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The Collector

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The essences. Not the things themselves.

Swimmings of light on the smallest things.

Or am I being sentimental?

Depressed.

I’m so far from everything. From normality. From light. From what I want to be.

October 18

G.P. — You paint with your whole being. First you learn that. The rest is luck.

Good solution: I must not be fey.

This morning I drew a whole series of quick sketches of bowls of fruit. Since Caliban wants to give, I don’t care how much paper I waste. I “hung” them and asked him to choose which one was best. Of course he picked all those that looked most like the wretched bowl of fruit. I started to try to explain to him. I was boasting about one of the sketches (the one I liked best). He annoyed me, it didn’t mean anything to him, and he made it clear in his miserable I’ll-take-your-word-for-it way that he didn’t really care. To him I was just a child amusing herself.

Blind, blind, other world.

My fault. I was showing off. How could he see the magic and importance of art (not my art, of art) when I was so vain?

We had an argument after lunch. He always asks me if he may stay. Sometimes I feel so lonely, so sick of my own thoughts, that I let him. I want him to stay. That’s what prison does. And there’s escape, escape, escape.

The argument was about nuclear disarmament. I had doubts, the other day. But not now.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN MIRANDA AND CALIBAN.

M. (I was sitting on my bed, smoking. Caliban on his usual chair by the iron door, the fan was going outside) What do you think about the H-bomb?

C. Nothing much.

M. You must think something.

C. Hope it doesn’t drop on you. Or on me.

M. I realize you’ve never lived with people who take things seriously, and discuss seriously. (He put on his hurt face.) Now let’s try again. What do you think about the H-bomb?

C. If I said anything serious, you wouldn’t take it serious. (I stared at him till he had to go on.) It’s obvious. You can’t do anything. It’s here to stay.

M. You don’t care what happens to the world?

C. What’d it matter if I did?

M. Oh, God.

C. We don’t have any say in things.

M. Look, if there are enough of us who believe the bomb is wicked and that a decent nation could never think of having it, whatever the circumstances, then the government would have to do something. Wouldn’t it?

C. Some hope, if you ask me.

M. How do you think Christianity started? Or anything else? With a little group of people who didn’t give up hope.

C. What would happen if the Russians come, then? (Clever point, he thinks.)

M. If it’s a choice between dropping bombs on them, or having them here as our conquerors — then the second, every time.

C. (check and mate) That’s pacifism.

M. Of course it is, you great lump. Do you know I’ve walked all the way from Aldermaston to London? Do you know I’ve given up hours and hours of my time to distribute leaflets and address envelopes and argue with miserable people like you who don’t believe anything? Who really deserve the bomb on them?

C. That doesn’t prove anything.

M. It’s despair at the lack of (I’m cheating, I didn’t say all these things — but I’m going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It’s despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It’s despair that so few of us care. It’s despair that there’s so much brutality and callousness in the world. It’s despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they’ve won a lot of money. And then do what you’ve done to me.

C. I thought you’d get on to that.

M. Well, you’re part of it. Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don’t care.

C. I know your lot. You think the whole blooming world’s all arranged so as everything ought to be your way.

M. Don’t be so wet.

C. I was a private in the army. You can’t tell me. My lot just do what they’re told (he was really quite worked up — for him) and better look out if they don’t.

M. You haven’t caught up with yourself. You’re rich now. You’ve got nothing to be hurt about.

C. Money doesn’t make all that difference.

M. Nobody can order you about any more.

C. You don’t understand me at all.

M. Oh, yes I do. I know you’re not a teddy. But deep down you feel like one. You hate being an underdog, you hate not being able to express yourself properly. They go and smash things, you sit and sulk. You say, I won’t help the world. I won’t do the smallest good thing for humanity. I’ll just think of myself and humanity can go and stew for all I care. (It’s like continually slapping someone across the face — almost a wince.) What use do you think money is unless it’s used? Do you understand what I’m talking about?

C. Yes.

M. Well?

C. Oh… you’re right. As always.

M. Are you being sarcastic again?

C. You’re like my Aunt Annie. She’s always going on about the way people behave nowadays. Not caring and all that.

M. You seem to think it’s right to be wrong.

C. Do you want your tea?

M. (superhuman effort) Look, for the sake of argument, we’ll say that however much good you tried to do in society, in fact you’d never do any good. That’s ridiculous, but never mind. There’s still yourself. I don’t think the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has much chance of actually affecting the government. It’s one of the first things you have to face up to. But we do it to keep our self-respect to show to ourselves, each one to himself or herself, that we care. And to let other people, all the lazy, sulky, hopeless ones like you, know that someone cares. We’re trying to shame you into thinking about it, about acting. (Silence — then I shouted.) Say something!

C. I know it’s evil.

M. Do something, then! (He gawped at me as if I’d told him to swim the Atlantic.) Look. A friend of mine went on a march to an American air-station in Essex. You know? They were stopped outside the gate, of course, and after a time the sergeant on guard came out and spoke to them and they began an argument and it got very heated because this sergeant thought that the Americans were like knights of old rescuing a damsel in distress. That the H-bombers were absolutely necessary — and so on. Gradually as they were arguing they began to realize that they rather liked the American. Because he felt very strongly, and honestly, about his views. It wasn’t only my friend. They all agreed about it afterwards. The only thing that really matters is feeling and living what you believe — so long as it’s something more than belief in your own comfort. My friend said he was nearer to that American sergeant than to all the grinning idiots who watched them march past on the way. It’s like football. Two sides may each want to beat the other, they may even hate each other as sides, but if someone came and told them football is stupid and not worth playing or caring about, then they’d feel together. It’s feeling that matters. Can’t you see?

C. I thought we were talking about the H-bomb.

M. Go away. You exhaust me. You’re like a sea of cotton wool.

C. (he stood up at once) I do like to hear you talk. I do think about what you say.

M. No, you don’t. You put what I say in your mind and wrap it up and it disappears for ever.

C. If I wanted to send a cheque to the… this lot… what’s the address?

M. To buy my approval?

C. What’s wrong with that?

M. We need money. But we need feeling even more. And I don’t think you’ve got any feeling to give away. You can’t win that by filling in a football coupon.

C. (there was an awkward silence) See you later, then.

(Exit Caliban. I hit my pillow so hard that it has looked reproachful ever since.)

(This evening — as I knew I would and could — I coaxed and bullied him, and he wrote out a cheque for a hundred pounds, which he’s promised to send off tomorrow. I know this is right. A year ago I would have stuck to the strict moral point. Like Major Barbara. But the essential is that we have money. Not where the money comes from, or why it is sent.)

October 19

I have been out.

I was copying all the afternoon (Piero) and I was in the sort of mood where normally I have to go out to the cinema or to a coffee-bar, anywhere. But out.

I made him take me by giving myself to him like a slave. Bind me, I said, but take me.

He bound and gagged me, held my arm, and we walked round the garden. Quite a big one. It was very dark, I could just make out the path and some trees. And it is very lonely. Right out in the country somewhere.

Then suddenly in the darkness I knew something was wrong with him. I couldn’t see him, but I was suddenly frightened, I just knew he wanted to kiss me or something worse. He tried to say something about being very happy; his voice very strained. Choked. And then, that I didn’t think he had any deep feelings, but he had. It’s so terrible not being able to speak. My tongue’s my defence with him, normally. My tongue and my look. There was a little silence, but I knew he was pent up.