Anna Kavan - Guilty

Why had I rushed away like that? What had happened? I asked myself, with an uneasy feeling that I’d acted foolishly. Nothing, apparently, had happened except in my head, where momentarily that larger-than-life form again loomed up, the personification of some inescapable threat at the heart of an old dream I couldn’t entirely forget but refused to remember, concentrating instead on the real incident.

My memory of recent events was quite clear, even though obscure dreamlike notions still haunted the back of my mind. Ignoring these, I saw how badly I had behaved, and the instant I got home telephoned to apologize, telling Carla my cold had suddenly got much worse, which seemed the only possible justification for my abrupt disappearance. Yet, even while I was speaking humbly to her, genuinely contrite, I was aware of a grievance, a vague suspicion; I couldn’t help feeling she’d treated me badly, though she’d always before been so considerate. Listening to her low musical voice, in which I could detect no personal warmth, I began to feel immensely removed from her; a million miles of darkness divided us.

But then I was suddenly projected into a quite different magic world, where depression, grievance and distrust couldn’t exist. I’d expected to be alone the next evening; now Carla proposed spending it with me, her mother having received a last-minute invitation, so that she herself would be free. This seemed to prove my importance to her, and immediately everything came all right again. Only in my jealous imagination had she smiled at a stranger with the intimacy she reserved for me. The prospect of her visit was like a wonderful surprise present; in the delight and excitement of its reception I expected perfection in every detail, my cold was to cure itself automatically during the night. I felt disappointed and cross when it seemed rather worse in the morning.

At any rate, I thought, there would be no temptation today to go out, since the Housing Bureau was closed. But as the afternoon dragged on, restless anxiety once more afflicted me. The sombre cloud-roof, which had all day covered the sky, towards three o’clock became in the west faintly burnished, soon afterwards extinguishing the last of the daylight. By four it was as dark as midnight.

Still three more hours had to pass before I could even begin to expect Carla. How would I ever get through three whole hours? My impatient longing for her was insistent, distracting; far worse than the dull pain behind my forehead. I was aware, too, of another unanalysed feeling, sinister and heavy and uncomprehended, fixed at the root of my anxiety, which I would not examine. I couldn’t stand it and, suddenly jumping up, went out of the flat and down the stairs; I simply had to go out — to do something.

The air out of doors, though bitingly cold, seemed somehow oppressive; some blocked electrical tension, struggling to find an outlet, exerted its pressure upon my nerves as I tramped along heavily under my aching head, not thinking of where I was going.

Seeing lighted trees in the windows and wreaths on the doors, family parties assembled in decorated rooms, I seemed to have gone back to Christmas Eve. Everything was repeating itself: the empty streets and these unreal celebrations behind the glass, which might have been taking place on another planet for all the contact I could ever conceivably have with them. It didn’t surprise me to find myself in front of the Housing Bureau. Where else could I have arrived?

But then I saw the place closed and dark, a metal grille barricading the entrance. Of course. The Christmas holiday; how could I have forgotten? I felt a passing uneasiness, troubled by my unnatural-minded vagueness. Deciding to put it down to my headache, I promptly forgot all about it, advancing, for no particular reason, towards the protective bars and running my hands over the cold steel. If I hadn’t done this I would never have discovered the existence of an unobtrusive opening about the size and shape of a man; a wicket at which I gazed for a while in perplexity, wondering why it had been left open and whether I ought to shut it.

Having made up my dull mind it was no business of mine, I was about to start walking home when, in the street I’d thought absolutely deserted, a passer-by stopped to stare at me with a persistent disapproving inquisitiveness that could only mean that he regarded me as a suspicious character loitering there. My reactions were not normal just then. It didn’t occur to me that, had I drawn his attention to the open gate and told him what was in my mind, his suspicions would have been removed and he would most likely have proved quite friendly. Instead, for some reason, I felt obliged to remain silent and motionless as long as he was watching me. He walked on, constantly turning his head to look back at me as long as I was in sight, reluctant to leave me to my evil devices. And only when he at last disappeared did I feel free to go home. Then, turning in that direction, I saw a whole group of people coming towards me whom I’d been too preoccupied to notice before, presumably from some local gathering that had just broken up.

As I’ve said, I was not in a normal state and can only suppose some degree of fever accounted for my behaviour now. I had done nothing wrong. Nor had I anything to fear from these new arrivals, doubtless law-abiding citizens like myself, who so far hadn’t observed me. There was no real reason for the intense anxiety to avoid their curious eyes that made me slip through the aperture into the shadows beyond the grille and flatten my body against one of the massive entrance doors as they passed.

Evidently I had succeeded in making myself invisible, for no inquisitive glance came my way. The last stragglers of the party had just gone by; another second and I’d have stepped outside the metal network again. But before I had time to move, while I was still leaning all my weight on the door, this support gave way behind me with such unexpected suddenness that I fell back with it. My arm was seized in a bewilderingly familiar grasp, I was dragged back still further, and the door shut again, in front of me this time, shutting me into what seemed total darkness.

In my already confused state I now became — for a space of time almost too brief to record — panic-stricken, my captor’s hateful touch evoking a whole chain of agonizing sensations. I ceased to be myself, feeling my being invaded by the personality of a criminal; the hand on my arm was the grip of the law — of the police, by whom I’d been arrested. What crime I’d committed I didn’t know; nor did this matter, since I knew I was guilty, and guilt itself was my crime. The shades of the prison house already enclosed me. There was no hope. I was being dragged deeper into some weird cavernous darkness, lit only by glow-worm glimmers of greenish light. Never again, I thought despairingly, should I see the sun.

That all these impressions occupied only the merest fraction of time was proved by the fact that I hadn’t even regained my balance when someone exclaimed, ‘Hold up, there!’ continuing, as I steadied myself, ‘Sorry, but I had to make sure nobody saw you come in, or we’d have had the whole population battering on the doors.’ The matter-of-fact, disembodied voice helped me to return to myself and to expel the intruder who had burdened me with his crime, as it concluded, ‘There’s news for you. Come this way.’

I’d already collected myself sufficiently to recognize the big room, which I’d previously always seen crowded and brightly lit, now dark and empty, only a few heavily green-shaded desk lamps scattered about. Though I wasn’t agitated any longer, I still felt half dazed by the shock of what had seemed my abduction and the associations it had aroused. I was so relieved now because the hand on my arm seemed kept there to guide and support, rather than to take me into custody, that I allowed myself to be led further into the darkness. I had no idea who was escorting me; there wasn’t nearly enough light to identify faces or even the colour of hair. The voice hadn’t sounded like Ginger’s, though, on the other hand, it was too cultivated to belong to one of the attendants. These reflections, too, helped restore my normality, while simultaneously arousing an undefined suspicion, which, despite its vagueness, at this point made me stand still and ask, ‘Where are you taking me?’