Anna Kavan - The Parson

If not the actual danger, then that worse thing, the exudation of ancient evil, would have sent most people hurrying out into the fight of day. To Rejane, however, the malevolence in the air was the appropriate atmosphere of the past, already starting to come alive again for her. The magic of the north demonstrated its power by reclaiming her in this way from the civilized world, which, until such a short time ago, had been her only reality. The world of cities was obliterated again by the other more potent, more ancient spell, here about to be consummated. Entranced, she gave herself up as to an unseen presence leading her on, moving with curious sleep-walking sureness, unperturbed by the many pitfalls through which she might have been precipitated into the submerged torture chambers and oubliettes lower down, or by the awful cold blight that was in the atmosphere.

Spellbound, she had become a queen in her dreaming, crowned, feeling the weight of trailing velvet, ermine white at her wrists and throat, as she approached the inner funerary chamber, the core of the place, for which, unconsciously, she was making. A flurry of misshapen ghosts greeted her entrance, shooting up to the groined ceiling, and crouching down, gnome-like, in the folds of the arras — for an instant she saw it all quite distinctly: the sable, gold-emblazoned hangings of the catafalque, lit by many tall candles, which, guttering in the draught of her trailing robes, sent flying in all directions the shadows of the fierce, bearded men standing with drawn swords, on guard.

Then, abruptly, her fantasy fled, swift as the shadows. Water sounds, which it had reduced to the droning of incantations, rose suddenly to a loud imperious shouting. All of a sudden the sea sounded frighteningly near.

She had gone so far in her dream that it took her another second to come back. To her amazement and horror, she saw then, in the daylight that entered as if through the mouth of a cave, a shocking precipice, right at her feet, where the floor collapsed into the seething water — from out there came the ominous rumbling boom of an approaching wave.

And, before she had time to think even, a terrifying great wall of water was rushing at her, bearing down upon her like an avalanche, yelling triumphantly as it came, and gurgling with sadistic glee. Her heart plunged in sudden terror, instinctively she jumped back, and felt a sickening movement beneath her, as the stone rocked under her weight, covered with slippery weed on which she could get no foothold. Wildly swaying, she struggled and struggled to get her balance, while the mountainous surge of water raced towards her, a ghostly, pale, impossible bird floating above, its reflected wings writhing like snakes on the monstrously swollen bulk of grey water.

With the ghastly sickness of nightmare she struggled in vain, her hands helplessly clutching and clawing the bare, slimy walls, finding nothing to grip, the rock always tilting further under her feet, and the wave towering up hideously, filling the world with its hugeness, its crashing thunder and icy cold flying spray.

In a blind, unconscious frenzy she bent herself back until her spine seemed to break; hearing, above all that insane water noise her own short, horrible, unnatural scream; seeing, at this moment of ultimate horror, the pitiless, pale bird-eye indifferently watching; as, in an agonized slither, she started lurching, sliding and slipping, helpless, down to the sea. With an icy shock as though death had already claimed her, she felt the cold spray on her face.

Instantly then, another shock shook right through her, she felt herself grasped and dragged back. A pair of arms went round her like iron bands, holding her, pulling her back somehow, away from the charging mountain of water and its fatal, freezing breath. She was barely conscious, shuddering so convulsively that she was almost sick. But the arms remained locked round her, and, gradually, she was dragged back, limply sliding and hardly conscious, over the unsteady stones: until the floor became solid again, the daylight dimmed; the sea’s thunder receded, there was no more impossible great floating bird-ghost.

*

Rejane felt the floor steady under her feet, heard the sea noise much diminished, and slowly began to understand she was safe. But she could not easily return to the living world. She had died, her life had been violated by the death-kiss of the sea. She was still shuddering so horribly from the shock, which had shaken her to the very last fibre, that the solid stone too seemed to be shaking round her, as if the whole place were about to come down.

How could she believe she’d escaped from the sea, when she still heard the waves thudding against the stone, shaking the ruin with their explosions? She seemed to see all the time that awful great gap tearing her dream of the past, the horrible wall of water charging at her, the spectral, snake-winged bird with its fierce, evil, slashing beak. She could not come back to life while she saw these things, she could not speak or stop shivering.

She still belonged to that ghastly unstable world where there was nothing to hold to, everything swirling round her, the rock slipping under her feet. Only if she could make the moment of her slithering, sickening plunge seem unreal, would she be able to return to her own existence. This knowledge came, not from her shocked, non-functioning brain, but from a far deeper instinctual source, productive only of absolute certainties.

Without almost believing that she was a superior being, she could not live. So she couldn’t allow herself to know she had looked in the eye of extinction, or felt the sea’s icy kiss. She must convince herself that this had not happened, and she must do it now — unless, in these first few moments after the event, she could isolate it, cut it off from her consciousness, she was done for; she wouldn’t be able to go on living at all.

With all the power of her will, she set about trying to transform the memory of what had just happened into fearful but absurd nightmare that couldn’t possibly have been real; struggling as desperately now with her will as her body had struggled then to obliterate all but a confused dreamlike impression, as of something imaginary. She didn’t know whether she would ever be able to do it. She was still so cold, shivering, freezing cold, everything wavering round her. The iron grip holding her seemed the one stable point in the universe.

Suddenly, then, she became aware of Oswald, who had saved her and was still holding her in his encircling arms, through which she could feel pulsing, like an electric current, the vibration of his desire. And, like a reflex, at this first instant of recognition, the part of her that always resented a man’s touch stiffened, and she heard her unsteady voice say, ‘Let me go…’ Although, as she realized immediately afterwards, this was the very last thing she really wanted. She was really in desperate need of him at that moment. Alone, she couldn’t recover from her terrifying experience. She needed the help of another person to overcome it and re-establish her in her life. The warmth of a living body was needed to counteract that other coldly inhuman touch. She needed to be identified with the life force throbbing in Oswald’s passion in order to prove that she was also alive and a part of life.

In spite of her protest, Oswald was what she needed, and Oswald she must have. Let him take her and warm her back to her life — let him exorcize the spell of the sea. His arms around her were hard and unyielding like bonds, but they were burning, pulsing with the urgency of his passion, to which she gave herself up, relaxing thankfully in their ungentle grasp.

*

It was to escape the load of his responsibilities and unhappiness, of which he was aware only as an undefined threat or weight, that the young man had followed her into the ruined castle. Inside, his blank state intensified by the dark and the sleep-walking motions of his companion, he’d drifted after her without a thought, as though being pulled by a magnet.