Let Me Alone

by Anna Kavan

  The bells of the little two-horse carriage jingled as they drove. Anna looked gaily at everything, Findlay included. But he was rather bird-like and remote. She was conscious of his softly glowing breast.

  ‘Isn’t it fun?’ she said to him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. But he did not come near. He seemed to have flown off blithely to the top of a tree.

  The driving, and the dinner at the hotel that evening passed rapidly, like a dream. Anna felt dazzled. She saw only the faces of the natives, the new glow of colour. But sometimes she glanced at Findlay’s face, which was the one that pleased her.

  As the evening went on, she was aware of some intention fixed upon her. Someone was willing her. Some secret, silent influence was centred upon her, urging her, intently, in some unknown direction. She looked up and met the blue eyes of Matthew fastened upon her.

  ‘The East begins here,’ he said to her, when the party broke up, and she found herself suddenly stranded, alone with him in one of the jingling carriages. She looked, and saw the black, domed sky arching over her head. And her heart dilated; she felt the great black dome in her heart. She sat under the stars, worshipping them. Her heart opened and grew vast, until the whole sky with all its stars began to pour into her, a mysterious flood of star-strung darkness. She wanted to receive the night sky into her heart. But Matthew sat beside her, an intruder, weighing upon her. His hard, round head was like a stone lying on her heart. He was insentient, and he weighed her down. She wanted to escape him. But he sat beside her like a stone, immovable, senseless, assailing her with the blind, indestructible, stony weapon of his obstinate will. If only she could get away from him to be alone with the starry night.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said her low voice, the voice of the small waves along the shore. She closed her eyes in the fragile brightness of the stars, so that she might not look at him.

  He did not answer. In her remoteness she felt with faint surprise the hidden power of excitement in him.

  ‘This is not the way to the boat,’ came her cool voice.

  And she knew that he was working against her in some way. A strange certitude came to her, a conviction of his treachery. She felt his malicious scheming about to entangle her.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ he said.

  A defiance, an obstinacy took possession of her, and a kind of lethargy. She could not trouble to circumvent him. She did not really believe in his ability to harm her. She despised him too much. He was too inhuman. And her heart, the heart of her attention was open and softly preoccupied with the starlit night.

  She could feel his will straining against her, like a heavy rock grinding and crushing, to compel her. He seemed mindless and oppressive as a rock. She was cold and abstracted and inert, not to be troubled or roused.

  So they drove down the narrow streets, and stopped at last in a doubtful quarter of darkness and dingy flares. There was a nameless, unpleasant smell of food and dirt and dark-skinned humanity. Matthew got out, and Anna followed him. He walked holding her arm, urging her on beside him. And she went submissive. She was as indifferent as a leprechaun, as untouchable, he seemed to be holding a goblin arm that chilled him. Yet he must press her on, like a weight against her.

  They went through a dark entry. Here Anna saw, with something of horror, the dense, close mass of faces glistening duskily, dusky and appalling under the white-hot flares, shifting and changing as the shadows flickered, chattering and grimacing with apparent ferocity or horrible amusement. All was hideous, a grimacing of hot, glistening, greyish faces. She was repelled by the dense animal conglomeration of humanity pressing about her. Her heart started and contracted within her. She knew that she was afraid.

  They stood for a moment of unbearable isolation. Blurred faces looked at them, whitish eyes stared at them, gargoyle mouths leered at them. Here and there a separate visage gleamed, sweatily, like a cheese. Looking round at the shadowy, horrible, mouthing throng a sudden panic-lust seized her, to hack a way through them and tear and trample them and so escape. Her body stiffened rigid like a blade. She looked about, and her face shone cold with loathing. She was afraid.

  And an intuition in her warned her against Matthew. He was plotting against her: he wished her ill. He would inflict some evil thing upon her. She stood rigid in the noisome place, waiting. The premonition of evil stung her fiercely, with a poisoned point. Still tensely she must wait.

