Anna Kavan - Guilty

I took to going about a good deal with the elder of Link’s sisters, who showed a flattering readiness to cancel other engagements to be my companion. For some time I’d been aware that the family hoped I’d eventually marry and settle down with one of the two, and this girl herself certainly gave me no reason to fear a rebuff if I were to propose. I used to wonder what was restraining me, for the arrangement would have been a happy and appropriate one, establishing me permanently in the position I wanted to hold — I could never again become an outsider then. It seemed like pure contrariness on my part to resist this apparently preordained move. Or was I afraid of embarking on a relationship that would invade my inmost privacy? I thought I’d outgrown whatever, during my schooldays, debarred me from close friendship with anyone. But I seem to have been mistaken, judging by a remark Link made, the cause of which I’ve forgotten, though the words remain in my memory. ‘You are a funny chap, Mark,’ he said. ‘One gets on so well with you; and then you suddenly put up a No Trespassing sign.’

But I might very well have drifted into an engagement in the end, simply because it seemed the obvious thing to do, if I hadn’t met Carla, which at once changed my whole life completely.

I’d gone with Link and the girls to dance somewhere. I wasn’t much of a dancer, and it was understood that I only functioned in this capacity while no one else was available. When, later that evening, a suitable alternative partner appeared, I was free to leave.

A dance was in progress as I slowly made my way around the room to the door, watching the circling figures intently, searching among them for the one I’d been keenly aware of ever since we arrived, though she was a stranger to all of us. It was the first time in my life I had felt this peculiar interest in someone I didn’t know, which made me reluctant to leave without a final glimpse of her.

Link passed, grinning, signalling to me over his part ner’s shoulder, and, seeing that I was in danger of being reclaimed by our party if I hung about any longer, I went out to the cloakroom. Here a young man I didn’t know seemed to be having an altercation with the attendant, but I found my coat for myself and returned to the vestibule, where I at once came face to face with the girl I had been looking for. Oblivious of good manners, I stood staring in a way that would have embarrassed most girls. But she was completely unruffled and cool. Already wearing her coat, she stopped at a mirror beside me and, with almost statuesque composure, began arranging a scarf over her dark hair. I had only to take one long step to reach a position from which I could see her reflection beyond the dim ghost of my own.

It was in the glass that I first perceived a change in the atmosphere, a softer, brighter radiance, reminding me of the setting sun reflected on snow. This limpid brightness I identified with her, as though she were its source; with its delicate glow on her face, she was beautiful and mysterious as a dream; magic was all about her. Spellbound, I ceased to be aware of my surroundings. I no longer had the feeling that I was indoors. That one step I had just taken had carried me over the threshold of magic without transition, as had sometimes happened during my childhood. I was alone with her in some fairy-tale country; a bubble of mirror-magic enclosed us both, outside time and reality.

She hadn’t looked at me in the real world; but in the mysterious secret depths of the mirror our eyes met — hers were very large, dark and luminous, almost startlingly brilliant in her clear pale face. She had been from the moment I first saw her immensely, immediately attractive to me; but in ordinary circumstances I would never have dared to stare at her as I was doing now, in the undefined hope of magic coming somehow to my aid — after all, I’d once believed myself a citizen of the enchanted land to which she so clearly belonged. Almost holding my breath I watched her lips part — could she be going to speak to me? Quietly, and as easily as if we’d been old friends, she asked, ‘Are you leaving now?’

I suppose I must have said ‘Yes’, though I was only thinking about her voice, which I found quite enthralling, exceptionally deep for a girl’s, with a musical vibrance, in perfect accord with her whole appearance.

Now she turned to ask, in the same natural way, as if we’d known each other for years, in which direction I would be going. But this abrupt transition from magic to reality was too much for me; seeing her, lustrous-eyed and mysterious, no longer mirrored in magic but face to face, I became confused. It occurred to me, meeting her calm gaze directly, that she’d mistaken me for somebody she knew. Then, with sudden exultance, I realized that she was as aware as I that we’d never met, yet she had made the first move towards me. Magic had overflowed into reality. I felt a quick sort of melting pang, a release of confused feeling; my heart began beating faster. The whole rhythm of my being changed. In astonishment, I supposed this must be falling in love, as, from the midst of the emotional turmoil, I heard my ordinary voice saying firmly, ‘I’m going your way.’

In my exalted state it seemed to me that this should have been enough, as though our destiny were already decided, and — to put it crudely — we should be left alone to get on with it, uninterrupted. To my annoyance, however, there was some obstruction. Dimly peering towards this interference, I recognized the young man who had been in the cloakroom; now he hurriedly approached, apologizing for being so long away, and struggling into his coat as he came. He ignored me, only addressing Carla. She was, I observed, more than capable of handling him; she was telling him not to worry, not to break up the party. ‘Mark and I are going the same way — we’ll go together.’

The sound of my name on her lips gave me a delicious thrill; in her magic ambience it seemed quite natural that she should know it. Passively, I listened to her melodious voice, scarcely hearing the words which dealt so competently with her would-be escort that he was soon accompanying us to the door, smiling and acquiescent. I left the situation entirely to her, as she was so obviously in command of it and only waited impatiently for us to be alone, feeling when we came finally out into the empty street that I had attained something I’d been struggling for all the evening.

Until it happened, nothing could have seemed less likely than that I should fall in love with a girl I didn’t even know and at first sight, too, in this headlong fashion. Nor could it ever have happened, I’m sure, had she not made that initial move which had such great significance for me and set free my blocked emotions. Some obvious integrity she possessed made it impossible to question the impulse on which she had spoken to me; I could only be deeply grateful to her for her courage and quickness in seizing the chance I’d have been too timid and too slow to grasp, prepared in return to give up on the spot the comfortable pattern of life I’d hitherto been determined to preserve.

‘There’s so little time,’ I remember her saying once, apropos of our first meeting. ‘And it’s all so precarious — senseless. Only pure accident decides whether one meets the right person or passes him in the street; any stranger, almost, might be the one, there’s no way of knowing. So if, by some miracle, one does know — don’t ask me how — isn’t it mad not to stop him?’

But this was later. Our conversation that night was devoted to getting to know the ordinary facts about one another, and long before we arrived at her home on the city’s outskirts we had ceased to be strangers. She told me she was the only child of rich parents, whose wealth had been devoured by war and taxation, so that, when her father died recently, he’d left little besides this house, in which she and her mother lived — they were even forced to let some of the rooms to make ends meet. I realized that our two worlds weren’t the same and had only happened to coincide because of the general chaos of the time. And, as the bus slowly jolted us along, I remember looking out at the maze of unfamiliar streets, contemplating the tremendous odds there must have been against our ever coming together and thinking it really did seem a miracle that we’d met.