Let Me Alone

by Anna Kavan

  The letters from England arrived once a week. Anna sat down indifferently to read them. Her heart was dead and despairing.

  The first she looked at was from Lauretta – all chatter about Blue Hills whither she had just travelled from the Riviera. The second was a letter, an untidily written scribble from Catherine. ‘When are you going to invite me to visit you? I have had enough of Oxford. The time has come for me to make a change – the more complete the better. So hurry up and say that you would like me to come. How much longer do you intend to let your intelligence atrophy –’

  It was like a voice from the dead. Anna trembled as though she had received a shock. She glanced round the room. It was like an oven, filled with dull, dead heat. The punkah had stopped. She called to the man to go on pulling. Then she picked up the letter again. She looked at the writing on the pale blue notepaper, glanced up at the swinging punkah, and at the dim, closed room. She had passed into another world now, where Catherine could never enter. She felt that she had suffered a severe shock. A bitterness of despair came over her.

  She sat still, pale and bitter. It was a black world which she now inhabited, like a purgatory, like an incurable illness. How could Catherine come into it? It was not possible that she should come. Anna was alone in her degradation. A humiliating, outcast despair filled her. She could not face Catherine, or write to her. She was too much ashamed. Her life was shameful and lonely. There was no longer any hope for her, there was no chance of escape. Yet, in spite of her humiliation and the despair which possessed her, she still remained in some part of her soul aloof and untouched. It was the hard centre of her being which never altered. Nothing could touch that.

  She longed for Catherine to come to her. But a barrier of shame was between them. She wanted Catherine. But she was afraid that Catherine would despise her because of the ruin she had made of her life. She thought of the bold beauty of the other girl, of her brilliance, and she could not endure that contempt should take the place of admiration in Catherine’s large, intense, dark eyes. She looked at her own body. And already its fine lines seemed to her to be thickened and coarsened, she imagined that she could detect the onset of a heavy femaleness which was loathsome to her. She was afraid of Catherine’s flamelike fineness, she could not face it, because of the prospect of her own physical degradation.

  Anna wanted Catherine to come to Naunggyi. She had confidence in the power of the other girl to rescue her, she trusted in her, she was certain that Catherine would extricate her from the nightmare of her existence. It was a terrible blow that she could not ask her to come. It seemed that she had been waiting all the time for Catherine’s arrival to save her from Matthew, to set her free. But now Catherine would never come. It was too late. At the bottom of Anna’s heart was a deep wound of despair. She was certain that Catherine would have been able to save her.

  But she could not ask her to come. Her shame was too deep. Hopelessly, feeling that this was really the end, she put away Catherine’s letter, and did not answer it.

  CHAPTER 16

  AT the end of the week Matthew came back to the bungalow. Anna saw him walking across the parched, open space. He was quite well-made, but with the ugly, clumsy sun-helmet on his head he looked foolish, top-heavy, curiously like some sort of mechanical toy. He was healthy and strong, the typical man of action, he walked rather like a wound-up machine.

  She was repelled when he came into the drawing-room, his large fists dangling, his head dark and smooth, but not shiny, and his blue eyes glassy and bright. He seemed so unaware of her, like an animal. And yet his glance was so possessive, it sickened her with disgust. She was hostile to him, repelled by him, and yet indifferent.

  He looked at the quiet, seemingly impassive girl, and he thought he had got the better of her. She noticed the complacent, proprietary, slightly suggestive regard which so disgusted her. She could not bear to think that she would have to tell him about the child. She felt that she would never bring herself to tell him.

  ‘Is there any news?’ he asked, smiling and showing his sharp teeth.

  She shook her head.

  He came and put his hand on her shoulder in a sort of caress, a heavy, clumsy touch from which she shuddered. She turned aside her head, hoping he would not kiss her. She felt as though she were bound up tightly, in a knot of distaste.

  ‘Nothing happened while I’ve been away?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ she said, resisting him.

  His hand tightened upon her. He tried to draw her against him.

