The Other Passenger

by John Keir Cross

  “I am to-day receiving a few people, amongst others Madame Sand . . .”

  He sighed. He fell asleep.

  Madame Sand, heavy and sated, was going over in her mind some aspects of her work. She contemplated vaguely a novel at some time or another with Chopin as a character—Chopin in, as would seem necessary, a suitably aristocratic setting. Phrases, disjointed and irrelevant, kept coming into her head. “In both mind and body he was delicate . . . he was like the ideal creations with which medieval poetry adorned Christian temples . . . He had an expression both tender and severe, both chaste and impassioned . . .”

  His body seemed incredibly frail in her arms. She had a sense of immense tenderness towards him, a feeling of possession. Earlier, when they had been talking, she had had a recrudescence of what had been almost her first feeling towards him—that his genius was hers to control, that she it was who would widen his experience, his whole attitude, who would make him possible—and impossible. Yet there was something else—it was all something else: somehow not what she had meant. Nothing was ever just what one meant. It was as if, all the time, other forces were responsible—she moved as a puppet—Chopin moved as a puppet. They could not help themselves. They were little people, and alone. They were both, she felt, as they lay there in the vast hollow monastery, “like violin E-strings on a double bass . . .”

  In the first creeping light of dawn she saw, on the piano, Chopin’s manuscript—the “spider scrawl.” A Prelude. She tightened her arms round the thin body as she asked herself: Who wrote it? Who wrote it—where did it come from? Not from him—not for a moment from this stricken boy in my arms.

  Who is Frederic Chopin? Oh, my God, my God—who is he?

  She trembled a little from the cold. It was as if a shadow and the shadow of a shadow had swept through the cell. There were little voices all around her. Faintly, mingling with the sound of the rain, she heard Solange moaning in her sleep. “Mama, mama . . . the beads—I want my little beads. And to pray for Fritz. The beads, mama—he’s damned . . .”

  “This is his ghost,” George whispered in fear, as she looked at the waxen peaceful face beside her. “This is only his ghost, after all . . .”

  She fell at last into a troubled sleep. Chopin smiled, coughed a little, and settled himself more closely to her body. The rain went on.

  PART TWO

  MYSTERIES

  . . . and each thing has its parasite—even the mole. There is a special flea for moles—the mole flea. And there is a strange destiny for mole fleas—they too are blind . . .

  Macfarlane’s Natural History

  Amateur Gardening

  Tuesday, 18th April. In the train. Now that I’ve started, am actually in the train, it’s different. I feel better. If the simile wasn’t impossible, I’d say it was like coming out of a tunnel into the sunshine. But when did the tunnel begin? So long ago that I can’t remember—can’t remember what it was like before. No more than a few disconnected images—Jenny and I on the beach at St. Andrews with those monstrous breakers at our feet, the sound of a portable gramophone coming thinly down from the dunes—the Ride of the Valkyries I remember—fantastically irrelevant: Jenny and I at a concert in the Albert Hall—Mahler, it was . . . but what did I care about Mahler? I could only feel her warmth beside me, could only hear her breathing through those slightly parted lips, could see nothing but the movement of her fingers on the arm of her chair. Jenny and I at tea in her flat—toasted muffins, tea always that shade too sweet, fantastic little cakes from the French baker at the corner, the Cézanne that was always crooked, the piano, the books—oh, all those books, a little dusty, packed tightly together. Jenny and I at a party, Jenny and I at the theatre, Jenny and I at the cottage . . .

  Later. I had to stop there. We reached a station and someone got out—stumbled over my legs. But I’d got to a pause anyway. That phrase—“Jenny and I at the cottage.” Too significant—painfully. Something that stabs and hurts. How one’s life—one’s whole life—can cluster round one image, one phrase. A phrase like that. And I have to force myself to face it. Those two things coming together—an immense moment. Too immense, really—for me. Look at me, after all. Clerk, twenty-eight, with literary ideas and ambitions. An occasional article in the magazines, two novels, half a dozen poems (unpublished), a diary (slightly Katherine Mansfield) and—well, let me be honest—two score letters or so to friends that I hope they’ll keep . . . That, and the garden.

  The garden. That’s the big thing. How I’ve struggled over all those years to get my cottage and my garden! The advertisements, the useless journeys to see half-fallen hovels, the agents, the landlords and then at last, at last . . .

  It’s all over now. All that gross and fantastic nightmare—it’s finished. There’s only the garden now. To have wanted only this one thing all my life—it seems all my life—to have wanted it as madly as I have wanted it, and now to be on my way—finally on my way! . . .

  I wonder—shall I think of her there?—because she has been there? And will it spoil it? Will those two things, those two parts of me, cancel each other out? No. Foolish. The literary man in the ascendant. . .

  What does Dennis feel? Can he feel? No, I mustn’t think of it—mustn’t, mustn’t. They had to question me, I suppose—the fiancé—always the Sunday Paper suspect. But to have to go through all that. It was over between us. We’d fixed it. It wasn’t only because of Dennis.

  I tried not to see those placards at the station, but my eyes went round to them in spite of myself. I try not to write of these things now but my hands act of themselves. “Trunk crime developments.” And I know, I know. Dennis in prison. Poor devil. But why, why? . . . Why did he have to . . .

