卿卿如晤-第二章

卿卿如晤 A Grief Observed

C. S. Lewis

1961

曾珍珍譯

第二章

第一次折回去重讀這些手記，讀得自己觸目驚心。從我的告白方式看，任何人都會以為她的死讓我耿耿於懷的，主要在於它對我造成的影响。她自己的觀點似乎全不算数。難道我忘了她在怨對的片刻曾經嘶喊著：「有那麼多值得活的事啊！」？幸福遲遲才進入她的人生，再多活個一千年都不會叫她饜然飽足的。她對一切人生樂趣的感受，無論是官能的、知性的、或心靈的，都仍十足新鮮，猶未被寵壞。任何東西供她享受，絕不會被糟蹋。她愛物、惜物，比我所認識的人都愛、都惜。她像一個飢餓的美食者，長期得不到飽足，好不容易終於遇見了合適的食物，却随即被剥奪。命運「或XX的什麼」取悦自己的方式是創造一項偉大的才賦，然後使它飽受挫折、貝多芬耳聾了，依吾人的標準看，這真是卑鄙的玩笑，是存心不良的白痴所耍的猴戲。

我必須多想想她，少在自己的感覺裡兜圈子。是啊，聽起來像是一樁好主意，不過，這裡頭有蹊蹺。我幾乎一直都在想她，想念有關她的種種——她說過的話，她的表情、笑容、和一舉一動。只是，這些都已透過我的心思篩選、匯集。她死還不到一個月，我已察覺到有一種過程正在緩緩地、鬼鬼祟祟地進行著，使我所思念的她漸漸變成想像中的女人、當然，這女人原有事實的根據，我本無意掺入虚構的東西，「我一直希望自己盡量存真」。然而，是否不可避免地，她終將漸漸成為我的造作，因為已經没有實体在那裡核對，在那裡挑出我的毛病，像真正的她經常愛做的，那樣的突如其來，讓我措手不及，只因她率真自然，忠於本我——她是她，不是我。

婚姻帶給我的最珍貴的礼物，便是這種經常發生的撞擊，來自於一個非常親昵、体已，却又無時不具異己属性的東西，它随時在那裡抗拒着──一言以蔽之，它就是真。難道這樣的磋磨必須戛然中止？難道仍被我稱為她的她，將可怕地褪成當年獨身的我在烟圈中經常遐思的那樣東西？哦，卿卿，卿卿，回來吧！一霎那就够了，來把這可憐的鬼魅趕走。哦，神啊，為什麼你偏要多此一舉？如果明知這條虫此刻註定得縮回——被攝回——殼中，當初又何必逼它出殼？。

今天，我必須見一位已經十年未見的人。這段期間，我一直以為自己對這人記憶猶新，包括他的長相、說話的神情、和愛談的話題等等。但當這人真的出現在我面前，五分鐘不到，便已把他在我心目中的形象整個給粉碎了。並非他變了，剛好相反，我不断地想起——（是的，當然，當然，我忘了他是這麼想的——忘了他討厭這個，或者他原來認識某某——也忘了他會慣性地把頭往後揚）這些，我從前都知道，再見他時，一下子便又重新記起。可是，他在我心目中的形象却完全没有這些影兒。當他的本人帶著這些特徵重新出現時，整体的效果，與十年來我所記得的形象，竟有那麼令驚訝的差别。我怎能奢望這樣的現象不發生在我記憶中的她身上呢？這過程不已開始進行了嗎？——悠悠静静地，像雪花——像將下一整夜的雪，初來時，霏霏微微落著——我的自己。我的印象、我的剪裁像細雪紛紛飄落在她的形象上，到了後來，把她真正的樣子幾乎全部遮蔽了。其實，真的她只要出現十分鐘——十秒鐘——就能改正這一切。然而，即使容許我有這十秒，一秒過後，那細細的雪又會開始飄落。她那剽悍的、尖銳的、具有洗滌作用的辛辣本色，那完全有别於我的本色，已然消失。

