«Because I love Julian I ought to be able to love everybody. I will be able to one day. Oh Christ, if I could only have some happiness. When she comes back I'll love everybody, I'll love Priscilla.»
«Priscilla's dead, Brad.»
«Love ought to triumph over time, but can it? Not time's fool, he said, and he knew about love if anybody did, he was bloody crucified if anybody was. Of course one's got to suffer. Perhaps in the end the suffering is all, it's all contained in the suffering. The final atoms of it all are simply pain. How old are you, Francis?»
«Forty-eight, Brad.»
«You're ten years luckier and wiser than I am.»
«I've never had any luck, Brad. I don't even hope for any any more. But I still love people. Not like Steve of course, but I love them. I love you, Brad.»
«She will come back. The world hasn't changed for nothing. It can't change back now. The old world has gone forever. Oh how my life has gone from me, it has ebbed away. I cannot believe I am fifty-eight.»
«Have you loved a lot of women, Brad?»
«I never really loved anybody before Julian came.»
«But there were women, after Chris I mean?»
«Don't say his name, Brad, please. I wish I hadn't told you it.»
«Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise because you don't need the future. I am happy now, I think. I'll write it all down, only not tonight.»
«I envy you being a writer chap, Brad. You can say what you feel. I'm just eaten by feelings and I can't even shout.»
«Yes, I can shout, I can fill the galaxy with bellowings of pain. But you know, Francis, I've never ever really explained anything. I feel now as if at last I could explain. It's as if all the matrix of my life which has been as hard and tight and small as a nut has become all luminous and spread out and huge. Everything's magnified. At last I can see it all and visit it all. Francis, I can be a great writer now, I know I can.»
«Sure you can, Brad. I always knew you had it in you. You were always like you were a great man.»
«I've never given myself away before, Francis, never gambled myself absolutely. I've been a timid frightened man all my life. Now I know what it's like to be beyond fear. I'm where greatness lives now. I've handed myself over. And yet it's like being under discipline too. I haven't any choice. I love, I worship and I shall be rewarded.»
«Sure, Brad. She will come.»
«Yes. He will come.»
«Brad, I think you'd better go to bed.»
«Yes, yes, to bed, to bed. Tomorrow we'll make a plan.»
«You stay here and I search.»
«Yes. Happiness must exist. It can't all be made of pain. But what is happiness made of? All right, all right, Francis, I'll go to bed. What's the worst image of suffering you can think of?»
«A concentration camp.»
