Айрис Мердок: A Severed Head

'When you attacked me in the cellar.'
'So you know what it meant when I appeared in Cambridge?'
'Yes.'
'But you did not tell Palmer.'
She simply stared at me and I saw the old snake in her looking coldly out through her eyes; and I saw again in a vision the darkness of her breasts and how I had found her with her brother, and I shuddered not so much at what I had seen as at the fact that I had seen it. She could never forgive me.
'You wrote me a lying letter,' she said. She stood looking at me, her head thrust forward, the collar of her overcoat turned up behind her black wig of hair, her hands in her pockets.
'I wrote you a foolish letter,' I said. 'I didn't know at the time it was lying.'
There was a slight pause and I was afraid she would dismiss me. I flattened my hands against the door behind me and almost prayed. I divined distantly within her some obscure hesitation. If I could only find the right words I could keep her talking, I could in this brief and vital moment for a little longer hold her; but for a single blunder I would be sent away.
I said, picking my words carefully, 'I am glad that you are not sceptical about my being in love. If anything is evident at least this must be. And you must also see my difficulties, since you and the circumstances have not allowed me much opportunity for self-expression. It would profit me little now if I were to tear your clothes off. But I would walk through sea and fire if you called me.' I spoke this in a low reasonable voice; and as I spoke I thought of Palmer's return and of the perilously limited time that remained to me.
She listened as if attentively to this, her dark eyes pondering me, and said, 'You do not know what you are asking. Do you want my love?'
This startled me and I said, 'I don't know, I don't even know if I think you capable of love. I want you.'
After a moment she laughed, and then said, 'Martin, you are talking nonsense.' She turned away and pulled off her overcoat with a sudden gesture and went to the side-table where the drinks and the glasses stood. She poured out two glasses of sherry. I noticed with ecstasy that her hand was trembling.
I did not leave my post. She placed one of the glasses on a little table half-way down the room and retired to the fireplace. I came and fetched it and returned to the door. I felt that if I came too near her I might tear her in pieces; and I felt a quivering joy in my blood which was my sense of her realizing this too. Then with a delayed reaction I apprehended her having used my first name, and I had to make an effort not to cover my face.
'Nonsense about doubting your capacity to love, or nonsense about simply wanting you?' I said. I was terrified of putting a foot wrong.
'You don't know me,' she said.
'Let me know you. I have an apprehension of you which is deeper than ordinary knowledge. You realize this also or you would not be talking to me now. You are not a woman who wastes her time.' I trembled too, yet irrationally and almost with exasperation I felt that only some thin brittle barrier divided us from a torrent of mutual surrender. If I could only see what act of mine would break it.
'Return to reality,' she said. 'Return to your wife, return to Antonia. I have nothing for you.'
'My marriage to Antonia is over,' I said. 'Palmer is right. It is dead.'
'Palmer spoke out of his own conventions. You are not a fool. You know that there are many ways in which your marriage is alive. In any case, do not think that this is more than a dream.' And she repeated, 'Return to reality.' Yet still she did not dismiss me.
'I love you,' I said, 'and I desire you and my whole being is prostrate before you. This is reality. Let us indeed not be blinded by any convention about where it is to be found.'
'Convention!' she said, and laughed again. I laughed too, and then we were both tense and solemn once more. I was stiff with concentrating and with bending my eyes and my will upon her. She stood there in her ancient dark green suit, feet apart and hands behind her back, staring at me.
She said, 'Your love for me does not inhabit the real world. Yes, it is love, I do not deny it. But not every love has a course to run, smooth or otherwise, and this love has no course at all. Because of what I am and because of what you saw I am a terrible object of fascination for you. I am a severed head such as primitive tribes and old alchemists used to use, anointing it with oil and putting a morsel of gold upon its tongue to make it utter prophecies. And who knows but that long acquaintance with a severed head might not lead to strange knowledge. For such knowledge one would have paid enough. But that is remote from love and remote from ordinary life. As real people we do not exist for each other.'
'I have at least with you,' I said, 'paid all the time. This precisely does make you real for me. You give me hope.'
'I do not intend to. Be clear about that.'
'What anyway does a love do which has no course?'
'It is changed into something else, something heavy or sharp that you carry within and bind around with your substance until it ceases to hurt. But that is your affair.'
I felt that I had displayed weakness and that this perhaps was fatal. She moved and her shadow moved upon the floor in the cold sunshine. As she fumbled for cigarettes in the pocket of her overcoat I felt sure that in a moment now she would send me away.
I began to advance down the room and as I did so she froze for a moment; and then with deliberation went on lighting her cigarette. She finished and looked at me, her hands hanging loosely at her sides, one holding the smouldering cigarette. Her solemn face of a Hebrew angel regarded me, ready, stripped of expression. But I could no more have touched her than if she had been the Ark of the Covenant.
When I was near to her I fell on my knees and prostrated myself full length with my head on the floor. It happened as spontaneously as if I had been knocked to the ground. It was strange, but I could have lain there for a long time.
After a moment or two she said, 'Get up,' in a steady voice, very deep.
I began to rise. She had moved back and was leaning against the mantelpiece. I could not prevent myself from supplicating. On my knees I said, 'Honor, let us not fight like this. Only see me a little. I ask only that. I know nothing of how you are situated yourself or what you want. But I feel certain that this thing which has been shivering and trembling between us in this half-hour is a real thing. Do not kill it. That is all I ask.'
She jerked her head, frowning in an exasperated way, and I realized that I had broken whatever precarious spell it was by which I had in these decisive minutes held her. I got up.
She said, 'We are not fighting. Please do not deceive yourself. You are living on dreams. You had better go now. Palmer will be here soon, and I had rather you went first.'
'But you will see me again?'
'There would be absolutely no point in my doing so. Palmer and I are going away almost at once.'
'Do not speak so,' I said. 'I want you abjectly.'
'Dear me,' she said mockingly, 'and whatever would you do with me if you had me?'
These words, conveying to me the simple truth that she could not regard me as an equal, stopped my mouth at last.
As I got into my car I saw Palmer getting out of a taxi near by. We waved to each other.