多麼動聽，又多麼可悲的一句話：「她將永遠活在我的記憶裡。」活？她才不屑這樣活著。何不乾脆像古埃及人那樣，以為在死人身上多抹些油，便能長久保有他們、往者已矣，難道没什任何辦法可叫我們接受這事實嗎？人死了剩下什麽呢？一具屍体、一道回憶、一條鬼魂（有些故事這麼說）——這些盡是嘲弄和嚇人的說法。總之，是拼出「死」這個字的另三種方法。我愛的是她本人；這句話說來却像我痴心所愛的是記憶中的她——我自己心中的一具影像。這有點近乎亂倫。

記得許久以前，有個夏天的早晨，我被一個神情愉快、粗工模樣的壮漢嚇了一跳。他提著一把鋤子和一個澆水罐子走進教會的坟場。随手把身後的籬門帶上時，他回頭向兩個朋友吆喝：改天見，俺瞧娘去了！他指的是除草和澆水這類清理坟塋的事。我之所以被嚇一跳，是因為這種形態的情感與教會坟場的種種，從過去到現在，一直讓我覺得難以茍同。然而，由於近來的感受，我開始懷疑，如果這個人的說法可以當真（我則對其持保留態度），這句話倒有蛮耐人尋味的地方。—塊6X3平方尺的花圃已經變成他的娘了。對他而言，這是娘的象徵，是與她之間的連繫。照料這片花圃，就是看望她。從某一方面看，這也許比保存和撫愛記憶中的一個影像好些吧？坟墓和影像一樣，都能讓人藉著它與一無法挽留的東西保持連繫，都是某一超乎想像之物的象徵。不過，影像另有一樣缺點，它會順著你的願望為你效劳。它會随着你的心情所要求的，或笑、或皺眉、或温柔、或淘氣，或放浪、或與你争論。它是一具由你操縱擺佈的傀儡。當然，情况還没糟到這地步，因為真實的人還十分鮮活；也就是那真實的，完全不受我的意志擺佈的記憶。感謝神，猶能在任何時刻湧上心頭，從我手中把綫扯走。不過，影像那無可救藥的任人擺佈，它那對我的令人乏味的依賴，註定會與日俱增。至於花園呢？它畢竟是現實的一部分——固執、頑抗、費人疑猜。這人的娘活著時必定是這樣子的。從前的她便是這樣。

或者，她現在仍是這樣。然而，我敢誠實地宣稱自己相信她仍存在着嗎？我所遇見的大部分人，譬如工作地方的同事，肯定認為她現在什麼都不是了，雖然他們不會强迫我接受這看法，至少現在還不會。我自己真正的看法呢？我向來都能信心充足地為其他的死者禱告，即使現在，也不例外。然而，當我試著為她禱告時，竟然躊躇不前，困惑和驚愕把我淹没了。一種不真實的感覺讓我毛骨悚然——彷彿自己正對著一片空茫談論著一個根本不存在的東西。

反應不同的原因其實很簡單。你無法知道自己對某件事物是否確實相信，直到這件事物是真是假，與你生死攸關。一條繩子若只用來扎箱子，你可以不假思察地說白己相信它够堅韌、牢靠、但是，假如你必須用這條繩子把自己吊在懸崖下，那時，恐怕你才會發現自己對這條繩子真正的信賴有多少。對人也是一樣。幾年來，我對B.R.可說相當信任了，直到一個關鍵時刻臨到，我必須決定是否應將一種重要的秘密告訴他，直時，我才徹底明白所謂我對他的「信賴」是怎麼回事。我發現這信賴根本不存在。的確，唯當所需付出的是非常的代價時，才能試驗出信仰的真實性。顯然，那讓我能為其他死者禱告的信心——我以為是信心——似乎够强，乃是因為我從未真正在乎這些人是否還繼續存有，雖然我以為自己在乎，非常在乎。

