‘Yes, please.’
‘Hell, there’s no bread, only biscuits.’
‘OK, anything.’
We settled down to the stew.
‘When are you coming back to London?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about Hartley?’
‘What about her?’
‘Any news, views?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve given up?’
‘No.’
‘Seen her?’
‘I had tea with her and Ben.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Polite. More wine?’
‘Thank you.’
I was afraid that James was going to pester me with more questions, but he did not, he seemed to have lost interest. With an air now of generalizing he said, ‘I think you’re nearly through, out of it. You’ve built a cage of needs and installed her in an empty space in the middle. The strong feelings are all around her-vanity, jealousy, revenge, your love for your youth-they aren’t focused on her, they don’t touch her. She seems to be their prisoner, but really you don’t harm her at all. You are using her image, a doll, a simulacrum, it’s an exorcism. Soon you will start seeing her as a wicked enchantress. Then you will have nothing to do except forgive her and that will be within your capacity.’
‘Thank you-but as it happens I don’t love her image, I love her, even what’s awful.’
‘Her preferring him to you? That would be a feat.’
‘No, wreckage, carnage, what’s in her mind.’
‘Well, what is in her mind? Perhaps she was simply bound to your memory by a sense of guilt. When you released her from it she was grateful, but then her own resentment was set free, her memories of how tiresome you were perhaps, and after that she could revert to a state of indifference. Any cheese?’
‘James, you understand absolutely nothing here. And I have not given up, nor am I nearly, as you put it, out or through!’
‘It may even be your destiny to live alone and be everybody’s uncle like a celibate priest, there are worse ends. Any cheese?’
‘I’m not ending just yet I hope! Yes, there is cheese.’ I set out the cheese and opened another bottle of wine.
‘By the way,’ said James, ‘I hope you believed what I said to you about Lizzie?’
I filled our glasses. ‘I can believe it was all her idea and you had to be a gent about it.’
James sat for a moment concentrating. I guessed that he was wondering whether to start again on details about how often they had met and so on. I decided it didn’t matter. I believed him. ‘It doesn’t matter. I believe you.’
‘I’m sorry it happened,’ he said. It was not exactly an apology.
‘OK. OK now.’
James returned to making patterns on the table and I felt embarrassed again. I said rather awkwardly, ‘Well, tell me about yourself, what are you up to?’
‘I’m going away-’
‘Aha, so you said, you said you were going on a journey. To where there are mountains maybe, and snow maybe, and demons in and out of boxes maybe?’
‘Who knows? You’re a sea man. I’m a mountain man.’
‘The sea is clean. The mountains are high. I think I am becoming drunk.’
‘The sea is not all that clean,’ said James. ‘Did you know that dolphins sometimes commit suicide by leaping onto the land because they’re so tormented by parasites?’
‘I wish you hadn’t told me that. Dolphins are such good beasts. So even they have their attendant demons. Well, you’re off are you, let me know when you’re back.’
‘I’ll do that thing.’
‘I can’t understand your attitude to Tibet.’
‘To Tibet?’
‘Yes, oddly enough! Surely it was just a primitive superstitious mediaeval tyranny.’
‘Of course it was a primitive superstitious mediaeval tyranny,’ said James, ‘who’s disputing that?’
‘You seem to be. You seem to regard it as a lost Buddhist paradise. ’ I had never ventured to say anything like this to James before, it must have been the drink.
‘I don’t regard it as a Buddhist paradise. Tibetan Buddhism was in many ways thoroughly corrupt. It was a wonderful human relic, a last living link with the ancient world, an extraordinary untouched country with a unique texture of religion and folklore. All this has been destroyed deliberately, ruthlessly and un-selectively. Such a quick thoughtless destruction of the past must always be a matter of regret whatever the subsequent advantages. ’
‘So you speak as an antiquarian?’
James shrugged his shoulders. He was examining several moths which were circling about the lamp. ‘You have some splendid moths here. I haven’t seen an Oak Eggar for ages. Oh dear, I think that poor fellow’s had it. Do you mind if I close the window? Then they won’t come in.’ He deftly caught two of the moths and put them outside, together with the corpse of their handsome companion, and closed the window. I noticed that it had stopped raining and the air was clearer. The wind had blown the mist away.
‘But then you were just keen on studying the superstition?’ I said. I felt that this evening, in spite of our embarrassments, my cousin was more open to me than I had ever known him.
‘What after all is superstition?’ said James, pouring some more wine into both glasses. ‘What is religion? Where does the one end and the other begin? How could one answer that question about Christianity?’
‘But I mean you were just a student of-not a-’ What did I mean? I could not get my question clear.
‘Of course,’ said James, on whom the wine seemed simply to have the effect of speeding his utterance, ‘you are right to keep using the word “superstition”, the concept is essential. I asked where does the one end and the other begin. I suppose almost all religion is superstition really. Religion is power, it has to be, the power for instance to change oneself, even to destroy oneself. But that is also its bane. The exercise of power is a dangerous delight. The short path is the only path but it is very steep.’
‘I thought religious people felt weak and worshipped something strong.’
‘That’s what they think. The worshipper endows the worshipped object with power, real power not imaginary power, that is the sense of the ontological proof, one of the most ambiguous ideas clever men ever thought of. But this power is dreadful stuff. Our lusts and attachments compose our god. And when one attachment is cast off another arrives by way of consolation. We never give up a pleasure absolutely, we only barter it for another. All spirituality tends to degenerate into magic, and the use of magic has an automatic nemesis even when the mind has been purified of grosser habits. White magic is black magic. And a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people. Demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards. The last achievement is the absolute surrender of magic itself, the end of what you call superstition. Yet how does it happen? Goodness is giving up power and acting upon the world negatively. The good are unimaginable.’
Perhaps James was drunk after all. I said, ‘Well, I don’t understand the half of what you say. Maybe I’m just an old-fashioned ex-Christian, but I always thought that goodness was to do with loving people, and isn’t that an attachment?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said James, rather I thought too casually, ‘yes-’ He poured himself out some more wine. We had opened another bottle.
‘All this giving up of attachments doesn’t sound to me like salvation and freedom, it sounds like death.’
‘Well, Socrates said we must practise dying-’ James was now beginning to sound flippant.
‘But you yourself,’ I said, for I wanted to hold on to him and bring all this airy metaphysic down to earth, and
