Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone

To Anna, so much alone in the strange place, it seemed that immense omens lurked in the sultry air. She waited for the coming of the rains with superstitious anticipation, as if she expected a heavenly sign to be vouchsafed. When the rains came she would escape. She would get away from this place which was destroying her. Her longing for escape burned to a sort of fire within her. Every evening she watched the enormous clouds piling themselves against the sky, and waited for the first drop of rain to fall.

And then suddenly, it was the end of everything. She realized that she was with child. A great sickness of horror and despair went through her. She was incredulous. She had thought so often about the possibility of conception, of bearing a child, but always as a sort of sentimental abstraction, never really in connection with herself. And now the disaster had overtaken her. A certain sense of finality made her hopeless and despairing. This was the finish, the finish of everything. She would never escape now.

Matthew was away for a few days. Anna was dazed with shame and despair. She felt strangely degraded, as though some shameful mark had been set upon her, some sordid stain that could never be removed. She was madly ashamed. She could not endure her body. When she caught sight of her reflexion as she dressed, she shuddered and turned her eyes away as from something horrible and unclean. And again, at night, when she was having her bath, her nerves jerked with insane repulsion, she could not bear the sight of her body. Whenever she thought of the child forming within her, a sort of madness of repulsion flooded her mind and flesh, an intolerable sickness. She wanted to kill herself. This final blow, she felt, had really broken her. She felt as if everything, Matthew and the place and the coming child, were a nightmare, a nightmare against her. Something at the core of her remained cold, indifferent, changeless. But she was so overwrought with horror, that even the sight of her bare arms filled her with quivering disgust. She felt that her body was desecrated and soiled. It would never be clean again.

The letters from England arrived once a week. Anna sat down indifferently to read them. Her heart was dead and despairing.

The first she looked at was from Lauretta — all chatter about Blue Hills whither she had just travelled from the Riviera. The second was a letter, an untidily written scribble from Catherine. ‘When are you going to invite me to visit you? I have had enough of Oxford. The time has come for me to make a change — the more complete the better. So hurry up and say that you would like me to come. How much longer do you intend to let your intelligence atrophy —’

It was like a voice from the dead. Anna trembled as though she had received a shock. She glanced round the room. It was like an oven, filled with dull, dead heat. The punkah had stopped. She called to the man to go on pulling. Then she picked up the letter again. She looked at the writing on the pale blue notepaper, glanced up at the swinging punkah, and at the dim, closed room. She had passed into another world now, where Catherine could never enter. She felt that she had suffered a severe shock. A bitterness of despair came over her.

She sat still, pale and bitter. It was a black world which she now inhabited, like a purgatory, like an incurable illness. How could Catherine come into it? It was not possible that she should come. Anna was alone in her degradation. A humiliating, outcast despair filled her. She could not face Catherine, or write to her. She was too much ashamed. Her life was shameful and lonely. There was no longer any hope for her, there was no chance of escape. Yet, in spite of her humiliation and the despair which possessed her, she still remained in some part of her soul aloof and untouched. It was the hard centre of her being which never altered. Nothing could touch that.

She longed for Catherine to come to her. But a barrier of shame was between them. She wanted Catherine. But she was afraid that Catherine would despise her because of the ruin she had made of her life. She thought of the bold beauty of the other girl, of her brilliance, and she could not endure that contempt should take the place of admiration in Catherine’s large, intense, dark eyes. She looked at her own body. And already its fine lines seemed to her to be thickened and coarsened, she imagined that she could detect the onset of a heavy femaleness which was loathsome to her. She was afraid of Catherine’s flamelike fineness, she could not face it, because of the prospect of her own physical degradation.

Anna wanted Catherine to come to Naunggyi. She had confidence in the power of the other girl to rescue her, she trusted in her, she was certain that Catherine would extricate her from the nightmare of her existence. It was a terrible blow that she could not ask her to come. It seemed that she had been waiting all the time for Catherine’s arrival to save her from Matthew, to set her free. But now Catherine would never come. It was too late. At the bottom of Anna’s heart was a deep wound of despair. She was certain that Catherine would have been able to save her.

But she could not ask her to come. Her shame was too deep. Hopelessly, feeling that this was really the end, she put away Catherine’s letter, and did not answer it.

AT the end of the week Matthew came back to the bungalow. Anna saw him walking across the parched, open space. He was quite well-made, but with the ugly, clumsy sun-helmet on his head he looked foolish, top-heavy, curiously like some sort of mechanical toy. He was healthy and strong, the typical man of action, he walked rather like a wound-up machine.

She was repelled when he came into the drawing-room, his large fists dangling, his head dark and smooth, but not shiny, and his blue eyes glassy and bright. He seemed so unaware of her, like an animal. And yet his glance was so possessive, it sickened her with disgust. She was hostile to him, repelled by him, and yet indifferent.

He looked at the quiet, seemingly impassive girl, and he thought he had got the better of her. She noticed the complacent, proprietary, slightly suggestive regard which so disgusted her. She could not bear to think that she would have to tell him about the child. She felt that she would never bring herself to tell him.

‘Is there any news?’ he asked, smiling and showing his sharp teeth.

She shook her head.

He came and put his hand on her shoulder in a sort of caress, a heavy, clumsy touch from which she shuddered. She turned aside her head, hoping he would not kiss her. She felt as though she were bound up tightly, in a knot of distaste.

‘Nothing happened while I’ve been away?’

‘Nothing at all,’ she said, resisting him.

His hand tightened upon her. He tried to draw her against him.

A madness of opposition sprang up in her heart. She wrenched herself away. She knew she would never touch him again. Suddenly, she couldn’t endure to be touched by him. Her repugnance was like a madness in her. She was desolate and degraded. But she would never touch him again.

Her opposition would never waver. She knew that this was final. She saw nothing but a dead, dry ugliness in Matthew. He was utterly repellant to her. Every nerve in her body seemed to strain away from him.

Immediately, there was a flare of sheer conflict between them. Matthew stepped back. His face had gone stiff with rage. He turned his back on her and walked out of the room. Anna had bested him for the moment. But the ultimate struggle was postponed merely. Her heart was in a trance of despair, blank, ashy dejection. She wanted to die.

In the late afternoon Matthew went to the club. Anna stayed alone in the house, sitting quite quiet, white, and numb. Her emotions seemed to have become deadened, her spirit hard and cold. Her thoughts made her miserable, so she tried to think as little as possible. At the bottom of her heart a cold despair lay like a cold stone. She would never escape now, there was no hope for her. Her hope was laid away in the drawer with Catherine’s letter, there was nothing but opposition left in her. She would resist Matthew, he should not touch her, she would resist him for ever. This was all that remained, this cold, negative force of resistance. The vivid flame of her real life was extinguished. Her real self was lost and dead.