但是，另有其他的難題。「她現在在那裡呢？換句話說，眼前這一刻，她在什麽地方？然而，現在的她若不是肉体——我從前所戀慕的那具肉体肯定已不再是她了——那麼，她就根本不存在於任何地方。再說，「眼前這一刻」原指活人的時間綫系裡的一個日子或一個點、這樣說，就好像她單獨出外旅行，没有我陪著，而我却看着表說：「我想她此刻正在猶士都。不過，除非她正按著與活人同樣的一分有60秒的時間綫系往前去，否則，「現在」到底意味着什麼？如果死者不是活在時間裡，或者不是活在與我們同類的時間裡，當我們談到有關他們的事時，在過去、現在、和未來之間有任何清楚的區别嗎？」。

好心人對我說：「她現今與神在一起。」從某層意義看，這是再確切不過的了。現在的她像神一樣，無法理解，超乎想像。

不過，我發現，這問題本身雖然非常重要，對居喪的人却無關宏旨。假如她和我共渡的這幾年塵世生活，其實只是兩個無法想像的，超然於宇宙之外的，永遠存活的某物的根坻、序曲、或人間的表象；那麼，我們可以將這某物以類似球体的東西表出。天然生命的平面與它相切的地方——換句話說，在塵世生活裡——它們以兩道圓（圓是球体的切面），兩道有交集的圓，出現。但這兩道圓，且别說它們相交的點，正是我悼念、相思、和為之憔悴的東西。你告訴我「她遠遊去了！」，我的心和肉体却一起呐喊，歸來吧！歸來吧！作一道圓，在天然生命的平面上與我的圓相交。然而，我知道，這是不可能的。我所渴求的，正是我永遠再也得不到的。往日的生活，那些笑語、争執、同飲、交歡，那些想來令人心碎的日常瑣事。無論從哪個觀點看，說「她死了」等於說「這一切都過去了」。它們已成為過去的一部分。過去就是過去。這就是時間所意味的，而時間正是死亡的另個名稱。天堂是一種境域，「在那裡，從前的總總都已譬如昨日死」。

對我提說信仰的真實性，我會樂意聽。對我提說信仰帶來的責任，我會順服地聽。但千萬别跟我談信仰給人帶來的安慰，我會懷疑你根本不懂。

當然，除非你照字面的意思相信：家人團聚「在遙遠的彼岸」本像人們依擬塵世的模樣所刻畫出來的那般。不過，這樣的刻畫根本不合聖經，而是濫出於拙劣的詩歌和版画。聖經中實在找不到片語只字提及這件事。而且，這樣的刻畫讓人一聽便覺得不對勁。我們明知不可能是這樣子的。真實的存在是複製不得的。從未見過有樣東西被取走，然後又用完全同樣的果西抵債回來。那些通靈的人士太懂得引人入殼了。「這邊的事物終究没什麼兩樣，」他們說。天堂裡也有雪茄。太好了，這真是投人所好——快樂的往日又回來了。這不正是我所呼求的嗎？用狂喊，用午夜的呢喃，用向著空氣吐訴的山盟海誓。

可憐的C引了一句話勸慰我：「你們哀哭，不要像没什有指望的人。」一聽，我整個人愣住了。顯然，這應是談給比我好的人聽的，像我這樣的人永遠做不到。使徒保羅的這句話只能安慰那些愛神甚於愛亡者，愛亡者又甚於愛自己的人。如果一個母親所哀哭的，不是自己所失喪的，而是她死去的愛子所失喪的，那麼，相信這孩子受造的目的並未落空，的確能帶給她安慰。相信她自己雖然失去了主要或唯一的快樂，却並未失去一件更偉大的事——她仍可以「荣耀神，並且永永遠遠享受神」——這也是一種安慰，是對她裡面那以神為目標的永生之靈的安慰。但對她的母愛則不然，那獨特的為人之母的快樂從此被剥奪了。任何地方或任何時刻，她再也不能把兒子抱在膝上，或替他洗澡，或講故事給他聽，或為他的前途擬定計劃，更别說抱孫子了。

