THE PARADIGM

RANDAL FLYNN

He sat and looked thoughtfully at the desert. It was stony and flat, sliding away towards the horizon, layer upon layer. The rock on which he sat was rough, its crevices filled with sand, and straggly vegetation such as the sun permitted. It was evening, but the world was still full of sun and heat. Nothing moved but the air layers, the heat rising up.

Fifty kilometres away, he thought, is Belzain.

He scratched himself. Tall white trees rattled where there was no breeze, leaves rubbing together like leathery palms. A colony of cicadas set up their hypnotic song. The crickets were coming out. He stood up and toyed with the idea of returning to his rooms. An unattractive idea - their emptiness would amplify his own. He walked sluggishly towards town.

The interview with Heenge, the regional proctor, had been what he thought it would be - the sound of leathery trees in the twilight.

‘No doubt you expected us.’ Heenge’s words, like himself, were rhetorical. He had stood just inside the door, in the no-man’s-land of an imaginary antechamber. He had no coat to hang up; instead, he carelessly positioned the faceless man who accompanied him against one wall, a rude figure in the soothing light of late afternoon.

‘Sit down,’ said Zouilh.

‘Thank you, no,’ replied Heenge. He took from an inner pocket a folded paper, and handed it to Zouilh. ‘A declaration,’ said Heenge, ‘of the state’s appreciation of your work. May I add my own congratulations? Our region has been honoured.’

The declaration informed Zouilh that he had shared first prize in the annual regional art award. The other prize-winner was his friend Uhertal.

Heenge handed him another bit of paper. ‘Naturally, your status will be increased, to B-class. You work for the state now. Someone may be here tomorrow to give you an idea of what we want from you. Your role is essential. The universe, justly or unjustly, imposes restrictions on beings such as ourselves. We must adjust to them in the way least destructive. Your plays will help everyone understand, will identify the favourable and unfavourable elements in our society. Such as spies.’

‘Spies from the moon?’ Zouilh paused before continuing, ‘You can’t make people attend a play.’

‘We’re not going to write your play for you. We simply wish you to work within certain - specified guidelines - clarifying problems, confusions, that sort of thing. You remember the play, The Paradigm. The perfect man, with the perfect ethos? It was very popular.’

‘Did Uhertal accept the new status?’

‘That is not for me to discuss.’

‘I can reject this?’

‘You can do whatever you like. You are free to do as you wish. Of course, rejection of B-class automatically reprocesses you to D-class. Merely a reduction in income.’ He smiled, as if to say: what is money to the true artist?

‘I’ll record my answer tomorrow ... when your fellow comes round.’

Heenge shrugged. ‘As you like. It has been a pleasure talking to you, Zouilh.’ On the way out he collected the faceless man; together they departed.

* * * *

He entered the outskirts of the town: it was a dreary region torn between impossible realities, yet more bearable for being a borderland. He passed houses and tenements which had grown into desolation the way a man grows into senility, unnoticed, with a fragmentary concern; each existed on the edge of life, and carried the despair of being incomplete. He moved towards the centre of town, but swung round after a few minutes, avoiding the centre. It was clear to him, in this peculiar light of evening, that the days of youth were really gone: the smooth days, the balmy days, the days of no decisions had petered out, like a disused road.

The alternative was equally clear, if bleak. He could go to the Factory, could suffer to have a mechanical nexus made for his wrist, to be ‘plugged in’ - and it came to him calmly that there really was a choice: there was a curious attraction for this existence, a sly urge to reduce each day by a third, a third less of the time he spent in consciousness, in doubt, in dilemma. Or he could accept B-class status, become an employee of the state, a toady. The former stirred the notion that perhaps life was already too long. The latter was just a continuation of his dilemma. He turned up a narrow lane, between walls of high leafy trees, where colonies of cicadas, separated by the lane, sought to hypnotise each other.

He knocked on the door. Sounds of footsteps came to him and Uhertal let him in. ‘I was expecting you,’ she said.

‘I’m becoming predictable.’ They went upstairs to the kitchen, and poured out mugs of hot thin tea.

Zouilh said, ‘So what have you decided to do?’

‘Heenge ...?’

‘... wouldn’t say a word.’

She said, ‘I’m going to reject.’

He looked at her, and was overwhelmed by his previous calm. She swirled her mug in both hands, and hunched forward as though cold. Guilt touched him. He reached forward and ran a finger along the back of her hand.

‘They’ll stick a metal plate on your wrist, with an input and an output, and plug you in. Anything might happen. You could have your soul sucked out and you wouldn’t know.’

‘Zouilh!’ She was angry with him. ‘It’s biofeedback, electrical impulses, to and fro. The soul is the pineal gland, which is tissue. Just tissue. You’re not being sensible.’

‘But ...’ He looked at her, lost for words. Anything he might say died on his lips, unspoken. A listlessness filled him. He got up.

‘I’ll see you sometime.’ He went to the top of the stairs and looked back. Her eyes were closed. She seemed lost in the future she had invoked. He went down the stairs, slapping each step so that he was jarred through, lacking the grace of self-control.

Not far away lived Scodal, a stage manager. At his door, Zouilh did not bother to knock, but went in, finding the middle-aged man at his desk. He slumped into a chair, shutting his eyes, expelling his breath in a long sigh.

Scodal said, ‘Doesn’t sound good, whatever it is.’

‘The regional art awards have come in.’

‘Well, let’s celebrate. You and Uhertal must be happy.’ He did not make it sound as though they should be happy.

‘Uhertal rejected it.’

‘Go on, surprise me.’

Zouilh looked crossly at him, then looked away.

Scodal went on, ‘What about you? I suppose that sigh means: “What do I do? How can I cop out nicely?”‘

Zouilh glared at him again.

Scodal said, ‘It’s a tough world.’

‘Philosophical garbage.’

‘We’ve all got problems.’

‘No, I’ve got problems. How can you write plays when ...?’ He broke off.

‘When someone is looking over your shoulder and making loud noises? Why worry about it? It’s just another audience.’

‘You’re part of a team production. It’s different for you. But ... oh hell, you have to distinguish between real art and ... and art by committee! You agree, don’t you? Internalise the audience and you create self-consciousness. Internalise the state and you create - shit! It’s an advertising campaign. Who do I write for, for God’s sake?’

‘I’d prefer to avoid imponderables. I haven’t eaten yet. Have you? Do you want to stay for dinner?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If you accept B status, what do you do next? Supposing, even for a moment, that your integrity will allow you to accept.’

‘Which integrity is that? The one that says I should, or the one that says I shouldn’t?’

‘You are stuck, aren’t you? Is there a real choice? I mean, art aside, what do you want to do?’

‘Write plays.’

‘Then start there - write a play, or lots of plays. Then see what happens. The point of decision isn’t now. You’re just fretting yourself. You’ll know when the time comes. It’ll be the truest thing in the universe to you.’

‘Yeah. But what’ll be true is how untrue I am.’

* * * *

The next day, Heenge’s man called round. His name was Estoy. He accepted a drink and came straight to the point. ‘One of the most crucial problems facing our society is spies.’

‘So Heenge suggested.’

‘Spies are everywhere. The public are warned, but it has little effect on them. We intend to get that effect through your plays, through an entertaining medium. You see where I’m going?’

