Anna Kavan - The Parson

As the short afternoon faded into dusk, one by one the other ridges of land faded out of sight, until he seemed to drive between worlds in a sort of nowhere, no sky, no earth to be seen, only brute crags suddenly looming, and the endless, unstable heave and gleam of the complaining water. The narrow spit of rock was in places little wider than the track, and, though it now and then threw up weird black pinnacles and escarpments, the deep water always pressed close on both sides, as if lying in wait.

With the gathering twilight, snow, which had been in the air all day, started to fall in a sprinkling of frozen grains, like salt out of a shaker. The driver turned a switch so that the windscreen was cleared, but otherwise took no notice — sunshine, wind, rain and snow were alike illusion to him where he was, cut off from himself and from the living world.

Yet, at a point indistinguishable from the rest of this grim solitude, he stopped the car with certainty and precision, though still absent, blank, and sat motionless, letting the windscreen-wipers go on clearing the glass after he’d switched off the engine. He had evidently almost reached the end of the land and the open sea, for, as the engine noise died, the thump of waves rose from the foot of the precipitous drop on the other side of the road. His forgotten sense of responsibility had made him pull up under a mass of rock, which partially shielded the car from the driving snow, already collecting in small drifts and pockets among the boulders.

Nowhere on the way had there been any sign of life, no animal, no sea-bird, even. In this loneliness that was frightening, unutterable, he sat as if waiting for someone, with the outward aspect of having come to an assignation, but blank inwardly, no thought taking shape in his mind.

The sea was turning a more solid black with the approach of night, only the spray of the breaking waves showing pale through the other whiteness falling out of the sky, which evaporated as it touched them. A strong, erratic wind intermittently sent the snow fuming upwards like smoke, or whirling in crazy spirals along the track. And, with this uncanny luminousness in the air smoking and swirling, the freezing desolate place, seemingly in the void, black fangs of rock jutting sheer out of groaning water, might have represented a northern hell; with the man as one of the damned, on whom everlasting night was descending.

His eyes, always turned to the sea, were still the eyes of a zombie more than a human being. But then there was a change in the static figure. The abnormal blank look left the face, which recovered, in consequence, some of its lost humanity. The eyes focused again.

Not knowing what had alerted him, or what he expected to see, the watcher stared out into the snowy dusk. He had a curious sense of something happening, or about to happen out there which concerned himself; and this, after his prolonged state of absence, seemed strange and almost alarming. He didn’t want to return, even in such a limited way, to his conscious self. It was painful, he tried to hold back. But, at the same time, he was aware that an obscure conflict had developed in him where nothing had been, as though he were under an obligation to become conscious.

All at once, leaning forward, he peered more intently through the thin, slanting curtain of snow: in the distance, beyond it, a mirage was forming. In the waste of black waters, mysterious glimmers, like marsh-lights, traced a pattern he half recognized. This was why he had come here — the cluster of small bright stars was what he’d driven so far to see. Startlingly positive and precise, the knowledge burst like a shout in his interior vacuum, which all this time had contained no definite thought.

The sparkling, mysterious, distant stars almost seemed familiar; he almost knew what they were. But not quite. They belonged to his life in the world, to which he no longer had access. He had left it, and now he could not, he didn’t even want to go back — it would be too painful. Out of the locked box of his memory nothing came forth.

The twinkling stars were so far away — what could they have to do with him? Yet he felt there was some connection… Slowly, reluctantly, as if compelled, he got out of the car and went to stand at the extreme edge of the precipice, trying to see them more clearly, searching confusedly for something lost, which he must make conscious.

He was so handsome, so young. His magnificent healthy body had hardly been used; it moved with its own spontaneous ease and vigorous youth. But something was missing from the man as a whole which cancelled the fine physique, so that, in spite of his splendid athletic body, he seemed not quite real, not quite there; his expression peculiarly at a loss, a bit deadened, dazed like that of a prisoner in a foreign country, locked in dumb helplessness. Oblivious of the icy wind stinging his skin and tearing at his blond hair, he stood there, imprisoned in his confusion and inner conflict, groping unwillingly after what was lost.

Suddenly he knew he was going to remember. His life seemed to be all around him in the swirling snow. In a moment he would see the stars as they really were, recognize their pattern. No, no — he could not! An agony of resistance sprang up in him instantly. The pain of recognition could not be borne. He could not go back to all that. There had been life and love and failure and disappointment; but it was all gone from him now. He was already outside the world — let it remain shut away!

Making no further attempt to recognize or remember, he let his consciousness lapse. As if to abet him, dusk was now deepening into night, blotting out everything. The car, which had been his last link with reality, had already been swallowed up with the rocks beyond. The thud of the unseen waves, rising more ominously in the darkness, was loud in his ears, though it didn’t reach his attention, fixed on another sound from far away out there across the water — a sort of mournful low bellowing, a leviathan lamentation.

What could it be? Why should it make him tremble? Though he couldn’t prevent these questions from forming, he refused to attend to them, or to associate them with himself. Staring into the falling snow, not in search of the answer to any question, all he saw was the snow-grains ceaselessly swooping at him out of the empty black and, in the distance, the sparkling design of stars.

After all, they were bringing back something from his life in the world… a dim recollection of street-lights… leading his eyes to where a door seemed to be opening on all his life might have been of nobility and fulfilment. All the love and happiness and success he had never known in his life seemed to shine there, for a moment, against the dark, in the magic light of the resplendent stars.

But then the starry pattern immediately started to change, the stars were changing. Mysteriously dimmed and diminished, they were moving away from him now, with ever-increasing speed, towards the fiord’s mouth and the open sea. Already reduced to bright pinpoints, almost out of his sight, they were only a faint, far gleam in the furthest distance. A few more seconds and they would have vanished. He would be alone in the dark.

Profound desolation descended on him as he watched the receding stars. He felt desolate and forlorn, like a child shut out of a bright room, left out of everything. And he longed, with a sudden nostalgic yearning, to be included in life again — in the human family circle. He couldn’t bear this exclusion, being shut out in the lonely dark.

But nor could he bear to go back to his life in the world. No, that was not the way. He had come too far already, and could now only go on, further still, away from all he had been.

He would follow the stars before they vanished completely.