Babel Tower (73 page)
Authors: A.S. Byatt
“Signed in blood,” he says. “You can read me on you and you on me.”
“Like savages. A rite of passage.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No. It’s lovely. It’s warm. A glow.”
They are whispering. Above their heads, Saskia’s footsteps trot and stop: Agatha calls out, the words inaudible.
“I’ve marked you,” he says. “We’ve marked each other.”
“Let’s never move,” she says, but this is an artificial note, this breaks the spell, for in the end they must move, and they know it.
“Are you happy?” she says, like all lovers, and he answers, “Completely,” one lovely hand heavy on the sharp edge of her haunch.
For whatever reason, this visit of John’s puts an end to the visits of Paul, at least for a time. Frederica wonders if Paul
knows,
in some way, and the knowledge keeps him away. Knows what? she wonders, a
week or two later, when the red glow has been washed off her skin and has cooled and faded a little—only a little—in her memory. For she does not know, she does not exactly want, or need, to know, what she and John Ottokar intend, or desire. Frederica has told no one but Agatha about John Ottokar, and Agatha very little. John Ottokar as a secret, as a hidden pleasure, is nothing to do with her and Leo’s future. But she is not free, as once she was, to feel her way in and out of loves and likings. For Leo watches her, calculating, jealous, wondering what she wants, what she plans, and his watching, like Paul’s quite different watching, weighs on her. And although in the early summer Frederica does not see Paul, she realises that Leo does, or has.
“I smelt that bad smell of that smiley man again today,” says Leo. And, “That man with the smell came by and looked in.”
She cannot mention this to John. She does not know what to make of it. She is nervous.
She dreams she is in bed with two men, one red, one white, made of hot stone, with stone erections tipped with drops of blood (the white man) and white drops of semen (the red one). They turn to her, they lay their heavy arms across her chest, crushing her. They mount half of her, a thigh one side, a thigh the other. They are heavy, they crush her, she cannot cry out. She wakes. She is afraid. She is rather pleased with the energy and simplicity of the dream-forms, as though they were a work of art she had deliberately constructed.
Dear John,
I write this letter only after much deliberation. There is a convention amongst psychoanalysts to put it at its lowest—in certain circumstances it bears a resemblance to a TABOO—there is a convention that it is “not done,” may be injurious, to approach the relatives and lovers and associates of any “patient,” with or without that “patient’s” consent. Conventional psychoanalytic treatment is a relationship between two people, analyst and analysand—other relationships are worked out within that framework.
As you know, and as I know you know, I am “treating” your brother for what have been diagnosed as “manic-depressive episodes.” As I believe you also know, I am in considerable sympathy with those new, and I believe promising, I will go so far as to say
exciting
ideas, thought-patterns, hypotheses, which suggest that we should look on unusual manifestations of the psyche not as aberrations from a specified
norm
(What is normal? Who dictates what we shall take as our
norm
?) but as ways of exploring the spirit, of exploring the pain, the Experience of the soul in a damaged and damaging environment. I do not, in other words, see your brother as a “sick man” in need of a “cure.” But he is undoubtedly a perturbed spirit, undergoing, passing through, a kind of psychic electrical storm, in which great bolts of lightning “all sweating, tilt about the watery heaven,” and he could be empowered or destroyed by these fiery currents.
I was pleased—pleased is a trivial word, I mean to say, and
should
say,
joyful,
to find Paul, or Zag as he prefers to be known, as a participant in the Meetings of the Spirits’ Tigers. The good old Quaker word “Meeting” does suggest what these gatherings are meant to be, and one of the purposes of the Meetings is to restore to the spiritual group the energy, the
violence
even, which, as Christopher Levenson said in his poem from which we took our name, has
slowly over the centuries leached away from the original Pentecostal waitings on the Inner Light. The Quakers no longer quake: the disciples no longer speak with tongues: the Inner Light is dimmed: “the Spirits’ Tigers are grown tame.” It is entirely good that we few should come together to reverse this entry, to generate energy, heat and light, to make each other as far as possible
whole
in the spirit, at least to
empower
those of us who are lost, or wandering, or crashed. I believe Zag’s choice to make one in these Many is a wise choice and to be supported. I believe the group—the Meeting—has been constituted by a wisdom and a purpose beyond the random needs of its individual members.
