A Severed Head

by Iris Murdoch

  As I stopped for a moment to look back at the lighted window I wondered in what terrible and unimaginable colloquy those two were now wrapped.

  Twenty-one

  I followed my sister up the steps. Outside the house the fog was golden yellow, thick with sulphurous grains. It was hard to breathe. I hurried after her retreating figure which had become almost at once invisible. It was exceedingly cold and our footsteps made a small crackling sound as they crushed the thin layer of ice which had formed upon the paving stones. When I caught her up I took her ungloved hand in mine and pressed it against my side to warm it a little, but it remained cold and limp. She walked a little faster than I did and as I began to hurry she always hurried a little more. Her face was averted from me, but I could see the drops of moisture upon her short black hair which seemed like a bedraggled cap set with small gems. The pavement seemed to become more thick with ice so that our feet no longer broke through the crystalline layer. The ice was stronger. At last very gently and without difficulty we began to skate. Her hand was warmer now as we began to move at first slowly and then faster upon the wide expanse of ice which showed yellow in the baleful winter light, its edges lost to view. As we moved effortlessly onward I turned her a little to face me. She had shaken the water from her hair which seemed now to be a furry hat, and in her high black skating boots she looked to me like a Cossack. But her face was sad. I drew her closer and we began to waltz together on the endless ice. As we danced I attempted to embrace her: but I was impeded by the sword which hung down stiffly between us, its hilt biting into me and causing a sharp pain. I lowered my hand and put it upon the hilt and felt immediately her hand trying to prevent me. We moved more slowly in a circle as I increased my pressure and then broke suddenly through her restraining grip. The sword came out with a rush as still facing each other we drew apart. Over her shoulder I could see on the far horizon a tiny figure approaching. Steadily as he approached she receded until for a moment they were the same size, stiff and rounded like twin images in the middle distance. Then as she dwindled away to nothing he glided on towards me with increasing speed, his huge Jewish face growing like a great egg above the silken wings of his gown. I swung the sword in an arc before him but as it moved the blade came away and flew upwards into the winter darkness which had collected above us. Clinging in fear and guilt to what remained in my hand I recognized my father.

  I woke up shivering. It was dark. The blankets had fallen to the floor and the camp bed felt damp as well as very hard and cold. I had a sharp pain in my stomach, doubtless the result of drinking a great deal the night before. Or was it still the night before? I got up, found my dressing-gown, and switched on the light.

  The naked bulb lit up a scene of gloomy disorder, the gaunt camp bed with its trail of blankets, the bare floorboards, my suitcase disgorging towels, underwear, packets of letters, and an electric razor. My jacket and trousers lay in a heap where I had drunkenly fallen out of them. The half-empty whisky bottle stood in the corner. There were various cigarette ends. The glass which I had just overturned with my foot rolled slowly across the floor until it came to rest against a leg of the bed. It made a hollow sound. The famous oil-fired central heating seemed to be making little impression on the temperature of the room. I turned on the electric fire which was set into the wall and it glowed in the bright light with a cheerless pallor. The demon asthma, defeated when I went to bed by drink and sheer exhaustion, was present still, and I could feel it squeeze my chest like a broad band wound about me and gradually tightening. Intermittent whines and gurgles issued from my lungs, I tried to breathe slowly. I knotted the belt of my dressing-gown and opened the window, but shut it at once after one sniff of the cold thick air outside. I looked out.

  Far below me in a kind of dark, Lowndes Square slumbered in the haze of its street lamps out of which black trees soared almost to the level of my window. I could not make out whether the diffused light in which I saw the shapes below was a twilight or whether it was simply the glow of lamplight spread out upon the night. The sky was dark and thick. I wondered what time it was. My watch had stopped and the telephone was not connected yet. In what I could discern of the square there seemed to be no one about. Perhaps I had only slept for an hour or two. What was certain was that I could not now sleep again. I turned back to the room.