他們告訴我她現在解脱了。他們告訴我她安息了。憑什麼他們這樣肯定？並非說我怕所發生的是最壞的情况。她臨終前說了一句話：「我與神和好了。」她並非向來都是這麼温馴的，不過，她從不撒謊。她也不容易受騙，更不會為了自己的好處，自欺欺人。所以，我指的不是那樣的情况。但他們憑什麼這樣肯定一切的愁煩會随着死亡結束？基督教世界有一半以上，東方則有上百萬的人，相信另一回事。誰知道她已「安息」了呢？為什麼分離（如果不是别的）——那使留下來的情人受盡煎熬的分離——對離去的那位却絲毫未帶來任何痛楚的感覺？

「因為她在神的手中」。若是這樣，她從來都在神的手中。我已看够這双手在人世中如何對待她。難道人一離開躯殼，這双手會立刻變得温和起來？若是這樣，為什麼？如果神是良善的與神會傷害人不能同時成立，那麼，神並不良善；否則，便是根本没有神。因為在我們所知道的唯一的人生中，他傷害我們，超過我們所懼怕的，也超過我們的想像。如果神的良善與神會傷害人可以相容，那麼，他便能在我們死後仍舊傷害我們，且像死前那樣讓人難以忍受。

有時，我忍不住想說：「神赦免了神」。有時，這樣說還嫌客氣。但是，如果我們所信的是真的，神並未這樣作。祂乃是把他釘在十字架上。

說啊，逃避現實給我們帶來什麼好處？我們正活在苦難的凌遲裡，逃脱不了的。事物的真相，加以逼視，任何人都受不了。而且，到底怎麼一回事，或者為什麼，這事物真相會這兒那兒随處開花，（或化膿），形成一種可怕的現象，叫意識？它又為什麼製造出像我們這樣的東西，能把它看穿，看穿之後，又在厭憎中畏縮？到底有誰「更奇怪了」，雖無任何需要在那裡催逼，却情願看穿它，並且不辞辛苦地挖掘它，即使所見的景象在自己心中留下無法愈合的潰瘍？——只有像她這樣願為真理付出代價的人。

如果她「不存在」了，那麼，她便從未存在過。是我誤把一堆原子當作一個人。其實，現在没有，也從未有過任何人。死亡正暴露了一直都存在著的虚無。被我們稱為活著的，不過是些尚未被揭下的假面相。所有人都同樣破產，只是有些人尚未當眾宣告而已。不過，這樣說也是荒謬；向誰揭露虚無呢？向誰宣告破產呢？向一盒盒的炮竹或原子堆。我絕不相信，更嚴格地說，我無法相信—堆物理事件能把錯誤加在另一堆物理事件上。

不，我真正的懼怕與唯物主義無關。如果唯物主義合乎真理。我們—─或被我們誤認為「我們」的—─便可以逃脱了，逃脱痛苦的凌遲。多吃幾顆安眠藥就成了。我最怕的是，原來，我們是陷在捕鼠器中的老鼠，或者比這更可怕，是實驗室中的老鼠。我相信有人說過：「神總是把事物幾何化」，倘若事實是「他一直都在進行活物解剖」呢？。

遲早我都得不帶修飾地面對這問題。除了自己迫切的希望之外，憑什麽我們必須相信，根據一切可能想得到的標準，神果然是「良善」的？所有浅顯的証據不正恰好指向相反的可能？我們用什麼來反駁這些証據？。

用基督來反駁，但是，假如我們把他誤認了呢？他臨終前所說的話再清楚不過的了。他已經發現那被他稱為「父」的，竟然與他向來所設想的不一樣，而且差之毫厘，失之千里，令人驚駭。長久以來用心安置，設餌巧妙的陷阱終於在十字架上發動了。一種卑劣的，已付諸行動的惡作劇終於大功告成。

那把所有禱告和希望給封殺掉的，是回想起她和我一切無效的禱告和錯謬的希望，這些希望並不是單由我們自己的「異想天開」支撑起來的；那鼓舞我們，甚至逼使找們過度樂觀的，原是錯誤的診断、X光片、異常的病势好轉。和甚至可列為奇迹的短暫痊愈。於是，我們一步步「被帶上通往花園的幽径」。然而，一次又一次，當他顯得最有恩典時，其實，正在準備著下一回合的凌遲。

