I Am Lazarus (Peter Owen Modern Classic) (16 page)

The early mornings there were often specially beautiful, and this particular morning I'm thinking of was one of the best. It was very still – the wind didn't usually rise till about ten o'clock – and the islands seemed to be floating light as cloud-castles just above the horizon. After all the dreadful anxiety I'd been through I felt that I could never absorb enough of the peace, the beauty, the solitude; and so I wasn't altogether pleased to see someone coming along the track that led to the garden gate. At first I thought it might be one of the workmen who had mislaid something, a screwdriver perhaps, or a scarf, and was coming back to see if he'd left it lying about anywhere. However, I soon saw that it wasn't a workman who was strolling towards me, but somebody I'd never set eyes on, a surprising figure in that out-of-the-way place, a big, tall, heavy man, smartly and rather eccentrically dressed in light trousers and a canary coloured pullover and a white linen cap like a yachting cap with a long peak. I stood at the window wondering who could be visiting me at this early hour. It was really rather annoying; I hadn't even had breakfast yet and the kettle was just on the boil.

I had a vague idea that if the stranger saw no one about he might
go away, and instead of showing myself I just stood where I was, watching him. His behaviour was as eccentric as his appearance, for instead of coming up to knock at the door as anyone else would have done, he began wandering about the garden with his hands in his pockets, looking at the house and surveying it from all sides with his head tilted and his eyes screwed up like an artist criticizing a sketch. After several minutes of this, having thoroughly scrutinized the house from every angle, he approached the door with the same rambling, indolent gait. By this time my curiosity was aroused and I at once let him in. He greeted me by name (but without introducing himself), took off his cap, dropped it on to a chair, shook my hand, and began to congratulate me warmly on the improvements I had made to the property. All this seemed very odd. I was certain I'd never met the man before and yet he spoke as if we were old friends. In my bewilderment I stared hard at him, trying to place his full, florid face which had a curious softness and shapelessness about it like a baby's face, or like an unfinished model in plasticine.

Benjo. How can I give the clearest picture of him? I think the word which best describes his whole personality is one which I've used already about his fashion of walking, the word ‘indolent’. Yes, everything about him seemed heavy and lazy, like a great, sleepy, good-natured tame bear. Just like a bear, too, in spite of his friendliness, there was something a little bit sly and suspicious about him, although you couldn't say what it was. His face was so soft and plump, like a happy baby's; and yet the little eyes, the pink, incomplete-looking mouth, were not quite reliable. These impressions I received at the start although they didn't become crystallized until later on. At that first meeting I was impressed most by his friendly attitude which was really very engaging. And when the kettle boiled over in the kitchen and he urged me not to delay my breakfast, I invited him to share it with me.

While I was making the tea and putting the breakfast things on a tray my visitor remained in the living-room. Through the open door I could see him lounging about the room and looking at everything with his screwed-up eyes just as he had done outside the house. It rather irritated me to see him do this; but then, as soon as I came in
with the tray, he began complimenting me on my good taste, admiring my books and the arrangement of the furniture, in such a simple, jolly way that I was placated at once.

The idea occurred to me while we were eating that he might have lived in the house himself at one time, or had some connection with the previous owners which would account for his interest, and I asked him if this were the case. Oh no, he replied, I've thought about living here often enough, but I didn't want to take on the job of doing up the place.

I wondered just what he meant by this. He didn't look as if he were short of money. His clothes, though far too ostentatious for my taste, were well made and of fine quality, the brilliant pullover was of softest wool embroidered on the pocket with an unknown coat-of-arms. No, I decided, it probably wasn't lack of funds but sheer slackness that made him fight shy of embarking on renovations.

The mysterious embroidery ornamenting his pocket stimulated my curiosity about him. Several times I was on the point of asking his name, but I was restrained by shyness and by my ignorance of the country's social conventions. In view of the friendly way he was treating me I felt it would appear a discourtesy on my part to inquire who he was. We sat there over our teacups for quite a while. My companion had a lazily humorous way of talking about local matters that was entertaining if not without a streak of malice. He seemed to have an intimate knowledge of everything that went on, and I asked him if he had lived in the district a long time. I come and go, you know, was his drawling answer to this: come and go. And then he ponderously heaved himself up from his chair and prepared to depart. Come and see me whenever you feel inclined, he said as he was leaving. Just ask for Benjo – anyone will show you the way. As he went off smiling to himself I realized that I still hadn't any idea why he had visited me: unless perhaps he had just looked in to inspect the place and see what I had done to it.

