“When he looked at me and said, ‘I kind
of view you as a son,’
And, for one second, our eyes met, and I
met that with the question:
‘Do you know what you are getting
yourself into?’”
Relient K, ‘Getting
Into You’, Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right …
But Three Do (2003)
Last Tuesday (20th October), coincidentally, marked the
fifth anniversary of the death of Eva Ibbotson, a quite brilliant novelist
responsible for several stories I remember enjoying immensely as a child:
particular highlights for me include The
Secret of Platform Thirteen (whose involvement of a doorway to a magical
world hidden at King’s Cross station could probably have got J. K. Rowling into
serious legal trouble if Ibbotson had felt moved to press charges of
plagiarism); Which Witch? (featuring
a series of amusingly less-than-spectacular attempts to woo an evil wizard with
displays of dark magic);1 and
Monster Mission (which I always
remember for its delightful conclusion where all is made well by consulting the
dictionary for the definition of the word ‘kidnapping’). Today, however, I mean
to talk about one of Ibbotson’s adult books – although the version I read
recently was one rebranded under a different title for the young adult market –
namely The Secret Countess, formerly A Countess Below Stairs.
 |
| Ibbotson, Eva, The Secret Countess, London: Macmillian Children’s Books (2007). |
The basic plot is that Russian
aristocrat Anna, having fled to England following the 1917 revolution, finds
employment as a maid in a grand house taking on extra staff to assist with
preparations for the impending return and wedding of the estate’s heir. It
perhaps doesn’t sound like the most thrilling storyline when I put it like
that, but the real triumph of the book – and it is utterly a triumph – is in
the details. Comparatively minor characters are all afforded distinct
personalities and motivations, which are tied together beautifully in the
ultimate denouement, and even the prose itself is joyously ornamental, without
tipping over into floridity. Take, for instance, lines like “Professor Fitzroy
nodded. He was a tall man, sepulchrally thin, with a tuft of grey hair which
accentuated his resemblance to a demented heron.”
And, in the spirit of the details being
the greater brilliance of the book, the principal love story, though pleasing
enough, pales and fades next to that of the secondary characters Tom Byrne and
Susie Rabinovitch. The following is from pages 278-280:
“Susie,”
said Tom, and she saw that he was in an unusually grim and serious mood. “How
many times have I asked you to marry me?”
“I
think, seventeen,” said Susie in her quiet,
pedantic voice, looking up at him and wishing yet again that he wasn’t quite
so handsome. “But it may only be sixteen;
I’m not completely sure.”
…
“Susie,
are you really going to ruin our happiness because of your parents’ wretched
religious prejudices? Even though I’ve told you a hundred times that you can
bring up our children in any way you like?”
Susie
hesitated … “It’s not that. My parents aren’t so orthodox any more. They’d moan
a little, but there’s no question of them disowning me or saying a kaddish over me. They’re far too kind and too concerned for my happiness.”
Tom
stared at her, amazed. “But why, then, Susie? Why do you keep on saying no?”
Susie
studied him carefully. “Tom, have you ever looked at me? At me? Not someone you’ve made up inside your
head.”
She
stepped forward so that the overhead light shone full on her face. The gypsy
dress, as she well knew, was extremely unbecoming to her and she was flushed
and mottled from the heat.
“I’m
plump now,” she continued in her level, unemotional voice. “In ten years I’ll
be fat, however much I diet. I have a hooked nose; most of the time I need
glasses. My hair is frizzy and my ears–”
“How
dare you!” Tom had seized her shoulders; he was
shaking her, hurting her. The famous Byrne temper, scourge of his red-haired
ancestors since Doomsday, blazed in his eyes. “How dare you talk to me like that! You are insulting
me!”
“What
do you mean?”
“How
dare you suppose that I don’t know who you are or
what you are? That I don’t understand what I see? Do you take me for some kind
of besotted schoolboy? It is unspeakable!
You could weigh as much as a hippopotamus and shave your head and wear a wig
and it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I never said you were beautiful. I never thought it. I said that you were you.”
Susie
loosened his hands. Then she smiled, that tender, wise smile that made nonsense
of her ugliness and said, “Well, in that case we must just hope that our
children don’t inherit your awful temper. Or my nose.”
