by Anna Kavan
She recovered her equilibrium and stood still, her face sombre and fixed. She felt that something had broken in her. Matthew stood dumb, confounded. Gradually a sort of horror dawned on his face, incredulous.
‘What am I doing?’ he said, in strange gulping tones. A queer, complicated grimace disfigured him. His face seemed to disintegrate. He seemed to collapse all at once, to fall in upon himself.
Anna looked at him, turned, and went out of the room. It was over: she had conquered him. But she felt wounded to death; violated and defiled. It was the end of everything. Now she must die. There was nothing else left.
Trembling slightly, she went downstairs and opened the door of the house. The night was quite black, like a black hole, and full of wild ripping and rushing noises. The violence of the wind struck her like a flat blow. The palm tree in front leaned over in an extraordinary thin arch, its leaves almost touching the ground. Across the sky, from horizon to horizon, ran blazing paths of lightning, changing and bifurcating. And deep, ponderous rolls of thunder broke above the wind, ominously, like judgments given against mankind.
Anna stood still, watching the bent palm tree, which seemed to her very fantastic and unreal. She was still trembling, and weak. She felt that she had come to the end of her life. She wanted to get away from the house, away from Matthew. She felt she could never endure to see him again, or to hear his voice. She had the sense of something being broken inside her. Her feet seemed heavy and very far off.
She dragged herself out of the house. As she went out, the wind swept upon her, as though to carry her away, up into the air. She felt that it was shaking her. to bits, that she must presently disappear in this void of windy dark. Something pained her shoulders, hurting her, but she struggled on.
She was lonely, and lost. She was in an ugly, repulsive nightmare which terrified her and degraded her. And the only way out of the nightmare was to die. She did not think how she should die. Something was broken and destroyed in her. She had come to an end. It was all repulsive and strange: and incoherent. There was no rational sequence of cause and effect.
Struggling along in the dark, she saw the tremendous writhing tumult of the great trees, streaming and roaring overhead, and flying darkly against the sky. She turned away from the trees, to avoid them. She was afraid of the trees because she had once seen a python, looped and hanging from a branch, and swaying a little, with a kind of hideous, revolting negligence, at the end of a deep glade. She would not go to the trees.
So she went on, lost and solitary, in the black, crashing wilderness, without thought. The lightning blazed bluishly from moment to moment, revealing a spasmodic, ghostly world. She was very tired and desolate, drowned deeply in the nightmare and the black night, far from any security.
Suddenly she was aware of something new. Something was flying in the air, a swarm of cold, heavy insects flying in her face, striking her skin with flat, cold bodies. It was the rain beginning. The first great drops struck her in the dark, like beetles. She shuddered, and caught her breath.
Down came the rain with a shattering crash, as though the floor of the sky had given way. Anna bowed her head before it, her breathing became laboured. The cold mass of water was crushing her, beating out her life. For some moments she could not move. The rain was beating her to death.
The bare ground was already running with water. The rain fell endlessly in solid floods, blotting out everything. The wind had gone suddenly. There was now nothing but falling masses of water, crooked slashes of lightning jagging across the black, and slow wheels of thunder, loose in the black sky, rolling and drumming heavily.
She must get away from the rain. A strange, morbid irritation awoke in her because of the stunning, persistent mass of water. This was not what she wanted. She wanted death. But not this maddening, insensate bludgeoning, this crushing infliction of water. It was idiotic. She raged inwardly in semi-delirious irritation, her heart began to beat in a mania of irritation.
She started to go back to the distant light of the house. She seemed paralysed, yet felt herself moving forward with stumbling steps. The weight of water beating upon her shoulders bruised her, the water crashed down upon her, ceaseless, relentless, to beat her down. She could not protect herself, so the rain battered upon her.
Her consciousness was almost gone, she had no more reason. She knew she must get out of the rain. That blind, malignant mass of water was too much for her. It fell in a dead weight, to crush her. She was almost unconscious, her movements were automatic, she was crushed to unconsciousness.
Her feet stumbled, she faltered continually. The ground was a morass, the force of rain striking the ground rebounded in a steamy fume to the height of her waist. The rain descended triumphantly. She looked to the light, faintly. It was not far away.
Shuddering, in a tranced unconsciousness, she worked her way forward, feeling that she must fall at every step. The rain battered in a mass against her. She struggled on as if hypnotized.
Then suddenly, in a flash of astonishment, she saw the light near, she stumbled against steps and went slowly up. She knew she was saved. She climbed with a dim determination to the top of the steps. The intolerable infliction of the rain was lifted. She made her way into the house and collapsed. Everything went from her, she sat in a chair, in her sodden clothes, motionless, spent.
