Rather than filling me with spiritual peace, however, the example set by Jesus only makes my existence seem trivial and shallow in comparison. In public I’m always talking about care ethics and the value of human community, but in my real life I don’t take on the work of caring for anyone except myself. Who in the world relies on me for anything? No one. I can blame myself, and I do, but I also think the failure is general.
People our age used to get married and have children and conduct love affairs, and now everyone is still single at thirty and lives with housemates they never see. Traditional marriage was obviously not fit for purpose, and almost ubiquitously ended in one kind of failure or another, but at least it was an effort at something, and not just a sad sterile foreclosure on the possibility of life. Of course if we all stay alone and practise celibacy and carefully police our personal boundaries, many problems will be avoided, but it seems we will also have almost nothing left that makes life worthwhile. I guess you could say the old ways of being together were wrong – they were! – and that we didn’t want to repeat old mistakes – we didn’t. But when we tore down what confined us, what did we have in mind to replace it? I offer no defence of coercive heterosexual monogamy, except that it was at least a way of doing things, a way of seeing life through. What do we have now? Instead? Nothing. And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.
However: Jesus teaches us not to judge. I can’t approve of unforgiving puritanism or of moral vanity, but I am hardly perfect in either regard. All my mania for culture, for
‘really good’ things, for knowing about jazz recordings and red wine and Danish furniture, even about Keats and Shakespeare and James Baldwin, what if it’s all a form of vanity, or even worse, a little bandage over the initial wound of my origins? I have put between myself and my parents such a gulf of sophistication that it’s impossible for them to touch me now or to reach me at all. And I look back across that gulf, not with a sense of guilt or loss, but with relief and satisfaction. Am I better than they are?
Certainly not, although maybe luckier. But I am different, and I don’t understand them very well, and I can’t live with them or draw them into my inner world – or for that
matter write about them. All my filial duties are nothing but a series of rituals on my part designed to shield myself from criticism while giving nothing of myself away. It was touching what you said in your last message about our civilisation collapsing and life going on afterwards. And yet I can’t imagine my life that way – I mean whatever goes on, it won’t be my life anymore, not really. Because in my deepest essence I am just an artefact of our culture, just a little bubble winking at the brim of our civilisation.
And when it’s gone, I’ll be gone. Not that I think I mind.
PS – I hate to ask, but since Simon says he’s coming along with you – should I make up two bedrooms or one?
19
On Friday morning it rained and Eileen took the bus to work. She had finished The Karamazov Brothers by then and was reading The Golden Bowl, standing up on the bus with one hand gripping the yellow upright rail and the other holding a copy of the novel in paperback. After alighting she put her scarf over her head and walked a couple of minutes to the office on Kildare Street in the rain. Inside, her colleagues were laughing at a satirical video about the Brexit negotiations. Eileen stood at the computer where they were gathered to watch it, looking over their shoulders at the screen, as the rain slid softly and noiselessly down the outer panes of the office windows. Oh, I’ve seen this one, she said. It’s funny. After that she made a pot of coffee and sat down at her desk.
She checked her phone and saw a message from Lola about a ‘cake tasting’ later that week. I’m busy tomorrow evening but otherwise free, Eileen wrote back. Let me know what works. Lola replied within a couple of minutes.
Lola: What are you doing tomorrow
Eileen: I have plans
Lola: Heh heh
Lola: Are you seeing someone??
Eileen glanced around the office, as if to check that no one was watching, and then, returning her attention to her phone, she began typing again.
Eileen: no comment
Lola: Is he tall
Eileen: none of your business
Eileen: but yes he’s 6’3”
Lola: !!
Lola: Did you meet him on the internet?
Lola: Is he a serial killer?
Lola: Still if he’s 6’3 I suppose it’s swings and roundabouts Eileen: this interview is terminated