or dead, is a sanctuary. With a sudden rush of wind, dead leaves, twigs and a scrap of paper blew in the door. The air of desolation, of neglect, increased; the chill, of the wind and of the spirit, intensified and I knew the peace that is most known when walking in a cemetery, one is contained within it, withdrawn as the dead are from the world, and listening as if from a great distance to the movements and noises of the city and its people. It would have been more fitting, I thought, had Rose Hurndell been buried here and not in London. Here, in this room, they had another grave for her, to keep alive her death rather than her work. A unique memorial, to pay a writer to work within a tomb! I felt, however, that if the sheer physical discomfort (there was no access to running water or toilet, little light, and little warmth – what need have the dead of these? – and in the course of my day’s work I would spend several hours in this one place) could be ignored (though unhappily it could not) I should find in the grave-like aspect of this room, in spite of the roar of the construction machinery in the many apartments being built nearby and the constant close passing of the trains, all of which became somehow insulated when one thought of oneself in a grave where one could not be reached, a sanctuary for working. (I found, unfortunately, later, when spring and summer came with warmth and light, that visitors also came: everyone who passed, seeing the door open, came curiously in to inspect the open tomb.)
I stayed a while sitting at the desk. I was overcome by a feeling of sadness that is conducive to some kind of writing but not to the kind of writing I was preparing.
I went out to explore the small garden where I found a green garden seat which I cleared, brushing away the small wine-coloured squashy berries, and I lay down, half in sun, half in shadow, looking up at the lemon tree in the neighbouring garden. I closed my eyes. The sun came out again, moving quickly, and was on my face, burning. I changed my position on the seat. The sun was hidden once again behind cloud, the chill started again, rustling the flax with a brittle snapping sound, and the secretive small birds once again set up their chittering and tutting. I fell asleep. I dreamed. The wine-coloured squashy berries which I had cleared from the seat and which came from a tree spreading above the seat, began to rain on me like ruby-stones, ruby-fruit, and filled my eyes with red juices and in my dream I remembered my arrival at Menton and the blessing of the colour green which I now found that I could not visualise, being able to remember only the shape encompassing the green which was now being distorted by the overflowing of the red. It was as if I were seeing the after-image of a blessing: not necessarily a curse, but rather the source of the green blessing. I found my confusion increasing. I told myself that I was dreaming the literary dream of a literary blind man, just as those who write or dream fiction have invented a ‘literary’ madness which abstracts from the dreary commonplaces of thinking and behaviour a poetic essence and sprinkles it where the shadow of ‘the truth’ falls upon the written or printed page. When in my dream I thought, perhaps this is the way Rose Hurndell died – had she not died of a brain haemorrhage, a sudden overflowing of life-blood into the brain which keeps its distance from blood.
Half-waking I heard the barking of a hundred guard dogs in the villas on the mountain-side, as if a pack of chiens de chase had broken loose, as I’d read that morning in the newspaper they had done, and set upon their master, an old man in a mountain village, and devoured him, and I heard them coming nearer and still I could see nothing but the second layer, if you will, of blessing of green life, which was fire, and I struggled, and the slats on the green garden seat felt like stakes pressed against my back; then suddenly, I think