In the Middle of the Wood (22 page)

“Yes.”

“That he has no free will?”

Oh, God, here we go again thought Ralph. “Listen,” he said, “if you put a plateful of cakes all of different colours and texture in front of people at a party one will take one and one another. Why do you think that is? We are programmed by previous experience to do so.”

“Programmed how far back?” said the scientist.

“As far back as the womb perhaps,” said Ralph. “Free will is an illusion. You should know that as a scientist.”

“I wouldn't admit that at all. Science has nothing to do with questions of free will and predestination.”

“You make the same experiments and expect them to come out the same way each time. If they don't you're angry. What about Yuri Geller? Every scientist set out to prove that he was wrong, that he was breaking the laws of physics. And now we know that he was a magician. Next you'll be talking about the Bermuda Triangle, the Turin Shroud, horoscopes, that there were spacemen in early Egypt.”

“Not necessarily,” said the psychologist. The lady doctor in the white coat was writing furiously in her notebook. All this crap, thought Ralph, as if it had any meaning: just talk and talk and talk. … It's all been said over and over, there is nothing new here, just staleness.

It was like being in one of the circles of the Inferno; if only he could leave the room but he couldn't. He despised himself. He had broken his vow of silence. He looked at the clock. He should have remained like a stone in the midst of the currents and swirls of conspiracy that ebbed and flowed around him. But he hadn't reckoned with his vanity. He wanted to go to the toilet and be violently sick and spew up all his words, his ideas, his stale theories. His glib orations disgusted him.

To be loved and to love. He thought there had been a time when that had happened, when he had waited for Linda when, in her yellow dress, she would come and see him before they were married: when, if she was late or if she didn't come, the world seemed to come to a stop. He could tell the sound of her footsteps from others. But that had been long ago.

Funny that Heydrich had nothing to say. He sat there upright in his chair. What had happened to his Webley, to his negligent massacres? Was he keeping the silence of the stone man?

The silence lasted and then because men cannot bear much silence, he heard Hugh saying,

“One thing I thought to bring up, there is something wrong with the plumbing in the toilet. It was like that when I was here four years ago and it hasn't been sorted since.”

There was a muted laugh. The psychologist said, “You know what workmen are. And you know the financial restraints we have.”

“I know what workers are,” said Hugh. “I was one myself.”

There was another muted laugh. The subject of the soul had been safely negotiated. Now one could turn to comedy. And yet Ralph wanted to discuss it more deeply, the subject of love. Was it like the cakes, were we conditioned to choose one person, or was love itself a glorious manifestation of free will, opening like a scented bouquet and conferring meaning on the whole world. It had seemed like that to him once. But now he was in chains, the world was grey and distant like Lady Macbeth's hair. She reminded him of a schoolteacher he had once had who in order to protect herself from the children had to offer them sweets. But that did not protect her.

He suddenly began to sweat and panic. He wanted more than anything to leave the room and be by himself for a while. He hung on to the legs of the chair feeling the room spinning about him. And then slowly the room steadied and he was all right again. He took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Neither the psychologist nor the note-taker was watching him at the time. They were listening to Hugh who was making some more good-humoured complaints.

The soul … love … Where was Linda at that moment? He didn't know. And yet if he telephoned her again he would be giving in. She had cried last time and on other occasions. These tears, what were they? What did they mean? Laughter, what did that mean? Pure, mechanical exhalations. Was that right? He saw again the river and heard its quiet tranquil noise, he gazed at the deer on the hills above. The two of them had sauntered there hand in hand. Their meetings had been like a radiance of the spirit, strong as the sun that shone yellow on the hills turning them to the colour of honey. Tears rose to his eyes and he wiped them away with his hands. No, no, he must not cry, he mustn't, he had never cried in his life. That was one thing he had learned from his stepfather.

There was a burst of laughter around him. Hugh had made another pawky statement. The clock showed half-past twelve. Now they could go for their lunch. Love could be left behind among the chairs which even now were being returned to another room. Some impulse moved the puppet Lady Macbeth towards the dining-room. Ralph joined the queue behind the man with the trembling head, and then sat at the same table with him.

“Hawkins,” said the man with the trembling head, putting his hand out across the table.

“Simmons.”

“I must say that I didn't agree with you but you talked well,” said Hawkins.

“You seem to know Greek,” said Ralph.

“My father was a doctor. He was a great man. Great personality. He stayed in the same district all his life but he was a tremendous personality. He taught me Greek.” Hawkins thought for a while and then said, “He committed suicide.”

“I'm sorry,” said Ralph. And then. “What did you used to do yourself?”

“Me? I was in charge of a scientific laboratory. Investigating various chemicals. I was to be shifted to England but I retired instead. I didn't want to go to England. I was to be merged with a lot of other laboratories.”

He leaned forward confidentially. “I fell ill and I attended this Pakistani doctor. And he told the psychologist that I was going to commit suicide. I had never said that to him at all.” And his eyes flared with a brief anger.

“I have depressions, of course, since my wife died, but I never at any time said that I was going to commit suicide.”

His hands shook as he took a piece of bread from the plate in front of him. “I must say, that your talk today reminded me of my father. He was an atheist you see. He didn't believe in the soul.”

“Do you?”

“In the soul? I don't know. I often think that someone with as powerful a personality as my father had will never die. Then again in practical terms nothing ever dies. There's an exchange of energies.”

All the time he was speaking his head was shaking uncontrollably.

“Tell me,” said Ralph, “do you think we can ever tell what is truth.”

“Tell what is truth? What do you mean?”

“I mean here we are talking to each other and we can't tell what either of us is really thinking. There's no way of knowing. Words don't mean anything, do they? They are disguises for the truth. They are what we say when we are thinking of something else.”

