Anna Kavan: Asylum Piece

It is three days since I received the official notification of my sentence; three days that have passed like shadows, like dreams.

The letter came through the post in the ordinary way and arrived by the afternoon delivery. Curiously enough, I was feeling more cheerful that afternoon than I had felt for a long time. The sun was shining, it was a lovely, calm day, one of those premature spring days which sometimes come to encourage us towards the end of a long, hard winter. The beautiful weather made me decide to go out; it really seemed shameful to stay shut up indoors with one’s worries when the outside world was full of sunshine and life. I went across the fields towards the wood on the hill. This has always been a favourite walk of mine, and as I went I was astonished to think how long it was since I had last been that way and how my habits had changed, how I myself had altered, since the case started against me.

The colours of the landscape were as if washed pure and true in the transparent, windless light, vivid new sproutings like chilly flames appeared here and there in the hedges, the boughs of the trees were clouded with purplish buds. From the old yew on the hillside, disturbed by my footsteps, emerged with their strangely silent, sure flight the two brown owls which I watched like old friends. Walking back to the house I made a resolution to go out more in future, not to stay indoors aimlessly brooding, but to make the most of the natural world and to identify myself with non-human things, since they at least held no threat over me.

Oh, if only I’d known what I should find when I went inside my door! But no premonition warned me of what was coming, on the contrary; as I’ve said, I felt more optimistic than I’ve felt since goodness knows when. I remember that as I crossed the garden from the field gate I was thinking about a man named David P. whom I had met some time previously, a man who was in the same position as I was, waiting to hear the result of his case, and whose tranquil, courageous bearing under conditions of almost intolerable strain had aroused my admiration. ‘How do you manage to keep so calm all the time?’ I had asked him, half believing that he must be in possession of some inside information, or perhaps had influence in official quarters. And I had remarked, too, on the fact that he alone of all the accused people I had ever met, wore an un-anxious, almost happy expression.

‘Oh, well, one doesn’t gain anything by worrying, does one?’ he had answered me. ‘You may be sure that all the worrying in the world isn’t going to affect the final issue for us. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that the less we think about our cases the better: if one has confidence in one’s advisor one can safely leave everything to him. As for looking cheerful, there’s still a lot left in life that we can enjoy. The great secret, in my opinion, is to concentrate on the things which can’t be taken away from one — the past, for instance, and trees, and poetry…’ Of course, I had often thought of this conversation before, but only now — and how ironic that realization should have come just then! — did I seem to realize the personal application of what David had said.

With these thoughts occupying my mind I went into the house. The afternoon post had come and the letters were still lying on the floor where they had fallen when the postman pushed them through the slit in the door. I bent down to pick them up. At first there seemed to be nothing of interest; only a circular and one or two bills or receipts. But then, half hidden by a bulb catalogue, I saw the pale blue, official envelope, I felt the familiar stiffness of the paper in my hand, and my heart quickened its beat.

Right up to that moment I had no suspicion of what the letter contained. From time to time, ever since my case started, these pale blue documents have descended upon me, sometimes with a form to be filled in, sometimes with an ambiguous message or with an extract from some incomprehensible blue book, and I, unsuspectingly, took this for another communication of the same kind. Even when I had torn open the envelope and read through the paper enclosed I failed at the start to take in the meaning of the words.

‘It can’t be true — someone’s playing a joke on me’, I thought, as the import of the sentences slowly penetrated my mind. ‘Surely this isn’t how it’s done — through the post — in this casual way —? Surely they’d at least send somebody — a messenger —’ But then a curious vibration, like running water, seemed to flow over the walls, I saw the walls leaning nearer, as if watchfully, I knew very well that the letter was not a trick; and I was glad that I was alone in the hall with only the walls watching to see my face.

That was what happened three days ago. Since then time has passed in an unreal flux. Perhaps to-day, perhaps to-morrow, the final blow will fall: I know that I have, at the most, another week or ten days. What is the correct behaviour for a condemned person? — the authorities have never sent me a pamphlet containing that information! Sometimes I feel almost relieved to think that it is all over, that the suspense is finished at last. At other times it seems to me that I am quite incapable of realizing that this is the end. I look at the elm trees over which the thickening buds have flung a soft purple bloom, and it seems incredible that I shall not even see the leaves as big as the ears of mice. No, no — it’s simply absurd — it can’t be true… It’s somebody else who has received the fatal pale blue notification — perhaps David P.: he would know how to behave in such circumstances; he would bear philosophically and with fortitude the sentence which I am not brave enough even to contemplate.

I am constantly aware of the heart beating inside my breast, strongly and resolutely pumping the blood through my veins. Once I read somewhere that when the blood is thin it wants to return whence it came. But my blood is not thin, my blood does not want to fall back. Unbearable reluctance of the blood that will not fall! How many, dying on the scaffold, must have suffered this unspeakable punishment, not to be justified by any penal code.

Yesterday afternoon I lay down on the couch in my living-room. I had scarcely slept at all the previous night and I felt I must rest a little. But I had hardly put my head on the cushions when a voice seemed to shout in my ear: ‘What, are you going to waste an hour with your eyes closed when perhaps this is their last hour for seeing anything?’

I jumped up, and like a demented person, like someone driven by furies, I hurried through the rooms of the house, hurried into the garden and into the fields, straining my eyes to appreciate every detail, straining to store up within my brain the images of all these things which are so soon to be hidden from me for ever. Later on, quite exhausted, I went into the inn for a drink; but no sooner was the glass in my hand than I felt an impulse to throw it away, unwilling to dim even with a single drop of alcohol the sharp vision of what might be the last scene upon which I should ever look.

People were there whom I knew. They laughed and spoke together about the coming summer and what they would do in the long summer days. How could I stay and listen to their talk, knowing that while they are carrying out the plans made so carelessly I shall be far from every activity? And how can I stay at home, either, answering the questions of the gardener about seeds for the summer, and hearing the chatter of my little girl who knows nothing of what is happening to me, and who also talks of the future, of the summer, and of what we will do together?

The hours pass, some slowly, some like flashes of light, but each one leading me inexorably nearer to the end. Incredulous, I watch the hours pass without bringing any reprieve. ‘Isn’t anyone going to do anything, then?’ I want to cry out. ‘Isn’t anything going to happen to save me? They can’t let me be destroyed like this. A message must come to say it was all a mistake. Somebody must do something.’