Anna Kavan - Ice

Telling her to open it later, I presented her with a small package containing a bracelet she had admired, and a cheque on my personal account. ‘I’ve brought you some good news, too. I’ve come to say good-bye.’ She looked disconcerted, asked what I meant. ‘I’m leaving tonight. By plane. Aren’t you pleased?’ As she only stared silently, I went on: ‘You’ve always wanted to get rid of me. You must be glad I’m going at last.’ A pause, then her voice, cold, resentful. ‘What do you expect me to say?’ I was puzzled by this reaction. She continued to survey me coldly, asked with sudden bitterness: ‘What sort of a man do you think you are?’ The tone was meant to be scathing. ‘Now perhaps you see why I’ve never trusted you. I always knew you’d betray me again … go off and leave me, just as you did before.’ I protested: ‘That’s grossly unfair! You can’t blame me for going after you’ve told me to go, made it completely clear that you’ve no time for me—I’ve hardly set eyes on you since we got here.’ ‘Oh …!’ With a disgusted exclamation, she turned her back, took a few steps away from me.

The full skirt swirling, a silky shimmer like moonlight on violets; the bright, heavy hair swinging, scintillating with violet highlights. I followed, touched her hair with the tips of my fingers, felt it ripple with life. Her arms had a soft satin sheen, the skin smooth and scented, a chain of violets round the thin wrist. I put my arms round her and kissed her neck. Instantly her whole body tensed in violent resistance, she twisted herself away. ‘Don’t touch me! I don’t know how you have the nerve….’ Her voice seemed to fail on the edge of tears, then rose again thinly: ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you go? And don’t come back this time. I never want to see you again, or be reminded of you!’ She pulled off her watch and a ring I had given her, flung them wildly in my direction; began trying to unfasten her necklace, hands at the back of her head, the raised arms giving her slight body a hint of voluptuousness it did not really possess. With an effort I refrained from embracing her again, pleaded with her instead. ‘Don’t be so angry. Don’t let’s part like this. You must know how I’ve felt about you all this time. You know how I’ve always followed you, forced you to come with me. But you’ve said so consistently that you hated me, wanted nothing to do with me, that I’ve finally had to believe you.’ I was only being half honest, and knew it. Tentatively I took her hand; it was stiff, unresponsive, but she did not take it away, let me go on holding it while she gazed at me fixedly. With doubt, criticism, accusation her eyes rested … serious, innocent, shadowed eyes; the hand behind her head still engaged with the necklace; the glittering hair, the scent of violets, close to my hand; then the grave voice…. ‘And if I hadn’t said those things, would you have stayed with me?’

This time it seemed important to speak the whole truth: but I could not be certain what that was, and in the end, the only true words seemed to be: ‘I don’t know.’

Immediately she became furious, tore her hand out of mine; the other hand tugged at the chain round her neck, broke it, beads shot all over the room. ‘How can you be so utterly heartless—and so brazen about it! Anyone else would be ashamed … but you … you don’t even pretend to have any feelings … it’s too horrible, hateful … you simply aren’t human at all!’ I was sorry, I had not wanted to hurt her: I could understand her indignation, in a way. There seemed nothing that I could say. My silence enraged her still more. ‘Oh, go on! Go away! Go!’ She turned on me suddenly, pushed me with a force for which I was unprepared, so that I stumbled back, ran my elbow into the door. It was painful, and I asked in annoyance: ‘Why are you so anxious to get me out of the room? Are you expecting somebody else? The owner of that open car you were in?’ ‘Oh, how I loathe and despise you! If only you knew how much!’ She pushed me again. ‘Get out, can’t you? Go, go, go!’ She took a deep breath, lunged at me, started pounding my chest with her fists. But the effort was too much, she abandoned it at once and leant against the wall, her head drooping. I saw that her shadowed face looked bruised by emotion, before the bright hair swung forward, concealing it. There was a brief pause, long enough for me to feel a chilly sensation creep over me; the adumbration of emptiness, loss … of what life would be like without her.

Action was needed to drive away this unpleasant feeling. I put my hand on the door knob, and said, ‘All right; I’ll go now,’ half hoping to be detained at the last moment. She did not move or speak, made no sign. Only, as I opened the door, a funny little sound escaped from her throat; a sob, a choke, a cough, I could not tell which. I went out into the passage, walked quickly past all the closed doors, back to my own room.

There was still a little time left. I rang for a bottle of Scotch and sat drinking. I felt uncertain, divided in myself. My bag was already packed and had been taken downstairs. In a few minutes I would have to follow .. . unless I changed my plans, stayed here after all. … I remembered that I had not said goodbye, wondered whether to go back, could not make up my mind. I was still undecided when it was time to go.

I had to pass her door again on the way down. I hesitated outside it for a second, then hurried on to the lift. Of course I was leaving. Only a madman would waste this almost miraculous chance of getting away. I could not possibly hope for another.

The news I heard during the flight confirmed my worst fears. The world situation seemed to be entering its last fatal phase. The elimination of many countries, including my own, left no check on the militarism of the remaining big powers, who confronted each other, the smaller nations dividing allegiance between them. Both principals held stocks of nuclear weapons many times in excess of the overkill stage, so that the balance of terror appeared to be nicely adjusted. But some of the lesser countries also possessed thermo-nuclear devices, though which of them was not known: and this uncertainty, and the resulting tension, provoked escalating crises, each of which brought nearer the final catastrophe. An insane impatience for death was driving mankind to a second suicide, even before the full effect of the first had been felt. I was profoundly depressed, left with a sense of waiting for something frightful to happen, a sort of mass execution.

I looked at the natural world, and it seemed to share my feelings, to be trying in vain to escape its approaching doom. The waves of the sea sped in disorderly flight towards the horizon; the sea birds, the dolphins and flying fish, hurtled frenziedly through the air; the islands trembled and grew transparent, endeavouring to detach themselves, to rise as vapour and vanish in space. But no escape was possible. The defenceless earth could only lie waiting for its destruction, either by avalanches of ice, or by chain-explosions which would go on and on, eventually transforming it into a nebula, its very substance disintegrated.

I went through the jungle alone, searching for the Indris, believing their magic influence might lift the dead-weight of depression which had fallen on me. I did not care whether I saw or dreamed them. It was hot, steamy; the mad intensity of the sun pouring down all its force on the equator for the last time. My head was aching, I was exhausted: unable to stand the burning sun any longer, I lay down in black shade, shut my eyes.

At once I felt that the lemurs were near me. Or was it their nearness that abolished despair and dread? It seemed more as if I received a message of hope from another world; a world without violence or cruelty, in which despair was unknown. I had often dreamed of this place, where life was a thousand times more exciting and splendid than life on earth. Now one of its inhabitants seemed to stand beside me. He smiled at me, touched my hand, spoke my name. His face was calm and impartial, timelessly intelligent, full of goodwill, impossible to associate with any form of pretence.