While the doctor had been speaking Nora had stopped, as if he had got her attention for the first time.
‘And once Father Lucas said to me, “Be simple, Matthew, life is a simple book, and an open book, read and be simple as the beasts in the field; just being miserable isn’t enough—you have got to know how.” So I got to thinking and I said to myself, “This is a terrible thing that Father Lucas has put on me—be simple like the beasts and yet think and harm nobody.” I began walking then. It had begun to snow and the night was down. I went toward the Ile, because I could see the lights in the show-windows of Our Lady and all the children in the dark with the tapers twinkling, saying their prayers softly with that small breath that comes off little lungs, whispering fatally about nothing, which is the way children say their prayers. Then I said, “Matthew, tonight you must find a small church where there are no people, where you can be alone like an animal, and yet think.” So I turned off and went down until I came to St. Merri and I went forward and there I was. All the candles were burning steadily for the troubles that people had entrusted to them and I was almost alone, only in a far corner an old peasant woman saying her beads.
‘So I walked straight up to the box for the souls in Purgatory, just to show that I was a true sinner, in case there happened to be a Protestant about. I was trying to think which of my hands was the more blessed, because there’s a box in the Raspail that says the hand you give with to the Little Sisters of the Poor, that will be blessed all day. I gave it up, hoping it was my right hand. Kneeling in a dark corner, bending my head over and down, I spoke to Tiny O’Toole, because it was his turn, I had tried everything else. There was nothing for it this time but to make him face the mystery so it could see him clear as it saw me. So then I whispered, “What is this thing, Lord?” And I began to cry; the tears went like rain goes down on the world, without touching the face of Heaven. Suddenly I realized that it was the first time in my life my tears were strange to me, because they just went straight forward out of my eyes; I was crying because I had to embarrass Tiny like that for the good it might do him.
‘I was crying and striking my left hand against the prie-Dieu, and all the while Tiny O’Toole was lying in a swoon. I said, “I have tried to seek, and I only find.” I said, “It is I, my Lord, who know there’s beauty in any permanent mistakes like me. Haven’t I said it so? But", I says, “I’m not able to stay permanent unless you help me, oh Book of Concealment! C’est le plaisir qui me bouleversé! The roaring lion goes forth, seeking his own fury! So tell me, what is permanent of me, me or him?” And there I was in the empty, almost empty church, all the people’s troubles flickering in little lights all over the place. And I said, “This would be a fine world, Lord, if you could get everybody out of it.” And there I was holding Tiny, bending over and crying, asking the question until I forgot, and went on crying, and I put Tiny away then, like a ruined bird, and went out of the place and walked looking at the stars that were twinkling, and I said, “Have I been simple like an animal, God, or have I been thinking?"’
She smiled. ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I talk to you. You’re so like a child; then again I know well enough.’
‘Speaking of children—and thanks for the compliment—take for instance the case of Don Anticolo, the young tenor from Beirut—he dipped down into his pelvis for his Wagner, and plunged to his breast pit for his Verdi—he’d sung himself once and a half round the world, a widower with a small son, scarcely ten by the clock when, presto—the boy was bitten by a rat while swimming in Venezia and this brought on a fever. His father would come in and take hold of him every ten minutes (or was it every half-hour?) to see if he was less hot, or hotter. His daddy was demented with grief and fear, but did he leave his bedside for a moment? He did, because, though the son was sick, the fleet was in. But being a father, he prayed as he drank the champagne; and he wished his son alive as he chucked over the compass and invited the crew home, bow and sprit. But when he got home the little son lay dead. The young tenor burst into tears and burned him and had the ashes put into a zinc box no bigger than a doll’s crate and held ceremony over him, twelve sailors all in blue standing about the deal table, a glass in their hands, sorrow in their sea-turned eye slanting under lids thinned by the horizon, as the distracted father and singer tossed the little zinc box down upon the table crying: “This, gentlemen, is my babe, this, lads, my son, my sailors, my boy!” and at that, running to the box and catching it up and dashing it down again, repeating, and weeping, “My son, my baby, my boy!” with trembling fingers nudging the box now here now there about the table, until it went up and down its length a dozen times; the father behind it, following it, touching it, weeping and crying like a dog who noses a bird that has, for some strange reason, no more movement.’
The doctor stood up, then sat down again. ‘Yes, oh God, Robin was beautiful. I don’t like her, but I have to admit that much: sort of fluid blue under her skin, as if the hide of time had been stripped from her, and with it, all transactions with knowledge. A sort of first position in attention; a face that will age only under the blows of perpetual childhood. The temples like those of young beasts cutting horns, as if they were sleeping eyes. And that look on a face we follow like a witch-fire. Sorcerers know the power of horns; meet a horn where you like and you know you have been identified. You could fall over a thousand human skulls without the same trepidation. And do old duchesses know it also! Have you ever seen them go into a large assembly of any sort, be it opera or bezique, without feathers, flowers, sprigs of oat, or some other gadget nodding above their temples!’
She had not heard him. ‘Every hour is my last, and,’ she said desperately, ‘one can’t live one’s last hour all one’s life!’
He grinned. ‘Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out. Ah,’ he added, ‘to be an animal, born at the opening of the eye, going only forward, and, at the end of day, shutting out memory with the dropping of the lid.’
‘Time isn’t long enough,’ she said, striking the table. ‘It isn’t long enough to live down her nights. God,’ she cried, ‘what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn’t tell me the truth, because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you be prepared for that? Everything we can’t bear in this world, some day we find in one person, and love it all at once. A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same. Some natures cannot appreciate, only regret. Will Robin only regret?’ She stopped abruptly, gripping the back of the chair. ‘Perhaps not,’ she said, ‘for even her memory wearied her.’ Then she said with the violence of misery, ‘There’s something evil in me, that loves evil and degradation—purity’s black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar’s door?’