The Flame of Life

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Cuthbert, wearing a pale blue shirt open at the neck, leaned against the wall, drinking his coffee in the sun.

‘Are you still stuck in your past?’ he called at Dawley walking down from his father’s studio.

Frank noticed how relaxed he looked, as if he had smelled blood. ‘For the time being. It does seem important. I don’t know why.’

‘Mine’s not,’ Cuthbert said, with the certainty that covered an abyss.

‘That’s because you haven’t got much.’

Dawley walked towards his caravan and Cuthbert followed: ‘The past is dead — or ought to be. Look at the big glossy attractive future! All our life is there, the unborn and the what-will-be — which is bound to be better than the miserable fucked-up existence of here and right now.’

He sounds like his father. Even looks like him: straight nose, and the mouth edging a bit that way. If he grew a moustache and lost weight you’d hardly know the difference, though he doesn’t have the same talent or resilience. Handley at his age knew exactly what he wanted. Maybe it’s not so good being an artist’s son, especially one who’s made money. ‘Come in for more coffee,’ he told him when they were at the caravan.

It’s as well he’s writing a book, Cuthbert thought, otherwise there wouldn’t be much to him. He’s the hollowest person I’ve seen — as if all his pathetic life’s been sucked away.

Ralph struggled from the garage with a plastic sack of rubbish, going up the steps to light the day’s bonfire. Frank faced Cuthbert across the table. ‘Ever been interested in politics?’

‘Mysticism’s more my line,’ he answered flippantly.

‘Some begin with mysticism and end in politics. Others begin with politics and end in mysticism. Depends where you start. Most don’t begin or end anywhere.’

‘What I believe,’ Cuthbert said, ‘is that people need something to believe in, a symbol they can look up to.’

He didn’t say anything that wasn’t seriously considered first — a trait Dawley respected. Still, though he might have a stiff upper lip, he did observe that it trembled from time to time. ‘You mean it’s what you want?’

‘Not really. I’d like to help people to believe. When they lose their faith in God they start to believe in themselves, which they can’t stand so they latch on to some monstrous industrial corporation or political organisation, or a combination of both, presided over by a squawling demagogue who leads them into the evil of their own bleak fantasies.’

‘The only salvation,’ Dawley said, ‘is that which benefits everybody. Communism is still the greatest moral force of the age, whatever its faults, in that it helps those who try to set themselves at the beginning of individual spiritual development. They never had a chance of it before because they were too busy getting their bread. Underprivileged people in underdeveloped countries are fighting for the opportunity to pull themselves up — not by their own bootlaces, because most of them don’t have boots — to a level where they can get enough to eat and wear. Instead of trying to do it through the feudal or capitalist jungle they do it with the Marxist philosophy of spiritual salvation. They want food, shelter, and the social machinery to give them the basic necessities of civilised respect.’

Cuthbert lifted his head from his hands. ‘I hear you had a hard time in Algeria. What made you go in the first place?’

‘A heavy question. I worked in a factory from the age of fifteen to twenty-seven. Got married, had kids. Stuck in the domestic rut till I couldn’t stand it any more. I had a sense of grievance which, as luck would have it, developed into a sense of protest. They hated me in the factory, some of the men and all of the management. Troublemaker. Shopsteward of Tory journalists. So I left, the only thing to do if I didn’t want to get killed in my car, or die of a disease nobody ever heard of. Do you know what a factory’s like?’

‘I’ve never work in one.’

‘I did twelve years, and I was still a young man. I’m thirty now, though I feel older. When I heard in those days of anyone signing on for twelve years with the army it seemed as if they were giving their lives away. I liked the factory, and fitted in because I worked hard, not having the conscience to skive. That’s more boring than work. I was also a good union man, went to all the meetings, collected dues, gave out notices and circulars, helped to organise stoppages, and read books on trade-union history. I fostered discontent whenever I thought it had a chance. But I was inconsistent, because while believing in Revolution, I worked hard on peace work. Though the gaffers were glad to get rid of me when I left, they also knew they’d lost a good worker who set an example. A group of us would down tools at the drop of a hat, but when we worked we more than made up for it. Agitation for better conditions, and the extra few bob now and again, is the oil that keeps the machine running, and the more enlightened bosses knew this, and didn’t panic. But I saw the split more and more clearly till I was falling apart, and had to get out before I went off my head.

