The Collector

by John Fowles

  It’s because I’m so lonely. I have to look at an intelligent face. Anyone who has been locked away like this would understand. You become very real to yourself in a strange way. As you never were before. So much of you is given to ordinary people, suppressed, in ordinary life. I watch my face and I watch it move as if it is someone else’s. I stare myself out.

  I sit with myself.

  Sometimes it’s like a sort of spell, and I have to put my tongue out and wrinkle my nose to break it.

  I sit down here in the absolute silence with my reflection, in a sort of state of mystery.

  In a trance.

  November 21st

  It’s the middle of the night. I can’t sleep.

  I hate myself.

  I nearly became a murderess tonight.

  I shall never be the same again.

  It is difficult to write. My hands are bound. I’ve got the gag off.

  It all began at lunch. I realized that I was having to struggle not to be nice to him. Because I felt I must talk to someone. Even him. At least he is a human being. When he went away after lunch, I wanted to call him back to talk. What I felt was quite different from what I decided I should feel two days ago. So I made a new decision. I could never hit him with anything down here. I’ve watched him so much with that in mind. And he never turns his back to me. Besides, there’s no weapon. So I thought, I’ve got to get upstairs and find something, some means. I had several ideas.

  Otherwise I was afraid I would fall into the old trap of pitying him.

  So I was a bit nicer at supper-time and said I needed a bath (which I did). He went away, came back, we went up. And there, it seemed a sign, specially left for me, was a small axe. It was on the kitchen window-sill, which is next to the door. He must have been chopping wood outside and forgotten to hide it. My always being down here.

  We passed indoors too quickly for me to do anything then.

  But I lay in the bath and thought. I decided it must be done. I had to catch up the axe and hit him with the blunt end, knock him out. I hadn’t the least idea where on the head was the best place to hit or how hard it had to be.

  Then I asked to go straight back. As we went out through the kitchen door, I dropped my talcum powder and things and stood to one side, towards the window-sill, as if I was looking to see where they’d gone. He did just what I wanted and bent forward to pick them up. I wasn’t nervous, I picked the axe up very neatly, I didn’t scrape the blade and it was the blunt end. But then … it was like waking up out of a bad dream. I had to hit him and I couldn’t but I had to.

  Then he began to straighten up (all this happened in a flash, really) and I did hit him. But he was turning and I didn’t hit straight. Or hard enough. I mean, I lashed out in a panic at the last moment. He fell sideways, but I knew he wasn’t knocked out, he still kept hold of me, I suddenly felt I had to kill him or he would kill me. I hit him again, but he had his arm up, at the same time he kicked out and knocked me off my feet.

  It was too horrible. Panting, straining, like animals. Then suddenly I knew it was—I don’t know, undignified. It sounds absurd, but that was it. Like a statue lying on its side. Like a fat woman trying to get up off the grass.

  We got up, he pushed me roughly towards the door, keeping a tight hold of me. But that was all. I had a funny feeling it was the same for him—disgusting.

  I thought someone may have heard, even though I couldn’t call out. But it was windy. Wet and cold. No one would have been out.

  I’ve been lying on the bed. I soon stopped crying. I’ve been lying for hours in the dark and thinking.

  November 22nd

  I am ashamed. I let myself down vilely.

  I’ve come to a series of decisions. Thoughts.

  Violence and force are wrong. If I use violence I descend to his level. It means that I have no real belief in the power of reason, and sympathy and humanity. That I lameduck people only because it flatters me, not because I believe they need my sympathy. I’ve been thinking back to Ladymont, to people I lameducked there. Sally Margison. I lameducked her just to show the Vestal Virgins that I was cleverer than they. That I could get her to do things for me that she wouldn’t do for them. Donald and Piers (because I’ve lameducked him in a sense, too) — but they’re both attractive young men. There were probably hundreds of other people who needed lameducking, my sympathy, far more than those two. And anyway, most girls would have jumped at the chance of lameducking them.

  I’ve given up too soon with Caliban. I’ve got to take up a new attitude with him. The prisoner-warder idea was silly. I won’t spit at him any more. I’ll be silent when he irritates me. I’ll treat him as someone who needs all my sympathy and understanding. I’ll go on trying to teach him things about art. Other things.

  There’s only one way to do things. The right way. Not what they meant by “the Right Way” at Ladymont. But the way you feel is right. My own right way.

  I am a moral person. I am not ashamed of being moral. I will not let Caliban make me immoral; even though he deserves all my hatred and bitterness and an axe in his head.

  (Later.) I’ve been nice to him. That is, not the cat I’ve been lately. As soon as he came in I made him let me look at his head, and I dabbed some Dettol on it. He was nervous. I make him jumpy. He doesn’t trust me. That is precisely the state I shouldn’t have got him into.

  It’s difficult, though. When I’m being beastly to him, he has such a way of looking sorry for himself that I begin to hate myself. But as soon as I begin to be nice to him, a sort of self-satisfaction seems to creep into his voice and his manner (very discreet, he’s been humility itself all day, no reproach about last night, of course) and I begin to want to goad and slap him again.

  A tightrope.