Now, what has this to do with me? you will ask. Or you will not ask, you will despise my rhetorical attributed question, for you know very well in part—
but not I think, in its wholeness
—what I am going to say to you, to request of you, to lay on you, in the vulgar tongue of our times.
As I was delighted to see Zag bathed in the light of the silence of the Tigers, so I was, on the two brief occasions when we met, overjoyed to see you. Your presence relaxed and calmed him; you brought a serenity to the Meeting which was good for others besides Zag; I think maybe the depth of the silent contemplation did you some good too, or so it appeared.
But you have not come to the last few meetings, and you have not answered the letters that have been sent to you. Zag says he believes you have “given up on him” and also “given up on the Tigers.”
I have been a cabin attendant on Zag’s spiritual voyage long enough to know that he believes it is your wish to put a distance between you. This is a sane wish, worthy of respect. There are three things I would nevertheless say to you—after great deliberation, as I say.
1. Your retreat is directly endangering Zag’s progress—he feels bereft, he feels angry, he feels many many negative things, which he turns against himself, like a child who cuts his own skin. When he does not see you you become in his mind a fantasy spectre or emanation, powerful, to be fought. When he does see you, he sees that you are a complex, separate human being, with
real
needs and a
real
life with which he can come to terms.
From Zag’s point of view, steady contact with you—above all, perhaps, in the sane and controlled emotional “field” of the Spirits’ Tigers—is necessary for the preservation of some sense of “reality.” And however much I may believe that “reality” is not the same thing as common-sense
convention
or
normality,
I do believe it exists. There is a real world—even if infinite—and there is an unreal world, and Zag is in great danger of being trapped in the latter.
2. Your retreat is, I suspect, endangering you, John. For you are
part
of Zag, and the separation must be a subtle unravelling, not a brutal and bloody teasing. You know that in your heart of hearts. Your “dailiness” you cling to is
an unreality as dangerous as Zag’s bad trips to the Aurora Borealis. If I overstep the mark, burn this letter. If I speak to any flicker of recognition in any anxiety anywhere in your head or your heart, consider further, come and talk to me, come back to the Spirits’ Tigers and bring the problem into the white light of our joint watchfulness and dreamy unknowing.
3. The world is changing before our eyes. Consciousness is changing. We can move into a state where
we do not hurt each other.
You were drawn to the Spirits’ Tigers for reasons beyond even your mysterious positive and negative charge to and from your brother. We can say these things, these days, without sounding mad, or cranky, but soberly and truthfully.
Again, if this says nothing to you, burn this letter, forget you received it.
With best wishes.
Yours very sincerely,
Elvet Gander
John Ottokar shows this letter dumbly to Frederica. He holds it out, over the table in a coffee bar where they are meeting in his lunch-break. He is wearing his suit, and a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and a dark blue tie with small emerald spots on it. Frederica is irritated by his portentous and apprehensive expression. She is more irritated by the content of the letter.
“
His
problem,” she pronounces, “is logorrhea. Some of those sentences mean almost nothing.”
“It’s partly a question of religious language,” says John Ottokar. “It tends to be kind of portmanteau and empty at the same time. I do rather hate it. The Quakers avoid it if they can.”
“He’s meant to be a psychoanalyst.”
“It’s not exclusive. You can be both.”
They are bickering about language, in order to avoid discussing the letter.
“What do you think?” says John Ottokar.
“It’s nothing to do with me,” says Frederica. “It’s
your
letter, and
your
brother, and
your
Quakers and
your
Tigers. And
your
psychoanalyst.”
“I see.”
He stares gloomily at the tablecloth. He puts together his papers, as though he is about to leave.
“I’m sorry. I sound spiteful. I don’t mean to be. It scares me. All these things you seem to be involved in, to
belong to.
