THE PHILOSOPHER’S PUPIL
Iris Murdoch
To Arnaldo Momigliano
CONTENTS
PRELUDE
i An Accident
PRELUDE
ii Our Town
THE EVENTS IN OUR TOWN
WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARDS
A Biography of Iris Murdoch
PRELUDE
i An Accident
A few minutes before his brainstorm, or whatever it was, took place, George McCaffrey was having a quarrel with his wife. It was eleven o’clock on a rainy March evening. They had been visiting George’s mother. Now George was driving along the quayside, taking the short-cut along the canal past the iron foot-bridge. It was raining hard. The malignant rain rattled on the car like shot. Propelled in oblique flurries, it assaulted the windscreen, obliterating in a second the frenetic strivings of the windscreen wipers. Little demonic faces composed of racing raindrops appeared and vanished. The intermittent yellow light of the street lamps, illuminating the grey atoms of the storm, fractured in sudden stars upon the rain-swarmed glass. Bumping on cobbles the car hummed and drummed.
Stella was usually silent when George had one of his rages. On this occasion she spoke up.
‘George, let me drive.’
‘No.’
‘Let me drive.’
‘I said no!’
‘Don’t drive so fast.’
‘Don’t touch me, damn you, leave me alone!’
‘I am leaving you alone.’
‘You never do, never, never.’
‘Change gear, you’re straining the engine.’
‘It’s my car, I can do what I bloody like with it.’
‘Don’t drive so fast, you can’t see.’
‘I can see with my own eyes. You can’t see with my eyes, can you? So shut up.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Fancy that!’
‘You make your mother drink too much.’
‘Why come then? You like to see us degrade each other, is that it?’
‘She shouldn’t drink so.’
‘I hope she dies of it, the fiend. Oh if only she could get on with dying!’
‘She sets you off, she always does.’
‘You set me off. She hates you.’
‘All right, I know.’
‘You seem quite pleased.’
‘No.’
‘You’re jealous of her.’
‘No.’
‘You think you’re better than all of us.’
‘Only in some respects.’
‘Only in some respects! Oh Christ !’
‘I’m only answering your idiotic remarks. I wish you’d be quiet and drive better.’
‘You needle me all the time with your beastly calm superiority, nothing touches you, nothing, you never cry like a real woman.’
‘Maybe I don’t cry when you’re around.’
‘You don’t cry. You can’t. Tears are human. When you’re alone you sit with a little self-satisfied smile, like a Buddha.’
‘Let’s not talk. I’m sorry —!’
‘Oh, you torment me so —!’
‘You torment yourself
‘People detest you, do you know that?’
‘No.’
‘All right, they detest me too.’
‘I should say you were rather popular.’
‘Because they don’t know what I’m like.’
‘Because they do. Everybody loves a black sheep.’
‘Black sheep! What a banality!’
‘Do you want me to call you something worse?’
‘They don’t bloody know what you’re like. They think you’re a prig. They don’t know you’re a devil.’
‘Oh do be quiet.’
‘I can’t stand your physical proximity.’
‘Stop the car then and I’ll get out.’
‘Oh no you don’t, you stay here. I won’t let you get out!’
‘Oh how it rains!’
‘You provoke me so that you can blame me. I know your tricks. You go on and on about how I lost my job, you keep bringing it up.’
‘You bring it up.’
‘You say you’re sorry, but you think that I’m a rotten contemptible failure.’
‘That’s what you think, not what I think.’
‘I could kill you for saying that.’
‘You only care about losing face, not about the harm that you do, not about things that matter.’
‘Such as you.’
‘Such as being kind to me.’
‘Are you kind to me?’
‘I try to be. I love you.’
‘That’s the most cruel thing of all, to keep saying that when it isn’t true, when I need real love not your bloody power mania, that’s your excuse, you think if you just say that it lets you off and you can do anything you like to me. Christ, you even destroy the bloody language, you stand beside me with your pretended love like a nurse waiting for the patient to collapse. You think one day I’d fall helplessly into your arms, but I never will, never never never. I’ll kill myself first, or you, you make an absolute nonsense of my life. If I’m mad you made me so — ’
‘You’re not mad.’
‘You said I ought to have electric shocks.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You lie.’
‘I said someone else said so.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh never mind.’
‘Who?’
‘The doctor.’
‘Oh, so you’ve been seeing the doctor about me!’
‘No, I just met him at Brian’s.’
‘You said, my husband has gone mad and I want him locked up.’
‘Do stop this farce.’
‘Farce, that’s what you reduce me to. I’m your puppet, you reduce me to a gibbering puppet and put me in your pocket. You’re so hard, so cold, no gentleness, no tenderness, no repose. If I’d married a sweet kind woman I’d be a different man. Oh it’s all so black, so black. Why don’t you go away?’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Someone might blame you for once! You hate me, don’t you? You are hating me, you are loathing me, in this very minute. Why don’t you admit it?’
‘I won’t say so.’
‘You mean it’s true, only you won’t say it, so why do you speak of love, you foul hypocrite?’
‘I didn’t say that. I said something different.’
‘I didn’t say that, I said something different! Are you crazy?’
‘I might say I hated you but it wouldn’t be true. I guard my tongue.’
‘You guard your tongue! Our life together is a madhouse. Why did you ever marry me? Everyone was amazed. Your father was stunned. Well, why did you —?’
‘Oh - it doesn’t matter.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You always say that. You’ll say it when I’m dying. You’re a leech, a flea, a blood-sucking parasite. You’re quietly pouring all my blood into your body. You’ll suck me white and dry and prop me up in a corner and say to people, “There’s my husband, poor George!”’
‘You don’t believe any of this, why do you say it?’
‘I do believe it. You imagine that however much I shout I really need you, and as soon as I stop you think it’s all right between us.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a lie, your lie, your illusion. God, if I could only cram it down your throat and put an end to you. Do you think I could talk like this if I didn’t hate you in the deepest part of my soul?’
‘Yes. You don’t hate me.’
‘You’ve been sent by the devil to torment me. Why don’t you go away before I kill you? Can’t you be unselfish enough not to get yourself murdered? But oh no, you won’t go away, you’ll never go away, you want people to admire you and say “There’s long-suffering Stella, the virtuous wife!”’