Latest / Fyodor Dostoevsky Classics Podcast / Monday or Tuesday - Virginia Woolf

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Monday or Tuesday - Virginia Woolf · Fyodor Dostoevsky Classics Podcast

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of Monday or Tuesday. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Lismarant Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Wolf. A haunted house.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever hour you woke, there was a door shutting from
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  Speaker 1: room to room. They went hand in hand, lifting here,
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  Speaker 1: opening there, making sure a ghostly couple here we left it,
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  Speaker 1: she said, and he added, Oh, but here too. It's upstairs,
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  Speaker 1: she murmured, And in the garden he whispered quietly. They said,
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  Speaker 1: Or we shall wake them. But it wasn't that you
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  Speaker 1: woke us. Oh no, they're looking for it. They're drawing
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  Speaker 1: the curtain. One might say, and so read a page
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  Speaker 1: or two. Now they've found it. One would be so,
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  Speaker 1: and stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired
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  Speaker 1: of reading, one might rise and see for one's self
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  Speaker 1: the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the
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  Speaker 1: woodpigeons bubbling with content, and the hum of the threshing
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  Speaker 1: machine sounding from the farm. What did I come in
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  Speaker 1: here for? What did I want to find? My hands
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  Speaker 1: were empty? Perhaps its upstairs? Then the apples were in
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  Speaker 1: the loft, and so down again the gardens still as ever,
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  Speaker 1: only the book had slipped into the grass, But they
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  Speaker 1: had found it in the drawing room, not that one
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  Speaker 1: could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses.
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  Speaker 1: All the leaves were green in the glass. If they
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  Speaker 1: moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its
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  Speaker 1: yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened,
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  Speaker 1: spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendent from
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  Speaker 1: the ceiling. What my hands were empty. The shadow of
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  Speaker 1: a thrush crossed the carpet. From the deepest wells of silence.
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  Speaker 1: The woodpigeon drew its bubble of sound. Safe, safe, Safe.
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  Speaker 1: The pulse of the house beat softly. The treasure buried
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  Speaker 1: the room. The pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the
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  Speaker 1: buried treasure. A moment later, the light had faded out
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  Speaker 1: in the garden. Then, but the trees spun darkness for
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  Speaker 1: a wandering beam of sun, so fine, so rare, coolly,
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  Speaker 1: sunk beneath the surface. The beam I sought always burnt
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  Speaker 1: behind the glass. Death was the glass. Death was between
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  Speaker 1: us coming to the woman first hundreds of years ago,
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  Speaker 1: leaving the house ceiling, all the windows, the rooms were dark.
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  Speaker 1: He left it, left her, went north, went east, saw
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  Speaker 1: the stars turned in the southern sky. Sought the house,
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  Speaker 1: found it dropped beneath the downs, safe, safe, safe. The
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  Speaker 1: pulse of the house beat gladly, the treasure yours. The
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  Speaker 1: wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this
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  Speaker 1: way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain,
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  Speaker 1: but the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window.
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  Speaker 1: The candle burns, stiff and still, wandering through the house,
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  Speaker 1: opening the windows, whispering not to wake us. The ghostly
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  Speaker 1: couple seek their joy here we slept, she says, and
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  Speaker 1: he adds kisses without number, waking in the morning, silver
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  Speaker 1: between the trees upstairs in the garden. When summer came
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  Speaker 1: in winter snow time, the doors go shutting far in
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  Speaker 1: the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
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  Speaker 1: Nearer they come cease at the doorway. The wind falls,
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  Speaker 1: the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken.
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  Speaker 1: We hear no steps beside us, We see no lady
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  Speaker 1: spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. Look,
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  Speaker 1: he breathes, sound asleep, love upon their lips, stooping, holding
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  Speaker 1: their silver lamp above us. Long they look, and deeply,
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  Speaker 1: long they pause. The wind drives straightly, the flame stoops slightly.
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  Speaker 1: Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and
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  Speaker 1: meeting stain the faces bent, the faces pondering, the faces
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  Speaker 1: that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy. Safe, safe, Safe.
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  Speaker 1: The heart of the house beats proudly, long years. He
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  Speaker 1: sighs again. You found me here, she murmurs, sleeping in
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  Speaker 1: the garden, reading, laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here
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  Speaker 1: we left our treasure. Stooping. Their light lifts the lids
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  Speaker 1: upon my eyes. Safe, safe, Safe. The pulse of the
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  Speaker 1: house beats wildly. Waking, I cry, Oh, is this your
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  Speaker 1: buried treasure? The light in the heart. End of chapter
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  Speaker 1: one of Monday or Tuesday. Recording by Lizmarant, port Richey, Florida,
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  Speaker 1: Lizmarant at gmail dot com. Chapter two of Monday or
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  Speaker 1: Tuesday by Virginia Woolf. This LibriVox recording is in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. Recording by Elizabeth morunt A Society. This is
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  Speaker 1: how it all came. About six or seven of us
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  Speaker 1: were sitting one day after tea. Some were gazing across
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  Speaker 1: the street into the windows of a milliner's shop, where
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  Speaker 1: the light still shone brightly upon scarlet feathers and golden slippers.
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  Speaker 1: Others were idly occupied in building little towers of sugar
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  Speaker 1: upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time,
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  Speaker 1: so far as I can remember, we drew round the
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  Speaker 1: fire and began, as usual to praise men, how strong,
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  Speaker 1: how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were.
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  Speaker 1: How we envied those who, by hook or by crook,
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  Speaker 1: managed to get attached to one for life. When Paul,
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  Speaker 1: who had said nothing, burst into tears. Paul, I must
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  Speaker 1: tell you, has always been queer for one thing. Her
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  Speaker 1: father was a strange man. He left her a fortune
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  Speaker 1: in his will, but on condition that she read all
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  Speaker 1: the books in the London Library. We comforted her as
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  Speaker 1: best we could, but we knew in our hearts how
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  Speaker 1: vain it was, for though we like her, Poulla is
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  Speaker 1: no beauty, leaves her shoelaces untied, and must have been
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  Speaker 1: thinking while we praised men that not one of them
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  Speaker 1: would ever wish to marry her. At last, she dried
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  Speaker 1: her tears. For some time we could make nothing of
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  Speaker 1: what she said, strange enough, it was in all conscience.
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  Speaker 1: She told us that, as we knew, she spent most
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  Speaker 1: of her time in the London Library reading. She had begun,
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  Speaker 1: she said, with English literature on the top floor, and
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  Speaker 1: was steadily working her way down to the Times on
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  Speaker 1: the bottom. And now half or perhaps only a quarter
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  Speaker 1: way through, a terrible thing had happened. She could read
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  Speaker 1: no more. Books were not what we thought them. Books,
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  Speaker 1: she cried, rising to her feet and speaking with an
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  Speaker 1: intensity of desolation which I shall never forget, are for
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  Speaker 1: the most part unutterably bad. Of course, we cried out,
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  Speaker 1: Shakespeare wrote books in Milton and Shelley. Oh, yes, she
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  Speaker 1: interrupted us. You've been well taught, I can see, But
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  Speaker 1: you are not members of the London Library. Here her
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  Speaker 1: sobs broke forth anew at length. Recovering a little, she
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  Speaker 1: opened one of the pile of books which she always
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  Speaker 1: carried about with her from a window or in a garden,
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  Speaker 1: or some such name as that it was called, And
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  Speaker 1: it was written by a man called Benton, or Henson,
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  Speaker 1: or something of that kind. She read the first few pages.
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  Speaker 1: We listened in silence. But that's not a book, someone said,
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  Speaker 1: So she chose another. This time it was a history,
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  Speaker 1: but I have forgotten the writer's name. Our trepidation increased
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  Speaker 1: as she went on. Not a word of it seemed
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  Speaker 1: to be true, and this style in which it was
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  Speaker 1: written was execrable poetry, poetry, we cried, impatiently read us poetry.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot describe the desolation which fell upon us as
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  Speaker 1: she opened a little volume and mouthed out the verbose,
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  Speaker 1: sentimental foolery which it contained. It must have been written
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  Speaker 1: by a woman, one of us urged, But no, she
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  Speaker 1: told us that it was written by a young man,
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  Speaker 1: one of the most famous poets of the day. I
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  Speaker 1: leave you to imagine what the shock of the discovery was.
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  Speaker 1: Though we all cried and begged her to read no more,
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  Speaker 1: she persisted and read us extracts from the Lives of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord Chancellor's. When she had finished, Jane, the eldest
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  Speaker 1: and wisest of us, rose to her feet and said
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  Speaker 1: that she for want was not convinced. Why. She asked,
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  Speaker 1: if men write such rubbish as this, should our mothers
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  Speaker 1: have wasted their youth in bringing them into the world.
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  Speaker 1: We were all silent, and in the silence, poor Paul
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  Speaker 1: could be heard sobbing out, why why did my father
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  Speaker 1: teach me to read? Clorinda was the first to come
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  Speaker 1: to her senses. It's all our fault, she said. Every
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  Speaker 1: one of us knows how to read, but no one
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  Speaker 1: save Paul, has ever taking the trouble to do it. I,
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  Speaker 1: for one, have taken it for granted that it was
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  Speaker 1: a woman's duty to spend her youth in bearing children.
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  Speaker 1: I venerated my mother for bearing ten, still more my
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  Speaker 1: grandmother for bearing fifteen. It was I confess my own
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  Speaker 1: ambition to bear twenty. We have gone on all these
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  Speaker 1: ages supposing that men were equally industrious, and that their
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  Speaker 1: works were of equal merit. While we have borne the children,
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  Speaker 1: they we supposed have borne the books and the pictures.
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  Speaker 1: We have populated the world, they have civilized it. But
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  Speaker 1: now that we can read, what prevents us from judging
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  Speaker 1: the results? Before we bring another child into the world,
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  Speaker 1: we must swear that we will find out what the
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  Speaker 1: world is like. So we made ourselves into a society
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  Speaker 1: for asking questions. One of us was to visit a
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  Speaker 1: man of war. Another was to hide herself in a
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  Speaker 1: scholar's study. Another was to attend a meeting of business men,
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  Speaker 1: while all were to read books, look at pictures, go
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  Speaker 1: to concerts, keep our eyes open in the streets, and
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  Speaker 1: ask questions perpetually. We were very young. You can judge
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  Speaker 1: of our simplicity when I tell you that, before parting
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  Speaker 1: that night, we agreed that the objects of life were
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  Speaker 1: to produce good people and good books. Our questions were
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  Speaker 1: to be directed to finding out how far these objects
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  Speaker 1: were now attained by men. We vowed solemnly that we
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  Speaker 1: would not bear a single child until we were satisfied.
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  Speaker 1: Off we went, then, some to the British Museum, others
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  Speaker 1: to the King's Navy, some to Oxford, others to Cambridge.
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  Speaker 1: We visited the Royal Academy and the Tate, heard modern
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  Speaker 1: music and concert rooms, went to the law courts and
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  Speaker 1: saw new plays. No one dined out without asking her
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  Speaker 1: partners certain questions and carefully noting his replies. At intervals,
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  Speaker 1: we met together and compared our observations. Oh, those were
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  Speaker 1: merry meetings. Never have I laughed so much as I
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  Speaker 1: did when Rose read her note upon Honor and described
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  Speaker 1: how she had dressed herself as an Ethiopian prince and
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  Speaker 1: gone aboard one of His Majesty's ships. Discovering the hoax,
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  Speaker 1: the captain visited her, now disguised as a private gentleman,
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  Speaker 1: and demanded that honor should be satisfied. But how, she asked,
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  Speaker 1: how he bellowed with the cane of course, seeing that
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  Speaker 1: he was beside himself with rage, and expecting that her
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  Speaker 1: last moment had come, she bent over and received, to
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  Speaker 1: her amazement, six light taps upon the behind. The honor
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  Speaker 1: of the British Navy is avenged, she cried, and raising herself,
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  Speaker 1: she saw him, with the sweat pouring down his face,
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  Speaker 1: holding out a trembling right hand away, she exclaimed, striking
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  Speaker 1: an attitude, and imitating the ferocity of his own expression,
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  Speaker 1: My honor has still to be satisfied. Spoken like a gentleman,
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  Speaker 1: he returned and fell into profound thought. If six strokes
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  Speaker 1: avenged the honor of the King's navy, he mused, how
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  Speaker 1: many avenged the honor of a private gentleman. He said,
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  Speaker 1: he would prefer to lay the case before his brother officers.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: She replied haughtily that she could not wait. He praised
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  Speaker 1: her sensibility. Let me see, he cried. Suddenly, did your
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  Speaker 1: father keep a carriage? No, she said, or a riding horse.