Outside the gate he passed the old woman who came from the village each day to clean up for me, and paused to say something to her which brought a wry grin to her rather sour old face. So Benjo has been to see you already, she remarked as she came in and
began taking off the big black straw hat, shaped like a basket, that she wore tied under her chin with two shabby ribbons. At the time I thought she was referring to the early hour, but afterwards I wondered whether another significance lay at the back of her words. I would have liked to question her about the remarkable Benjo who was evidently well known to her (how could such a conspicuous figure fail to be well known in an isolated village?), but I don't approve of gossiping with servants and she herself had nothing more to say although several times during the morning I caught her glancing at me with rather a queer expression. I always found the inhabitants of that remote district very insular and reserved; a fact which emphasized by contrast Benjo's geniality.

One afternoon a few days later I decided to pay my return call on him, and stopped to ask my way at the combined post office and inn in the centre of the village. It was a depressing place, dark as a cave and full of some rank, unclassifiable smell, but in spite of its unprepossessingness there were always three of four yokels hanging about there; I suppose because they had nowhere else to meet. These idlers seemed to find something amusing in my request to be directed to Benjo's house. One fellow who had such a hairy face that he might have changed heads with an Ainu burst into loud laughter, exclaiming, She asks us for Benjo's house!
She
asks! But the proprietor came up and silenced him with what I thought unnecessary roughness, pushing him angrily to one side, and, accompanying me for a few steps, pointed out with his pipe the road I would have to follow. You can't miss it, he said. Just make for those black trees you can see there against the sky. I thanked him, and he nodded his head once or twice in the dour way they have in those parts, before he went back to the others who were watching from the dark mouth of the door.

It only took me a few minutes to walk to the group of firs which showed up conspicuously against the predominant bright green of the chestnut woods. There was no sign of any sort of a dwelling; only a narrow, crazy track that might have been made by rabbits, looping and faltering between the crowded tree-trunks. This trail soon led me to a small clearing in the middle of the plantation. But
here there was nothing to be seen either, except what looked like an old weatherbeaten gipsy caravan derelict under the trees. I was just going to turn back to the road when, to my amazement, the upper part of Benjo himself suddenly emerged through the window of the caravan, like a very large snail protruding from a very small shell.

So you found your way here, he called out cheerfully. And how do you like my country residence? He waited for me to approach, laughing as if the whole thing were an excellent joke, and leaning out of the narrow window in which he had the appearance of being tightly wedged. Come up: you'll find it very snug, he went on. But as I put my foot on the lowest of the four steps that led to the door at the back of the caravan, he seemed to alter his mind, saying, Perhaps it's really a bit cramped for the two of us inside, and on such a fine afternoon we'd do better out of doors.

Next moment he opened the door and brought out two folding chairs which he passed to me down the steps. If you'll just take these I'll see if I can find some refreshments, he said. Through the little door I could only get a glimpse of the interior of the caravan littered with books and papers amongst which Benjo's enormous figure was rummaging. Then he came out with some glasses and bottles of beer and the door was banged shut.

I seem to have given you a surprise, he said while the chairs were set up on the slippery brown floor of pine needles. He kept laughing as he poured out the beer, and I could see he was very much tickled by my astonishment.

But is this where you really live? I asked in the stupid way that one falls into when one's thoroughly taken aback. I don't know what sort of a house I'd expected Benjo to have; probably some showy villa in keeping with his style of dress. I noticed that he was just as spick-and-span in his gaudy way as at our previous meeting, and I wondered how he managed to look so dandified when he lived like a gipsy. There didn't seem any room for his clothes or anywhere to keep them in the caravan. And what was the meaning of all those books and papers? Benjo was the last person I should have suspected of studious habits. Could he be conducting some
kind of private business out here in the woods? I began to realize then what a dark horse the fellow was.

