The Collector

by John Fowles

“Oh, you’re like mercury. You won’t be picked up.”

He said, the New People are still the poor people. Theirs is the new form of poverty. The others hadn’t any money and these haven’t any soul.

But this is what I feel these days. That I belong to a sort of band of people who have to stand against all the rest. I don’t know who they are—famous men, dead and living, who’ve fought for the right things and created and painted in the right way, and unfamous people I know who don’t lie about things, who try not to be lazy, who try to be human and intelligent.

I’m vain. I’m not one of them. I want to be one of them, and that’s not the same thing.

Bourgeois people give because they’re embarrassed if you pester them.

Intelligent people give or at least they look honestly at you and say no. They’re not ashamed not to give.

But the New People are too mean to give and too s...

There’s no word to say how he said it. Sadly, almost unwillingly. Tenderly, but a shade bitterly. And honestly. Not teasing, not being dry. But right out of his real self. I’d been looking down all the time we were talking, but he made me look up then, and our eyes met and I know something passed between us. I could feel it. Almost a physical touch. Changing us. His saying something he totally meant, and my feeling it.

He said he loved me, even so. I said, what you love is your own love. It’s not love, it’s selfishness. It’s not me you think of, but what you feel about me.

We’re so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we’re stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can’t stand ours.