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  Speaker 1: We had a donkey, she bethought her, which drew the
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  Speaker 1: mowing machine. At this his face lighted. My mother's name,
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  Speaker 1: she added, For God's sake, man, don't mention your mother's name.
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  Speaker 1: He shrieked, trembling like an aspen and flushing to the
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  Speaker 1: roots of his hair, and it was ten minutes at
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  Speaker 1: least before she could induce him to proceed. At length,
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  Speaker 1: he decreed that if she gave him four strokes and
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  Speaker 1: a half in the small of the back at a
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  Speaker 1: spot indicated by himself, the half conceited, he said, in
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  Speaker 1: recognition of the fact that her great grandmother's uncle was
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  Speaker 1: killed at Trafalgar, it was his opinion that her honor
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  Speaker 1: would be as good as new. This was done, they
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  Speaker 1: retired to a restaurant, drank two bottles of wine, for
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  Speaker 1: which he insisted upon paying hearted with protestations of eternal friendship.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Then we had Fanny's account of her visit to the
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  Speaker 1: law courts. At her first visit, she had come to
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  Speaker 1: the conclusion that the judges were either made of wood
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  Speaker 1: or were impersonated by large animals resembling man who had
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  Speaker 1: been trained to move with extreme dignity. Mumble and nod
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  Speaker 1: their heads. To test her theory, she had liberated a
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: handkerchief of blue bottles at the critical moment of a trial,
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  Speaker 1: but was unable to judge whether the creatures gave signs
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  Speaker 1: of humanity, for the buzzing of the flies induced so
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: sound asleep that she only woke in time to see
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the prisoners led into the cells below. But from the
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  Speaker 1: evidence she brought, we voted that it is unfair to
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: suppose that the judges are met. Helen went to the
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  Speaker 1: Royal Academy, but when asked to deliver her report upon
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  Speaker 1: the pictures, she began to recite from a pale blue volume.
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  Speaker 1: Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the
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  Speaker 1: sound of a voice that is still home. Is the
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  Speaker 1: hunter home from the hill. He gave his bridle reins
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  Speaker 1: a shake. Love is sweet, Love is brief spring, The
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  Speaker 1: fair spring is the year's pleasant king. Oh to be
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  Speaker 1: in England, now that April's there, men must work and
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  Speaker 1: women must weep. The path of duty is the way
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  Speaker 1: to glory. We could listen to no more of this gibberish.
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  Speaker 1: We want no more poetry, we cried, Daughters of England.
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  Speaker 1: She began, But here we pulled her down, a vase
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: of water getting spilt over her in the scuffle. Thank god,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: she exclaimed, shaking herself like a dog. Now I'll roll
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: on the carpet and see if I can't brush off
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: what remains of the union jack. Then perhaps here she
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: rolled energetically. Getting up, she began to explain to us
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  Speaker 1: what modern pictures are like, when Castalius stopped her. What
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: is the average size of a picture? She asked, Perhaps
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: two feet by two and a half, She said, cast
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  Speaker 1: All you made notes while Helen spoke, And when she
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  Speaker 1: had done, and we were trying not to meet each
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: other's eyes, rose and said, at your wish, I spent
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: last week at Oxbridge disguised as a charwoman. I thus
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: had access to the rooms of several professors, and will
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  Speaker 1: now attempt to give you some idea. Only she broke off.
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  Speaker 1: I can't think how to do it. It's all so queer.
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  Speaker 1: These professors, she went on, live in large houses built
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  Speaker 1: round grass plots, each in a kind of cell by himself.
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  Speaker 1: If they have every convenience and comfort, you have only
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to press a button or light a little lamp. Their
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  Speaker 1: papers are beautifully filed. Books abound there are no children
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  Speaker 1: or animals save half a dozen stray cats and one
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  Speaker 1: aged bullfinch a cock. I remember she broke off an
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: aunt of mine who lived at Dultch and kept cactuses.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: You reached the conservatory through the double drawing room, and
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: there on the hot pipes were dozens of them, ugly, squat,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: briskly little plants, each in a separate pot. Once in
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: a hundreds the allow flowered, so my aunt said, But
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: she died before that happened. We told her to keep
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  Speaker 1: to the point. Well she resumed. When Professor Hobkin was out,
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  Speaker 1: I examined his life work an addition of Sappho. It's
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: a queer looking book, six or seven inches thick. Not
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  Speaker 1: all by Sappho, Oh No, Most of it is the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: defense of Sappho's chastity, which some German had denied. And
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I can assure you the passion with which these two
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: gentlemen argued, the learning they displayed, the prodigious ingenuity with
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: which they disputed. The use of some implement which looked
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: to me for all the world like a hairpin, astounded me,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: especially when the door opened and Professor Hobkin himself appeared
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: a very nice, mild, old gentleman. But what could he
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: know about chastity? We misunderstood her. No, no, she protested,
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  Speaker 1: he's the soul of honor. I'm sure not that he
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: resembles Rose's sea captain in the leaf. I was thinking
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: rather of my aunt's cactuses. What could they know about chastity? Again,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: we told her not to wander from the point. Did
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the Oxbridge professors help to produce good people and good books?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: The objects of life? There? She exclaimed. It never struck
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: me to ask. It never occurred to me that they
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: could possibly produce anything. I believe, said Sue, that you
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: made some mistake. Probably Professor Hopkin was a gynecologist. A
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: scholar is a very different sort of man. A scholar
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: is overflowing with humor and invention, perhaps addicted to wine.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: But what of that? A delightful companion, generous, subtle, imaginative,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: as stands to reason for he spends his life in
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: company with the finest human beings that have ever existed,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: hum said Castalia. Perhaps I'd better go back and try again.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Some three months later, it happened that I was sitting
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  Speaker 1: alone when Castalia entered. I don't know what it was
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  Speaker 1: the look of her that so moved me, but I
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  Speaker 1: could not restrain myself, and dashing across the room, I
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: clasped her in my arms. Not only was she very beautiful,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: she seemed also in the highest spirits. How happy you look,
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  Speaker 1: I exclaimed, as she sat down. I've been at Oxbridge,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: she said, Asking questions, answering them, she replied, you have
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: not broken our vow, I said, anxiously, noticing something about
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: her figure. Oh the vow, she said casually, I'm going
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: to have a baby. If that's what you mean, you
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: can't imagine, she burst out. How exciting, how beautiful, how satisfying?
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: What is I asked? To answer questions, she replied in
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: some confusion, whereupon she told me the whole of her story.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: But in the middle of an account which interested and
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: excited me more than anything I had ever heard, she
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: gave the strangest cry, half whoop, half Helloa, chastity, chastity.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Where's my chastity? She cried? Help ho the scent bottle.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: There was nothing in the room but a cruet containing mustard,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: which I was about to administer when she recovered her composure.
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  Speaker 1: You should have thought of that three months ago. I said,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: severely true. She replied, there's not much good in thinking
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: of it now. It was unfortunate by the way that
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: my mother had me called Castalia, Oh, Castalia, your mother.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I was beginning when she reached for the mustard pot. No, no, no,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: she said, shaking her head. If you'd been a chaste
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: woman yourself, you would have screamed at the sight of me,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: instead of which you rushed across the room and took
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: me in your arms. No, Cassandra, we are neither of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: us chaste. So we went on talking. Meanwhile, the room
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: was filling up, for it was the day appointed to
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: discuss the results of our observations. Every one, I thought,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: felt as I did about Castalia. They kissed her and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: said how glad they were to see her again. At length,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: when we were all assembled, Jane rose and said that
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: it was time to begin. She began by saying that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: we had now asked questions for over five years, and
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: that though the results were bound to be inconclusive, here
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Castalia nudged me and whispered that she was not so
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: sure about that. Then she got up and, interrupting Jane
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a sentence, said, before you say
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: any more. I want to know. Am I to stay
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: in the room, Because she added, I have to confess
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that I am an impure woman. Everyone looked at her
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: in astonishment. You are going to have a baby, asked Jane.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: She nodded her head. It was extraordinary to see the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: different expressions on their faces. A sort of hum went
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: through the room, in which I could catch the words impure, baby, castalia,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and so on. Jane, who was herself considerably moved, put
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: it to us, shall she go? Is she impure? Such
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: a roar filled the room, as might have been heard
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: in the street outside. No, no, no, let her stay impure. Fiddlesticks.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Yet I fancied that some of the youngest girls of
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: nineteen or twenty held back, as if overcome with shyness.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Then we all came about her and began asking questions,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And at last I saw one of the youngest, who
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: had kept in the background, approach shyly and say to her,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: what is chastity? Then? I mean, is it good or
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: is it bad? Or is it nothing at all? She replied,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: so low that I could not catch what she said.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I was shocked, said another. For at least
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: ten minutes in my opinion, said Paul, who was growing
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: crusty from always reading in the London library. Chastity is
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: nothing but ignorance, a most discreditable state of mind. We
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: should admit only the unchaste to our society. I vote
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that Castalia shall be our president. This was violently disputed.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: It is as unfair to brand women with chastity as
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: with unchastity, said Paul. Some of us haven't the opportunity either. Moreover,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I don't believe Cassie herself maintains that she acted as
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: she did from a pure love of knowledge. He is
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: only twenty one and divinely beautiful, said Cassie, with a
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: ravishing gesture. I move, said Helen, that no one be
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: allowed to talk of chastity or unchastity save those who
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: are in love. Oh bother, said Judith, who had been
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: inquiring into scientific matters. I am not in love, and
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I am longing to explain my measures for dispensing with
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: prostitutes and fertilizing virgins by act of Parliament. She went
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: on to tell us of an invention of hers to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: be erected at tube stations and other public resorts, which,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: upon payment of a small fee, would safeguard the nation's health,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: accommodate its sons, and relieve its daughters. Then she had
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: contrived a method of preserving in sealed tubes the germs
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: of future Lord Chancellor's, or poets, or painters or musicians.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: When she went on, supposing that is to say that
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: these breeds are not extinct, and that women still wish
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: to bear children. Of course we wish to bear children,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: cried Castalia impatiently. Jane to the table. That is the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: very point we are met to consider, she said. For
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: five years we have been trying to find out whether
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: we are justified in continuing the human race. Castalia has
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: anticipated our decision, but it remains for the rest of
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: us to make up our minds. Here, one after another
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: of our messengers rose and delivered their reports. The marvels
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: of civilization far exceeded our expectations. And as we learned
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: for the first time how man flies in the air,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: talks across space, penetrates to the heart of an atom,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: and embraces the universe and his speculations, a murmur of
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: admiration burst from our lips. We are proud, we cried,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: that our mothers sacrificed their youth in such a cause
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: as this. Castalia, who had been listening intently, looking prouder
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: than all the rest. Then Jane reminded us that we
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: had still much to learn, and Castalia begged us to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: make haste. On we went through a vast tangle of statistics.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: We learned that England has a population of so many million,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and that such and such a proportion of them is
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: constantly hungry and in prison. That the average size of
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: a workingman's family is such, and that so great a
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: percentage of women die from maladies incident to childbirth. Reports
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: were read on visits to factories, shops, slums and dockyards.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Descriptions were given of the stock exchange, of a gigantic
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: house of business in the city, and of a government office.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: The British colonies were now discussed, and some account was
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: given of our rule in India, Africa and Ireland. I
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: was sitting by Castalia, and I noticed her uneasiness. We
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: shall never come to any conclusion at all at this rate,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: she said, as it appears that civilization is so much
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: more complex than we had any notion. Would it not
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: be better to confine ourselves to our original enquiry? We
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: agreed that it was the object of life to produce
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: good people and good books. All this time we have
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: been talking of aeroplanes, factories, and money. Let us talk
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: about men themselves and their arts, for that is the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: heart of the matter. The diners out stepped forward with
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: long slips of paper containing answers to their questions. These
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: had been framed after much consideration. A good man, we
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: had agreed, must at any rate be honest, passionate, and unworldly.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: But whether or not a particular man possessed those qualities
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: could only be discovered by asking questions, often beginning at
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a remote distance from the center. Is Kensington a nice
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: place to live in? Where is your son being educated?
