The Self-Enchanted

by David Stacton

  The moonlight made his face pale and luminous. She could see his chest rise and fall, and his lips were slightly parted. The hair was clotted around his forehead, and he was sweating. The sweat made his face glow, and beneath his closed eyes his eyeballs seemed hard and round.

  She could not bear to be parted from him. She saw every pore and line on his face. “Christopher,” she whispered. His eyes opened. It took him a moment to focus and then he began to stir. He smiled slightly and closed his eyes again, and she put her head in the crook of his arm.

  “How did we get back?” he asked.

  “I drove you.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “He wants you to see a specialist in Hong Kong.” She reached out her hand, stroking his hair. “I love you,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you.” She began to cry, because she could not help it. “Christopher,” she said. “I’m frightened.”

  “There’s no reason to be,” he said, but hugged her closer in the darkness. She stood up, slipped out of her clothes, and got in bed with him.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “You feel so young and healthy. Will I ever be young again?”

  “Of course you will.”

  “I haven’t been too pleasant.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He turned on his side and she sank down into a voluptuousness of exhaustion and desire. She would give him anything now.

  “Who is this doctor?” he asked after a while.

  “I don’t know. His name is James.”

  He was silent for a minute. “When am I to go there?”

  “We should leave to-morrow.”

  He lay staring at the ceiling, and she could feel his frightened body pressing towards her, trying to flee out of itself and into her.

  “I’ve never needed anyone before,” he said, “or been needed. It’s funny. I don’t mind. I always thought I would. When I realized I needed you, I hated you. But I don’t. I love you.” He turned towards her. “I want to live,” he said. He began to sob quietly, the tears trickling down his face.

  “I want a child now, Christopher,” she said.

  “It’s too late.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said bitterly.

  “I wanted to found a family,” he said. “Can you imagine that? I wanted a strong son.”

  “He will be.”

  “There’s still enough money: he could have everything I never had. But there isn’t much time.”

  “That’s not true,” she wailed.

  He sat up in bed. He was thinking. “I was nineteen when I met Nora,” he said. “She was rich, and I wanted power. I wanted enough power so nobody could ever touch me, or laugh at me again. I hated her. But she wanted me, and she got me. I thought it was my big chance. She taught me how to go into a room and what to say and how to meet the right people. She told me what to buy and sell, and she got me out of small-time gambling. She got me to buy up real estate. And all the time I hated her. She’s obscene. And then she wanted me to marry her daughter. Why? God knows why. Because she wanted me under her thumb and to show she still had the upper hand. She didn’t succeed, and she’s never forgiven me. She wants to ruin me just to prove she can do it. I took you there. I wanted to show her I was free of her. Like Curt, I guess. And she tricked us both. I’ll never forgive her for that. And she’ll never forgive me.”

  She could not stop him. He talked on and on. He told her about his family, and his childhood, and the small-time days. He told her everything, as though he had to. And she realized that he was confessing to her. Yet there were some things he did not tell her. There were some things that hurt him too much for him to tell her or anyone, and she could guess that. He talked until dawn, smoking cigarette after cigarette.

  Finally she got him to rest.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked hesitantly. But he looked scared.

  “Of course.”

  “I couldn’t face it alone.”

  “You won’t have to,” she said.

  At last, after he had fallen asleep and the soft morning sun was creeping across the floor towards the bed, she lay sleepless, looking down at him. There was nothing she could do for him. She could only try to help. And in the meantime there was Hong Kong, and she did not like to think about what she would discover there. She wanted to take him in her arms, like a child, and comfort him.

  *

  Hong Kong was a nightmare. It lasted three days. She went with him to the hospital, only to have him demand that she leave. She went back to the hotel, plagued by anxiety. When he appeared he would tell her nothing. He was upset and irritable. At night he was brutal. In his heaving shoulders she could read every muscle of a terror she did not understand.

  In the daytime he hid from her. At times he could not bear her. He ran to be alone, as a wounded animal runs.

  On the fourth morning she found him sitting at breakfast, shaking violently.

  “What time do you go to see James?” she asked.

  “I’m not going.”

  “That’s unreasonable.”

  “I’m not,” he shouted, so that everyone in the dining-room could hear him. She saw the look in his eyes.

  “Christopher, you’ve got to go.”

  “I Won’t I tell you.”

  “I won’t, I tell you.’

  “Christopher, everyone is watching us.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I don’t care.’

  “Christopher!”

  He blinked at her and stopped. She got him into a car and got in with him, giving the address to the driver. The car pulled up before James’s offices.

  “Do you want me to go in with you?” she asked.

  “No. I may as well face it. But wait here.” He kissed her and went into the building. She could hear the meter ticking. It ticked on maddeningly, until she thought it would drive her insane. She watched the numbers turn up and knew that the driver was watching her in the rear-view mirror. It was an old car with a high tonneau and a square front with two lamps. She found herself picking with her fingernails at the flaking leather upholstery. The flakes got under her nails, and she searched compulsively in her handbag for a nail file, aware that she was doing everything too jerkily. She forced herself to be calm. She took out a compact and powdered her nose, but still Christopher did not come back. She watched the second hand on her watch. It was like a capillary. It swept round and round the dial, hesitating as it approached ten, and when it was over to one, pouring smoothly down again. She got out of the cab and walked up and down. She was starting back towards the cab when she saw Christopher. She knew at once that it was bad news. She could see every detail of his body, and searched his face.