  I can’t write any more. It’s difficult in the train. I want to lie back in the seat and close my eyes. Another forty minutes—an hour and a half, counting the walk. And all that forgotten—forgotten­.

  A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot . . .

  Loathsome poem. But it runs through my head to the train rhythm like a delirium. A lovesome thing, a lovesome thing, a lovesome thing, a lovesome thing . . .

  Sunday, 23rd. Berkshire. Rain to-day—otherwise I wouldn’t be writing. I’ve built up the fire and made tea (find it difficult to write—hands blistered from digging—stiff and painful) . . .

  Yet what is there to say? The sort of contentment I have can’t be expressed in words—one doesn’t even want to try to express it. To go out in the morning, to dig, to plant, to sow—it’s its own expression. Only—sometimes it’s hard to believe it. I mean—sometimes I straighten my back and look up at the cottage and a sudden terrible fear comes over me that it isn’t true, that I’m really still back there in the midst of the nightmare and am imagining all this because of the sheer power of my wish to escape . . . But no. It’s gone in a moment. It isn’t this that’s unreal. It’s the other.

  There are moments, when I’m digging, when it seems that my mind sets itself to a rhythm—I find myself repeating some silly phrase over and over again—something like: “When did you last see your fiancée,” for example. And although it’s distorted and meaningless (all mixed up with that picture of the little boy and the Roundheads in the school readers), I get afraid sometimes that there’s something bigger going on underneath. I mean—oh, I don’t know what I mean. I’m afraid it’ll ruin all this . . . It’s as if my mind were taking revenge on me because I fight and fight and won’t let it think . . .

  I read that back. Where’s the literary man? I’ve given myself away. I’m not content. And because of all that. The fantastic irony of it. We had finished—I was coming here before it happened. And then because Dennis, because Dennis . . . Everything I’ve ever worked for, all I’ve ever wanted, knocked to hell! Beethoven’s Parcae.

  No. I won’t give in. I will forget it, put it out of mind. I will, I will . . .

  I stopped there to light a pipe. The rain’s over, I think, but I’m in the mood to go on; or rather—I’m in the mood no
t to stop.

  When I force myself to be honest I know that all the time I’ve been writing, I’ve been thinking over that last scene between us—seeing it dimly in my mind, misty and obstructed because of the mental effort to write. As in a glass darkly. (If ever I write the story of all this, that’s what I’ll call it—As In a Glass Darkly.) I remember going to her flat that night, knowing I shouldn’t go, that it was already over between us. I had some flowers with me (futile gesture—I’d only bought them on the way to cover something up from myself) and a big slab of the cake she used to like so much. When I went in Dennis was already there. I had known he would be, of course, but somehow it was still a surprise—a surprise that what I had known had been confirmed, I imagine. Jenny was standing close to the fire—very tall and slim and dignified in a black gown. I gave her the flowers and the cake and then we all three looked at each other in a futile and foolishly antagonistic sort of way. There was nothing to stay for—nothing at all—but somehow it was absurd simply to disappear again. Besides, I wanted to look at them—I wanted to look at Dennis—to see why I’d failed and he succeeded . . .

  Later he went over to the piano and began to play—Chopin, the Fantaisie Impromptu. During that sickly middle theme he looked across and smiled at her and I could see then, quite apart from all I was legitimately entitled to feel against him—I could see then that there was something wrong with him—some quality of mind that was missing, a sort of perverted and impersonal malice that could make him capable of—oh, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Only there was that thing, and I saw it.

  When I left, Jenny came to the door with me. Another example of the terrible flatness of the big moments of life. I said I hoped she’d be happy with Dennis—and all the time I was fighting down the part of me that was saying that she was no more than a vulgar little tart and would leave him sooner or later for someone else, just as she had left me for him. She asked me what I was going to do and I said the cottage. She laughed. “You always liked amateur gardening, didn’t you?” she said. What could I say to that? It was the one futile, bourgeois phrase. I suddenly had to see her as I’d always hoped she wasn’t. Amateur gardening! . . .

  Why am I writing all this? I read back, and all the time it’s as if I’m addressing someone—even as if I were getting something off my chest. . . Should it matter now, after that final revelation about her character? Why should she come and poison this one piece of my life that should be apart? She had nothing to do with me—not this part of me. Not even before, on the beach at St. Andrews, for example. No. I think it was something else. When I was all ready to come down here, for instance, and then had to be held back because of that. “When did you last see your fiancée? . . .”

  Yesterday I went to the village. I didn’t have to. I told myself it was to get tobacco, lest I should run out over the week-end. I bought a paper in the shop. That was why I went—in spite of myself. Hell, if one has known a person—no matter whom—one is interested, one ought to be interested . . .

  They’ve found the legs. Written like that it’s revolting. The legs—and they were beautiful, I used to love her legs.

  Why won’t it leave me in peace? What had it all to do with me? What right had it to happen at this one particular moment? Because I was once engaged to her. Two things superimposed in time—an accident.

