Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [4]
Three
The address I had been given was on that part of the Mall that lies between the Doves and the Black Lion. On Chiswick Mall the houses face the river, but on that piece of Hammersmith Mall which is relevant to my tale they turn their backs to the river and pretend to be an ordinary street. Chiswick Mall is a lazy collection of houses and greenery that looks dreamily out on to the water, but Hammersmith Mall is a labyrinth of waterworks and laundries with pubs and Georgian houses in between, which sometimes face the river and sometimes back it. The number to which I had been directed turned out to be a house standing a little by itself, with its back to the river and its front on a quiet piece of street, and an opening beside it where some steps led down to the water. By now I was in no such hurry. I looked at the house with suspicious curiosity, and it seemed to be looking back at me. It was a brooding self-absorbed sort of house, fronted by a small ragged garden and a wall shoulder high. The house was square, with rows of tall windows, and had preserved a remnant of elegance. I approached the iron gate in the wall. It was then that I observed a poster which was fixed on the other side of the gate. It was a home-made poster whose colours were running a bit, so that it had a rather sad appearance. I deciphered it. It said: RIVERSIDE MIMING THEATRE Reopening on August 1st with a luxurious and fanciful production of Ivan Lazemnikov's great farce MARISHKA. Members only. The audience is requested to laugh softly and not to applaud. I stared at this object for some time. I don't know why, but it struck me as queer. Finally, with a slow crescendo in the region of the heart I pushed open the gate, which was a little rusty, and walked up to the house. The windows gleamed blackly, like eyes behind dark glasses. The door was newly painted. I did not look for a bell, but tried the handle at once. The door opened quietly and I stepped on tiptoe into the hall. An oppressive silence surged out of the place like a cloud. I closed the door and shut out all the little noises of the river front. Now there was nothing but the silence. I stood perfectly still for a while until my breathing became more regular, and until I could see my way in the dark hall. As I did these things I was asking myself why I was behaving in such an odd way, but the possible proximity of Anna confused me completely, so that I couldn't think but could only perform the little series of actions which suggested themselves with a feeling of inevitability. I walked slowly down the hall, planting my feet with care on a long black sound-absorbing rug. When I came to the stairs I glided up them; I suppose my feet touched the steps. I could hear no sound. I found myself on a broad landing, with a carved wooden balustrade behind me and several doors in front of me. Everything seemed neat and nicely appointed. The carpets were thick, and the woodwork as clean as an apple. I looked about me. It didn't occur to me to doubt that Anna was somewhere near, any more than it occurred to me to call her name or utter any other sound. I moved to the nearest door and opened it wide. Then I got a shock that stiffened me from head to toe. I was looking straight into seven or eight pairs of staring eyes, which seemed to be located a few feet from my face. I stepped I sick hastily, and the door swung to again with a faint click which was the first sound I had heard since I entered the house. I stood still for a moment in utter incomprehension, my scalp prickling. Then I seized the handle firmly and opened the door again, stepping as I did so into the doorway. The faces had moved, but were still turned towards me; and then in an instant I understood. I was in the gallery of a tiny theatre. The gallery, sloping and foreshortened, seemed to give immediately on to the stage; and on the stage were a number of actors, moving silently to and fro, and wearing masks which they kept turned towards the auditorium. These masks were a little larger than life, and this fact accounted for the extraordinary impression of closeness which I had received when I first opened the door. My perceptual field now adjusted itself, and I looked with fascinated interest and surprise upon the strange scene. The masks were not attached to the face, but mounted upon a pole which the actor held in his right hand and skilfully maintained in parallel to the footlights, so that no hint of the actor's real features could be seen. Most of the masks were made full face, but two of them, which were worn by the only two women on the scene, were made in profile. The mask features were grotesque and stylized, but with a certain queer beauty. I noticed particularly the two female masks, one of them sensual and serene, and the other nervous, watchful, hypocritical. These two masks had the eyes filled in, but the male masks had empty eyes through which the eyes of the actors gleamed oddly. All were dressed in white, the men in white peasant shirts and breeches, and the women in plain ankle-length white robes caught in at the waist. I wondered if this was Lazemnikov's great farce Marishka; both Marishka and its author were equally strange to me. The actors meanwhile were continuing to execute their movements in the extraordinary silence which seemed to keep the whole house spellbound. I saw that they were wearing soft close-fitting slippers and that the stage was carpeted. They moved about the stage with gliding or slouching movements, turning their masked heads from side to side, and I observed something of that queer expressiveness of neck and shoulder in which