Anna Kavan - The Parson

Oswald himself was rather puzzled by this access of unexpected assurance. Where could it have come from? But he was glad to accept it and to let it sweep him along. As long as it lasted, he felt bound to get his own way, as if he had made a pact with the devil; or as if the black threat of loss hanging over him brought this strange compensation of confidence which was almost a touch of madness.

In the car he continued to be animated, refusing to think of either the past or the future, cutting off his perceptions deliberately, trying to limit them to each moment as it came, and to the small, familiar, moving enclosure where he was alone with the woman he loved. The attempt was only partly successful: though he wouldn’t admit it, some part of him never ceased being aware of what each passing moment was bringing nearer. Darkness and loss were advancing, implacable as the night.

At the station he would not see beyond Rejane’s beauty, which, like a lighted lamp, illuminated the grey, bitter day and the drab platform. Nevertheless at the back of his mind he was aware that the darkness was closing in. The train was due to leave immediately, and, having installed her in it, he got out and stood stiffly, as if on guard, gazing up at her window.

She was wearing her fur coat, and, though he hadn’t noticed it specially so far, he now saw how the dusky, soft, luxurious coat, made of the skins of many little dead animals, accentuated her living beauty. Its bulk made her seem smaller and frailer, almost like a fragile little girl. A pang went through him, unendurable — how could he be parted from her and live? Again he unconsciously stretched his arms in that peculiar tortured gesture. While the train suddenly shuddered along all its length, all the hairs of the small dead animals trembled, as if with returning life; and the man also trembled, and his life seemed to pause. Darkness was upon him.

With that night descending, he heard his voice speak again, but most strangely, out of the dark, stricken depths: ‘I can’t bear to see you go.’ It was against all his inherited instincts as well as his disciplined training to say such a thing; but nothing mattered now in the darkness where his life hung in suspense.

She called, ‘Then come with me — come and see me on to the boat’, smiling, not making the suggestion quite seriously, but with a sort of gay challenge, as if saying, ‘I dare you to come.’

He had no time to answer before, with a strong heave, the train pulled her away, starting to slide past him, curving and gliding out of the station. Already the engine was out of sight, the bare rails, nakedly gleaming, stretching out longer and longer, while people waved or turned already towards the exits.

Without a thought in his head, the young man watched the last compartment glide past, then, at the very end of the train came the luggage-van, its big sliding doors still open wide as if to welcome him in; as all his splendid muscles effortlessly combined, with perfect co-ordination and timing, to swing him on board.

Two men in uniform, stacking trunks at the back of the van, stared, astounded, as at an angel fallen from heaven, before they began to protest and approach him. As if they were paper men, Oswald pushed them aside, with a strange inhuman assurance, pressing money into their hands, a fixed uncanny grin on his face. Not knowing what to make of it, they stood speechlessly staring, while he crossed the iron connecting-plates, clashing and jerking under his feet, and came to the corridor of the train beyond.

He was still possessed of that unnatural confidence, against which no obstruction could stand. The meaningless shapes and noises fell back and were instantly lost, swallowed up by the roar and rush of the train. Everything clattering and rocking round him, with mad immutable calm he walked down the swaying corridor until he found Rejane’s compartment and entered. Light came back to him then, and to the world, his life went on again. At the last moment, he had been reprieved.

The reprieve was only temporary, a poor depreciating investment to set against the bankruptcy of total loss he would still soon have to face. But for the moment he was beyond fate’s reach, safe in his charmed assurance, laughing and talking with an animation that was not his own, his eyes brilliant and distracted, feeling unlike himself, rather as though he were slightly drunk.

Rejane glanced at him dubiously now and then, not at all sure that she wanted him with her. She hadn’t expected him to come, really. But his spectacular leap on to the moving train had pleased her vanity; and a handsome man was always a desirable appendage, an accessory to her elegance, and an insurance against any momentary lack of self-confidence. So she accepted him, with certain provisos, for the time being.

*

The short journey was soon over. Masts appeared, like a forest of bare saplings, clustered against the sullen gleam of grey water. Then they were at the station, which was part of the docks, and in the harbour itself.

As Oswald heard the harsh cries of gulls, his assurance abruptly vanished, leaving him unprotected. By the sudden chill that gripped him, he knew he should never have come. Yet he must go through with it now; he was committed.

With automatic efficiency he dealt with porters and luggage. Then, emerging beside Rejane from the echoing station, he was startled by the portentous sight of the liner’s great hull just in front of them, looming like the ominous, enormous symbol of inexorable fate, high over their heads.

He felt a sudden hatred for the ship; which increased as he followed Rejane through its warm, lighted interior, hating the comfort which placed it so unmistakably in her world of wealth, where he didn’t belong.

The luxury of her stateroom made it seem quite unreal, like a film star’s bedroom, softly yet brightly lit. It felt like a hothouse to him, coming straight from the frigid greyness outside, and it was filled like a hothouse with flowers and with their scent — roses, violets, carnations, lilies, camellias, tuberoses, incredibly exotic in the grim north — sent by the lover to welcome her home.

Without knowing where they had come from, Oswald felt an instinctive antipathy to the massed flowers crowding everywhere. There were too many of them, and their scent was too strong, an overpowering sweetness in the warm air.

Noticing how Rejane immediately seemed at home in this atmosphere, which he found merely oppressive, blooming into a new elegance and sophistication, he belatedly began to realize how far her world was removed from his own. For the first time, the power of her money began to dawn on him, as he watched her the centre of a coming and going of immaculate uniforms, a person of importance, while he stood in the background, unnoticed. He’d never really considered the matter till now, when he felt her money pushing him further and further away from her. Suddenly it had come to divide them, like one of the bottomless fiords, with no way of getting across.

She seemed to have forgotten about him already. Unnoticed he stood there, his heart heavy and cold like a stone in his breast, an unwanted onlooker, knowing he ought to leave but unable to drag himself away. His life depended on seeing her, so how could he go?

If only she would ask him to come with her on the boat, as he had on the train! With just the money he happened to have in his pocket, without even a toothbrush, he would follow her gladly to the ends of the earth; and to hell with his family and with the regiment.

When, presently, she merely asked him to come to one of the bars for a parting drink, everything seemed to go dark in a fearful premonition of loneliness, for without her only darkness was left in the world. She walked ahead of him along a softly carpeted corridor, and he had the cruel illusion that she was diminishing in the distance while he was left far behind.