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: And your daughter? Now? Please tell me what do you
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: pay for your cigars? By the way, is Sir Joseph
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: a baronet or only a knight? Often it seemed that
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: we learned more from trivial questions of this kind than
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: from more direct ones. I accepted my peerage, said Lord Buncom,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: because my wife wished it. I forget how many titles
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: were accepted for the same reason. Working fifteen hours out
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: of the twenty four as I do, ten thousand professional
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: men began. No. No, of course, you can neither read
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: nor write. But why do you work so hard, my
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: dear lady, with a growing family? But why does your
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: family grow? Their wives wished that too, or perhaps it
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: was the British Empire. But more significant than the answers
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: were the refusals to answer. Very few would reply at
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: all to questions about morality and religion, and such answers
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: as were given were not serious. Questions as to the
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: value of money and power were almost invariably brushed aside
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: or pressed at extreme risk to the asker. I'm sure,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: said Jill, that if Sir Harley Tightboots hadn't been carving
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: them up when I asked him about the capitalist's system,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: he would have cut my throat. The only reason why
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: we escaped with our lives over and over again is
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that men are at once so hungry and so chivalrous.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: They despise us too much to mind what we say.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Of course they despise us, said Eleanor at the same time,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: how do you account for this? I made enquiries among
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the artists. Now, no woman has ever been an artist,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: has she? Paul Jane Austan, Charlotte Bronte George Elliott cried,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Paul like a man crying muffins in a back street.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Damn the woman, someone exclaimed, what a bore she is.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Since Sappo, there has been no female of first rate.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Eleanor began, quoting from a weekly newspaper. It's now well
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: known that Sappo was the somewhat lewde invention of Professor Hobkin.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Ruth interrupted, Anyhow, there is no reason to suppose that
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: any woman ever has been able to write, or ever
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: will be able to write, Eleanor continued. And yet whenever
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I go among authors, they never cease to talk to
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: me about their books. Masterly, I say, or Shakespeare himself,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: for one must say something, and I assure you they
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: believe me. That proves nothing, said Jane. They all do
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: it only, she sighed, it doesn't seem to help us much.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Perhaps we had better examine modern literature next, Liz, it's
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: your turn, Elizabeth rose and said that in order to
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: prosecute her inquiry, she had dressed as a man and
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: been taken for a reviewer. I have read new books
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: pretty steadily for the past five years, said she. Mister
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Wells is the most popular living writer. Then comes mister
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Arnold Bennett, then mister Compton, Mackenzie, mister mc kenna, and
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: mister Walpole may be bracketed together, she sat down. But
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: you've told us nothing, we expostulated. Or do you mean
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that these gentlemen have greatly surpassed Jane Elliot? And that
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: English fiction is what's that? Where's that review of yours? Oh? Yes,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: safe in their hands, safe, quite safe, she said, shifting
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: uneasily from foot to foot. And I'm sure that they
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: give away even more than they receive. We were all
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: sure of that. But we pressed her. Do they write
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: good books? Good books? She said, looking at the ceiling.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: You must remember, she began speaking with extreme rapidity, ahem,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: that fiction is the mirror of life, and you can't
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: deny that education is of the highest importance, and that
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: it would be extremely annoying if you found yourself alone
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: at Brighton late at night, not to know which was
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: the best boarding house to stay at. And suppose it
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: was a dripping Sunday evening, wouldn't it be nice to
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: go to the movies? But what has that got to
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: do with it? We asked, nothing? Nothing, nothing, whatever? She replied, Well,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: tell us the truth. We bade her the truth, But
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: isn't it wonderful? She broke off. Mister Chitter has written
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a weekly article for the past thirty years upon love
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: or hot buttered toast, and has sent all his sons
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to eton the truth, we demanded, Oh, the truth, she stammered.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: The truth has nothing to do with literature, and sitting down,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: she refused to say another word. It all seemed to
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: us very inconclusive, ladies, We must try to sum up
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the results. Jane was beginning when a hum which had
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: been heard for some time through the open window, drowned
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: her voice. War war, War, declaration of war. Men were
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: shouting in the street below. We looked at each other
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: in horror. What war? We cried, What war? We remembered
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: too late that we had never thought of sending any
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: one to the House of Commons. We had forgotten all
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: about it. We turned to Paul, who had reached the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: history shelves in the London Library, and asked her to
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: enlighten us, why we cried. Do men go to war?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another, she replied, calmly.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: In seventeen sixty, for example, the shouts outside drowned her
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: words again in seventeen ninety seven. In eighteen o four,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: it was the Austrians in eighteen sixty six to eighteen seventy,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: was the Franco Prussian in nineteen hundred, on the other hand,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: but it's now nineteen fourteen. We cut her short. Ah,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know what they're going to war for now,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: she admitted. The war was over and peace was in
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: process of being signed. When I once more found myself
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: with Castalia in the room where our meetings used to
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: be held, we began idly turning over the pages of
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: our old minute books. Queer, I mused to see what
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: we were thinking five years ago. We are agreed, Castalia quoted,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: reading over my shoulder, that it is the object of
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: life to produce good people and good books. We made
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: no comment upon that a good man is at any
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: rate honest, passionate and unworldly. What a woman's language, I observed,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Oh dear, cried Castalia, pushing the book away from her.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: What fools we were. It was all Paul's father's fault,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: she went on. I believe he did it on purpose.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: That ridiculous, Will I mean forcing Paul to read all
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the books in the London library? If we hadn't learnt
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: to read, she said, bitterly, we might still have been
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: bearing children in ignorance, and that I believe was the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: happiest life. After all, I know what you're going to
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: say about war, she checked me, and the horror of
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: bearing children to see them killed. But our mothers did it,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and their mothers and their mothers before them, and they
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: didn't complain. They couldn't read. I've done my best, she sighed,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: to prevent my little girl from learning to read. But
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: what's the use. I caught Anne only yesterday with a
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: newspaper in her hand, and she was beginning to ask
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: me if it was true. Next to'll ask me whether
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: mister Lloyd George is a good man, then whether mister
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Arnold Bennett is a good novelist, and finally whether I
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: believe in God. How can I bring my daughter up
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: to believe in nothing, she demanded. Surely you could teach
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: her to believe that a man's intellect is and always
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: will be fundamentally superior to a woman's, I suggested. She
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: brightened at this and began to turn over our old
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: minutes again. Yes, she said, think of their discoveries, their mathematics,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: their science, their philosophy, their scholarship. Ha ha, And then
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: she began to laugh. I shall never forget old Hopkin
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: in the hairpin, she said, and went on reading and laughing,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: and I thought she was quite happy when suddenly she
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: drew the book from her and burst out, Oh, Cassandra,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: why do you torment me? Don't you know that our
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: beliefs in man's intellect is the greatest fallacy of them all?
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: What I exclaimed. Ask any journalist, schoolmaster, politician, or public
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: housekeeper in the land, and they will all tell you
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: that men are much cleverer than women. As if I
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: doubted it, she said, scornfully, How could they help it?
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Haven't we bred them and fed them and kept them
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: in comfort since the beginning of time so that they
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: may be clever even if they're nothing else. It's all
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: our doing, she cried. We insisted upon having intellect, and
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: now we've got it. And it's intellect, she continued, That's
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of it. What could be more charming
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: than a boy before he has begun to cultivate his intellect.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: He is beautiful to look at, he gives himself no airs,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: he understands the meaning of art, and literature. Instinctively, he
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: goes about enjoying his life and making other people enjoy theirs.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Then they teach him to cultivate his intellect. He becomes
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: a barrister, a civil servant, a general and author, a professor.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Every day he goes to an office. Every year he
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: produces a book. He maintains a whole family by the
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: products of his brain. Poor devil. Soon he cannot come
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: into a room without making us all feel uncomfortable. He
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: condescends to every woman he meets, and dares not tell
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: the truth, even to his own wife. Instead of rejoicing
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: our eyes, we have to shut them if we are
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: to take him in our arms. True, they console themselves
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: with stars of all shapes, ribbons of all shades, and
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: incomes of all sizes. But what is to console us
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that we shall be able in ten years time to
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: spend a weekend at Lahore, Or that the least insect
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: in Japan has a name twice the length of its body. Oh, Cassandra,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: for Heaven's sake, let us devise a method by which
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: men may bear children. It is our only chance, for
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: unless we provide them with some innocent occupation, we shall
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: get neither good people nor good books. We shall perish
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: beneath the fruits of their unbridled activity, and not a
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: human being will survive to know that there once was Shakespeare.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: It is too late, I replied. We cannot provide even
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: for the children that we have. And then you ask
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: me to believe in intellect, she said. While we spoke,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: men were crying hoarsely and wearily in the street, and
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: listening we heard that the Treaty of Peace had just
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: been signed. The voices died away, the rain was falling
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and interfered, no doubt with the proper explosion of the fireworks.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: My cook will have brought the evening news, said Castalia,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: and Anne will be spelling it out over her tea.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: I must go home. It's no good, not a bit
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: of good, I said. Once she knows how to read,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and that is herself. Well, that would be a change,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: sighed Castalia. So we swept up the papers of our society,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and though Anne was playing with her doll very happily,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: we solemnly made her a present of the lot and
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: told her we had chosen her to be president. Of
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the Society of the future, upon which she burst into tears,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: poor little girl and of a society. Recording by Lismarant
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. Chapter three of Monday or Tuesday.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Lismarant Monday or Tuesday
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: by Virginia Woolf, Chapter three, Monday or Tuesday. Lazy and indifferent,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way, the
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: heron passes over the church beneath the sky, white and distant,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: absorbed in itself endlessly. The sky covers and uncovers, moves
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: and remains a lake, blot the shores of it out,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a mountain, oh perfect, the sun gold on its slopes
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: down that falls burns then or white feathers, forever and ever,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a few words, forever desiring.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: A cry starts to the left, another to the right.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Wheels strike divergently, omnibuses conglomerate in conflict, forever desiring. The
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: clock asseverates with twelve distinct strokes that it is mid day,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: light sheds gold, scales, children swarm forever, desiring truth. Red
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: is the dome. Coins hang on the trees, Smoke trails
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: from the chimneys, bark shout cry, iron for sale, and
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: truth radiating to a point. Men's feet and women's feet
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: black or gold encrusted, This focky weather, sugar, no thank you,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: the Commonwealth of the future. The firelight darting and making
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the room red, save for the black figures and their
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: bright eyes. While outside a van discharges Miss Thingamy drinks
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: tea at her desk, and plate glass preserves fur coats flaunted,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: leaf light drifting at corners, blown across the wheels, silver splashed,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: home or not home, gathered, scattered, squandered in separate scales,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled, and truth now to
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: recollect by the fireside. On the white square of marble,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: from ivory depths, words rising shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Fall in the book, in the flame, in the smoke,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: in the momentary sparks or now voyaging the marble square
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: pendant minarets beneath and the Indian seas, while space rushes
