The Time of the Angels (18 page)

“You will think about what I said?”

“Of course I’ll think about it. Thank you—thank you—”

She turned now with a sort of awkward dignity and walked away rather slowly, still with the cautious catlike tread. Closing his eyes, Eugene heard the crackle of her footsteps receding. When he looked again she was gone.

He blinked, staring about him. It was as if he had come out of a small room, out of a sealed interior, so much had the scene which had just passed secluded him from his surroundings. The quayside was still deserted, the thick snow upon it marked only with his and Pattie’s footprints. He looked along the wide river, breathing deeply, and the giddiness returned, the giddiness it seemed to him of a waltzer; and it was as if he had been dancing over the snow, waltzing so swiftly and so lightly that his feet had never broken the frosty white crust.

Some new sensation had taken residence in his body, new or else very old. He felt it surge upward and he threw his head back like an ecstatic swimmer meeting a wave. He recognized the sensation, it was happiness. Yes, he would marry Pattie, he would live in a real house again.

He gazed at the skyline. The gilded domes and spires twinkled in the sun, a pale whitish gold, blending into the heaped buttresses of the snow. The painted many-pillared facades, blue and terracotta under the blurred chequerings of the snow, stretched away diminishing along the endless quays, each window with its tall snowy crest, each capital traced out in arabesques of white. He looked at the long low city upon its huge frozen river. The sun shone for him from a sky of lapis lazuli upon the solemn fortress walls, upon the striped turrets of the Resurrection, upon the vast gilded dome of St Isaacs, upon the rearing bronze of Peter, and upon the slim pure golden finger of the Admiralty spire.

“IF DYING, AS Being-at-an-end, were understood in the sense of an ending of the kind we have discussed, then Dasein would thereby be treated as something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand. In death, Dasein has not been fulfilled nor has it simply disappeared; it has not become finished or is it wholly at one’s disposal as something ready-to-hand. On the contrary, just as Dasein is already its not-yet, and is its not-yet constantly as long as it is, it is already its end too. The ending which we have in view when we speak of death does not signify Dasein’s Being-at-an-end, but a Being-towards-the-end of this entity. Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is. Ending, as Being-towards-the-end, must be clarified ontologically in terms of Dasein’s kind of Being. And presumably the possibility of an existent Being of that not-yet which lies before the end will become intelligible only if the character of ending has been determined existentially. The existential clarification of Being-towards-the-end will also give us an adequate basis for defining what can possibly be the meaning of our talk about a totality of Dasein, if indeed this totality is to be constituted by death as the end.”

Pattie, who was cleaning Carel’s room, read these words in the book which lay open upon his desk. She read them, or rather it was not reading since they meant absolutely nothing to her. The words sounded senseless and awful, like the distant boom of some big catastrophe. Was this what the world was like when people were intellectual and clever enough to see it in its reality? Was this, underneath everything that appeared, what it was really like?

Pattie put down her dustpan and brush and went to the window. A train was rumbling underneath the house. She had still not got used to them. She hitched up her tweed skirt. The fastening had broken that morning and the safety-pin with which she had secured it had come undone. It was the afternoon, and the sun was shining, hazily and reddishly now, between luminous streaks of cloud. Far off across the snow Pattie could see the black receding figure of Mrs Barlow whom she had some minutes ago turned away from the door. The snow-field of the building site was sugary pink, and the spires of the city beyond, heavily shadowed on one side and defined on the other in a clear rosy light, lifted a medley of cubes and cones towards the sky. Pattie sneezed. Was she getting a cold? Carel hated it when she had a cold. Perhaps it was just the dust.

Throughout the day Pattie had avoided Eugene. It had not been difficult, since Eugene through delicacy, perhaps through sheer happiness, had kept out of her way. Pattie had passed the time in a mingling of joy and despair so intense that in the end she scarcely understood which was which. She had not known that she would love Eugene. But she knew now that she did and that she loved him in a quite special way which she had thought to be impossible to her forever.

