I Am Lazarus (Peter Owen Modern Classic) (11 page)

And my mother. I see that I have hardly written anything about her as yet, although she was so much the centre of both our lives. Our father died when I was only a few years old and I have no recollection of him at all. My first memories are all of my mother, bending over me, stroking me with cool hands, holding a cup to my lips, soothing me through the mazy fevers of interminable nights, taking me for precious outings during my rare spells of comparative health. She was gay and pretty in those early days, smiling often, and singing, and with a quaint humour distinctively hers. That is the way I like to remember her. As a girl she must have been charming, with my brother's bright hair and complexion. I used to hear people say when we were children how much he resembled her.

It hurts me to think that it was the strain of looking after me which dimmed her brightness prematurely. Her devotion to me was extraordinary. At the time I took it for granted, never having known what it was to be left without her care for a single day. But now I realize that there was something fanatical, almost abnormal, in her determination to keep me alive and to shield me from every blow. There was even – how can I convey what I mean? – a touch of perversity in her protectiveness. I hardly know how to express it except by saying that her will for my welfare exceeded the natural bounds of maternal love and assumed a masochistic quality.

For my sake, although she was still a young and attractive woman, she sacrificed all social amusements. Because I was an invalid and could seldom go out, and then only for short periods, we lived a life of almost complete seclusion. When my brother started to earn his living and to bring his friends to the house I noticed a brief revival of her vitality. She looked younger, and began to speak again in the old humorous way that she had abandoned. Even her hair seemed to become more alive although its colour had. faded.

But the pleasure of seeing these young people she also renounced on the grounds that their presence disturbed me. It would be best, she decided, that my brother should not invite his friends to our home since I was always upset by them and thrown into a state of quarrelsome agitation by their talk.

Not long after this the one-sided conflict between us intensified and it became apparent that I could not or would not agree with my brother even on the few occasions that we were together. A sort of frenzy of malice entered into me at this time. I was jealous of his looks, of his popularity, of the fact that he played his part in the world as an effective member of society while I was forced to drag out a wretched existence lying on sofas in darkened rooms. To my jealousy was added a devastating sense of inferiority. And these two emotions working together like deadly germs in the blood generated an uncontrollable aggression against my brother which broke out in constant violent and utterly unjustified accusations.

He, acting no doubt on my mother's suggestion, spent less and
less time with us. He still slept at home, but most of his days were passed elsewhere and often he did not come home until long after I had gone to bed.

My mother did not speak of him or of his lengthened absences. I, encased in my own egotism, was happy in her even more undivided attention and pleased myself with the thought that her pleasure equalled mine.

We now lived a life restricted to tiny domestic details. I rested on the sofa and read and on good days pottered about out of doors. My mother attended to the house and cooked the special foods which she never allowed anyone else to prepare for me. This time she seemed definitely and finally to have turned away from her youth. Her hair began to go grey. She became very silent; not melancholy, but certainly not gay; and though her manner towards me was quietly cheerful her smile seldom appeared. Sometimes I would catch her sitting listlessly like a quite old woman, and I would wonder at the change that had taken place in one who used to be lively and whimsical. I do not say that I was perturbed by the change. In a way it even caused me a feeling of complacency as though she had become more wholly mine by giving up everything else.

All that concerned me was that we were alone and always together and that nothing interfered with the cloud of protection in which she enveloped me.

Now comes the part that is hardest of all to set down. I feel my brain starting to spin, and I must hurry on before confusion engulfs me completely.

It was bitterly cold weather and I was recovering from an attack of influenza. My brother had caught the infection from me, but mildly, and had been at home in bed for two or three days.

On his first day downstairs the two of us were in the study where most of my existence was passed, I on my usual sofa, he in an armchair by the fire. It was a long while since we had been in the same room together for more than a few minutes at a time. As we rested there, both with our books, I was conscious of him glancing at me now and again as if there were something he wanted to say. Contrarily,
I refused to take any notice for several minutes, but when I finally looked up I met his eyes gazing eagerly and wistfully into mine.