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: blue and stars glint truth or now, content with closeness,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: lazy and indifferent, the heron returns, the sky veils her stars,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: then bears them. End of chapter three of Monday or
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Tuesday Reading by Elizabeth Morant. Chapter four of Monday or
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Tuesday by Virginia Wolf. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: public domain recording by Liz Morant, an unwritten novel. Such
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to make
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: one's eyes slide above the paper's edge to the poor
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: woman's face, insignificant without that look, almost a symbol of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: human destiny with it. Life's what you see in people's eyes.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Life's what they learn, and, having learnt it, never though
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: they seek to hide it, cease to be aware of
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: what that life's like. That it seems five faces opposite,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: five mature faces, and the knowledge in each face strange
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: though how people want to conceal it. Marks of reticence
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: are on all those faces, lips shut, eyes shaded, each
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: one of the five doing something to hide or stultify
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: his knowledge. One smokes, another reads, a third check's entries
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: in a pocket book. A fourth stares at the map
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: of the line framed opposite, and the fifth The terrible
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: thing about the fifth is that she does nothing at all.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: She looks at life. Ah, but my poor unfortunate woman,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: do play the game. Do for all our sakes conceal it.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: As if she heard me, she looked up, shifted slightly
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: in her seat. Inside she seemed to apologize, and at
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: the same time to say to me, if only you knew.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Then she looked at life again. But I do know,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I answered, silently, glancing at the Times. For Manner's sake,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I know the whole business peace between Germany and the
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Allied Powers was yesterday officially ushered in at Perry Senor Nitty,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the Italian Prime Minister. A passenger train at Doncaster was
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: in collision with a goods train. We all know that
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Times knows, but we pretend we don't. My eyes had
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: once more crept over the paper's rim. She shuddered, twitched
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: her arm queerly to the middle of her back, and
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: shook her head again. I dipped into my great reservoir
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: of life. Take what you like, I continued. Berths, deaths, marriages,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: court circular, the habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: sand Hills, murder, high wages in the cost of living. Oh,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: take what you like, I repeated, it's all in the
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: times again, with infinite weariness. She moved her head from
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: side to side until, like a top exhausted with spinning,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: it settled on her neck. The times was no protection
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: against such sorrow as hers, but other human beings forbade intercourse.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: The best thing to do against life was to fold
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: the paper so that it made a perfect square, crisp, thick,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: impervious even to life. This done, I glanced up quickly,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: armed with the shield of my own. She pierced through
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: my shield. She gazed into my eyes, as if searching
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: any sediment of courage at the depths of them, and
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: damping it to clay. Her twitch alone denied all hope,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: discounted all illusion. So we rattled through Surrey and across
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the border into Sussex. But with my eyes upon life,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I did not see that the other travelers had left
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: one by one, till save for the man who read,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: we were alone together. Here was three bridges station. We
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: drew slowly down the platform and stopped. Was he going
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: to leave us? I prayed both ways. I prayed last
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: that he might stay. At that instant he roused himself,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: crumpled his paper contemptuously, like a thing done with, burst
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: open the door and left us alone. The unhappy woman,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: leaning a little forward, palely and colorlessly, addressed me, talked
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: of stations and holidays, of brothers at Eastbourne, and the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: time of year, which was I forget now early or late.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: But at last, looking from the window and seeing I
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: knew only life, she breathed, staying away. That's the drawback
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: of it. Ah, Now we approached the catastrophe. My sister
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: in law. The bitterness of her tone was like lemon
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: on cold steel, And speaking not to me but to herself,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: she muttered nonsense, she would say, that's what they all say.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: And while she spoke, she fidgeted, as though the skin
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: on her back were as a plucked fowls in a
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: poulterer's shop window. Oh that cow, she broke off nervously,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: as though the great wooden cow in the meadow had
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: shocked her and saved her from some indiscretion. Then she shuddered,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: and then she made the awkward angular movement that I
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: had seen before. Then she shuddered, as if after the
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: spasm some spot between the shoulders burnt or itched. Then again.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: She looked the most unhappy woman in the world, and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I once more reproached her, though not with the same conviction.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: For if there were a reason, and if I knew
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: the reason, the stigma was removed from life. Sisters in law,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I said her lips pursed, as if to spit venom
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: at the word pursed. They remained. All she did was
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: to take her glove and rub hard at a spot
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: on the window pane. She rubbed as if she would
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: rub something out forever, some stain, some indelible contamination. Indeed
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: the spot remained for all her rubbing, and back she
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: sank with the shudder and the clutch of the arm.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I had come to expect. Something impelled me to take
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: my glove and rub my window. There too was a
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: little speck on the glass. For all my rubbing, it remained.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: And then the spasm went through me. I crooked my
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: felt like the damp chicken skin in the poulterer's shop window.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: One spot between the shoulders itched and irritated, felt Clammy
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: felt raw. Could I reach it surreptitiously? I tried. She
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: saw me a smile of infinite irony, infinite sorrow flitted
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: and faded from her face. But she had communicated, shared
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: her secret, passed her poison. She would speak no more.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Leaning back in my corner, shielding my eyes from her eyes,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: seeing only the slopes and hollows, grays and purples of
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: the winter's landscape. I read her message, deciphered her secret,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: reading it beneath her gaze. Hilda's, the sister in law, Hilda, Hilda, Hilda,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: marsh Hilda, the blooming, the full, bosomed, the matronly. Hilda
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: stands at the door as the cab draws up, holding
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: a coin. Poor Minnie more of a grasshopper than ever
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: old cloak she had last year. Well, well, with two
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: children these days, one can't do more. Oh Minnie, I've
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: got it here. You are, Cabby, none of your ways
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: with me. Come in, Minnie. Oh I could carry you,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: let alone your basket. So they go into the dining room,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Aunt Minnie. Children slowly, the knives and forks sink from
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: the upright down. They get Bob and Barbara hold out
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: hands stiffly, back again to their chairs, staring between the
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: resumed mouthfuls. But this will skip ornaments curtains, trefoil, china plate,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of biscuit. Skip. Oh,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: but wait. Halfway through luncheon one of those shivers. Bob
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: stares at her spoon in mouth. Get on with your pudding, Bob,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: But Hilda disapproves. Why should she twitch? Skip skip till
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: we reach the landing On the upper floor, stairs, brass bound,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: linoleum worn. Oh, yes, little bedroom looking out over the
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: roofs of Eastbourne, zig zagging roofs like the spines of caterpillars.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: This way, that way, striped red and yellow with blue
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: black slating. Now, Minnie, the doors shut. Hilda heavily descends
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: to the basement. You unstrap the straps of your basket,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: lay on the bed, a meager nightgown, stand side by side,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: furred felt slippers. The looking glass, No, you avoid the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: looking glass, some methodical disposition of hat pins. Perhaps the
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: shell box has something in it. You shake it. It's
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the pearl stud there was last year. That's all. And
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: then the sniff, the sigh, the sitting by the window.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Three o'clock on a December afternoon, the rain drizzling, one
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: light low in the skylight of a drapery emporium, another
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: high in a servant's bedroom. This one goes out that
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: gives her nothing to look at A moment's blankness. Then
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: what are you thinking? Let me peep across at her
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: opposite She's asleep or pretending it. So what would she
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: think about sitting at the window at three o'clock in
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: the afternoon, health money hills her? God, Yes, sitting on
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: the very edge of the chair looking over the roofs
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: of Eastbourne, Minnie Marsh prays to God, that's all very well,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: and she may rub the pain too, as though to
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: see God better. But what God does she see? Who's
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the god of Minnie Marsh, the god of the back
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: streets of Eastbourne, the god of three o'clock in the afternoon.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I too see roofs, I see sky, But oh dear,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: this seeing of God's more like President Krueger than Prince Albert.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: That's the best I can do for him. And I
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: see him on a chair and a black frock coat,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: not so very high up either. I can manage a
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: cloud or two for him to sit on. And then
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: his hand trailing and cloud holds a rod a truncheon.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: Is it black thick, thorned, a brutal old bully. Minnie's
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: God did he send the itch and the patch in
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: the twitch? Is that why she prays? What she rubs
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: on the window is the stain of sin? Oh, she
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: committed some crime. I have my choice of crime. The
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: woods flit and fly in summer. There are bluebells in
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: the opening there when spring comes, primroses. A parting? Was it?
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Twenty years ago? VAL's broken, not Minnie's. She was faithful,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: how she nursed her mother, all her savings on the tombstone,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: wreaths under glass, daffodils and jars. But I'm off the track.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: A crime, they would say. She kept her sorrow, suppressed
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: her secret, her sex, they'd say, the scientific people. But
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: what flummery to saddle her with sex? No more like this?
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Passing down the streets of Croydon twenty years ago, the
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: violet loops of ribbon and the draper's windows spangled, and
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: the electric light catch her eye. She lingers past six.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: Still by running she can reach home. She pushes through
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the glass swing door. It's sale time. Shallow trays brim
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: with ribbons. She pauses, pulls this, fingers that with the
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: raised roses on it. No need to choose, no need
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: to buy, and each tray, with its surprises, we don't
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: shut till seven. And then it is seven. She runs,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: She rushes home, She reaches, but too late. Neighbors, the doctor,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: baby brother, the kettle, scalded, hospital dead, or only the
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: shock of it, the blame. Ah. But the detail matters nothing.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: It's what she carries with her, the spot, the crime,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: the thing to expiate, always there between her shoulders. Yes,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: she seems to nod to me, it's the thing I did.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Whether you did or what you did, I don't mind.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: It's not the thing I want. The draper's window looped
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: with violet. That'll do a little cheap, perhaps a little commonplace,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: since one has a choice of crimes. But then so many.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Let me peep across again, still sleeping or pretending sleep,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: white worn, the mouth closed, a touch of obstinacy, more
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: than one would think, no hint of sex. So many crimes.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Aren't your crime? Your crime was cheap. Only the retribution solemn.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: For now the church door opens, the hard wooden pew
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: receives her. On the brown tiles, she kneels every day,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: winter summer, dusk dawn. There she's at it, prays all
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: her sins fall, fall, forever fall. The spot receives them.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: It's raised, it's red, it's burning. Next she twitches small
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: boy's point Bob at lunch to day. But elderly women
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: are the worst. Indeed, now you can't sit praying any longer.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Kruegers sunk beneath the clouds, washed over as with a
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: painter's brush of liquid gray, to which he adds a
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: tinge of black, even the tip of the trunche, and gone.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Now that's what always happens, Just as you've seen him,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: felt him. Someone interrupts. It's Hilda, now how you hate her.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: She'll even lock the bathroom door overnight too, though it's
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: only cold water you want. And sometimes when the knight's
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: been bad, it seems as if washing helped. And John
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: at breakfast, the children meals are worst, And sometimes there
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: are friends. Ferns don't altogether hide em. They guess too.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: So out you go along the front, where the waves
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: are gray and the papers blow, and the glass shelters
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: green and drafty, and the chairs cost tuppence too much,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: for there must be preachers along the sands. Ah, that's
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: a nigger. That's a funny man. That's a man with parakeets,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: poor little creatures. Is there no one here who thinks
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: of God? Just step there over the pier with his rod.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: But no, there's nothing but gray in the sky, or
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: if it's blue, the white clouds hide him. And the
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: music it's military music. And what they are fishing for?
