The Burden Read online

  Her eyes, wide now and deeply blue, assessed him.

  She said, a little uncertainly: "Oh-?"

  He waited.

  Then she smiled.

  "Please do."

  He drew up a chair and sat.

  She asked: "You are American?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you come off the ship?"

  Her eyes went momentarily to the harbour again. There was a ship alongside the quay. There was nearly always a ship.

  "I did come on a ship, but not that ship. I've been here a week or two."

  "Most people," she said, "don't stay as long as that."

  It was a statement, not a question.

  Llewellyn gestured to a waiter who came.

  He ordered a Cura?ao.

  "May I order you something?"

  "Thank you." she said. And added: "He knows."

  The boy bowed his head in assent and went away.

  They sat for a moment or two in silence.

  "I suppose," she said at last, "you were lonely? There aren't many Americans or English here."

  She was, he saw, settling the question of why he had spoken to her.

  "No," he said at once. "I wasn't lonely. I find I'm-glad to be alone."

  "Oh, one is, isn't one?"

  The fervour with which she spoke surprised him.

  "I see," he said. "That's why you come here?"

  She nodded.

  "To be alone. And now I've come and spoilt it?"

  "No," she said. "You don't matter. You're a stranger, you see."

  "I see."

  "I don't even know your name."

  "Do you want to?"

  "No. I'd rather you didn't tell me. I won't tell you my name, either."

  She added doubtfully:

  "But perhaps you've been told that already. Everyone in the caf? knows me, of course."

  "No, they haven't mentioned it. They understand, I think, that you would not want it told."

  "They do understand. They have, all of them, such wonderful good manners. Not taught good manners-the natural thing. I could never have believed till I came here that natural courtesy could be such a wonderful-such a positive thing."

  The waiter came back with their two drinks. Llewellyn paid him.

  He looked over to the glass the girl held cupped in her two hands.

  "Brandy?"

  "Yes. Brandy helps a lot."

  "It helps you to feel alone? Is that it?"

  "Yes. It helps me to feel-free."

  "And you're not free?"

  "Is anybody free?"

  He considered. She had not said the words bitterly-as they are usually spoken. She had been asking a simple question.

  "The fate of every man is bound about his neck-is that what you feel?"

  "No, I don't think so. Not quite. I can understand feeling rather like that, that your course was charted out like a ship's, and that you must follow it, again rather like a ship, and that so long as you do, you are all right. But I feel more like a ship that has, quite suddenly, gone off its proper course. And then, you see, you're lost. You don't know where you are, and you're at the mercy of the wind and sea, and you're not free, you're caught in the grip of something you don't understand-tangled up in it all." She added: "What nonsense I'm talking. I suppose it's the brandy."

  He agreed.

  "It's partly the brandy, no doubt. Where does it take you?"

  "Oh, away… that's all-away…"

  "What is it, really, that you have to get away from?"

  "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That's the really-well, wicked part of it. I'm one of the fortunate ones. I've got everything." She repeated sombrely: "Everything… Oh, I don't mean I've not had sorrows, losses, but it's not that. I don't hanker and grieve over the past. I don't resurrect it and live it over again. I don't want to go back, or even forward. I just want to go away somewhere. I sit here drinking brandy and presently I'm out there, beyond the harbour, and going farther and farther-into some kind of unreal place that doesn't really exist. It's rather like the dreams of flying you have as a child-no weight-so light-floating."

  The wide unfocused stare was coming back to her eyes. Llewellyn sat watching her.

  Presently she came to herself with a little start.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't come back. I'm going now." He rose. "May I, now and then, come and sit here and talk to you? If you'd rather not, just say so. I shall understand."

  "No, I should like you to come. Good-night. I shan't go just yet. You see, it's not always that I can get away."

  2

  It was about a week later when they talked together again.

  She said as soon as he sat down: "I'm glad you haven't gone away yet. I was afraid you might have gone."

  "I shan't go away just yet. It's not time yet."

  "Where will you go when you leave here?"

  "I don't know."

  "You mean-you're waiting for orders?"

  "You might put it like that, yes."

  She said slowly:

  "Last time, when we talked, it was all about me. We didn't talk about you at all. Why did you come here-to the island? Had you a reason?"

  "Perhaps it was for the same reason as you drink brandy-to get away, in my case from people."

  "People in general, or do you mean special people?"

  "Not people in general. I meant really people who know me-or knew me-as I was."

  "Did something-happen?"

  "Yes, something happened."

  She leaned forward.

  "Are you like me? Did something happen that put you off course?"

  He shook his head with something that was almost vehemence.

  "No, not at all. What happened to me was an intrinsic part of the pattern of my life. It had significance and intention."

  "But what you said about people-"

  "They don't understand, you see. They are sorry for me, and they want to drag me back-to something that's finished."

  She wrinkled a puzzled brow.

  "I don't quite-"

  "I had a job," he said smiling. "Now-I've lost it."

  "An important job?"

  "I don't know." He was thoughtful. "I thought it was. But one can't really know, you see, what is important. One has to learn not to trust one's own values. Values are always relative."