I come and go, he said, just as he'd said it before. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, you know. Then, as if he guessed my doubts and wanted to banish them, he became serious and went on in a very reasonable tone, Of course, it has its drawbacks, it's not luxurious, it's by no means all that I could wish. But on the other hand there are definite advantages in this style of living. It's cheap and healthy, and convenient for getting about, and I'm able to get through a lot more work than I would if I were living somewhere where people were continually dropping in on me and distracting my attention.

I didn't know what to think. There was certainly something queer and inexplicable about Benjo; and at the same time he was so naif and so anxious to be friendly that it seemed unworthy and even absurd to distrust him. After all, he was more like a big, clumsy, harmless, friendly animal than a man, lolling back there in his seat with a drowsy, good-natured grin. Most likely there was some quite simple explanation of his odd idiosyncrasies.

I stopped with him until we had finished the beer, but without getting a second chance of looking inside the caravan. Feeling that I'd already been guilty of rudeness in displaying so openly my surprise at his living arrangements, I didn't like to ask any questions. Benjo himself did not refer again to his mysterious ‘work’: nor did he again mention his domicile until, just as I was leaving, he remarked, Now you can see why I envy you your cosy quarters up there on the hill.

I've described this interview with Benjo in some detail because, in its way, it was typical of my whole association with him. I suppose ‘association’ is the right word to use about a relationship which always continued superficially cordial without ever remotely approaching intimacy and without ever losing (on my side) a faint element of uneasiness. In spite of my longing for solitude there were days when loneliness overcame me in the strange country and I was glad to see Benjo's massive form loafing along in some garish costume. At other times I would be irritated by him almost
unbearably, or filled with a vague, amorphous suspicion that even bordered upon alarm. Living alone in a lonely place one's few human contacts assume disproportionate importance, and so Benjo occupied a larger place in my mind than was warranted by the actual time that we spent together. How often did we see one another? I have the impression that at some periods we met frequently, almost daily. At other times weeks would go by between our encounters. Quite often Benjo would leave the village, and for days on end his caravan would be missing from the clearing among the pines. When this happened, I believe that I experienced a lightening, a sense of relief, of which, however, I myself was hardly aware. Yet I was not displeased when, after a solitary spell, I heard that he had returned. It was almost invariably the old cleaning woman who first gave me the news. Benjo came back last night, she would announce while she was fetching a broom from the corner or starting to wash up the breakfast dishes. Or, Benjo will be with us again before sundown. I didn't ask her, though I often wanted to, how she obtained this information about his movements which she never failed to pass on in a portentous voice as if it had some special personal significance for me.

Looking back now, it seems to have been Benjo who visited me far more often than I visited him. In fact, I can't really be certain that I went again more than once or twice to the caravan or that I ever got another glimpse of its interior. Probably one of the reasons for this was that in order to get to the fir plantation one had to walk through the village, and I always avoided the place as much as I could. There was something indefinably depressing to me about the grey little houses and their uncompromising inhabitants. Benjo, on the contrary, was quite at home in the village where he spent a good deal of time drinking and gossiping at the inn, apparently on excellent terms with the habitues. From there it was an easy walk for him to my house, and he acquired the habit of strolling up the hill with a bottle of beer which we would divide between us. His behaviour towards me was always precisely the same. The same lazy, jolly, bantering manner; the same flippant, slightly malicious talk about this trifle or that; the same indolent
way of slouching round, hands in pockets and head tilted to one side, staring at everything in sight. As time went on this trick of his got on my nerves more and more acutely. My irritation reached such a pitch that I could hardly restrain myself from bursting out in protest at his inquisitive attitude. Yet all the time I was bothered by the feeling that my annoyance was unjustifiable. Why should I resent a person taking a friendly interest in my activities? Everything I did seemed to interest Benjo, whether I was gardening or working indoors, painting a cupboard or putting up shelves or some such odd job in the way of making the place more comfortable. He would lounge near me for hours, not helping actively, but encouraging me with appreciation and sometimes with suggestions of his own, and all the while smiling with the sort of complacent expression that might be worn by a landlord who watches a good tenant improving his property.