Ice

by Anna Kavan

  I could not remain isolated from the rest of the world. I was involved with the fate of the planet, I had to take an active part in whatever was going on. The endless celebrations here seemed both boring and sinister, reminiscent of the orgies of the plague years. Now, as then, people were deluding themselves; they induced a false sense of security by means of self-indulgence and wishful thinking. I did not believe for one moment they had really escaped.

  I observed the weather carefully; it was fine and warm, but not warm enough. I noted particularly how the temperature fell after sunset, producing a definite chill. It was a bad sign. If I mentioned it, I was told this was the cool season. All the same, the sun should have had more power. Looking about, I found other signs of a changing climate. Plants in the tropical gardens were starting to look unhealthy, and I asked a man working there why this was. He gave me a suspicious glance, mumbled an evasive answer: when I persisted, he pretended to hear the head gardener calling, and ran away. I commented on the chilly evenings to some townspeople I saw going about in peculiar wrappings. They were obviously unused to even this mild degree of cold, and possessed no suitable clothing. They too answered evasively and looked at me in alarm. In view of the new regulations, they probably took me for an agent provocateur.

  An acquaintance of mine, employed in an official capacity by his government, stopped to refuel his plane. I made contact with him, questioned him about events elsewhere. He was uncommunicative. I understood the reason and did not press him. He could not be certain of my affiliations. Mistakes were not tolerated. An absolute standard of loyalty was demanded. The speaker of an incautious phrase would be eliminated, given no chance to correct an error of judgment. Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed to take me as a passenger when he left, but only as far as another island in the archipelago. I saw on the map that the island inhabited by the Indris was not far away, and, although I had decided to go back to my old profession, I promised myself a short visit to the lemurs before proceeding to the theater of military operations.

  I went to inform the girl of my plans. Earlier in the day, waiting to cross a street, I had been held up while a procession went past. She was at its head, standing beside the driver of a big open car decorated with Parma violets. She did not see me, she had no reason to look. Her hair shone like pale fire in the sun, she was smiling and throwing violets to the crowd. It was hard to recognize her as the girl who had traveled with me. When I entered her room, she was still wearing the same Parma violet dress; the delicate color suited her fragile paleness, she looked extremely attractive. Her sparkling hair, sprinkled with silver and Parma violets, had been touched with a matching dye; the slight touch of fantasy was especially charming.

  Telling her to open it later, I presented her with a small package containing a bracelet she had admired, and a check on my personal account. “I’ve brought you some good news, too. I’ve come to say good-bye.” She looked disconcerted, asked what I meant. “I’m leaving tonight. By plane. Aren’t you pleased?” As she only stared silently, I went on: “You’ve always wanted to get rid of me. You must be glad I’m going at last.” A pause, then her voice, cold, resentful. “What do you expect me to say?” I was puzzled by this reaction. She continued to survey me coldly, asked with sudden bitterness: “What sort of a man do you think you are?” The tone was meant to be scathing. “Now perhaps you see why I’ve never trusted you. I always knew you’d betray me again . . . go off and leave me, just as you did before.” I protested: “That’s grossly unfair! You can’t blame me for going after you’ve told me to go, made it completely clear that you’ve no time for me—I’ve hardly set eyes on you since we got here.” “Oh . . . !” With a disgusted exclamation, she turned her back, took a few steps away from me.