For a long time she remained as if quite unconscious. She had no idea of what she should do. Vaguely, she began to feel that there was something she ought to do. But what was it? She did not know. She could not make the effort of thought. The thunder gradually retreated. Then there was nothing but darkness, the empty house, and the hissing, steady crash of the rain.
At last she forced herself upstairs. It seemed a long, long way – a wearisome pilgrimage. Once she fancied that Matthew was calling to her. How thankful she was that he did not appear. She lay on her bed, shivering with cold, for a long time. Then she fell into a heavy, uncomfortable sleep.
She was rather ill for a few days, not delirious, but feverish and strange. A strange sense of inappropriateness haunted her like a persistent ache. She ought to have died that night in the rain. Why had she not died? She seemed to have suffered an unnatural partial death. Her spirit was dead. Why did her body still linger in life?
She was dead, and yet she was alive. Her body held her to life, in spite of herself. There was all the time a sense of falsity, of unreality. Why did her body persist in living? She had come to the end of everything. There was no object left in life. It was only decent that she should die. But her boay nailed her to life, nailing her down.
There would be no child. She was glad of that. She was glad that Matthew had not known about the child, that no one had known. It would be a secret now, for ever. A secret shame at the bottom of her heart. She tried to push the secret down, deeper, deeper, within herself. She wanted to hide it even from herself.
Then suddenly she thought of Catherine. In a vivid flash she realized that Catherine could now come to her. Catherine could come and deliver her from the nightmare and from Matthew. Her spirit stirred in its death-trance. She began to come back to personal life. But for some time she did nothing. There was a period of waiting – a strange waiting for life to swing back. She could not find herself at first.
Then she wrote out a cable and sent one of the servants with it to the station. She said nothing to Matthew, to anyone. She waited a few days in a state of passive suspense. She was not anxious or excited. Only she waited with all her being. It was the final crisis of her existence. If Catherine came, she would live. If not, let this be the end. At last it seemed that a decision was being made for her, outside her. She was almost at peace in her profound waiting, her sense of approaching finality. She had touched bottom at last.
One evening a cable arrived from Catherine: ‘I am coming on the next boat.’ The old flame sprang up again in her. Her life was not finished then. It went on. Hope came back to her a little, like an old warmth renewed. It was good that the ni
ghtmare had not destroyed her. A glow of warmth and vitality went through her blood.
She must tell Matthew about the cable. She wondered vaguely how he would react. But she did not trouble about his attitude. She was not interested. He did not affect her any more. Since she had conquered him, since she had bested him in the struggle for dominance, he seemed obliterated. The recognition of her victory killed the cocksureness in him. He had no more power over her, she knew she had subdued him to her for ever, her victory was final and complete. And he himself seemed aware of this. He knew he would never be able to touch her again. He did not really want to touch her. She had taken the heart out of him in her victory. He succumbed to her.
There was no reality in their relationship one to another. Matthew came into Anna’s room, where she was in bed ill. He was stiff and obliterated. He did not look at her. He could not bear to look at her cold, enigmatic, indifferent face. He had no assurance, no support. He never looked at Anna, if he could help it, while he talked to her. She was a horror and a humiliation to him. He was afraid of her. He wanted to run away and hide himself from the horror and the humiliating slight of her victorious disregard. He felt that she had humiliated him for ever. He was strangely effaced before her.
They talked civilly, quietly, to one another, about ordinary affairs, as two strangers might speak. They were like two strangers who were obliged temporarily to live in the same house. And all the time he wanted to hide himself from her.
Calmly, without misgiving or anxiety, she told him that Catherine was coming. His heart went small and painful at the realization of her contempt for him. He knew he counted for less than nothing.
‘I am not enough for you, then,’ he said, in a childish, querulous voice, resentful.
She looked at him across the room, studying him. He stood stiffly, his shoulders set square, the light behind his dark, round, inhuman head. She saw him. She saw him so distinctly that he was almost pitiful to her. She wanted to like him, to be friends with him. But she could not. Insensitive, blank, meaningless, there he stood like a queer effigy of himself. ‘A queer fish.’ It was so fatally true.
‘It’s the loneliness,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand being so much alone.’ She wanted to let him down lightly.
‘You haven’t done with me?’ he asked at length, turning his head. ‘Because this girl comes you haven’t finished with me? It won’t make any difference?’ His pride was broken; she had conquered him, but he clung to the wraith of his complacency. It was pathetic.
‘No,’ she answered, lying to him. She was sorry for him. She wanted to say more. But she knew that everything was finished. What was the good of talking? And her own hope was stirring warmly, beautifully within her. She had her own thoughts to attend to.
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