  "So you gave up your job?"

  "No." His smile flashed out again. "I was sacked."

  "Oh." She was taken aback. "Did you-mind?"

  "Oh yes, I minded. Anyone would have. But that's all over now."

  She frowned at her empty glass. As she turned her head, the boy who had been waiting replaced the empty glass with a full one.

  She took a couple of sips, then she said:

  "Can I ask you something?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Do you think happiness is very important?"

  He considered.

  "That's a very difficult question to answer. If I were to say that happiness is vitally important, and that at the same time it doesn't matter at all, you'd think I was crazy."

  "Can't you be a little clearer?"

  "Well, it's rather like sex. Sex is vitally important, and yet doesn't matter. You're married?"

  He had noticed the slim gold ring on her finger.

  "I've been married twice."

  "Did you love your husband?"

  He left it in the singular, and she answered without quibbling.

  "I loved him more than anything in the world."

  "When you look back on your life with him, what are the things that come first to your mind, the moments that you will always remember? Are they of the first time you slept together-or are they of something else?"

  Laughter came to her suddenly, and a quick enchanting gaiety.

  "His hat," she said.

  "Hat?"

  "Yes. On our honeymoon. It blew away and he bought a native one, a ridiculous straw thing, and I said it would be more suitable for me. So I put it on, and th
en he put on mine-one of those silly bits of nonsense women wear, and we looked at each other and laughed. All trippers change hats, he said, and then he said: 'Good Lord, I do love you…' " Her voice caught. "I'll never forget."

  "You see?" said Llewellyn. "Those are the magical moments-the moments of belonging-of everlasting sweetness-not sex. And yet if sex goes wrong, a marriage is completely ruined. So, in the same way, food is important-without it you cannot live, and yet, so long as you are fed, it occupies very little of your thoughts. Happiness is one of the foods of life, it encourages growth, it is a great teacher, but it is not the purpose of life, and is, in itself, not ultimately satisfying."

  He added gently:

  "Is it happiness that you want?"

  "I don't know. I ought to be happy. I have everything to make me happy."

  "But you want something more?"

  "Less," she said quickly, "I want less out of life. It's too much-it's all too much."

  She added, rather unexpectedly:

  "It's all so heavy."

  They sat for some time in silence.

  "If I knew," she said at last, "if I knew in the least what I really wanted, instead of just being so negative and idiotic."

  "But you do know what you want; you want to escape. Why don't you, then?"

  "Escape?"

  "Yes. What's stopping you? Money?"

  "No, it's not money. I have money-not a great deal, but sufficient."

  "What is it then?"

  "It's so many things. You wouldn't understand." Her lips twisted in a sudden, ruefully humorous smile. "It's like Tchekov's three sisters, always moaning about going to Moscow; they never go, and never will, although I suppose they could just have gone to the station and taken a train to Moscow any day of their lives! Just as I could buy a ticket and sail on that ship out there, that sails tonight."

  "Why don't you?"

  He was watching her.

  "You think you know the answer," she said.

  He shook his head.

  "No, I don't know the answer. I'm trying to help you find it."

  "Perhaps I'm like Tchekov's three sisters. Perhaps I don't really want to go."

  "Perhaps."

  "Perhaps escape is just an idea that I play with."

  "Possibly. We all have fantasies that help us to bear the lives we live."

  "And escape is my fantasy?"

  "I don't know. You know."

  "I don't know anything-anything at all. I had every chance, I did the wrong thing. And then, when one has done the wrong thing, one has to stick to it, hasn't one?"

  "I don't know."

  "Must you go on saying that over and over?"

  "I'm sorry, but it's true. You're asking me to come to a conclusion on something I know nothing about."

  "It was a general principle."

  "There isn't such a thing as a general principle."

  "Do you mean"-she stared at him-"that there isn't such a thing as absolute right and wrong?"

  "No, I didn't mean that. Of course there's absolute right and wrong, but that's a thing so far beyond our knowledge and comprehension, that we can only have the dimmest apprehension of it."

  "But surely one knows what is right?"

  "You have been taught it by the accepted canons of the day. Or, going further, you can feel it of your own instinctive knowledge. But even that's a long way off. People were burned at the stake, not by sadists or brutes, but by earnest and high-minded men, who believed that what they did was right. Read some of the law cases in ancient Greece, of a man who refused to let his slaves be tortured so as to get at the truth, as was the prevalent custom. He was looked upon as a man who deliberately obscured justice. There was an earnest God-fearing clergyman in the States who beat his three-year-old son, whom he loved, to death, because the child refused to say his prayers."

  "That's all horrible!"

  "Yes, because time has changed our ideas."

  "Then, what can we do?"

  Her lovely bewildered face bent towards him.

  "Follow your pattern, in humility-and hope."

  "Follow one's pattern-yes, I see that, but my pattern-it's wrong somehow." She laughed. "Like when you're knitting a jumper and you've dropped a stitch a long way back."

  "I wouldn't know about that," he said. "I've never knitted."

  "Why wouldn't you give me an opinion just now?"

  "It would only have been an opinion."

  "Well?"

