A Sense of Reality: And Other Stories Read online

  We sat there alone at the back of the church. The air was as cold and still as a frozen tree and the candles burned straight on the altar and God, so they believed, passed along the altar-rail. This was the birth of Christianity: outside in the dark was old savage Judea, but in here the world was only a few minutes old. It was the Year One again, and I felt the old sentimental longing to believe as those, I suppose, believed who came back one by one from the rail, with lips set like closed doors around the dissolving wafer and with crossed hands. If I had said to one of them, ‘Teach me why you believe,’ what would the answer have been? I thought perhaps I knew, for once in the war—driven by fear and disgust at the sight of the dead—I had spoken to a Catholic chaplain in just that way. He didn’t belong to my unit, he was a busy man—it isn’t the job of a chaplain in the line to instruct or convert and he was not to blame that he could convey nothing of his faith to an outsider like myself. He lent me two books—one a penny-catechism with its catalogue of preposterous questions and answers, smug and explanatory—mystery like a butterfly killed by cyanide, stiffened and laid out with pins and paper-strips; the other a sober enough study of gospel dates. I lost them both in a few days, with three bottles of whisky, my jeep and the corporal whose name I had not had time to learn before he was killed, while I was peeing in the green canal close by. I don’t suppose I’d have kept the books much longer anyway. They were not the kind of help I needed, nor was the chaplain the man to give it me. I remember asking him if he had read Morin’s novels. ‘I haven’t time to waste with him,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘They were the first books,’ I said, ‘to interest me in your faith.’

  ‘You’d have done much better to read Chesterton,’ he said.

  So it was odd to find myself there at the back of the church with Morin himself. He was the first to leave and I followed him out. I was glad to go, for the sentimental attraction of a Midnight Mass was lost in the long ennui of the communions.

  ‘M. Morin,’ I said in that low voice we assume in a church or hospital.

  He looked quickly, and I thought defensively, up.

  I said, ‘Forgive my speaking to you like this, M. Morin, but your books have given me such great pleasure.’ Had the man from Porlock employed the same banal phrases ?

  ‘You are English?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  He spoke to me then in English. ‘You write yourself? Forgive my asking, but I do not know your name.’

  ‘Dunlop. But I don’t write. I buy and sell wine.’

  ‘A profession more worthy of respect,’ M. Morin said. ‘If you would care to drive with me—I live only ten kilometres from here—I think I could show you a wine you may not have encountered.’

  ‘Surely, it’s rather late, M. Morin. And I have a driver …’

  ‘Send him home. After Midnight Mass I find it difficult to sleep. You would be doing me a kindness.’ When I hesitated he said, ‘As for tomorrow, that is just any day of the year, and I don’t like visitors.’

  I tried to make a joke of it. ‘You mean it’s my only chance?’ and he replied ‘Yes’ with seriousness. The doors of the church swung open and the congregation came slowly out into the frosty glitter, pecking at the holy water stoup with their forefingers, chatting cheerfully again as the mystery receded, greeting neighbours. A wailing child marked the lateness of the hour like a clock. M. Morin strode away and I followed him.

  3

  M. Morin drove with clumsy violence, wrenching at his gears, scraping the right-hand hedgerows as though the car were a new invention and he a courageous pioneer in its use. ‘So you have read some of my books?’ he asked.

  ‘A great many, when I was a schoolboy …’

  ‘You mean they are fit only for children?’

  ‘I mean nothing of the sort.’

  ‘What can a child find in them?’

  ‘I was sixteen when I began to read them. That’s not a child.’

  ‘Oh well, now they are only read by the old—and the pious. Are you pious, Mr Dunlop?’

  ‘I’m not a Catholic.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. Then I shan’t offend you.’

  ‘Once I thought of becoming one.’

  ‘Second thoughts are best.’

  ‘I think it was your books that made me curious.’

  ‘I will not take responsibility,’ he said. ‘I am not a theologian.’ We bumped over a little branch railway-track without altering speed and swerved right through a gateway much in need of repair. A light hanging in a porch shone on an open door.

  ‘Don’t you lock up,’ I asked him, ‘in these parts?’

  He said, ‘Ten years ago—times were bad then—a hungry man was frozen to death near here on Christmas morning. He could find no one to open a door: there was a blizzard, but they were all at church. Come in,’ he said angrily from the porch; ‘are you looking round, making notes of how I live? Have you deceived me? Are you a journalist?’

  If I had had my own car with me I would have driven away. ‘M. Morin,’ I said, ‘there are different kinds of hunger. You seem only to cater for one kind.’ He went ahead of me into a small study—a desk, a table, two comfortable chairs, and some bookshelves oddly bare—I could see no sign of his own books. There was a bottle of brandy on the table, ready perhaps for the stranger and the blizzard that would never again come together in this place.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, ‘sit down. You must forgive me if I was discourteous. I am unused to company. I will go and find the wine I spoke of. Make yourself at home.’ I had never seen a man less at home himself. It was as if he were camping in a house that belonged to another.

