I Am Lazarus (Peter Owen Modern Classic)

by Kavan, Anna

  Gradually I myself became infected by their uneasiness. The look of the landscape, too, through which we were travelling was not reassuring. For some time after leaving the town we had been driving across a flat, parched, yellowish plain, uninhabited apparently, and useless as pasturage, for the short lion-coloured grass was brittle and dry and no trees gave their shade. A range of low mountains sullenly barred the earth from the sky which was now invaded by strange upright clouds as by a battalion of ominous ghosts.

  The way must have been longer than we anticipated as the day was fading into a thundery half-light when we reached the narrow peninsula at the end of which the hotel was situated. Here there was nothing on either side of the road but a few sand dunes patterned with coarse grass and beyond that the two vast expanses of calm and uncoloured water. We drove for what seemed a long time along this road before we reached the hotel. The monotonous lava-grey continuity of sky and sea exercised a hypnotic effect on the eye. All existence seemed to have dwindled to that one narrow, monotone and trance-like progression between languidly droning seas.

  How can I describe the dramatic way in which the appearance of our destination broke into this tedious enhancement? Suddenly the evening mists cleared away, a pure, cool light, not sunshine, but the aftermath of the sunset glow, filled the western sky and touched the long backs of the waves with an ethereal radiance. A million luminous scales shimmered on the breast of the little harbour where yachts were moored. The hotel stood on higher ground overlooking the harbour. Many of its windows were already lighted, and as I gazed at the strange rounded bulk of the tower a flock of large birds in wedge formation flew very high above it towards the west.

  I got out of the car and hurried up the steep incline in front of the building. My friends tried to detain me, calling out that they wanted to look at the harbour while some daylight still remained, but I paid no attention.

  Perhaps it would have been better if I had waited for them and we had gone all together up to the hotel, the ramifications of which, not lofty, but rambling and spacious and decked out with creepers and balconies, reminded me of one of Genji's summer palaces.

  But would it have made any difference after all? Would the presence of other people have deterred the small figure with straight fair hair who gravely approached me between beds of cannas that twilight had already deprived of their colours? And after all, why should I deny her? In this world of false friends and dangerous ambiguities where nothing is what it seems, isn't it best to accept whatever comes without resistance or inquiry, relying only upon the unassailable knowledge that in one's heart a hyacinth is secretly and inviolably blooming?

  OUR CITY

  ‘I did believe, and do still, that the end of our city will be in Fire and Brimstone from above.’

  I

  How often one hears our city spoken of as ‘cruel’. In fact, this adjective is used so frequently that in many people's minds cruelty has become accepted as the city's most typical and outstanding attribute: whereas there are in existence a great variety of other qualities, probably equally characteristic and certainly just as remarkable.

  To my mind, one of the most astonishing things about the city is its plurality. In my own personal experience, for example, it has, during a comparatively short space of time, displayed three distinct manifestations of its complex being. And if it is possible for one individual in one brief period to witness three such changes, just imagine the astronomical number of different forms in which our city is bound to appear through the centuries to the millions of its inhabitants.

  In my case, the first metamorphosis was, I think, the most unexpected; for who, even among the unprejudiced, would expect the city to show itself as an octopus? yet that is exactly what happened. Slowly, with deliberation, and at the same time as it seemed almost languidly, a blackish tentacle was unfurled which travelled undeviatingly across the globe to the remote antipodean island where I imagined myself secure. I shall not forget the tentacle's deceptive semi-transparency, something like that dark Swedish glass which contains tints both purple and black while still keeping translucence. The tentacle had the same insubstantial, ethereal look: but it had also a strength many times greater than that of the strongest steel.

  The second metamorphosis was, by comparison with the first, almost predictible. It was, in a sense, logical, and though I won't go so far as to say that I actually anticipated it, I certainly recognized its inevitability when it appeared. As a matter of fact I believe I really did, if not consciously or completely, at least in some obscure, inchoate way, foresee it; although it's difficult to be quite sure of this after the event. We all of us know from films or pictures or the posters of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, those hideous toothed traps, sadistic jaws which snap upon the delicate leg or paw of some soft-furred wild creature, mangling the flesh and splintering the fragile bones and clamping the victim to a slow, agonizing death. There is even a sort of resemblance between the serrated blade as it must appear shearing down on its prey and the ferocious skyline of a city partially laid waste.

