The Furnished Room Read Online Free PDF

managed to squeeze out of her. She’s supposed to have a weak heart, and I was hoping she’d pop off and leave me her money. But I soon decided that the weak-heart business was just an act, and as I didn’t have time to hang about waiting for her to die, I cleared out. Did a bunk. Put some ads in the Personal Ad columns of newspapers. “Officer, ex-public school, do anything, go anywhere.” You know the sort of thing. You ought to try it yourself. Were you an officer or public school?’
    â€˜No, neither.’
    â€˜Doesn’t matter. They expect you to lie. Want you to, in fact. They want a man who knows how to bluff. I got some pretty interesting jobs that way. Some fairly legal. Others...’ Dyce winked. ‘Oh yes, the world is full of rich cowards who are willing to pay somebody else to do their living for them.’
    Beckett offered his cigarettes and they both lit up.
    Dyce lay back, grinning, his eyes narrowed. ‘Shocked you, hey? The life of crime.’
    â€˜No, not at all. Crime interests me. I think that today it mainly springs from boredom. A deprived man wants the object he is deprived of: food, work, political liberty. But the man who has no pressing material needs can suffer instead from spiritual sickness. He realizes he lives in a system of lies, and consequently believes in nothing.’ Beckett sat up suddenly. ‘Well, look, I mean, what is nihilism? Inability to believe, inability to feel, a sort of paralysing insight into the meaninglessness of existence. Boredom. The nihilist is constantly undermined by his sense of absurdity and lack of meaning. Nihilism is a claustrophobic state; a prison. I think crime can be an attempt to break out of the prison; a dynamite to blast the walls.’
    â€˜Carry on.’
    â€˜The nihilist wants to feel, so he strikes at life in order that life may strike him back.’
    Dyce said: ‘By putting him in prison?’
    â€˜No, by making him feel sin, danger, or anything. Anything is better than nothing.’
    â€˜Oh yes, I agree with you there.’
    Beckett said: ‘Of course murder is the only absolute crime, qualitatively different from every other crime.’
    â€˜Yes. Well, I hadn’t thought along those lines myself. Probably because I’m seldom bored, I play life like a poker game, and it seems fun to me. It doesn’t worry me that I live in a system of lies as long as my lies are more successful than the other fellow’s.’
    Beckett laughed, liking Dyce’s frankness.
    Dyce said: ‘But you over-glamorize the criminal. The blasé youths, the Teddy-boy types, probably don’t believe in anything. But they wouldn’t put it into the sort of words you use. And with the older ones it’s mostly laziness.’
    â€˜Oh yes. Most criminals, I suppose, drift into crime through laziness or through lack of free will.’
    â€˜You believe in free will?’
    â€˜I don’t think we have as much as we should like to suppose.’
    â€˜But a murderer might have it? You said murder was qualitative….’
    Beckett said: ‘He might.’ The grass was damp, and he stood up. ‘Let’s go back inside.’
    â€˜And collect our nympho, who probably thinks we’ve both deserted her. Well, which of us is going to stagger over the bridal threshold with that not inconsiderable weight?’
    â€˜You are.’
    â€˜Thanks, old boy. Sheer necessity, you know. Must have somewhere to sleep, and plug my electric razor. With any luck I might get her to wash my drip-dry shirt as well.’ Dyce stood up, and collected his jacket from the rose bush.
    At that moment Michael bounded into the garden, with his arms flung wide in ecstatic love for all humanity. Seeing Beckett and Dyce, he twined an arm