  “How did it go?”

  “He wants to see you,” he said heavily. Behind him she could see all too clearly the black outline of the cab, and the driver, who was picking his teeth. Even from this distance she could hear the ticking of the meter. “I’ll wait in the cab,” he told her. “Don’t be too long. I don’t want to be alone.”

  She stared at him and then started up the stairs. Looking back, she saw him huddled up in the back seat of the cab. She went down the hallway until she found a door marked “Dr. James” and opened it. She was shown into a room furnished with dark furniture. Its walls were panelled and there was a dark Turkey carpet. The doctor at least looked sympathetic. He was an Englishman of about fifty, precise and thin. She looked at him helplessly.

  “I’m afraid the news isn’t very good. Why hasn’t he seen a doctor before? If he had …”

  “Oh,” she said, finishing the sentence for him.

  “Of course, you can check in the States. But I’m afraid the diagnosis will be the same.”

  She felt like an idiot. “Will he die?”

  “He will unless he consents to an operation. It’s pretty far advanced.”

  “And if he doesn’t have the operation, how much longer”, she stumbled on the words, “will he live?”

  Dr. Jame
s looked uncomfortable. “Perhaps a few months. Perhaps a year. I don’t know. Nobody could. But not more than a year, and the pain will be pretty bad.”

  “Does he know this?”

  “In substance, yes.”

  “And if he had the operation?”

  “It’s a chance, a slim chance, but a chance.”

  “Did he refuse?”

  “He was violent about it. A lot of people feel that way. It’s not a pretty operation. But he’s living on will-power, and that can’t go on for ever. Will-power won’t pull him through.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “I’m afraid you’re in for a bad time of it,” he said. “But get him to agree to the operation.”

  “He never will.”

  Dr. James grunted and rose. “What’s he scared of, otherwise?” he asked. “Do you know?”

  “In part.”

  “He may crack up. If I were you I’d get him home right away. And if you can, talk him into the operation. Well, you must, that’s all. And you should get a nurse, soon. I’m sorry,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  She went out and waited in the hall for a moment, unable to face Christopher. Then she went down the steps to the cab. When she got in he gave directions to the driver. He was very quiet. At last, looking out into the street, away from her, he asked, “Did he tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned to her and she could see that his eyes were hard and his jaw determined. “I’m not having it,” he said. “Do you think I want to be a cripple? I’d rather die.”

  “It’s your only chance,” she said hopelessly.

  “Then I don’t want a chance.”

  She tried to talk him around, but she knew that he meant it. She tried everything she could think of. She even tried to reason with him in bed, where consent is most easily given, but she could do nothing with him. He would not even leave Macao. She gave up. Her one desire now was to get him back to the valley. She could not get over the idea that things might be different there.

  *

  For the first time since they had come to Macao the skies were heavy, with great bruised purple clouds that huddled across the sky. The surface of the river was angry. The wind whipped it to and fro into small white caps that hissed and foamed and subsided, only to form again.

  The trees in the hotel garden scraped against the walls like raw bones. The rooms were peculiarly dim with that dimness of electric light burning in the day time. The atmosphere was damp. The whole town seemed to be waiting for the storm to break. She could hear the thunder rolling in the distant hills.

  They had dinner together in the dining-room. It was crowded. Even the incessant orchestra was not as insistent as usual. After dinner they went to bed early.

  “I wish to hell the damned storm would break,” snapped Christopher.

  “It isn’t very cheerful,” She was relieved. She always was when they reached their room and went to bed for the night. Then it was possible to be honest and to be close to him. He had no secrets from her in the night.

  “It makes me restless. If it would only either rain or clear up.”

  They lay in darkness, listening to the creaking plants below the balcony. The whole town seemed to be quivering around them.

  “Do you want to be alone?” she asked.

  “Would you mind?”

  Distressed, she bent over and kissed him, and he put his arms around her angrily. Suddenly he let her go. She went to her own room reluctantly.

  He lay alone for a long time, tossing and turning. He propped himself up in bed and lit a cigarette. There was a sudden hush. The wind died. Far off, and then nearer, the thunder rumbled, and after a pause, with a tremendous roar, the rain began to come down. It crashed around the hotel, until the balcony door opened on nothing but a solid curtain of water, shutting out the world and locking him in this one small room. He sat up in the darkness, watching. He turned over and tried to bury himself in the bed, but the bed was by now rumpled and hot. He got up, stumbled in the darkness, and went to the windows. The rain splattered over his face in hard drops. It was cold rain, icy cold, and he drew back.

  The rain fell endlessly, beating everything down to the ground, and turning the earth into a morass of mud in which the flowers struggled and drowned. The wind was rising. Outside the windows it drove the rain backwards and forwards like a steel curtain.

