by A. S. Byatt
And now, I write to ask, what are we to do? How shall this be the end, that is in its very nature a beginning? I know fully that this letter will cross one from you which will say, wisely and rightly, that we must meet no more, no more see one another—that even the letters, that space of freedom, must be put an end to. And the plot which holds us, the conventions which bind us, declare that I must, as a gentleman, acquiesce in that requirement, at least for a time, and hope that Fate, or the plotter who watches over our steps will decree some further meeting, some accidental re-opening …
But, my Dear, I cannot do this. It goes against nature—not my own particularly, but Dame Nature herself—who this morning smiles at me in and through you, so that everything is alight—from the anemones on my desk to the motes of dust in the beam of sunlight through the window, to the words on the page in front of me (John Donne) with you, with you, with you. I am happy—as I have never been happy—who should be writing to you in who can say what agony of mind full of guilt and horrified withdrawal. I see your quizzical little mouth and I reread your riddling words about the Ants and Spiders—and I smile, to think you are all the time there, poised and watchful—and something more, that I know of, whether you will or no …
What do I ask? you will enquire in your precise and yet mocking way—cutting down my protestations to precise proposals. I do not know—how can I know? I only cast myself upon your mercy, not to be cut off, not scanted with a single famished kiss, not yet, not now. Can we not find a small space, for a limited time—in which to marvel that we have found each other?
Do you remember—no, of course you must remember—how we saw the Rainbow, from the brow of our hill, under our clump of trees—where light suffused the watery drops in the indrowned air—and the Flood was stayed—and we—we stood under the arch of it, as though the whole Earth were ours, by new Covenant—And from foot to distant foot of the rainbow is one bright, joined curve, though it shifts with our changing vision.
What a convoluted Missive, to lie and gather dust, maybe forever, in the Poste Restante. I shall walk, from time to time, in the Park, and wait even, under those same Trees—and trust you will forgive—and a little more
Your
R.H.A.
Oh Sir—things flicker and shift, they are indeed all spangle and sparks and flashes. I have sat by my fireside all this long evening—on my safe stool—turning my burning cheeks towards the Aspirations of the flame and the caving-in, the ruddy mutter, the crumbling of the consumed coals to—where am I leading myself—to lifeless dust—Sir.
And then—out there—when the Rainbow stood out on the dark air over a drowning world—no Lightning struck those Trees, nor trickled along their Wooden Limbs to earth—yet flame licked, flame enfolded, flame looped veins—burned up and utterly consumed—
Struck trees die black
Fire in the Air
Leaves not a Wrack
of bone or hair—
Our first Parents hid under such strong circling trees, I believe—but the Eye saw them—who had incautiously eaten knowledge which was death to them—
If the world shall not be drowned with water a second time—it is certain how we shall perish—it is told us—
And you also—in Ragnarök—matched Wordsworth’s fleet waters of a drowning world—with—the tongues of Surtur’s flames that lapped the shores—Of all the earth and drunk its solid crust—And spat it molten gold on the red heaven—
And after that—a rain—of Ash—
Ash the sheltering World-Tree, Ash the deadly Rain
So Dust to Dust and Ash to Ash again—
I see whole bevies of shooting stars—like gold arrows before my darkening eyes—they presage Headache—but before the black—and burning—I have a small light space to say—oh what? I cannot let you burn me up. I cannot. I should go up—not with the orderly peace of my beloved hearth here—with its miniature caverns of delight, its hot temporary jewel-gardens with their palisadoes and promontories—no—I shall go up—like Straw on a Dry Day—a rushing wind—a tremor on the air—a smell of burning—a blown smoke—and a deal of white fine powder that holds its spillikin shape only an infinitesimal moment and then is random specks—oh no I cannot—
You see, Sir, I say nothing of Honour, nor of Morality—though they are weighty matters—I go to the Core, which renders much disquisition on these matters superfluous. The core is my solitude, my solitude that is threatened, that you threaten, without which I am nothing—so how may honour, how may morality speak to me?
I read your Mind, my dear Mr Ash. You will argue now for a monitored and carefully limited combustion—a fire-grate with bars and formal boundaries and brassy finials—ne progredietur ultra—
But I say—your glowing salamander is a Firedrake. And there will be—Conflagration—
Before Migraine-headaches there is a moment of madness. This has extended from the burning in the clearing—until this minute—and now speaks.
No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.
Not that I have not dreamed of walking in the furnace—as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—
But we latter-day Reasonable Beings have not the miracle-working Passion of the old believers—
I have known—Incandescence—and must decline to sample it further.
The headache proceeds apace. Half my head—is merely a gourd full of pain—
Jane will post this so it goes now. Forgive its faults. And forgive me.
Christabel
My dear,
What am I to make of your missive—I had almost writ missile—which as I foretold has crossed mine—but which as I had not the courage to foretell is not a cool denial but a most heated riddling, to take up your metaphor? You are a true poet—when you are agitated, or discomposed, or unusually interested in any matter—you express your ideas in metaphor. So what am I to make of all this scintillation? I will tell you—a Pyre from which you, my Phoenix, shall fly up renewed and unchanged—the gold more burnished, the eye brighter—semper eadem.
