The Collector

 Three nights ago was so strange. I was so excited at leaving this crypt. I felt so nearly in complete control. It suddenly seemed all rather a grand adventure, something I'd one day soon be telling everyone about. A sort of chess-game with death I'd rather unexpectedly won. A feeling that I _had_ run a terrible risk and now everything was going to be all right. That he was going to let me go, even.

 Mad.

 I have to give him a name. I'm going to call him Caliban.

 Piero. I've spent the whole day with Piero, I've read all about him, I've stared at all the pictures in the book, I've lived them. How can I ever become a good painter when I know so little geometry and mathematics? I'm going to make Caliban buy me books. I shall become a geometrician. Shattering doubts about modern art. I thought of Piero standing in front of a Jackson Pollock, no, even a Picasso or a Matisse. His eyes. I can just see his eyes.

 The things Piero says in a hand. In a fold in a sleeve. I know all this, we've been told it and told it and I've said it. But today I really felt it. I felt our whole age was a hoax, a sham. The way people talk and talk about tachism and cubism and this ism and that ism and all the long words they use -- great smeary clots of words and phrases. All to hide the fact that either you can paint or you can't.

 I want to paint like Berthe Morisot, I don't mean with her colours or forms or anything physical, but with her simplicity and light. I don't want to be clever or great or "significant" or given all that clumsy masculine analysis. I want to paint sunlight on children's faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain.

 The essences. Not the things themselves.

 Swimmings of light on the smallest things.

 Or am I being sentimental?

 Depressed.

 I'm so far from everything. From normality. From light. From what I want to be.

    _October 18th_

 G.P. -- You paint with your whole being. First you leam that. The rest is luck.

 Good solution: I must not be fey.

 This morning I drew a whole series of quick sketches of bowls of fruit. Since Caliban wants to give, I don't care how much paper I waste. I "hung" them and asked him to choose which one was best. Of course he picked all those that looked most like the wretched bowl of fruit. I started to try to explain to him. I was boasting about one of the sketches (the one I liked best). He annoyed me, it didn't mean anything to him, and he made it clear in his miserable I'll-take-your-word-for-it way that he didn't really care. To him I was just a child amusing herself.

 Blind, blind, other world.

 My fault. I was showing off. How could he see the magic and importance of art (not my art, of _art_) when I was so vain?

 We had an argument after lunch. He always asks me if he may stay. Sometimes I feel so lonely, so sick of my own thoughts, that I let him. I _want_ him to stay. That's what prison does. And there's escape, escape, escape.

 The argument was about nuclear disarmament. I had doubts, the other day. But not now.

  DIALOGUE BETWEEN MIRANDA AND CALIBAN.

 M. (_I was sitting on my bed, smoking. Caliban on his usual chair by the iron door, the fan was going outside_) What do you think about the H-bomb?

 C. Nothing much.

 M. You must think something.

 C. Hope it doesn't drop on you. Or on me.

 M. I realize you've never lived with people who take things seriously, and discuss seriously. (_He put on his hurt face_.) Now let's try again. What do you think about the H-bomb?

 C. If I said anything serious, you wouldn't take it serious. (_I stared at him till he had to go on_.) It's obvious. You can't do anything. It's here to stay.

 M. You don't care what happens to the world?

 C. What'd it matter if I did?

 M. Oh, God.

 C. We don't have any say in things.

 M. Look, if there are enough of us who believe the bomb is wicked and that a decent nation could never think of having it, whatever the circumstances, then the government would have to do something. Wouldn't it?

 C. Some hope, if you ask me.

 M. How do you think Christianity started? Or anything else? With a little group of people who didn't give up hope.

 C. What would happen if the Russians come, then? (_Clever point, he thinks_.)

 M. If it's a choice between dropping bombs on them, or having them here as our conquerors -- then the second, every time.

 C. (_check and mate_) That's pacifism.

 M. Of course it is, you great lump. Do you know I've walked all the way from Aldermaston to London? Do you know I've given up hours and hours of my time to distribute leaflets and address envelopes and argue with miserable people like you who don't believe anything? Who really deserve the bomb on them?

 C. That doesn't prove anything.