Eyeless in Gaza

  Mark uttered an explosive little laugh. ‘One may want human material,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean one’s going to get it. What one actually gets . . .’ He laughed again. ‘Well, it’s mostly plain, undiluted bug.’

  ‘There,’ said Dr Miller, ‘you’re wrong. If one looks for men, one finds them. Very decent ones, in a majority of cases. For example, go among a suspicious, badly treated, savage people; go unarmed, with your hands open.’ He held out his large square hands in a gesture of offering. ‘Go with the persistent and obstinate intention of doing them some good – curing their sick, for example. I don’t care how bitter their grievance against white men may be; in the end, if you’re given time enough to make your intentions clear, they’ll accept you as a friend, they’ll be human beings treating you as a human being. Of course,’ he added, and the symbols of inner laughter revealed themselves once more about his eyes, ‘it sometimes happens that they don’t leave you the necessary time. They spear you before you’re well under way. But it doesn’t often happen – it has never happened to me, as you see – and when it does happen, well, there’s always the hope that the next man who comes will be more successful. Anthropologists may get killed; but anthropology goes on; and in the long run it can’t fail to succeed. Whereas your entomological approach . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It may succeed at the beginning; you can generally frighten and overawe people into submission. That’s to say that, by treating them as bugs, you can generally make them behave like bugs – crawl and scuttle to cover. But the moment they have the opportunity, they’ll turn on you. The anthropologist may get killed while establishing his first contacts; but after that, he’s safe; he’s a man among men. The entomologist may start by being safe; but he’s a bug-hunter among bugs – among bugs, what’s more, who resent being treated as bugs, who know they aren’t bugs. His bad quarter of an hour comes later on. It’s the old story: you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them.’

  ‘You don’t have to sit on them,’ said Mark. ‘It’s the other people’s bottoms that get punctured, not yours. If you wielded the bayonets with a certain amount of intelligence, I don’t see why you shouldn’t go on ruling indefinitely. The real trouble is, of course, that there isn’t the necessary intelligence. Most bug-hunters are indistinguishable from the bugs.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Dr Miller agreed. ‘And the only remedy is for the bug-hunter to throw his bayonets away and treat the bugs as though they were human beings.’

  ‘But we’re talking about intelligence,’ said Mark. The tone of contemptuous tolerance implied that he was doing his best not to get angry with the old fool for his incapacity to think. ‘Being sentimental has nothing to do with being intelligent.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ the doctor insisted, ‘it has everything to do with it. You can’t be intelligent about human beings unless you’re first sentimental about them. Sentimental in the good sense, of course. In the sense of caring for them. It’s the first indispensable condition of understanding them. If you don’t care for them, you can’t possibly understand them; all your acuteness will just be another form of stupidity.’

  ‘And if you do care for them,’ said Mark, ‘you’ll be carried away by your maudlin emotions and become incapable of seeing them for what they are. Look at the grotesque, humiliating things that happen when people care too much. The young men who fall in love and imagine that hideous, imbecile girls are paragons of beauty and intellect. The devoted women who persist in thinking that their squalid little hubbies are all that’s most charming, noble, wise, profound.’

  ‘They’re probably quite right,’ said Dr Miller. ‘It’s indifference and hatred that are blind, not love.’

  ‘Not lo-ove!’ Mark repeated derisively. ‘Perhaps we might now sing a hymn.’

  ‘With pleasure.’ Dr Miller smiled. ‘A Christian hymn, or a Buddhist hymn, or a Confucian – whichever you like. I’m an anthropologist; and after all, what’s anthropology? Merely applied scientific religion.’