‘You want me to make jokes about spies? How many spies does it take to change a light bulb? None. Spies aren’t afraid of the dark.’

‘I’ll leave this pamphlet with you. Study it. Maintain contact with us as the play develops. We can offer suggestions. You may think we’re all bureaucrats, but we may be able to help you over some of the bumps. Think of us as a sounding board. And remember, you’re now in the B-class income bracket.’

When he had left, Zouilh read the pamphlet. It contained nothing more obnoxious than a few empty-headed suggestions and hints; yet, in addition, it seemed to him that here was a clue. To use it, however, he required to understand the thing it supposedly clarified.

The next few days were filled with that fretful impatience of the writer who has nothing to write. He ate and slept and masturbated and listened to music, using it to focus his mind upon itself.

The idea came to him late one night as he tossed and turned in the exasperating clutch of insomnia. He admired it as something that had possibility; yet, within the stipulated framework, it seemed doomed from the start. It concerned a happy working-class family in Ory. It is their custom to take in lodgers. The family consists of three generations, plus the new lodger who, of course, is the spy. Over a period of weeks, the spy brings dissension to the family, purposefully distorting and disintegrating their solidarity. Two sons are disowned. The grandfather is killed, but everyone pretends it is an accident. Meanwhile, the spy cleverly convinces them that the source of their trouble is the state. He does this so well that eventually they strike out, planting a bomb in the Factory. With the inevitability of bureaucracy, the proctors arrive and the family is taken away, leaving the spy in possession of the house and business. He dances on the verandah as the family is carted off.

Like most of the plays he wrote, it did not come easily. It proceeded fitfully, disturbed often by humdrum demands, picked up once more moodily, with reluctance or excitement, then dropped again. At one point, it seemed doomed to a merely embryonic start...

It was his custom to take a walk in the evening, along the dry streets with the light fading up into the sky, where it might glow for hours. Trees lined the streets, and yellowed leaves drifted down the gutters and paths. A few figures sauntered past, but it was the hour after the Factory workers had gone home for the day; the streets were his.

One evening, he met Uhertal. She sat on a stone bench in one corner of the park, in the interface between leafy calm and busy suburb. He sat down beside her. She stirred, lifting her head to look at him. Her large eyes showed him the change in her. She was smaller, thinner, her cheeks less smooth, the line of her jaw sharper. She seemed listless, withered. He thought it his imagination, but his fingers found her wrist and brushed the metal plate. He jerked his hand away. She sighed. He put an arm around her shoulders, and helped her to her feet. Small noises rose from her throat, as though she struggled to tell him something. Once on her feet, she recovered rapidly, leaving him the taste of a quickly fading dream, a glimpse of some future.

He stood still for a moment, abandoned by any hope of a resolution, like a planet abandoned by its sun. The play was full of shit, and the shit was in himself.

The inertia of his calm forced him up the street, along narrow cobbled lanes, to his own house. Uhertal walked by herself. They had been friends for ages, sharing a shallow kind of intimacy, which did more to separate them than to bind them. He realised he did not know her and realising that, saw the mistake in it.

He made them hot drinks and they sat huddled in the living room, the wide doors flung open to the evening breeze and the clear light that made him think of the clear light of the mind. The silence between them was easy and unnoticed.

Abruptly, he asked, forcing out the words, ‘How is your writing?’ He was afraid of what she might say, but was not prepared for the emptiness in her voice: ‘It isn’t. How’s yours?’

She didn’t even look at him. He decided not to answer her. Instead, he reached out and took her hand. She shivered as if cold, and started to cry. He leant forward and kissed the tears as they fell down her face, and somehow clumsily found her lips; his tongue slipped into her mouth, but her mouth was dry. She slowly, fumblingly, kissed him back. He loosened some buttons, pushed up her skirt: his body remembered the old intimate movements. He caressed her, running fingertips across her belly, through the matted curly hairs. He moved his body onto hers, his fingers softly inside her, but hesitated, feeling the dryness between her legs.

He entered her with difficulty; she was tight and dry, her face the face of someone wounded. He stopped. ‘Don’t... doesn’t hurt...’ she murmured. He moved slowly, guiltily, quickening his thrusts as she came with a thin, tired cry. She came twice more but her cries were silent, like some frantic bird seen through a windowpane. His own moment was lost in the welter of pain and guilt. He felt vaguely foolish, detached, a spectator to their act.

Afterward, they were covered in sweat, and lay, still joined, in stillness. She fell asleep and he did not move, afraid she would awaken; inevitably, he dozed, waking foggily to pull a thin covering over their bodies as the evening turned cold.

When he woke again, it was late in the night; she lay beneath him, solid and warm, a promise. He left her asleep, covering her with a blanket, while he put together some warm food and drink. He brought her the meal, but did not awaken her at once. Her face was smooth and brown, filled out by sleep and an ease one imagines transfigures those who have died.

She woke confused, like a child, brushing hair from her eyes as she tried to sit up. Her eyes were dark from sleep.

‘Have something to eat. Then we’ll sleep.’

Sometime later, when she had eaten, he asked, ‘What time do you start in the morning? Not early?’

She nodded, as though dumb.

‘What time?’

‘Six o’clock.’

‘You’ll move in with me?’

Again, she just nodded.

‘While you’re at work, I’ll fix it with the block-proctor.’

She slept easily and calmly all night. He roused in the morning as she left for work. ‘Have a good day.’

‘I will.’ She kissed him and left. He lay on his back, gazing into the air above, thoughtful and disturbed. Yet at the same time he felt excited and scared; both feelings churned in his stomach until he turned onto his side and rolled up into a foetal position, suddenly and shockingly ambivalent. He was cold right through. Right then he wished Uhertal would not return. Looming before him in time was a vastness and openness that reduced him to cowardice. He wondered at the fear of loneliness, and compared it with his present fear. Was he signing away all the years of independent existence? Of doing things for himself, by himself, of being alone on a subsistence level of aloneness? He was scared.

He got up and ate. The food filled his stomach and wellbeing filled his mind. He went cheerily to the block-proctor’s office and returned with the application forms. He would need a larger room, with a double bed, and could demand a private bathroom. He had a light meal prepared when she returned. They ate, made love, and went out into the evening.

A strong breeze was blowing all the leaves through the streets, blowing the stillness out of existence. They came to the park and ran among the trees; the wind lent them energy, made them excited with themselves. The whole world moved, and seemed involved in some complex choreography, to which the slow-moving clouds imparted the illusion of an earth toppling massively beneath their feet. They stood still, gazing at the clouds, allowing themselves to feel dizzy.

Exhausted and tingling, they went home. The evening was spent curled up on the sofa, in each other’s arms, listening to the hum of quietness outside the house, or looking at the stars and speculating idly about distant intelligences.

The days that followed were dreamy days of contentment; his one source of irritation was the play. It languished; surrounding it was a feeling of redundancy. Dimly, he understood that the need to create was a commonplace need that sometimes could be filled by a substitute. Everyone shared the need, but not the method of satisfaction.

Over the next month he wrote two pages; Uhertal seemed to have forgotten that once she also wrote plays, and turned her energy to exhorting him to finish his.

The application forms were processed. A depression settled on his spirits, so that he wondered about the outcome of their application. ‘What if we’re refused cohabitation status?’