  While he was away, I looked more closely at his bookshelves. He had not re-bound any of his paper-backs and his shelves had the appearance of bankrupt stock: small tears and dust and the discoloration of sunlight. There was a great deal of theology, some poetry very few novels. He came back with the wine and a plate of salami. When he had tasted the wine himself, he poured me a glass. ‘It will do,’ he said.

  ‘It’s excellent. Remarkable.’

  ‘A small vineyard twenty miles away. I will give you the address before you go. For me, on a night like this, I prefer brandy.’ So perhaps it was really for himself and not for the stranger, I thought, that the bottle stood ready.

  ‘It’s certainly cold.’

  ‘It was not the weather I meant.’

  ‘I have been looking at your library. You read a lot of theology?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘I wonder if you would recommend …’ But I had even less success with him than with the chaplain.

  ‘No. Not if you want to believe. If you are foolish enough to want that you must avoid theology.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He said, ‘A man can accept anything to do with God until scholars begin to go into the details and the implications. A man can accept the Trinity, but the arguments that follow …’ He gave a gesture of rejection. ‘I would never try to determine some point in differential calculus with a two-times-two table. You end by disbelieving the calculus.’ He poured out two more glasses and drank his own as though it were vodka. ‘I used to believe in revelation, but I never believed in the capacity of the human mind.’

  ‘You used to believe?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Dunlop—was that the name?—used. If you are one of those who come seeking belief, go away. You won’t find it here.’

  ‘But from your books …’

  ‘You will find none of them,’ he said, ‘on my shelves.’

  ‘I noticed you have some theology.’

  ‘Even disbelief,’ he said, with his eye on the brandy bottle, ‘needs bolstering.’ I noticed that the brandy affected him very quickly, not only his readiness to communicate with me, but even the physical appearance of his eyeballs. It was as if the little blood-cells had been waiting under the white membrane to burst at once like buds with the third glass. He said, ‘Can you find anything more inadequate than the
scholastic arguments for the existence of God?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know them.’

  ‘The arguments from an agent, from a cause?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They tell you that in all change there are two elements, that which is changed and that which changes it. Each agent of change is itself determined by some higher agent. Can this go on ad infinitum? Oh no, they say, that would not give the finality that thought demands. But does thought demand it? Why shouldn’t the chain go on for ever? Man has invented the idea of infinity. In any case how trivial any argument based on what human thought demands must be. The thoughts of you and me and Monsieur Dupont. I would prefer the thoughts of an ape. Its instincts are less corrupted. Show me a gorilla praying and I might believe again.’

  ‘But surely there are other arguments?’

  ‘Four. Each more inadequate than the other. It needs a child to say to these theologians, Why? Why not? Why not an infinite series of causes? Why should the existence of a good and a better imply the existence of a best? This is playing with words. We invent the words and make arguments from them. The better is not a fact: it is only a word and a human judgement.’

  ‘You are arguing,’ I said, ‘against someone who can’t answer you back. You see, M. Morin, I don’t believe either. I’m curious, that’s all.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’ve said that before—curious. Curiosity is a great trap. They used to come here in their dozens to see me. I used to get letters saying how I had converted them by this book or that. Long after I ceased to believe myself I was a carrier of belief, like a man can be a carrier of disease without being sick. Women especially.’ He added with disgust, ‘I had only to sleep with a woman to make a convert.’ He turned his red eyes towards me and really seemed to require an answer when he said, ‘What sort of Rasputin life was that?’ The brandy by now had really taken a hold; I wondered how many years he had been waiting for some stranger without faith to whom he could speak with frankness.

  ‘Did you never tell this to a priest? I always imagined in your faith …’

  ‘There were always too many priests,’ he said, ‘around me. The priests swarmed like flies. Near me and any woman I knew. First I was an exhibit for their faith. I was useful to them, a sign that even an intelligent man could believe. That was the period of the Dominicans, who liked the literary atmosphere and good wine. Then afterwards when the books stopped, and they smelt something—gamey—in my religion, it was the turn of the Jesuits, who never despair of what they call a man’s soul.’

  ‘And why did the books stop?’

  ‘Who knows? Did you never write verses for some girl when you were a boy?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you didn’t marry the girl, did you? The unprofessional poet writes of his feelings and when the poem is finished he finds his love dead on the page. Perhaps I wrote away my belief like the young man writes away his love. Only it took longer—twenty years and fifteen books.’ He held up the wine. ‘Another glass?’

  ‘I would rather have some of your brandy.’ Unlike the wine it was a crude and common mark, and I thought again, For a beggar’s sake or his own? I said, ‘All the same you go to Mass.’

  ‘I go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve,’ he said. ‘The worst of Catholics goes then—even those who do not go at Easter. It is the Mass of our childhood. And of mercy. What would they think if I were not there? I don’t want to give scandal. You must realize I wouldn’t speak to any one of my neighbours as I have spoken to you. I am their Catholic author, you see. Their Academician. I never wanted to help anyone believe, but God knows I wouldn’t take a hand in robbing them …’

  ‘I was surprised at one thing when I saw you there, M. Morin.’

  ‘Yes?’

  I said rashly, ‘You and I were the only ones who didn’t take Communion.’