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Do they catch them? How the children stare well? Then
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Homa back way, Homa back way. The words half meaning
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: might have been spoken by the old man with whiskers. No, no,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: he didn't really speak. But everything has meaning. Placards leaning
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: against doorways, names above shop windows, red fruit and baskets,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: women's heads in the hair, all say Minnie Marsh. But
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: here's a jerk. Eggs are cheaper. That's what always happens.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I was heading her over the waterfall, straight for madness,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: when like a flock of dream sheep, she turns the
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: other way and runs between my fingers. Eggs are cheaper,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: tethered to the shores of the world. None of the crimes, sorrows,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: rhapsodies or insanities for poor Minnie Marsh, Never late for luncheon,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: never caught in a storm without a macintosh, never utterly,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches home,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: scrapes her boots. Have I read you right? Put the
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: human face, the human face at the top of the
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: fullest sheet of print, holds more, with holds more. Now,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: eyes open, she looks out and in the human eye.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: How do you define it? There's a break, a division,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: so that when you've grasped the stem, the butterflies off
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the moth that hangs in the evening over the yellow flower, move,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: raise your hand off high away. I won't raise my hand.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Hang still, then quiver life, soul, spirit, whatever you are
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: of Minnie Marsh, I too on my flower, the hawk
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: over the down alone? Or what were the worth of life?
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: To rise? Hang still in the evening in the mid day,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: hang still over the down, the flicker of a hand
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: off up, then poised again alone, unseen, seeing all so
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: still down there, all so lovely, none seeing, none caring
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the eyes of others, our prisons, their thoughts, our cages,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: air above, air below, and the moon and immortality. Oh
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: but I drop to the turf. Are you down too?
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: You in the corner? What's your name, woman, Minnie Marsh,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: some such name as that there she is tight to
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: her blossom, opening her handbag, from which she takes a
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: hollow shell an egg. Who was saying that eggs were cheaper? You?
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Or I? Oh, it was you who said it. On
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: the way home, You remember when the old gentleman suddenly
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: opening his umbrella or sneezing. Was it anyhow Krueger went,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: And you came home a back way and scraped your boots. Yes,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: And now you lay across your knees a pocket handkerchief,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: into which drop little angular fragments of egg shell, fragments
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: of a map, a puzzle. I wish I could piece
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: them together, if you would only sit still. She's moved
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: her knees, the maps in bits again down the slopes
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: of the andes, the white blocks of marble go bounding
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: and hurtling, crushing to death. A whole troop of Spanish
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: muleteers with the convoy drake's booty gold and silver. But
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: to return to what to where she opened the door
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: and putting her umbrella in the stand, That goes without
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: saying so too, the whiff of beef from the basement,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: dot dot dot, But what I cannot thus eliminate what
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: I must head down, eyes shut, with the courage of
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: a battalion and the blindness of a bull, charge and disperse,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: are indubitably the figures behind the ferns. Commercial travelers. There.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: I've hidden them all this time, in the hope that
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: somehow they disappear, or better still, emerge, as indeed they
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: must if the story is to go on, gathering richness
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should rolling along
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: with it. Two, if not three, commercial travelers and a
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: whole grove of aspaedistra. The fronds of the aspadistra only
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: partly concealed the commercial traveler. Rhododendrons would conceal him utterly
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: and into the bargain. Give me my fling of red
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and white for which I starve and strive. But rhododendrons
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: in Eastbourne in December on the marsh's table. No, no,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: I dare not. It's all a matter of crusts and cruets,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: frills and ferns. Perhaps there will be a moment later
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: by the sea. Moreover, I feel pleasantly pricking through the
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: green fretwork and over the glacis of cut glass, a
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: desire to peer and peep at the man opposite one's
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: as much as I can manage. James Margridge, is it
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: whom the marshes call Jimmy Minnie. You must promise not
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: to twitch till I've got this straight. James Margridge travels
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: in shall we say, buttons, But the time's not come
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: for bringing them in the big and the little on
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: the long cards, some peacock eyed, others dull gold cairngorm's sun,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: and others corals sprays. But I say the time's not come.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: He travels, and on Thursdays, his eastborn day, takes his
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: meals with the marshes, His red face, his little steady eyes,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: by no means altogether commonplace, his enormous appetite, that's safe.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: He won't look at many till the bread swamped, the
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: gravy dry, napkin tucked diamond wise. But this is primitive,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: and whatever it may do, the reader, don't take me in.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Let's dodge to the Morgridge household set that in motion. Well,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: the family boots are mended on Sundays by James himself.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: He reads truth, but his passion roses, and his wife,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: a retired hospital nurse. Interesting. For God's sake, let me
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: have one woman with a name I like, but no,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: she's of the unborn children of the mind, ilicit, nonetheless loved,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: like my rhododendrons. How many die in every novel that's written,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: the best, the dearest, while Margridge lives. It's life's fault.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Here's Minnie eating her egg at the moment opposite and
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: to the other end of the line, are we past loose?
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: There must be Jimmy or what's her twitch? For there
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: must be Margridge. Life's fault. Life imposes her laws, Life
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: blocks the way. Life's behind the fern. Life's the tyrant. Oh,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: but not the bully. No, For I assure you I
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: come willingly. I come wooed by Heaven knows what compulsion
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: across ferns and cruets, tables splashed in bottles, smeared. I
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: foothold on the person in the soul of Margridge, the man.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: The enormous stability of the fabric, the spine tough as whalebone,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: straight as oak tree, the ribs, radiating branches, the flesh
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: taut tarpaulin the red hollows the suck and regurgitation of
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: the heart, while from above meat falls in brown cubes,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: and beer gushes to be churned to blood again. And
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: as we reach the eyes behind the aspedistra, they see
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: something black, white, dismal. Now the plate again. Behind the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: aspaedistra they see elderly woman Marsh's sister, hild Us. More
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: my sort the tablecloth. Now Marsh would know what's wrong
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: with Morris's talk that over cheese has come the plate again,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: turn it round the enormous fingers. Now the woman opposite
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Marsh's sister, not a bit like Marsh, wretched, elderly female.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: You should feed your hens God's truth. What's set her twitching?
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Not what I said, Dear, dear, dear, these elderly women.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Dear Dear, Yes, Minnie, I know you've twitched, but one moment,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: James Margridge, Dear dear dear, how beautiful the sound is,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Like the knock of a mallet on seasoned timber, like
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: the throb of the heart of an ancient whaler, when
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: the sea's press thick and the green is clouded. Dear dear,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: what a passing bell for the souls of the fretful,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: to soothe them and solace them, lap them in linen,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: saying so long, good luck to you, and then what's
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: your pleasure? For though Margredge would pluck his rose for her.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: That's done, that's over. Now what's the next thing? Madam?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: You'll miss your train for they don't linger. That's the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: man's way. That's the sound that reverberates. That's Saint Paul's
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: and the motor omnibuses. But we're brushing the crumbs off.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Oh Margridge, you won't stay. You must be off. Are
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: you driving through Eastbourne this afternoon in one of those
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: little carriages? Are you the man who's walled up in
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: green cardboard boxes and sometimes has the blinds down, and
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes sits so solemn, staring like a sphynx, And always
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: there's a look of the sepulchral, something of the undertaker,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: the coffin, and the dusk about horse and driver. Do
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: tell me, but the door's slammed. We shall never meet again, Margridge. Farewell, Yes, yes,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: I'm coming right up to the top of the house
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: one moment. I'll linger. How the mud goes round in
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: the mind? What a swirl. These monsters leave the water's rocking,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: the weeds waving and green, here black there, striking to
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: and still, And there comes to the lips some prayer
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: One nods to the people one never meets again. James
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: Margridge is dead, now gone forever Well, Minnie, I can
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: face it no longer. If she said that, let me
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: look at her. She is brushing the eggshell into deep declivities.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: She said it, certainly, leaning against the wall of the bedroom,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: and plucking at the little balls which edge the claret
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: colored curtain. But when the self speaks to the self,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: who is speaking the entombed soul, the spirit driven in
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: in into the central catacomb, the self that took the
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: veil and left the world a coward perhaps, yet somehow
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: beautiful as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: down the dark corridors. I can bear it no longer,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: her spirit, says that man at lunch, Hilda, the children,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: Oh heavens her, sob It's the spirit wailing its destiny,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: the spirit driven hither thither, lodging on the diminishing carpets,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: meager footholds, shrunken shreds of all the vanishing universe, love, life, faith, husband, children.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: I know not what splendors and pageantries glimpsed in girlhood,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: not for me, not for me. But then the muffins,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the bald elderly dog, bead mats I should fancy, and
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: the consolation of under linen. If Minnie Marsh were run
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: over and taken to hospital, nurses and doctors themselves would exclaim,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: there's the vista and the vision, there's the distance, the
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: blue blot at the end of the avenue, while after all,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the tea is rich, the muffin hot, and the dog Benny.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: To your basket, sir, and see what mother's brought you.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: So taking the glove with the worn thumb, defying once
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: more the encroaching demon of what's called going in holes,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: you renew the fortifications, threading the gray wool, running it
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: in and out, running it in and out, across and over,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: spinning a web through which God himself, hush, don't think
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: of God. How firm the stitches are you must be
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: light fall gently, and the clouds show an inner vest
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: the twig and shake the rain drop hanging to the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: twig's elbow. Why look up? Was it a sound? A thought?
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Oh heavens, Back again to the thing you did, the
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: plate glass with the violet loops. But Hilda will come, ignotomies, humiliations.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Oh close the breech. Having mended her glove, Minnie Marsh
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: lays it in the drawer. She shuts the drawer with decision.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: I catch sight of her face in the glass. Lips
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: are pursed, chin held high. Next she laces her shoes.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: Then she touches her throat. What's your brooch? Mistletoe or merry? Thought?
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: And what is happening? Unless I'm much mistaken? The pulses quickened.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: The moment's come. The threads are racing, Niagara's ahead. Here's
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: the crisis. Heaven be with you. Down she goes, Courage, courage,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: face it, be it, for God's sake. Don't wait on
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: the mat. Now there's the door. I'm on your side.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: Speak confront her confound her soul. Oh, I beg your pardon. Yes,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: this is Eastbourne. I'll reach it down for you. Let
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: me try the handle. But Minnie, though we keep up pretenses,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: I've read you right, I'm with you now. That's all
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: your luggage. Much obliged, I'm sure, But why do you
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: look about you? Hilda won't come to the station, nor
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: John and Margridge's driving at the far side of Eastbourne.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: I'll wait by my bag, ma'am. That's safest. He said
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: he'd meet me. Oh, there he is, that's my son.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: So they walk off together. Well but I'm confounded. Surely,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Minnie you know better. A strange young man stop, I'll
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: tell him, Minnie, Miss marsh I don't know, though. There's
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, but
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: it's untrue. It's indecent. Look how he bends. As they
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: reach the gateway, she finds her ticket. What's the joke? Off?
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: They go down the road side by side. Well, my
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: world's done for what do I stand on? What do
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: I know? That's not Minnie, there never was Margridge? Who
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: am I life's bare as bone? And yet the last
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: look of them, he's stepping from the curb, and she
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: following him round the edge of the big building brims
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: me with wonder, floods me anew, mysterious figures, Mother and son?
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Who are you? Why do you walk down the street?
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Where to night will you sleep? And then tomorrow? Oh
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: how it whirls and surges, floats me afresh? I start
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: after them? People drive this way and that, The white
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: light splutters and pores, plate glass windows, carnations, chrysanthemums, ivy
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: and dark gardens, milk carts at the door. Wherever I go,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: mysterious figures. I see you turning the corner, mothers and sons?