Hands up who’s ever pulled a Susie
Rabinovitch and believed that professed love couldn’t be genuine, because its
professed object was simply too unlovable. There must be some mistake; you’re
not seeing me as I really am; you couldn’t possibly love me – no one could.
 |
| That’s it, right in the air. You know who you are, Susie-Rabinovitch-Syndrome-sufferers. |
The trouble with this perspective is
that it stands all responsibility for love on the beloved – I have to be
sufficiently appealing in order to be loved – and wholly dismisses the factor
of the lover’s capacity for love. This seems particularly odd when you consider
that the object of the sentence, by definition, doesn’t have to do anything to have the verb performed
upon it; if the subject is capable of the verb, that’s all the action that’s
required for the sentence to be true. Still, it isn’t, perhaps, particularly
romantic to talk about this in terms of grammar (fond as I am of grammar, it
probably comes under the peanut-butter-milkshake category of love),2
so I’ll give another example.
Earlier this year, I stood in an
enormous tent in a field in Somerset at an event called Momentum,3
and told God I still somehow couldn’t believe he really loved me. Maybe, my
mind conceded, he did once, before year after year of failure and relapse and
disappointing complacency; maybe he was prepared to tolerate me in his kingdom
for the sake of keeping a promise – but surely, mess of wrongdoing and weakness
and hypocrisy as I was, he couldn’t love me.
It was a little while before I heard his
‘how dare you’. Not condemnatory, not another accusation laid at my door,
another reason to scuttle into the corner and curl up once again bewailing my
own shortcomings – but firm, gentle, and entirely fair. How dare you – you are
insulting me; how dare you suppose that I don’t know who or what you are, that
I don’t understand what I see?
Did I really believe that God hadn’t
read the small print, that he was so short-sighted as to agree to the cross
without knowing every corner of my fallen heart better than I do myself? Or did
I believe he was so irrationally petty as to change his mind on the matter once
presented with my failings first-hand? Or did I believe his love was so flimsy
and ineffectual, so easily able to be smothered, that I could do so simply by
not being perfect?
The cross pours scorn on any suggestion
that God couldn’t possibly love such people as you and me. God the Son trades
heavenly power and bliss for a criminal’s death; God the Father directs his
entirely fair and justified anger at all that’s wrong in the world against the
one human being not responsible for any of it, his Son; the two are wrenched
apart for the first time in the history of everything, and all for the sake of
sparing the very people who rejected God time and time again, even to the point
of arranging his execution – us, humanity.4
Words fall short, frankly, but my point
is that what happened on the cross had nothing to do with us being lovable, and
everything to do with God being loving. His love is without flaw; capable of
loving even the least appealing person, it can never be diminished by any
failing of its object; it has no weaknesses to be exploited. I insult God – I claim
that he is less than he is – when I believe otherwise.
The thing about Susie Rabinovitch
Syndrome is that, like so many wrong ways of viewing the world, it ultimately
comes down to a focus on the self. I believe it is my characteristics that govern the feelings and behaviour of other
people towards me, and leave no space for theirs to have any bearing. And I
reckon that, often, the best possible cure for the Syndrome is, actually, a
shake round the shoulders and a ‘how dare you’ and being put firmly in one’s
place.
The end of the Relient K song I quoted above?
“You said, ‘I love you, and that’s what you are getting yourself into.’”5
Footnotes
1 Apparently, an animated film based on Which Witch? is being made by the Jim Henson Company, http://movieweb.com/which-witch-movie-billy-crystal-jim-henson-company/,
but I’m wary of getting too excited, based on the number of times I’ve come
across books that were apparently being
made into films, but don’t appear to have ever actually emerged from the
chrysalis.
2 I’m referencing a post I made two weeks ago, just to be
clear. There is, as ever, a link in the box on the right, if you happened to
want to read it.
3 Also known as Soul Survivor’s older sibling: http://momentum.org.uk/. It’s a crazy,
challenging, inspiring few days, and I’d probably recommend it if you don’t
mind camping.
4 In a way, I’m not sure where in the Bible to point you on
this matter, because it’s kind of the whole story. Still, try Philippians 2:5-7
(https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians%202&version=ESV),
Colossians 1:15-23 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=colossians+1&version=ESV),
Isaiah 53 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+53&version=ESV), Mark 15:25-39 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+15&version=ESV
), and my old favourite Romans 5:6-11 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+5&version=ESV) just to get you started.
5 Go on, have a listen – the lyrics are much better sung
than written down, and some kind human has even made a lyric video with snazzy
transition effects and totally inconsistent font and colour and everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0urB9mnCx-A.
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