  Till suddenly, a flame went over her, a deadly flame of disgust, burning, corrosive, feeding like some destructive acid upon the very core of her being, destroying her. She must escape, or die. A negro had strolled into the vacant central space. He was altogether naked, was dusty-bluish skinned, and led by one horn a small goat – a dirty brown goat – that seemed frightened and cowed. He was evidently pleased with himself. His curious leering smile, and the curious way he jerked the reluctant goat with his naked arm, in a sort of flick, was very disgusting. Anna felt her heart dissolving in a flame of utter disgust. She must escape or perish, annihilated and consumed by her own horror. She turned and thrust her way out into the street.

  So she fled from the place, she hurried along as if escaping from a nightmare. She sped through the stir of the narrow, seething streets, a pale, unthinking thing, flying from the world. She wanted solitude, the absence of alarm, the reassurance of the starlit night. Above all she wanted to get away from the repellant, insistent crowd of natives hemming her about.

  She was not afraid any more. All this herd of dusky creatures seething and surging had no power to alarm her. It was not the natives who had made her afraid. But the evil breath of that noxious place, and the evil thing which germinated there. That and the round, dark head of Matthew that haunted her like a traitorous thought.

  She hurried blindly along. She had no idea where she was going. She did not think at all. She was detached, alone.

  Gradually she began to come back to herself. Gradually a more normal consciousness returned. Slowly the sky swung back to its high, calm, nightly beneficence. She saw the stars still benign and lovely, the pernicious horror of the night began to evaporate. But dismay still lapped her about. What had happened? What was this horror she had experienced? The horror was evil: and it was Matthew. It was Matthew who had inflicted this nightmare upon her. Was Matthew the nightmare? He was strange, he was unreal. What had he done to her? How had he contrived to violate her inmost sanctities? She was filled with superstitious fear of the Matthew who had done this thing. She could not believe that this was the man she knew, it was not possible, not to be thought of. She would not believe in it. With her will she refused to believe. Matthew was a nonentity, a cipher. But he was harmless, his intentions towards her were good and affectionate and commonplace. She would not believe anything else.

  So she walked in a daze of dismay. She did not know how to get back to the boat, where to go. It did not matter. She only wanted to be by herself. She wanted to get out of the crowds. Quickly she walked the unfamiliar streets – quickly – as in a delirium. The place had become a nightmare to her: the world was a nightmare. To escape the nightmare she wanted to isolate herself, she wished to be in some lonely spot.

  She met Findlay standing at a corner; waiting for her, it seemed. She was astonished.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.

  ‘Looking for you,’ he replied.

  ‘But how is it you are just here? At this particular corner?’

  ‘I followed your carriage. After a time my driver lost sight of you, so I got out and wandered about.’

  Anna was astonished. Or rather, she felt that she ought to be astonished. Actually, his appearance seemed natural, almost inevitable: rather providential, too, really. She found that she was glad of his support.

  They began to walk along. The dark faces were still ceaselessly passing, and hemming them in, and staring with a strange, sneering, slightly obscene curiosity, in the flary dark. Findlay seemed unaware. But Anna felt herself violated. She couldn’t get rid
of the feeling of violation, of having her privacy exposed and desecrated. She wanted to get away from all the dark faces – never to see them again – never while she lived.

  ‘Can’t we go somewhere quiet?’ she said. ‘Away from all these creatures? I want to be quiet.’

  They turned off down a dark alley beside an immensely high wall. Massive and black the wall loomed in the darkness, steeply solid as a mountain-side, and black as the abysmal heart of night. An iron gate stood ajar. They pushed through. Inside was a queer, dark, level place with a few trees blackly entangled in the starry sky, and a mysterious distant glitter of black water. Black, nameless piles were towering here and there, incomprehensible and vaguely menacing like unknown presences. It was very dark, quiet, and deserted.

  All this time, Findlay stayed silent, uninquiring. It was not till he had lighted cigarettes for Anna and for himself that he began to speak.

  ‘What happened to you?’ he asked, and his sleeve touched her wrist.

  Anna strolled on with her cigarette in her mouth, abstracted. He kept in step with her, watching her with side-long glances in the dark. But there was a great gulf between them.

