'If you like,' she says guardedly.
The judge, her judge, looks away, purses her lips. A long silence falls. She listens for the buzzing of the fly that one is supposed to hear on such occasions, but there does not appear to be a fly in the courtroom.
Does she believe in life? But for this absurd tribunal and its demands, would she even believe in frogs? How does one know what one believes in?
She tries a test that seems to work when she is writing: to send out a word into the darkness and listen for what kind of sound comes back. Like a foundryman tapping a belclass="underline" is it cracked or healthy? The frogs: what tone do the frogs give off?
The answer: no tone at all. But she is too canny, knows the business too well, to be disappointed just yet. The mud frogs of the Dulgannon are a new departure for her. Give them time: they might yet be made to ring true. For there is something about them that obscurely engages her, something about their mud tombs and the fingers of their hands, fingers that end in little balls, soft, wet, mucous.
She thinks of the frog beneath the earth, spread out as if flying, as if parachuting through the darkness. She thinks of the mud eating away at the tips of those fingers, trying to absorb them, to dissolve the soft tissue till no one can tell any longer (certainly not the frog itself, lost as it is in its cold sleep of hibernation) what is earth, what is flesh.Yes, that she can believe in: the dissolution, the return to the elements; and the converse moment she can believe in too, when the first quiver of returning life runs through the body and the limbs contract, the hands flex. She can believe in that, if she concentrates closely enough, word by word.
'Psst.'
It is the bailiff. He gestures towards the bench, where the judge-in-chief is regarding her impatiently. Has she been in a trance, or even asleep? Has she been dozing in the faces of her judges? She should be more careful.
'I refer you to your first appearance before this court, when you gave as your occupation "secretary to the invisible" and made the following statement: "A good secretary should not have beliefs. It is inappropriate to the function"; and, a little later, "I have beliefs but I do not believe in them."
'At that hearing you appeared to disparage belief, calling it an impediment to your calling. At today's hearing, however, you testify to a belief in frogs, or more accurately in the allegorical meaning of a frog's life, if I understand your drift. My question is: Have you changed the basis of your plea from the first hearing to the present one? Are you giving up the secretary story and presenting a new one, based on the firmness of your belief in the creation?'
Has she changed her story? It is a weighty question, no doubt about that, yet she has to struggle to fix her attention on it. The courtroom is hot, she feels drugged, she is not sure how much more of this hearing she can take. What she would like most is to lay her head on a pillow and have a snooze, even if it has to be the filthy pillow in the bunkhouse.
'It depends,' she says, playing for time, trying to think (Come on, corne on! she tells herself: Your life depends on this!). 'You ask if I have changed my plea. But who am I, who is this I, this you? We change from day to day, and we also stay the same. No I, no you is more fundamental than any other. You might as well ask which is the true Elizabeth Costello: the one who made the first statement or the one who made the second. My answer is, both are true. Both. And neither. I am an other. Pardon me for resorting to words that are not my own, but I cannot improve on them. You have the wrong person before you. If you think you have the right person you have the wrong person. The wrong Elizabeth Costello.'
Is this true? It may not be true but it is certainly not false. She has never felt more like the wrong person in her life.
Her interrogator waves impatiently. 'I am not asking to see your passport. Passports have no force here, as I am sure you are aware. The question I ask is: you, by whom I mean this person before our eyes, this person petitioning for passage, this person here and nowhere else – do you speak for yourself?'
Yes. No, emphatically no. Yes and no. Both.'
Her judge glances left and right at his colleagues. Is she imagining it, or does the flicker of a smile pass among them, and a whispered word? What is the word? Confused7.
He turns back to her. 'Thank you. That is all.You will hear from us in due course.'
'That is all?'
'That is all, for today.'
'I am not confused.'
'Yes, you are not confused. But who is it who is not confused?'
They cannot contain themselves, her panel of judges, her board. First they titter like children, then abandon all dignity and howl with laughter.
• * *
She wanders across the square. It is, she would guess, early afternoon. There is less bustle than usual. The locals must be at their siesta. The young in one another's arms. If I had my life again, she tells herself, not without bitterness, I would spend it otherwise. Have more fun. What good has it done me, this life of writing, now that it comes to the final proving?
The sun is fierce. She ought to be wearing a hat. But her hat is in the bunkhouse, and the thought of re-entering that airless space repels her.
The courthouse scene has not left her, the ignominy of it, the shame. Yet beneath it all she remains, strangely, under the spell of the frogs. Today, it would appear, she is disposed to believe in frogs. What will it be tomorrow? Midges? Grasshoppers? The objects of her belief appear to be quite random. They come up without warning, surprising and even, despite her dark mood, delighting her.
She gives the frogs a tap with her fingernail. The tone that comes back is clear, clear as a bell.
She gives the word belief a tap. How does belief measure up? Will her test work with abstractions too?
The sound that belief returns is not as clear, but clear enough nevertheless. Today, at this time, in this place, she is evidently not without belief. In fact, now that she thinks of it, she lives, in a certain sense, by belief. Her mind, when she is truly herself, appears to pass from one belief to the next, pausing, balancing, then moving on. A picture comes to her of a girl crossing a stream; it comes together with a line from Keats: Keeping steady her laden head across a brook. She lives by belief, she works by belief, she is a creature of belief. What a relief! Should she run back and tell them, her judges, before they disrobe (and before she changes her mind)?
Astonishing that a court which sets itself up as an interrogatory of belief should refuse to pass her. They must have heard other writers before, other disbelieving believers or believing disbelievers. Writers are not lawyers, surely they must allow for that, allow for eccentricities of presentation. But of course this is not a court of law. Not even a court of logic. Her first impression was right: a court out of Kafka or Alice in Wonderland, a court of paradox. The first shall be last and the last first. Or contrariwise. If it were guaranteed in advance that one could breeze through one's hearing with anecdotes from one's childhood, skipping with laden head from one belief to another, from frogs to stones to flying machines, as often as a woman changes her hat (now where does that line come from?), then every petitioner would take up autobiography, and the court stenographer would be washed away in streams of free association.
She is before the gate again, before what is evidently her gate and hers alone, though it must be visible to anyone who cares to give it a glance. It is, as ever, closed, but the door to the lodge is open, and inside she can see the gatekeeper, the custodian, busy as usual with his papers, which ripple lightly in the air from the fan.
'Another hot day,' she remarks.
'Mm,' he mumbles, not interrupting his work.
'Every time I pass by I see you writing,' she continues, trying not to be deterred. 'You are a writer too, in a sense. What are you writing?'
'Records. Keeping the records up to date.'
'I've just had my second hearing.'
'That's good.'
'I sang for my judges. I was today's singing-bird. Do you use that expression: singing-bird?'
He shakes his head abstractedly: no.
'It did not go well, I'm afraid, my song.'
'Mm.'
'I know you are not a judge,' she says. 'Nevertheless, in your judgement, do I stand any chance of passing through? And if I do not pass through, if I am deemed not good enough to pass, will I stop here for ever, in this place?'
He shrugs. 'We all stand a chance.' He has not looked up, not once. Does that mean something? Does it mean that he has not the courage to look her in the eye?
'But as a writer,' she persists – 'what chance do I stand as a writer, with the special problems of a writer, the special fidelities?'