A Month in the Country

Among the first figures that Birkin recovers from the wall mural and its depiction of the Final Judgment is an imposing, terrifying figure of Christ the Judge at its apex: “This was no catalogue Christ, insufferably ethereal. This was a wintry hard-liner. Justice, yes there would be justice. But not mercy. That was writ large on each feature” (33). He dubs it the Oxgodby Christ. It was not a God of love or forgiveness. This was an uncompromising, threatening deity, delivering at last on the centuries-old threat of punishment. “This is what you did to me,” the eyes seemed to say to Birkin, and so you shall “suffer torment” (34).

It is a suffering Birkin feels when he arrives at the Oxgodby train station in late July. He cannot let go the torments of his memories of the battlefield. He cannot forget the wounded, the hellish conditions, and his friends lost in the mud and blood. He cannot forget the infidelities of his wife, whose casual affairs destroyed his tender faith in love and the promise of marriage. In short, he begins the summer of his redemption already in hell—a hell far worse than the one depicted on the wall.