‘We won’t be. Don’t be foolish.’

‘The quota of couples in this area may already be filled.’

‘The application is just paperwork. You know, administration.’

‘Someone will probably lose our papers, or mix them up. I’ll come home one evening and you’ll be fat and bleary-eyed. You’ll rant at me.’

‘Do you want to go out somewhere, walk it off? You’re not usually this down. Is it the play?’

‘It’s everything.’

‘It always is.’

‘It isn’t funny’’

‘I was being grim, not facetious.’

Zouilh said, ‘You still like me?’

‘Sometimes. You’re not bad, you know.’

‘They won’t affirm our application. They’ll tell us to separate.’

‘Christ. We aren’t told what to do.’

‘No, only what not to do.’

‘Why don’t you cheer up? Do something disgusting.’ He reached between her legs, pulled her close. He kissed her breasts. ‘Yes, that’s a start.’

* * * *

Some while later, as they lay relaxed, she said, ‘You must have cheered up.’

‘I think they’ll probably let us live together.’

‘Why don’t you do some writing tonight? I’ll make dinner.’

‘What about your writing? If I cook dinner, you can work on a play.

‘When did you last write something?’ She didn’t answer him. ‘It was before we started living together. I don’t want you to stop writing.’

‘The way you have?’

‘Don’t evade me. This is serious.’

‘You’re so serious.’

‘Your job in the Factory takes a lot out of you.’

‘You’re not being metaphorical, are you?’

‘I’m trying to find out why you don’t write. Or won’t write. Or whatever. Writing isn’t something you give up, like a bad habit. You can’t be cured of it. Though maybe, for a while ...’

He moved restlessly on the chair. Neither spoke. After a few minutes, Uhertal left the room. He heard her washing dishes, preparatory to making dinner.

* * * *

One day, Heenge dropped by. With him, as always, was the faceless man.

Heenge said, ‘Everyone in the office eagerly awaits your new play. It must be good, considering how long it’s taking.’

‘I’m getting there.’

‘Are you?’

‘I don’t remember any stipulation concerning time. Are you giving me a deadline?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Heenge, ‘all this new-found domesticity has had an unfavourable effect on the writing. Might that be so?’ He looked around the room, a thin concern clouding his expression.

He went on, ‘When does your cohabitation application formally come through?’

There was a long pause before Zouilh answered, ‘The day I give you the play.’

Heenge smiled. ‘Then I’ll be off. Merely called to see how things were progressing. Remember, if there’s anything you want ... just contact me. There are certain privileges attached to working for us.’

The play was finished within the week. He took it over to Scodal’s for comment. The older man was not alone. With him, lounging in a heavy armchair, was a fellow in his middle twenties. He had a strange tenseness about him.

Scodal said, ‘This is Kabat. He’s just come to Ory, from Belzain.’

Zouilh looked at him in surprise. ‘I didn’t think it was easy to get a permit. You’re not married with eight kids?’

Kabat shook his head. ‘No, I just know some people.’

‘Have you got a place yet?’

‘Not yet. Scodal has been putting me up for a few days. Where do you live?’

Zouilh told him.

‘Any space around there?’

‘Our building has a couple of empty rooms. Why don’t you see the block-proctor? If you can get a permit to leave Belzain, you shouldn’t have much trouble.’

Kabat simply nodded.

Scodal said, ‘What have you there, Zouilh? Is that your play? Can I read it?’

Zouilh handed it across. Scodal promptly settled back into his chair, abandoning the two men to what devices they might have in common.

‘Why Ory?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Why did you leave Belzain, for Ory? We’re just a flyspeck in the desert.’

Kabat shrugged, in a kind of listlessness, as if it didn’t matter to him where he ended up. ‘There’s work everywhere. The people I work for needed someone in Ory and I needed to get out of Belzain, so I came here.’

They sat for a while in silence. Zouilh glanced occasionally at Scodal. At the end of an hour, the older man put down the play.

‘Oh, the dirty rotten spies,’ he said, and grinned.

‘You like it?’

‘Yes. I’m really impressed.’

‘You don’t think it’s soured by the propaganda?’

‘Not at all. The so-called limitations seem to me now not to have been limitations at all, to judge by this. You’ve done more than they could want.’

‘But when do I do the plays I want?’

‘What’s this, then?’

‘Propaganda. Nothing more.’

‘Bunk. Propaganda to Heenge, but something entirely different to me.’ There was a pause. Zouilh’s face tightened. He looked like someone who had accomplished a detestable act, but did not know anymore what to detest.

Scodal went on. ‘The writer knows as little of what goes into a story as what goes on in his mind. Each story, looking back, is a surprise. You know this. The audience is also a surprise, because you isolate yourself from it. But each part of that audience shares a certain structure of reality, a view of things and, in each part, your play will mean something different. To Heenge, it will probably convey the idea that spies can only introduce destruction and pain to our way of life. To someone else, me for instance, it suggests, as the spy tries to make out, that the state really is the cause of the distress. It’s not out of victory that he dances, but out of indignation and outrage.’

‘You’re being glib.’

‘I’m being truthful.’

‘In which case the authorities will reject it, and probably lock me up.’

‘You credit them with too large a view. They’ll be eating out of your hands after this.’

* * * *

Heenge seemed in full agreement. The play was accepted without hitch. Three months later, it was performed by the Ory Theatre Company, with Scodal in the wings, and a consultant from the proctors.

Zouilh did not attend any of the performances. He did not read any opinions of the play. He feared contact with the audience, as if he might be infected with something, a disease, a disease that would undo his desperate need to write and the aloofness that seemed so essential to it. If the audience were allowed to intercede, then the act of creation would become a communal act. He did not write to elucidate to others but, through his writing, to comprehend himself.

The general reaction, as reported by Scodal, was favourable. People attended the play, and performances were never empty. On his next play, Heenge informed him one dry afternoon, he was to be given much more scope. There was no structure to work within, no specific limitations: he had earned a larger liberty.

This liberty was not confined to his artistic expression. The application came through without trouble. Attached to it was a small, handwritten note. It was from Heenge:

Since the undoubted success of your recent play, it has been seen fit to offer you private accommodation should you so desire. Any of the above addresses are open to you for inspection. Should the premises be occupied, show said occupants this letter. You should not have any trouble.

Yours cordially,

Heenge, Regional Proctor.

He showed the note to Uhertal. She said, ‘You aren’t going to accept, are you?’

‘Of course not. I just wanted you to see the social benefits and cultural achievements to be acquired through art.’

‘Cultural achievements?’

‘The dream of every social reformer: I’ve generated freedom through art. I’ve altered the so-called establishment.’

‘Freedom for yourself. What about everyone else?’

‘Well, that’s where that idea always fell down. Everyone has to be an artist.’

‘In any case, it’s a superfluous freedom.’

‘Is it?’

‘Look, we’re not ground down, or chained up. I do precisely what I want.’

‘The illusion of free will,’ he answered. ‘No one will ever believe we don’t have it because everybody feels they do. Even the fellow tied up, weighted down, and chained in a dungeon, still believes he possesses free will.’

‘Well, I believe it. You haven’t converted me.’

‘Exactly. It’s an act of faith.’

‘As opposed to intellectual crap.’

