Free A Garden of Trees by Nicholas Mosley Page A

trees would grow. We could not sit beneath them.”
    â€œWe could climb among the branches.”
    â€œWe are too old, too heavy, they would not carry us.”
    â€œThere must be a new beginning.”
    â€œThere has been an old one.”
    â€œA new one that would carry us like an island in the sea.”
    â€œLike a grave in a churchyard.”
    â€œThere is no beginning in graves.”
    â€œYou do not know,” Marius said.
    â€œWhat is memory?” Peter said.
    â€œMemory is a graveyard.”
    â€œOh Marius, Marius, how I hate this world!” Peter walked away from us into the darkness.
    Annabelle put on her coat and we sat on the small stone parapet beneath the statue. There was the sound of water beside us, and the moon made distances solid like ice.
    â€œThere is water here,” Annabelle said.
    â€œWhen you go out of the garden,” Marius said, “you remember what was in it and the death you died there. If you remember this always then the desert is beautiful. If you do not you cannot live.”
    â€œThere should be fishes,” Annabelle said.
    â€œIf you cannot live you will pretend that you are living. This is the imagination of dreams. But if you remember you will not be dead. This is the imagination of reality.”
    â€œDid you love your island?” Annabelle said.
    â€œI loved it except that I was alone,” I said.
    â€œAnd did you mind that?”
    â€œI should have gone mad.”
    â€œYou go mad with people too.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause you cannot touch them.”
    â€œYou can,” I said.
    â€œIf you remember,” Marius said—“if always there is before you this sight of yourself being born in blood, and if you say that that birth was the first death I died because of the agony . . . ”
    â€œCan you?” Annabelle said.
    â€œ . . . then you will be able to touch people for a time even if you cannot touch yourself. People can only touch each other in the face of love or tragedy.”
    â€œAnd yourself?”
    â€œOh, you can never touch yourself except through others. That is a later development.”
    â€œThat is what Peter wants.”
    â€œI can see him talking to a dustman.”
    â€œHe will be talking of the moon.”
    â€œHe would desire the moon without knowing what to do with it.”
    â€œThere is the moon in this water.”
    â€œThat is as near as anyone will ever get to it.” Annabelle put her finger into the water and the moon came to life in waves. “One could lie in it,” she said.
    â€œYou see, because it is a reflection.”
    â€œCan you only touch reflections?”
    â€œOnly those that are true to the things that they reflect.”
    â€œAnd will they have meaning?”
    â€œThey will have reality.”
    â€œI don’t know if that is true.”
    â€œI don’t know what we’re talking about,” Marius said.
    Annabelle splashed her hand into the fountain and ripples of laughter seemed to ease across the stillness. “You do, but you’re so crafty,” she said. “And what was it that stopped you going mad?”
    â€œStopped?” Marius said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGrapefruits.”
    â€œGrapefruits?”
    â€œYes.” We began to laugh. “I will tell you about it. When I was a boy we used to play a game with grapefruits. My friend would go up to one of the top windows of the house—and it was a very tall house—and he threw grapefruits down at me. I would catch them. It was a very extraordinary feeling and it stopped me going mad.”
    Annabelle and I laughed so much that we had to stand up.
    â€œHave you ever caught a grapefruit?” he said. “A grapefruit falling from a very great height?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œYou should try it. It is a very extraordinary feeling. And when you miss it, you see, it hits the ground and bursts, and that is tragedy.”