The Book And The Brotherhood

`You've never really cared for anything except your parrot.’

Gerard was astounded. 'How on earth did you know -?’

`His name was Grey. You told me about him on the very first occasion when we met, when we walked back from a lecture and we went into the Botanical Garden and into the greenhouse. Do you remember?'

Gerard did not remember. 'No.' He was amazed and upset. 'I never told anybody. I certainly don't recall telling you.'

'Well, you did. I'm sorry, don't get angry. And what I said just now was nonsense, just spite. I do want to talk to you though. Our second innings, perhaps, to use Raffles's terminology.'

'I see no parallel,'said Gerard, recovering. 'We never had first innings. But go on.'

'You've forgotten that too. A second innings is always played differently. Never mind. Another of your troubles is that you're afraid of technology.'

'Perhaps you don't mind the idea of a world without books?'

'It's inevitable, so it must be understood, it must be embraced, even loved.'

'So after all you turn out to be a historical materialist! What about your book?'

'It will perish with the rest. Plato, Shakespeare, Hegel, they'll all burn, and I shall burn too. But before that my book will have had a certain influence, that's its point, that's what I've been striving for all these years, that little bit of influence. That’s what's worth doing, and it's the only thing that's worth doing now, to look at the future and make some sense of it and touch it. Look, Gerard, I don't think I'm God, I don't think I'm Hegel, I don't even think I'm Feuerbach-‘

‘All right, all right.'

‘I just belong to now, I'm doing what has to be done now, I'm living the history of our time, which you and your friends seem to be entirely unaware of -'

‘All right, what about what has to be done now? What about poverty and hunger and injustice? What about practical politics and social work?'

‘Don’t misunderstand me-'

‘And please don't scrape the table with your finger nails.’

‘Sorry. Of course we have to deal with poverty and injustice. People like you donate money to charities and then forget it all As for social work you've never been near it in your life, it's something which other inferior people do. One has to think radically about these problems -'

‘You believe in revolution, in violent revolution?'

‘All revolutions are violent, with or without barricades. There will be revolution so we must think revolution.'

‘Perhaps we've reached the stage where you can tell me why you don't believe in parliamentary democracy?'

‘It's obvious. As a form of authority it can't survive. The world in the next century is going to look more like Africa than like Europe. We've got to have the courage to try to understand the whole of history and make genuine predictions. That’s why Marxism is the only philosophy in the world today.’

‘But there's no such thing as history! Your theory is based mistake. All it comes to is wreck the nearest thing and imagine something good will automatically come about! You combine irrational pessimism with irrational optimism! You foresee terrible things, but you also think that you can understand the future and control it and love it! Marxism has always 'saved' its extremely improbable hypotheses by faith in a Utopian conclusion. And you accuse me of believing in God!'

`Yes. Absolute pessimism and absolute optimism, both are necessary.'

`Is that what's called dialectical thinking?'

`You've always been too frightened of talking nonsense, that's why you could never really do philosophy. I am not a utopian, I don't imagine that the state will wither away or the division of labour will cease or alienation will disappear. Nor do I think that we shall have full employment or a classless society or a world without hunger in any future that we can conceive of now. It's the wasteland next. Of course I think this society, our so-called free society, is rotten to the corem- it’s oppressive and corrupt and unjust, it's materialistic and ruthless and immoral, and soft, rotted with pornography and kitsch. You think this too. But you imagine that in some way all the nice things will be preserved and all the nasty things will become less nasty. It can't be like that, we have to go through the fire, in an oppressive society only violence is honest. Men are half alive now, in the future they’ll be puppets. Even if we don't blow ourselves up the future will be; by your nice standards, terrible. There will be a crisis authority, of sovereignty, technology will rule because it will have to rule. History has passed you by, everything happens fast now, we have to run to stay in the same place, let alone get a step ahead to see where we are. We've got to rethink everything -'

`Wait a minute,' said Gerard. He felt his heart beating faster, he felt hot and took off his jacket. 'You say men will be puppets and technology will rule, but surely, whether you call yourself a Marxist or not, you must be working against such a society, not for it! All right, the present is imperfect and the future looks grim, but we must just hold onto what’s good, hold onto our values and try to weather the storm. You say rethink everything, but in the light of what? We must be pragmatic and hopeful, not in love with despair! ^We can’t know the future, Marx couldn't predict the future, and he was looking into one a good deal steadier than ours. We must defend the individual -'

‘What individual?'

‘Come of it,'said Gerard.

‘The bourgeois individual won't survive this tornado, he has already disintegrated, he has withered, he knows he's a fiction. I am not in love with despair, I am in love if you like with a good society which doesn't yet exist. But one cannot even glimpse that society unless one understands the collapse of this one.’

‘I suppose you see yourself as a commissar in a world state of puppets who can't read or write! The elite would have the books, the rest would be watching television!'

‘We won't be there, we are trash, we deserve nothing not even whipping, of course we are in pain, we are living through our own dissolution, all we can do -'

The telephone began ringing in the hall. Patricia opened the door. It’sRose, wanting you.'

‘Oh hell,' said Gerard, and went out closing the door behind him.

Rose’s voice was anxious and apologetic. 'Oh, my dear- are you all right?’

‘Of course, I'm all right!'

‘I’m terribly sorry I didn't ring sooner, I'm away from the flat – I’ve had a rather odd morning, I'll tell you later. I would rung sooner only I couldn't find a telephone box. How did it go?’

‘How did what go?'

‘You talk with Crimond!'

‘It’s still going on.'

‘Can’t you get rid off him? Is it -?'

Rose, could you ring later on sometime? Sorry, I must go now.’ He put down the telephone and hurried back into the dining room.

Crimond had got up and was studying one of the pictures representing a geisha in a boat.

‘Don’t go, David. Do sit down.'

Crimond was looking more relaxed. Enlivened by the argument he looked younger and less tired. 'Did Rose think I'd done you a mischief?'

`She was anxious!'

`I hope I've dealt an intellectual wound.'

`Not yet!'

`I have to go soon -'

`Sit down.'

They sat down. There was a moment's silence.