* * * *

That evening, as the sun floated towards the horizon, they sat on the common verandah, overlooking a small, tree-dotted park, not much more than an expanse of grass with some swings and a slippery-slide. The world was full of the sounds of evening, and the light of evening, and that special calm as the day slowly dies.

‘A friend of Scodal’s is moving in tomorrow, downstairs in the front. I met him some time ago, when I finished my play. I think he’s been getting on Scodal’s nerves. Has a tendency to become a fixture.’

‘Don’t shoot him before I see him, if you please. What does he do?’

‘I don’t quite know. Do you want to meet him? Why don’t we have him to dinner tomorrow night?’

‘We’ll open some of that old wine. A proper welcome.’

They sat and watched the evening progress. One or two stars appeared very high up, in an expanding pool of blackness.

‘I’ve got an idea for another play. Not for Heenge, though. For me. Small one this time, one act, two scenes.’

‘Before and after?’

‘Tranquility and Peevishness.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, I don’t quite understand what I’m getting at.’

‘“How do I know what I think till I see what I say?’”

‘I suppose. It started with an image, just as I was about to fall asleep. It’s about a fellow in a room, sitting in a chair. There’s only one door out of the room, but there’s a stereo and a TV and games and books and blow-up, life-sized dolls and a letterbox, for mail. A dumb waiter brings him his food.’

‘Sounds very significant.’

‘Shut up. I won’t tell you anything unless you promise not to say anything. Don’t even raise an eyebrow.’

‘All right. What happens then?’

‘Well, this fellow is content. He likes being there. He has everything he wants and, if he wants to, he can leave. There’s the door, unlock it, step out, off you go. Old friends write him letters and invite him to parties and dinners and picnics and movies. Could be quite a socialite if he wanted to. He’s lived this way for years. He loves it. He understands it. Then one day some crank writes him a letter telling him the door is locked from the outside, and always has been locked, all these years. He throws the letter away.’

‘And tries the door.’

‘Of course not. He knows it isn’t locked. He can leave any time he wants to leave. He’s free, and it’s his inalienable right to be free, and he knows it. Besides, the letter writer is obviously a crank.’

‘Yeah, his name’s Zouilh.’

‘That thought occurred to me, except I’ve got to work out why I’m writing this bastard a letter and where I got my information from. Am I a crank?’

‘What will Heenge think of this?’

‘I’m not sending it to Heenge.’

‘My God, a bathroom playwright.’

‘Scodal will read it. And maybe Kabat, the fellow moving in tomorrow. Anyway, it’s my problem, not theirs.’

* * * *

Kabat moved in on time. Zouilh offered to help, but discovered that Kabat travelled light: he walked in carrying all his worldly possessions.

‘Mobility,’ he explained sententiously, ‘is the most important feature of existence. Mobility means freedom: possessions are a weight around your neck, and they’ll drown you sooner or later. I keep afloat.’

‘In the desert?’ The joke was lost on Kabat.

They looked over the three main rooms assigned to him: a kitchen, a bedroom, a living room, and a small bathroom off the bedroom.

‘A private bathroom. How did you manage that?’

‘People I know.’

‘I’m surprised. People one knows restrict freedom as much as possessions.’ Kabat eyed him oddly. Zouilh said, ‘Would you like to come to dinner tonight?’

‘That would be nice. What time?’

‘Around eight. I’m in the middle of a play, so I’ll shoot through. I’ll see you later. If you need anything, just pop upstairs. Uhertal will be home when the Factory closes.’

* * * *

Later that day, to Uhertal he said, ‘I don’t think I like him.’

‘Who? Kabat?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve only known him a couple of hours. Do give him a chance. Kiss me and get me a hot drink. I’m dead. My brain has congealed. Oh, don’t look so alarmed. I was just being figurative. Christ. Electrical impulses - nothing more. Have you studied biofeedback?’

‘Not in depth. But having met “veterans” after thirty years in the Factory, I say “congealed brains” describes them pretty well.’

‘Just get me my drink. Why don’t you like Kabat?’

He returned after a few minutes with a mug of hot tea, thin and spiced.

‘I once opened an autobiography, and read the first page. Then I put it down. I couldn’t read any more. I felt devastated, like being forced to cross a lake with terribly thin ice. Everything seems to be on the verge of collapse.’

‘Kabat is like that?’

‘It’s the same feeling, not as strong.’

‘Well, I hope you survive dinner.’

‘With your cooking - ?’ He ducked, but not fast enough.

Throughout the dinner, the talk remained commonplace. Afterward, they retired to the upper verandah, with drinks, but they were subdued. When night fell and the stars came out, high and cold, they began to talk, words rebounding between them like the crickets.

‘Are you connected with the theatre, Kabat?’ asked Uhertal.

Kabat ran a dry tongue over dry lips. ‘It is one of the fields I’m interested in.’

‘As part of your work, or ...’

‘Both. I do some writing myself. Purely commercial, though. Perhaps you might consider me a freelance writer. It’s not a vocation, however; merely a trade. I don’t write plays, though I like to read them.’

Zouilh said, ‘Well, I’ll get you to read some of mine, particularly the one I’m doing now. I’ll be finished with it in a couple of days. Ifs one of those pieces that pour right out: no planning, no reworking.’

‘Whatever you like. I’m not very busy at present.’

Uhertal got up. ‘I’ve got to go to bed. Busy day ahead. Going into an elevated level of consciousness - that is, unconsciousness. I’ll see you later, Kabat. Goodnight, dear.’ She kissed him, said goodnight again, and left the two men to the night. They were silent awhile.

Kabat said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a bad habit, I know. But I like it. I like smoking.’

‘What do you plan to do in Ory? You’re very evasive about your job. Is it a government job? You’re not a spy, are you?’

‘I’ve been a spy.’

‘Who for? Not from the moon, I hope.’

‘People with - ideas. Sometimes they ask me to recruit for them. Would you like to be a spy?’

‘Sounds too energetic. I’m not active enough. To be a spy, I mean. Are you a spy?’

‘Let me ask you a question. If everybody becomes a traitor to the state, who is in the wrong?’

‘Is treachery statistical?’

‘Isn’t it? Who decides?’

‘History,’ said Zouilh.

‘I can’t wait for history.’

A silence fell.

‘Despite my occupation, I’m not comfortable with political discussion,’ Kabat said. ‘Too many words. Sometimes I think we drown ourselves in words. Like psychology. I can’t ever quite escape the conviction that the words have no corresponding value, no meaningfulness. Like having an equation with nothing after the equals sign. Either it’s all very significant or very empty.’

‘But even the ancient Greeks proved that “nothingness” was worth talking about.’

‘All that counts is action. All that is remembered is action.’

‘Ideas are remembered.’

‘Ideas are the excuses of those who muddle about on the edges of history.’

‘I don’t know. “Muddling about” has a lot to recommend it.’

Kabat emitted a bark of laughter and for a moment seemed naked. ‘You only say that because your muddling has some pattern to it. What if your muddle is just a muddle?’

Zouilh drained his glass. Rabat’s raw question touched a nerve somewhere in the back of his mind. There was no tolerable way of answering it.

He said, ‘I don’t know. I’m not the person to ask.’ He looked across at the other man. Kabat had withdrawn into silence.

