Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone

Anna went with him into the garden. The night was brilliant, the moonlight burned and glittered. The moon seemed smaller, more distinct, much more dazzling and intense than the English moon. It was like a small round hole in the sky through which the white fire of brightness poured in a concentrated beam. The air was quite warm.

The warm night air was on Anna’s face, not stirring, but lying softly upon her, like a flower. It was an alien, soft air, heavy with the suggestion of unknown things. And she was alone with Findlay. Out in the mysterious, nocturnal garden he walked beside her.

‘Shall we go down to the sea?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ came his airy voice.

And smiling, he took her hand. A sharp tremor went over her.

‘Which is the way?’ she said.

‘Here,’ he answered.

He walked holding her hand in the moonlight, she saw his face strangely blanched and masklike, and yet beautiful. It was the beautiful curve of his mouth which so enthralled her.

They went in silence, wading through the pale brightness. The moonlight was like a fluid, a magic, silvery element, buoyant and wonderful.

They came to the shore, a ghostly silver waste, with grey wraiths of palm trees writhing and bending. The sea moved with mysterious massiveness, shadowed and brightly flashing, the mysterious, slow waves of the Indian Ocean rolled in, slowly, heavily, without spray, and flattened themselves with a dull, muted crash. It was all mysterious and unfamiliar; rather oppressive, the heavily swinging ocean, in the flare of dead white light.

She stood on the sand, on the unstable, treacherous body of the sand, and watched the slow rhythm of the unfurling waves. Her heart was cold like the sea. And yet an emotional excitement burned hotly in her veins, because of Findlay, and because of the wine she had drunk.

‘I don’t like it,’ she said, in an unfamiliar tone. ‘It’s a dead sea.’

He gave an odd, half-mocking jerk of his head, and began to laugh. She could not hear his laughter in the noise of the waves, but she saw his face laughing at her boldly, carelessly, mischievously, like the satyr he resembled. She had an impulse to abandon herself — to him? — to what? She was not certain.

‘Rex?’ she said to him.

‘Well?’ he answered.

The impudent smile showed on his face, he took hold of her hands. She felt the warm, firm swell of his chest. For the moment she was open to him. If he should take her at this moment she would yield. She waited for him: let him do as he wished. She leaned towards him in the moonlight, she felt his hands holding hers.

She saw his eyes looking down on her, dark and sparkling and alien. Gazing up, she saw the luminous pallor of his face above her, in the moonlight, something irresponsible and thrilling and rather sinister. She looked at him and her blood pulsed hot and expectant. She waited, submissive, and he hovered above her in his elusiveness, his heart yearning to her.

He wanted so much to take her in the moonlight. But the desire in him was overborne by the knowledge of her difference. He knew that she was not for him. His airy nature sheered off in alarm. He wanted her, and yet he did not want her. His irresponsibility made a gulf between them. They were in different worlds.

So he could not touch her. He did nothing. He did not even kiss her. He sheered off, he had to retain his elvish freedom, though the leaving of her hurt him and lacerated him.

Anna stood still, feeling lost. Presently she realized his failure. Her heart flew to anger. She looked at Findlay, and there seemed to be a furtive look about him, an evasiveness, and she stiffened in sudden dislike, turning away. Then a sort of shame stabbed through her anger; she was ashamed, and only wanted to be gone.

‘Let us go back,’ she said.

They turned away from the heaving bulk of water, away from the darkly surging waves, back towards the hotel. Findlay glanced at her, and would have spoken. But she would not look at him. Pale and silent and angry, she walked in the gleaming, silvery night. And all the time at the back of her mind there was something shameful. She wondered angrily at her own shame.

They reached the lighted entrance. Anna’s heart trembled, but it was locked in bitterness.

‘Good night,’ she said, standing on the step above him, her face wearing its peculiar blank, almost stony look. She wondered what he was thinking, as he stood and watched her.

He looked at her, at her slender body, which he was not able to touch. And he knew that his failure would always haunt him. He did not want her, he was in a different world; but he suffered at losing her.

‘What have I done?’ he asked, diffident, and smiling rather exquisitely.

She felt her heart stir. His smile still went to her heart. Yet her heart was not touched; it was cold and bitter. No response came on her face.

‘Nothing,’ she said, hating him.

She went into the hotel and turned her back on him. There were people moving about. She caught sight of Matthew. She went up and touched his arm.

‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I shall go to bed now.’

He looked at her very strangely. He looked at her hands, which trembled slightly. Then he looked at her face again, which was cold and blank and a little despairing.

A slyness came into his eyes, a strange suggestion of craft.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will see you upstairs.’

He took her arm at the elbow to lead her away. She did not notice him. Findlay stood in the doorway, watching, but without any expression, the two people, the girl and the stiff-shouldered, rather insignificant man. Anna went on with Matthew. They began to walk up the stairs. Still she was locked in anger, feeling a great bitterness in her heart. Against her will her hands were trembling: but she was not softened: her anger was cold and shameful. She had a sensation of strange, cold lightness.

Matthew had opened her bedroom door, and was waiting for her to go in.

‘Can I do anything?’ he asked, watching her.

She was aware of a cold indifference, and also of something else, not exactly excitement, but a kind of frozen recklessness, anguished and bitter. It was as if her disillusionment, her feeling of shame aroused some passionate desperation in her. She seemed to be in the grip of a kind of possession.

‘Can I do anything for you?’ persisted Matthew. There was a queer confidence in his voice and also a note of insinuation.

She hesitated, watching him. The blue glassiness was bright in his eyes, he was staring at her hungrily, as a starved creature might. Some certainty flared in her soul. She knew that if she let him come into the room she would have to submit to him.

‘Would you like me to open the shutters?’ he asked, humbly it seemed.

She shuddered with cold and with the intense premonition of what must follow.

They still stood at the door.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Leave them as they are.’

‘It will be stuffy. I had better open them,’ he said, with his strange, blindly persisting obstinacy that seemed to stifle her.

There was something inevitable about him. It no longer seemed worth while to resist. Sometime, somewhere his obstinacy, his mindless, unwavering determination would get the better of her. Impossible to withstand him for ever. She realized with horror that she was going to yield. His large, brown, hairless hand was advancing in her direction. She stood still. His head was round and dark and ball-like. So unlike a human cranium. He smiled in anticipation.

‘No!’ she exclaimed involuntarily, stepping back.

But he stepped after her, very prancy and complacent now, and closed the door behind him. She saw his brown, neat, expressionless face coming towards her through the air. It was like an image approaching. Her blood ran cold with the horror of his unreality, with the horror of the thing he threatened, and with humiliation, and with the bitterness of lonely despair. She was a helpless traveller alone in the night. And what was he? She felt herself his victim.