Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

DOCTOR: Gladly, your rectitude.

QUESTOR: As for Countess Valvazor, she has disappeared. And that at least is a fact. We shall see no more of her in this life.

REGISTRAR: Or the next.

QUAESTOR: Amen; I wish I were so sanguine. I suggest to you, prefect, that a couple of trustworthy fellows saw the countess making for Arelanópli yesterday morning, would you agree? There will be the question of the inheritance to be settled. I look forward to that, not least to the arrival of some innocent cousin from Philadelphia, as it might be, to take possession of his property, like a young man in a ghostly tale.

Well, unless I have missed something, our business is concluded. Prefect, you will see to it that all documents are burnt. All documents.

DOCTOR: May I ask a question, your rectitude? Do you believe the countess’s story?

QUAESTOR: Must I believe anything? If I must believe something, then what else is there? And now, gentlemen, I invite you to take wine with me. There is that in what I have heard this evening that drives me almost irresistibly to a fortifying glass.

VIII — Stephen Hillier to A. C. Winterbourne

Hotel Astoria,

Budapest,

Hungary

6 September 1925

My dear Charles,

It’s no good, I shall have to tell someone, no, not someone, you, before I go mad, or die of I don’t know what, grief, or horror, or something like bewilderment, which I never thought could become an emotion as intense and as painful as the others. Sorry, I’m probably not making much sense. Let me concentrate on matters about which there can be no dispute.

On the 3rd, Friday morning, I left that castle and made the rotten journey to Arelanópli, where I took the first available train out of Dacia. It was a stopping train and I had made no arrangements to visit Hungary and it cost me a fiver to be let in, but I would cheerfully have paid ten times as much just to get out of that beastly country. I must say the Astoria is a very decent place and the servants are most considerate, appearing not to notice what I’m afraid must have been my obvious distress of mind, meeting without question my desire to take all meals in my room (not that I’ve wanted very much to eat) and leaving me alone as far as possible. As a result I’m better, well, better than I was, though not exactly chirpy at this stage. I reckon I shall be able to face a long journey in a couple of days and then will probably make for Paris, anyhow somewhere as unlike where I’ve been as possible. I can’t face Connie yet awhile; it’s not that I don’t — no, I won’t go into it now, I think you’ll understand when you’ve read what I have to say.

I remember at the end of my last (God knows how I managed to get it posted) I told you I was in the parlour trying to read and waiting for Lukretia. Charles, I want to skip over what happened that evening (there was nothing that can’t wait till I see you) and come to the next morning, I suppose about seven o’clock. That night I hadn’t dreamed at all, so that waking suddenly, as I did, was like being in a single instant thrust from a dark dungeon into the sunlight; the whole of that charming bedroom was ablaze with the sun. It made me blink. I felt at the same time sluggish and on edge, strung up, for a moment unable to remember where I was. It took me longer than that to piece together what had happened or must have happened before I fell asleep and later. I decided at last — Lukretia had given me champagne; there had been some drug in the champagne; I had succumbed to it; she had left the room; she had not returned. Possessed by a sudden urgency I jumped out of bed and dressed as quickly as I’ve ever done in my life. On the dressing-table there was an envelope with my name on it, also the lock of my hair had gone (explanation later). I put the envelope in my pocket and hurried out.

Downstairs, I found the parlour door shut, locked fast. I called repeatedly, but no one came, nor was there at first the least sound; I had the sense that I was alone in the castle. Then, faint but insistent, there came to my ears an irregular banging or slamming sound, as of an unfastened shutter caught by the wind, indescribably desolate. I found the cause soon enough, in fact a long glass door giving on to a small terrace at the side of the building. In the grip of the acutest dread, yet not knowing what it was that so afflicted me, I advanced through the doorway. The air was already warm; I could hear insect noises and the song of birds. A statue of a naked nymph or girl holding a lamb in her arms, no doubt a copy of a Hellenistic original, stood off to one side. I moved out of the shadow cast by the house and into the full light of the sun; it was very strong. A fitful breeze was stirring the dust on the flagstones. My eye fell on what might have been a thin wisp of dark hair, no more than four or five strands, but it had disintegrated before I could reach it. A thought too terrible to think was beating at the inside of my head. I remembered the envelope I had picked up and tore it open; there was a single sheet of writing inside. This is what it said.

My only dear love,

‘I have to go away and you will never see me again in this life. Anything that could drive me from you must be very powerful, very strong, and it is, so strong that I must not tell you what it is. But I am allowed to tell you what it is not. It is not your fault, neither in yourself nor in any deed or word of yours. It is no shortcoming in the love we feel for each other. That love has been the only true thing in my life and the means of deliverance from all my sorrows. It, and you, have made me happy in such a way that what other happiness I have known seems to me trivial and dull. And that means that the shortness of our time together matters much less to me; I hope, I know, that this will be a consolation to you.

Now I must go. Don’t try to find me; I cannot be found. Don’t try to learn more about me; think of me as you knew me. We may meet after all in a million years from now; I think perhaps God intends that. Goodbye, heart of my heart.

Your Lukretia

Remember your promise. Duminu wobisku .

And with the last two words the unbearable thought declared itself. I reached into my pocket again and brought out the tracing I had made of the first phrases of the document Macneil had shown me in the library. There was no question about it; the hands were the same. I knew now what had troubled me at the time: my unwitting perception that the writing was feminine had been up against my conscious assumption that what was in front of me was the work of a man. And I knew much more besides.

I won’t try to describe my feelings. I went back indoors and knelt down and prayed for Lukretia’s soul, as I have done on retiring and rising ever since and will continue to do for the rest of my life. Then I found Magda, or she me. She asked me my pleasure. I told her I wanted to be packed up and out of the place in the shortest possible time, and she set about it as if she was no less interested in my early departure than I was. How much had she seen and heard over the years? In the last thirty-six hours? I didn’t want to find out. After our first question and answer neither of us had anything to say till we were standing outside the great front door and a grim-faced fellow in an overall was loading my bags into a sort of wagonette. Even then Magda and I exchanged only a word of thanks as I tipped her and a word of farewell, but right at the last she gave me a look saying as plainly as words that we were united by our loss, and I hope I returned it adequately. Before the driver had whipped up his horses the door of the castle shut with a crash. Macneil didn’t appear, which suited my book all right.

I’m sorry to bother you with all this, old boy, but perhaps you see now why I had to tell you, or felt I had to tell you, and why I don’t feel like coming home just yet. I’ll probably see you about the 18th or the 20th. Thanks for listening!