那是我昨晚寫的，是怒吼，而非思考。現在，讓我重新再寫一遍。認為神並不良善的想法合理嗎？神真的那麼惡劣？——宇宙的虐待狂，存心播弄人的白痴？

這樣形容，不說别的，未免太將神人格化了。仔細想想，這比把他刻畫成一個年紀老邁、鬍鬚修長、神情嚴肅的国王還更擬人化。這類老王似的形象近乎容格式的原始類型，大抵將神和童話故事中年邁而睿智的国王、先知、聖人、或魔法師聯想在一起。雖然依造型看，這是人的樣子，但它已喻指超乎人性的東西。至少，它讓你得到一個概念，這東西比你古老，知識比你渊博，是你無法測透的。總之，它保留了神秘的性質，所以，給希望留下了餘地，同時還容許你懼怕它或敬畏它——雖然，這懼怕不必是對王之性喜随興作孽所油然而生的畏懼。至於我昨晚所勾勒的圖画，則完全是像S.C.這樣的人的画像。——從前，他常和我一起用晚餐，老愛告訴我那天下午他如何整自己養的猫。像S.C.這樣的家伙，無論格局如何擴大，都無法發明、創造、或治理任何東西。他只會設下陷阱，放餌誘殺它們。他也絕想不到要用愛、笑、或水仙花、或霜氣凝重的晚霞作餌。這樣的人創造宇宙？他連一句笑話、一個鞠躬、一声道歉、或一個朋友，都製作不出來。

或者，可否像走後門似的，透過一種極端的加爾文主義，嚴肅地引入一道有關神並不良善的概念？你盡可說所有的人都墮落了，都壞透了，壞到一個地步，連我們對良善所持的概念都不值一顧。或者，再糟糕不過——我們將某事物視為良善的這事實恰足以作為証據，推知這事物其實是惡的。現在，我們最怕的事變成真的了，神的確具有一切我們認為惡的特性——無理、愛虚荣、自以為是、不公義、残酷等等。但是，所有這些「我們看為」黑的，其實是白的。是我們的敗壞使它們看來是黑的。

是又怎麼樣？單憑這點，為了一切現實的和「設想出來的」目地，便能像海綿吸水一樣，把神抹煞得精光。良善這個字應用到他身上，變成毫無意義：就像abrdcadabra這個字一樣。我們失去了順從他的動機，甚至也不再怕他。的確，我們有從他來的各樣威脅和應許，但是，憑什麼非信不可？若從他的觀點看，残忍是「良善」的，那麼，說謊便也是良善的。就算這些都是真的，又怎麼樣呢？如果神對良善的看法與我們的有這樣大的出人，那麼，被他稱為「天堂」的，也許我們應稱為「地獄」，反之亦然。最後，如果事物的真相到頭來對我們是這樣的毫無意義，——或者，反過來說，如果我們真是這樣十足的白痴，——那麼，竭智思考有關神或其他事物的努力有何屁用？這個結，當你試著想把它拉緊時、它反而鬆開了。

為什麼我容許這樣齷齰、荒謬的想法在自己心中落脚？難道任由感覺偽裝成思想，就能讓自己麻木些嗎？所有這些随筆簡直就是無意義的掙扎，出自一個不願接受這項事實的人：對於苦難，除了捱忍之外，人實在完全束手無措；除了不願接受這事實之外，這人還以為仍有辦法化解痛苦，叫它不再折磨人（多麼希望他能找到辦法）。其實，看牙医時，手緊抓著躺椅的扶手或平放在腿上，並無區别。無論如何，鑽牙機還是繼續鑽下去。

喪妻的悲慟，感覺上，好像懼怕一樣，也許，更嚴格地說，像懸空。或像等待——一整個人虚懸在那裡，枯候著某事的發生。這使人生蒙上了一層終久宿命的感覺、似乎任何事都不值得開始。我整個人無法静定下來, 老是猛打呵欠，終日惶惶不安，煙抽了又抽。在這之前，我總覺時間不够用，現在，什麼都没有了，就只剩下時間，最純質的時間，虚空的昨往今來。