  Anthony broke a long silence. ‘Why do you only apply it to blackamoors?’ he asked. ‘What about beginning at home, like charity?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the doctor, ‘it ought to have begun at home. If, in fact, it began abroad, that’s merely a historical accident. It began there because we were imperialists and so came into contact with people whose habits were different from ours and therefore seemed stranger than ours. An accident, I repeat. But in some ways a rather fortunate accident. For thanks to it we’ve learnt a lot of facts and a valuable technique, which we probably shouldn’t have learnt at home. For two reasons. Because it’s hard to think dispassionately about oneself, and still harder to think correctly about something that’s very complicated. Home’s both those things – an elaborate civilization that happens to be our own. Savage societies are simply civilized societies on a small scale and with the lid off. We can learn to understand them fairly easily. And when we’ve learnt to understand savages, we’ve learnt, as we discover, to understand the civilized. And that’s not all. Savages are usually hostile and suspicious. The anthropologist has got to learn to overcome that hostility and suspicion. And when he’s learnt that, he’s learnt the whole secret of politics.’

  ‘Which is . . .?’

  ‘That if you treat other people well, they’ll treat you well.’

  ‘You’re a bit optimistic, aren’t you?’

  ‘No. In the long run they’ll always treat you well.’

  ‘In the long run,’ said Mark impatiently, ‘we shall all be dead. What about the short run?’

  ‘You’ve got to take a risk.’

  ‘But Europeans aren’t like your Sunday-school savages. It’ll be an enormous risk.’

  ‘Possibly. But always smaller than the risk you run by treating people badly and goading them into a war. Besides, they’re not worse than savages. They’ve just been badly handled – need a bit of anthropology, that’s all.’

  ‘And who’s going to give them the anthropology?’

  ‘Well, among others,’ Dr Miller answered, ‘I am. And I hope you are, Mark Staithes.’

  Mark made a flayed grimace and shook his head. ‘Let them slit one another’s throats,’ he said. ‘They’ll do it anyhow, whatever you tell them. So leave them to make their idiotic wars in peace. Besides,’ he pointed to the basket-work cage that kept the bed-clothes out of contact with his wound, ‘what can I do now? Look on, that’s all. We’d much better all look on. It won’t be for long, anyhow. Just a few years; and then . . .’ He paused, looked down and frowned. ‘What are those verses of Rochester’s? Yes.’ He raised his head again and recited:

  ‘Then old age and experience; hand in hand,

  Lead him to death, and make him understand,

  After a search so painful and so long,

  That all his life he had been in the wrong.

  Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,

  Who was so proud, so witty and so wise.

  ‘Huddled in dirt,’ he repeated. ‘That’s really admirable. Huddled in dirt. And one doesn’t have to wait till one’s dead to be that. We’ll find a snug little patch of dirt and huddle together, shall we?’ He turned to Anthony. ‘Huddle together among the cow-pats and watch the doctor trying his best anthropological bedside manner on General Goering. There’ll be some hearty laughs.’

  ‘In spite of which,’ said Anthony, ‘I think I shall go and make myself ridiculous with Miller.’

  CHAPTER LII

  July 24th 1914

  THERE WERE FOUR of them in the search-party: Anthony, the policeman, an old shepherd, with the grey whiskers and the majestic profile of a Victorian statesman, and a fair, red-faced boy of seventeen, the baker’s son. The boy was made to carry the canvas part of the stretcher, while the shepherd and the policeman used the long poles as staves.

  They set out from behind the cottage, walking in a line – like beaters, Anthony found himself reflecting – up the slope of the hill. It was a brilliant day, cloudless and
windless. The distant hills showed as though through veils, dim with much sunlight and almost without colour. Under their feet the grass and heather were dusty with long drought. Anthony took off his jacket, and then, on second thoughts, his hat. A touch of sunstroke might simplify things; there would be no need to give explanations or answer questions. Even as it was, he felt rather sick and there was a griping in his bowels. But that was hardly enough. How many difficulties would be removed if he could be really ill! Every now and then, as they climbed slowly on, he put his hand to his head, and each time the hair felt hot to the touch, like the fur of a cat that has been sitting in front of the fire. It was a pity, he thought, that his hair was so thick.

  Three hours later they had found what they were looking for. Brian’s body was lying, face downwards, in a kind of rocky bay, at the foot of a cliff above the tarn. Bracken was growing between the rocks, and in the hot air its sweetish, oppressive scent was almost suffocatingly strong. The place was loud with flies. When the policeman turned the body over, the mangled face was almost unrecognizable. Anthony looked for a moment, then turned away. His whole body had begun to tremble uncontrollably; he had to lean against a rock to prevent himself from falling.