  A madness of opposition sprang up in her heart. She wrenched herself away. She knew she would never touch him again. Suddenly, she couldn’t endure to be touched by him. Her repugnance was like a madness in her. She was desolate and degraded. But she would never touch him again.

  Her opposition would never waver. She knew that this was final. She saw nothing but a dead, dry ugliness in Matthew. He was utterly repellant to her. Every nerve in her body seemed to strain away from him.

  Immediately, there was a flare of sheer conflict between them. Matthew stepped back. His face had gone stiff with rage. He turned his back on her and walked out of the room. Anna had bested him for the moment. But the ultimate struggle was postponed merely. Her heart was in a trance of despair, blank, ashy dejection. She wanted to die.

  In the late afternoon Matthew went to the club. Anna stayed alone in the house, sitting quite quiet, white, and numb. Her emotions seemed to have become deadened, her spirit hard and cold. Her thoughts made her miserable, so she tried to think as little as possible. At the bottom of her heart a cold despair lay like a cold stone. She would never escape now, there was no hope for her. Her hope was laid away in the drawer with Catherine’s letter, there was nothing but opposition left in her. She would resist Matthew, he should not touch her, she would resist him for ever. This was all that remained, this cold, negative force of resistance. The vivid flame of her real life was extinguished. Her real self was lost and dead.

  The miserable minutes passed, in the hot, empty, dilapidated house. It was insufferably hot. The punkah swung back and forward wearily. Back and forward, back and forward, the monotony caused a deep-seated physical ache in her. She went upstairs to put some eau-de-cologne on her forehead. The things on her dressing-table, the bottles and the silver-backed brushes, were almost too hot to touch. It was strangely dark.

  She went to the window and looked out. Great clouds were moving across the sky, though the air was deathly still. A curious coppery film, like a veil of electricity made visible, hung in the upper air. The parrots were making a great noise.

  She stood for a minute to watch the fluttering parrots. She had a sort of fondness for them, for the small, vivid, blue-green birds, so brilliant and jewel-green, darting and poising among the dry-as-dust branches of the tamarinds. She was sorry for them when, in the heat of the midday sun, they swooned with the heat, and fell down dizzily, small green-winged fallen angels, to lie half dead and palpitating on the ground. Now they were all dithering with excitement, for some reason, flashing and beating, and screeching their thin, sharp, frail little cries.

  The whole pulse of the day seemed stifled, the air heavy with suspense, burning, sinister suspense vibrating in the air under the clouds, over the still, breathless plain. It was about the time of sunset, but in the west, and over the whole sky, the threatening mass of cloud had gathered: the dark clouds roofed over the world. They looked black and massive as iron, and heavy with an ominous, diabolic portentousness. Like the iron wings of demons. And underneath the clouds, between the clouds and the earth, the strange electric luminosity hung, phosphorescent, shedding a livid gleam upon everything.

  There was no one about. The world seemed swept clean of humanity. All at once a desolation had descended. Away in the village, gongs were rolling their heavy notes on the air.

  Anna went downstairs again. The drawing-room was almost in darkness. She called a servant to open the shutters.

  ‘The rain is coming,’ s
aid the man, stepping quickly about on his small, quick, silent feet. In him, too, the dark thrill of expectation and excitement was perceptible. The forbidden, obscure excitement of the old demon-worship. He opened the wooden shutters with deft, rapid motions. Anna could feel the secret, intense, febrile preoccupation in him, rather ghoulish and frightening. He hurried silently away. She was alone again.

  Her mind and body alike were taut with suspense. It was almost more than she could bear. She did not know for what she was waiting – for the rains to break, or for the struggle with Matthew, or for her own destruction. All was strange, dreary, and desperate. Yet her inner pride held its own. Let her body be defiled, let her spirit be quenched; yet she would never yield, she would never really be touched. Just such a single, lonely spark of pure resistance glowed in her, indomitable.