Yet also this was not conceivable. She loved Carel and she could not love anyone else. Even to say this was to say something too abstract. Into the web of her being which was interwoven with Carel no alien thing could penetrate, it was too dense, too thick, too dark in there. She was knitted to Carel by bonds so awful that it was a frivolity even to call them love. She was Carel.

What then had happened this morning? In the sunlight and the snow some madness had come, some sudden amazing freedom. The black years had dropped from her heart, and she had felt again that free impetuous movement toward another, that human gesture which makes each one of us most wholly himself. And it was indeed as if a new self had come to her so that in her out-going toward Eugene she was complete and there was none of her that was elsewhere. Out of her dark benumbed being something had sprung clear and danced. Her joy in Eugene’s love, her joy in her own renewed power to love, had remained with her in purity throughout the day. Yet how could this be?

The innocence which she had prized in Eugene before she knew him well shone round him in glory now. He was a man without shadows. He loved her, simply, truthfully, and offered her a life of innocence. He offered her too, and she had felt it, smelt it, this morning, happiness. Happiness was in Eugene as it is in all blameless people and needed only a touch to make it flow over. It had flowed on to her, it was perhaps what most of all throughout the day had crazed her. She felt that she could be happy with Eugene. She could become his legally wedded wife and wear a golden wedding-ring and live with him innocently. To be married, to be ordinary, to love in innocence.

It was perfectly possible. And yet it was totally impossible. I could not tell Eugene about Carel, she thought, he would shrink from me in horror if he knew. The question of telling did not even arise. Am I still Carel’s mistress? Pattie asked herself, and she answered yes. At any moment still, indeed forever, Carel could take her into his bed if he wished. She had no other will but his. Carel was her whole destiny. It was true that she had sometimes imagined leaving him, had pictured a redeemed Pattie leading a humble life of service. But this was an idle dream, as she knew now by the contrast between these imaginings and the sharp unmistakable pain of a real possibility. That the real possibility was an impossibility was a contradiction which she would have somehow to learn to live with.

But I love him, said Pattie to herself, as if this simplicity could save her.

“Pattikins.”

“Yes.” Pattie turned back hastily from the window.

“Haven’t you finished yet?”

“Yes, just finished.”

“Did you find any traces of those mice?”

“No.”

“Odd. I’m sure I saw something.”

Guilt wrenched and griped in Pattie’s bowels and she felt herself blush a dusky black blush, as if all the blackness in her blood had risen to accuse her.

“Don’t go, Pattie, I want to talk to you.”

Carel was wearing dark glasses. The two glossy ovals stared impenetrably, reflecting the pink light, reflecting in little the crowded towers of the city. Remote in the house Elizabeth’s bell tinkled a while and then stopped.

“Pattie, would you mind pulling the curtains? I don’t like this glare from the snow.”

Pattie pulled the curtains.

“More carefully, please. There’s still some light showing.”

For a moment the room was in total darkness. Then Carel switched on the lamp on his desk. He looked at her with his great dark night eyes, then he took the glasses off and rubbed his face. He began to walk up and down. “Don’t go. Just sit somewhere.”

The room was very cold. Pattie sat down on a chair against the wall and watched him move. She noticed that he was barefoot under the cassock. The cassock swung with the energy of his steps and as he came near her with each turn it touched her knee with a rough caress. It seemed to Pattie now impossible that Carel should not know of her relations with Eugene, should not know everything that went on inside her mind. His presence subjugated her whole being with a dark swoop, with a pounce of automatic unconscious power. She closed her eyes and something, perhaps her soul, seemed to fall out of her and lie upon the ground underneath those bare marching feet.

“Pattikins.”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to you seriously.”

“Yes.” Pattie put two fingers into her mouth and bit upon them hard.

“Shall we have some music. Could you put on the Nutcracker Suite?”

