Bethany (29 page)

‘So you were.'

‘I have to see what you see, don't I? You won't let me see what I see.'

‘What you see is a distortion.'

‘It's my reality.'

‘That's your trouble. You won't share anyone else's reality. Then you wonder why you can't communicate with them.'

‘What I see is true for
me
. We're all right in our own way.'

‘Including Hitler, I suppose.'

‘Yes, including Hitler. Even he had a little bit of truth. We've all got our own kind of truth.'

I am about to hurl myself with all my weight against this lie, when something holds me back. A tiny thing, a flicker in the mind. A flicker of infinity. In an instant it has sapped my strength.

‘That is sophistry,' I say. ‘You are using a small truth to evade a larger one. That's a very dangerous game.'

She turns on me and hurls four words.

‘Don't change my data.'

I walk quickly away from the suddenly dark room, down the stairs and out into the garden.

How beautiful the roses are. Delicate, thin-veined. The bees investigate them, as bees have always done.

I sit on the grass. The sun is hot.

I should like to sleep now.

In front of me is a door. If I do not open it I am dead. If I open it I may find my death inside.

Open it, then.

Oh God, the height, the terror. The unimaginable dance.

Rest. Breathe. Rest.

I cannot face it.

It must be faced.

Consider it as a philosophical problem. Is there one truth, or are there many? Are there degrees of truth? Is truth absolute or relative?

It is absolute. I know it is. I have seen truth.

And a moment ago, what did you see?

The sky turned over and I saw its back.

What did you see?

I saw infinity, and everything in it was true.

Very well. If everything is true …

No. With all my being, No.

I saw the truth of Alex. I saw her darkness. That truth excluded what she calls her truth. I saw that her truth was a lie.

I cannot have been mistaken. I cannot have been mistaken.

Who is right?

My truth condemns her. Hers condemns me.

If we are both right, then she is right and I am wrong.

If I am right, she is wrong.

But I must not change her data.

This is not a philosophical problem. This is a question on which hangs the meaning of my life. And if of my life, then of Alex's life and of life itself. If I do not find the right answer, I shall have destroyed myself. If the answer I find tells me I was wrong, I shall have destroyed myself. If I do not find an answer, I cannot go on living because I shall not know in what way to live. I am required to decide, now in this garden, what is the truth of the universe.

And where do I begin, when I do not know with what eyes to look?

I cannot solve this problem with my reason. It will work only from the premises supplied to it, and I do not know what premises to supply. I do not have a starting-point. My reason will not find its own starting-point.

What will supply me with a starting-point? Not any recollection from the past, because my understanding of the past depends on my understanding of the present, and it is the present I am seeking to understand.

Should I then trust my intuition? It arises in a region beyond consciousness and I cannot search its motives: it will
supply me with the starting-point I need to prove that I am right, and in doing so it will destroy me.

I cannot look outside me for the answer. No other human being can answer this question for me. I can trust no one and nothing, least of all myself.

Dear God, help me.

It is a kind of crucifixion. We are all Christ.

I must put down this burden, and I cannot. I carry the universe on my back. I am Christ, I am Atlas. I cannot lay it down without destroying the world.

On the past depends the present.

On the present depends the past.

If I look at the past with the eyes of the past I see Alex enclosed in a wall of darkness.

If I look at the past with the eyes of the present I see nothing at all.

I see something.

It is the same scene, but there is a difference.

It is a different scene.

It is the same scene.

We are all assembled in the parlour. Dao has summoned a meeting. The group is serious and silent. Simon sits waiting in his chair. He is waiting for the obstructive member of the group to see her error. She will not see it. She refuses to accept that anything that has been said to her has any connection with her. She does not seem to understand what is happening. There is a wall. On one side of it is darkness. She cannot see what is happening on the far side of the wall, and no one can tell her. I cannot understand a word they are saying to me.

Alex. Me.

Me. Alex.

On what happened then depends what is happening now.

On what is happening now depends what happened then.

If I was right, Alex was right.

If Alex was wrong, I was wrong.

But I admitted that I was wrong.

And I did not believe it. To my dying day I shall believe that Simon was wrong and I was right.

Why then did I submit to him, that afternoon on the landing?

Because I could not bear to leave this house.

It is very cold out here.

Follow it, follow the path. There is nothing left now, except the path. Follow it to the end.

‘We have thought of three alternatives,' says Simon. ‘Between them they cover all the possibilities. Alex will choose the one that suits her best.'

He speaks cheerfully, almost affectionately, like a kind schoolmaster propounding a simple choice.

I am struck suddenly by the depth of his ignorance about Alex. He does not understand her at all: he never has. What I thought was understanding was merely his brilliant grasp of the general principles of human psychology, which fitted her as well, and as roughly, as they do anyone. By the accidental closeness of the fit here and there one is misled into thinking that the whole suit is tailor-made.

So Simon, assuming that Alex is like most people in a respect in which she is unlike most people, puts to her three alternatives. To him, to most people, they are three discrete ideas; three diverging roads; three apples on a table. But Alex, brought up in the wild, does not see three separate things. She sees a net.

She sees a net and before it can close over her she darts under it and away.

‘I do not accept the group's alternatives.'

Of course she doesn't. She doesn't understand that she has
to accept them: that this is her test. Simon doesn't understand that she can't accept them: that this is his test.

Only I understand.

Only I understand that they are both doing the only thing they can.

Only I can see what is happening, and I say nothing. Why do I say nothing?

Because one must not interpret. Never interpret another's words or actions.

But they need an interpreter. They cannot hear each other.

Why do I say nothing?

Because Alex is not a wild animal but a human being.

But they are hunting her like an animal.
We
are hunting her.

Why do I say nothing?

Because … because Alex must learn the rules.

But people learn from kindness. This is cruelty.

Why am I allowing it? Why do I not defend her?

Why do I let him drive his cruel words into her, blow after unanswered blow, if not because I know that only by unleashing its destructiveness can this group be destroyed; that to soften the injustice of Alex's hell would be to prolong my purgatory for ever.

So they are leaving. I bring them gifts. I give them food, sleeping bags, vegetables from the garden.

I will give them anything. Anything, as long as they go.

No sacrifice is too great. None.

What have I done?

Anita Mason was born in Bristol, England. She read English at Oxford, lived in London, and worked in the publishing field for five years.

She is the author of eight novels to date, as well as a number of short stories. Her novels include,
The Illusionist
(1983),
The War Against Chaos
(1988),
The Racket
(1990),
Angel
(1994), and
The Yellow Cathedral
(2002).
The Illusionist
was nominated for the 1983 Booker Prize in the UK.

Discover books by Anita Mason published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/AnitaMason

Angel
The Racket
The Yellow Cathedral
War against Chaos

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain 1981 by Hamish Hamilton

Copyright © 1981 Anita Mason

All rights reserved
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The moral right of the author is asserted.

eISBN: 9781448213696

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