  With regard to the third metamorphosis, I am in an uncertain position. To me this aspect of the city's character, though less clearly in sequence than the second, still is quite comprehensible and far from surprising in view of what had gone before. But to an outsider, someone from another part of the world, I can see that it may well seem the most astonishing manifestation of all. ‘How can a city be a judge at one and the same time?’ I can imagine such a man asking: ‘a judge, what's more, who not only arraigns the criminal, sets up the court, conducts the trial, and passes sentence, but actually sees that the sentence is carried out.’

  To such a person I can only reply that I have no explanation to give him. These things are not well understood, and doubtless there's some good reason why we don't understand them. The most satisfactory attitude is to accept the facts as they are without too much probing, perhaps simultaneously working out some private thesis of one's own to account for them.

  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.

  Something catches her attention so that she turns her head. Look, a butterfly, she calls out. The first butterfly of the year. The first one I've seen since I left my home.

  And then, as she watches the wavering flight of the pretty red brown butterfly, the animation dies out of her face, her eyes lose their blueness and slowly darken with tears. The other girl, too, becomes grave, the words she is saying falter, dead before they are spoken, the fragile happiness which these two had nourished between them vanishes like the butterfly whose uncertain, frail wings seem to be at the mercy of the first breath of wind.

  It is not only the exile whose cheeks have become wet: and though they are both conscious of this they say nothing about it, they don't speak of anything sad, but quickly start talking about some clouds which are coming up shaped, not like swans, but like small shying horses. Soon both the girls are smiling often again. Probably it's only an illusion that their voices no longer sound quite so gay. Out-of-doors, in the lovely spring weather, how could anyone help feeling gay? So beautifully blue the sky is; the cherry blossom so white.

  IV

  The clock by my bed has a dial that shines in the dark. It is a small white clock with a shutter which slides over its face when it starts out on a journey. This clock has accompanied me on many tremendous journeys. It has been stowed carefully away and muffled against damage in the gales of northern oceans; the spray of tropical seas has tarnished its metal parts; from beside many beds it has patiently watched with me the solemn march of the constellations of two hemispheres.

  Now it stands with the same patience at this improbable city bedside. It ticks in the same unflurried, impersonal fashion. Its tick does not sound either friendly or unfriendly: it has a sound which suggests impartiality. It is an impartial, scientific observer, this clock, quietly recording into eternity all that passes in front of its face. In spite of our long association, the clock and I are not on intimate terms; my feeling for the clock is one of respect more than cordiality.

  Just now the hands of the clock stand at half-past two. They gleam greenishly in the dark. I've been asleep for an hour. A minute or so ticks away. Then there is noise. The sirens wail up and down my room with howling vi
olence. It always happens like that, it's always the same, it's not the sirens that wake me: I always wake up a minute or two before the alert actually sounds. The siren noise comes to an end: other noises begin. Mobile guns grind elephantinely over me. A plane buzzes round my head. Outside the black windows the searchlights climb questing. I can feel the broad beams sawing and the narrow beams scissoring through my nerves. Then suddenly from far away over the city, dull, muffled, heavy noise. Pandemonium is starting up; is coming nearer and nearer, implacably; is here, ultimately, on top of me. The darkness explodes into thunderous tumult. Through it all I catch the slither of some small object falling inside my room. I put out my hand to the switch, and, incredible as it seems, the light goes on just as usual. In the calm yellow light I see that it is, of course, the picture on the chest-of-drawers that has slipped on the polished wood and fallen down on its face. It always happens like that, every time it's the same, the vibration always makes the picture fall down. The noise batters the night with unappeasable fury. The whole night outside is rent and rocking in all directions. I cover my ears in a vain attempt to shut out some of the din; in particular, there's one excruciating sound which resembles, magnified to the nth degree, the screech of tearing canvas that I desperately try to exclude.

  The noise makes me feel inexpressibly lonely. I am quite alone in the little house, alone with the clock whose tick I can no longer distinguish. I have the impression that I'm the only living soul in the midst of this fiendish hullaballoo. Can there really be other human beings out there in the city? Impossible to imagine that people are connected in any way with the racket that's going on. It's an absolutely inhuman excess of noise, the rage of the city itself. Our city itself is ravening at the night.