‘If there is ...’ He stopped, then began again. ‘If there is an answer, then there is only one answer for each person. And even then it’s only an act of faith. It wouldn’t bear too much looking at.’

‘Perhaps,’ Kabat said, ‘God has an answer, for each soul that cares to ask.’

‘Lots of people seem to think so.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I think it would be a half-baked answer, to use an unfair metaphor.’

‘But it isn’t just a metaphor; it isn’t just words. There’s got to be something on the other side of the equals sign. You do believe that?’

‘I’m one of those who is drowning. Don’t ask me.’

‘You must know; you’ve got it. I felt it the moment you started to speak that day at Scodal’s. You knew.’

‘Knew what? You think I have the secret to life? Well, I don’t.’ Kabat’s face seemed on the verge of breaking out, of blurting an entire faith in a moment of panic; Zouilh felt out of his depth, stricken by Kabat’s panic, and the sense that it was not a faith, but a lack of it.

‘Don’t you see, Kabat? I also doubt. I don’t have any answers. I tell you, it is an act. To keep my spirits up.’

‘You do know!’ Kabat said vehemently. ‘Tell me. Tell me!’

Zouilh looked up. He was astonished to see tears in Kabat’s eyes. He tried to stand up but couldn’t. It seemed as if something pinned him down, the weight of all the despair in the world. That amorphous chaotic feeling of devastation hung just beyond the boundaries of his being, swelling, infecting him with darkness.

He got up and hurried inside, leaving the man with the tears in his eyes sitting bleakly on the verandah, clutching his empty glass.

‘I’ll get some drinks. Back in ...’ The words gurgled faintly in his throat. He went to the cupboard where they kept the drinks. All the lights were off; a faint illumination floated in through the windows. He crouched down in front of the cupboard, in the dark, feeling the tension in his chest. His neck ached with some awful strain. The house was silent, as though it had slipped into catatonia; he heard a soft plink from the verandah; the house stirred, like a sleeper caught in a dream.

He grabbed a bottle, stood up, and retraced his steps through the dim rooms. Kabat was a black, stony figure, frozen in the dark, gazing down into the park. Zouilh filled up their glasses, and reseated himself. No one spoke. No one broke the stillness; though the night, outside the house, hummed quietly to itself, full of small comings and goings, infinitesimal actions. From the corner of his eye, he observed Kabat’s figure, utterly still in the dark, empty of features and, paradoxically, protean. Intuitively, he knew that the man was a creature of the night; it was the closest expression of himself he had ever found. And, with the image of the night, came another, that of the thief: Kabat had no place or meaning in the universe, no way of completing himself, only a tragic awareness of loss: if he were able, he would steal what he did not have, but the triumph would only last an instant. It was with the insouciant forces of the universe that he contended: someone had played musical chairs and he’d been left standing.

‘Even if I knew something, it still couldn’t be handed over, like a jar of something.’

‘I took a degree in physics and philosophy, and a degree in ancient languages,’ said Kabat, almost talking to himself. ‘I’ve been a teacher, of physics, and even dance. I’ve swept floors, and put up buildings, and taken down circus tents. I wrote a novel and some poems, painted some bad pictures. I married and had children, jogged ten miles to work and back every day. Every one of them a jar of something that turned out to be nothing. But you don’t want to hear this. You can’t really understand. I’m one of the ugly people, and the beautiful, like the rich, have never understood the poor.’

‘You’re right, Kabat. I can’t help you. I tried once to help someone. I invited her into my world - of writing, of philosophy. I tried to convince her that the only security in the world is what wells up from within. But one night she left, for someone else she said; went completely out of my life to look for something which she couldn’t describe to me, or tell me where it might be. And I couldn’t tell her. Then, or now.’

‘You have something of value.’

‘I would like to help.’

‘It’s useless, I know. I’m sorry if I’ve acted like a fool.’

‘Being human is being a fool. It’s a lack in myself which I despise.’

‘You condemn yourself easily.’

‘I’ve written plays and stories. I’ve learned things about myself.’

Kabat stood up, emptying his glass. ‘I must go. Bring your play down as soon as it’s finished. Thanks for the dinner.’

The words acted like a buffer; little, inconsequential words that repeated themselves endlessly, any time two people tried to say something. Here, tonight, they covered up the tears, the terrible feeling of despair; they amplified the soothing empty darkness.

Kabat found his own way out. Zouilh sat for some time trapped in his thoughts. The darkness closed in on him, became a feature of his thoughts. He felt a kind of sterilised calm, as though his mind had been boiled dry; it left him tired and pensive.

After a while he went to bed; Uhertal stirred, half turned, muttering a few incomprehensible words before falling asleep again. He let the darkness enter his mind and soon was asleep.

* * * *

He awoke alone in a pool of morning light; Uhertal had been long gone, her side of the bed already cold. He forced himself to get up, knowing the lost hours that could be spent dozing pleasurably. He was full of the energy to write that sometimes pervades the writer for the duration of the story. Breakfast was brief, followed by a quick shower.

It was a slow-paced day: bouts of writing mingled with some light reading, unnecessary snacks, and intervals of doing nothing at all. But the play progressed, reaching completion shortly before Uhertal returned.

She said, ‘It’s done?’

‘Yes.’

She kissed him; they hugged each other.

He said at last, ‘I’ll make dinner, while you read the play.’

‘I can’t read it now. I feel like a lump of uninspired clay.’

‘All right. Lie back and put your legs up. Dinner in half an hour.’

‘Get me a drink first.’

‘OK.’ He brought the drink, then cooked dinner.

That evening, after Uhertal slept, he took the play over to Scodal’s. Scodal read it quickly, but was unusually brief in his comments. Finally, he said, ‘Give it to Kabat to read.’

In his surprise, Zouilh asked, ‘What have you left out that Kabat can add?’

Scodal shook his head. ‘Kabat has connections. Let him read the play.’

Zouilh rose, sliding the manuscript into a ragged envelope. He said, ‘You’re being mysterious. Kabat has infected you. I’ll come back some time when your head is clear.’

Scodal called after him. ‘Show it to Kabat. Don’t forget.’

It was cool outside. He followed a winding lane between white-walled buildings brushed faintly by the new moon; the lane entered the park, looping around the few trees and the children’s swings. He knocked on Kabat’s door. A muffled voice answered.

Gingerly, he pushed open the door. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Yes. Come in. Sit down. I just made some tea. Is your play finished?’

‘This is it. Do you still want to read it?’

‘I do, if you can leave it with me overnight. Have you got a spare copy?’

‘Yes, but that’s the original. Don’t lose it.’

‘I’ll treat it like my own. Sugar?’

Zouilh nodded. ‘No milk,’ he added. He went on, ‘I’m sorry about last night. I feel I did something wrong. I feel guilty.’

‘Now it is you who’s being foolish.’

‘Back and forth the words go. Like the bloody crickets.’

‘I was serious.’

‘So was I,’ Zouilh said. ‘Last night, it was okay; tonight, you’re bandying words with me. If you want to read my play, I’ll leave it.’

‘I do.’

‘Why did Scodal suggest I let you read it?’

‘How should I know? Perhaps he thought it entered my experience.’

‘He was quite mysterious.’

Kabat said, ‘I understand you’re also working on your next state play. The first one was quite a success. Spies again?’