Indian dancers excel. Their left hands performed a variety of simple conventional gestures. I had never seen mime quite like this before. The effect was hypnotic. What was going on was not clear to me, but it seemed that a huge burly central figure, wearing a mask which expressed a sort of humble yearning stupidity, was being mocked by the other players. I examined the two women carefully, wondering if either of them was Anna; but I was certain that neither was. I should have known her at once. Then my attention was caught by the burly simpleton. For some time I stared at the mask, with its grotesque immobility and the flash of eyes behind it. A sort of force seemed to radiate from those eyes which entered into me with a gentle shock. I stared and stared. There was something about that hulking form that seemed vaguely familiar. At that moment, with one of the movements, the stage creaked, and the backcloth shivered slightly. This sound brought me to myself, and brought with it the sudden alarming realization that the actors could see me. On tiptoe I moved back on to the landing and closed the door. The silence was over me like a great bell, but the whole place throbbed with a soundless vibration which it took me a moment to recognize as the beating of my own heart. I turned now to look at the other doors. One at the far end of the landing had a little notice on it. I read, in large letters, Props Room, and underneath in smaller letters, Miss Quentin. I closed my eyes for a moment and stilled my breathing. Then I knocked. The sound echoed strangely. Then a husky voice said: 'Come in.' I stepped into the room. It was a long narrow room with large windows opening in to the river, and it was filled to overflowing with a sort of multicoloured chaos which I couldn't at the first moment take in. In the midst of this Anna sat writing at a desk with her back to me. I shut the door behind me as she turned slowly. For a long moment we looked at each other in silence. Like a filling glass I felt my soul rise into my eyes; and in the intense equilibrium of the meeting we both experienced almost a moment of contemplation. Anna got up and said 'Jake!' Then I saw her. She was plumper and had not defended herself against time. There was about her a sort of wrecked look which was infinitely touching. Her face, which I remembered as round and smooth as an apricot, was become just a little tense and drawn, and her neck now revealed her age. The great brown eyes, which once opened so blandly upon the world, seemed narrowed, and where Anna had used to draw a dark line upward at their corners the years had sketched in a little sheaf of wrinkles. Tresses of hair which had escaped from the complex coronet curled about her neck, and I could see streaks of grey. I looked upon the face that I had known so well and now that for the first time I saw its beauty as mortal I felt that I had never loved it so dearly. Anna took in my glance, and then with an instinctive gesture she took refuge behind her hands. 'What brings you here, Jake?' said Anna. The spell was broken. 'I wanted to see you,' I said; and now I was anxious just to avoid looking at her and to collect my wits. I looked around the room. An astonishing medley of objects lay about in piles which in places reached up to the ceiling. The contents of the room had a sort of strange cohesion and homogeneity, and they seemed to adhere to the walls like the contents of a half-empty jam jar. Yet here was every kind of thing. It was like a vast toy shop that had been hit by a bomb. In my first glance I noticed a French horn, a rocking-horse, a set of red-striped tin trumpets, some Chinese silk robes, a couple of rifles, Paisley shawls, teddy bears, glass balls, tangles of necklaces and other jewellery, a convex mirror, a stuffed snake, countless toy animals, and a number of tin trunks out of which multi-coloured costumes trailed. Exquisite and expensive playthings lay enlaced with the gimcrack contents of Christmas crackers. I sat down on the nearest seat, which happened to be the back of the rocking-horse, and surveyed the scene. 'What is this extraordinary place?' I said. 'What are you doing these days, Anna?' 'Oh, this and that,' said Anna. She had always used to say this when she didn't want to tell me something. I could see she was nervous, and as she talked she kept picking things up, now a piece of ribbon, or now a ball or a long band of Brussels lace. 'How did you find this place?' she asked. I told her. 'Why did you come?' I didn't want to embark on a routine series of questions and answers. What did it matter why I had come? I didn't know myself. 'I've been turned out of a place where I live.' This wasn't very explicit, but I couldn't think of anything to tell but the truth. 'Oh!' said Anna. Then she asked, 'What have you been doing all these years?' I wished I had something impressive to say, but again I could think of nothing but the truth. 'I've done some translating and some broadcasting,' I said. 'I've managed.' But I could see Anna wasn't really listening to my replies. She picked up a pair of red gloves, and pulled one of them on, smooth-out the fingers and averting her eyes from me. 'Seen any of our old friends, lately?' she asked. I felt I really couldn't answer this. 'Who cares about our old friends?' I said. What is more tormenting than a meeting after a long time, when all the words fall to the ground like dead things, and the spirit that should animate them floats disembodied in the air? We both felt its presence. 'You look just the same, Jake,' said Anna. It was true. I still looked much as I did when I was twenty-four. She added, 'I wish I did!' 