Sacrament

CHAPTER VIII

The pain-killers Hugo had been administered denied him easy slumber. He lay as though upon a catafalque in the dimly lit room, while memories came to pay their respects. Some were vague; no more than murmurs and fiutterings. But most were crystalline; more real to his heavy-lidded eyes than the idiot nurses who now and then came to check on his state. Happy visitations, most of them: memories of the halcyon years after the war, when his star had been in the ascendant. There had been a period of three or four years following the publication of his first book, The Fallacy of Thought, in 1949, when he had been the idol of every iconoclast in English philosophical circles. At the tender age of twenty-four, he had published a book that not only challenged the tenets of logical positivism (all metaphysical investigation is invalid, because it can never be verified), but also existentialism (the chief imperatives of philosophical study are being and freedom). He was later to repudiate much that he'd written in that first book, but that didn't matter now. He forgot his doubts, and remembered only the fine, high times. Debating at the Sorbonne with Sartre (he'd met Eleanor there that spring); making mincemeat of Ayer at a party in Oxford; being told by one of his sometime tutors that he was destined for greatness; that if he kept to his purpose he would change the course of European thought. All perfect nonsense, but he indulged it readily tonight, enjoying the gilded phantoms who glided to his bedside to pay him court. (Sartre was amongst them, as batrachian as ever; with Simone in tow.) Some of these tribute-payers simply smiled and nodded at him, one or two were too drunk to say a word; but many chatted to him in a casual fashion; unimportant opinions, every one. But he listened indulgently, knowing they only sought to impress.

And then, more quietly than even the quietest of the crowd, came one who did not belong amongst these blithe memories; and with him, his lady-friend, watching Hugo from the bottom of the bed.

'Go away,' Hugo said. The woman - her companion had called her Rosa, hadn't he, out on the dark road? - studied him sympathetically. 'You look tired,' she said.

'I want the other dreams back,' he said. 'Damn it, you've frightened them off.' It was true. The room had been vacated of all but these two:the smiling beauty and her gaunt and sickly groom. 'I told you to go away,' Hugo said.

'You're not imagining us,' Rosa said. Oh Lord, he thought. 'Unless of course, we're all illusions. You imagining us imagining you-'

'Don't ... bother ...' Hugo said, 'I wouldn't let a first year student get away with that sort of sophistry.' Even as he spoke, he regretted his tone. He was supine and light-headed, lying in a bed: this was no time to be condescending. 'On the other hand...' he began.

'I'm sure you're right,' the woman said. She pinched herself. 'I feel very real.' She smiled, touching her breast now. 'You want to feel?'

'No,' he said hastily.

'I think you do,' she replied, moving along the side of the bed towards him. 'Just a touch.' 'Your boyfriend's very quiet,' Hugo said, hoping to distract her. She glanced back at Steep, who had not moved a muscle since arriving. His gloved hands were clinging to the rail at the bottom of the bed, and he looked so frail in the sickly light Hugo felt less intimidated the more he studied the man. The mesmeric strength he'd displayed on the road seemed to have run out of his heels; though he stared at Hugo hard, it was the fixedness of a man who lacked the will to avert his eyes. Perhaps, Hugo thought, I don't have to be afraid. Perhaps I can talk the truth out of them.

'Does he want to sit down?' Hugo asked.

'Maybe you should, Jacob,' Rosa said, to which Steep grunted, and retreating to the comfortless chair beside the door, sat.

'Is he sick?' Hugo asked her.

'No, just anxious.'

'Any particular reason?'

'Coming back here,' the woman replied. 'It makes us both a little sensitive. We remember things, and once we start remembering, we can't stop. Back we go, whether we like it or not.'

'Back ... where?' Hugo wondered, putting the question lightly, so as not to seem too interested in the reply. 'We don't exactly know,' Rosa said. 'Which bothers Jacob a lot more than it bothers me. I think you men need to know these things more than we women do. Isn't that right?'

'I hadn't thought about it,' Hugo said.

'Well he frets noon and night about what we were before we were what we are, if you follow me.'