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: You you you, I hasten, I follow this I fancy
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: must be the sea. Gray is the landscape, dim as ashes,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: if I go through the ritual the ancient antics, it's you,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: unknown figures, you I adore. If I open my arms,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: it's you. I embrace you. I draw to me adorable world.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: End of an unwritten novel recording by Lizmarant Lizmarant at
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Chapter five of Monday or Tuesday. This
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Lismarant Monday or Tuesday by
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: Virginia Woolf, Chapter five, the String Quartet. Well, here we are,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: and if you cast your eye over the room, you
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: will see that tubes and trams and omnibuses, private carriages
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: not a few. Even I venture to believe landaus with
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: bays in them have been busy at it, weaving threads
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: from one end of London to the other. Yet I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: begin to have my doubts, if indeed it's true as
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: they're saying, that Regent Street is up, and the treaty signed,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: and the weather not cold for the time of year,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: and even at that rent not a flat to be had,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: and the worst of influenza its after effects. If I
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: bethink me of having forgotten to write about the leak
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: in the larder and left my glove in the train,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: If the ties of blood require me leaning forward to
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: accept cordially the hand which is perhaps offered hesitatingly. Seven
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: years since we met the last time in Venice, And
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: where are you living now? Well, the late afternoon suits
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: me the best, though, if it weren't asking too much.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: But I knew you at once. Still the war made
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: a break. If the mind's shot through by such little arrows,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: and per human society compels it, no sooner is one
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: launched than another presses forward. If this engenders heat, and
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: in addition they've turned on the electric light. If saying
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: one thing does, in so many cases leave behind it
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: a need to improve and revise, stirring beside regrets, pleasures,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: vanities and desires. If it's all the facts I mean,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: and the hats, the fur BoA's, the gentlemen's swallow tail coats,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: and pearl tie pins that come to the surface, what
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: chance is there of what? It becomes every minute more
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: difficult to say. Why, in spite of everything, I sit
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: here believing I can't now say what or even remember
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: the last time it happened. Did you see the procession?
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: The king looked cold? No, no, no, But what was it?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: She's bought a house at Malmesbury, how lucky to find one.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: On the contrary, it seems to me pretty sure that she,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: whoever she may be, is damned. Since it's all a
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: matter of flats and hats and seagulls, or so it
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: seems to be for a hundred people sitting here, well dressed,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: walled in furred replete. Not that I can boast, since
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: I too sit passive on a gilt chair, only turning
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: the earth above a buried memory, as we all do.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: For there are signs, if I'm not mistaken, that we're
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: all recalling something, furtively seeking something. Why fidget, Why so
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: anxious about the sit of cloaks and gloves, whether to
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: button or unbutton? Then watch that elderly face against the
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: dark canvas A moment ago urbane and flush, now taciturn
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: and sad, as if in shadow? Was it the sound
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: of the second violin tuning in the anteroom. Here they
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: come four black figures carrying instruments, and seat themselves facing
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: the white squares under the down pour of light, rest
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: the tips of their bows on the music stand. With
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the simultaneous movement lift them lightly, poise them, and looking
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: across at the player opposite the first violin counts one, two, three,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: flourish spring, virgin bursts the pear tree on the top
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: of the mountain. Fountains, jet drops descend, but the waters
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: of the rhone flow, swift and deep, race under the arches,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: and sweep the trailing water leaves, washing shadows over the
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: silver fish. The spotted fish, rushed down by the swift waters,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: now swept into an eddy where it's difficult. This conglomeration
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: of fish all in a pool, leaping, splashing, scraping, sharp fins,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: and such a boil of current that the yellow pebbles
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: are churned round and round, round and round, free now
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: rushing downwards or even somehow ascending in exquisite spirals into
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: the air, curled like thin shavings from under a plane,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: up and up. How lovely goodnesses in those who stepping
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: lightly go smiling through the world. Also in jolly old
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: fishwives squatted under arches, obscene old women, how deeply they
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: laugh and shake and rolic when they walk from side
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: to hum. Ha. That's an early Mozart, of course. But
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: the tune, like all his tunes, makes one despair. I mean, hope,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: what do I mean? That's the worst of music. I
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: thin sharp wine, or an indecent story. Now I could
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: relish that the older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: Ha ha, I'm laughing. What at you said? Nothing? Nor
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: did the old gentleman opposite? But suppose, suppose hush? The
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: melancholy river bears us on when the moon comes through
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: the trailing willow boughs. I see your face, I hear
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: your voice, and the birds singing as we pass the
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow? Sorrow, joy, joy,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: woven together like reeds in moonlight, woven together, inextricably, commingled,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: bound in pain and strewn in sorrow. Crash, The boat sinks, rising,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: The figures ascend, but now leaf thin, tapering to a
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: dusky wraith, which, feary tipped, draws its twofold passion from
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: my heart for me. It sings, unseals my sorrow, thaws,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: compassion floods with love. The sunless world nor ceasing abates
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: its tenderness, but deftly, subtly weaves in and out, until,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: in this pattern, this consummation, the cleft ones unify, soars, sobs,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: sink to rest, sorrow and joy. Why then, grieve, ask
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: what remain unsatisfied? I say, all's been settled, Yes, laid
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: to rest under a coverlet of rose, leaves falling, falling, Ah,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: but they cease. One rose leaf falling from an enormous height,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: like the little parachute dropped from an invisible balloon, turns,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: flutters waveringly. It won't reach us. No, no, I noticed nothing.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: That's the worst of music, these silly dreams. The second
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: violin was late. You say, there's old missus Monroe feeling
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: her way out blinder each year, poor woman on this
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: slippery floor, eyeless, old age, gray headed sphinx. There she
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: stands on the pavement, beckoning so sternly the red omnibus.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: How lovely, how well they play? How how how the
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: tongue is but a clapper, simplicity itself. The feathers in
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: the hat next me are bright and pleasing as a
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: child's rattle. The leaf on the plane tree flashes green
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: through the chink and the curtain. Very strange, very exciting,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: How how how hush these are the lovers on the grass.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: If madam you will take my hand, sir, I would
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: bodies in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: the shadows of our souls. Then these are the embraces
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: of our souls. The lemons nod assent. The swan pushes
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: from the bank and floats, dreaming into mid stream, but
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: to return. He followed me down the corridor, and as
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: we turned the corner trod on the lace of my petticoat.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: What could I do but cry, ah, and stop to
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: finger it, at which he drew his sword, made passes
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: as if he were stabbing something to death, and cried, mad, mad, mad.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: Whereupon I screamed, and the Prince, who was writing in
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: the large vellum book in the oriel window, came out,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: in his velvet skull cap and furred slippers, snatched a
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: rapier from the wall, the King of Spain's gift, you know,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: on which I escaped, flinging on this cloak to hide
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: the ravages to my skirt, to hide. But listen the horns.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: The gentlemen replies, so fast to the lady, and she
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: runs up the scale with such witty exchange of compliment,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: now culminating in a sob of passion, that the words
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: are indistinguishable, though the meaning is plain enough. Love, laughter, flight, pursuit,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: celestial bliss, all floated out on the gayest ripple of
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: tender endearment, until the sound of the silver horns, at
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: first far distant, gradually sounds more and more distinctly, as
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: if Seneschals were saluting the dawn, or proclaiming ominously the
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: escape of the lovers. The green garden, moonlit pool, lemons, lovers,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: and fish are all dissolved in the opal sky, across which,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: as the horns are joined by trumpets and supported by clarions,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: their rise white arches firmly planted on marble pillars, tramp
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: and trumpeting, clang and clangor firm establishment, fast foundation, march
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: of myriads, Confusion and chaos trod to earth. But this
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: city to which we travel has neither stone nor marble.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: Hangs enduring, stands unshakable, nor does a face, nor does
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: a flag greet or welcome. Leave then to perish your hope,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: droop in the desert, my joy naked, advance bare, are
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: the pillars auspicious to none, casting no shade, resplendent severe back.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: Then I fall eager no more, desiring only to go
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: find the street, mark the buildings, greet the apple woman.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: Say to the maid who opens the door, a starry night,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: good night, good night, you go this way, alas I
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: go that end of the string quartet. Recording by Lizmarant
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Lizmarant at gmail dot com. Chapter six of Monday or
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: Tuesday by Virginia Wolf. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: public domain. Recording by Lismarant. Blue and green green. The
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: pointed fingers of glass hang downwards. The light slides down
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: the glass and drops a pool of green. All day long.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: The ten fingers of the luster drop green upon the marble.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: The feathers of parakeets, their harsh cries, sharp blades of
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: palm trees green, two green needles, glittering in the sun.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: But the hard glass drips onto the marble. The pools
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: hover above the desert sand. The camels lurch through them.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: The pools settle on the marble. Rushes edge them, Weeds
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: clog them. Here and there a white blossom the frog
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: flops over. At night, the stars are set there unbroken.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: Evening comes, and the shadow sweeps the green over the mantelpiece.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: The ruffled surface of ocean. No ships come. The aimless
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: waves sway beneath the empty sky. Its night. The needle
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: strip blots of blue, the greens out blue. The snub
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: nosed monster rises to the surface and spouts through his
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: blunt nostrils. Two columns of water, which fiery white in
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: the center, spray off into a fringe of blue beads.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: Strokes of blue line the black tarpaulin of his hide.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: Slushing the water through mouth and nostrils, He sings heavy
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: with water, and the blue closes over him, dowsing the
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: polished pebbles of his eyes. Thrown upon the beach, he
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: lies blunt, obtuse, shedding dry blue scales, their metallic blue stains.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: The rusty iron on the beach blue are the ribs
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: of the wrecked rowing boat. A wave rolls beneath the
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: blue bells, but the cathedrals different, cold incense laden faint blue,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: with the veils of Madonna's End of Blue and Green.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: Recording by Lizmarant Lizmarant at gmail dot com. Chapter seven
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: of Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Wolf. This LibriVox recording
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Recording by Liz Mourant QW. Gardens.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: From the oval shaped flower bed there rose perhaps a
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: hundred stalks, spreading into heart shaped or tongue shaped leaves
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: half way up and unfurling at the tip, red or
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: blue or yellow petals, marked with spots of color raised
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: upon the surface, and from the red, blue or yellow
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: passed one over the other, staining an inch of the
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: brown earth beneath the spot of the most intricate color.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: The light fell either upon the smooth gray back of
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: a pebble or the shell of a snail with its
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: brown circular veins, or falling into a rain drop. It
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: thin walls of water that one expected them to burst
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: silver gray once more, and the light now settled upon
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: the flesh of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: fiber beneath the surface. And again it moved on and
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: dome of the heart shaped and tongue shaped leaves. Then
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: the breeze stirred rather were briskly overhead, and the color
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: the men and women who walk in kew gardens in July.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: The figures of these men and women straggled past the
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: flower bed with a curiously irregular movement, not unlike that
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: in zigzag flights from bed to bed. The man was
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: while she bore on with greater purpose, only turning her
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: head now and then to see that the children were
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: not too far behind. The man kept this distance in
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: front of the woman purposely, though perhaps unconsciously, for he
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: wished to go on with his thoughts. Fifteen years ago
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: I came here with Lily. He thought. We sat somewhere
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: over there by a lake, and I begged her to
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: marry me. All through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: kept circling round us. How clearly I see the dragonfly
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: and her shoe with a square silver buckle at the toe.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: All the time I spoke, I saw her shoe and went,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: and it moved impatiently. I knew without looking up what
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: she was going to say, the whole of her seemed
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: to be in her shoe, and my love, my desire
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: were in the dragonfly. For some reason, I thought that
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: if it's settled there on that leaf, the broad one
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: with the red flower in the middle of it, if
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: the dragon fly settled on the leaf, she would say
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: yes at once. But the dragonfly went round and round.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: It never settled anywhere, of course, not happily. Not Or
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't be walking here with Eleanor and the children
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: tell me, Eleanor, do you ever think of the past?
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: Why do you ask, Simon? Because I've been thinking of
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: the past. I've been thinking of Lily, the woman I
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: might have married. Well, why are you silent? Do you
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: mind my thinking of the past? Why should I mind? Simon?
