in your blood there isn’t a long-gone fiend that only lacks a body?’
‘In my blood?’
‘Or mine. Any one of us. When we talk about a man acting out of character, what are we honestly saying? Aren’t we saying that there must be more to the man than we choose to know, or indeed more than he chooses to know about himself?’
‘Are we so utterly lacking in self-knowledge, do you think?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that, Dark; a man may know himself, but he prides himself on his character, his integrity – the word says it all – integrity – we use it to mean virtue, but it means wholeness too, and which of us is that?’
‘We are all whole, I hope.’
‘Do you wilfully misunderstand me, I wonder?’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Dark, and his mouth was dry and Stevenson noticed how he played with his watch chain like a rosary.
‘Shall I be frank?’
‘Please do.’
‘I was in Bristol…’
‘I see.’
‘And I met a sailor by the name of – ’
‘Price,’ said Dark.
He got up and went to look out of the window, and when he turned back into his study, full of well-worn and familiar things, he felt like a stranger in his own life.
‘I will tell you then,’ he said.
He was talking, telling the whole story from beginning to end, but he heard his voice far off, like a man in another room. He was overhearing himself. It was himself he was talking to. Himself he needed to tell.
If I had not seen her again that day in London, perhaps my life would have been very different. I waited a month for our next meeting and I thought of nothingelse that month. As soon as we were together, she turned round and asked me to unhook her dress. There were twenty hooks; I remember counting them.
She stepped out of her dress and uncoiled her hair and kissed me. She was so free with her body. Her body, her freedom. I was afraid of how she made me feel. You say we are not one, you say truly there are two of us. Yes, there were two of us, but we were one. As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them. The reds and greens of her body are the colours of my love for her, the coloured parts of me, not the thick heavy glass of the rest.
I am a glass man, but there is no light in me that can shine across the sea. I shall lead no one home, save no lives, not even my own.
She came here once. Not to this house, but to the lighthouse. That makes it bearable for me to go on living here. Every day I walk the way we walked, and I try and pick out her imprint. She trailed her hands along the sea wall. She sat by a rock with her back to the wind. She made this bleak place bountiful. Some of her is in the wind, is in the poppies, is in the dive of the gulls. I find her when I look, even though I will never see her again.
I find her in the lighthouse and its long flashes overthe water, I found her in the cave – miraculous, impossible, but she was there, the curve of her caught up in the living rock. When I put my hand in the gap, it’s her I feel; her salty smoothness, her sharp edges, her turnings and openings, her memory.
Darwin said something to me once for which I was grateful. I had been trying to forget, trying to stop my mind reaching for a place where it can never home. He knew my agitation, though he did not know its cause, and he took me up to Am Parbh – the Turning Point, and with his hand on my shoulder, he said, ‘Nothing can be forgotten. Nothing can be lost. The universe itself is one vast memory system. Look back and you will find the beginnings of the world.’
1859
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and Richard Wagner completed his opera Tristan and Isolde. Both are about the beginnings of the world.
Darwin – objective, scientific, empirical, quantifiable.
Wagner – subjective, poetic, intuitive, mysterious.
In Tristan the world shrinks to a
‘In my blood?’
‘Or mine. Any one of us. When we talk about a man acting out of character, what are we honestly saying? Aren’t we saying that there must be more to the man than we choose to know, or indeed more than he chooses to know about himself?’
‘Are we so utterly lacking in self-knowledge, do you think?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that, Dark; a man may know himself, but he prides himself on his character, his integrity – the word says it all – integrity – we use it to mean virtue, but it means wholeness too, and which of us is that?’
‘We are all whole, I hope.’
‘Do you wilfully misunderstand me, I wonder?’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Dark, and his mouth was dry and Stevenson noticed how he played with his watch chain like a rosary.
‘Shall I be frank?’
‘Please do.’
‘I was in Bristol…’
‘I see.’
‘And I met a sailor by the name of – ’
‘Price,’ said Dark.
He got up and went to look out of the window, and when he turned back into his study, full of well-worn and familiar things, he felt like a stranger in his own life.
‘I will tell you then,’ he said.
He was talking, telling the whole story from beginning to end, but he heard his voice far off, like a man in another room. He was overhearing himself. It was himself he was talking to. Himself he needed to tell.
If I had not seen her again that day in London, perhaps my life would have been very different. I waited a month for our next meeting and I thought of nothingelse that month. As soon as we were together, she turned round and asked me to unhook her dress. There were twenty hooks; I remember counting them.
She stepped out of her dress and uncoiled her hair and kissed me. She was so free with her body. Her body, her freedom. I was afraid of how she made me feel. You say we are not one, you say truly there are two of us. Yes, there were two of us, but we were one. As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them. The reds and greens of her body are the colours of my love for her, the coloured parts of me, not the thick heavy glass of the rest.
I am a glass man, but there is no light in me that can shine across the sea. I shall lead no one home, save no lives, not even my own.
She came here once. Not to this house, but to the lighthouse. That makes it bearable for me to go on living here. Every day I walk the way we walked, and I try and pick out her imprint. She trailed her hands along the sea wall. She sat by a rock with her back to the wind. She made this bleak place bountiful. Some of her is in the wind, is in the poppies, is in the dive of the gulls. I find her when I look, even though I will never see her again.
I find her in the lighthouse and its long flashes overthe water, I found her in the cave – miraculous, impossible, but she was there, the curve of her caught up in the living rock. When I put my hand in the gap, it’s her I feel; her salty smoothness, her sharp edges, her turnings and openings, her memory.
Darwin said something to me once for which I was grateful. I had been trying to forget, trying to stop my mind reaching for a place where it can never home. He knew my agitation, though he did not know its cause, and he took me up to Am Parbh – the Turning Point, and with his hand on my shoulder, he said, ‘Nothing can be forgotten. Nothing can be lost. The universe itself is one vast memory system. Look back and you will find the beginnings of the world.’
1859
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and Richard Wagner completed his opera Tristan and Isolde. Both are about the beginnings of the world.
Darwin – objective, scientific, empirical, quantifiable.
Wagner – subjective, poetic, intuitive, mysterious.
In Tristan the world shrinks to a
Similar Books
