Complete Poems and Plays (64 page)

C
ELIA
.
                                                         Oh, they live in the country,

Now they can’t afford to have a place in town.

It’s all they can do to keep the country house going:

But it’s been in the family so long, they won’t leave it.

R
EILLY
.
And you live in London?

C
ELIA
.
                                              I share a flat

With a cousin: but she’s abroad at the moment,

And my family want me to come down and stay with them.

But I just can’t face it.

R
EILLY
.
                             So you want to see no one?

C
ELIA
.
No … it isn’t that I
want
to be alone,

But that everyone’s alone — or so it seems to me.

They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;

They make faces, and think they understand each other.

And I’m sure that they don’t. Is that a delusion?

R
EILLY
.
A delusion is something we must return from.

There are other states of mind, which we take to be delusion,

But which we have to accept and go on from.

And the second symptom?

C
ELIA
.
                                      That’s stranger still.

It sounds ridiculous — but the only word for it

That I can find, is a sense of sin.

R
EILLY
.
You suffer from a sense of sin, Miss Coplestone?

This is most unusual.

C
ELIA
.
                            It seemed to
me
abnormal.

R
EILLY
.
We have yet to find what would be normal

For
you,
before we use the term ‘abnormal’.

Tell me what you mean by a sense of sin.

C
ELIA
.
It’s much easier to tell you what I don’t mean:

I don’t mean sin in the ordinary sense.

R
EILLY
.
And what, in your opinion, is the ordinary sense?

C
ELIA
.
Well … I suppose it’s being immoral —

And I don’t feel as if I was immoral:

In fact, aren’t the people one thinks of as immoral

Just the people who we say have no moral sense?

I’ve never noticed that immorality

Was accompanied by a sense of sin:

At least, I have never come across it.

I suppose it is wicked to hurt other people

If you know that you’re hurting them. I haven’t hurt
her.

I wasn’t taking anything away from her —

Anything she wanted. I may have been a fool:

But I don’t mind at all having been a fool.

R
EILLY
.
And what is the point of view of your family?

C
ELIA
.
Well, my bringing up was pretty conventional —

I had always been taught to disbelieve in sin.

Oh, I don’t mean that it was ever mentioned!

But anything wrong, from our point of view,

Was either bad form, or was psychological.

And bad form always led to disaster

Because the people one knew disapproved of it.

I don’t worry much about form, myself —

But when everything’s bad form, or mental kinks,

You either become bad form, and cease to care,

Or else, if you care, you must be kinky.

R
EILLY
.
And so you suppose you have what you call a ‘kink’?

C
ELIA
.
But everything seemed so right, at the time!

I’ve been thinking about it, over and over;

I can see now, it was all a mistake:

But I don’t see why mistakes should make one feel sinful!

And yet I can’t find any other word for it.

It must be some kind of hallucination;

Yet, at the same time, I’m frightened by the fear

That it is more real than anything I believed in.

R
EILLY
.
What is more real than anything you believed in?

C
ELIA.
It’s not the feeling of anything I’ve ever
done,

Which I might get away from, or of anything in me

I could get rid of — but of emptiness, of failure

Towards someone, or something, outside of myself;

And I feel I must …
atone
— is that the word?

Can you treat a patient for such a state of mind?

R
EILLY
.
What had you believed were your relations with this man?

C
ELIA
.
Oh, you’d guessed that, had you? That’s clever of you.

No, perhaps I made it obvious. You don’t need to know

About him, do you?

R
EILLY
.
                         No.

C
ELIA
.
                                  Perhaps I’m only typical.

R
EILLY
.
There are different types. Some are rarer than others.

C
ELIA
.
Oh, I thought that I was giving him so much!

And he to me — and the giving and the taking

Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation

Of what was good for the persons we had been

But for the new person,
us.
If I could feel

As I did then, even now it would seem right.

And then I found we were only strangers

And that there had been neither giving nor taking

But that we had merely made use of each other

Each for his purpose. That’s horrible. Can we only love

Something created by our own imagination?

Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?

Then one
is
alone, and if one is alone

Then lover and beloved are equally unreal

And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.

R
EILLY
.
And this man. What does he now seem like, to you?

C
ELIA
.
Like a child who has wandered into a forest

Playing with an imaginary playmate

And suddenly discovers he is only a child

Lost in a forest, wanting to go home.

R
EILLY
.
Compassion may be already a clue

Towards finding your own way out of the forest.

C
ELIA
.
But even if I find my way out of the forest

I shall be left with the inconsolable memory

Of the treasure I went into the forest to find

And never found, and which was not there

And perhaps is not anywhere? But if not anywhere,

Why do I feel guilty at not having found it?

R
EILLY
.
Disillusion can become itself an illusion

If we rest in it.

C
ELIA
.
              I cannot argue.

It’s not that I’m afraid of being hurt again:

Nothing again can either hurt or heal.

I have thought at moments that the ecstasy is real

Although those who experience it may have no reality.

For what happened is remembered like a dream

In which one is exalted by intensity of loving

In the spirit, a vibration of delight

Without desire, for desire is fulfilled

In the delight of loving. A state one does not know

When awake. But what, or whom I loved,

Or what in me was loving, I do not know.

And if that is all meaningless, I want to be cured

Of a craving for something I cannot find

And of the shame of never finding it.

Can you cure me?

R
EILLY
.
                      The condition is curable.

But the form of treatment must be your own choice:

I cannot choose for you. If that is what you wish,

I can reconcile you to the human condition,

The condition to which some who have gone as far as you

Have succeeded in returning. They may remember

The vision they have had, but they cease to regret it,

Maintain themselves by the common routine,

Learn to avoid excessive expectation,

Become tolerant of themselves and others,

Giving and taking, in the usual actions

What there is to give and take. They do not repine;

Are contented with the morning that separates

And with the evening that brings together

For casual talk before the fire

Two people who know they do not understand each other,

Breeding children whom they do not understand

And who will never understand them.

C
ELIA
.
                                                       Is that the best life?

R
EILLY
.
It is a good life. Though you will not know how good

Till you come to the end. But you will want nothing else,

And the other life will be only like a book

You have read once, and lost. In a world of lunacy,

Violence, stupidity, greed … it is a good life.

C
ELIA
.
I know I ought to be able to accept that

If I might still have it. Yet it leaves me cold.

Perhaps that’s just a part of my illness,

But I feel it would be a kind of surrender —

No, not a surrender — more like a betrayal.

You see, I think I really had a vision of something

Though I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to forget it.

I want to live with it. I could do without everything,

Put up with anything, if I might cherish it.

In fact, I think it would really be dishonest

For me, now, to try to make a life with
any
body!

I couldn’t give anyone the kind of love —

I wish I could — which belongs to that life.