Pattie went to the gramophone and put the record on with awkward hands. He must know about Eugene.

“Turn it well down. That’s right.”

Carel continued his marching. Then he went to the window and peered through a slit in the curtain. The pink flamingo sunset slashed the gloom momentarily. “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous?”

Carel readjusted the curtain and turned back into the semidarkness. Then, not looking at Pattie, he began rather dreamily to unbutton his cassock. The heavy black stuff parted like a peeling fruit and revealed a triangle of whiteness. Carel began to slip his shoulders out and with a faint sough the black garment fell to the floor in a heap about his feet. He stepped out of it. Underneath it he seemed to be wearing nothing but a shirt. Pattie remembered this routine and she began to tremble.

“Pattie, come here.”

“Yes.”

Carel sat down in the chair at his desk, turning it sideways. Dressed in the shirt he looked different, slim, young, almost vulnerable, in a way which Pattie could hardly bear.

“There, you shall kneel. I am going to hear your catechism.”

Pattie knelt before him. She could not then stop herself from touching his knees. When she touched the bone at the knee and the thin shank of the calf she gave a groan, and bowed her head against him, embracing his legs.

“Come now, Pattie. You’ve got to listen to me sensibly.” He detached her gently from him, and she knelt back, looking up at his face which she could not see very clearly.

“What is your name?”

“Pattie.”

“Who gave you that name?”

“You did.”

“Yes, I suppose I am indeed your godfather, your father in God. Do you believe in God, Pattie?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And do you love God?”

“Yes.”

“And do you believe that God loves you?”

“Yes.”

“Rest in that belief. It is for you.”

“I will.”

“Your faith matters to me, Pattie, it’s strange. Are you a Christian?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you believe in the doctrine of the redemption?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand the doctrine of the redemption?”

“I don’t know. I believe it. I don’t know if I understand it.”

“You answer well. Will you be crucified for me, Pattie?”

Pattie stared up into the half-shadowed face. Carel’s face, usually protected by its curious stiffness, seemed uncovered now, as if a dry crust had been taken off it. His face was naked, moist and fresh, or perhaps it was that the expression was unusually concentrated in the eyes which had grown huge and intent. Carel looked beautiful to Pattie, softened and smoothed and young.

“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t know what you mean.”

“There will a trial, Pattie, there will be pain.”

“I can bear pain.”

“Bear it with your eyes fixed upon me.”

“I will.”

“You might make a miracle for me, who knows.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“We’ve been a long way together, haven’t we, Pattie beast. You won’t ever leave me, will you?”

Pattie was choking now in a flow of emotion. She could hardly speak. “No, of course not.”

“Whatever I do, whatever I become, you won’t leave me?”

“I love you,” said Pattie. She gripped his legs again, collapsed at his feet, her head pressing against his knees. She felt her tears brushing against him. He did not now put her away but very gently stroked her hair with a touch she could hardly sense.

“‘Woman would like to feel that love can do everything, it is her special superstition.’ But perhaps it is not a superstition. Can love do everything, Pattie?”

“I think so, I hope so.”

“Be faithful in your love, then.”

“I will.”

“Pattie, my dark angel, I want to bind you in chains you can never break.”

“I am bound.”

“I meant to deify you. I wasn’t able to. I meant to make you my black goddess, my counter-virgin, my Anti-Maria.”

“I know I’ve been no good—”

“You have been infinitely good. You are my sugar-plum fairy. Lucky the man who has the sugar-plum fairy and the swan princess.”

“I wish I could have been better—”

“You’re a goose, Pattie, a dear, dear coffee-coloured goose. You belong to me, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

Carel’s hands descended to her shoulders and he pressed lightly upon her as he leaned forward out of his chair and came down to the floor, blocking the light. Pattie groaned, relaxing her hold and falling back, wrapped into darkness. She felt his hands fumbling now to undo the front of her blouse.

“Hail, Pattie, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed are thou among women.”