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: Doesn't one always think of the past? In a garden
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: one's past? All that remains of it? Those men and women,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: with those ghosts lying under the trees, one's happiness, one's reaction.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: For me, a square silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: for me a kiss, imagined six little girls sitting before
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: their easels twenty years ago, down by the side of
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: a lake, painting the water lilies, the first red water
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: lilies I had ever seen. And suddenly a kiss there
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: on the back of my neck, and my hands shook
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: all the afternoon so that I couldn't paint. I took
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: out my watch and marked the hour when I would
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: allow myself to think of the kiss for five minutes only.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: It was so precious, the kiss of an old, gray
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: haired woman with a wart on her nose, the mother
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: of all my kisses, all my life. Come Caroline, Come Hubert.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: They walked on the pass the flower bed, now walking
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: four abreast, and soon diminished in size among the trees,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: and looked half transparent as the sunlight in shade swam
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: over their backs in large, trembling, irregular patches. In the
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: oval flower bed, the snail, whose shell had been stained red,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: blue and yellow for the space of two minutes or so,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: and next began to labor over the crumbs of loose earth,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: which broke away and rolled down as it passed over them.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: It appeared to have a definite goal in front of it,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: differing in this respect from the singular high stepping angular
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: green insect who attempted to cross in front of it,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: and waited for a second with its antenna trembling as
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: if in deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with deep green
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: lakes in the hollows, flat blade like trees that waved
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: from root to tip, round boulders of gray stone, vast
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: crumpled surfaces of a thin, crackling texture. All these objects
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: lay across the snail's progress, between one stalk and another
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: to his goal. Before he had decided whether to circumvent
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: there came past the bed the feet of other human beings.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: This time they were both men. The younger of the
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: two were an expression of perhaps unnatural calm. He raised
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: his eyes and fixed them very steadily in front of
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: him while his companion spoke, and directly his companion had
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: done speaking, he looked on the ground again, and sometimes
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: opened his lips only after a long pause, and sometimes
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: did not open them at all. The elder man had
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: a curiously uneven and shaky method of walking, jerking his
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: hand forward and throwing up his head abruptly, rather in
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: the manner of an impatient carriage horse tired of waiting
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: outside a house. But in the man these gestures were
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly. He smiled to
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: himself and again began to talk, as if the smile
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: had been in answer. He was talking about spirits, the
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: spirits of the dead, who, according to him, were even
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: now telling him all sorts of odd things about their
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: experiences in heaven. Heaven was known to the ancients as Thessaly. William,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: and now with this war, the spirit matter is rolling
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: between the hills like thunder. He paused, seemed to listen, smiled,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: jerked his head, and continued. You have a small electric
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the wire
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: isolate insulate. Well, we'll skip the details. No good going
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: into details that wouldn't be understood. And in short, the
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: little machine stands in any convenient position by the head
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: of the bed. We will say, on a neat mahogany
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: stand all arrangements being properly fixed by workmen under my direction.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: The widow applies her ear and summons the spirit by
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: sign as agreed women widows women in black. Here he
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: seemed to have caught sight of a woman's dress in
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: the distance, which in the shade looked a purple black.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: He took off his hat, placed his hand upon his heart,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: and hurried towards her, muttering and gesticulating feverishly. But William
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: caught him by the sleeve and touched a flower with
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: the tip of his walking stick in order to divert
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: the old man's attention. After looking at it for a
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: moment in some confusion, the old man bent his ear
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: to it and seemed to answer a voice speaking from it,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: for he began talking about the forests of Uruguay, which
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: he had visited hundreds of years ago in company with
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: the most beautiful young woman in Europe. He could be
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: heard murmuring about forests of Uruguay blanketed with the wax
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: petals of tropical roses, nightingales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: drowned at sea, as he suffered himself to be moved
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: on by William, upon whose face the look of stoical
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: patience grew slowly deeper and deeper, following his steps so
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: closely as to be slightly puzzled by his gestures came
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: two elderly women of the lower middle class, one stout
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: and ponderous, the other rosy, cheeked and nimble. Like most
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: people of their station, they were frankly fascinated by any
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: signs of eccentricity betokening a disordered brain, especially in the
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: well to do, But they were too far off to
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: be certain whether the gestures were merely eccentric or genuinely mad.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: After they had scrutinized the old man's back in silence
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: for a moment, and given each other a queer, sly look,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: they went on energetically piecing together their very complicated dialog
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: nell Bert Lot Cess Bill pa. He says I says
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: she says I says I says I says my Bert
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: sis Bill, Grandad. The old man sugar sugar flower, kipper's greens, sugar, sugar, sugar.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: The ponderous woman looked through the pattern of falling words
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: at the flowers, standing cool, firm and upright in the
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: earth with a curious expression. She saw them. As a
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: sleeper waking from a heavy sleep, sees a brass candlestick
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: reflecting the light in an unfamiliar way and closes his
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: eyes and opens them, and, seeing the brass candlestick again,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: finally starts broad awake and stares at the candlestick with
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: all his powers. So the heavy woman came to a
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: standstill opposite the oval shaped flower bed and ceased even
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: She stood there, letting the words fall over her, swaying
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: the top part of her body slowly backwards and forwards,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: looking at the flowers. Then she suggested that they should
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: find a seat and have their tea. The snail had
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: now considered every possible method of reaching his goal without
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: going round the dead leaf or climbing over it. Let
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: alone the effort needed for climbing a leaf, He was
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: doubtful whether the thin texture, which vibrated with such an
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: alarming crackle and touched even by the tip of his
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: horns as would bear his weight, and this determined him
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: finally to creep beneath it, for there was a point
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: where the leaf curved high enough from the ground to
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: admit him. He had just inserted his head in the
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: opening and was taking stock of the high brown roof
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: and was getting used to the cool brown light when
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: two other people came past outside on the turf. This
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: time they were both young, a young man and a
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: young woman. They were both in the prime of youth,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: or even in that season which precedes the prime of youth,
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: the season before the smooth pink folds of the flower
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: have burst their gummy case, when the wings of the butterfly,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: though fully grown, are motionless in the sun. Lucky, it
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: isn't Friday, he observed. Why do you believe in luck?
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: They make you pay sixpence on Friday? What's sixpence anyway?
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: Isn't it worth sixpence? What's it? What do you mean
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: by it? Oh? Anything? I mean? You know what I mean.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: Long pauses came between each of these remarks that were
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: uttered in toneless and monotonous voices. The couple stood still
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: on the edge of the flower bed and together pressed
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: the end of her parasol deep down into the soft earth.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: The action and the fact that his hand rested on
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: the top of hers expressed their feelings in a strange way,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: as these short, insignificant words also expressed something. Words with
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: short wings, for their heavy body of meaning inadequate to
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: carry them far, and thus alighting awkwardly upon the very
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: common objects that surrounded them and were, to their inexperienced
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: touch so massive. But who knows, so they thought, as
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: they pressed the parasol into the earth, What precipices aren't
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: concealed in them? Or what slopes of ice don't shine
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: has ever seen this before? Even when she wondered what
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: sort of tea they gave you a cue, he felt
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: that something loomed up behind her words, and stood vast
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: and solid behind them, And the mist very slowly rose
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: and uncovered. Oh heavens, what were those shapes? Little white
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: tables and waitresses who looked first at her and then
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: at him. And there was a bill that he would
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: pay with a real two shilling piece. And it was real,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: all real, he assured himself, fingering the coin in his pocket,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: real to every one except to him, and to her.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: Even to him it began to seem real. And then
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: but it was too exciting to stand and think any longer,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: and he pulled the parasol out of the earth of
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: the jerk, and was impatient to find a place where
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: one had tea with other people. Like other people, Come along, Trissy,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: It's time we had our tea. Wherever does one hap
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: one's tea? She asked, with the oddest thrill of excitement
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: in her voice, looking vaguely round and letting herself be
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: drawn on down the grass patch, trailing her parasol, turning
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: her head this way and that way forgetting her tea,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: wishing to go down there and then down there, remembering
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: orchids and cranes among wild flowers, a Chinese pagoda and
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: a crimson crested bird, but he bore her on. Thus,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: one couple after another, with much the same irregular and
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: aimless movement, passed the flower bed and were enveloped in
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: layer after layer of green blue vapor, in which at
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: first their bodies had substance and a dash of color,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: but later both so abstance in color dissolved in the
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: green blue atmosphere. How hot, it was, so hot that
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: even the thrush chose to hop like a mechanical bird
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: one movement and the next. Instead of rambling vaguely, the
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: white butterflies danced one above another, making with their white
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: shifting flakes the outline of a shattered marble column. Above
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: the tallest flowers. The glass roofs of the palm house
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: shone as if a whole market full of shiny green
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: umbrellas had opened. In the sun, and in the drone
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: of the aeroplane, the voice of the summer sky murmured
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: its fierce soul, yellow and black, pink and snow white.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: Shapes of all these colors, Men, women and children were
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: wavered in sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: faintly with red and blue. It seemed as if all
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: gross and heavy bodies had sunk down in the heat, motionless,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: and lay huddled upon the ground. But their voices went
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: wavering from them, as if they were flames lolling from
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices, yes, voices, wordless,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: voices breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: such passion of desire, or in the voices of children,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: such freshness of surprise, breaking the silence. But there was
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: no silence all the time. The motor omnibuses were turning
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: their wheels and changing their gear, like a vast nest
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: of Chinese boxes, all of wrought steel, turning ceaselessly, one
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: within another. The city murmured on top of which the
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: voices cried aloud, and the petals of myriads of flowers
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: flashed their colors into the air gardens. Recording by Lismarant
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: Port Richie, Florida, Lismarant at gmail dot com. Chapter eight
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: of Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Wolf. This LibriVox recording
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Recording by Elizabeth Morant. The
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: Mark on the Wall. Perhaps it was the middle of
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: January in the present year that I first looked up
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: and saw the mark on the wall. In order to
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: fix the date, it is necessary to remember what one saw.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: So now I think of the fire, the steady film
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: of yellow light upon the page of my book, the
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: it must have been the winter time, and we had
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: just finished our tea, for I remember that I was
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: mark on the wall. For the first time, I looked
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: up through the smoke of my cigarette, and my eye
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: lodged for a moment upon the burning coals, and that
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: tower came into my mind, and I thought of the
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of the
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: black rock. Rather, to my relief, the sight of the
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: mark interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy,
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: an automatic fancy made as a child. Perhaps the mark
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: was a small round mark black upon the white wall,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece. How readily
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: little way, as ants carry a blade of straw, so feverishly,
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: and then leave it. If that mark was made by
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: a nail, it can't have been for a picture. It
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: must have been for a miniature, the miniature of a
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: lady with white powdered curls, powdered dusted cheeks and lips
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: like red carnations. A fraud, of course, for the people
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: who had the house before us would have chosen pictures
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: in that way, an old picture for an old room.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: That is the sort of people. They were very interesting people,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: and I think of them so often in such queer places,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: because one will never see them again, never know what
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: happened next. They wanted to leave this house because they
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: wanted to change their style of furniture, so he said,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: And he was in process of saying that, in his opinion,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: art should have ideas behind it. When we were torn
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: asunder as one is torn from the old lady about
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: to pour out tea and the young man about to
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: hit the tennis ball in the back garden of the
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: suburban villa, as one rushes past in the train. But
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: as for that mark, I'm not sure about it. I
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: don't believe it was made by a nail. After all,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: it's too big, too round for that. I might get up,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: But if I got up and looked at it ten
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: to one, I shouldn't be able to say for certain,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: because once a thing's done, no one ever knows how
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: it happened. Oh, dear me, the mystery of life, the
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: inaccuracy of thought, the ignorance of humanity. To show how
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: very little control of our possessions we have. What an
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: accidental affair this living is, after all our civilization. Let
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: me just count over a few of the things lost
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: in one lifetime beginning, for that seems always the most
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: mysterious of losses. What cat would gnaw? What rat would nibble?