  The full skirt swirling, a silky shimmer like moonlight on violets; the bright, heavy hair swinging, scintillating with violet highlights. I followed, touched her hair with the tips of my fingers, felt it ripple with life. Her arms had a soft satin sheen, the skin smooth and scented, a chain of violets round the thin wrist. I put my arms round her and kissed her neck. Instantly her whole body tensed in violent resistance, she twisted herself away. “Don’t touch me! I don’t know how you have the nerve . . .” Her voice seemed to fail on the edge of tears, then rose again thinly: “Well, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you go? And don’t come back this time. I never want to see you again, or be reminded of you!” She pulled off her watch and a ring I had given her, flung them wildly in my direction; began trying to unfasten her necklace, hands at the back of her head, the raised arms giving her slight body a hint of voluptuousness it did not really possess. With an effort I refrained from embracing her again, pleaded with her instead. “Don’t be so angry. Don’t let’s part like this. You must know how I’ve felt about you all this time. You know how I’ve always followed you, forced you to come with me. But you’ve said so consistently that you hated me, wanted nothing to do with me, that I’ve finally had to believe you.” I was only being half honest, and knew it. Tentatively I took her hand; it was stiff, unresponsive, but she did not take it away, let me go on holding it while she gazed at me fixedly. With doubt, criticism, accusation her eyes rested . . . serious, innocent, shadowed eyes; the hand behind her head still engaged with the necklace; the glittering hair, the scent of violets, close to my hand; then the grave voice . . . “And if I hadn’t said those things, would you have stayed with me?”

  This time it seemed important to speak the whole truth: but I could not be certain what that was, and in the end the only true words seemed to be: “I don’t know.”

  Immediately she became furious, tore her hand out of mine; the other hand tugged at the chain round her neck, broke it, beads shot all over the room. “How can you be so utterly heartless—and so brazen about it! Anyone else would be ashamed . . . but you . . . you don’t even pretend to have any feelings . . . it’s too horrible, hateful . . . you simply aren’t human at all!” I was sorry, I had not wanted to hurt her: I could understand her indignation, in a way. There seemed nothing that I could say. My silence enraged her still more. “Oh, go on! Go away! Go!” She turned on me suddenly, pushed me with a force for which I was unprepared, so that I stumbled back, ran my elbow into the door. It was painful, and I asked in annoyance: “Why are you so anxious to get me out of the room? Are you expecting somebody else? The owner of that open car you were in?” “Oh, how I loathe and despise you! If only you knew how much!” She pushed me again. “Get out, can’t you? Go, go, go!” She took a deep breath, lunged at me, started pounding my chest with her fists. But the effort was too much, she abandoned it at once and leaned against the wall, her head drooping. I saw that her shadowed face looked bruised by emotion, before the bright hair swung forward, concealing it. There was a brief pause, long enough for me to feel a chilly sensation creep over me; the adumbration of emptiness, loss . . . of what life would be like without her.

  Action was needed to drive away this unpleasant feeling. I put my hand on the door knob, and said, “All right; I’ll go now,” half hoping to be detained at the last moment. She did not move or speak, made no sign. Only, as I opened the door, a funny little sound escaped from her throat; a sob, a choke, a cough, I could not tell which. I went out into the passage, walked quickly past all the closed doors, back to my own room.

  There was still a little time left. I rang for a bottle of Scotch and sat drinking. I felt uncertain, divided in myself. My bag was already packed and had been taken downstairs. In a few minutes I would have to follow . . . unless I changed my plans, stayed here after all . . . I remembered that I had not said good-bye, wondered whether to go back, could not make up my mind. I was still undecided when it was time to go.

  I had to pass her door again on the way down. I hesitated outside it for a second, then hurried on to the lift. Of course I was leaving. Only a madman would waste this almost miraculous chance of getting away. I could not possibly hope for another.

  TWELVE<
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  The news I heard during the flight confirmed my worst fears. The world situation seemed to be entering its last fatal phase. The elimination of many countries, including my own, left no check on the militarism of the remaining big powers, who confronted each other, the smaller nations dividing allegiance between them. Both principals held stocks of nuclear weapons many times in excess of the overkill stage, so that the balance of terror appeared to be nicely adjusted. But some of the lesser countries also possessed thermonuclear devices, although which of them was not known: and this uncertainty, and the resulting tension, provoked escalating crises, each of which brought nearer the final catastrophe. An insane impatience for death was driving mankind to a second suicide, even before the full effect of the first had been felt. I was profoundly depressed, left with a sense of waiting for something frightful to happen, a sort of mass execution.

