The Book And The Brotherhood

wantonly.'

‘Oh Jeanie, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I can't rest, I can't rest-‘

Jean put her arms round him, round the bundle of his shoulders and his overcoat, and drew his head down to her shoulder and stroked his hair over the crown of his head and down onto his neck under the coat collar, and looked away over his head across the chill room to the open door. His head was cold. 'You work too hard,' she said, 'I know you have so. I wish I could make you rest. I so often want to_. You must teach me how. I know we rest _in bed. But you don't rest any other way – and neither do I. '

Crimond lifted his head and put his cold lips gently to her cheek. 'What do people do who can rest, my angel of love?’

`I wish I were a_ll angel of peace. '

`You are, you are m_y peace, I have no other.'

`People who can rest read books and go for walks and arrange flowers and weed their gardens and wash their cars and listen to music and rearrange their possessions and have their friends to informal suppers and have lots of general conversation.'

`At least we read books.'

`You read work books, and poetry. I can't read at present. It'll come back.'

`Perhaps your friend Rose is rⁱght. She want’s us to fail. She isn't really your friend. She's spiteful. as women are.’

`And irrational, I suppose! You want to liberate the world but you still think in ^your heart women are inferior, you think they aren't quite real.'

`All men think that,' said Crimond, raising his head from where it had been resting, and thrusting her away a little. ‘And most women too. Why deny it, women are different, their brains are different, they're weaker, women cry and men don't, that symbolises it.'

`Have you never cried?'

`Not that I know of.'

‘Perhaps you will one day.'

`Perhaps, when the world ends.'

`You're certainly not very sound on the liberation of women. Maybe after all Islam will rule the world.’

`It is a possibility I have considered.'

`So you think me irrational and inferior and unreal?’

`Not you, little one. You are not a woman. You are an errant spirit. We are both from elsewhere, we are visitors here, aliens, and by a happy chance we have met each other.'

‘No wonder we think everyone else we know is half alive.'

‘You must find something to do, something to study, you are wasting your talents.'

‘I will find something, I will, don't worry about that!'

‘I believe you are bored sometimes, you must be, Rose is right. You’ve given up so much, all your friends, your social life-‘

‘What I've given up is worthless to me. You've given up your solitude. I wonder if you sometimes regret it?'

‘No, no, my heart and my soul – it was fated. You won't leave me, will you, little falcon?'

‘How could I leave you, I ^am you, I cannot tear myself out from the sheth of my limbs.'

‘You see, we do read, we do. Perhaps one day we shall go for a walk. Yes, yes, if` we are to be dⁱsmembered we shall be dismembered together.'

‘If only you could be more quiet with me. You said I was your peace. But you are always starting away as if you'd had an electric shock.'

‘Then I shall never he it peace with you,' said Crimond, `if peace is quietness. I meant something else.' He pulled off his coat and sat, apart from her, leaning forward with his head in his hands. 'Yost are my weakness, my weak point, that is part of our impossibility.’

Jean sat stiffly, frightened, as she often was. After a moment she said softly, slowly, `When the book is finished perhaps we could travel a little. I'd so much like to be with you in France and Italy. You go on about the importance of Europe. You could visit people and talk to them.'

‘When I finish the book I shall cease to be, and so will you.'

‘Sometimes you talk nonsense, deliberate tiresome nonsense.’

‘Perhaps the book will never be finished.'

‘Of course it will, _and then you'll write another.'

‘My darling, can you see us growing old together?''

‘You won't grow old.' she said. Could he, her Crimond, grow old? Then she said, 'I love you – whatever is to be we’ll be together. Oh Crimond, don't torment me with this talk-‘

`I shall be bald, your lovely live hair will be limp and grey, we shall be weak and crippled. We shall look at each other in fear as we diminish more. I don't want ever to get used to you, Jeanie dear, why should we, we carry the long mortal burden of age and decline, we who are living gods in this place? I cannot leave you behind, any more than you can leave me behind. Better to consummate our love in death.’ As he was rubbing his hands over his face and his eyes and through his hair. 'Oh I am so tired- my mind is so tired tired -‘

Jean felt afraid. He had talked like this before. ‘Yes, yes, of course, you are tired, you should stop working, rest, rest, just for a day.'

`I can't rest, you don't understand, you betray me, you don't listen to my words. I'm sorry. Sometimes I feel I am a knife poised at your heart.'

`I do listen, I do understand, you are wondering what you will do when you have finished the book, you imagine you’ll become dull and ordinary, the book has kept you in a state of excitement for so many years, I've seen you trembling with emotion as you write-‘

`You imagine that explains something, you imagine it explains something away. No, no, there is no away, it’s deeper than that, it's you and me, we are crushed by our impossibility -'

^`Crimond, we make our possibility, we make it day by day-‘

`Do you want to kill me?'

`Only when I kill myself. Jeanie, I love you, you love me, that's what it's about. The perfection of our love is now we are absolutists, we are gods, later is only less.’

`Crimond, my darling, you know that I will you want, whatever you want, I am yours, I will go with you wherever you go. Here is my life, here is my death. But -'

`But you think we should have lunch!'

‘But the book is not finished, and after it is finished there will be another book- Besides -'

‘Besides?’

‘I want to dance with you again.'

‘Perhaps we shall dance together again, sometime, at the end of the world.’

‘And you will learn to weep then, at the end of the world. Please don’t frighten me by saying these mad things. I know you want eternity, but we can make eternity _in time. That's what love is, after all. Come-‘

‘Come to bed.'

‘Oh, my Jeanie, my queen, if only there were only that -.’

‘That child is going to die,' said Violet Hernshaw to Gideon Fairfax. 'She is determined to die. She will die of a wasting sickness, of a mysterious virus, of tuberculosis, depression, starvation -'

^`Well, can't we stop her?' said Gideon, leaning back in his chair.

`Who's we?'