Современная литература Великобритании и США. Учебно-методическое пособие

ства», но книга в готовом виде так и не появляется в романе Мердок, заставив усомниться в ее существовании. Что сто­ит за неудачной попыткой самоубийства Раймонда – потеря цели для писателя или сомнения в полноценности «силовых» идей, преломленных через призму неомарксизма, – эту за­гадку автор преднамеренно оставляет неразгаданной. Тайна книги Кримонда противопоставляется таинственности, хотя и пародийной, окружающей внутренний этикет «братства», которое отчасти напоминает масонскую организацию в мини­атюре. Но процесс распада книги неизбежно влечет за собой и разногласия внутри «братства». «В этой ситуации кто-то должен умереть», – говорит один из членов «Общества под­держки Книги» Дженкин Ридерхуд, фигура, воплощающая в романе добро. Жертвой нелепой случайности становится именно Дженкин, что подтверждает идею Мердок о том, что трагедия и ирония – единое целое, два органично слитых лика жизни.

describe or to connect. Art is a kind of artificial memory and the pain which attends all serious art is a sense of that factitiousness. Most artists are the minor poets of their little world, who have only one voice and can sing only one song.

The first days were a maelstrom of confusion, misunderstandings, incredulity. Not only could I not believe what had happened, I could not conceptualize it. However I am not going to tell anything more of this as a story. The story is over. And what it is the story of I shall attempt in a little while to say. As the time went on I tried various attitudes, said various things, changed my mind, told the truth, then lied, then broke down, was impassive, then devious, then abject. None of this helped at the trial. Rachel in black was a touching figure. Everyone deferred and was sympathetic. The judge had a special inclination of the shoulders and a special grave smile. I do not think anything was planned in cold blood. It occurred to me later that of course the police themselves had decided what had happened, they suggested it to Rachel, they told her what it was all about. She may even have tried to be, at the start, incoherently truthful. But the story was so impossible. The poker, wiped clean of her fingerprints and liberally covered with my own, was soon found. The whole thing was obvious. All Rachel had to do was scream. I for my part acted as guiltily as any man could. Perhaps at moments I almost believed that I had killed him, just as at moments perhaps she almost believed that she had not.

There was even a sort of perfection about it. She had taken such a perfect revenge upon the two men in her life. Some women never forgive. “I would not give him my hair for a bowstring at the end. I would not raise a finger to save him dying.” Christian had joined Arnold in France, as I learnt much later. But no doubt the will that powered that hammerblow had been forged much earlier. When I glimpsed it at the start of my narration it was already steely strong. There was, almost, no surprise here. What did surprise me was the strength of Rachel’s feeling for myself. There must have been, to create such a great hate, a very considerable degree of love. I had simply not noticed that Rachel loved me. She must have cared deeply to be able, in order to destroy me, to lie so hugely and so consistently. I ought to have been moved to reverence. Later perhaps I was. No, I do not exactly “blame,” though neither do I “condone.” I am not sure what “forgiveness” means. I have cut attachments, I have “let her off,” I feel no thrilling connection of resentment between us. In some blank way I even wish her well. Forgiveness is often thought of as an emotion. It is not that. It is rather a certain kind of cessation of emotion. So perhaps I do indeed forgive. It matters little what words one uses here. In fact she was an instrument which did me a very great service.

to be wasted. I had never felt more alert and alive in my life, and from the vantage point of my new consciousness I looked back upon what I had been: a timid incomplete resentful man.

Hartbourne and Francis, in their different ways, did what they could for me. Hartbourne’s line, worked out after discussions with my lawyer, was that I was insane. (“That cock won’t fight, old man!” I shouted to him across the courtroom.) His evidence for this view was rather slender. It appeared that I frequently cancelled appointments. (“Then are we all mad?” said the prosecuting counsel.) I had forgotten to attend a party which had been arranged in my honour. I was moody and eccentric and absent-minded. I imagined myself to be a writer. (“But he is a writer!” said the prosecuting counsel. I applauded.) My apparently calm reaction to my sister’s death which the insanity lobby also tried to use, was later taken over by the prosecution as a proof of my callousness. The climax and raison d’etre of the theory was that I had killed Arnold in a brain storm and then forgotten all about it! And if I had displayed uncertainty and clutched my head more often this idea might have been at least worth entertaining. As it was, I appeared as a liar but not as a lunatic. I calmly and lucidly denied that I was mad, and the judge and the jury agreed with me. Hartbourne believed me guilty of course.

up to it.” And the prosecution soon tied him in a knot. “Why then did you not accompany the accused to Baling?”

“I had to go out to buy tickets for Venice.”

“For Venice?”

“Yes, he and I were just going to go to Venice together.” (Laughter.) In fact, all that Francis managed (quite involuntarily) to contribute to the argument was another sinister theory about my motives, to the effect that I was a homosexual, madly in love with Arnold, and that I had killed him out of jealousy! Some of the lewder newspapers ran this idea for a while. However the judge, probably out of consideration for Rachel’s feelings, did not highlight it in his final summing up.

It never entered anyone’s head that she could have had a motive for killing her husband. Marriage is a very private place. I had myself destroyed the only piece of solid evidence for

his talents. And poor Priscilla, risen from the grave, seemed to point her finger at me too. I had failed as a friend and I had failed as a brother. My insensibility to my sister’s plight and then to her death was attested by several. The defence, as I said, did their best to use this as proof of mental unbalance. But the general view was simply that it proved me a monster.

I gave myself up to the course of events with a certain resignation and without screams of protest, for another and deeper reason too, which had to do with Julian. Or perhaps there were two reasons here, one lying above the other. Or perhaps three. What did I believe that Julian thought about what had happened? In a strange way I was almost entirely agnostic about what Julian thought. I did not imagine that she saw me as a murderer. But neither did I expect her to defend me by accusing her mother. My love for Julian had somehow brought about this death. (This piece of causality I was quite clear about.) And my responsibility for it I was prepared to lodge forever in the mystery of my love for Julian and her love for me. That was part of it. But I also felt something like this, that the emergence of my life out of quietness into public drama and horror was a necessary and in some deep sense natural outcome of the visitation with which I had been honoured. Sometimes I thought of it as a punishment for the failure of my vow of silence. Sometimes, shifting the same idea only very slightly, it seemed more like a reward. Because I loved Julian something huge had happened to me. I had been given the privilege of an ordeal. That I suffered through her and for her was, in addition, a delightful, almost frivolous comfort.