  ‘Where did you get to?’

  ‘Matthew took me to some horrible place,’ she said.

  He peered closely.

  ‘How – horrible?’ he said, watching her.

  She lifted her shoulders in an odd motion, half shrug, half shudder.

  ‘Oh – beastly. Don’t let’s talk about it.’ And she walked on more quickly, puffing her cigarette.

  Findlay watched her with invisible eyes. His eyes were darkened shadows in the pale gleam of his face. She could not see them. But his smile, the beginning of his luminous smile, was visible to her.

  ‘Why are you going to the East?’ he said. ‘Why are you going to live with Matthew?’

  ‘Why?’ she repeated, in astonishment. ‘I’m married to him – that’s why.’ There was some bitterness in her tone.

  He shook his head in the darkness.

  ‘It won’t do, you know,’ he said. ‘You’ll never be able to live with him, with Matthew.’

  She felt a tremor go through her blood at the sound of Findlay’s mischievous, soft voice. There was something about him that was like magic to her, the swift, secret, unbelievable excitement that trembled in all her veins, because he was so thrilling, and she was so aware. She seemed so subtly attuned to his thrillingness. The consciousness of it vibrated through her with almost unbearable intensity. Yet her mind stayed quite aloof. Her mind was not attracted: it was even a little antagonistic. With her mind she recognized something shifty and elvishly unreliable in him, something which made it impossible to depend on him. And this she found unsympathetic.

  ‘Why won’t it do? Why shouldn’t Matthew and I live together?’

  Once more she saw the negatory movement of his head. His face wore the curious smile, pale, disturbing, poignant, with the satyr-quality of dangerous archness.

  ‘It’s ridiculous. You’ll be unhappy. You’ll hate the life in the East. Why are you going there?’

  Anna stood still and tipped the ash from her cigarette.

  ‘I must go. I must,’ she said. ‘There’s no alternative.’

  ‘You’ll hate it.’

  She looked at him angrily.

  ‘Why do you say that? Why should you deliberately try to make me depressed? Do you want me to be miserable?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps.’ He gave a curious Mephistophelean laugh, almost soundless. ‘Perhaps that’s what I do want.’

  She was resentful, staring at him accusingly.

  ‘Why? Why?’ she asked resentfully, challenging him.

  He smiled, his wide, subtle smile, like a satyr’s, but so strangely attractive. It made a quiver like electricity pass through her. Yet her mind was antagonized, nor would it ever be otherwise.

  So there was a sort of deadlock. She was tremulous before his smiling face. She thrilled at the careless, graceful poise of his long, thin body, so like an elegant, long-legged bird. She wanted him to come near. And he wanted to approach. But her mind had ultimately decided against him, rejecting him. And this held him off. He was too sensitive a plant not to wilt and shrivel in the blast of her silent criticism. He could not stand up against that. And she couldn’t help finding fault with him, in her mind. He was so irresponsible, like a child; and like a child, charming and heart-breaking. Perhaps if he were to touch her, her resistance would break down. Would he touch her? She shuddered, and hoped not. Or did she really, underneath everything, hope that he would? Anyhow, he did not.

  And suddenly, as she watched him, she saw some men in uniform, with lanterns, coming along. As they caught sight of Anna and Findlay, as they drew near across the dark, empty space, there arose a certain commotion. Some of them shouted. Some were calling incomprehensibly, some were running towards them, some were gesticulating; it was like a kind of attack. Anna watched the approaching troop with apprehension.

  And as she watched, in a moment the foremost men were upon them, talking loudly and excitedly. Findlay answered laboriously. It seemed that he knew a few words of Arabic. Anna looked on, rather nervous. The men were all round, standing quite near; such an odd, theatrical crew. But they didn’t do anything violent. In spite of their excitement they seemed quite deferential. So her alarms subsided, and she listened to the palaver. Findlay was standing beside her. She would have liked to stick a pin in his smoothly swelling, handsome, birdlike chest. She felt intolerant of him. He stood there, speaking slowly, his nose arched in his faintly conceited, aristocratic manner, as he talked to the men. His face had the palely-smiling gleam, his eyes in the lantern light flickered roguish and attractive. But somehow, mentally, she rather distrusted him. He was unsatisfactory: though he had that peculiar demonish distinction that thrilled her so much. She was sure he would let her down if he had the chance. If he had not already done so.