  ‘Come, lad.’ The old shepherd took him by the arm, and leading him away, made him sit down on the grass, out of sight of the body. Anthony waited. A buzzard turned slowly in the sky, tracing out the passage of time on an invisible clock-face. Then at last they came out from behind the buttress of rock into his view. The shepherd and the boy walked in front, each holding one pole of the stretcher, while the policeman, behind, had to support the weight on both the poles. Brian’s torn jacket had been taken off and spread over his face. One stiffened arm stuck out irrepressibly and, at every step the bearers took, swung and trembled in the air. There were bloodstains on the shirt. Anthony got up, and, in spite of their protestations, insisted on taking half the policeman’s burden. Very slowly, they made their way down towards the valley. It was after three o’clock when at last they reached the cottage.

  Later, the policeman went through the pockets of coat and trousers. A tobacco pouch, a pipe, Mrs Benson’s packet of sandwiches, six or seven shillings in money, and a notebook half full of jottings about the economic history of the Roman Empire. Not the smallest hint that what had happened had been anything but an accident.

  Mrs Foxe arrived the following evening. Rigid at first with self-control, she listened in silence, stonily, to Anthony’s story; then, all at once, broke down, fell to pieces as it were, in a passion of tears. Anthony stood by her for a moment, uncertainly; then crept out of the room.

  Next morning, when he saw her again, Mrs Foxe had recovered her calm – but a different kind of calm. The calm of a living, sentient being, not the mechanical and frozen stillness of a statue. There were dark lines under her eyes, and the face was that of an old and suffering woman; but there was a sweetness and serenity in the suffering, an expression of dignity, almost of majesty. Looking at her, Anthony felt himself abashed, as though he were in the presence of something that he was not worthy, that he had no right, to approach. Abashed and guilty, more guilty even than he had felt the night before, when her grief had passed beyond her control.

  He would have liked to escape once more; but she kept him with her all the morning, sometimes sitting in silence, sometimes speaking in that slow, beautifully modulated voice of hers. To Anthony silence and speech were equally a torture. It was an agony to sit there, saying nothing, listening to the clock ticking, and wondering, worrying about the future – how to get away from Joan, what to tell her about that accursed letter of hers; and every now and then stealing a glance at Mrs Foxe and asking himself what was going on in her mind and whether she had any knowledge, any suspicion even, of what had really happened. Yes, her silences were painful; but equally painful was her speech.

  ‘I realize,’ she began, slowly and pensively, ‘I realize now that I loved him in the wrong way – too possessively.’

  What was he to say? That it was true? Of course it was true. She had been like a vampire, fastened on poor Brian’s spirit. Sucking his life’s blood. (St Monica, he remembered, by Ary Scheffer.) Yes, a vampire. If anyone was responsible for Brian’s death, it was she. But his self-justificatory indignation against her evaporated as she spoke again.

  ‘Perhaps that was one of the reasons why it happened, in order that I might learn that love mustn’t be like that.’ Then, after a pause, ‘I suppose,’ she went on, ‘Brian had learnt enough. He hadn’t very much to learn, really. He knew so much to start with. Like Mozart – only his genius wasn’t for music; it was for love. Perhaps that was why he could go so soon. Whereas I . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve had to have this lesson. After all these long years of learning, still so wilfully stupid and ignorant!’ She sighed and was silent once more.

  A vampire – but she knew it; she admitted her share of responsibility. There remained his share – still unconfessed. ‘I ought to tell her,’ he said to himself, and thought of all that had resulted from his failure to tell the truth to Brian. But while he was hesitating, Mrs Foxe began again.

  ‘One ought to love everyone like an only son,’ she went on. ‘And one’s own only son as one amongst them. A son one can’t help loving more than the rest, because one has more opportunities for loving him. But the love would be different only in quantity, not in kind. One ought to love him as one loves all the other only sons – for God’s sake, not for one’s own.’