夫妻血肉相連，合成一体，或許，你可以說，是一條船。現在，右邊的引擎失靈了，我，左引擎，再勉强嘰哩嘎啦，還得繼續往前發動，直到抵達港口，或者，直到旅程的終點。港口？我怎敢這麼說？避風岸罷了。横在眼前的更可能是暗夜、震耳的暴風、狂浪。而任何閃爍在陸地的灯光也許只是落難者求救的信號。這曾經是她擱浅的岸灘，也曾經是我母親的。這是她們被迫登陸的地方，而不是目的港湾——我這麼說。

CHAPTER TWO

For the first time I have looked back and read these notes. They appall me. From the way I’ve been talking anyone would think that H.’s death mattered chiefly for its effect on myself. Her point of view seems to have dropped out of sight. Have I forgotten the moment of bitterness when she cried out, ‘And there was so much to live for’? Happiness had not come to her early in life. A thousand years of it would not have made her blasée. Her palate for all the joys of sense and intellect and spirit was fresh and unspoiled. Nothing would have been wasted on her. She liked more things and liked them more than anyone I have known. A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food, and almost instantly the food was snatched away. Fate (or whatever it is) delights to produce a great capacity and then frustrate it. Beethoven went deaf. By our standards a mean joke; the monkey trick of a spiteful imbecile.

I must think more about H. and less about myself.

Yes, that sounds very well. But there’s a snag. I am thinking about her nearly always. Thinking of the H. facts—real words, looks, laughs, and actions of hers. But it is my own mind that selects and groups them. Already, less than a month after her death, I can feel the slow, insidious beginning of a process that will make the H. I think of into a more and more imaginary woman. Founded on fact, no doubt. I shall put in nothing fictitious (or I hope I shan’t). But won’t the composition inevitably become more and more my own? The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short, as the real H. so often did, so unexpectedly, by being so thoroughly herself and not me.

The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant—in a word, real. Is all that work to be undone? Is what I shall still call H. to sink back horribly into being not much more than one of my old bachelor pipe-dreams? Oh my dear, my dear, come back for one moment and drive that miserable phantom away. Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back—to be sucked back—into it?

Today I had to meet a man I haven’t seen for ten years. And all that time I had thought I was remembering him well—how he looked and spoke and the sort of things he said. The first five minutes of the real man shattered the image completely. Not that he had changed. On the contrary. I kept on thinking, ‘Yes, of course, of course. I’d forgotten that he thought that—or disliked this, or knew so-and-so—or jerked his head back that way.’ I had known all these things once and I recognized them the moment I met them again. But they had all faded out of my mental picture of him, and when they were all replaced by his actual presence the total effect was quite astonishingly different from the image I had carried about with me for those ten years. How can I hope that this will not happen to my memory of H.? That it is not happening already? Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night—little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes—ten seconds—of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again. The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone.

What pitiable cant to say, ‘She will live forever in my memory!’ Live? That is exactly what she won’t do. You might as well think like the old Egyptians that you can keep the dead by embalming them. Will nothing persuade us that they are gone? What’s left? A corpse, a memory, and (in some versions) a ghost. All mockeries or horrors. Three more ways of spelling the word dead. It was H. I loved. As if I wanted to fall in love with my memory of her, an image in my own mind! It would be a sort of incest.