‘Perhaps the industrial life wasn’t for me. The protest I developed may be part of my basic temperament for all I know. So I joined up with a guerrilla army which, when it’s got the country it’s fighting for, will begin building the same industrial society which I was forced to escape from after twelve years.

‘Yet working in a factory, in a country that has no manufactured goods — and assuming that socialism is the system by which the goods would be shared out in such an initial shortage — would be different to sweating in a capitalist state whereby you support an entire class of idle bastards on your back.’

‘It must be difficult to keep your faith.’

‘It’s not my faith that’s in danger,’ Dawley said, ‘as long as I spread my intelligence wide enough to understand all possible realities. I suppose there’s something about myself I want to find.’ Ash dropped from his cigarette. ‘But people who try to “find themselves” only want to get back to what they were before whatever it was came along and blasted them out of it — not in fact to change their life, but simply to return to their real and possibly undamaged selves. In military terms it’s called the “indirect approach” — never meeting something head-on because it only strengthens the obstacle you’re up against, in spite of all the force you bring to bear. In fact the more force you use the firmer the obstacle becomes. So you go a roundabout way to overcome it, no matter how much time and distance and energy is involved, so as to meet it on your own time and terms.’

For someone who wasn’t a talker, a person who came from the ‘grunt and thump’ level of society (as he’d hear it put so charmingly at college) he keeps it up very well, Cuthbert thought.

A fine fat missel-thrush strutted across the window-sill, its whole breast speckled, as if it were a sparrow that had found a leopard skin and put it on to appear brave. It pecked at the wood, and flew away. ‘There are too many second-class citizens in the world,’ said Dawley.

‘Only God is a first-class citizen.’ Cuthbert stood by the door, watching smoke rise from the paddock, more directly into the sky because of a slight shifting in the wind. ‘We need a God in the name of good to look after us and stop us killing each other.’

‘He’s not made much of a job of it so far.’

‘God is a reflection of man. He is good only when men are good.’

‘Men are good when they are persuaded to be by a socialist system of ethics,’ Dawley said. ‘You talk as if men are guilty. They’re not. They just can’t help themselves. So they have to be shown themselves right to the bone, and given a pattern to live by which they can respect and understand.’

‘I’ve not noticed much good from the communist system so far.’

‘It’s hardly been going sixty years. Yours has been here two thousand — and look what a mess it’s made.’ But Dawley felt friendly towards him in spite of his worn-out views. ‘When I was in Algeria,’ he said, coffee steam mingling with smoke from his cigarette, ‘I saw a man in the desert eating a snake. He belonged to some wandering sect. I’d been on the run for days, after a big balls-up of an attack on a French base, a forlorn hope that was only done to relieve pressure somewhere else, or maybe to influence peace talks at Evian — no bloody less. I was delirious and half dead, and wondered later whether I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. But I hadn’t.

‘There were a few scruffy palm trees and a tent or two, and nomads pulling water for their camels. I was dying of thirst, and hoped to get some. I couldn’t have cared less, either, because there wasn’t much life in me. You get beyond it after a while. It’s quite a revelation to have gone that far towards an absolute end. You’re sinking into peace yet you’re still doing something about saving yourself.

‘My shirt was like fire, but even that feeling went when I heard the music and edged through the crowd to see what was happening. I’d heard no music for months, and it soothed my aches and pains. Dusk was coming on, and my will to live was at its height. Maybe I was born at that time of the day. My parents are dead and they never told me. An old bloke was playing the pipe. A middle-aged man with a bad-tempered face moved his head from side to side in time to the music, and a young chap beat a drum.

‘At the feet of the middle-aged man was a damp sack, and when the music reached a certain pitch he bent down and took out a live snake. After playing with it for a while he began to rear and tremble, his yellow eyes bulging. The people drew back, but they couldn’t stop watching, as if he was a demon who’d show them what they were made of.