  But it’s cleared the air.

  (Night.) I tried to teach him what to look for in abstract art after supper. It’s hopeless. He has it fixed in his poor dim noddle that art is fiddling away (he can’t understand why I don’t “rub out”) until you get an exact photographic likeness and that making lovely cool designs (Ben Nicholson) is vaguely immoral. I can see it makes a nice pattern, he said. But he won’t concede that “making a nice pattern” is art. With him, it’s that certain words have terribly strong undertones. Everything to do with art embarrasses him (and I suppose fascinates him). It’s all vaguely immoral. He knows great art is great, but “great” means locked away in museums and spoken about when you want to show off. Living art, modern art shocks him. You can’t talk about it with him because the word “art” starts off a whole series of shocked, guilty ideas in him.

  I wish I knew if there were many people like him. Of course I know the vast majority—especially the New People—don’t care a damn about any of the arts. But is it because they are like him? Or because they just couldn’t care less? I mean, does it really bore them (so that they don’t need it at all in their lives) or does it secretly shock and dismay them, so that they have to pretend to be bored?

  November 23rd

  I’ve just finished Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. It’s shocked me. It’s shocked me in itself and it’s shocked me because of where I am.

  It shocked me in the same way as Room at the Top shocked me when I read it last year. I know they’re very clever, it must be wonderful to be able to write like Alan Sillitoe. Real, unphoney. Saying what you mean. If he was a painter it would be wonderful (he’d be like John Bratby, much better) he’d be able to set Nottingham down and it would be wonderful in paint. Because he painted so well, put down what he saw, people would admire him. But it isn’t enough to write well (I mean choose the right words and so on) to be a good writer. Because I think Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is disgusting. I think Arthur Seaton is disgusting. And I think the most disgusting thing of all is that Alan Sillitoe doesn’t show that he’s disgusted by his young man. I think they think young men like that are really rather fine.

  I hated the way Art
hur Seaton just doesn’t care about anything outside his own little life. He’s mean, narrow, selfish, brutal. Because he’s cheeky and hates his work and is successful with women, he’s supposed to be vital.

  The only thing I like about him is the feeling that there is something there that could be used for good if it could be got at.

  It’s the inwardness of such people. Their not caring what happens anywhere else in the world. In life.

  Their being-in-a-box.

  Perhaps Alan Sillitoe wanted to attack the society that produces such people. But he doesn’t make it clear. I know what he’s done, he’s fallen in love with what he’s painting. He started out to paint it as ugly as it is, but then its ugliness conquered him, and he started trying to cheat. To prettify.

  It shocked me too because of Caliban. I see there’s something of Arthur Seaton in him, only in him it’s turned upside down. I mean, he has that hate of other things and other people outside his own type. He has that selfishness—it’s not even an honest selfishness, because he puts the blame on life and then enjoys being selfish with a free conscience. He’s obstinate, too.

  This has shocked me because I think everyone now except us (and we’re contaminated) has this selfishness and this’ brutality, whether it’s hidden, mousy, and perverse, or obvious and crude. Religion’s as good as dead, there’s nothing to hold back the New People, they’ll grow stronger and stronger and swamp us.

  No, they won’t. Because of David. Because of people like Alan Sillitoe (it says on the back he was the son of a labourer). I mean the intelligent New People will always revolt and come across to our side. The New People destroy themselves because they’re so stupid. They can never keep the intelligent ones with them. Especially the young ones. We want something better than just money and keeping up with the Joneses.

  But it’s a battle. It’s like being in a city and being besieged. They’re all around. And we’ve got to hold out.

  It’s a battle between Caliban and myself. He is the New People and I am the Few.

  I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.

  He’s worse than the Arthur Seaton kind.

  If Arthur Seaton saw a modern statue he didn’t like, he’d smash it. But Caliban would drape a tarpaulin round it. I don’t know which is worse. But I think Caliban’s way is.

  November 24th

  I’m getting desperate to escape. I can’t get any relief from drawing or playing records or reading. The burning burning need I have (all prisoners must have) is for other people. Caliban is only half a person at the best of times. I want to see dozens and dozens of strange faces. Like being terribly thirsty and gulping down glass after glass of water. Exactly like that. I read once that nobody can stand more than ten years in prison, or more than one year of solitary confinement.

  One just can’t imagine what prison is like from outside. You think, well, there’d be lots of time to think and read, it wouldn’t be too bad. But it is too bad. It’s the slowness of time. I’ll swear all the clocks in the world have gone centuries slower since I came here.

  I shouldn’t complain. This is a luxury prison.

  And there’s his diabolical cunning about the newspapers and radio and so on. I never read the papers very much, or listened to the news. But to be totally cut off. It’s so strange. I feel I’ve lost all my bearings.

  I spend hours lying on the bed thinking about how to escape.

  Endless.

  November 25th

  (Afternoon.) This morning I had a talk with him. I got him to sit as a model. Then I asked him what he really wanted me to do. Should I become his mistress? But that shocked him. He went red and said he could buy that in London.

  I told him he was a Chinese box. And he is.

