The Unicorn (17 page)

‘Mmm. I’ve thought all that too.’

Effingham, who had offered his remarks as a half-flippant farrago, looked up quickly, not sure how to take this reply, and whether it was intended as a sort of rebuke; but Max seemed deep in thought, his gaze resting on the distant photograph of his wife.

‘At times you know,’ Max went on, and his voice became hoarse and rhythmical, ‘at times especially in the winter, it has all seemed to me so delicate that any action would be too gross for it, and certainly any action of mine, and it has seemed to me that this was why I always did nothing.’

‘And was it?’

‘I don’t know. Of course, the situation has fascinated me as it has fascinated us all. But in a way too I think I was afraid of her.’

‘Afraid of her needing you?’

‘Afraid of her disturbing my work.’

‘Well, you have stuck to your work,’ said Effingham. He felt suddenly uneasy. The quietness of the room menaced him with some possibility of judgement. He went on, ‘You have stuck to your work. The book is nearly finished.’

‘Yes. More nearly than I’ve let Alice know. She thinks I’ll go out like a light when the book is finished.’

‘You won’t,’ said Effingham. Then the vision came, incomprehensibly painful. ‘Ah - when the book is finished - you will go to see her -‘

Max did not reply. He said after a little silence, ‘I wish I understood more.’

‘So do I,’ said Effingham. He swept his hand upward through the clouds of cigar smoke. He felt stifled, threatened, upset. He wanted somehow to lighten the tone of the conversation and to disturb Max’s oppressive reverie. ‘I’d like to know a bit more about Gerald Scottow, for instance.’ This was a topic on which he was now firmly resolved to question Pip.

‘I am more real in the winter,’ Max went on softly. ‘I can think then. And of course I’ve thought about her. And sometimes it has seemed obvious that the right reaction is the simple one. Alice’s for instance.’

‘What is Alice’s?’ said Effingham grumpily. He was sorry now that he had reported Hannah’s words to the old man.

‘Alice is simply appalled and thinks that something ought to be done. If she doesn’t say so to you, doubtless she has her reasons.’

‘Humph,’ said Effingham. He knew it was some time now since Max had given up wanting him to marry Alice. He wondered vaguely if Alice ever discussed him. He said, ‘It is appalling of course. Visiting that place today was like visiting a police state. It makes one notice the free society when one gets back to it.’

The free society? That rag freedom! Freedom may be a value in politics, but it’s not a value in morals. Truth, yes. But not freedom. That’s a flimsy idea, like happiness. In morals, we are all prisoners, but the name of our cure is not freedom.’

All prisoners, thought Effingham. Speak for yourself, old man.
You
are a prisoner, of books, age and ill-health. It then occurred to him that in some curious way Max might derive consolation from the spectacle, over there in the other house, of another captivity, a distorted mirror image of his own.

‘I do wonder in a way,’ said Effingham, ‘why I
don’t
react more simply. I suppose it’s partly a sort of reverence for her way of taking the thing. And partly because, honestly, I find it all somehow beautiful. But that’s idiotic romanticism. She was quite right about that.’

‘It needn’t be,’ said Max. “Plato tells us that of all the things which belong to the spiritual world beauty is the one which is most easily seen here below. We can see wisdom only darkly. But we can see beauty quite plainly, whoever we are, and we don’t need to be trained to love it. And because beauty is a spiritual thing it commands worship rather than arousing desire. That is the meaning of Courtly Love. Hannah is beautiful and her story is as you say “somehow beautiful”. But of course unless there are other virtues, other values, such worship can become corrupt.’

Max’s oblivion of everything to do with Freud was one of the things which made Effingham love him. He said, ‘I don’t know if I have those other virtues. I suppose I’d better try and grow them! I feel if I could only get the situation into focus, give myself some theory of what she’s
doing,
I could at least participate in some way, be resigned or whatever it is with her, stop - enjoying it. When you said just now you’d thought all that too did you mean you’d thought that I ought to stop enjoying it?’

“That among many things. In a way we can’t help using her as a scapegoat. In a way that’s what she’s for and to recognize it is to do her honour. She is our image of the significance of suffering. But we must also see her as real. And that will make us suffer too.’

‘I’m not sure that I understand,’ said Effingham. ‘I know one mustn’t think of her as a legendary creature, a beautiful unicorn -‘

‘The unicorn is also the image of Christ. But we have to do too with an ordinary guilty person.’

‘Do you really see her as expiating a crime?’

‘I’m not a Christian. By saying she’s guilty I just mean she’s like us. And if she
feels
no guilt, so much the better for her. Guilt keeps people imprisoned in themselves. We must just not forget that there
was
a crime. Exactly whose probably doesn’t matter by now.’

‘I should have thought it did,’ said Effingham. Though I’m not prepared to regard her as particularly guilty even if she
did
push that bloody man over the cliff. I wish I’d pushed him myself. I hate to think sometimes that she might be - suffering all this - somehow for him.’

‘Why not?’ said Max. ‘He is in a privileged relationship to her.’

‘Because he’s her husband, yes!’

‘I didn’t mean that. Because he’s her executioner.’

‘Privileged? You mean he’s the person she has the power to forgive?’

