Dear Illusion: Collected Stories

by Kingsley Amis

  As I read, I began to wish more fervently than ever before that the advance of science had reached the point at which books and other printed or written material could be copied at the pressing of a switch, for instance by some development of the photographic process. This is 1925, though, not 1975, and I have had to do what I could with pen and ink. As you see, I started to transcribe the original, which is jolly simple Dacian, but not simple enough, I suspect, for those whose knowledge of the tongue is worse than rusty. Being simple it has lost little by being translated, though I should add here that the writer was obviously an educated man and that one or two words and expressions, together with some slight formalities of construction, suggest a date in the last century, most likely its second half.

  Enclosure

  Duminu wobisku. Preko wos ni par mizerikordi ni par pieti.

  The Lord be with you. I ask you not for pity nor for mercy, but for your prayers. You who are not accursed, pray to Almighty God for my wicked soul. You who go out in the day, petition all-loving God for His justice towards a child of His who lives in loneliness and misery, who stays always in the same place and who never sees the sun. Plead with Him that I have no choice in the end but to take my loathsome refection, and to lie and dissemble, which I loathe almost as bitterly, and suborn others to do evil on my behalf, for if I do not I shall surely die at last, and there is no life so miserable that it is not to be preferred to death. Say all this to Him, for His will is that I cannot say it myself; why should one of my vile condition obtain such relief? Say to Him also that I trust in His goodness and expect His deliverance. On that day there shall come one who will.

  Main letter

  One who will do what? is no doubt the question you’re asking yourself. I certainly asked it, and must have done so aloud, for Macneil, at my side again to write in an addition to the vast catalogue, expressed his ignorance and added that (as I had surmised) the following sheet or sheets were lost. He went on to say that he considered it to be about fifty years old, or a little less, and that it had been in the library when he first came, but with no press-mark or entry and no information as to its origin, merely a half-indecipherable note about a hearing before a quaestor or investigatory magistrate. Finally he asked me what I thought of the document. I told him I didn’t know, which was and is no more than the truth. It might be a fake, it might be the ravings of a madman, but I can’t believe it’s either, but as to why, that again I don’t know. Something about the handwriting bothers me; I’ve made a tracing of the first few words which you’ll forgive me for not sending on.

  Luncheon, consisting mainly of toothsome and expertly cooked river trout, was pleasant enough, enlivened moreover by much interesting talk from Macneil on the subject of local history; he has his own style of being agreeable. After the meal, as arranged, he took me over to the family tomb in the grounds. This, especially the interior, proved sadly unspectacular. It was strange none the less to see a plate in the wall with the legend ‘Segnu Aleku Valvazor, 1841–1891’ and a Latin text mentioning eternal rest. Macneil told me that when – but this is another piece of talk which I feel instinctively calls for ipsissima verba.

  ‘Not more than a couple of weeks after the burial,’ he said, ‘a party from the village came up and broke open the coffin and found . . . a corpse. A corpse showing unmistakable signs of decay, not Aleku in his habit as he lived. There were no more rumours after that.’

  I was startled, and exclaimed, ‘It took a damned lot of nerve to lead that coffin-breaking expedition.’

  ‘Yes, nobody seemed to know who did. Not a local man, it was said.’

  ‘When was this place built?’ I asked him.

  ‘In its present form it was completed in 1891. You’re quite right, Mr Hillier, the year of the baron’s death, by a melancholy coincidence much remarked on. No sooner had the Count prepared for a return to traditional practice by entombing the family dead outside the castle proper than his younger brother . . .’ He spread his hands.

  ‘Then there’s a burial chamber inside the castle proper.’

  ‘Oh indeed, an extensive one. I’d be happy to show it to you in the morning. I must be getting back to the library now; we take a large number of journals and I do so hate getting behind with them.’

  We were strolling quite companionably towards the castle when he asked me something that filled me with suspicion on the instant.

  ‘Are your whereabouts known to your people in England, Mr Hillier?’

  I replied carefully and truthfully, ‘No, at this moment not a soul has more than the vaguest idea of where I am.’

  ‘Dear dear,’ he said, ‘a most unwise omission in a country like this. If I may, I’ll send a man to the telegraph station. Tomorrow.’

