Anna Kavan - Guilty

My only respite from guilt was when Carla seemed to be in the room, very lovely, her hair darkly framing her calm pale face; but this was almost as bad, for her serene shining gaze was always cold and indifferent. She never smiled, never spoke to me nor touched me. And though she sometimes leaned over the bed as though to kiss me, I came to dread this more than anything, because of the way her face always became distorted as it approached mine, vanishing at last with a look of disgust or a mocking smile it had never worn in real life.

Spector, too, made his appearance, a tall, shadowy, menacing figure, faceless and almost formless, towering above me in mysterious silent denunciation. And sometimes the two of them would seem to blend into each other as they had done in the porch, so that I couldn’t tell whether one or both kept watch on me from the shadows gathered thickly under the sloping ceilings.

These visitations left so strong an impression that afterwards it was hard for me to believe neither of the people concerned had really been there; which accounted, I think, for my failure — when my temperature fell and the delusions left me — to appreciate the completeness of the break between us. Without consciously thinking about it, I must have assumed that sooner or later one or other of them would reappear and reclaim me, otherwise I couldn’t have been so calm — I couldn’t have given way to the profound lethargy that for some time made me indifferent to everything. Long after I became convalescent and was, physically, on the road to recovery, my mental state remained unchanged. I couldn’t bear the prospect of taking up my life in the world again. At the same time, it was impossible for me not to realize that there was something distinctly abnormal, not to be accounted for by my short illness, about an apathy so deep and prolonged. The mere thought of resuming my former activities was abhorrent to me. And, fascinated, almost, by this heavy torpor, I began to explore it and to write down what I found, thus occupying many long, solitary hours of my convalescence.

It was obvious that, to get at the truth, I would have to delve back into my early memories, as I’ve tried to do here. At first I was troubled by Spector’s over-prominence in the picture, emerging from the start as a huge, isolated, out-of-scale figure, obscuring and falsifying the rest. But his significance always was out of proportion, and I should have been falsifying the scene had I made less of it. And I soon perceived that his influence over me had not really diminished, as, sensing its opposition to my love affair, I’d pretended it had. A secret interior conflict had, in fact, reduced me to my present state, the two conflicting loyalties, which had been tugging in opposite directions till I was practically pulled in half, having ended by immobilizing me altogether.

My investigations had led to a reassessing of intellectual values, and I saw that, though my conclusion was accurate as far as it went, it was not the whole truth. As soon as I decided I’d have to dig down still deeper to uncover the root of my listless withdrawal from life, I became aware of some interference from the past distracting and confusing my thoughts, causing me a sensation that was at the same time oppressive, expectant and empty. In these somewhat contradictory feelings, I came to recognize my childish sense of having run down like a clock that needed someone to wind it before it could go again; and saw that I was now no less helpless than in those far-off days when I waited for somebody to take me by the hand and tell me what to do. On my own initiative I could do nothing, take no responsibility, make no decisions only watch my existence unroll.

All my life I’d been dependent on a stronger personality and had accepted the principle of my dependence so thoroughly that I regarded it as inevitable, and was waiting now as passively as a silver cup on its plinth for either Carla or Spector to claim me, not even very much caring which of them dominated me again.

The ambivalence that had always made me unsure whether I loved the man more than I hated and feared him, or vice versa, now extended to the girl as well. Carla’s beauty, I knew, would always have power to charm me, but whether I still loved her I very much doubted. It was with her that I had experienced my most intense happiness. But now, thinking about her, I had a double impression, a memory of past joy and of more recent mistrust and resentment. Incidents she had never explained had left me with an unhealed wound and the suspicion that both she and Spector had been making use of me for their own unknown personal ends.

Against my will, the picture I always tried to forget formed in front of me with such detailed distinctness that I really seemed to be watching all over again the two enlaced figures going into the house, joined as closely as one. With my own eyes I had witnessed their intimacy — there was no getting around it. Now, suddenly, my new respect for truth asserted itself. I found I could no longer go on deluding myself with the idea that one or other of them was bound to take possession of me, as in the past. For the first time since my illness I felt disturbed. Uneasiness pervading my lethargy, I got up and started restlessly pacing the room. If I was not to lead the old life of dependence, what was my future life to be?

I stopped and looked out of the window. The last faint tinge of a stormy sunset still smouldered in the sky above, but down in the streets it was already night and the lamps had been lit. The time of the evening rush had begun, and from this height the crowds surging in every direction seemed to move with the aimless chaotic frenzy of disturbed insects. The sight troubled me obscurely, and I drew the curtains sharply across the window to shut it out.

Most emphatically, I did not want to be one of the scurrying, nameless thousands down there. This thought led to another slight shock, as I remembered how I’d once taken a pride in being indistinguishable from the people around me. But this only seemed to prove my fundamental difference, I now thought, for surely, if I’d really been like everyone else, such an extraordinary notion would never have entered my head. I’d have taken the similarity for granted.

So in reality I’d never been the confident, normal young man of my thoughts at all. Logically following upon this conviction came the equally disconcerting corollary: I had never been a schoolboy either, or a lover, or any of the various beings I’d impersonated at various stages of my career.

I should have liked to put an end to these thoughts, by which I was becoming more and more disturbed, but they seemed to crowd into my head independently and against my will. I had the feeling that enlightenment was pressing so hard upon me that it created a sense of danger — but I could do nothing about it, and, though I was afraid of where my thoughts might lead, I had to follow them along the path they had chosen.

I’d never been anything but ‘in transit’ through my life. In a sudden, complete, instantaneous vision, I saw it as a train and myself as a passenger always changing compartments, moving on to another before getting to know the self left behind in the last carriage. I’d always presumed these old outgrown personalities had ceased to exist when I discarded them, possibly lingering on for a while as remembered ghosts of what they had been, till they finally sank into oblivion, dead and forgotten. Now, for the first time, I understood that it wasn’t possible to discard any part of myself. Seeing all these unknown selves sitting where I’d left them, staring out of the windows through the eyes I’d once shared, I was struck most forcibly by the fact that I hadn’t got rid of them after all; they were still in the same train with me and always would be as long as I travelled in it. This meant that at any time any one of them was liable to spring out of his place, chase me along the corridor to my present compartment and there take possession of me, temporarily directing my actions and supplanting my current self.