  An understanding had at last been reached with the men. Findlay suddenly laughed and threw his cigarette on the ground. He stamped it out with the heel of his shoe.

  ‘We mustn’t smoke here,’ he told Anna. ‘It seems we’re in the government petrol depot.’ His face was all curling up in pale, faunal amusement.

  But her heart had hardened against him. She put out her cigarette and moved away.

  ‘We must find Matthew and get back to the boat,’ she said coolly.

  There was a dreariness in her on Findlay’s account. As though in rejecting him, or being let down by him, she had suffered some dragging internal wrench.

  Without more ado they went back to the frequented, the Europeanized, tourist-ridden part of the town. Matthew was discovered outside the hotel, walking up and down in suppressed anxiety, and of course looking in the wrong direction. What to say to him? Anna could not bring herself to believe in his latest enormity, nor disbelieve. They called out to attract his attention.

  He turned round. ‘Where have you been?’ he said, in an aggrieved fashion. ‘I’ve hunted for you everywhere. Everywhere.’ So he stared out of his blue eyes at Anna, and seemed to have forgotten the rest of the evening.

  When Anna looked at him, she saw only his innocence, his extraordinary, naive unawareness, as though he had really forgotten. And the look of anxious reproach in his eyes which seemed to put her in the wrong. She did not know what to believe.

  ‘How could you go off like that?’ said Matthew, his eyes reproachful. ‘I’ve been dreadfully worried. Port Said is no place for a woman alone.’ He really seemed to think she was in the wrong.

  Findlay wandered away. When Anna was alone with Matthew he still maintained his injured, innocent behaviour.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she said, staring at him coldly. ‘Why did you take me to that horrible place?’

  ‘Why did you run away?’ he retorted. He avoided the issue entirely. He would not answer her. And she knew that he never would answer. Impossible to get anything out of him. Perhaps he really failed to hear her question, or
failed to understand. The impossibility of communication with him made her feel hopeless. She looked at his face. It was brown and blank.

  ‘We must go back to the boat,’ he said. ‘We must get a gharri.’

  A carriage was called and they got in. Anna made one more attempt.

  ‘I want to know what your idea was in taking me to that beastly place,’ she said. Her eye was stony.

  Matthew sat beside her listening to her question, to her voice of cold inquiry. He did not seem to hear. He seemed to hear only what he wished, to understand only what was acceptable to him. You might question him for a year and a day and he would never hear you – unless he wanted to hear.

  Anna felt this, and gave it up. She was quite bewildered. She could not reconcile the Matthew who had inflicted the nightmare upon her with the innocent Matthew who came afterwards. She did not know which to believe in. Nevertheless, she knew he was more of a nonentity to her than a nightmare. He would never become important. He was not real. She looked at him with a certain horror and apprehension, at his close, round, meaningless head bobbing in her direction. She hurried away as soon as she could. But he was not really of any importance, although she found him repugnant.

  The voyage went on, the Port Said incident dropped out of sight and was more or less forgotten. Matthew stuck closer to Anna. It seemed now that he had to be always with her. His popularity among the lady passengers was on the wane for some reason. Perhaps they had tired of his somewhat insipid attractions and had begun to see through him. Or perhaps it was he himself who had changed, growing less gratifyingly obliging. He was rather touchy these days; he started to quarrel with the men, to take offence at everything. He seemed to have developed a childish fear of being ‘left out.’ And so, of course, he was left out. And so he turned back to Anna, and would not leave her. Which was distinctly trying.

  Not that he interfered particularly. But he was always hanging round her deck-chair, urging her to partner him in the games, and, when she refused, sitting down beside her with his dumb, stonelike obstinacy and a rather martyrized expression.