I remember being rather horrified one summer morning long ago when a burly, cheerful laboring man, carrying a hoe and a watering pot came into our churchyard and, as he pulled the gate behind him, shouted over his shoulder to two friends, ‘See you later, I’m just going to visit Mum.’ He meant he was going to weed and water and generally tidy up her grave. It horrified me because this mode of sentiment, all this churchyard stuff, was and is simply hateful, even inconceivable, to me. But in the light of my recent thoughts I am beginning to wonder whether, if one could take that man’s line (I can’t), there isn’t a good deal to be said for it. A six-by-three-foot flower-bed had become Mum. That was his symbol for her, his link with her. Caring for it was visiting her. May this not be in one way better than preserving and caressing an image in one’s own memory? The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable. But the image has the added disadvantage that it will do whatever you want. It will smile or frown, be tender, gay, ribald, or argumentative just as your mood demands. It is a puppet of which you hold the strings. Not yet of course. The reality is still too fresh; genuine and wholly involuntary memories can still, thank God, at any moment rush in and tear the strings out of my hands. But the fatal obedience of the image, its insipid dependence on me, is bound to increase. The flower-bed on the other hand is an obstinate, resistant, often intractable bit of reality, just as Mum in her lifetime doubtless was. As H. was.

Or as H. is. Can I honestly say that I believe she now is anything? The vast majority of the people I meet, say, at work, would certainly think she is not. Though naturally they wouldn’t press the point on me. Not just now anyway. What do I really think? I have always been able to pray for the other dead, and I still do, with some confidence. But when I try to pray for H., I halt. Bewilderment and amazement come over me. I have a ghastly sense of unreality, of speaking into a vacuum about a nonentity.

The reason for the difference is only too plain. You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? The same with people. For years I would have said that I had perfect confidence in B.R. Then came the moment when I had to decide whether I would or would not trust him with a really important secret. That threw quite a new light on what I called my ‘confidence’ in him. I discovered that there was no such thing. Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. Apparently the faith—I thought it faith—which enables me to pray for the other dead has seemed strong only because I have never really cared, not desperately, whether they existed or not. Yet I thought I did.

But there are other difficulties. ‘Where is she now?’ That is, in what place is she at the present time? But if H. is not a body—and the body I loved is certainly no longer she—she is in no place at all. And ‘the present time’ is a date or point in our time series. It is as if she were on a journey without me and I said, looking at my watch, ‘I wonder is she at Euston now.’ But unless she is proceeding at sixty seconds a minute along this same timeline that all we living people travel by, what does now mean? If the dead are not in time, or not in our sort of time, is there any clear difference, when we speak of them, between was and is and will be?

Kind people have said to me, ‘She is with God.’ In one sense that is most certain. She is, like God, incomprehensible and unimaginable.

But I find that this question, however important it may be in itself, is not after all very important in relation to grief. Suppose that the earthly lives she and I shared for a few years are in reality only the basis for, or prelude to, or earthly appearance of, two unimaginable, supercosmic, eternal somethings. Those somethings could be pictured as spheres or globes. Where the plane of Nature cuts through them—that is, in earthly life—they appear as two circles (circles are slices of spheres). Two circles that touched. But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me, ‘she goes on.’ But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace. On any view whatever, to say, ‘H. is dead,’ is to say, ‘All that is gone.’ It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where ‘the former things have passed away.’

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions ‘on the further shore,’ pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There’s not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn’t be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the spiritualists bait their hook! ‘Things on this side are not so different after all.’ There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.

And that, just that, is what I cry out for, with mad, midnight endearments and entreaties spoken into the empty air.

And poor C. quotes to me, ‘Do not mourn like those that have no hope.’ It astonishes me, the way we are invited to apply to ourselves words so obviously addressed to our betters. What St. Paul says can comfort only those who love God better than the dead, and the dead better than themselves. If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to ‘glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.

They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? I don’t mean that I fear the worst of all. Nearly her last words were, ‘I am at peace with God.’ She had not always been. And she never lied. And she wasn’t easily deceived, least of all, in her own favor. I don’t mean that. But why are they so sure that all anguish煎熬ends with death? More than half the Christian world, and millions in the East, believe otherwise. How do they know she is ‘at rest?’ Why should the separation (if nothing else) which so agonizes the lover who is left behind be painless to the lover who departs?

‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it.

Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him.

Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. And how or why did such a reality blossom (or fester) here and there into the terrible phenomenon called consciousness? Why did it produce things like us who can see it and, seeing it, recoil in loathing? Who (stranger still) want to see it and take pains to find it out, even when no need compels them and even though the sight of it makes an incurable ulcer in their hearts? People like H. herself, who would have truth at any price.