  ‘That is why I don’t go to the church in my own village. That too would be noticed and cause scandal.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ I stumbled heavily on (perhaps the brandy had affected me too). ‘Forgive me, M. Morin, but I wondered at your age what kept you from Communion. Of course now I know the reason.’

  ‘Do you?’ Morin said. ‘Young man, I doubt it.’ He looked at me across his glass with impersonal enmity. He said, ‘You don’t understand a thing I have been saying to you. What a story you would make of this if you were a journalist and yet there wouldn’t be a word of truth …’

  I said stiffly, I thought you made it perfectly clear that you had lost your faith.’

  ‘Do you think that would keep anyone from the Confessional? You are a long way from understanding the Church or the human mind, Mr Dunlop. Why, it is one of the most common confessions of all for a priest to hear—almost as common as adultery. “Father, I have lost my faith.” The priest, you may be sure, makes it himself often enough at the altar before he receives the Host.’

  I said—I was angry in return now, ‘Then what keeps you away? Pride? One of your Rasputin women?’

  ‘As you so rightly thought,’ he said, ‘women are no longer a problem at my age.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Two-thirty. Perhaps I ought to drive you back.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to part from you like this. It’s the drink that makes us irritable. Your books are still important to me. I know I am ignorant. I am not a Catholic and never shall be, but in the old days your books made me understand that at least it might be possible to believe. You never closed the door in my face as you are doing now. Nor did your characters, Durobier, Sagrin.’ I indicated the brandy bottle. ‘I told you just now—people are not only hungry and thirsty in that way. Because you’ve lost your faith …’

  He interrupted me ferociously. ‘I never told you that.’

  ‘Then what have you been talking about all this time?’

  ‘I told you I had lost my belief. That’s quite a different thing. But how are you to understand?’

  ‘You don’t give me a chance.’

  He was obviously striving to be patient. He said, ‘I will put it this way. If a doctor prescribed you a drug and told you to take it every day for the rest of your life and you stopped obeying him and drank no more, and your health decayed, would you not have faith in your doctor all the more?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I still don’t understand you.’

  ‘For twenty years,’ Morin said, ‘I excommunicated myself voluntarily. I never went to Confession. I loved a woman too much to pretend to myself that I would ever leave her. You know the condition of absolution? A firm purpose of amendment. I had no such purpose. Five years ago my mistress died and my sex died with her.’

  ‘Then why couldn’t you go back?’

  ‘I was afraid. I am still afraid.’

  ‘Of what the priest would say?’

  ‘What a strange idea you have of the Church. No, not of what the priest would say. He would say nothing. I daresay there is no greater gift you can give a priest in the confessional, Mr Dunlop, than to return to it after many years. He feels of use again. But can’t you understand? I can tell myself now that my lack of belief is a final proof that the Church is right and the faith is true. I had cut myself off for twenty years from grace and my belief withered as the priests said it would. I don’t believe in God and His Son and His angels and His saints, but I know the reason why I don’t believe and the reason is—the Church is true and what she taught me is true. For twenty years I have been without the sacraments and I can see the effect. The wafer must be more than wafer.’

  ‘But if you went back …’

  ‘If I went back and belief did not return? That is what I fear, Mr Dunlop. As long as I keep away from the sacraments, my lack of belief is an argument for the Church. But if I returned and they failed me, then I would really be a man without faith, who had better hide himself quickly in the grave so as not to discourage others.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘Paradoxical, Mr Dunlop?’

  ‘That is what they said of your books.’

&nbs
p; ‘I know.’

  ‘Your characters carried their ideas to extreme lengths. So your critics said.’

  ‘And you think I do too?’

  ‘Yes, M. Morin.’

  His eyes wouldn’t meet mine. He grimaced beyond me. ‘At least I am not a carrier of disease any longer. You have escaped infection.’ He added, ‘Time for bed, Mr Dunlop. Time for bed. The young need more sleep.’

  ‘I am not as young as that.’

  ‘To me you seem very young.’

  He drove me back to my hotel and we hardly spoke. I was thinking of the strange faith which held him even now after he had ceased to believe. I had felt very little curiosity since that moment of the war when I had spoken to the chaplain, but now I began to wonder again. M. Morin considered he had ceased to be a carrier, and I couldn’t help hoping that he was right. He had forgotten to give me the address of the vineyard, but I had forgotten to ask him for it when I said good night.

  DREAM OF A STRANGE LAND

  1

  The house of the Herr Professor was screened on every side by the plantation of fir-trees which grew among great grey rocks. Although it was only twenty minutes’ ride from the capital and then a few minutes from the main road to the north, a visitor had the impression that he was in deep country; he felt himself to be hundreds of miles away from the cafés, the kiosks, the opera-houses and the theatres.

  The Herr Professor had virtually retired two years ago when he reached the age of sixty-five. His appointment at the hospital had been filled, he had closed his consulting-room in the capital, and if he continued to work it was only for a few favoured patients who were compelled to drive out to see him, or if they were poor (for he had not clung to a few rich patients only) to take a bus which landed them about ten minutes’ walk away at the edge of the trees and the rocks.