  I looked at the natural world, and it seemed to share my feelings, to be trying in vain to escape its approaching doom. The waves of the sea sped in disorderly flight toward the horizon; the sea birds, the dolphins and flying fish, hurtled frenziedly through the air; the islands trembled and grew transparent, endeavoring to detach themselves, to rise as vapor and vanish in space. But no escape was possible. The defenseless earth could only lie waiting for its destruction, either by avalanches of ice, or by chain-explosions which would go on and on, eventually transforming it into a nebula, its very substance disintegrated.

  I went through the jungle alone, searching for the Indris, believing their magic influence might lift the dead weight of depression which had fallen on me. I did not care whether I saw or dreamed them. It was hot, steamy; the mad intensity of the sun pouring down all its force on the equator for the last time. My head was aching, I was exhausted: unable to stand the burning sun any longer, I lay down in black shade, shut my eyes.

  At once I felt that the lemurs were near me. Or was it their nearness that abolished despair and dread? It seemed more as if I received a message of hope from another world; a world without violence or cruelty, in which despair was unknown. I had often dreamed of this place, where life was a thousand times more exciting and splendid than life on earth. Now one of its inhabitants seemed to stand beside me. He smiled at me, touched my hand, spoke my name. His face was calm and impartial, tunelessly intelligent, full of goodwill, impossible to associate with any form of pretense.

  He told me about the hallucination of space-time, and the joining of past and future so that either could be the present, and all ages accessible. He said he would take me to his world, if I wanted to go. He and others like him had seen the end of our planet, the end of the human race. The race was dying, the collective death-wish, the fatal impulse to self-destruction, although perhaps human life might survive. The life here was over. But life was continuing and expanding in a different place. We could be incorporated in this wider life, if we chose.

  I tried to understand. He was a man, but seemed more; he was not what I was. He had access to superior knowledge, to some ultimate truth. He was offering me the freedom of his privileged world, a world my inmost self longed to know. I felt the excitement of the unimaginable experience. From the doomed dying world man had ruined, I seemed to catch sight of this other one, new, infinitely alive, and of boundless potential. For a second I believed myself capable of existing on a higher level in that wonderful world; but saw how far it was beyond my powers when I thought of the girl, the warden, the spreading ice, the fighting and killing. I was part of all that, irrevocably involved with events and persons upon this planet. It was heartbreaking to reject what a part of me wanted most. But I knew that my place was here, in our world under sentence of death, and that I would have to stay and see it through to the end.

  The dream, the hallucination, or whatever it was, had a powerful effect on me afterward. I could not forget it, could not forget the supreme intelligence and integrity of that dream-face. I was left with a sense of emptiness, loss, as if something precious really had been in my grasp, and I had thrown it away.

  It did not seem to matter what I did now. I was committed to violence and must keep to my pattern. I managed to reach the mainland where guerrilla fighting was going on, and, indifferent to everything, joined a company of mercenaries in the pay of the west. We fought in the marshes, in the delta of a tidal river with many mouths, thigh-deep in mud most of the time. More men had been lost in the mud than through enemy action when finally we were withdrawn. It seemed to me we were fighting against the ice, which was all the while coming steadily nearer, covering more of the world with its dead silence, its awful white peace. By making war we asserted the fact that we were alive and opposed the icy death creeping over the globe.

  I still felt I was waiting for something fearful to happen, but in a curious sort of suspended state. There was an emotional blockage. I recognized it in others besides myself. In suppressing food riots, our machine guns indiscriminately cut down rioters and harmless pedestrians. I had no feeling about it and noticed the same indifference in everyone else. People stood looking on as at a performance, did not even attend to the wounded. I had to share a sleeping tent with five other men for a time. They had fantastic courage, but no idea of danger, of life, death, anything; were satisfied as long as they got a hot meal every day with meat and potatoes. I could not make any contact with them; hung up my overcoat as a screen and lay sleepless behind it.

