to the hedge or fence and facing the window. I mean that this was what was reflected in the plate glass at the back of the loggia: this was what the girl seemed to be painting. But with God there was another figure kneeling or seated on the ground: she had her arms over God's lap. I thought – This is what you usually do not see of God; the other part of him. The figure was that of my friend who was like Lilith. The girl in front of the loggia, half-facing me, was painting this scene; God-and-Lilith were reflected in the window behind her: they were somewhere just out of sight to her right on my left. I thought – I am seeing – what – not a symbol, but a symbol of symbols? Am I watching myself watching – or myself creating it? It seemed that if I moved the dead strands of climbers carefully I might see God face to face: I mean I saw God at his discourses every day, but that was a story-God: this would be God without his smile or mask: he would be together with his, and my, Lilith. I mean Moses, did he not, only saw God's arse? There was one of God's acolytes, like a gardener, on his hands and knees just beyond the fence: he was replanting the hedge: he was watching me. I thought – It is all right: we are both of us angels. I pressed my head as close as I could against the fence. I did then have a glimpse of God and Lilith with her head on his knee: she was wearing her flame-coloured dress; he had his hand on her hair. I thought – But of course they are together, at one, beyond the walls of the
cave: they are what we talk about as the sun, are they? And now I have seen them: been with them: I mean, there is that girl painting them. So you do not get burned outside the walls of the cave, do you? You set up your easel perhaps, which is the back way.

‘Hullo.'

‘Hullo.'

‘It was good of you to come.'

‘Not at all.'

‘Would you like a drink?'

‘Orange juice please.'

‘Not “Save the Oranges”!'

‘No.'

I have not explained about this hotel. It is a grand tourist hotel not far from the Garden on a promontory between the estuary and the sea. People in the Garden used to pretend it wasn't there, though people with money stayed there when they visited the Garden. It and its grounds were surrounded by a high wire fence rather like that which surrounded the Garden. I used to think – It is some sort of alternative or anti-Garden. I tried not to go there, perhaps because I thought I might want to stay.

Eccleston said ‘You've been in the Garden – what – four or five months?'

‘Yes.'

‘And how do you find it?'

‘All right.'

‘What made you choose it?'

‘A story that you once printed about it, as a matter of fact.'

We were sitting on a lawn by a bright-blue swimming-pool. There were palm trees hung with fairy lights.

Eccleston said ‘An orange juice and a large vodka and tonic, please.'

I said ‘You printed a story, months ago, about sex and drugs. But there are no drugs in the Garden. You made the people in the Garden sound so wonderful.'

Eccleston said ‘Lovely lovely sex and drugs.'

Eccleston was a middle-aged man with a heavy, handsome face set so low on his shoulders that it was as if a sculptor had miscalculated and found himself short of stone.

I said ‘What story are you doing now?'

He said ‘You're still starry-eyed –'

I said ‘What is starry-eyed –'

I thought – I've forgotten how to do this.

He said ‘All things bright and beautiful.'

I said ‘You do think you're learning something, yes.'

The people round the swimming-pool were at tables in twos and fours. It was as if they were ready to play some game that they had forgotten. I thought – Perhaps they should be making up the game.

He said ‘What are you learning?'

I said ‘To stand back from yourself. To try to see yourself.'

He said ‘Sounds a bit schizophrenic.'

I said ‘Thanks for the drink.'

Eccleston wore a white linen jacket with a white polo-neck shirt and dark cotton trousers. His face was the texture of paper that has been soaked. I thought – It would not be possible for him to see himself?

He said ‘You know the story about the girl who died and came alive?'

I said ‘Yes.'

He said ‘Well, what is it?'

I said ‘There are always these stories.'

The people round the swimming-pool seemed to be waiting for some announcement. I thought – Of the result of the Battle of Waterloo? Whether or not the Bomb has gone off?

He said ‘What stories?'

I said ‘People die, and come alive.'

He said ‘And you don't think that's interesting?'

‘Not very.'

‘Why not?'

‘What does it mean?'

There had been this story, it is true (well, how can one talk
about such things? these are just stories that pop up like the figures in porticoes and doorways) about an incident that had happened just before I had arrived in the Garden. There had been a girl called Anita Kroll who was supposed to have died, and to have come alive: I mean she had been pronounced dead, and then God had just touched her, people said. I had heard the story originally from Shastri. People in the Garden did not talk about it much: when I asked them they were apt to say something like – Oh that! – and laugh and look away.

Eccleston said ‘Well, what does it mean?'

I said ‘It's a story. No one pays much attention to it in the Garden.'

‘Not when it's getting so much publicity outside?'

‘No.'

‘Not when the publicity must be bringing a lot of new people, and a lot of money, into the Garden?'

‘But it's people like you who are doing the publicity. It's you who are thinking about money.'

It was true, I suppose, that it was difficult to know how to think about the story in the Garden.

‘Well it's quite clever to appear disinterested. This, of course, creates even more interest outside.'

I had got out of the habit of fighting with people like Eccleston. I thought I might say – Well yes, it is clever, to want to have everything both ways.

He said ‘She was thought to be dead –'

‘Yes.'

‘And a doctor certified this –'

‘Apparently.'

‘And then she was seen to come alive.'

‘So they say.'

‘But what do you think?'

‘It was before my time in the Garden.'

So far as I had been able to make out, what had happened was this –

The girl called Anita Kroll had been to one of God's sessions with his special disciples in the evening: God had blessed her,
put his finger on her forehead, and she had been carried out in some state of collapse. Then later in her room it had been thought that she was dead: she seemed to have had a heart-attack. A doctor had been sent for and he had said that she was dead: then God had appeared at the door of her room-God usually never went out of his inner garden except for his morning discourses – and he had taken her by the hand, and had slapped it or something, and Anita Kroll had come alive. Then God had gone back to his inner garden. It was said that no one had informed God that Anita Kroll was supposed to be dead, because they had not wanted to disturb his meditation. Afterwards God had told them not to spread the story. But, of course, versions of it had got out.