  The innermost box is that I should love him; in all ways. With my body, with my mind. Respect him and cherish him. It’s so utterly impossible—even if I could overcome the physical thing, how could I ever look in any way but down on him?

  Battering his head on a stone wall.

  I don’t want to die. I feel full of endurance. I shall always want to survive. I will survive.

  November 26th

  The only unusual thing about him—how he loves me. Ordinary New People couldn’t love anything as he loves me. That is blindly. Absolutely. Like Dante and Beatrice.

  He enjoys being hopelessly in love with me. I expect Dante was the same. Mooning around knowing it was all quite hopeless and getting lots of good creative material from the experience.

  Though of course Caliban can’t get anything but his own miserable pleasure.

  People who don’t make anything. I hate them.

  How frightened of dying I was in those first days. I don’t want to die because I keep on thinking of the future. I’m desperately curious to know what life will bring to me. What will happen to me, how I’ll develop, what I’ll be in five years’ time, in ten, in thirty. The man I will marry and the places I will live in and get to know. Children. It isn’t just a selfish curiosity. This is the worst possible time in history to die. Space-travel, science, the whole world waking up and stretching itself. A new age is beginning. I know it’s dangerous. But it’s wonderful to be alive in it.

  I love, I adore my age.

  I keep on having thoughts today. One was: uncreative men plus opportunity-to-create equals evil men.

  Another one was: killing him was breaking my word to what I believe. Some people would say—you’re only a drop, your word-breaking is only a drop, it wouldn’t matter. But all the evil in the world’s made up of little drops. It’s silly talking about the unimportance of the little drops. The little drops and the ocean are the same thing.

  I’ve been daydreaming (not for the first time) about living with G.P. He deceives me, he leaves me, he is brutal and cynical with me, I am in despair. In these daydreams there isn’t much sex, it’s just our living together. In rather romantic surroundings. Sea-and-island northern landscapes. White cottages. Sometimes in the Mediterranean. We are together, very close in spirit. All silly magazine stuff, really, in the details. But there is the closeness of spirit. That is something real. And the situations I imagine (where he forsakes me) are real. I mean, it kills me to think of them.

  Sometimes I’m not very far from utter despair. No one knows I am alive any more. I’m given up for dead by now, I’m accepted for dead. There’s that—the real situation. And there are the future situations I sit on the bed here and think about: my utter love for some man; I know I can’t do things like love by halves, I know I have love pent up in me, I shall throw myself away, lose my heart and my body and my mind and soul to some cad like G.P. Who’ll betray me. I feel it. Everything is tender and rational at first in my daydreams of living with him, but I know it wouldn’t be in fact. It would be all passion and violence. Jealousy. Despair. Sour. Something would be killed in me. He would be hurt, too.

  If he really loved me he couldn’t have sent me away.

  If he really loved me he would have sent me away.

  November 27th

  Midnight.

  I’ll never escape. It drives me mad. I must must must do something. I feel as if I’m at the earth’s heart. I’ve got the whole weight of the whole earth pressing in on this little box. It grows smaller smaller smaller. I can feel it contracting.

  I want to scream sometimes. Till my voice is raw. To death.

  I can’t write it. There aren’t the words.

  Utter despair.

  I’ve been like that all day. A kind of endless panic in slow-motion.

  What can he have thought when he first got me here?

  Something’s gone wrong in his plans. I’m not acting like the girl of his dreams I was. I’m his pig in a poke.

  Is that why he keeps me? Hoping the dream Miranda will appear?

  Perhaps I should be his dream-girl. Put my arms round him and kiss him. Praise him, pat him, str
oke him. Kiss him.

  I didn’t mean that. But it’s made me think.

  Perhaps I really should kiss him. More than kiss him. Love him. Make Prince Charming step out.

  I’m thinking hours between each sentence I write.

  I’ve got to make him feel that finally I’ve been touched by his chivalry and so on and so on …

  This is extraordinary.

  He would have to act.

  I am sure I can do it. At least he’s scrupulously clean. He never smells of anything but soap.

  I’m going to sleep on it.

  November 28th

  I’ve come to a tremendous decision today.

  I’ve imagined being in bed with him.

  It’s useless just kissing him. I’ve got to give him such a tremendous shock that he’ll have to release me. Because you can’t very well imprison someone who’s given herself to you.

  I shall be in his power. I couldn’t ever go to the police. I should only want to hush it up.

  It’s so obvious. It stares one in the face.

  Like a really good sacrifice at chess.

  It’s like drawing. You can’t nibble at a line. The boldness is the line.

  I thought out all the sex facts. I wish I knew a little more about men, I wish I was absolutely sure, that I didn’t have to go on things heard, read, half understood, but I’m going to let him do what Piers wanted to do in Spain—what they call Scotch love. Get me into bed if he wants. Play with me if he wants. But not the final thing. I’m going to tell him it’s my time of the month, if he tries to go too far. But I think he’ll be so shocked that I shall be able to make him do what I want. I mean, I’m going to do all the seducing. I know it would be a terrible risk with ninety-nine men out of a hundred, but I think he’s the hundredth. He’ll stop when I tell him.