  Presently I began to hear the warden mentioned again. He was attached to western headquarters, held an important post there. I remembered his wish to cooperate with the big powers, and admired the way he had achieved it. Thinking of him made me restless. It seemed idiotic to spend my last days in a hired fighting unit, and I decided to ask him to find me a job in which I would have more scope. The problem was how to reach him. Our leader was the only person who occasionally had direct dealings with the higher command, and he refused to help me, interested in nothing but his own advancement. For days we had been attacking a strongly defended building said to contain secret papers. He would not ask for reinforcements, determined to get the credit for taking the place unaided. By a simple trick, I enabled him to capture the building and send the documents to headquarters, for which he was highly praised.

  Impressed by my ingenuity, he asked me to have a drink with him, offered me promotion. He was making a personal report the next day, and I said that the only reward I wanted was to go to headquarters with him. He replied that he couldn’t spare me, I must give him more of these tips. He was half drunk. I deliberately encouraged him to go on drinking until he passed out. In the morning, when he was about to start, I jumped into his car, pretending he had promised to take me, relying on his having been too drunk the previous night to remember what had been said. It was a nasty moment. He clearly suspected something. But he did not have me thrown out of the car. I drove with him to headquarters, neither of us speaking a word the whole way.

  THIRTEEN

  They had built their headquarters far away from the battlefields, a large clean new building, flying a large clean flag. Stone and concrete, it stood out solid, massive, expensive, indestructible looking, among the low, old, rickety wooden houses. Apart from the sentries at the main entrance, it seemed to have nothing to do with war. No other guards were visible. Inside there appeared to be no security precautions at all. I recalled the commander’s drunken remark: perhaps these people really were too soft to fight; relying on their technological supremacy, on the gigantic size and wealth of their country, believed they need not dirty their hands with the actual fighting, paid their inferiors to do that.

  I was directed to the warden’s suite. The place was air-conditioned. Elevators rose smoothly, silently, swiftly. Thick carpets stretched from wall to wall of the wide corridors. After the squalid discomfort in which I had been living, it was like a luxury hotel. Lights blazed everywhere in spite of the sunshine outside. Windows were hermetically sealed, not made to open. The resulting atmosphere was slightly
unreal.

  A woman secretary in uniform told me the warden could see no one. He was leaving immediately on a tour of inspection and would be away some days. I said: “I must see him before he goes. It’s urgent. I’ve come all this way specially. I won’t keep him a minute.” She pursed her lips, shook her head. “Absolutely impossible. He has important papers to sign and gave orders that nobody was to disturb him.” Her well made-up face was adamant, uncomprehending. It annoyed me. “To hell with that! I tell you I must see him! It’s a personal matter. Can’t you understand?” I wanted to shake her, to get some human expression into her face. Instead, I made my voice calm. “At least tell him I’m here and ask whether he’ll see me.” I felt in my pockets for some means of identification, then wrote my name on a pad. While I was doing so, a colonel came in. The secretary went over and whispered to him. At the end of their confabulation the man said he would give the message himself, took the paper with my name on it, and left the room by the same door through which he had just entered. I knew he had no intention of telling the warden about me. Only decisive action on my part would get me an interview. Soon it would be too late.

  “Where does that door lead?” I asked the secretary, pointing to one at the other end of the room. “Oh, that’s strictly private. You can’t go in there. It’s forbidden.” For the first time she began to lose her superior calm and to look flustered. She had not been trained to deal with a direct approach. I said: “Well, I’m going in,” moved toward the door. “No!” She flew to stand in front of it, barring my way. The country she belonged to was so firmly convinced of world power that its nationals could not conceive of real opposition from anyone, even over the smallest issue. I smiled, pushed her aside. She clung on to my clothes, holding me back. There was a brief scuffle. I heard a voice I recognized beyond the closed door. “What’s going on there?” I went in. “Oh, it’s you, is it?” He seemed singularly unsurprised. In the doorway the secretary was talking fast and apologetically. He waved her away. The door shut. I said: “I must speak to you.”