”
“I don’t say that. The point is, I haven’t gone to the Spirits’ Tigers, not since … not since we … I know you don’t like it. I want—I want to give—what
we
have—a chance.”
“If you think I think I’ve got any right—am in any position—to stop you being a spiritual Tiger—please reconsider. I don’t have any such right—I’m not asking for it.”
“I know.”
And don’t look gloomy and submissive, Frederica wants to cry out; what I liked was your independent
prowling.
John Ottokar says mildly, “Elvet Gander has got a point. He won’t say Paul is sick, because he doesn’t like the word, but Paul is whatever Paul was when everyone said he was sick. He can’t cope with normal life, I do know. And I do know that I could help. He’s right there. I know.”
“Well then, you must help him.”
“But if I help him at the expense of my own life—if I get all
snarled
—”
Frederica feels she ought to say, “We’ll deal with this together, we’ll see it through, don’t worry.” Those are the lines that are written into the script, but she doesn’t want to say them. She doesn’t know where she and John Ottokar would or would not be going
without
Paul/Zag and Elvet Gander and the Spiritual Tigers.
“I don’t want to bore you,” says John Ottokar, responding accurately to this unspoken communication.
Frederica laughs.
“I don’t see how anyone could find all this
boring,
” she says. “Frightening, yes. What will you do?”
“I shan’t go to the Tigers. I do want peace and quiet—the normal. I find them
heady
and—and intensely satisfying. But I ought perhaps to write to Gander and try and say what I feel, why I don’t think it’s a good idea. And I don’t want to write, I hate writing, I hate putting things down, it’s all lies, it’s all
approximate
…”
“I’m going to meet Gander myself,” says Frederica. “Rupert Parrott’s having a meeting ‘In Defence of
Babbletower.
’ He’s asked all his trendy authors—Gander, and Canon Holly and Phyllis Pratt. He’s asked me, because he says I can make Jude behave better. He says a recent graduate gave evidence in the
Lady Chatterley
case, just a young girl, to show she was unsullied. I can’t see me making a good impression in the witness box as an unsullied young girl who had read
Babbletower
and was still unsullied. He’s terribly worked up. In a crusading
sort of way. Whereas Jude is terribly worked up in a
personal
sort of way, and doesn’t look well.”
The June end-of-the-year exhibition at the Samuel Palmer School is still known as the Dip Show, though the students are now taking a degree, not a diploma. This is why they must pass a literature exam, and why Frederica has been working hard, invigilating and marking papers. Frederica and Agatha go to the Dip Show together, on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Leo and Saskia go with them, and Clement and Thano attach themselves to the party. So does John Ottokar, who turns up “for the fairy story,” and stays to lunch, as he sometimes does.
Frederica enjoys the atmosphere. The great studios are divided into spaces, and there are abrupt changes of identity from space to space. A series of stormily menacing rural landscapes is juxtaposed with a box containing brilliant demi-lunes and diamonds of purple and yellow spots and stripes. This is next to a series of collages—balloon-breasted bearded men in fishnet tights and stilettos wrestling or embracing giant carrots and stuffed rabbits, which is in turn next to a painterly series of portraits of men and women in the act of peeling soft plastic masks off their faces. Frederica now knows enough about painting to see that what makes these interesting is the virtuosity and variety of the troughs and channels and folds and texture of the different surfaces, the perspectives of the doubled eyes and twisted sockets. She can also see that the student (Susie Blair) has been taught by Desmond Bull. Susie Blair writes decorous little essays for Frederica on “Show the different methods by which Jane Austen invites and discourages the reader’s sympathy for Emma Woodhouse and/or Fanny Price”—these essays show no sign of the savage intelligence that imitates flesh and plastic in oil paint. Frederica enjoys the gaps between the painters’ writings and their inventions, which she could never have thought up, or begun to imagine, even the weakest. In the next cubicle are a series of dream-worlds somewhere between Claude and Arthur Rackham, entitled
Faery Lands Forlorn.
They ought to be kitsch, and are not, not quite. Saskia says, “Look at the little greeny lights.”