Anna Kavan: I Am Lazarus

Yes, it's a hard and mysterious system under which we live, and we can't hope to understand it. Whether or not there really exist laws governing official procedure is immaterial since it is impossible to investigate these secret matters. Perhaps the most incomprehensible thing of all is that a well-meaning person like A is as liable to heavy penalties as the worst criminal. Although we don't know what originally brought A under official notice I can say from my own knowledge of her that it couldn't have been anything you or I would consider a serious offence. And her second offence, if that lay in leaving the ship, was surely not much more than an error committed with the best intentions. I'm not defending the fact that she joined in the drinking party; obviously, to keep a clear head should have been the first care of a person in her predicament: and most likely all her subsequent misfortunes stemmed from that lack of restraint. Yet even here one sees extenuating circumstances. To begin with, she was already excited and over-tired when she arrived on the boat: and she was in a totally strange environment besides, in circumstances that were very difficult and disturbing. It would not have been easy for her to avoid taking part in the captain's celebrations or to have refused the drinks that were offered to her without seeming unsociable or straitlaced. Yet for these actions she is condemned to do penance for many years; perhaps even for the whole of the rest of her life. For who knows whether, although she achieved her return long ago, the authorities, will ever see fit to terminate her protracted sentence?

ONCE, a very long time ago, an extraordinary thing happened to me. A very long time ago, I've written: but mere words can't describe the enormous stretches of time which have intervened between that incident and the present day. When I look back on it it's like contemplating something in a former existence of which one has miraculously retained memory. If I were a believer in the transmigration of souls, I should really be inclined to think that it did take place in an earlier incarnation. It has that remote quality; and at the same time it continues to exercise an obscure and profound influence over me, even now.

There are times when I hardly remember the occurrence at all. For quite long periods the memory seems to withdraw itself, to go into retreat, as it were. When this happens I become restless, and the great bird which always hovers above me swoops lower and fills my head with the stridence of his black wing-beats. At first, because the memory has really gone a little away, the cause of my uneasiness is not clear; I'll put it down to the oppressive weather, or perhaps to something I've eaten. But sooner or later a glimpse comes to me, as if, in the secret room where it had hidden itself, the memory lifted a corner of the curtain and peeped out of the window. Then at once I hurry off in pursuit. From that instant of realization my whole life becomes oriented towards the one objective of recapture. I feel like the owner of some beloved and valuable animal that has been stolen; or the parent of a kidnapped child. I can't rest until the precious memory is safely housed again in my consciousness.

What was this wonderful event? someone may ask sceptically. It certainly must have been something unique that happened all that time ago and is still so important that you can't bear to forget about it. Anybody can say that they've had a mystical experience without fear of contradiction because there's no way of proving the matter. But surely this is something more definite. Describe it to us. Tell us about it.

Well, the experience did have its objective aspect which can be described in quite simple language that anyone can understand. For instance, it can be stated plainly that I was condemned, that I was imprisoned, that I had given up hope, and that I was then delivered and set free without stipulations. I can describe the courtyard with its high spiked walls, where shuffling, indistinguishable gangs swept the leaves which the guards always re-scattered to be swept again. I can describe the peep-hole in the hookless door, the hard, unsleeping eye-bulb in its cage. I can describe the smells in corridors, the sounds ambiguously interpreted, the sights from which eyes were averted hastily. I can describe the hands under which I suffered; I can describe the visitor with the rolled umbrella who announced my release.

But all these descriptions, no matter how detailed, give only the bare shell of the experience, the true significance of which beats within them like a heart that can never die. The objective side of the matter does in fact die; or at least it can be said to grow old and desiccated and frail as a beetle's discarded carapace. But the mysterious and private heart never ceases to beat. Indestructible and immortal, the heart beats on, independent, and beating for me alone. It's the personal nature of the experience which is incommunicable and which gives it its supreme value. What does it matter if the outward manifestation withers and shrivels and ultimately even crumbles to dust as long as the priceless heart still survives? Perhaps I was mistaken in the gentleman who spoke with such smooth reassurance. Perhaps I was taken in by the umbrella encased slim as a wand in its black silk tube. To judge from what happened afterwards it seems likely that I was too trusting on that far-distant occasion. Nevertheless, painful and ruinous appearances cannot kill the heart of the experience which continually beats for me; no less strongly in the shadow of threatening wings.

IT'S true that I've never talked much about the things that happened to me in the other country. When my friend used to ask me questions about my life over there I found it hard, impossible almost, to answer: and now I find it equally hard to explain why this was so. It wasn't, as he assumed, simply that I'd forgotten about it. I don't deny that my memory is bad. My recollection of that far-off time as a whole is incomplete and blurred, there are a great many gaps and inconsistencies in it, and the chronology is inexplicably confused. On the other hand, I can remember a number of disconnected episodes quite clearly; I could certainly have related them to him if I hadn't felt so reluctant to break the shell of privacy in which they were encased. For a long time it was as if a sort of tabu were laid on the whole subject of my experiences abroad. It was the greatest effort to me to focus my attention on that period at all because, as soon as I started to concentrate, I used to be overcome by something I can only describe as a mental blackout. And this wasn't because the memory was unpleasant to dwell upon. Quite the reverse, the impression that always remained with me of those days was of a wonderfully tranquil and happy time. No, I can't really account at all for the inhibition that persistently kept me silent so long, nor for its gradual weakening. Now that no one questions me any more about these affairs I am able to contemplate them without interference. The curious thing is that now that no question induced blackout obscures them, the memories themselves seem to be evaporating. The curtain which used to cover the picture has been removed; but now the colours of the paints are starting to fade. Every day the canvas becomes more indistinct, a ghostly landscape, with a few figures, such as Benjo's, appearing here and there, still touched with the bizarre gleam of their original brightness.

I hadn't been long in the country when I first made Benjo's acquaintance. By the way, I never discovered whether Benjo was his surname, or an abbreviation, or just a nickname: he was always referred to simply as Benjo. It was early in the morning when I first saw him. I know I hadn't been long in the old house I had bought, because the men who had been at work on the renovations had left only a few days before. The place was intended for a farmstead, but for some reason the land had been sold off separately while the building remained empty for several years. You couldn't have called it a good buy from the practical standpoint: the house was dilapidated and old-fashioned and inconvenient, and very isolated and inaccessible too; but the price was low and I wasn't deterred by the drawbacks, numerous as they were. The thing that really appealed to me about the property was its situation high up on a lonely hillside with a wonderful sweeping vista of chestnut forest and a distant view of the sea. There was a rough little hamlet of grey, primitive cottages about half a mile away, but it was hidden by a fold of the hills. All you could see from my windows was the wild garden where anemones and red tulips grew in between the stones, and then the great cascading fall of woods to the sea.