  Whether he does or he doesn’t, my vaguely based conviction that nobody here should know of this letter, much less be given it to post, has become intensified. I’ll be sure to get it off to you myself in the morning, along with one to Connie. Not that the story’s over yet by a long chalk, I bet.

  I write this in the parlour I described to you earlier. Outside, the colours of the lawns and shrubs are beginning to fade as evening approaches; Magda has just brought me a lamp. Still Lukretia has not returned. With Macneil’s permission I brought here the library copy of De Mortuis Viventibus by Lartius Calasanctius, all of whose works I thought I knew; this one I’d never even heard of, but I’m too strung up to do as much as open it. Shameful of me. Perhaps I’ll be more capable tomorrow.

  I’ll write again as soon as I have more news. Good luck with the James Barnes Hitchens prize.

  Yours aye,

  Stephen

  VI – Countess Valvazor’s Journal

  1 September 1925 – . . . The last was no dream, but a memory of that fatal night, all except the moment when Stephen was there in my place, helpless as I was, and I woke cursing Aleku for a devil and a hound of hell. Now I have fed my hatred enough, and can come to the events of this very evening.

  After making my arrangements with Magda, I found Stephen in the parlour with one of Robert’s ancient tomes on his knee. He sprang up and we kissed with every show of passion, but I immediately sensed a constraint in him. And yet it was he who, breaking the embrace, gave a look of misgiving and mistrust.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gravely. ‘Is it your nurse?’

  ‘I stayed with her till she died,’ I told him, ‘that’s why I’m so late. It was quite peaceful. A good death. I had to go, Stephen.’

  ‘Of course.’ His voice was so gentle that I wanted to kiss his feet.

  ‘I’m sorry I rushed off without seeing you, but I just didn’t know . . .’

  ‘I understand.’

  I tried to brace myself. ‘If I were to ask you to go now, this evening, not as far as Arelanópli but farther than Nuvakastra, and wait there for me to join you, and if I said it was very important to both of us for you to do that, would you go?’

  ‘After being told nothing more? Not even just how important “very important” is?’

  ‘Meaning we . . . might never see each other again.’

  ‘“Might”?’ he said, still gently. ‘How likely is “might”? Nine chances in ten? One in a hundred?’

  ‘Oh, darling . . .’ I felt great tenderness for him, and great exasperation. ‘You’d have to have it all spelled out, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Otherwise I might feel I was being got out of the way for some sinister purpose.’

  ‘Sinister? I don’t understand, Stephen.’

  Now his look was stern. ‘Neither do I. Last night I saw the funeral of Baron Aleku Valvazor in the year 1891.’

  ‘You were remembering the picture in my sitting-room. That sort of thing often happens in dreams.’

  ‘This was no dream. I saw it.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ I insisted.

  ‘It happened. I watched it from your bedroom window. At least that’s where I started.’

  ‘How could you see anything?’ I aske
d in bewilderment. ‘It was dark.’

  ‘Outside it was light. When the . . . performance was over I found I was standing in a strange, completely bare room in some other part of the castle. I had the devil’s own job finding my way back, in fact—’

  I interrupted him. ‘All right, what if it did happen? How could it have anything to do with me and my sinister purposes?’

  ‘It has something to do with you all right. You were there. I recognized you.’

  ‘I was where?’

  ‘At the funeral. In 1891.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said coolly. ‘I was in somebody’s dream in 1925. Somebody I had just made a certain impression on, if I’m not flattering myself. But I’m going to humour you. Let’s suppose you’re right: you weren’t dreaming, you saw Aleku’s funeral, though I’m far from sure what that means. You couldn’t have seen me at it, because I wasn’t born then. But you might quite well have seen this person.’ And I opened my locket and showed him mummy’s picture. ‘My mother. She was there.’

  ‘It was you,’ he said, but he said it with lessened conviction.

  ‘You took it to be me. Of course you did. You would take it to be me rather than a person you’d never so much as thought about. Aren’t we always doing that? Taking someone for a person we know, even when the person doesn’t look anything like the someone? Haven’t you often done that? In your dreams?’

  The truth of that observation obviously struck him with some force, and turned him almost sullen for the moment. ‘Well, how did I get to that strange room?’

