Anna Kavan - I Am Lazarus

But the pleasure of seeing these young people she also renounced on the grounds that their presence disturbed me. It would be best, she decided, that my brother should not invite his friends to our home since I was always upset by them and thrown into a state of quarrelsome agitation by their talk.

Not long after this the one-sided conflict between us intensified and it became apparent that I could not or would not agree with my brother even on the few occasions that we were together. A sort of frenzy of malice entered into me at this time. I was jealous of his looks, of his popularity, of the fact that he played his part in the world as an effective member of society while I was forced to drag out a wretched existence lying on sofas in darkened rooms. To my jealousy was added a devastating sense of inferiority. And these two emotions working together like deadly germs in the blood generated an uncontrollable aggression against my brother which broke out in constant violent and utterly unjustified accusations.

He, acting no doubt on my mother's suggestion, spent less and less time with us. He still slept at home, but most of his days were passed elsewhere and often he did not come home until long after I had gone to bed.

My mother did not speak of him or of his lengthened absences. I, encased in my own egotism, was happy in her even more undivided attention and pleased myself with the thought that her pleasure equalled mine.

We now lived a life restricted to tiny domestic details. I rested on the sofa and read and on good days pottered about out of doors. My mother attended to the house and cooked the special foods which she never allowed anyone else to prepare for me. This time she seemed definitely and finally to have turned away from her youth. Her hair began to go grey. She became very silent; not melancholy, but certainly not gay; and though her manner towards me was quietly cheerful her smile seldom appeared. Sometimes I would catch her sitting listlessly like a quite old woman, and I would wonder at the change that had taken place in one who used to be lively and whimsical. I do not say that I was perturbed by the change. In a way it even caused me a feeling of complacency as though she had become more wholly mine by giving up everything else.

All that concerned me was that we were alone and always together and that nothing interfered with the cloud of protection in which she enveloped me.

Now comes the part that is hardest of all to set down. I feel my brain starting to spin, and I must hurry on before confusion engulfs me completely.

It was bitterly cold weather and I was recovering from an attack of influenza. My brother had caught the infection from me, but mildly, and had been at home in bed for two or three days.

On his first day downstairs the two of us were in the study where most of my existence was passed, I on my usual sofa, he in an armchair by the fire. It was a long while since we had been in the same room together for more than a few minutes at a time. As we rested there, both with our books, I was conscious of him glancing at me now and again as if there were something he wanted to say. Contrarily, I refused to take any notice for several minutes, but when I finally looked up I met his eyes gazing eagerly and wistfully into mine.

As soon as he saw that I was looking at him he got up, put his book aside, and came over to me. Standing beside the sofa, looking down with that candid smile that was so hard to resist, he began to speak to me in a gentle, appealing voice, saying how sorry he was that we had drifted so far apart, begging my pardon if he had hurt me in some way, and asking if we could not make an effort to get on better together, if only for mother's sake.

He spoke so earnestly and with such simple friendliness and good will that I felt a sudden softening towards him. O God, how much I really wanted to yield myself up to him then, to tear out my black heart and throw it down at his feet. I wanted to love him and to be loved in return. What would I not have given for the power to respond when his hand came down affectionately on my shoulder.

But at that very moment an awful seizure gripped hold of me, my head felt as though it must burst open, and, as if to relieve the intolerable congestion of the brain, a tremendous paroxysm of coughing came on, shaking me so viciously that the walls of my chest seemed to be tom apart.

My brother tried to support me in my convulsions. I can still see his face, a little pale after illness, abruptly turning whiter with shock and dismay. My mother came running with medicine in a glass, but I was too far gone to drink. Accustomed to these crises, she at once knew what to do. There was a certain ampoule that, when crushed, exhaled a vapour which gave me relief: but by an unusual oversight there were none of these in the house. At once she prepared to run to the druggist who lived not far away. I, however, as soon as I realized her intention, held her back, clutching her hand, and indicating as well as I could in the midst of my spasms that she was not to leave me.

I'll go, my brother offered immediately, already on his way to the door.

But you shouldn't go out in this cold, my mother said. You're not well yourself yet.

Even in my extremity I saw the agonized look that she gave him with those words, and felt her hand jerk in mine.

Let him go, I tried to say. It won't hurt him. He's so strong. I don't know if I actually spoke aloud. At any rate, he was gone.

My mother made no further protest. In silence she did what she could for me, easing my acute distress until the ampoule was brought. Later on I was helped to bed, none the worse for the dreadful fit.

Next day my brother was seriously ill with pneumonia. By the evening he was delirious; unconscious the following day. Just before the end he came to himself. My mother fetched me from the place where I was lying prostrated with sorrow and a kind of dread impossible to describe in words.

You must come, she said. He is asking for you.

I did not want to go to the bedside. I was afraid.

Come, my mother said in a stern voice I had never heard. He is dying.

Trembling, I followed her to the room.

I believe some relatives were there as well as the doctor, but I did not see them. I saw only my brother, propped up with pillows, and changed. His short fatal illness had changed him exceedingly. His face had turned sunken and sallow, his hair had lost its gloss and stuck to his forehead in dank strands. Violent tremors shook me as I stood at the side of the bed. Was it my own or my brother's dying face that confronted me there, distorted by anguished breaths?

I saw that he wished to say something to me and stooped over him. The fearful sound of his breathing was so loud that it seemed to be inside my head. I had the sensation of participating in the agony of a man being tortured to death, and my shudders became so uncontrollable that I was afraid of falling upon him. At last words came; clear, and yet not like human speech at all, they came from so far away.

It's a pity.

It was like listening to a voice speaking across oceans and continents. And after a long delay, very softly, so that none of the others heard, followed two more words.

For you.

I don't know what happened then. I only remember the terrible pang that pierced through my whole being, the consciousness of some priceless thing irrevocably lost, as if a vital organ had been ripped out of my body.

I have a dim impression of confused commotion, of a lamentable cry, of the doctor hurrying forward. Was it I or my mother who cried out and fell on the bed? I'm not certain. All I know is that my brother was dead and that someone supported me from the room.

Later on, perhaps many hours later, I was lying again on my sofa. It was night time. A light burned on the table under a heavy shade. I think I must have been given a sedative, for I seemed to climb laboriously up a million steps from the depths of uneasy sleep. For a long time I lay absolutely still, staring at the circle of light on the tablecloth. The cloth was one of those thick old-fashioned affairs, coloured a deep blue, and I looked at it with the disinterested attention one might give to a rare object one had not seen before. By doing this I managed partially to insulate myself from reality. I was aware and yet unaware of the tragedy that had happened.