And is it an effect of Love—to set beside each of us, like a manifest emanation some mythic monstrous and inhuman self? So that it becomes easy and natural for you to write as a Creature of the burning fiery furnace, a hearth-salamander turned Firedrake of the air, and easy and natural for you to see me in both mythic readings at once of my pliable name—the World-Tree consumed to its papery remnants. You feel—as I feel—elemental in this force. All creation rushed round us out there—earth, air, fire, water, and there we were, I beg you to remember, warm and human and safe, in the circle of the trees, in each other’s arms, under the arch of the sky.
The most important thing to make clear to you is this. I make no threat to your solitude. How should I? How may I? Is not your blessed desire to be alone the only thing which makes possible what would else in very truth harm someone?
This agreed—may we not, in some circumscribed way—briefly, perhaps, probably—though it is Love’s Nature to know itself eternal—and in confined spaces too—may we not steal some—I almost wrote small, but it will never be that—some great happiness? We must come to grief and regret anyway—and I for one would rather regret the reality than its phantasm, knowledge than hope, the deed than the hesitation, true life and not mere sickly potentialities. All of which casuistry is only to say, my very dear, come back to the Park, let me touch your hand again, let us walk in our decorous storm together. There may well come a moment when this will be impossible, for many good reasons—but you know, and feel, as I know and feel that this moment of impossibility is not yet, is not now?
I am reluctant to take my pen from the paper and fold up this letter—for as long as I write to you, I have the illusion that we are in touch, that is, blessed. Did you know, speaking of dragons as we were, and of conflagration and intemperate burning—that the Chinese dragon, who in Mandarin is Lung—is a creature not of the fiery but exclusively of the watery element? And thus a cousin of your mysterious Melusina i
n her marble tub? Which is to say, there may be cooler dragons, who may take more temperate pleasures. He appears, blue and winding, on Chinese dishes, with a sprinkling mane and accompanied by what I once took to be little flakes of fire, and now know to be curlings of water.
What a page of prose to lie like some bomb in the Poste Restante. I am become, in the last two days, a restless Anarchist.
I shall wait under the trees—from day to day, at your time—and look out for a woman like a steady upright flame and a grey hound poured along the ground like smoke—
I know you will come. All along, what I have known, has been. It is not a state of affairs I normally experience, nor one I ever required—but I am an honest man, and recognise what is, when it is … So you will come. (Not peremptory but quiet, this knowing—)
Your R.H.A.
Dear Sir
I am too proud—to say I knew, I should not have come—and yet came. I acknowledge my Acts—of which all that trepidant walk was one—from Mount Ararat Road to the Tempting Knoll—with Dog Tray circling and growling—He loves you not, Sir—and the end of that sentence could be—“and nor do I” as well as the more expected ending “whatever I may feel.” Were you happy I came? Were we godlike as you promised? Two earnest pacers, pointing diligent toes in the dust. Did you remark—setting Electrical Powers and Galvanic Impulses aside for the moment—how shy we are one with another? Mere acquaintances, if not on paper. We pass the time of day—and the Time of the Universe has a brief stop at our fingers’ touch—who are we? who?—would you not rather have the freedom of the white page? Is it alas too late? Is our primaeval innocence gone?
No—I am out—I am out of my Tower and my Wits. I have my cottage to myself for a few brief hours—Tuesday afternoon—ca 1.00 p.m.—should you care to reconnoitre the humdrum truth of your imagined Bower—of—? Will you take Tea?
Oh, I regret much. Much. And there are things that must be said—soon now—and will find their moment.
I am sad, sir, today—low and sad—sad that we went walking, yet sad too, that we are not walking still. And that is all I can write, for the Muse has forsaken me—as she may mockingly forsake all Women, who dally with Her—and then—Love—
Your Christabel
My Dear
So now I may think of you in truth—in your little Parlour—presiding over the flowering little cups—with Monsignor Dorato prinking and trilling, not, as I had hypothesised, in a Florentine palazzo but in a very Taj Mahal of burning brass wires. And over the mantel, Christabel before Sir Leoline—yourself caught like a statue with coloured light striking garishly across you and an equally frigid Dog Tray. Who ranged, busily seeking, with his hackles like porpentine quills and his soft grey lip wrinkled in a snarl—truly, as you say, he at least does not love me, and once or twice threatened my composed attention to the excellent seed cake, and rattled cup and saucer. And no porch with tumbling flowers—all vanishing froth and fantasy—but stiff tall Roses like a thicket of sentinels.
I think your house did not love me, and I should not have come.
And it is true, as you said, across the whole hearth, that I too have a house, which we have not described or even spoken of. And that I have a wife. You asked me to speak of her and I was speechless. I know not how you construed that—I grant it was your absolute right to ask—and yet I could not answer. (Though I knew you must ask.)