As soon as he saw that I was looking at him he got up, put his book aside, and came over to me. Standing beside the sofa, looking down with that candid smile that was so hard to resist, he began to speak to me in a gentle, appealing voice, saying how sorry he was that we had drifted so far apart, begging my pardon if he had hurt me in some way, and asking if we could not make an effort to get on better together, if only for mother's sake.

He spoke so earnestly and with such simple friendliness and good will that I felt a sudden softening towards him. O God, how much I really wanted to yield myself up to him then, to tear out my black heart and throw it down at his feet. I wanted to love him and to be loved in return. What would I not have given for the power to respond when his hand came down affectionately on my shoulder.

But at that very moment an awful seizure gripped hold of me, my head felt as though it must burst open, and, as if to relieve the intolerable congestion of the brain, a tremendous paroxysm of coughing came on, shaking me so viciously that the walls of my chest seemed to be tom apart.

My brother tried to support me in my convulsions. I can still see his face, a little pale after illness, abruptly turning whiter with shock and dismay. My mother came running with medicine in a glass, but I was too far gone to drink. Accustomed to these crises, she at once knew what to do. There was a certain ampoule that, when crushed, exhaled a vapour which gave me relief: but by an unusual oversight there were none of these in the house. At once she prepared to run to the druggist who lived not far away. I, however, as soon as I realized her intention, held her back, clutching her hand, and indicating as well as I could in the midst of my spasms that she was not to leave me.

I'll go, my brother offered immediately, already on his way to the door.

But you shouldn't go out in this cold, my mother said. You're not well yourself yet.

Even in my extremity I saw the agonized look that she gave him with those words, and felt her hand jerk in mine.

Let him go, I tried to say. It won't hurt him. He's so strong. I don't know if I actually spoke aloud. At any rate, he was gone.

My mother made no further protest. In silence she did what she could for me, easing my acute distress until the ampoule was brought. Later on I was helped to bed, none the worse for the dreadful fit.

Next day my brother was seriously ill with pneumonia. By the evening he was delirious; unconscious the following day. Just before the end he came to himself. My mother fetched me from the place where I was lying prostrated with sorrow and a kind of dread impossible to describe in words.

You must come, she said. He is asking for you.

I did not want to go to the bedside. I was afraid.

Come, my mother said in a stern voice I had never heard. He is dying.

Trembling, I followed her to the room.

I believe some relatives were there as well as the doctor, but I did not see them. I saw only my brother, propped up with pillows, and changed. His short fatal illness had changed him exceedingly. His face had turned sunken and sallow, his hair had lost its gloss and stuck to his forehead in dank strands. Violent tremors shook me as I stood at the side of the bed. Was it my own or my brother's dying face that confronted me there, distorted by anguished breaths?

I saw that he wished to say something to me and stooped over him. The fearful sound of his breathing was so loud that it seemed to be inside my head. I had the sensation of participating in the agony of a man being tortured to death, and my shudders became so uncontrollable that I was afraid of falling upon him. At last words came; clear, and yet not like human speech at all, they came from so far away.

It's a pity.

It was like listening to a voice speaking across oceans and continents. And after a long delay, very softly, so that none of the others heard, followed two more words.

For you.

I don't know what happened then. I only remember the terrible pang that pierced through my whole being, the consciousness of some priceless thing irrevocably lost, as if a vital organ had been ripped out of my body.

I have a dim impression of confused commotion, of a lamentable cry, of the doctor hurrying forward. Was it I or my mother who cried out and fell on the bed? I'm not certain. All I know is that my brother was dead and that someone supported me from the room.

Later on, perhaps many hours later, I was lying again on my sofa. It was night time. A light burned on the table under a heavy shade. I think I must have been given a sedative, for I seemed to climb laboriously up a million steps from the depths of uneasy sleep. For a long time I lay absolutely still, staring at the circle of light on the tablecloth. The cloth was one of those thick old-fashioned affairs, coloured a deep blue, and I looked at it with the disinterested attention one might give to a rare object one had not seen before. By doing this I managed partially to insulate myself from reality. I was aware and yet unaware of the tragedy that had happened.