  ‘Darling, you walked there in your sleep. How else could you have got there? I couldn’t have carried you.’

  ‘No’, and a rueful grin.

  ‘That’s better,’ I said, trying to sound as much like an English governess as I could. ‘Now let’s have no more childish talk of sinister purposes.’ With that I kissed him in a very ungovernessy fashion.

  A little later he said, ‘All right – devilish odd, though,’ but I knew already that I had disarmed his suspicions. With his cheek against mine he went on softly, ‘But what was your real purpose? In trying to get rid of me?’

  ‘That was rather silly. I wasn’t trying to get rid of you. Did I sound like it?’

  ‘Not much, no.’

  ‘What I was doing was giving you the chance of ducking out if you wanted to. Making it easy for you.’

  ‘But why should I have wanted to duck out, as you call it?’ he went on as before.

  ‘I don’t know. Well, you might have. I had plenty of time for thinking on my trip, maybe too much, and in the cold light of day I found I just couldn’t believe in last night. For myself I could, but I couldn’t quite for you. I don’t know why, you gave me no cause.’

  ‘I say, Lukretia, really,’ he rebuked me.

  ‘Yes, I said it was silly.’

  ‘Was that what was wrong when you first came in tonight? My God, what an absurd question.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘You were not.’ He drew away a little and looked me in the eyes, smiling. When he smiles his mouth stays firm; it would not be quite so lovely otherwise. He has a little scar shaped like a V on the left side of his chin. Perhaps he got it playing some game in school, in that ‘quite decent’ school in Sussex county. I looked back at him and he said, ‘Would you like me to show you just how silly you were being?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I would. I’d like that very much.’

  What followed was joy, unlike anything he or I have ever had in our lives before or have ever thought about, but still very simple joy. Afterwards there was peace, for me the first I can remember; I cannot speak for him. But it had to end. I got out of bed, put on a robe, went behind the screen and opened the champagne.

  I could hear him laughing. ‘Why all the concealment?’ he asked.

  ‘I was afraid if I didn’t arrange it this way you might be distracted.’ Back in bed I raised my glass to him and said in my native language, ‘I wish you happiness your life long.’

  ‘May your good fortune never fail,’ he responded at once, raising his own glass. His Dacian is very correct, but his consonants are heavy in the English way. A delightful way.

  There was one more thing to be done. I fetched the small scissors from my dresser and snipped away a lock of hair. ‘Now your turn,’ I said. ‘No, let me do it for you.’ When I had taken a lock of his, thick and strong, I held on to it and handed him mine. ‘We’re official lovers now and can only cease to be by exchanging these again. Is that English? By giving them back.’

  ‘I follow you.’ There was a sadness in his eyes which at another time might have troubled me. ‘I’m glad we’ve done that. Is it a peasant custom?’

  ‘Well, a custom anyhow, though it’s dying out, as what isn’t? But I’m fond of it. I’ve never done it before. You needn’t go on holding that; the ceremony is concluded.’

  I went back to the dresser and left the two locks and the scissors. Stephen was comfortably settled against the pillows with his eyes shut.

  ‘Well, what do we do tomorrow?’ he asked drowsily.

  ‘Tomorrow we prepare for England,’ I replied. ‘And the day following we leave for England. And after however many days it is we arrive in England. And we go to London and see the churches and the palaces and the people, and we walk in the park and sail on the river. And in the country we go riding and we sit in the garden early and late.’

  I cried then, but there was no one to hear me; Magda’s potion certainly acted fast. Soon I made myself stop crying, for I had work to do, and tough work at that. I put on a gown of blazing scarlet and bedecked myself with my finest jewels. On my way out I bent and kissed Stephen’s forehead. As I did so it occurred to me that there was really no hurry; those with whom I had business would stay till I came. I settled myself at Stephen’s side and kissed his cheek, once, twice. By slow degrees a delicious languor stole over me; as I lay there I could no longer feel the pressure of the bed against my body; my vision clouded, so that I saw only vague coloured shapes without any meaning, and in my ears there was the sweetest melody I ever heard, in some sense under my control and yet at every turn delightful in its unexpectedness, always about to come to rest in a cadence of supreme poignancy before miraculously passing into fresh unbounded rapture. There was no name for the instruments that played it, nor for the bewitching odours that drifted to my nostrils. An inviolable warmth enfolded me. My well-being and happiness were both of them exquisite, and to be made perfect needed only a single small action on my part. And for its performance no volition would be necessary, nothing more than surrender to the onward flow of ravishment. Oh paradise, oh abode of the blessed . . .