  Palmer had of course been right. It was only on the following day that the full shock came to me. I had returned to London in a daze, had come straight to Lowndes Square and had then slept until late. That had been, assuming that it was now after midnight, yesterday morning. When I woke I woke to a state of terror and despair which was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I had tasted despair in the past, but as I remember it had always had a fairly clear cause and a clear nature. This present thing was confused and irrational and its very obscurity was a source of fear. I was frightened to be alone with it and yet there was no one to whom I could run. I could not even make out what part in my condition was played by horror of incest. I had never consciously felt any aversion from the idea of an embrace of siblings. Yet perhaps it was just this idea at work in my soul through some pattern which I could not discern which brought about this almost tangible sense of darkness. What was strange too was that this particular horror, whatever its source, was now indissolubly connected with my passion for Honor, so that it was as if the object of my desire were indeed my sister.

  During my interview with Palmer my sense of Honor’s proximity had been as it were diffused, a trembling in the atmosphere which was not quite a sound but which if it had been audible might have been a shriek. Now afterwards my thought of her, focused, was a round pain to the periphery of which the torn fragments of my being adhered like rags of flesh. I could indeed hardly put a name to my state, so unlike was it to anything which I had experienced previously when in love. It seemed as if this condition had with those no common feature. Yet I could not think what else to call it if it was not love which so brought me to my knees.

  I could not without agony recall the mounting level of my intention and its terrible climax. Something still remained to torment me of a kind of dream which I had had of some miraculous and magnificent encounter with Honor in which the lurid light of battle which had so flashed over our past meetings should be transformed into, or rather finally seen as, the glow of a violent love. I had dreamed of her as free, as alone, as waiting in her still slumbering consciousness for me, reserved, separated, sacred. The so-different truth of the matter could scarcely be contemplated. I had not for a second conceived of her possessing a lover; and at the idea that she had taken to her in that role her brother my fascinated and appalled imagination reeled. In any woman this dark love could not but be something of colossal dimensions. Some sign of how great it was I could indeed now in retrospect see, interpreting in the light of my knowledge Honor’s bewildering conduct.

  I thought of myself as in every sense lost, sunk without trace in a love which now seemed tinged with insanity, and deprived altogether of hope. I attached little importance to Palmer’s statement that what I had seen would be without a sequel. It seemed as if Honor’s will alone, bent upon Palmer, must bring all that she wished to pass. I had of course no intention, had never had any intention, of speaking to Antonia. Antonia seemed to me as unconnected with this as if she were a complete stranger. She seemed too, for such monstrous knowledge, too flimsy and too small. I could not have spoken to Antonia about my falling in love and so I could not speak to her about this which was inseparably a part of my falling in love. No one would ever know about it. But I could not see Palmer, even married to Antonia, as ever free from the clutches of that tawny-breasted witch the vision of whom, her jagged black hair in disorder, her face stern and angelic above her nakedness, never ceased now to be before me; and I felt equally that I was cursed for life, like men who have slept with temple prostitutes and, visited by a goddess, cannot touch a woman after.

  I spent the day in a sort of limbo. I could not eat anything, no
r could I rest because of a dreadful aching and tingling in the limbs. I walked about in Hyde Park, returned to the flat, and set out again at once through fear of being alone. The misty park was desolate as a moon landscape but at least there were forms of human beings upon it here and there. I thought a little bit about Georgie, but her figure, seeming already to belong to a remote past, looked so sadly upon me that I could not endure to contemplate it. I could not ask Georgie to console me because I loved another, nor could the old love, poor pathetic thing as it now seemed, heal me of the new. I drank a great deal and went to bed about nine o’clock in a desperate desire for oblivion.

