The Collector

wants to buy things for me. I could ask for anything. Except my freedom.

He’s given me an expensive Swiss watch. I say I will use it while I am here and give it back when I go. I said I couldn’t stand the orangeady carpet any more and he’s bought me some Indian and Turkish rugs. Three Indian mats and a beautiful deep purple, rose-orange and sepia white-fringed Turkish carpet (he said it was the only one “they” had, so no credit to his taste).

It makes this cell more liveable in. The floor’s very soft and springy. I’ve broken all the ugly ashtrays and pots. Ugly ornaments don’t deserve to exist.

I’m so superior to him. I know this sounds wickedly conceited. But I am. And so it’s Ladymont and Boadicaea and noblesse oblige all over again. I feel I’ve got to show him how decent human beings live and behave.

He is ugliness. But you can’t smash human ugliness.

Three nights ago was so strange. I was so excited at leaving this crypt. I felt so nearly in complete control. It suddenly seemed all rather a grand adventure, something I’d one day soon be telling everyone about. A sort of chess-game with death I’d rather unexpectedly won. A feeling that I had run a terrible risk and now everything was going to be all right. That he was going to let me go, even.

Mad.

I have to give him a name. I’m going to call him Caliban.

Piero. I’ve spent the whole day with Piero, I’ve read all about him, I’ve stared at all the pictures in the book, I’ve lived them. How can I ever become a good painter when I know so little geometry and mathematics? I’m going to make Caliban buy me books. I shall become a geometrician. Shattering doubts about modern art. I thought of Piero standing in front of a Jackson Pollock, no, even a Picasso or a Matisse. His eyes. I can just see his eyes.

The things Piero says in a hand. In a fold in a sleeve. I know all this, we’ve been told it and told it and I’ve said it. But today I really felt it. I felt our whole age was a hoax, a sham. The way people talk and talk about tachism and cubism and this ism and that ism and all the long words they use—great smeary clots of words and phrases. All to hide the fact that either you can paint or you can’t.

I want to paint like Berthe Morisot, I don’t mean with her colours or forms or anything physical, but with her simplicity and light. I don’t want to be clever or great or “significant” or given all that clumsy masculine analysis. I want to paint sunlight on children’s faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain.

The essences. Not the things themselves.

Swimmings of light on the smallest things.

Or am I being sentimental?

Depressed.

I’m so far from everything. From normality. From light. From what I want to be.

October 18th

G.P.—You paint with your whole being. First you leam that. The rest is luck.

Good solution: I must not be fey.

This morning I drew a whole series of quick sketches of bowls of fruit. Since Caliban wants to give, I don’t care how much paper I waste. I “hung” them and asked him to choose which one was best. Of course he picked all those that looked most like the wretched bowl of fruit. I started to try to explain to him. I was boasting about one of the sketches (the one I liked best). He annoyed me, it didn’t mean anything to him, and he made it clear in his miserable I’ll-take-your-word-for-it way that he didn’t really care. To him I was just a child amusing herself.

Blind, blind, other world.

My fault. I was showing off. How could he see the magic and importance of art (not my art, of art) when I was so vain?

We had an argument after lunch. He always asks me if he may stay. Sometimes I feel so lonely, so sick of my own thoughts, that I let him. I want him to stay. That’s what prison does. And there’s escape, escape, escape.

The argument was about nuclear disarmament. I had doubts, the other day. But not now.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN MIRANDA AND CALIBAN.

M. (I was sitting on my bed, smoking. Caliban on his usual chair by the iron door, the fan was going outside) What do you think about the H-bomb?

C. Nothing much.

M. You must think something.

C. Hope it doesn’t drop on you. Or on me.

M. I realize you’ve never lived with people who take things seriously, and discuss seriously. (He put on his hurt face.) Now let’s try again. What do you think about the H-bomb?

C. If I said anything serious, you wouldn’t take it serious. (I stared at him till he had to go on.) It’s obvious. You can’t do anything. It’s here to stay.

M. You don’t care what happens to the world?

C. What’d it matter if I did?

M. Oh, God.

C. We don’t have any say in things.

M. Look, if there are enough of us who believe the bomb is wicked and that a decent nation could never think of having it, whatever the circumstances, then the government would have to do something. Wouldn’t it?

C. Some hope, if you ask me.

M. How do you think Christianity started? Or anything else? With a little group of people who didn’t give up hope.

C. What would happen if the Russians come, then? (Clever point, he thinks.)

M. If it’s a choice between dropping bombs on them, or having them here as our conquerors—then the second, every time.

C. (check and mate) That’s pacifism.

M. Of course it is, you great lump. Do you know I’ve walked all the way from Aldermaston to London? Do you know I’ve given up hours and hours of my time to distribute leaflets and address envelopes and argue with miserable people like you who don’t believe anything? Who really deserve the bomb on them?

C. That doesn’t prove anything.

M. It’s despair at the lack of (I’m cheating, I didn’t say all these things—but I’m going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It’s despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It’s despair that so few of us care. It’s despair that there’s so much brutality and callousness in the world. It’s despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they’ve won a lot of money. And then do what you’ve done to me.

C. I thought you’d get on to that.

M. Well, you’re part of it. Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don’t care.

C. I know your lot. You think the whole blooming world’s all arranged so as everything ought to be your way.

M. Don’t be so wet.

C. I was a private in the army. You can’t tell me. My lot just do what they’re told (he was really quite worked up—for him) and better look out if they don’t.

M. You haven’t caught up with yourself. You’re rich now. You’ve got nothing to be hurt about.

C. Money doesn’t make all that difference.

M. Nobody can order you about any more.

C. You don’t understand me at all.

M. Oh, yes I do. I know you’re not a teddy. But deep down you feel like one. You hate being an underdog, you hate not being able to express yourself properly. They go and smash things, you sit and sulk. You say, I won’t