  Suddenly I was back in my dream, that cruel dream in which Aleku chained me to the dungeon wall in perpetual captivity, but now there was another beside me, gagged and blindfolded like myself, and I knew it was Stephen. I screamed and came to myself in an instant. After a second’s inexpressible agony of mind I ascertained that, though my teeth had indeed been at his throat, they had not penetrated the skin and, as I watched with equally intense relief, the marks I had left began to fade. I got off the bed and knelt down and tried to say a prayer of thanksgiving, for I had no doubt about where that warning had come from, but not a word could I utter, as always. So I offered thanks in my heart; even He cannot prevent that. They were double thanks; I knew now for a certainty what I had been pretending was not certain, that I could not for ever, nor even for long, suppress the abominable craving that defines my state, and that Stephen would be in deadly danger as long as I could get at him. This knowledge has hardened my resolution to do what must be done. It must all of it be done; the danger to Stephen comes not only from me.

  Writing this last entry has brought me pain, not least in detailing the lies I had to tell my beloved. But it has helped me relive some of the most wonderful, the only wonderful moments of my life, and after forty years I find it hard to break the habit of confiding to these pages what nobody el
se must know and what, thanks to Magda, nobody else will ever know. So now, goodbye. To whom, to what do I say those words? No matter.

  VII – confidential Transcript of the Privy Inquest Under His Rectitude Quaestor Miron Filipescu, Nuvakastra, 3 September 1925, Extracts

  QUAESTOR: Fetch Prefect Sturdza.

  REGISTRAR: Prefect Sturdza, in the name of Omnipotent God I charge you to tell the truth in all matters—

  QUAESTOR: Hold your peace, registrar, and let the hearing proceed. This is not a court of law; it is not even an official council. I pray God our business today never comes before any such body. Speak, prefect.

  PREFECT: Thank you, your rectitude. I have here the paper brought to me at the police office by the witness Magda Marghiloman. I have satisfied myself that the handwriting is that of Lukretia Iulia Klodia Valvazor i Vukcic, Countess Valvazor of the same.

  QUAESTOR: Good, good, Read it, man.

  PREFECT: Yes, sir. ‘In the year 1886, being then twenty-nine years old, I was forcibly reduced to the abject and abominable state of vampire by my father’s brother, Baron Aleku Valvazor, who also debauched me. For four years thereafter we continued our hideous practices to the horror and shame of my parents and at growing risk to ourselves. The danger was not from the subsequent activities of our unfortunate victims, who were made away with when they had served their turn, but from the number of unexplained disappearances in the surrounding country. The village people would have come for us one fine day.

  ‘At the end of that period, early in 1890, the Englishman Robert Macneil arrived at Valvazor, ostensibly to serve as librarian and nothing more, but though my father would never admit it I have always been certain that, through some intermediary unknown to me, he had obtained Macneil for another purpose, namely to protect his brother and daughter from the otherwise inevitable consequences of their vile acts. At any rate, Macneil soon set about an elaborate deception. He procured a middle-aged man – a Bessarabian corn-factor, I was told – who resembled Aleku closely, or closely enough, and somehow lured him here. Having caused it to be given out that the baron was gravely ill with typhus fever, he administered to the unhappy stranger a fatal dose of one of those poisons that leave no exterior sign. A pair of local women, chosen for their ready tongues, were brought in to prepare the deceased for burial. A funeral was then elaborately staged and the stranger laid to rest in the mausoleum that my father had refurbished for the purpose. The behaviour of the peasantry on this occasion was gratifyingly credulous, but Macneil would leave nothing to chance. With every appearance of spontaneity, though in fact at his instigation, a band of villagers broke open the tomb after a sufficient interval and found, not the untouched, immaculate form they had been half-expecting, but what could only have been a dead body. To all appearance, Baron Aleku was no more. No such stratagem was thought necessary in my case; I was then quite undistinguished in horror.