If H. ‘is not,’ then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren’t, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared.

But this must be nonsense; vacuity revealed to whom? Bankruptcy declared to whom? To other boxes of fireworks or clouds of atoms. I will never believe—more strictly I can’t believe—that one set of physical events could be, or make, a mistake about other sets.

No, my real fear is not of materialism. If it were true, we—or what we mistake for ‘we’—could get out, get from under the harrow. An overdose of sleeping pills would do it. I am more afraid that we are really rats in a trap. Or, worse still, rats in a laboratory. Someone said, I believe, ‘God always geometrizes.’ Supposing the truth were ‘God always vivisects’?

Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language. What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, ‘good’? Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite? What have we to set against it?

We set Christ against it. But how if He were mistaken? Almost His last words may have a perfectly clear meaning. He had found that the Being He called Father was horribly and infinitely different from what He had supposed. The trap, so long and carefully prepared and so subtly baited, was at last sprung, on the cross. The vile practical joke had succeeded.

What chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H. and I offered and all the false hopes we had. Not hopes raised merely by our own wishful thinking, hopes encouraged, even forced upon us, by false diagnoses, by X-ray photographs, by strange remissions, by one temporary recovery that might have ranked as a miracle. Step by step we were ‘led up the garden path.’ Time after time, when He seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture.

I wrote that last night. It was a yell rather than a thought. Let me try it over again. Is it rational to believe in a bad God? Anyway, in a God so bad as all that? The Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile?

I think it is, if nothing else, too anthropomorphic. When you come to think of it, it is far more anthropomorphic than picturing Him as a grave old king with a long beard. That image is a Jungian archetype. It links God with all the wise old kings in the fairy-tales, with prophets, sages, magicians. Though it is (formally) the picture of a man, it suggests something more than humanity. At the very least it gets in the idea of something older than yourself, something that knows more, something you can’t fathom. It preserves mystery. Therefore room for hope. Therefore room for a dread or awe that needn’t be mere fear of mischief from a spiteful potentate. But the picture I was building up last night is simply the picture of a man like S.C.—who used to sit next to me at dinner and tell me what he’d been doing to the cats that afternoon. Now a being like S.C., however magnified, couldn’t invent or create or govern anything. He would set traps and try to bait them. But he’d never have thought of baits like love, or laughter, or daffodils, or a frosty sunset. He make a universe? He couldn’t make a joke, or a bow, or an apology, or a friend.

Or could one seriously introduce the idea of a bad God, as it were by the back door, through a sort of extreme Calvinism? You could say we are fallen and depraved. We are so depraved that our ideas of goodness count for nothing; or worse than nothing—the very fact that we think something good is presumptive evidence that it is really bad. Now God has in fact—our worst fears are true—all the characteristics we regard as bad: unreasonableness, vanity, vindictiveness, injustice, cruelty. But all these blacks (as they seem to us) are really whites. It’s only our depravity that makes them look black to us.

And so what? This, for all practical (and speculative) purposes, sponges God off the slate. The word good, applied to Him, becomes meaningless: like abracadabra. We have no motive for obeying Him. Not even fear. It is true we have His threats and promises. But why should we believe them? If cruelty is from His point of view ‘good,’ telling lies may be ‘good’ too. Even if they are true, what then? If His ideas of good are so very different from ours, what He calls Heaven might well be what we should call Hell, and vice-versa. Finally, if reality at its very root is so meaningless to us—or, putting it the other way round, if we are such total imbeciles—what is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else? This knot comes undone when you try to pull it tight.

Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense? Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less? Aren’t all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.

One flesh. Or, if you prefer, one ship. The starboard engine has gone. I, the port engine, must chug along somehow till we make harbor. Or rather, till the journey ends. How can I assume a harbor? A lee shore, more likely, a black night, a deafening gale, breakers ahead—and any lights shown from the land probably being waved by wreckers. Such was H.’s landfall. Such was my mother’s. I say their landfalls; not their arrivals.