A: Rules? You want rules? You really can’t survive without a book of rules? Hasn’t the human race progressed at all? Can’t you decide, one by one, what’s right, what’s wrong? Do you have to continue to believe in groups? Do you have to believe in the God of your neighbours? Can’t you create one of your own? Surely you know enough by now about yourselves, your compulsions, your motivations, your sibling rivalries, your anal retentiveness, your territorial aggressions and so forth? Have your prophets and wise men, your therapists and social philosophers, taught you nothing? Is it so confusing that you just can’t begin to solve it at all; can’t work hard to build heaven on earth, but prefer to trust in the one after death? I don’t believe it. You underrate yourselves. So you’ll get no rules from me. I tell you this much, there is no excuse any more, you can’t claim ignorance: if you get Darcy’s Utopia wrong there’s going to be no forgiveness: it’ll be too late.
Then Hugo’s voice, a commentary:
Eleanor Darcy was trembling. The morning was chill. She had refused to put on a coat. I took her arm but she shook me off. The grass was bright with dew. The sun had reached the edge of the railway embankment. It dazzled.
Q: Can you be more explicit?
A: This is off the record?
Q: Of course. Who exactly is giving this forgiveness? God?
A: Good lord no, man, in whom I incorporate the lesser, woman. God has no concept of fairness. Man must place himself above God. God is not the father: God is the child.
Q: Don’t you think that’s rather, well, enigmatic of you?
A: Be quiet. These things are difficult to get hold of. And I’m in a hurry. Sometimes I get things wrong. How can I not? I’m human. Man exists not to worship, not to glorify, but to comprehend God so that by that comprehension God can grow. How about that? That seems the gist of it. Sometimes there are not even words for the thoughts. Other languages might be easier.
Q: I’m not hot at theology.
A: Pity. Julian was starting up a new faculty of divinity when he got struck off. They said he would have been better advised cutting courses, not adding to them. Theology, they said, wasn’t sexy as a subject. Little did they know!
Hugo’s voice:
I asked if we should turn back, on the pretext that we were cold. The front room, the sofa with red roses, seemed preferable to the dazzle we approached. I was surprised that Brenda’s children seemed so ordinary, snotty, peevish. Fed by this source of light, they should be little gods. She did not hear me; she was clearly listening to something other than me; I was glad: my nerve returned.
Q: No rules about diet, or marriage, or sex? These are the messages which usually get through.
A: Well of course, but they’re so obvious we all know them. No beef, no sheep, no pig to be eaten: they are all ecologically unsound. Dairy products in moderation. Chicken, fish, so long as the animals breed and live naturally. Empathy must be found with the animal kingdom. If you must have more protein eat each other.
Q: What did you say?
A: You heard me. But boil well first. Those are the only dietary rules I give you. Your desire to live for ever should make it easy for you to fill in any number of others. Personally I find them boring. Now you have Darcy’s Utopia to create there will be some point in longevity. I have already spoken to you at length about marriage and sex. Don’t worry too much about HIV infection. Everyone dies. A virus is a small price to pay for sex. You will have to resort to nuclear power while you reduce your population and learn to live simply. You’ll just have to put up with the consequences: it’s your own fault for letting things get so badly out of control. You lost your way: you lost your vision. No one could look more than five years ahead.
Q: No punishments? No sanctions? No hellfire, no grappling hooks to drag you to the fire, no skinning alive? What are the consequences of the non-forgiveness you speak of?
A: The end of the earth, the end of you, that’s all.
Q: No hell? No heaven? Just blanking out?
Hugo’s voice:
She turned and looked at me: her being was luminous: I lowered my eyes. She laughed and the laughter was all around me. It was not nice at all.
A: It depends what you make of Darcy’s Utopia. If you find it heaven, lucky old you. Some might simply blank out with boredom, but if that’s hell it is a kinder one that any promised you in the past. I hope you see some improvement here. I do. Define yourselves more kindly; do yourselves and me that favour. After all, you’re the adults: I’m just the child.
Hugo’s voice:
I turned and went back to the house: I couldn’t bear it any longer. She went on into the light. Brenda said, ‘Oh God, she’s at it again. She goes down there, has a kind of fit: I have to drag her back to the house: she mumbles for hours: I don’t know what to do about it. I’m glad you’re writing it all down. Someone has to. I haven’t time, what with the kids and my husband working all hours.’