I have a wife, and I love her. Not as I love you. Now, I have sat for half-an-hour, having written those bleak little sentences, and quite unable to go on. There are good reasons—I cannot discuss them, but they are good, if not absolutely adequately good—why my love for you need not hurt her. I know this must sound bald and lame. It must, most probably, be what many men, philandering men, have said before me—I do not know—I am inexperienced in these matters and never thought to find myself writing such a letter. I find I can say no more, only aver that I believe what I have said to be true and hope that I shall not lose you by this necessary uncouthness. To discuss this any further would be the most certain way to betray her. I should feel the same if the question were ever to arise of discussing you—with anyone at all. Even the implicit analogy is distressing—you must feel it. What you are is yours—what we have—if anything—is ours.
Please destroy this letter—whatever you do or have done with the rest—because in itself it constitutes such a betrayal.
I hope the Muse has not indeed forsaken you—even briefly, even for so long as a Teatime. I am writing a lyric poem—most intransigent—about Firedrakes and Chinese Lung dragons—a conjuration, it might rightly be called. It is to do with you—as everything I do these days, or think, or breathe, or see is to do with you—but it is not addressed to you—those poems are to come.
If any answer comes to this plain letter—I shall know both that you are generous indeed, and that our small space is ours—for our short time—until the moment of impossibility makes itself known—
Your R.H.A.
My dear Sir,
Yr plainness and yr reticence can do you nothing but Honour—if that might be thought to be pertinent in this—Pandora’s Box—we have opened—or wet Outdoors we have ventured into. I find I can write no more—indeed and indeed my Head Hurts—and matters in this House—of which I shall not speak, from something the same motives of I hope honour—enfin, they do not go well. Can you be in the park on Thursday. I have matters to impart that I would rather speak.
Ever, C.
My dear
My Phoenix is temporarily a woebegone and even bedraggled bird—speaking uncharacteristically small and meek—and even from moment to moment deferential. This will not do—this may not be—I will renounce all, all my heart’s happiness, I say—to see you brighten and flare as you were wont. I would do all in my power that you might sparkle in your sphere as ever before—even renounce my so-much-insisted-upon claim on you. So tell me—not that you are sad, but why you are so, and truthfully, and I will take it upon me to mend what’s ill, if it lies in my power. Now write back to me as you may, and come again on Tuesday.
Always, R.H.A.
Dearest Sir,
In faith I know not why I am so sad. No—I know—it is that you take me out of myself and give me back—diminished—I am wet eyes—and touched hands—and lips am I too—a very present—famished—fragment of a woman—who has not her desire in truth—and yet has desire superabundantly—ah—this is painful—
And you say—so kind you are—“I love you. I love you.”—and I believe—but who is she—who is “you”? Is she—fine fair hair and—whatever yearns so—I was once something else—something alone and better—I was sufficient unto my self—and now I range—busily seeking with continual change. I might be less discontented if my daily Life were happy, but it is become a brittle tissue of silence and needle-sharp reproach punctuating. I stare proudly—and seem most ignorant where I am most sharply knowing—and known—but this costs—it is not easy—it is not good.
I read yr John Donne.
But we, by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
This is a fine phrase—“inter-assured of the mind.” Do you believe it is possible to find such—safe mooring—in the howling gale?
And I have now a new word in my vocabulary, much hated, to which I am enslaved—it goes “And if—” “And if—” And if we had time and space to be together—as we have allowed ourselves to wish to be—then we would be free together—whereas now—caged?
My dear,
The true exercise of freedom is—cannily and wisely and with grace—to move inside what space confines—and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted. But we are human—and to be human is to desire to know what may be known by any means. And it is easier to miss lips hands and eyes when they are grown a little familiar and are not at all to be explored, the unknown calling. “A
nd if” we had a week—or two—what would we not make of it? And maybe we shall. We are resourceful and intelligent persons.
I would not for the whole world diminish you. I know it is usual in these circumstances to protest—“I love you for yourself alone”—“I love you essentially”—and as you imply, my dearest, to mean by “you essentially”—lips hands and eyes. But you must know—we do know—that it is not so—dearest, I love your soul and with that your poetry—the grammar and stopping and hurrying syntax of your quick thought—quite as much essentially you as Cleopatra’s hopping was essentially hers to delight Antony—more essentially, in that while all lips hands and eyes resemble each other somewhat (though yours are enchanting and also magnetic)—your thought clothed with your words is uniquely you, came with you, would vanish if you vanished—
The journey I spoke of is not finally decided on. Tugwell finds himself greatly involved in his work at home—and though the project was long ago decided upon for when the weather should be clement—to be civilised these days requires an intelligent interest in the minuter forms of life and the monstrous permanent forms of the planet—it now hangs fire. And I who was all enthusiasm—now hang fire—hang upon fire—for how should I willingly go so far from Richmond?
Until Tuesday then
P.S. Swammerdam is almost ready once more.
Dearest Sir,
My dubious Muse is back. I send you (unperfected) what She has dictated.