  I wondered now if I should not try after all to go to sleep again. There was nothing I could do with myself waking. I pulled the blankets back on to the camp bed and lay down on top of them without switching out the light; but the ache had come back into my limbs and I knew it was useless to attempt to rest. I got up again and began to hunt for my asthma tablets, tilting the rest of the contents of my suitcase out on to the floor. I found them, and retrieved the glass which turned out to be cracked. I trailed out to the kitchen and began gloomily to wash a plastic mug which had been left behind by the previous tenant.

  A strange sudden sound echoed through the flat. It was close by, and yet I could not locate its direction. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. I jumped, with a violent trip of the heart, and then stood rigid listening to the silence and wondering what I had heard. The sound came again. After a terrified moment I realized that it was the door bell which I had not heard before. I adjusted my dressing-gown and went into the dark corridor, leaving the door open behind me to give some light. I fumbled with the catch of the front door, my hands trembling with nervousness, and eventually got it open. The lights were on on the landing. It was Antonia.

  I stared at her with an idiotic surprise and my heart beat faster as if I already knew that she had brought bad news. She had her back to the light but her darkened face seemed to stare as madly as my own. Without speaking I turned back towards the lighted sitting-room and Antonia followed me in, closing both doors behind her.

  I moved towards the window and then back to look at her. She looked wild. She wore a scarf over her head from which great strands of greying gold hair escaped on to the collar of her tweed coat. She seemed to be wearing no make-up and was extremely pale. Her big mouth was drooping as it sometimes did before she cried.

  I said, ‘What time is it, Antonia?’

  ‘Ten o’clock.’

  ‘In the night or in the morning?’

  ‘In the morning,’ she said, staring at me with wider eyes.

  ‘But why is it so dark?’

  ‘It’s foggy.’

  ‘I must have slept for twelve hours,’ I said. ‘What is it, Antonia?’

  ‘Martin,’ said Antonia, ‘did anything odd happen when I was away?’

  My breath came short. ‘Odd?’ I said. ‘No, not that I know of. Where were you, anyway?’ I had not even wondered till now. I had not had a thought to spare for her.

  ‘I went to see mother,’ said Antonia. ‘She hasn’t been well. I’m sure I told you. I wanted Anderson to come too, but he had to go to Cambridge to fetch away his things.’

  ‘Why did you ask if anything odd had happened?’

  ‘Well, something must have happened,” said Antonia, ‘or else I’m going mad.’

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ I said. ‘But I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Did you see Anderson at the week-end?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, something’s happened to him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Antonia. ‘It’s like in stories when someone is possessed by the devil, or in science fiction. He looks the same and yet he seems to be a different person. It’s as if a different personality inhabited him.’

  ‘This must be nonsense,’ I said. ‘Sit down, for heaven’s sake, Antonia, and stop looking as if you were going to scream.’

  ‘But he is changed,’ said Antonia, her voice rising. ‘He’s turned against me.’ She was staring at me as if she positively wanted to infect me with her own craziness.

  ‘ “Turned against you”?’ I said. ‘Come, come, Antonia. And please don’t be so intense. I’m not feeling at all well myself. Now just tell me quietly and in detail what the hell you mean. And do sit down, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘It isn’t anything very definite,’ she said, ‘and yet it’s overwhelming. Something must have happened. He behaves quite differently to me, he’s cold and he looks at me in such a terrifying way as if he were thinking about killing me. Of course I got quite tearful, and that seemed to annoy him more. Then he went away for ages in the middle of the night. And Honor Klein has come back to the house and she seems to be everywhere at once like a sort of black cloud. And honestly, Martin, I’m frightened.’ She ended with a little whine and sat down on the camp bed, getting out her handkerchief.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ I said. ‘You must be imagining all this.’ I was exceedingly shaken to see my own fear mirrored in her unconsciousness, in her innocence.

  ‘It was such a shock,’ said Antonia. The big tears now coursed down her face. ‘I could hardly believe it at first, I thought I must be imagining it too. But he kept watching me, and so cold. As if I’d committed a crime. I wonder if anyone has told him some story about me?’