‘Forgive is too weak a word. Recall the idea of Ate which was so real to the Greeks. Ate is the name of the almost automatic transfer of suffering from one being to another. Power is a form of Ate. The victims of power, and any power has its victims, are themselves infected. They have then to pass it on, to use power on others. This is evil, and the crude image of the all-powerful God is a sacrilege. Good is not exactly powerless. For to be powerless, to be a complete victim, may be another source of power. But Good is non-powerful. And it is in the good that Ate is finally quenched, when it encounters a pure being who only suffers and does not attempt to pass the suffering on.’

Do you think Hannah is such a being?’

Max was silent for a few moments. Then he said, stubbing out his cigar, ‘I don’t know.’ After a while he said, T may be suffering from my own form of what you call romanticism. The truth about her may be quite other. She may be just a sort of enchantress, a Circe, a spiritual Penelope keeping her suitors spellbound and enslaved.’

‘I don’t care for the Penelope image. I don’t want Peter Crean-Smith to come back and put an arrow through me. You said the pure being doesn’t pass the suffering on. But you also said that one ought to suffer with her.’

‘Yes, but she would not be the cause of the suffering. Suffering is only justified if it purifies, and this kind could.’

‘You mean the compassionate kind. Yes. If
we
have to put in such a lot of work perhaps it won’t matter in the end whether she’s a wicked enchantress or not, provided she’s made saints of us! But I’m not really up to this spiritual adventure story. I just wish I could
understand
her. She has a weird unusual sort of calm. She spoke today about not feeling anything any more. But that can’t be right. Women are made for feeling, for love. She
must
feel, she
must
love. She loves me, in a way. I only wished she loved me properly, with ordinary love.’

‘She can’t afford ordinary love,’ said Max. ‘I think that must be what, in these last years, she has understood. If she were to give way to ordinary love in that situation she would be lost. The only being she can afford to love now is God.’

‘God,’ said Effingham. ‘God!’ He added, asking a question which seemed to have been on the tip of his tongue all his life, ‘Do you believe in God, Max?’

Max paused again, and replied in the same tone, ‘I don’t know, Effingham.’ The oil-lamp murmured in the silent shadowy room, sending up the cigar smoke in a quiet spiral. He added, ‘Of course, in the ordinary sense of believing in God I certainly don’t. I don’t believe in that
old
tyrant, that
old
monster. Yet -‘

‘I suspect you of being a crypto-Platonist.’

‘Not even crypto, Effingham. I believe in Good. So do you.’

‘That’s different,’ said Effingham. ‘Good is a matter of choosing, acting -‘

“That is the vulgar doctrine, my dear Effingham. What we can
see
determines what we choose. Good is the distant source of light, it is the unimaginable object of our desire. Our fallen nature knows only its name and its perfection. That is the idea which is vulgarized by existentialists and linguistic philosophers when they make good into a mere matter of personal choice. It cannot be defined, not because it is a function of our freedom, but because we do not know it.’

‘This sounds like a mystery religion.’

‘All religions are mystery religions. The only proof of God is the ontological proof, and that is a mystery. Only the spiritual man can give it to himself in secret.’

I always thought the ontological proof was based on a gross logical fallacy. I realize I’m in no condition to give it to myself -‘

‘ “Desire and possession of the true Good are one.”’

‘God is because I desire him? I’m damned if I’ll stand for that.’

Max smiled. He said, ‘I shall take refuge in the
Phaedrus.
You remember at the end Socrates tells Phaedrus that words can’t be removed from place to place and retain their meaning. Truth is communicated from a particular speaker to a particular listener.’

‘I stand rebuked! I recall that passage. But it is a reference to mystery religions, isn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily. It can apply to any occasion of learning the truth.’

‘Do you think Hannah - desires the true good?’

Max said after a long silence during which Effingham found himself nodding with sleep, ‘I’m not sure. And I don’t think you can tell me. It may all be to meet some need of my own. I’ve meant all my life to go on a spiritual pilgrimage. And here I am at the end - and I haven’t even set out.’ He spoke with a sudden fierceness, cutting and lighting a cigar with quick precision and moving the ash-tray farther down the table with a loud clack. He added, ‘Perhaps Hannah is my experiment! I’ve always had a great theoretical knowledge of morals, but practically speaking I’ve never done a hand’s turn. That’s why my reference to the
Phaedrus
was damned dishonest. I don’t know the truth either. I just know about it.’

‘Well,’ said Effingham, who was getting very sleepy indeed. ‘You may be right about her. There is something unusual, something spiritual, there. There is that very exceptional quietness -‘

‘A mouse that’s trapped by a cat is quiet!’ said Alice sharply behind him. She had entered without their noticing her.

She came round the table and banged a tray down between the two men. ‘Here’s your tea. I found that vervain stuff that Effie brought from France. I hope it’s all right It’s as old as the hills.’

Darling Effie,

Do come back soon, the office is hell, but hell, without you. When you are here (a funny thing, it occurs to me just this moment and is probably something to do with your being a brilliant administrator) when you are here it seems as if you are doing nothing at all all day (pert words from your junior) and yet as soon as you go the whole place gets uneasy and unhinged as if we suddenly weren’t sure why we came in in the mornings and sat at these desks and shuffled these papers. It seems, without you, absurd; and perhaps one time you’ll come back and find we’ve all gone away and the office is deserted, and the telephones are ringing in empty rooms. What I am referring to, as you will of course realize, is my own psychological state, though you are missed here, and I’m afraid there are a lot of things which men in other departments won’t refer to anyone but you. Your in-tray is a picture. Poor sweetie.