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Angels sleeps in her cell, her room which should be gay with cushions or theatre programmes or comic pottery, but isn't. The distant clocks have been chiming and ringing all night to pass the time. She lies on her stomach, to hide or protect time, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed, her head wrenched sideways.
Everything about her now is unformed. Her intelligence has stopped working. She is herself and, as she flounders, flies, sinks from one dream to another, unrecognizable.
What does myself look like? I mean, who am I?
You are an examination result, dear. Perhaps, in time, a scholarship. Perhaps an Honors Degree. Try harder.
But myself - I mean myself?
Perhaps you could find yourself in the Guides, or in the New Testament somewhere. If not, we can provide various substitutes, such as Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Nurse Cavell. It's really none of our business, but we do keep a few heroines handy, just in case.
But how shall I deal with myself? What shall I do with myself all my life?
You may look in the answer book. You must control yourself, discipline yourself, sacrifice yourself, respect yourself. If necessary you may defend yourself and able yourself, and to have confidence in yourself while effacing yourself is not entirely bad. You must never, however, love yourself or pity yourself, praise yourself or allow yourself to have either will or opinion. Never indulge yourself, never be conscious of yourself, never forget yourself and above all, never be centered in yourself. We hope this is understood?
But if there is no one else to love, pity or praise? If no one else is conscious of me, remembers me, if I am no one's centre?
That, dear, is what God is for. As Our Lord says, "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings and not one of them is forgotten before God?" To forget yourself in one sense is desirable, whereas, as we have said, to forget yourself in another sense is not. Now if we rewrite those subjoined sentences, strengthening them by omission of caveats, trite quotations, indirect assertions and vulgarisms everything, we feel certain, will seem a great deal clearer; or, alternatively, more clear.
She twists her head, hitting the mattress with a vague, feeble gesture. "But I'll never get there," she says, stating a proved fact. "I'll never get there."
The clocks repeat themselves. She turns on her back and, still asleep, rubs her stomach with the unhappy, worried expression of a child who has eaten a sour apple.
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