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: Three pale blue canisters of book binding tools. Then there
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: the Queen Anne's coal scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: organ all gone, and jewels too, opals and emeralds. They
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: lie about the roots of turnips. What a scraping pairing
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: affair it is, to be sure, the wonder is that
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: I've any clothes on my back, that I sit surrounded
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: to compare life to anything, one must liken it to
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: being blown through the tube at fifty miles an hour,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: landing at the other end without a single hairpin in
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: one's hair, shot out at the feet of God, entirely naked,
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: tumbling head over heels in the Asphodel meadows like brown
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: paper parcels pitched down a chute in the post office,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: with one's hair flying back like the tail of a
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: race horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: the perpetual waste and repair, all so casual, also half hazard,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: but after life, the slow pulling down of thick green stalks,
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: so that the cup of the flower, as it turns over,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: deluges one with purple and red light. Why, after all,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: should one not be born there, as one is born here, helpless, speechless,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the roots of
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: the grass, at the toes of the giants, as were saying,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: which are trees? And which are men and women? Or
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: whether there are such things that won't be in a
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: condition to do. For fifty years or so, there will
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: be nothing but spaces of light and dark, intersected by
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: thick stalks, and rather higher up, perhaps rose shaped blots
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: of an indistinct color, dim pinks and blues, which will,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: as time goes on, become more definite, become I don't
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: know what. And yet that mark on the wall is
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: not a hole at all. It may even be caused
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: by some round black substance, such as a small rose
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: leaf left over from the summer. And I, not being
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: a very vigilant housekeeper, look at the dust on the mantelpiece,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: for example, the dust which, so they say, buried Troy
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: three times over. Only fragments of pot's utterly refusing annihilation,
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: as one can believe. The tree outside the window taps
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: vary gently on the pane. I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: without any sense of hostility or obstacle. I want to
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: sink deeper and deeper away from the surface with its hard,
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: separate facts, to steady myself. Let me catch hold of
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: the first idea that passes Shakespeare. Well, he will do
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: as well as another. A man who sat himself solidly
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: in an armchair and looked into the fire, so a
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: shower of ideas fell perpetually from some very high heaven
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: down through his mind. He leant his forehead on his hand,
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: and people looking in through the open door. For this
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: scene is supposed to take place on a summer's evening.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: But how dull this is, this historical fiction. It doesn't
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: interest me at all. I wish I could hit upon
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: a pleasant track of thought, a tract indirectly reflecting credit
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: upon myself. For those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent,
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: even in the minds of modest mouse colored people who
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: believe genuinely that they dislike like to hear their own praises.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: They are not thoughts directly praising oneself, that is the
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: beauty of them. They are thoughts like this. And then
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: I came into the room they were discussing Botany. I said,
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: how I had seen a flower growing on a dust
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: heap on the site of an old house in King's Way.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: The seed, I said, must have been sown in the
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: reign of Charles the First. What flowers grew in the
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: reign of Charles the First? I asked, But I don't
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: remember the answer. Tall flowers with purple tassels to them, perhaps,
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: And so it goes on. All the time. I'm dressing
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: up the figure of myself in my own mind, lovingly, stealthily,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: not openly adoring it, for if I did that, I
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: should catch myself out and stretch my hand at once
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: for a book in self protection. Indeed, it is curious
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: or any other handling that can make it ridiculous or
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: too unlike the original to be believed in any longer.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Or is it not so very curious? After all? It
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: is a matter of great importance. Suppose the looking glass smashes,
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: of forest depths all about it is there no longer
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: but only that shell of a person which is seen
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: by other people. What an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: It becomes a world not to be lived in. As
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways, we
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: the gleam of glassiness in our eyes. And the novelists
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: in future will realize more and more the importance of
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: but an almost infinite number. Those are the depths they
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: description of reality more and more out of their stories,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: taking a knowledge of it for granted, as the Greeks did,
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: and Shakespeare perhaps, but these generalizations are very worthless. The
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: military sound of the word is enough. It recalls leading articles,
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: cabinet ministers, a whole class of things, indeed, which as
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: a child one thought the thing itself, the standard thing,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: the real thing from which one could not depart save
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: at the risk of nameless damnation. Generalizations bring back, somehow
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: Sunday in London, Sunday afternoon walks, Sunday luncheons, and also
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: ways of speaking of the dead, clothes and habits like
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: the habit of sitting all together in one room until
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: a certain hour, although nobody liked it, there was a
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: rule for everything. The rule for tablecloths at that particular
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: period was that they should be made of tapestry, with
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: little yellow compartments marked upon them, such as you may
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: see in photographs of the carpets in the corridors of
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind were not
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: real tablecloths. How shocking, and yet how wonderful it was
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: to discover that these real things, Sunday luncheons, Sunday walks,
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: country houses, and tablecloths were not entirely real, were indeed
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: half phantoms. And the damnation which visited the disbeliever in
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: them was only a sense of illegitimate freedom. What now
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: takes the place of those things? I wonder, those real
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: standard things? Men? Perhaps, should you be a woman, the
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: masculine point of view which governs our lives, which sets
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: the standard, which establishes Whitaker's table of precedency, which has become,
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: I suppose, since the war, half a phantom to many
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: men and women, which soon, one may hope, will be
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: laughed into the dustmin where the phantoms go the mahogany
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: sideboards and the landseer prints gods and devils, hell and
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: so forth, leaving us all with an intoxicating sense of
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: illegitimate freedom if freedom exists in certain lights. That mark
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: on the wall seems actually to project from the wall.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: Nor is it entirely circular, I cannot be sure, but
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: it seems to cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: I ran my finger down that strip of the wall,
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: it would, at a certain point mount and descend a
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: small tumulus. A small tumulus like those barrows on the
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: South Downs, which are they say, either tombs or camps
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: of the two. I should prefer them to be tombs.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: Desiring melancholy like most English people, and finding it natural
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: at the end of a walk to think of the
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: bones stretched beneath the turf. There must be some book
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: about it, Some antiquary must have dug up those bones
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: and given them a name. What sort of a man
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: is an antiquary, I wonder retired kernels for the most part,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: I dare say, leading parties of age laborers to the
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: top here, examining clods of earth and stone, and getting
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: into correspondence with the neighboring clergy, which, being opened at
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: breakfast time, gives them a feeling of importance, and the
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: comparison of arrowheads necessitates cross country journeys to the county towns,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: an agreeable necessity both to them and to their elderly wives,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: who wish to make plum jam or to clean out
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: the study, and have every reason for keeping that great
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: question of the camp or the tomb in perpetual suspension.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: While the colonel himself feels agreeably philosophic in accumulating evidence
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: on both sides of the question, it is true that
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: he does finally incline to believe in the camp, and
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: being opposed indicts a pamphlet which he is about to
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: read at the quarterly meeting of the local society, when
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: a stroke lays him low, and his last conscious thoughts
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: are not of wife or child, but of the camp
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: and that arrowhead there, which is now in the case
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: at the local museum, together with the foot of a
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: Chinese murderess, a handful of Elizabethan nails, a great many
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: Tudor clay pipes, a piece of Roman pottery, and the
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: wine glass that Nelson drag out of, proving I really
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: don't know what No now, nothing is proved, nothing is known.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: And if I were to get up at this very
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: really what shall we say? The head of a gigantic
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: gold nail driven in two hundred years ago, which is now,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: owing to the patient attrition of many generations of housemaids,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: revealed its head above the coat of paint, and is
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: taking its first view of modern life in the sight
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: of a white walled, firelit room. What should I gain? Knowledge?
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: Matter for further speculation. I can think sitting still as
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: well as standing up. And what is knowledge? What are
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: our learned men save the dis scendants of witches and hermits,
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: who crouched in caves and in woods, brewing herbs, interrogating
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: shrew mice, and writing down the language of the stars.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: And the less we honor them as our superstitions dwindle,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases. Yes,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: one could imagine a very pleasant world, a quiet, spacious world,
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: with the flowers so red and blue in the open fields,
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: A world without professors or specialists, or housekeepers with the
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: profiles of policemen. A world which one could slice with
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: one's thought, as a fish slices the water with his fin,
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: grazing the stems of the water lilies hanging suspended over
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: nests of white sea eggs. How peaceful it is down here,
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: rooted in the center of the world, and gazing up
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: through the gray waters with their sudden gleams of light
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: and their reflections. If it were not for Whitaker's Almanac,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: if it were not for the table of precedency, I
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: must jump up and see for myself what that mark
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: on the wall really is, A nail of rose leaf,
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: a crack in the wood. Here is nature once more
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: at her old game of self preservation. This train of
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: thought she perceives is threatening mere waste of energy, even
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: some collision with reality. For who will ever be able
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: to lift a finger against Whittaker's table of precedency. The
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: Archbishop of Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: The Lord High Chancellor is followed by the Archbishop of York.
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: Everybody follows somebody. Such is the philosophy of Whittaker. And
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: the great thing is to know who follows whom Whittaker knows,
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: and let that so Nature counsels comfort you instead of
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: enraging you. And if you can't be comforted, if you
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: must shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: on the wall. I understand Nature's game, her prompting to
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: take action as a way of ending any thought that
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose comes
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: our slight contempt for men of action, men we assume
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: who don't think. Still, there's no harm in putting a
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: full stop to one's disagreeable thoughts by looking at a
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: mark on the wall. Indeed, now that I have fixed
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: my eyes upon it, I feel that I have grasped
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: a plank in the sea. I feel a satisfying sense
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: of reality, which at once turns the two archbishops and
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: is something definite, something real. Thus, waking from a midnight
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: lies quiescent, worshiping the chest of drawers. Worshiping solidity, worshiping reality,
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: worshiping the impersonal world, which is a proof of some
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: existence other than ours. That is what one wants to
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: be sure of. Wood is a pleasant thing to think about.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: It comes from a tree, and trees grow, and we
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: don't know how they grow. For years years they grow
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: without paying any attention to us. In meadows, in forests,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: and by the side of rivers, all things one likes
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: to think about. The cows swish their tails beneath them
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: on hot afternoons. They paint rivers so green that when
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: a moor hen dives, one expects to see its feathers
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: all green when it comes up again. I like to
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: think of the fish balanced against the stream like flags
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: blown out, and of water beetles slowly raising domes of
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: mud upon the bed of the river. I like to
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: think of the tree itself, first the close, dry sensation
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: of being wood, then the grinding of the storm, then
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: the slow, delicious ooze of sap. I like to think
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: of it too, on winter's nights, standing in the empty field,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: with all leaves close, furled, nothing tender, exposed to the
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: iron bullets of the moon, A naked mast upon an
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: earth that goes tumbling, tumbling all night long. The song
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: of birds must sound very loud and strange in June,
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: and how cold the feet of insects must feel upon
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: it as they make laborious progresses up the creases of
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: the bark or sun themselves upon the thin green awning
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: of the leaves, and look straight in front of them
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: with diamond cut red eyes. One by one the fibers
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: snap beneath the immense cold pressure of the earth. Then
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: the last storm comes, and falling the highest branches drive
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: deep into the ground again. Even so, life isn't done with.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: There are a million patient, watchful lives still for a
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: tree all over the world, in bedrooms, in ships, on
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: the pavement, lining rooms, where men and women sit after tea,
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes. It is full of peaceful thoughts, happy thoughts.
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: This tree. I should like to take each one separately,
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: But something is getting in the way. Where was I?
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: What has it all been about? A tree, a river,
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: the Downs, Whittaker's Almanac, the fields of Asphodel. I can't
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: remember a thing. Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing. There is
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: a vast upheaval of matter. Someone is standing over me
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: and saying I'm going out to buy a newspaper. Yes,
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: though it's no good buying newspapers. Nothing ever happens. Cursed
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: this war, God, damn this war. All the same. I
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: don't see why we should have a snail on our wall.
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: Ah the mark on the wall. It was a snail.
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: End of the Mark on the Wall. Reading by Elizabeth
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: Murant Lizmarant at gmail dot com end of Monday or
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: Tuesday by Virginia Wolf six