'Every inch of the way,' Hugo beamed.

'What a man you are,' she said.

'Are you mocking me?' Hugo bristled.

'Not at all. I always mean what I say. You ask him.'

'Is it true?' Hugo said to Steep.

'It's true,' he replied, his voice colourless. 'She's everything a man could ever want in a woman.' 'And he's everything I ever wanted in a man,' Rosa said.

'She's compassionate, she's motherly

'He's cruel, he's paternal-'

'She likes to smother-'

'So do you,' Rosa pointed out.

Steep smiled. 'She's better with blood than I am. And babies. And medicine.'

'He's better with poems. And knives. And geography.'

'She likes the moon. I prefer sunlight.'

'He likes to drum. I like to sing.'

She looked at him fondly. 'He thinks too much,' she said.

'She feels more than she should,' he replied, looking back at her.

They fell silent now, their gazes locked. And watching them Hugo felt something very like envy. He'd never known anyone the way these two knew one another; nor opened his heart to be known in his turn. In fact he'd prided himself on how undiscovered he was; how secret, how remote. What a fool he'd been.

'You see how it is?' Rosa said finally. 'He's impossible.' She feigned exasperation, but she smiled indulgently at her beloved while she did so. 'All he ever wants is answers, answers. And I say to him - just go with the flow a little, enjoy the ride a little - but no, he has to get to the truth of things. What are we here for, Rosa? Why were we born?' She glanced at Hugo. 'More sophistry, eh?'

'No ...' Steep said, clucking at her. 'I won't have you say that.' He pulled himself to his feet, turning his gaze on Hugo. 'You may not admit it, but the question runs in your head too, don't tell me it doesn't. It vexes every living thing.'

'Now that I doubt,' Hugo replied.

'You haven't seen the world through our eyes. You haven't heard it with our ears. You don't know how it moans and sobs.'

'You should try a night in here,' Hugo said. 'I've heard enough sobbing to last-'

'Where's Will?' Steep said suddenly.

'What?'

'He wants to know where Will is,' Rosa said.

'Gone,' Hugo replied.

'He came to see you?'

'Yes, he came. But I couldn't abide his being here, so I told him to go away.'

'Why do you hate him so much?' Rosa said.

'I don't hate him,' Hugo replied, 'I just don't have any interest in him. That's all. I had another son, you know-

'So you said,' Rosa reminded him.

'He was the heart of me. You never saw such a boy. His name was Nathaniel. Did I tell you that?'

'No.'

'Well he was.'

'So how did Will take it?' Steep said.

Hugo looked faintly annoyed to have been distracted from his reverie. 'How did he take what?'

'Your sending him away?'

'Oh Christ knows. He's always been secretive. I never knew a thing he was thinking.'

'He got that from you,' Rosa observed.

'Maybe,' Hugo conceded. 'Anyway, he won't be coming back.'

'He'll come and see you one more time,' Steep said.

'I beg to differ.'

'Believe me, he will,' Steep replied. 'It's his duty.' He glanced at Rosa, who now sat gently on the bed beside Hugo. She lay her hand on the patient's chest, lightly.

'What are you doing?' he said.

'Be calm,' she told him.

'I am calm. What are you doing?'

'It can be bliss,' she said.

Hugo appealed to Steep. 'What's she wittering on about?'

'He'll come to pay his respects, Hugo-' Steep replied.

'What is this?'

-and he'll be weak. I need him weak.'

Hugo could hear his pulse in his head now, its lazy rhythm soothing. 'He's already weak,' Hugo said, his voice a little slurred.

'How little you know him,' Steep replied. 'The things he's witnessed. The things he learned. He's dangerous.'

'To you?'

'To my purpose,' Steep replied.

Even in his present, dreamy state, Hugo knew they came to the heart of things: Steep's purpose. 'And ... what . . . is that exactly?' he said.

'To know God,' Steep replied. 'When I know God, I will know why we were born, she and I. We'll be gathered into eternity, and gone.'

'And Will's in your way?'

'He distracts me,' Steep said. 'He puts it about that I'm the Devil

'Now, now,' Rosa said, as if to soothe him. 'You're getting paranoid again.'

