Anna Kavan - The Parson

With sudden horror, he realized that he was including her with the alien hostile world, organized against him. And the idea already seemed to have destroyed his former uncritical respect and love, so that he continued, half against his will, to identify her with the general hostility that was piling up great fire-edged fortresses of cloud in the sky. His face grew more and more sombre as he drove on, in almost complete silence, in the slowly darkening light, which gradually assumed a coppery tinge, ominous-seeming after the weeks of sunshine.

*

Since the last little grim stony village they’d passed not a house, not a soul. There was only the everlasting grey moor with its lumpish tors stretching in every direction, an occasional sunbeam pointing a long, thin finger at it, ending in a spotlight of lurid brilliance. Or, from time to time, several rays would pierce the dense cloud, emerging like fansticks from one point, or coming from different parts of the sky to pass stealthily to and fro like the stilt-legs of luminous giants whose heads were hidden above the sky. Now, belts of forest began to alternate with the moorland, black, bristling fir-woods and dense huddles of bare, deciduous trees that seemed to be strangling each other, drowning in their own debris of dead leaves and entanglements of smashed limbs.

Rejane stared out at all this in silence, bored and disdainful, till a sudden nerve-shattering clatter of loose stones flying up made her comment indignantly on the state of the road.

‘What else can you expect?’ Back came Oswald’s muted musical melancholic voice. ‘It’s only made up once a year for the summer tourists. Nobody comes in the winter. There won’t be another car along here till next spring.’

‘We’ll actually be the last people to come this year?’

For some reason her original sense of northern strangeness revived at this thought and she gave him a wondering glance, which he, occupied with avoiding the ruts and potholes, failed to observe. It was all so uncivilized, so alien, so inexpressibly strange, to her: and Oswald himself was so much a part of the strangeness. His wintry blue eyes were related to the desolate landscape, filled with the weird mystic gloom she imagined as the gloom of the endless winters, when the sun went stooping across the sky, following its low arc, like a runner who must not be seen, mysteriously diffusing its tender rose through the falling snow — unexpectedly the spell of the north worked again.

Suddenly she was startled by a tremendous snapping and crackling under the wheels, as they crushed a tangle of branches blown down into the road. And now, all at once, winter seemed very near, waiting, just out of sight, like a threat in the air. Just for a second she felt a childish fear that winter would overtake her before she could get away — that she’d be caught and held her against her will in the hostile, alien north. It lasted only the barest moment; just long enough for her to recall the headland she’d seen on the map, pointing straight to the Pole, and to wish she hadn’t insisted on this expedition. Last night Oswald had been desperately anxious to dissuade her from coming — why didn’t he now suggest turning back? Before, he’d always been so quick to catch her mood and fulfil her least wish, almost before she herself had become aware of it.

Glancing at his set profile, she had the idea he kept silent now out of spite, trying to force her to say she’d had enough — which, of course, she never would. Indignantly she turned away, to look out of the window again; only to be flung against him as the car lurched, skidding wildly on what seemed the loose stones of a river-bed, rushing the steep bank on the other side. She opened her mouth in exasperated complaint. But, before she could get a word out, they reached the top, and her breath was snatched away by the wind that came charging at them, straight off the open sea.

She could only grasp, everything else forgotten, astonished by the sight of this vast, heaving mass of angry-looking water, appearing so unexpectedly, right under her nose. The road ran along the very edge of the cliff; there was nothing at all in front of her but the ocean of foam-capped rollers, dotted with rocky islets, each in its collar of foam — indomitable, even though drowned, the moorland tors kept their heads above water. Coloured like anthracite far out, the sea changed nearer the shore to peculiar acid shades of yellow and green, the waves rearing up, racing landwards, like the arched necks of horses, their wild white manes blowing back. The road was high above them most of the time. But periodically the cliff subsided, they sank to sea-level and drove on the hard white sand of the beaches which interspersed the jagged, stark, brutal rocks, where the waves towered high above them. Most extraordinary, it seemed to Rejane, to be looking up at those huge greengage-coloured monsters, pounding in like wild horses, crashing down their hoofs on the rocks with a noise like thunder, filling the air with their savage neighing and the misty fume of their breath. All her bored apprehension was blown away instantly, and replaced by exhilaration.

The waves exploded in tremendous thunder, the wind slammed and banged and battered the car, as if trying to blow it into the sea or smash it to smithereens on the rocks. While, like some magic snowstorm, thickening the misted air, pale sea-birds of many varieties rose and fell, or hung almost motionless on barely quivering wings, their fierce-looking beaks opening and shutting in ghostly screams, no sound of which pierced the louder tumult of wind and water.

All this she found most exciting after the dreary, desolate monotony of the moor. This tumultuous wildness of the elements appealed to her witch-self. Unaware of the cold, she let down her window to feel the salty wind on her skin; and now caught a thin, eerie thread of sound woven into the turmoil, a high, unearthly screeching from the crowd of escorting birds, drifting along with them effortlessly, as if drawn by the draught of the car. Listening entranced to this uncanny other-world accompaniment to the sea’s vociferous clamour and the bellowing of the wind, she forgot Oswald’s existence. She’d already left him in spirit, and didn’t even attempt to hide her rapt demonic expression — the man saw it, and was aghast.

*

Her lovely face, in its luminous pure pallor, with all its planes and outlines emphasized by the wind, the hair flowing back from it like dark water, had a pure unearthliness, like the face of a water-maiden, an ethereal quality the heavy, clodlike earth and its clod-hopping inhabitants could never know. But it also had the inhuman smile of a water-witch, chilling his blood, as if the woman he loved had revealed herself as this lovely but soulless and evil thing.

He shivered, in spite of his thick overcoat, not only because of the cold, though he felt it after his years near the equator, and had meant to ask her to shut the window. He left the words unspoken now, silenced by his glimpse of that undisguised demon-look, which chilled him to the bone.

It was the unawareness of her rapt face that was most hurtful and insulting to him, showing so clearly her obliviousness of him, her indifference to him and to their coming separation. He remembered how she’d told him he could hope, and was forced to acknowledge openly what he already suspected in secret — that she’d said it only to keep him quiet. Suddenly he was stung into acute resentment. What a fool she must have thought him. How she must have been laughing at him all the time, sneering at his credulity, his innocence. He was ashamed — his love had been degraded into something shameful, something he wanted to throw away. He looked at her again, intentionally filling his eyes with her cruel indifference. So she really was part of the general conspiracy against him. He hadn’t quite believed it before; now he let the idea take possession of him. He couldn’t endure his love any longer — he must get rid of it somehow. So he kept glancing at her, whenever he could take his eyes off the road, as if her heartless nonchalance, at which he’d been unable to look a minute ago, had become a magnet, irresistibly attracting his eyes.