The Book And The Brotherhood

`Yes,' said Jenkin, and sighed. 'Still, I'll never forget seeing him dance that evening last summer.'

`Like Shiva!'

`Weaving his passionate web!'

`Precisely. Crimond's stuff is just a fashionable amalgam, senseless but dangerous – a kind of Taoism with a dash of Heraclitus and modern physics, then labelled Marxism. Thy philosopher as physicist, as cosmologist, as theologian. Plalo did a good job when he threw out the preSocratics.'

`Yes, but they're back! I know what you mean and I don't like it either. But aren't we now mixing up two separaw problems?'

`You mean his private morals and his book. But they aren't separate. Crimond is a terrorist.'

`That's how Rose sees him. All the same, he knows ^an awful lot and he can think. The book may be a great deal better than the slapdash provocative opinions he sometimes utters.'

`Has he shown it to you?'

`No, of course not!'

`Do you plan to meet him?'

`I don't plan, I just don't run a mile! We've got to see hint sometime to ask him about the book.'

`Yes, yes, I'm going to call the committee, we'll have to see him -'

`We must get the style right.'

`I think 'tone' is the word. You say 'ask about the book' but there's nothing we can do except curse privately that we're all spending our money year after year to propagate ideas we detest!'

`It's a dotty situation. Jean could support him, but of course he wouldn't – and it doesn't alter our obligation.'

‘I'm certain he doesn't touch a penny of Jean's money.' Has the book changed or have we? The brotherhood of western intellectuals versus the book of history.'

`You're talking his language. There is no book of history, there is no history in that sense, it's all just determinism and amor fati. Or if there is a book of history it's called the Phenotnenology of Mind and it's out of date! Or do you think we’ve really given up? Come, come, Jenkin!'

'”What by nature and by training we loved, has little strenght remaining, though we would gladly give the Oxford Colleges, Big Ben, and all the birds in Wicken Fen, it has no wish to live'. ‘

‘Don't quote that at me, dear boy. You don't think it or feel it’

‘Perhaps it is not only our fate but our truth to be weak and uncertain.’

‘You think we are in Alexandria in the last days of Athens!'

‘I certainly don't think we have the right to give away the birds in Wicken Fen, they don't belong to us. May I have I her glass of wine?'

‘It's your wine, dolt, I gave it to you!'

Gerard stood up as if to go, and Jenkin rose too, looking up is tall friend and rumpling his wispy strawy hair.

Gerard said, 'Why the hell does Duncan have to lose all the time, why is he the one that falls in the river! I wonder what really happened in Ireland -'

‘I think we shouldn't wonder so much,' said Jenkin, 'some-es we try to think in too much detail about other people's lives. Other’s people's consciousness can be so unlike our own. One learns that.'

‘Gerard sighed, recognising the truth of this, feeling the ccessibility to him of Jenkin's consciousness. 'What were up to at that summer school, Jenkin, you're not going over Pod, are you?'

'Sit down.' They sat down again and Jenkin filled the two oses. 'I just like to know what's happening.'

‘In Liberation Theology? In South America?'

'On the planet.'

They were silent for a moment, Jenkin hunched up, pulling his short legs, becoming almost egg-shaped, Gerard elongated, his legs outstretched, his arms hanging, his tie undone, his dark hair every way.

‘I hate God,' said Gerard.’

'”He who alone is wise wants and does not want to be calle Zeus.' Heraclitus wasn't altogether a disaster, you know.'

Gerard laughed. He reflected how much, in the many year that had passed, he had defined himself by his difference from his friends, differences felt in that degree of detail which is obtained by continuous careful talking. In a way, their lives together had been quite like their childish hopes. Yet also hr was increasingly conscious now of that loneliness of human beings to which Jenkin had referred.

`If he does or doesn't want something it implies he exists.'

`You ought to write about Plotinus and St Augustine and what happened to Platonism.'

`What indeed. Levquist said I was rotted by Christianity!'

‘You think you're on a ladder going up, and you do go up.'

‘You think you're on a road going on, and you do go on.'

`We all do that, there's no merit in it.'

‘You live in the present. I can never find the present.'

‘Sometimes I wish I could give up metaphors and just think.'

‘Think'what?' What a rogue and peasant slave I am.'

‘That's a metaphor. I hate all that Christian praise and blame. And yet -'

`You're a puritan, Gerard. You blame yourself for the lack of some ideal terrible discipline!'

`I remember you said that we're all sunk in the illusions of egoism like in a big sticky cream cake!'

`Yes, but I don't mind too much. Why destroy the healthy ego? It does a job. You're making me feel hungry. Will you stay for supper? Please do.'

`No. I think there's a human task. You think there are human fates. Maybe that way you learn more.'

`Oh I don't know. While you were talking I was picturing the Berlin Wall. It's white.'

`I know it's white.'

`It's like what I think of evil. One must think of it. Perhaps all the time. In oneself too. Start from where one is.'

`You always mix things up,' said Gerard. 'The Berlin Walt lint where you are. It's true that we can't imagine virtue tich above our own level except as pure loss. But one must ry to think about being good, not just shedding contrite tears and rogue and peasant slave stuff. That's just selfgratification!'

'You can't by-pass where you are by an imaginary leap into the ideal!'

'All right, but it's better to have an ideal, rather than just 1i iii1ging on and thinking how different we all are!'

'You're so self-reliant,' said Jenkin. He said this casually because he was tired of this abstract talk which Gerard liked so, and because he wanted Gerard to stay to supper but was not sure there was anything in the larder above the macaroni cheese and fish cake level. One of the supermarkets might still be open. He'd have to go out and buy more wine anyway. Then he realised how much Gerard would resent being called self-reliant.

'Self-reliant!' Gerard rose again and picked up his overcoat a chair.

Resigned Jenkin also rose. 'You won't stay to supper?'

No, thanks. I'll try to fix that committee meeting.

' What about Pat and Gideon?'

I won't have them on the committee, I've told them it won't do. They want to contribute anyway, I've told them they can’t. I've told Gull he mustn't pay either now he's unployed. I suppose all this ought to be discussed. Oh hell.’

'Pat and Gideon can't be pro-Crimond.'

'They aren't. They just want a finger in the pie. Gideon finds it all amusing.'

'He's in London?'

Yes. He's