  Yet, in a sense, I can write impersonally enough. Her death means nothing to me—except in that it has broken up my peace. She herself—what do I care about her? What do I care about Dennis? He’s in prison. It’s finished.

  27th. Thursday. These past few days a new thought has come to disturb me. Suppose they haven’t finished questioning me—suppose they come down here, here! No—they couldn’t. If they must question me, I’ll go to them—I’ll go back to town. I can’t have them here, in my garden. This one thing I must keep apart.

  It’s getting worse—more difficult. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I tried reading, but the words were meaningless. I kept seeing her face on the page, smiling—and Dennis’s smile as he looked across from the piano that night . . .

  Later. To the village again this evening. They were talking about it in the pub. I wanted to run away—to run and run. And then I wanted to make the big gesture—yes, to tell them I was the fiancé. “Knew her—of course I knew her,” I could hear myself say. “Why—I was engaged to her! I’ve caressed her—I’ve felt her arms round my neck—yes, those very arms you’re talking about, the ones they’ve just found . . .”

  As I walked back a mist was settling over the fields. Last year, when Jenny was with me, I remember we stood at the cottage window and watched it—exactly like that. And I told her about the garden, what I was going to do—how someday, when I had enough money, I was going to give up my job in London and come down here for good, writing and gardening. Oh, all my hopes and dreams . . . And all she was thinking—I know it now: “He was always fond of amateur gardening . . .”

  It’s late. Terribly quiet. I’ve let the fire die down almost to nothing. But I can’t go to bed. I can’t screw up my courage to the point of turning out the lamp. Yet what is there to be afraid of? I’ve dealt with it all—my mind is settled and balanced. I have my philosophy, worked out, perfectly ordered: there’s no room for that sort of thing . . . If I feel like this, what about Dennis? Poor devil . . .

  I wonder if anybody ever reads Trilby nowadays? Svengali, even after he was dead, exerting his influence . . . Lord, how meretricious that allusion is! I’m losing my grip—can’t write, can’t think.

  I’m cold. One more cigarette. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair! If you only knew what I’ve gone through—all my life! All the beastly humiliation, the desperate struggle to get enough money to get here for good, the shelving of principles, having to kowtow to a set of beastly money-grubbers—and now this!

  They’re looking for the head. I heard that in the pub this evening—someone showed me a paper. Dennis won’t confess—says nothing. Oh God, oh God! . . .

  Wednesday, 17th May. No serious rain for three weeks. Much better. By forcing myself to work all day I can keep my mind clear. But it’s an immense effort.

  Reading back this part of my journal I can see it’s all wrong. It’s muddy. I want to be more detached—factual. Lots of things have disappeared in the confusion. I used to have a gift for irony, for instance . . .

  Two incidents. The first was when my nearest neighbour came over to see me about some wood on my ground. I could see that that was only a pretext: he kept looking at me curiously, with a foolish half-smile, as if he and I shared some agreeable secret. I felt myself getting more and more irritated. He made one or two clumsy attempts to draw me into conversation. Just as he was going he allowed his smile to expand into a fatuous grin. “Excuse me, Mr. Baxter,” he said, “but are you the same Mr. Baxter that was a witness in this trunk crime business?” I didn’t reply. I wanted to kick him off my land—get his filthy leer out of sight of my garden. “I thought I recognised you,” he went on. “And the—er—young lady—she was here with you last year, wasn’t she? . . .”

  When I look back now the whole incident seems grotesque and irrelevant. He talked as if, as if . . . I mean, there was something so damned matter of fact about his tone—except for that silly smile . . . And then I thought of all that his visit would mean—gossip round the village, people coming out to look . . . Quite suddenly I lost control. We were standing in the doorway and I screamed out something and slammed the door in his face. Next thing I remember is standing at the window watching him walking over the fields. He had a limp. I swear from the set of his back that he was laughing. I wanted to rush out after him and get my fingers round his throat. And suddenly I became aware that I had something in my hand. The wood-axe. I must have snatched it up when I slammed the door. I didn’t remember, couldn’t recollect . . .

  The other thing I don’t want to write about. But I must force myself. Small, trivial—an example of how my imagination is being affect
ed by all this. All that subterranean part of my mind I keep repressing . . .

  Last week—Wednesday—I was working in the garden—sowing seeds at the foot of the vegetable patch. I’d reached the end of the row and was smoothing over the soil, when, quite clearly, I heard someone call from the house that tea was ready. “Coming, Jenny,” I called, and then suddenly I remembered and straightened my back. I went, hot—clammy. Yet I could have sworn . . .

  I’ve tried to write these two things impersonally, but even here I’ve failed. Nothing can reproduce the enormous effect they had on me. Now that I’m quieter I try to analyze them and my reactions to them. I look out into the garden and it seems—did they really happen? I mean—oh, it’s impossible. My mind’s a jumble. I can’t control anything, anything.

  I try not to be indignant any more. But how can I help it? It’s too great a struggle. Sometimes I think it would be better to submit. But to what? Jenny’s dead. And I know, I know what she was. One can understand women like that being murdered. It’s the only way one can finally touch them and keep them. That smile of Dennis’s was the desire to touch. I’m not sorry for him. No. Only . . .