  He felt his way across the salon and stopped at Sally’s door. He could hear her steady breathing, as she slept. Going back to his own room, he dressed hurriedly and jammed his feet into his shoes. He groped his way through the salon, found the door, and let himself into the hall. It was long and shabby. Some of its lights had blown out.

  He reached the top of the stairs and paused. Below him stretched the emptiness of the lobby. He had to find someone to talk to, anyone. He went downstairs and wandered from room to room, but there was nobody there, so he rushed out through the revolving doors and stepped into the torrent. The rain was so thick that he could scarcely see across the street.

  He was cold, bitterly cold, and he was soaked through. The rain had driven through his coat into his clothes. His tweeds stank of smoke and rain and clung heavily to his body. It was as though everything conspired to pull him down.

  At last he saw the sign of the Central Hotel, glimmering through the heavy mist, and lurched inside. The bright lights made him blink. He did not know which way to turn. Then he saw Mrs. Carter.

  “Whatever brings you out on a night like this?” she asked, and he tried to turn away. “Why, you poor man, you’re shivering from head to foot.” She took his arm, looking at him sharply and smiling at the same time. “Come and have a drink. You’ll die of pneumonia if you don’t.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Of course you drink. Everybody drinks. Ask anybody.” She tugged at him, and he followed her, finding it difficult to focus. The room whirled round his head. “Here,” she said, and he felt a glass in his hand. “That will do the trick.”

  He drank it. It burned him, but it settled him. He looked at her and motioned to the bartender.

  “What you need is a good binge,” she said. “You look as though you’d seen a ghost. And I’m just the girl to help you. George is neglecting me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Let’s see everything, even in the rain. I want to see everything.”

  She was flushed. There were two bright spots on her cheeks, and he realized that she was not thirty-five: she must be forty-five or six. She had no business drinking: when she drank her face fell apart and you could see the old face underneath, the face that was older than she was.

  “Come on,” she said. “Be a sport. I’ll tell you about my operations.”

  He let her drag him along. Her knowledge of Macao was exhaustive. He lost count of where they had been or where they were going. He was dizzy. He ached. He felt wretchedly cold. And all around him fear seemed to seep through the walls, running out in pools of rain, the horrible crushing weight of this dirty city, crashing down to destroy him.

  Mrs. Carter told him the abridged story of her life. She had been born in Oklahoma.

  This bar was shoddy and crowded with cheap tarts and squat, swarthy Portuguese sailors. The uproar was terrific, but even it could not drown out the uproar of the rain. He looked in the mirror behind the bar. Mrs. Carter’s makeup showed a suggestion of wrinkles underneath her smooth face. Her head was propped against her hand, which held a cigarette. He watched the smoke rise from its tip. It took an endless time to do so.

  The pain began again. The liquor must have started it. His palms were wet, and he tried to rise. Mrs. Carter took his arm, but he drew away. He fought his way back out of the crowd, and then he was free, standing panting in a narrow black hall, with the rain a solid curtain again before him. He plunged out, slipping on the glistening street, his footsteps drowned in the rain. His breath came jerkily in short, painful gasps. He realized that he had come to a square. It was inches deep in water. Before
him loomed a church. He plunged up the steps, sobbing, and tried the centre doors. They were locked. He tried one at the side, desperately pulling at it, and it gave, half-flinging him back. He fell inside, pulling the door after him, to shut out the awful rain.

  He was standing in the darkened vestibule. It was cold and quiet. Afraid of something behind him, he pulled open an inner door and found himself in the nave. Helpless, he sank down into a wicker chair that stood alone on the flat tiles. There was no one to help him or save him.

  When he opened his eyes the nave had settled into place. It seemed immensely long. The floor stretched endlessly, scattered with chairs turned this way and that, one or two of them overturned. In the distance, weak, feeble and elusive, shone the altar, almost in darkness except for one or two pale flames. He dragged himself down the nave towards it, sobbing with fear.

  When he reached it he tried to fumble in his pocket, to find matches, and getting them, stood up, clutching the rail. The matches were damp, and he struck one after the other, futilely. In the rows of candles only one was now burning, close to its socket. He thought that if it went out he would die. Thrusting a taper into it, from the rack, he began to light the candles. He lit them all. Even so, they did not cast enough light, and he went to the side altars with another taper, until every candle in the building burnt with a light too dim.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “Save me. Let me live. I want to live. I’ll do anything, but let me live.” Before him the little lights burned feebly, buffeted this way and that, and the rain dinned louder and louder on the roof, bringing the building down around his ears. He would have done anything to stave off the pain and the darkness, but he could not. His eyes were heavy. He could not keep awake. The world whirled rapidly away from him.

  Monsignor Parr found him there, collapsed on the tiles.

  XXI

  In the early morning hours the Bella Vista was deserted. It was then that the scrubwomen washed the marble floor of the terrace and that the dining-room was swept clear of debris. At five the gambling rooms stank of cigarettes, cigar smoke, and alcohol. All stains had to be removed by eight. The kitchens, of course, were never still. The fires in the stoves were not permitted to sink below a hot ash.