‘Yes, but a different attack.’

‘I saw the play. I was impressed. It had vague overtones of the absurdist theatre. That sort of thing goes straight to the heart; the people sense the absurdity of their own position. Your play articulated it beautifully. I wish I had written it.’

‘It wasn’t my intention to communicate contradictions.’

‘How do you know? What creature comprehends its own mind?’

‘I’m not arguing. Really.’

They sipped their tea without speaking. Abruptly, Zouilh stood up. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll drop in and get the play after lunch tomorrow. Will you be finished it by then?’

‘Without a doubt. Thanks for leaving it with me. I’ll be careful with it.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ Zouilh said.

He climbed the wooden stairs. Uhertal slept peacefully on her back, her knees drawn up; she murmured softly from her dreams, unable to wake. Sleep eluded him, despite his exhaustion. He sat down in an armchair, a lamp above his head, the new state play in his lap.

He could not deny that it was propaganda he was writing, that ordinarily he would not have chosen this subject. Nevertheless, the play excited him. He had lost interest in its topicality: he had forgotten the penalty for failure to complete it. He sensed a private meaning, which he must unravel like a mystery, exhuming clues from his subconscious. To unravel it, he must write it.

It concerned a man called Shopek, a small-time successful banker. Over a period of weeks, Shopek gradually comes to suspect that he himself is a spy, in the pay of the moon people. One of the minor soliloquies ran something like this:

‘There is more to me than outward appearance reveals. I am of two natures. I am, on the one hand, that creature of this milieu who feels in himself the stirrings of an unbearable revulsion, and, on the other, a creature of the night, a being little known to me, whose loyalties are not my loyalties.’

He falls prey to an analytical self-watchfulness, carefully evaluating each thought and gesture, each action and omission, working himself up into a private pogrom, a peak of self-loathing. He begins a cumulative process of self-mutilation. He has been damned into ambivalence; he becomes Iago and Othello in one being and, like Othello, he must destroy himself to rid himself of Iago’s evil.

To redeem himself he attempts self-hypnotism to elicit the names of his fellow spies. His mutilations become more and more extreme until, one day, he amputates an arm and then a leg. In order to reprocess himself into a new man, he consumes his own flesh. But the taint of Iago remains; his neighbours learn of his equivocal nature and hunt him down. When they finally catch him, hobbling down a dusty narrow lane, they build a large fire and cook him and eat him, continuing his own process, eliminating him from the system.

One day, shortly after his secret is out, Shopek says to a friend:

(In despair): ‘I am a room, a bed, a wife, food, work that I enjoy - so what is wrong? I wake up at night covered in sweat (Hozek says I talk gibberish when I’m asleep - maybe another language) and I can smell it. The whole room stinks, like someone’s crawled underneath my bed and died there and is stinking the place up. It smells like a corpse. Hozek doesn’t smell anything, but she’s worried. I’ve got her quite worried about me.’

Before going to bed, Zouilh added one small scene at the end of Act One, where Shopek finds a letter he has supposedly written to himself. The contents of the letter are not revealed till the beginning of the next act.

The play was one third completed.

* * * *

He did not see Kabat again for two days. There was a local conference for B-class employees, a foredoomed attempt to provide a composite picture, so that artists and artisans might comprehend the larger wheel within which they worked. Its doom was a bureaucratic doom, a political doom: some members worked on the restricted list and their identity and true function remained anonymous; information was sparse and selective.

It wasted two days and engendered a hopeless sense of lethargy; Zouilh returned home, bringing with him a personal doom, which draped about him like a fog. The energy of the play had left him suddenly, evaporated into the tail-chasing talk and restrictions, or just into the air of the conference room, along with the cigarette smoke. At any rate, it had gone - the play would have to lie idle for a while, till he felt once more that there was some way to move ahead. With his sense of doom, he brought a feeling of melancholia, as though an old friend had turned out to be false, as though he had had to give up some old value, and the idea of replacing it was exhausting.

He caught Uhertal sitting in the backyard, her shoulders against a tree, for a single moment rudely exposed as she thought no one watched. She looked starved, reminding him of the evening he found her sitting in the park, almost too weary to walk home.

At his approach, she straightened up, smiled at him, and patted the grassy spot beside her. He sat down.

‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

The words held him back, forced him to go through banalities; he wanted to kiss her and hold her, but the words - the poor animal words - hung between them, like an exhaustion too heavy to hold. He would have liked to say, ‘I love you’, but he had not said those three words in twice as many months. He was aware that some relationships did not need love - in fact, might function better without it - but he felt a growing incumbency to assure her, if indeed it was Uhertal who needed the assurance, if indeed it was assurance that was needed.

She leant her head on his shoulder. The spell was broken. He kissed her, her cheek, her hair. ‘I want you to get out of the Factory,’ he said.

‘I can’t do that. As a D-class worker, what choice do I have?’

‘Well, I have a choice. Heenge will practically lick my boots if I get this next play out on time. I could get you transferred, maybe even upgraded.’

‘I don’t think Heenge will do that.’

‘He will, if he wants my play.’

‘You may end up where I am.’

‘Is it so bad?’

‘No. In fact, you get to like it. Eight hours, gone, just like that. Takes a load off your shoulders. I don’t want to live a long time.’

He held her tighter; it was not exactly guilt he felt at his own desire to live a very long time, but whatever it was, it saddened him.

‘I’ll have a talk with Heenge sometime in the next week.’

‘But I like it.’

‘It’s not doing you any good. You’ve changed.’

‘Then it’s you who’s changed me.’

‘What?’

‘You.’

‘What do you mean?’

But she had drifted into sleep, her hair fallen across one eye. He held her protectively, gazing at her in mild shock. He thought: How can I have changed her? Except in the way everyone changes? Was it change at all? Perhaps he had prevented her from changing, from changing enough to survive, to survive despair. He himself, he knew, in those first few months, had forged ahead, but that had quickly slowed.

The thought, like an invisible worm, edged into his consciousness that the relationship had found a plateau, was on the verge of dying: it held him back and, perhaps, would never let Uhertal move forward.

He carried her, awkwardly, upstairs; she roused but did not object to being carried; it was like a surprise. Their love-making was quiet, uncommitted. Afterwards, he went and saw Kabat. It had been several days since he dropped it off.

‘What did you think of my play?’

Kabat handed him a small newspaper, a copy of the underground Mandatory. Puzzled, he flipped through till he came to several pages with the unmistakable layout of a play. He went back to the beginning and read a few lines. It was his play; the name of the author was not given. He looked at Kabat.

Kabat said, ‘That’s what I think of it, and those are the people I work for. Your play was too important to languish in a desk drawer.’

‘Don’t you think it should have been my decision?’

‘A play like that is above personal ownership. It will do some good.’

‘For whom?’

‘The people.’

‘Maybe the people don’t want any “good” done for them.’

‘Isn’t that what your play is about?’

‘I don’t know what my play is about. That’s why I wrote it.’

‘I’m sorry. Sorry that you’re angry.’

‘I’m not angry. I’m not even surprised. I don’t feel anything about it. I’m glad you didn’t put my name on it.’

‘We aren’t stupid. All the old mistakes were made years ago.’

‘Sometimes I wonder which is my right foot and which is my left. I never seem to arrive where I’m heading.’