'He does!' Steep said, with a sudden fury. 'What are those damnable books of his if they're not accusations? Every picture, every word, like a knife! A knife! Here!' He slammed his fist against his chest. 'And I would have loved him! Wouldn't I?'

'You would,' said Rosa.

'I would have treasured him; made him my perfect child.' Steep rose from his chair now, and approaching the bed, he gazed down at Hugo. 'You never saw him. That's the pity of it. For him. For you. You were so blinded by the dead you never knew what lived there, right under your nose. So fine a man, so brave a man, that I have to kill him, before he undoes me, utterly.' Steep looked up to Rosa. 'Oh be done with it,' he said. 'He's not worth the breath.'

'Be done?' Hugo said.

'Hush,' Rosa said. 'Clear your mind. It's easier.'

'For you maybe-' he replied, trying to sit up. But the light pressure she had upon his chest was all she needed to keep him in his place. And the thump of his heart was getting louder, and the weight of his lids heavier. 'Shush ...' she said, as though to a troubled child, 'be still ...'

She leaned a little closer to him, and her warmth and her breath made him want to curl up in her arms. 'I told you,' Steep said softly, 'he'll see you one last time. But you won't see him, Hugo.'

... oh ... God ... no...'

'You won't see him.'

Again, he tried to rise up out of the bed, and this time she let him come a little way, far enough for her to slip her arm around his body and draw him closer. She had started to sing: a soft and lilting lullaby.

Don't listen to it, he told himself, don't succumb. But it was such a gentle sound - so calm and reassuring - that he wanted to fold himself into the woman's arms and forget the brittleness of his bones, the hardness of his heart; wanted to sigh and suckle-

No! That was death! He had to resist her. There wasn't strength enough in his limbs to free himself. All he could hope to do was put some important thought between his life and the song she was singing; anything to stop him dissolving in her arms. A book! Yes, he would think of a bo ok he might write when he'd escaped her. Something that would touch and change people. A confessional, perhaps, told with all the vitriol he could muster. Something sharp and bracing, as far from this saccharine song as possible. He'd tell the truth: about Sartre, about Eleanor, about Nathaniel- No, not Nathaniel. I don't want to think about Nathaniel. It was too late. The boy's image appeared in his head, and with it the lullaby, full of sweet melancholy. He couldn't fully understand the words, but he got the gist. They were words of reassurance, telling him to close his eyes and sink away, sink away to the place beyond sleep where all the good children of the world went to play. His eyelids were so heavy now he was looking through slits, but hecould see Steep, watching him from the bottom of the bed, waiting, waiting ...

I will not give you the satisfaction of dying, Hugo thought, and so thinking turned his gaze towards Steep's mistress. He couldn't see her face, but he felt the fullness of her breasts beside his head, and dared think there was hope for him yet. He would fuck her in his imagination; yes, that's what he would do: put his erection between himself and death. He would strip her naked in his mind's eye, and pin her down, make her sob with his assault till her throat was too raw for lullabies. He started to move his hips against the coverlet.

She stopped singing. 'Oh now...' she murmured, 'what are you doing?' She pulled her blouse aside to indulge him, and his undisciplined mouth sought out her nipple, found it, and sucked. Her hand went down under the sheet, under the band of his pyjamas, and touched him, tenderly. He shuddered. This wasn't what he'd planned; not at all. He was still a child, despite what she was stroking; still a baby, melting in her embrace like grey butter.

Some other story! Quickly, he had to think of some high and adult thought to speed the beat of his heart, or it would all be over. Ethics? No. Holocausts? No. Democracy, justice, the fall of civilization; no, no, no. Nothing was grim or great enough to save him from the breast, from the stroke, from the ease of lying here and letting sleep take him into darkness.

He heard his heart booming in his head, like syrup on a timpano. He felt the blood in his veins thicken and slow. He could do nothing. Nor, now, did he want to. His eyelids flickered closed, his lips lost their hold upon the nipple; and down he went, down and down, until there was no further left to fall.