“I suppose so,” said Hawkins slowly. A piece of bread stuck to the left side of his mouth. “My father always told the truth. To tell the truth and be damned, he'd always say. People respected him. He was a big bluff man. I'm not sure whether telling the truth always works but people admired him for it. My mother said he should have been more tactful. I remember him saying to a patient, “Aren't you dead yet, man?” The odd thing was that they loved him for it.”

“That's not exactly what I mean,” said Ralph. “Look, is there no way of finding out what goes on behind the face.”

“None,” said Hawkins with finality.

“Then,” said Ralph, “we may live in a world of perpetual betrayal.”

“Yes. You find the same in the natural world. Animals disguise themselves so that they won't be eaten. Take the chameleon, for example. But there are thousands of examples. That of course might cause depression.”

“What might?”

“The strain of keeping up a disguise. Some of course are more natural liars than others. My father said that a lot of his patients were liars. If they told the truth they might be better off. There's a woman I used to know who kept up the pretence of having been a landowner in Kenya. She had never been to Kenya in her life. She would talk of her doctor in Harley Street. She lived in a room and kitchen.”

“Why did your father commit suicide?”

“I don't know. He hanged himself. He used to say that one had no reason for living if one had no future. He was referring to his patients. They had no future and they still lived.”

“Did he believe that he himself had no future?”

“I don't know. His suicide came as a great surprise to everyone. That very day he had been issuing pills. His diary was full. Everyone loved him. Sometimes when he came into a patient's house he would start dancing.”

“I don't think I'll ever write again,” said Ralph suddenly.

“Are you a writer then?”

“Yes. I'm a novelist but you won't have read any of my books. The fact is I can't concentrate. And another thing. I don't believe in words any more. They're no different from spit. No, they're worse than spit, they're dangerous. I'm sick of them. They betrayed me. If you live long enough everything betrays you, even the earth itself. Even the things that are dearest to you. Where is there evidence in the universe for love?”

“Love? In the universe?”

“Yes, that truism love. Everything is the ego magnified.”

“I think I loved my wife,” said Hawkins quietly. “I think I loved my wife and my father.”

“You mean you admired him.”

“I'm not sure. I think I loved him. And my wife too. I often think of her. She would have gone with me to England even though she would have hated it. That is, if I had wanted her to. I used to invite some of my friends in to talk. She didn't understand what we were talking about but it didn't seem to matter to her. She was Irish. She showed me a translation of an Irish poem once. It was about a dead wife written by her husband. It went,

Only the other day I was reading of a woman who was going to have a baby and who had cancer. If she had the baby she knew that she would die. She sacrificed herself for the baby.”

The handicapped girl with the flat white face leaned over to take the plates. I hate this place, thought Ralph, I hate it. I don't understand anything. It was as if his mind were breaking, revealing gaps here and there through clouds. Was love what Heydrich and the handicapped girl felt when they walked hand in hand through the grounds? Was love what the birds felt on their engraved courses? Curse you, he thought, all you unimaginative ones, all you who can't put yourselves in the places of the others, all you who trample through the sacred groves with your heavy boots, curse you, my marble-faced stepfather.

He rose abruptly from the table and went into the lounge. There was a scatter of newspapers and magazines and he picked one up and, after a while, dropped it. Opposite him lying on the floor was a record player with a number of records beside it, like large black cards without purpose. There was a chess-board and a draughts-board. When the ‘psychologist' came in he said to him,

“Would you like a game of chess?”

“I don't play,” said the psychologist slowly.

“I'll teach you to play.”

“Well, I'm no very clever. I dinna ken if I'm able,” said the psychologist relapsing suddenly into dialect.

“Of course you're able. It's quite simple.”

He laid a chess-board out on the table and arranged the pieces on it. “Now watch,” he said. “These are the pawns. And this is the king and that's the queen. That is the rook and this is the bishop and this is the knight. The pawns can move forward one piece at a time or, on the first move, two squares. The rook can move any number of squares horizontally or vertically. The queen is the most powerful piece on the board and can move any number of squares, diagonally, horizontally or vertically. The bishop can move diagonally any number of squares. The king can only move one square at a time. The purpose of the game is to put the king in check.”

The psychologist gazed down at the board while Ralph was talking, his brow wrinkled.

“The object of the game is to gain control of the centre,” said Ralph. “Now I'll make the first move. What are you going to do then in answer to my pawn move?”

The psychologist moved a pawn on his left flank.

“That's not a good move,” said Ralph. “Why did I tell you it wasn't?”

“Well, I canna … should I have moved it this way?” And he indicated the diagonal line.

“No, that's not it. The object is to gain control of the centre. So there's no point in moving that pawn. What do you want to do instead?”

“I dinna ken.”

“Move one of the centre pawns. That'll free your bishop, do you see?”

Ralph on his second move brought another pawn to protect his first one.

“Do you see that?” he asked. “You can't take that pawn while I have this one here. Pawns take diagonally.”

The psychologist moved one of his own pawns forward and tried to take Ralph's pawn frontally.

So you're at it, thought Ralph, you think I'm going to imagine that you're as stupid as that. You're trying to pretend that you're not really a psychologist but a country bumpkin.

“No,” he said, “you can't do that. You take diagonally. You can't take frontally. What are you going to do now?” he asked, replacing the pawn. The psychologist moved his pawn again frontally.

“You can't do that. I just told you,” said Ralph. “You take diagonally.”

And he replaced the board as it was at the beginning. “Look,” he said, “let's begin again.” And he went through all the moves of all the pieces while the psychologist listened, brow wrinkled. You're not deceiving me, thought Ralph.