‘During the Great War, they had to train desert fighters to take equal paces with both feet, otherwise they went round in circles till they died. Now, if you had only one foot...’

‘Funny you should say that. Fellow in my latest play cuts his leg off, to eat it, he says. Perhaps that’s the real reason: so he can go straight to some spot he’s already picked out. I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Wouldn’t do him any good. He’d still be lopsided. He’d still go round in circles.’

‘I suppose so.’ Zouilh paused, before adding, ‘I’ll be going.’

* * * *

Uhertal was still asleep, exactly where he had placed her. It worried him. She had been sleeping too much lately. Instinctively, she must know; she always slept through periods of strain. He hoped she would awaken cured, and perhaps cure him.

For the next two weeks, nothing much happened. Outside, the heat of summer slowly built up, colours lost their fullness and became transparent; the grass yellowed; dust seemed to flow in the streets. There were no more fallen leaves.

Kabat came to see him one day. They sat on the verandah with chilled drinks. ‘The Mandatory would like to see some more of your stuff. Anything you’ve got lying around.’

‘They forget I didn’t do the first one for them.’

‘That’s beside the point. We got a terrific lot of positive feedback from that issue, so much that we had to print off another edition. Others will copy it. It’ll be around the globe in two months, or sooner.’

Zouilh stared at him, bewildered. He said, ‘But there’s nothing really to it. Everyone must be making too much of it.’

Kabat went away, disgruntled.

Zouilh’s next visitor was Heenge. The proctor politely inquired after Uhertal’s health, and was reassured that she was well.

‘But I’m glad you brought her up. I want you to arrange a transfer for her, into something more interesting. Craftwork, perhaps. You can do it easily.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because you’ll get my next play in a fortnight, and it’ll be better than the last one.’

‘The last one? Oh, you mean the one you gave us - the spy in the family. Yes.’

‘What play did you think I meant?’

‘I thought writers were always writing. I merely imagined that you wouldn’t confine yourself entirely to our plays.’

‘You don’t give me any time to do stuff for myself.’

‘Perhaps in the future we can strike a compromise. About Uhertal: I’ll see what can be done. In return, have your play finished as soon as possible. You haven’t done much work lately. A writer’s block?’

Zouilh nodded.

‘Well, don’t let it pre-empt your obligations, will you? I’ll be back.’

Zouilh finished his drink before going over to Scodal’s. ‘Everyone,’ he said to Scodal, ‘is badgering me.’

‘I’ll refrain from joining the sport, then.’

‘Everyone wants plays out of me, including me. But they’re not coming.’

‘Everybody?’

‘Seems like everybody.’

‘There’s an interesting play being shown at the Western Mouth. Started yesterday.’

‘The Western Mouth’s a restricted theatre. Besides, I can never find it.’

‘It is what they call an absurd play. It doesn’t make sense to most people - not up here, not in the head ... but here, in the heart. Here it does something that is astonishing. It couldn’t be said to be a political play - a contradiction of terms, someone once declared - and yet it stirs the “many-headed monster”. We need more plays like that.’

‘Why are you being so mysterious, Scodal? You think I wrote it. Well, I probably did. As you well know.’

‘Who knows you’re connected with it?’

‘You and Kabat. And I think Heenge suspects.’

‘Does he? Well, no one ever claimed Heenge was stupid. What will you do now?’

‘Go home.’

‘And work on another play?’

‘One for the state. And I may not work on that. I feel apathetic. Uhertal and I ... I think we may break up soon. I don’t know. I’ve got a feeling that, if we don’t break up, she’ll die. I’ll talk to you later.’

He let himself out, taking his usual route home. Scodal’s appraisal of the ‘absurd’ play made no impression on him: even his energy to feel achievement had drained out of him. There could be no sensation till the play touched his heart.

* * * *

Three men he had never met awaited him in his lounge. Uhertal pulled him aside before he entered. She said, ‘They’re proctors.’

‘Why aren’t they in uniform? They can’t be here on business. It’s an offence.’

‘They can’t be here socially, either.’

He went in to see them. One of the grey strangers stood up. He looked briefly at a card in his hand. ‘You’re Zouilh. We would like you to come with us for some questioning. Our identification.’

He handed over something the size of a business card, bearing a photograph and small print.

They did not hurry him; they gave him time to have a light meal, and leave with Uhertal an explanatory letter which they all signed. In a bleak way, it was a receipt for his existence. They loaded him into a car whose windows were blackened; he sat between two of the strangers. He felt no anger. He was filled with a cancerous weakness, which spread from the stomach out to his fingers and toes.

He could hardly walk when they arrived at the anonymous-looking building (no one had ever scrawled his name on these walls) and allowed them to help him indoors as if he were drunk. It was not fear, either, unless fear was the ultimate kind of exhaustion.

He was locked in a cell whose walls were padded. No one visited him; no one questioned him. Late at night, someone pushed a tray into his room. It contained a drink and a bun. Like the walls of the building, the walls of the cell were empty of graffiti. He wished he had a pen, even a needle, to deface their ugliness. A picture would have made it a different room. Other than the bed and himself, the room contained nothing: there was no sense of grief, no suggestion of tragedy, not even the smell of sweat or urine or vomit. No one had ever been tortured there.

It seemed separate from reality, and he became as detached. After a while he lost track of time in the white shadowless blandness; the walls, if he looked at them too long, reversed their perspectives so that sometimes he seemed to be looking up into a corner, and sometimes down, or the corner became the edge of another room he could not get into. It had the effect of cramming his consciousness into one tiny point somewhere between his eyes. When he tried to concentrate on this, the tiny point became part of the geometry of the room: fluid, unreliable, with a sense of shifting infinity.

I think, therefore I am, he reminded himself. And thought: Unlike the fellow in my play I know I can’t get out. The door is locked. But it seemed to him that it was a long time ago he had wanted to get out; it came to him like a dream that it didn’t matter to him whether he was ever released. Outside, nothing existed for him: there were two halves of an old equation, but the equation had lost its meaning. There was a house and a girl and a group of friends, a physical landscape, and there was a creature called Zouilh who must sacrifice everything for a distant totality and a demand as intrinsic and undeniable as the expression of a gene.

He looked about him, at the white padded walls: the room had grown foggy; the whiteness filled even the air, and threatened to fill his mind. He buried his head under the pillow, welcoming the stuffy darkness. He tried to think clearly, but his thoughts were fat grubs on a tree picked off by predatory birds; they could not help him. For some time, he lay with his head under the pillow and, after a while, he began to understand: in the darkness and claustrophobia, with the smell of his own sour breath in his nostrils, his conception of the man in the room, of the only possible recourse, crystallised.

Suddenly he wanted to get out. He wanted to start immediately on a course of action. He shouted and thumped on the walls, but no one appeared. Eventually, he lay down and slept.

Some hours later, he was woken. Two proctors escorted him from the building and left him at an intersection he recognised. He watched them retrace their steps into the darkness; they had not spoken to him. As they disappeared, he ran a short way after them: he wanted to say something so scathing, with such mordant irony, that they would stop and stare at him, shocked into stillness. But he could think of nothing to say.

He turned away slowly, saddened by the opportunity lost, and made his way down the street, toward home.