  "And it might have influenced you… I should think you're easily influenced."

  Her face grew sombre again.

  "Yes. Perhaps that's what was wrong."

  He waited for a moment or two, then he said in a matter-of-fact voice:

  "What exactly is wrong?"

  "Nothing." She looked at him despairingly. "Nothing. I've got everything any woman could want."

  "You're generalising again. You're not any woman. You're you. Have you got everything you want?"

  "Yes, yes, yes! Love and kindness and money and luxury, and beautiful surroundings and companionship-everything. All the things that I would have chosen for myself. No, it's me. There's something wrong with me."

  She looked at him defiantly. Strangely enough, she was comforted when he answered matter-of-factly:

  "Oh yes. There's something wrong with you-that's very clear."

  3

  She pushed her brandy-glass a little way away from her.

  She said: "Can I talk about myself?"

  "If you like."

  "Because if I did, I might just see where-it all went wrong. That would help, I think."

  "Yes. It might help."

  "It's all been very nice and ordinary-my life, I mean. A happy childhood, a lovely home. I went to school and did all the ordinary things, and nobody was ever nasty to me; perhaps if they had been, it would have been better for me. Perhaps I was a spoiled brat-but no, I don't really think so. And I came home from school and played tennis and danced, and met young men, and wondered what job to take up-all the usual things."

  "Sounds straightforward enough."

  "And then I fell in love and married." Her voice changed slightly.

  "And lived happily…"

  "No." Her voice was thoughtful. "I loved him, but I was unhappy very often." She added: "That's why I asked you if happiness really mattered."

  She paused, and then went on:

  "It's so hard to explain. I wasn't very happy, but yet in a curious way it was all right-it was what I'd chosen, what I wanted. I didn't-go into it with my eyes shut. Of course I idealised him-one does. But I remember now, waking up very early one morning-it was about five o'clock, just before dawn. That's a cold, truthful time, don't you think? And I knew then-saw, I mean-what the future would become, I knew I shouldn't be really happy, I saw what he was like, selfish and ruthless in a gay kind of charming way, but I saw, too, that he was charming, and gay and light-hearted-and that I loved him, and that no one else would do, and that I would rather be unhappy, married to him, than smug and comfortable without him. And I thought I could, with luck, and if I wasn't too stupid, make a go of it. I accepted the fact that I loved him more than he would ever love me, and that I mustn't-ever-ask him for more than he wanted to give."

  She stopped a moment, and then went on:

  "Of course I didn't put it to myself as clearly as all that. I'm describing now what was then just a feeling. But it was real. I went back again to thinking him wonderful and inventing all sorts of noble things about him that weren't in the least true. But I'd had my moment-the moment when you do see what lies ahead of you, and you can turn back or go on. I did think in those cold early morning minutes when you see how difficult and-yes-frightening things are-I did think of turning back. But instead I chose to go on."

  He said very gently:

  "And you regret-?"

  "No, no!" She was vehement. "I've never regretted. Every minute of it was worthwhile! There's only one thing to regret-that he died."

  T
he deadness was gone from her eyes now. It was no longer a woman drifting away from life towards fairy-land, who leaned forward facing him across the table. It was a woman passionately alive.

  "He died too soon," she said. "What is it Macbeth says? 'She should have died hereafter.' That's what I feel about him. He should have died hereafter."

  He shook his head.

  "We all feel that when people die."

  "Do we? I wouldn't know. I know he was ill. I realise he'd have been a cripple for life. I realise he bore it all badly and hated his life, and took it out on everybody and principally on me. But he didn't want to die. In spite of everything he didn't want to die. That's why I resent it so passionately for him. He'd what amounts to a genius for living-even half a life, even a quarter, he would have enjoyed. Oh!" She raised her arms passionately. "I hate God for making him die."

  She stopped then, and looked at him doubtfully. "I shouldn't have said that-that I hated God."

  He said calmly: "It's much better to hate God than to hate your fellow-men. You can't hurt God."

  "No. But He can hurt you."

  "Oh no, my dear. We hurt each other, and hurt ourselves."

  "And make God our scapegoat?"

  "That is what He has always been. He bears our burdens-the burden of our revolts, of our hates, yes, and of our love."

  Chapter Three

  1

  In the afternoons, Llewellyn had formed the habit of going for long walks. He would start up from the town on a widely curving, zig-zagging road that led steadily upwards until the town and the bay lay beneath him, looking curiously unreal.in the stillness of the afternoon. It was the hour of the siesta, and no gaily-coloured dots moved on the water-front, or on the occasionally glimpsed roads and streets. Up here on the hills, the only human creatures Llewellyn met were goat-herds, little boys who wandered singing to themselves in the sunshine, or sat playing games of their own with little heaps of stones. These would give Llewellyn a grave good afternoon, without curiosity. They were accustomed to foreigners who strode energetically along, their shirts open at the neck, perspiring freely. Such foreigners were, they knew, either writers or painters. Though not numerous, they were, at least, no novelty. As Llewellyn had no apparatus of canvas or easel or even sketch-book with him, they put him down as a writer, and said to him politely: "Good-afternoon."