'You look lovely,' I said. Anna laughed, and picked up a wreath of artificial flowers. 'What a mess this place is!' she said. 'I keep meaning to tidy it.' 'It's lovely too,' I said. 'Well, if you call this lovely!' said Anna. All this time she avoided my eye. In a moment we should be talking soberly like two old acquaintances. I wasn't going to allow this. I looked at her, and amid the enchanting chaos of silks and animals and improbable objects that seemed to rise almost to her waist she looked like a very wise mermaid rising out of a motley coloured sea; but in a moment she would have escaped me. The strangeness of the whole day was suddenly present to me with a kind of impetus; and immediately I had an idea. In the old days the living-room of Anna's Bayswater flat had been so surrounded by other windows that there was only one corner of the loom, low down on the floor, which was not overlooked. So if I wanted to kiss Anna this was the only place where I could do it. At that time too I had, in a not entirely disinterested fashion, been teaching Anna some Judo, and one of our customs had been that when I came in I would seize her and throw her down into this corner to be kissed. The memory of this rose in me now like an inspiration and I advanced upon her. I took her wrist, and for on instant saw her eyes wide with alarm, very close to mine, and libel) in a moment I had thrown her, very carefully, on to a pile of velvet costumes in the corner of the room. My knee sank into the velvet beside her, and straight away a mass of scarves, laces, tin trumpets, woolly dogs, fancy hats and other objects came cascading down on top of us until we were half buried. I kissed Anna. Her eyes were still wide and her lips parted and for a moment she lay stiffly in my arms like a great doll. Then she began to Wight, and I laughed too, and we both laughed enormously with Measure and relief. I felt her sigh and relax, and her body became 'minded and pliant, and we looked into each other's faces and mailed a long smile of confidence and recognition. 'Darling Anna!' I said. 'However have I existed without you!' I pulled some embroidered silk up behind her head to make a pillow. She threw her back into it and regarded me and then drew me closer. 'I want to tell you all sorts of things, Jake,' said Anna, 'but I don't know whether I can now. I'm terribly glad to see you. You can see that, can't you?' She looked into my eyes and I felt the old warm spicy breeze blowing. Of course I couldn't doubt it. 'You crook!' I said. Anna laughed at me as she had always done. 'So some girl has thrown you out!' said Anna. She always counter-attacked. 'You know you could have had me forever if you'd wanted me,' I said. I wasn't going to let her get away with it, and what I said was more or less true after all. 'I loved you,' I added. 'Oh, love, love!' said Anna. 'How tired I am of that word. What has love ever meant to me but creaking stairs in other people's houses? What use has all this love ever been that men forced on me? Love is persecution. All I want is to be left alone to do some loving on my own account.' I contemplated her coolly, framing her head in my arms. 'You wouldn't be so careless of it if you'd ever lacked the love of others,' I said. She met my look now, and there was something detached and theoretical in her eye which I had never noticed there before. 'No really, Jake,' she said. 'This talk of love means very little. Love is not a feeling. It can be tested. Love is action, it is silence. It's not the emotional straining and scheming for possession that you used to think it was.' This seemed to me very foolish talk. 'But love is concerned with possession,' I said. 'If you knew anything about unsatisfied love, you'd know this.' 'No,' said Anna strangely. 'Unsatisfied love is concerned with understanding. Only if it is all, all understanding, can it remain love while being unsatisfied.' I was not listening to this serious speech because my attention had been caught by the word 'silence'. 'What is this place, Anna?' I asked. 'That's one of the things that would be hard to explain, Jakie,' said Anna, and I could feel her hands seeking each other in the small of my back. She locked me to her, then she said, 'It's a little experiment.' This phrase grated on me. It didn't sound like Anna at all. 'There was some other voice here. I thought I would pick my way round this. 'What about your singing?' I asked. 'Oh, I've given up singing,' said Anna. 'I shan't sing any more. 'Her glance fled away over my shoulder and she withdrew her hands. 'Why in heaven's name not, Anna?' 'Well,' said Anna, and I could still sense the curious artificiality in her tone, 'I don't care for that way of earning a living. The sort of singing I do is so'--she searched for the word--'ostentatious. There's no truth in it. One's just exploiting one's charm to seduce people.' I took her by the shoulders and shook her. 'You don't believe what you're saying!' I cried. 'I do, Jake!' Anna looked up at me almost imploringly. How about the theatre?' I asked. 'How does that come in?' 'This is pure art,' said Anna. 'It's very simple and it's very 'Anna, who's been getting at you?' I asked her. 'Jake,' said Anna, 'you were always like that. As soon as I said Anything that surprised you, you said that someone had been getting at me!' During the last part of our conversation she had laid her hand lip, in my shoulder so that her wrist watch was just in sight, and I could see her gaze passing lightly over it from time to time. I felt humus. 'Stop looking at your watch!' I said. 'You haven't seen me for wins. You can spare me a little time now!' I guessed that Anna had it in mind that very soon our t