  The richly vibrant voice spoke on, and, with every word it uttered, Anthony felt more guilty – more guilty, and at the same time more completely and hopelessly committed to his guilt. The longer he delayed and the more she said in this strain of resignation, the harder it was going to be to undeceive her with the truth.

  ‘Listen, Anthony,’ she resumed, after another long pause. ‘You know how fond of you I’ve always been. Ever since that time just after your mother’s death – do you remember? – when you first came to stay with us. You were such a defenceless little boy. And that’s how I’ve always seen you, ever since. Defenceless under your armour. For, of course, you’ve had an armour. You still have. To protect yourself against me, among other dangers.’ She smiled at him. Anthony dropped his eyes, blushed and mumbled some incoherent phrase. ‘Never mind why you’ve wanted to protect yourself,’ she went on. ‘I don’t want to know, unless you want to tell me. And perhaps you’ll feel you want to protect yourself still more now. Because I’m going to say that I’d like you to take Brian’s place. The place,’ she qualified, ‘that Brian ought to have had if I’d loved him in the right way. Among all the other only sons, the one whom there’s more opportunity of loving than the rest. That’s what I’d like you to be, Anthony. But, of course, I won’t force myself on you. It’s for you to decide.’

  He sat in silence, his face averted from her, his head bent. ‘Blurt it out,’ a voice was crying within him. ‘Anyhow, at any price!’ But if it had been difficult before, now it was impossible. Saying she wanted him to take Brian’s place! It was she who had made it impossible. He was shaken by a gust of futile anger. If only she’d leave him in peace, let him go away and be alone! Suddenly his throat contracted, the tears came into his eyes, the muscles of his chest tightened in spasm after violent spasm; he was sobbing. Mrs Foxe crossed the room, and bending over him, laid a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Poor Anthony,’ she whispered.

  He was pinned irrevocably to his lie.

  That evening he wrote to Joan. This horrible accident. So unnecessary. So stupid in its tragedy. It had happened, as a matter of fact, before he had had an opportunity for telling Brian about those events in London. And, by the way, had she written to Brian? An envelope addressed in her handwriting had been delivered at mid-day, when the poor fellow had already started out. He was keeping it for her and would return it personally, when he saw her next. Meanwhile, Mrs Foxe was bearing it wonderfully; and they must all be brave; and he was always hers affectionatel
y.

  CHAPTER LIII

  February 23rd 1934

  HELEN CAME INTO the sitting-room, holding a frying-pan in which the bacon was still spluttering from the fire.

  ‘Breakfast!’ she called.

  ‘Komme gleich’ came back from the bedroom, and a moment later Ekki showed himself at the open door in shirtsleeves, razor in hand, his fair ruddy face covered with soapsuds.

  ‘Almost finished,’ he said in English, and disappeared again.

  Helen smiled to herself as she sat down. Loving him as she did, she found an extraordinary pleasure in this close and incessant physical intimacy with him – the intimacy that their poverty had perforce imposed on them. Why do people want large houses, separate rooms, all the private hiding-places that the rich find indispensable? She couldn’t imagine, now. Humming to herself, out of tune, Helen poured out the tea, helped herself to bacon, then began to sort the morning’s letters. Helen Amberley. No Mrs. Communist frankness and informality. She opened the envelope. The letter was from Newcastle. Would it be possible for her or Giesebrecht to speak to a group of young comrades on conditions in Germany some time in March? Well, one would have to see. Mr E. Giesebrecht. From Switzerland; and surely that thin spiky writing was Holtzmann’s. Ekki would be pleased.

  ‘Something from Holtzmann,’ she said as he came in. ‘I wonder what news he’ll have this time?’

  Ekki took the letter, and, with that methodical deliberation that characterized all his actions, opened it; then, laid it down beside his plate and cut off a piece of bacon. He poked the bacon into his mouth, picked up the letter again, and, slowly chewing, began to read. An expression of intent and focused gravity came into his face; he could never do anything except thoroughly and wholeheartedly. When he had finished, he turned back to the first page and started reading all over again.