for when you come, Fred, and I have to pretend all the time.’
They stood silent, their tears drying, their hands linked. Slowly they quieted, in love and in pity, in the same way that they quieted in their long silences when the hungers of the flesh were held by love on the edge of fruition so long that they burned out and up and away into a flame of identity.
At last they kissed, brother-and-sister kisses, gentle and warm.
‘You’re going to be late, Fred. You’ll get the sack.’
‘I can always get another job.’
‘I can always get another husband …’
‘Olive Oyl … but you look really good in that white naygleejay.’
‘Yes, I’m just the type that’s no good naked, I need clothes.’
‘That’s right – I must go.’
‘Coming tomorrow?’
‘Yes. About ten?’
‘Yes.’
‘Keep him happy, then. Ta-ta.’
‘Look after yourself- look after yourself, my darling, look after yourself…’
The day I had promised to take Catherine down to visit my young friend Philip at his school in the country, we were to leave at eleven, but she arrived at nine. Her blue dress was new, and so were her fashionable shoes. Her hair had just been done. She looked more than ever like a pink and gold Renoir girl who expects everything from life.
Catherine lives in a white house overlooking the sweeping brown tides of the river. She helped me clean up my flat with a devotion which said that she felt small flats were altogether more romantic than large houses. We drank tea, and talked mainly about Philip, who, being fifteen, has pure stern tastes in everything from food to music. Catherine looked at the books lying around his room, and asked if she might borrow the stories of Isaac Babel to read on the train. Catherine is thirteen. I suggested she might find them difficult, but she said: ‘Philip reads them, doesn’t he?’
During the journey I read newspapers and watched her pretty frowning face as she turned the pages of Babel, for she was determined to let nothing get between her and her ambition to be worthy of Philip.
At the school, which is charming, civilized, and expensive, the two children walked together across green fields, and I followed, seeing how the sun gilded their bright friendly heads turned towards each other as they talked. In Catherine’s left hand she carried the stories of Isaac Babel.
After lunch we went to the pictures. Philip allowed it to be seen that he thought going to the pictures just for the fun of it was not worthy of intelligent people, but he made the concession, for our sakes. For his sake we chose the more serious of the two films that were showing in the little town. It was about a good priest who helped criminals in New York. His goodness, however, was not enough to prevent one of them from being sent to the gas chamber; and Philip and I waited with Catherine in the dark until she had stopped crying and could face the light of a golden evening.
At the entrance of the cinema the doorman was lying in wait for anyone who had red eyes. Grasping Catherine by her suffering arm, he said bitterly: ‘Yes, why are you crying? He had to be punished for his crime, didn’t he?’ Catherine stared at him, incredulous. Philip rescued her by saying with disdain: ‘Some people don’t know right from wrong even when it’s demonstrated to them.’ The doorman turned his attention to the next red-eyed emerger from the dark; and we went on together to the station, the children silent because of the cruelty of the world.
Finally Catherine said, her eyes wet again: ‘I think it’s all absolutely beastly, and I can’t bear to think about it.’ And Philip said: ‘But we’ve got to think about it, don’t you see, because if we don’t it’ll just go on and on, don’t you see?’
In the train going back to London I sat beside Catherine. She had the stories open in front of her, but she said: ‘Philip’s awfully lucky. I wish I went to that school. Did you notice that girl who said hullo to him in the garden? They must be great friends. I wish my mother would let me have a dress like that, it’s not fair.’
‘I thought it was too old for her.’
‘Oh did you?’
Soon she bent her head again over the book, but almost at once lifted it to say: ‘Is he a very famous writer?’
‘He’s a marvellous writer, brilliant, one of the very best.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, for one thing, he’s so simple. Look how few words he uses, and how strong his stories are.’
‘I see. Do you know him? Does he live in London?’
‘Oh no, he’s dead.’
‘Oh. They why did you – I thought he was alive, the way you talked.’
‘I’m sorry, I suppose I wasn’t thinking of him as dead.’
‘When did he die?’
‘He was murdered. About twenty years ago, I suppose.’
‘Twenty years.’ Her hands began the movement of pushing the book over to me, but then relaxed. ‘I’ll be fourteen in November,’ she stated, sounding threatened, while her eyes challenged me.
I found it hard to express my need to apologize, but before I could speak, she said, patiently attentive again: ‘You said he was murdered?’
‘Yes.’
‘I expect the person who murdered him felt sorry when he discovered he had murdered a famous writer.’
‘Yes, I expect so.’
‘Was he old when he was murdered?’
‘No, quite young really.’
‘Well, that was bad luck, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it was bad luck.’
‘Which do you think is the very best story here? I mean, in your honest opinion, the very very best one.’
I chose the story about killing the goose. She read it slowly, while I sat waiting, wishing to take it from her, wishing to protect this charming little person from Isaac Babel.
When she had finished she said: ‘Well, some of it I don’t understand. He’s got a funny way of looking at things. Why should a man’s legs in boots look like girls?’ She finally pushed the book over at me, and said: ‘I think it’s all morbid.’
‘But you have to understand the kind of life he had. First, he was a Jew in Russia. That was bad enough. Then his experience was all revolution and civil war and …’
But I could see these words bouncing off the clear glass of her fiercely denying gaze; and I said: ‘Look, Catherine, why don’t you try again when you’re older? Perhaps you’ll like him better then?’
She said gratefully: ‘Yes, perhaps that would be best. After all, Philip is two years older than me, isn’t he?’
A week later I got a letter from Catherine.
Thank you very much for being kind enough to take me to visit Philip at his school. It was the most lovely day in my whole life. I am extremely grateful to you for taking me. I have been thinking about the Hoodlum Priest. That was a film which demonstrated to me beyond any shadow of doubt that Capital Punishment is a Wicked Thing, and I shall never forget what I learned that afternoon, and the lessons of it will be with me all my life. I have been meditating about what you said about Isaac Babel, the famed Russian short story writer, and I now see that the conscious simplicity of his style is what makes him, beyond the