  She began to revive the memory of her past life. It was almost as though she evoked for the last time the spirit of her real self. It was as if, through her memories, she might return for a little to her true self, as she had been before the nightmare had enveloped her, before this doom had come upon her, this misery of thwarting and degradation.

  She thought of her father and herself, and of Haddenham and her relations with Sidney and with Rachel Fielding, and of Blue Hills. And it seemed to her that her life had been a river flowing on strongly to some unknown but appropriate destination, from which her marriage had caused it to deviate. It was Lauretta who had diverted it from its proper course. But she felt no especial bitterness against Lauretta. Only she felt inclined to weep at the cruel purposelessness of her own frustration – why had it happened? And she wondered what her true life should have been, the course for which she had been destined.

  It was a torment to her to recall the past. For it was like looking back on a life of lost opportunities. It had been beautiful and full of promise. She saw the promise of her beginning, which could never come to fulfilment, she saw its death. And the rare, fine self which she had lost had lived so briefly, she had not had time to realize it.

  At length Matthew came back from the club. Hard and despairing and closed within herself, she waited for the start of the battle. She heard the heavy clatter of his footsteps outside. He did not look at her as he came in. His face was neat and unrevealing as ever, his eyes bright and blue and expressionless, his dark head was round and foolish-looking as it always was. But there was about him a dangerousness, a sullen, surly, slightly unbalanced air. He looked a bully. He glanced at Anna’s calm, abstracted face. Hysterical anger gushed up from his heart.

  They sat down together to dinner. The lamplight fell on the heavy, gaol-made furniture, bringing out reddish gleams, like blood, in the dark wood. The heat was stifling, volcanic, like a molten mass pressing against the walls of the house. Anna felt she could not live. Outside the windows, pale flickerings of lightning came and went.

  ‘The rains are breaking,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Will the rain come to-night?’ she asked. It was difficult to speak to him.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he answered, churlish.

  She felt she would die.

  The servants hurried on with the meal. They seemed electric, vibrant with secret excitement; not so much human beings as living conductors of electricity. Anna looked at the thin, brown, delicate hands of the man who was serving her. She could not bear to take the dish from him, lest his hands should burn her with a fire of electricity, lest sparks should fly from his finger-tips.

  Matthew sat silent in front of her. He was dressed in white, and his skin showed dark as leather against the white linen. She could feel the fierce, almost insane antagonism in him, the lust to conquer her. And she could feel her own resistance, unchanging, rocky.

  She knew she would never let him touch her again. She would die rather. But he was so fixed, so mindless, and the stiffness of his body was so like an inanimate thing. And he was determined, obstinately, blindly determined. Her heart grew colder.

  She sat at the table without eating or speaking. The lightning flickered incessantly upon the silver and on the blades of the knives.

  Finally the meal came to an end. They went back to the drawing-room, which was a dark, asphyxiating tank of heavy heat. They seemed to fall into a trough of sheer ghastliness.

  Anna took a book and pretended to read. The presence of Matthew was like a pressure on her head. She was all the time aware of his eyes watching with a blank, unmoving hostility. Her heart seemed to die in a last despair.

  As she sat over her book the wind rose, in a sudden crash, there was a noise of something banging at the back of the house, the trees made strange rushing sounds. She looked up, startled. Matthew got to his feet.

  ‘I shall go to bed,’ he said. ‘I’m tired, and I want to get some sleep before the thunder begins. Once the storm starts in earnest there’ll be no rest for anybody.’

  A ghastliness came over her. She was overcome by the imminence of the cruel struggle. A deep, helpless misery rose up in her. But she was quite steadfast, firmly set on her rock of resistance. He should not touch her.

  They went upstairs, and she stood in her own room, very quiet, awaiting, as it seemed, his onslaught upon her. She did not begin to undress.

  She looked out of the window at the black sky where great gusts of wind were tearing about. Vast hollow noises of wind or thunder were crashing behind the rushing of the trees. The lightning was beating nearer, like livid wings beating in the sky.