‘The speeded-up music helped him to keep the mad intensity of his vision. He needed all his strength, because he was actually fighting with the snake. It was fat and strong, about a yard long, and he was trying to subdue it, to get the energy and strength out of it. He was after its life. He was quick and knew how to fight, otherwise it would have buried its fangs in him a dozen times. He must have been immune to the venom, and a bite that did get through only increased his strength and cunning. He was determined to kill the snake.

‘There was worse to come. When the snake was almost done for he began to bite it. My guts turned to water. The nomads must have known what he was after. They groaned, as if the world was coming to an end. As his teeth ripped at the snake, which had done no man any harm, after all, I felt he was biting me. The music stopped, and this made it worse. It was horrible. All that the world meant, or had grown away from, was in this. I forced myself closer. It needed more push and courage to keep looking than it did to face bombs and bullets. I was dying with the snake, yet I was killing it myself. I was being bitten. I was struggling, and biting. I hardly thought about whether the man was brave or cruel, mad or benevolent, a wizard or a fool. He’d ripped my heart out.

‘The sky was milk-white and turning pink, but dead and empty. No help could come from that quarter. The gravel underfoot was cooling from the heat of the day. The camels nosed around us as if nothing were happening. I didn’t know whether to kill the man or kill myself. That was my moment of truth. If I’d been what I saw myself as — a true revolutionary who believed in rationality and progress — I would have killed him. I’d got a gun and ammunition. But I couldn’t move. He was tearing at the earth’s heart, and by watching I was approving of it. I was not only a revolutionary, but a human being, with whatever that implies.

‘There was a movement on the edge of the crowd. Two other FLN men came up, who weren’t hypnotised by it like me. They saw it as disgusting, and humiliating for all those fighting to create a just society. One of the men drew his gun and poured bullets into the snake-eater.

‘It was the death of the swamp in me. He’d done the right thing. I even thought so at the time. And his action had been a reproach to me — though he didn’t see it like that. I hadn’t been able to shoot the man. I was a foreigner. I was me, and my principles didn’t allow me to kill a man who was doing what in some primeval way he had to do. That was my excuse, though I had already killed people for less. But I failed, and knew at last that because there are things I can feel, there are things that I can’t do. I was dying and awake in the same egg.

‘I collapsed. Apart from my absolute exhaustion, the knot of the world slashed by bullets had shattered me. I was ill in every corner of my body and spirit, maybe for weeks. I don’t know. I can’t piece the days together. There are gaps. The sun ate the moon, but both were diseased. My solidity shifted. I’m another person. No, that’s not true: I’m the same. Everyone has a greater breadth than he or she imagines.

‘Bullets broke everything. If the man hadn’t arrived, and the show had ended as it was meant to, I might have been less affected. It would have worked itself out. But looking back, and I’m still forced to much of the time, it was the most crucial thing about the desert.

‘I stayed a few more months, till I was wounded and could do no more. It was like living in a dream, though the fighting was clear enough. It amazes me that I survived, but because it went by in a dream I was protected. The dead snake kept me safe. I was more in sympathy with it than anything else. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. I was closer to my own soul at the same time, closer to the soul of man than I had ever been. I accepted it, I still accept it. I wasn’t frightened enough to start shooting. The snake had been killed, but it still lived. The man was killed but he still lives. I still live. The earth is eternal. The soul of man has roots which go deeper than Marxism — only a fool wouldn’t think so — but Marxism can give it an honourable coat, something to cover the broken human spirit with.’

What had haunted him, he told Cuthbert, was the face of the man eating the snake, showing the sanest and most pitiable eyes he had ever seen. Each pore of his skin was corroded, eating himself, and whoever his eyes turned on. It was less painful to look at the snake he was eating. The face, at the moment before turning to the snake, was one of pain, desperation, self-loathing, panic, fear, awe, the terror of letting go and, finally, courage.

He saw the face later when Handley’s brother John found him in Algeria. On the final night when they were making their way down the hillside to a waiting boat that would take them to a ship out at sea, John had run back up the rocky slope with the intention of staying behind. He didn’t want to go — out and back to England — but Dawley had subdued him and forced him to the beach. In the dim light of a torch he had seen the same multiplicity of expressions on John’s face as had been on the snake-eater’s in the desert before he turned to consume the snake.