At last my mother came into the room. I did not look at her. Always before when she had opened the door I had turned towards her with confident and eager expectation of comfort. But now I did not want to see her. I did not want to raise my eyes from the tablecloth. I felt myself starting again to tremble as I had done at my brother's deathbed: long, deep inward shudders ran over my secret nerves.

My mother said nothing. I was aware that she had come into the middle of the room and was standing beside the table. I had the idea that she was waiting for me to speak some particular word, but what it might be I could not imagine. Very slowly and with the greatest possible reluctance I lifted my eyes.

She was standing looking down at me, resting one hand on the table. It seemed to me that something about her was different: not the black dress, because for a long time now she had habitually worn black; nor her pallor, although I noticed that her face was unusually white. It was rather that something indefinable seemed to have been taken from her.

The silence between us became intolerable and I stammered something intended for consolation, saying that at least we still had each other.

Yes, you are all that is left now, she said in a low, grave tone, while her eyes appeared to be studying me with the same unnatural and dispassionate consideration that I had bestowed on the tablecloth.

And suddenly, as she stood there looking at me so quietly and steadfastly in the quiet room, at night, with the lamp burning, the terrible revelation sprang out like writing upon the wall, and I realized everything, my own blindness, the horror. It was not I but my brother whom my mother had loved all along. He was the treasure of which I had robbed her for all these years and of which I had now deprived her for ever.

As if she knew what was in my mind she remarked:

You were always stronger than he was, and now you have managed to get rid of him for good.

A blue thread from the tablecloth had caught on her sleeve, and as she was speaking she carefully picked it off and threw it away. I don't know why, but this little action of hers was more than I could endure, and I groaned and hid my face in my hands.

I suppose she must have gone out of the room then although I did not hear her go. But after a minute the most awful thing of all happened: I heard her voice crying from the staircase in that dreadful, inhuman tone of a person screaming out of a nightmare, O, what will become of us now?

Whatever happens to me, I shall never forget that terrible cry. No walls, however high and thick, can exclude it. Nothing that I could possibly be called upon to bear could drown that sound which is always in my ears now like an accompaniment to the waves breaking outside.

What will become of us now? For her you might say the question is finally answered. And yet, was the answer really contained in that narrow box that so soon after my brother's coffin took the same steep journey down the dark stairs of our home? When the barber comes round and sets up his glass I look at my reflection and
wonder whether the whole drama is not still going on here, in this little room, inside these high walls. Perhaps there will never be an end to it at all. Or perhaps the end will only come when no mirror reflects me any more. Perhaps when I die, perhaps death alone will bring peace, the armistice and end to this sad internecine strife.

THE GANNETS

I
T
was springtime, a windy day. I had walked a long way on the cliffs by a path that I did not know. Gannets were diving like snow falling into the sea, pursuing a shoal of fish that kept parallel with the shore. I'm not certain now whether I walked so far in order to watch the gannets or to explore the coast, or simply because it was a bright afternoon.

After winding for a long time between low bushes and rocks, the path suddenly began to climb steeply over a headland. Seeing the difficult track ahead made me realize that I was tired, and that I had already come much further than I had intended. From the position of the sun I knew that it must be getting late. The sensible thing would have been to turn back then: especially as the gannets, which I had perhaps been following unconsciously, were vanishing round the rocky point shaped like the snout of a huge saurian. But instead of starting the long walk home I kept on, telling myself that I might as well see what lay beyond the head since I had come so far. It was quite a stiff climb, the path was slippery with pine needles and loose stones, and I was breathless by the time I got to the top. There was nothing about the view from the crest, either, to justify the effort of getting there. However far I looked I could see only a vista of the same yellowish rocky cliffs topped with pine trees and scrub which had been in front of my eyes the whole afternoon.