  Matthew came into the room. She was unaware. She was watching the void of roaring darkness. He saw her grave, jewel-hard face turned to the night, her slim body straight against the dark window. Her face was so abstracted and cold, the expression of her face seemed sinister, apart from humanity. The sound of the wind was like voices which she seemed to understand, like voices calling to her. She looked intent.

  Matthew stood motionless. He was half afraid. He half wanted to go away from her. But he could not. He could not go away. A sort of hysteria was goading him, goading him towards her desperately. His face was blank; there was darkness in his heart.

  At last he said:

  ‘Why haven’t you started to undress?’

  She looked round as if a shadow had spoken. Matthew stood stiff, just inside the doorway.

  She looked at him. But she hardly seemed to see him. She took no heed of him. He was affronted; his heart black and angry.

  ‘Are you waiting for me to help you?’ he asked, with a vicious leer. And a sharp pain leapt within her. She knew what was coming – she would have to fight him. He should not touch her.

  ‘I was watching the storm,’ she said coldly.

  Matthew watched her with a queer smile on his face. But it was a smile of enmity. He came a little nearer.

  ‘Let me help you,’ he said. ‘Let me take off your dress.’ And he smiled suggestively, with suggestive anticipation, as he advanced to take her by the arm. But she stepped quickly away.

  ‘Let me alone, she said.

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said, angrily. He contrived to put a nasty threat into the words.

  She said nothing, but watched him. He should not touch her.

  ‘Come!’ he said menacingly. He was half afraid of his seething rage against her.

  Anna watched him with cold grey eyes. And once more he attempted to take hold of her, coming very near, so that his brownish, neat face was close to hers.

  ‘Please go away,’ she said, avoiding him.

  ‘Why should I go?’ cried Matthew, looking at the silent girl with a grimace of fury. Her indifferent face looked back at him, pale and stubborn.

  ‘Why should I go away?’ Am I to be turned out of my own house by my own wife?’ There was a dangerous menace in the ridiculous question.

  Anna stood still, her heart cold as stone. She felt that the strain of the suspense and the unpleasantness must kill her. She wondered whether she ought to tell him about the child. But she did not. She could not bring herself to tell him.

  She moved towards the door
. Matthew came after her, grasping at her, and her heart beat thickly, for she knew it was a fight to the death between them. She would never submit to him. Her will was ultimately set against that, hard and inflexible. She put out her arms to keep him off.

  ‘Don’t think you can get away from me,’ he bullied. He contorted his face, the neat lips half smiling. There was something fundamentally obscene in his expression. Anna shrank back. She was trembling. And she was repelled. Her whole soul sickened in repulsion.

  ‘Come here!’ he cried, in a mad frenzy, snarling, rabid. He seized her by the arms and dragged her to him. A cord snapped in Anna’s heart. Her eyes and her face stony, she struggled against him. His mad, fixed, glowering eyes were close to hers. She strained back. It was the final battle between her and him. She felt herself utterly calm and cold. She had become simply an instrument of pure resistance. She jerked herself half out of his grip, and fought her way, struggling, to the door. He still held her by one arm, and clung to her fiercely, but she was almost at the door.

  She knew that if once she could get out of the room she was safe. He would not follow her. So she concentrated on the door, to reach it and free herself. He was panting and desperate. She saw his face above hers brown and neat still, with eyes like pieces of blue glass, meaningless, yet full of a mad obstinacy and a horrible frenzied lust. He should not conquer her, this hateful, non-human creature who was so much stronger than she. In loathing of his smooth, monkeyish strength she writhed and struggled and twisted in his grasp. But he would not release her. He swung her off her feet, and struck at her with his free hand, his eyes murderous. She felt a stab of nightmare panic; yet really, at heart, she was calm and even indifferent. Then his arm and his clenched fist came down hard across her chest. Instinctively she ducked her head to protect her face. The next blow fell on her neck. The next on her shoulders. Then, suddenly, he let go of her entirely. For a moment, she was as if stunned.