Nothing stirred the night - not a wind, not a sound: the night did not answer stillness, except with stillness. He passed through the park, dimly lit by naked bulbs on tall poles, passing close to the trees and shrubbery.

A hand reached out and gripped his arm, dragging him into the shadows. A fist slammed into his stomach. He doubled up, wheezing for breath: the pain filled his head, his ears, his eyes; he was drowning in it. He was punched in the face. He fell over. Someone kicked him and swore: ‘Bastard!’

‘Traitor!’ hissed another.

‘Who... who...Kabat?’

Pain crashed through his chest, his arm. Something struck his head. He rolled over, sick, dazed. Blood dripped from his mouth. There was the noise of people hurrying off. He tried to get to his feet, couldn’t, flopped down. The blood now was mixed with tears. He vomited, his whole body throwing up, his mind throwing up, receding into darkness. The world rocked slowly to and fro as he drifted away from consciousness.

* * * *

The cold entered him first. He curled up into a ball and the pain of movement flashed through his skull, bringing him awake. His face and shirt were smeared with blood. Suddenly he grimaced, and spat out a lump of congealed blood the size of his finger. He tasted tears: they ran down his face and into the corners of his wrecked mouth. He could not think; there was only the immediate sense of having been abandoned.

Slowly, getting onto his knees first, he stood up. He leant against a tree, his left arm pressed against the side of his chest. The pain had become a dull pain, diffused through his flesh, sparking momentarily into agony.

But he was a spectator to it: its arena of action, of affectiveness, was divorced from him. The park was filling with the clear light of dawn, the soothing darkness emptying out.

Slightly stooped, his face still wet with tears, he headed home. For a fleeting moment, he felt he was injured beyond all life, that from this recent outrage he must surely die. But the despair passed, leaving him with the certitude that it was time to make a choice.

He found Scodal and Uhertal sitting together in the lounge, her head in his lap, trying to doze. She got up and came to him, kissed him lightly on his hurt mouth, and went off to fetch bandages. Scodal helped him to a chair.

‘I didn’t think the proctors would do this kind of thing.’

‘The proctors didn’t do it.’

‘Then who did?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything. Maybe it was the proctors - finishing what they started.’

‘Why were you arrested?’ Scodal asked.

‘I’m not sure I was arrested. Nobody questioned me. And nobody told me anything.’

Uhertal returned. With Scodal’s help, they cleaned his cuts and repaired or bandaged the damage as best they could.

Uhertal said, ‘You’d better have a doctor check you out.’

‘No need for that. I’d know if anything were broken.’

‘You could be bleeding.’

‘I haven’t got time to see a doctor. Believe me ...’

He looked at their faces, solemn and concerned. They did not understand his new sense of urgency.

‘I’ve got to finish the play and ...’

‘And rest. Scodal, you’d better go. Come over tomorrow. And thank you.’

‘See you tomorrow, then.’ He left.

‘I’m glad you weren’t alone.’

‘I was scared. I thought I’d never see you again. And there wasn’t anything I could do.’

They went up to bed. He lay gingerly on his back.

Uhertal asked, ‘Is there anything you want?’

‘Yes, I want everyone to leave me alone.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Kiss me?’

‘My lips ...’

‘Of course. Goodnight.’

He lay in the darkness, still feeling the coldness of the park, looking at the wash of light over the ceiling. They lay apart, their bodies separated by a column of air. Uhertal dropped off to sleep immediately, as was her way. It annoyed him. Outside, the day was coming on. He thought: I do love her. And I need her. But he did not think she needed him.

Vaguely he realised he was talking about a habit, a habit of being together, of sleeping together, a routine to which they had tacitly agreed. We will probably just drift apart, he thought. I will go my way, and she will go hers. Would there be pain, he wondered? Perhaps if I just got out of bed and walked away, it would be okay. Pain fades. I survived once before.

* * * *

The next few days were days of recovery and lethargy; the sense of urgency seemed lost somewhere. The heat of summer built steadily up, and vegetation took on its characteristic lemon-green colour, the colour of perfunctory survival. Dust blew through the streets like mist. Water out of taps was tepid, tasting of miles of pipes.

The heat sapped his energy, drained him of motion: the play of Shopek dried up like a corpse left out in the desert. Lethargy filled his existence. To sit down, even for a moment, was to invite a total numbness of mind, of will.

He was worried by the thought that Heenge would not secure the transfer for Uhertal if the play was not written. He tried to put down a few words, but his concentration slipped away. He wanted to do something, to make a protest, to rebel - he wanted to formulate a plan of action. Kabat and Scodal were right: more absurd plays had to be written; the populace had to be informed that the door was indeed locked. And, inexorably, because he possessed a sense of what was just, he asked himself: would they be better off? One has the freedom to jump off cliffs, but ordinarily one doesn’t want to. Jumping off cliffs is notoriously unhealthy; perhaps wrenching a new social order from the old was equally unhealthy. Perhaps it was he who should change himself to fit the present order. Surely it was easier for one man to change than a whole world.

He could change himself through his writing: art remakes the artist. He would fit in, he would be cured: he might have no more need to write; he could become a plumber or a bus driver; he would not have to give up the habit he and Uhertal shared.

Wearily, he realised that such an act could not be artistic: it contradicted the tacit principles of art. It would be, like Shopek’s, an act of self-mutilation, Othello plucking out his eyes. His deeper intuition had been correct: he could not afford sentimentality. Sentimentality could destroy you. Kabat was afraid of his possessions, but sentimentality was the most expensive possession.

He said to Uhertal, ‘I’m going out for the evening. I’ll take some food with me.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out to the edge of the desert.’

‘Take a canteen of water with you.’

‘OK.’

She made him some sandwiches, twice as many as he would need, poured iced water into a canteen, and kissed him goodbye.

‘I’ll be back. I may be quite some time, though.’

She nodded and watched him go, waving till he was out of sight, as though the last moment of the play, before the curtain fell, was the most important.

He walked for an hour till he came to his favourite rock, squatting on the edge of the desert, throwing an elongated shadow. Fifty kilometres away, he thought, is Belzain. And right here, and right now, I must decide. Behind me stretches twenty-seven years; I have had two important relationships; I have lots of friends; I have written lots of moderately decent plays.

But that was only half of it, he knew, and he wondered suddenly, do two halves make a whole?

What of Uhertal? Had he broken with her? The final decision seemed left up to the desert and the sky and the evening. She understood - she knew he would not come back, but that ultimately he had to come back. The final confrontation was here, in Ory, among old friends and lovers. He was one half of an equation. He must find the other half.

If he started walking now, he could be in Belzain by morning. It was in his mind that he could elude the authorities, find an empty room, scavenge from canteens. There was no doubt he could survive in Belzain; he could go on writing.

The sun floated closer to the horizon, dropping towards the tips of tall fingers of rock, red and rudely pocked by wind and sand.

It was clear to him that he could no longer compromise. One could not say that, since I am free to choose, I need not choose right now. That was the kind of thought the state fostered - it bred a freedom that was facile, the freedom of the man in the room.

The light was dimmer, the shadowy fingers creeping towards him, pointing at him.

He sighed. Gently against his cheek he felt the first cool breeze of evening. The sun was going down, and the crickets were coming out, milling on the ground like shipwrecked sailors.

First published 1979.