Anna Kavan - I Am Lazarus

No, I can't explain how our city can be at one time a judge, at another a trap, at another an octopus. Nor have I any way of elucidating the sentence passed on me, which is really two sentences, mutally exclusive but running concurrently: the sentence of banishment from the city and of imprisonment in it. You may wonder how I have the heart to keep on at all in such a hopeless position. Indeed there often are times when I'm practically in despair, when the contradiction seems too bitter and senseless and incomprehensible to be borne. All that keeps me going then, I think, is the hope that some time or other I may by chance come upon the solution, that one half of the contradiction will somehow dissolve into the other, or the sentence as a whole be modified or even remitted. It's no good approaching these obscure matters systematically. All one can do is to go on living, if possible, and moving a little, tentatively, as occasion offers, first in one direction and then in another. Like that a solution may ultimately be found, as in the case of those puzzles made of wires intertwined, which suddenly and by a purely accidental manipulation fall apart into two halves.

II

There's a street near where I live which is very ugly. It's not a slum street but part of what is called a respectable, cheap neighbourhood. The people who live there are quite poor. The refugee woman who works in the library rents a room in this street. She has taken refuge there. I should have thought myself that it was more a place to escape from.

It's not only the small, yellowish-grey houses which are ugly: the actual roadway that pitches not steeply uphill, the lamp-posts, the squat air-raid shelter, even the gutters, all seem to have an air of meanness and malevolence which is frightening. The street has a smell, too. It is, as far as I can describe it, a sour smell, with spite in it. A smell of asphalt, of dustbins not emptied often enough, and spite. The people who walk in the street look spiteful too; they glance at you resentfully as they pass, as if they would like to do you an injury. They look at you as if they wished you were at their mercy. I should hate to be handed over to the mercy of the people in this street. Even the children who dart up and down have faces like spiteful gnomes. A little girl in a plaid dress pushes past me, her limp, uncombed hair brushes my arm, and that moment, from just underneath my elbow, she lets out a shrill screech that pierces the whole afternoon. I feel as if a hobgoblin had jabbed a long pin through my ear.

The bald, excrescent shelter which I'm now passing has a curious morbid look, like some kind of tumour that has stopped being painful and hardened into a static, permanent lump. It reminds me of one of those chronic swellings you sometimes see on a person's neck which has been there so long that no one but a stranger notices it any more. The entrance to the shelter is screened with wire netting. I look through. The inside of the place is unclean.

Now, something quite extraordinary occurs in the street. A small dog comes round the corner, running after his mistress. Yes, actually a dog; what a relief. And what's more it's a dog of that particular aristocratic, antique breed, half lion, half marmoset, from which, rather than from any other species, I would choose a companion if ever again it became possible for me to know such happiness as companionship with a dog.

This little dog, coloured like a red squirrel, runs with the gay abandonment peculiar to his race, his plumy tail streaming behind and seeming to beat the pavement to the rhythm of his elastic and bounding movements. How can I explain my emotion at the sight of that small, heraldic-looking beast careering so buoyantly? The appearance of these dogs when they run has always seemed to me quite amazingly intrepid and lively, at the same time both brave and amusing — even faintly absurd — yet somehow exceedingly dashing and debonnaire, almost heroic, in the style of diminutive Quixotes launching themselves without the least hesitation upon the enormously dangerous world.

The lion-dog runs forward with all his racial gallantry and élan , into that ugly street smelling of asphalt, sourness and spite. It comes to this, then, as I see it. One must try to live up to the dog's standard. That's what one must aim at.

III

How blue the sky is this morning: as if summer had kindly approved the date set for putting the clocks on another hour. It's only the fourth of April and now we've already got double summertime. To-day might easily have been foggy like it was most of last week; it might have been pouring with rain, or blowing a gale, there might even have been a snowstorm. But, thank goodness, the weather is perfect. There isn't so much to be thankful for these days; the people walking uphill to the candle-spired church must often be hard put to it to fmd suitable subjects for thanksgiving in their prayers. To-day, though, everybody can thank God for the fine weather. And people with gardens, how happy they must be: they've got an extra cause to give thanks with the daffodils springing bright everywhere and the blossom coming out on the fruit trees just as prettily as it does in countries which are at peace. Overnight, as it seems, the chestnut buds have burst into harmless miniature flares, beautifully green. All the trees which have been dull and dormant so long are now suddenly lit up by these miraculous green fires, gentle beacons of hope, quietly and graciously burning. Oh, how blue the sky is. The barrage balloons look foolish and rather gay, like flocks of silver-paper kites riding high up there in the blue.

In the garden of the small house below the church an old cherry tree is just on the point of blooming. Thousands of tiny white buds, still close and firm, tremble all over the branches among golden green leaves the size of a mouse's ear. On some of the upper boughs, more exposed to the sun, the blossom is out already, and here the open petals cluster so thickly that it looks as if snow showers had caught and lingered among the young leaves. A few early bees have found out the cherry tree and are working busily over the white flowers.

The foreign girl who lives in the little house leans out of the window. She's quite close to the cherry blossom, she could almost touch the starry sprays if she leaned out a little further. A brightness comes on her face, reflected perhaps from the bloom. Or perhaps the. humming bees and the twittering of the birds remind her of home. Perhaps she suddenly remembers hearing those cheerful sounds under a stronger sun.

The girl is in no hurry to leave the window. For quite a long time she leans out with her arms on the sill, and the wind lightly stirs the fair hair beside her face which in spite of its bright look somehow gives an impression of sadness. From where she stands she can see over the garden wall into the street of grey quiet houses leading uphill to the church. It is the hour of the morning when in ordinary times the church bells would be ringing. There are no bells now, and the few people on their way to the service walk slowly, separated from one another, in dark clothes that look too heavy for the spring day. At the open door of the house opposite a woman and a little boy are watching the people disappear one by one into the church. When the last one is out of sight the mother puts her hand on the child's head, turns him gently back into the house with her and closes the door behind them without a sound.

The street is quite empty now. under the blue sky across which a cloud in the shape of a swan is airily floating.

In a moment a girl comes round the corner, walking fast. She is dark-eyed, very slender, and well dressed; her high heels tap merrily as she hurries along. She sees her friend at the window, waves to her, and calls out a greeting. The foreign girl runs down to meet her, and soon they are sitting on the grass where a sprinkle of white petals has yet to fall. How happy they seem together under the cherry tree, talking, and smiling often: the dark eyes gleam in the sun, the grey eyes reflect the tender blue of the sky. The dark girl gives news of her husband, a soldier fighting far off in the desert, from whom she has just had a letter. While she speaks of him her face is lively and beautiful. The foreigner leans forward with eagerness, rejoicing in her friend's pleasure.