  ‘What story could anybody tell?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Antonia. ‘Something about me and Alexander for instance. You know the way people love to invent things. Somebody must have done something to put him against me. There must have been some misunderstanding. You haven’t done anything, have you, Martin?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen Palmer. Anyway you know perfectly well I wouldn’t do anything like that.’ Palmer must be on the rack, wondering if I had told Antonia. The thought did not displease me.

  I became aware of a faint hissing sound behind me. It increased, and I turned to the window. It had started to rain. Looking at the greyish yellowish sky I saw it now as daylight. I turned back to the lighted room and the lifted frightened face of Antonia. The place was as bleak and lurid as a prison cell.

  ‘Perhaps he’s going mad,’ she said. ‘Martin, did you know that his mother was insane?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Was she? That’s interesting.’

  ‘He only told me quite recently,’ said Antonia. ‘Last week, before –’ She sobbed, wiped her face slowly all over with the handkerchief and sobbed again.

  I stood, hands in the pockets of my dressing-gown, watching her cry. I pitied her, but only as an unconscious extension of my own dilemma.

  ‘So Honor Klein is there,’ I said.

  ‘I hate the woman,’ said Antonia. ‘She was supposed to be going back to Cambridge, but there she still was and now she’s actually living in the house. She gives me the creeps.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. The door bell rang and we both jumped.

  I looked at Antonia, and her wide eyes followed me to the door. I crossed the hall and flung the front door open. It was the removal men.

  I told them to dump the stuff anywhere and returned to Antonia. She was standing up now, examining her face in her pocket mirror. She dabbed a little powder on to her nose and was now rubbing her cheeks which were still shiny with tears. She pushed the scarf back off her hair and gave an exhausted sigh. She looked haggard.

  ‘Darling, do use your common sense,’ she said. ‘You may as well have the stuff put in the right rooms.’ She seemed a little recovered and went out to organize the removal men. A few minutes later two giants came shuffling in carrying the Carl-ton House writing-table with the Audubon prints stacked on top of it. I told them where to put it. When they had gone I cut the string which held the prints together and began to lay them out against the wall in a row: the puffins, the nightjars, the gold-winged woodpeckers, the Carolina parrots, the scarlet tanagers, the great crested owls. T
he uprooted familiar things affected me with a sad sick feeling as if I were dimly remembering that someone had died. I could hear Antonia’s voice in the hall instructing the men. What was my sickness? I stared through the prints, unable to focus my eyes upon them, into another world. Behold her bosom and half her side, a sight to dream of not to tell.

  Antonia came back into the room and shut the door. She was carrying the Meissen cockatoos one in each hand. She put them on the two ends of the mantelpiece. She said, ‘That’s all for this room, I’ve told them. Oh, the bird prints, yes, you’ve taken them. I’d forgotten that they were yours.’ She looked at them sadly and began to take off her coat.

  ‘We rather forgot about mine and yours, didn’t we?’ I said. ‘I’ll give them back to you.’

  ‘No. no,’ said Antonia. ‘I don’t want them. You must have your own things.’

  ‘Well, you must come and help me arrange them,’ I said. ‘You will, won’t you?’

  Antonia looked at me. Her face contracted, and she shook her head, trying to speak. Then she said, ‘Oh, Martin, I’m so miserable, I’m so miserable!’ She began to wail with a low keening sound, and sat down heavily on the bed rocking herself to and fro. For a while I watched her.

  The door bell rang again. Antonia’s weeping stopped as if at the turn of a switch, and as I passed her she clutched my hand for a moment. I gave her a reassuring squeeze and went on out into the hall. Someone was silhouetted in the open doorway. It was, of course, Palmer.

  Ever since Antonia had arrived I had been expecting him, and it was with an extraordinary exhilaration that I now saw his tall figure confronting me. I could not see his face properly, but I could feel my own becoming expressionless and bland. I was glad he had come.