Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone

She seemed not to be there at all, really. She, Anna-Marie, was absent, and some malicious hobgoblin had taken her place. There she sat in the locked room, cross-legged on the ugly red eiderdown, looking out with shallow, distant eyes, and the hard, bright glaze over her face, a bit devilish in the midnight solitude.

Queer, the change that had come over her. The tall, dignified slenderness, the rather slow graciousness of movement, the attractive, grave repose, all vanished: and in their place a hard, cold, jeering brightness, rather disgusting, and a certain febrile quickness, even her movements changed from lingering, deliberate grace to a restless, flame-like flicking, a strange destructive rhythm of darts and jerks. She seemed to have become smaller, and quicker, and brighter, and harder. Less ethereal, though more unearthly: more like some little malignant imp. The bright, arch, reckless, indifferent look upon her face! The goblin-Anna didn’t care.

Next morning she was her old self again — almost. But about her face still hovered a queer expression, like a dim reflection from far off, and her mouth had a little twist, half smile, half grimace, that did not rightly belong there.

It was late when she woke up, and ten o’clock before she was dressed. As she put on her clothes, she wondered rather uneasily what Matthew’s attitude would be after last night’s affair. How would he behave? She simply couldn’t conceive. She felt quite interested, impersonally, to see what he would do. Nothing would surprise her now. Nothing. But she was not quite comfortable about him.

He was waiting for her in the sitting-room, very neat and compact-looking in his navy-blue suit with the white stripe in it. He held his shoulders more rigid than ever. She wondered if there was a bruise where he had crashed against the door. He looked rather down in the mouth; but calm, she was glad to see.

As she came in, he took a step towards her, standing straight up to attention, and looking like a soldier who has been called up to receive a formal reprimand. Which made her amused and uncomfortable.

‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘I apologize. I can’t think what came over me. Can you forgive me?’

He stared at her rather wanly out of his absurd stiffness.

Anna looked at his strange round head, shuddered inwardly, and moved towards the door.

‘It’s over now,’ she said. ‘Don’t let’s talk of it any more.’

He got in front of her, blocking the way.

‘But you do forgive me, don’t you? Say you forgive me?’ he cried.

He looked at her humbly. But she could see the complacent, bullying pasha behind the appealing ingenuousness. And yet his humility was quite sincere. Quite a real part of him. Perhaps it was the real Matthew, the man himself, who was naive and humble and rather charming. And something outside, some devil, that possessed him from time to time and perpetrated his atrocities. Or perhaps the bully was his own real self. Who could tell?

Matthew, standing in front of her, bent forward unexpectedly and took her hand, pressing it against his face.

‘Forgive me! You do forgive me, don’t you?’ he said, plaintive and subdued as he held her hand to his mouth and kissed it. The words came out muffled with his warm breath against the palm of her hand. ‘Everything is all right again now, isn’t it?’

She knew that things were very far from all right. But what was the use of saying so? He understood nothing. And she wanted her breakfast. She nodded, acquiescent, feeling a little ashamed for him, her hand growing hot against his mouth.

He was beginning to regain his aplomb. He was still humble. But his self-satisfaction was coming back, she could see his head perking up again.

‘You’ll forget all about last night?’ he said, still in the same humble manner.

‘Yes,’ she replied. She wanted to have breakfast.

He pulled her to him, and kissed her rather clumsily on the edge of her mouth, one of his strangely unconvincing kisses that meant nothing at all to her. She submitted in cool distaste, extricating herself as soon as possible.

‘There,’ he said, quite in his ordinary voice, ‘we’re friends again now.’

The re-establishment of his complacency irritated her. She managed to get past him into the corridor.

That afternoon a friend of Matthew’s, a man named Webber, came to offer his congratulations. He held an important government post of some kind in the East. Mr. Webber, who was pale, and who had a sort of gallantry about him, had tea with them in the plushy sitting-room.

His gallantry, though persistent, was far from flattering. He persisted in paying childishly laborious compliments to Anna. It was no compliment at all to think that she might swallow such stuff. And all the time he contrived, by his expressions and by his clumsy deference, to surround her with the aura of his gallantry while simultaneously making her feel that she was of no serious account. He flattered her, and posed in front of her, rolled his eye at her and smiled with playful archness. He assumed an elaborately artificial manner for her benefit: but it was the sort of manner one might put on for a child. He was playing down to her all the time.

Anna was disgusted but also amused. She wanted to burst out laughing at the preposterous fellow who thought himself too high and mighty to take her seriously: who condescended to her out of his glorious masculine conceit. She was not worthy to be treated as his equal! Here was a blow for her! But Matthew apparently was enjoying the situation. He sat back on the sofa, drinking in Webber’s flattery, taking the whole credit to himself. He loved to feel that his friend was envious, that Webber envied him his young wife. He seemed to swell with complacency as he sat. His habitual neat stiffness of pose relaxed somewhat; he almost lolled against the over-stuffed upholstery.

Mr. Webber sat on, staying for a dreary hour after tea. Anna thought he would never go. He talked at her all the time in a gallant, or an inane fashion. He didn’t notice that she gave him no encouragement. He drivelled on.

Hearing the clock strike six, he started theatrically, looked at his watch with an exaggerated, falsely incredulous expression, and finally rose. He took an elaborate farewell of Anna; to which she responded without undue politeness. At last he moved off.

But he was not quite done yet. At the door he stopped and put his hand on Matthew’s hard shoulder.

‘Well, old man,’ he said in a confidential tone, ‘I congratulate you. Wonderful wife you’ve got. Wonderful girl. Wonderfully fine girl.’

And he leered with a horrible archness, running his eye over Anna as though she had been a valuable animal. She gasped. She gasped with outraged surprise. The impudence of it, the beastly, insulting impudence! And Matthew was still smiling, neatly, contentedly, as if he had been paid a well-deserved compliment.

When he had gone away she refused to speak of him, that horrible friend of Matthew’s. And she was so cold, so distant, that Matthew was bewildered. He couldn’t make out what was wrong. Anna would not try to explain. She knew it was quite useless. But the resentment which she felt for him was almost as strong as her dislike of Mr. Webber. Not content with allowing her to be insulted, Matthew had to take the insult to her as a compliment to himself. She looked at him with sardonic, stony eyes.

The days of what was called the honeymoon followed one another slowly. It is unnecessary to say that Anna did not enjoy them. One might almost expect her to have been miserable. But she was not — merely bored. She liked the independent feeling of freedom from Lauretta and the Blue Hill tyranny — that was something.

She was her own mistress, more or less. She could go out when and where she liked, spend her money how she liked, and in general gratify the trivial wishes of the moment. Matthew did not interfere with her comings and goings. He did not even talk to her very much. But he wanted to be with her all the time. He seemed to have a craving to be near her, a craving for her physical presence. It did not matter if she never spoke to him, if she ignored him entirely; just so long as he could keep her in sight. It would have been pathetic if it had not been so irritating. He would have liked to accompany her everywhere.