The Doll (2 page)

And the East Wind blew against the church, shaking the roof, and the surf broke and thundered on the shore.

The next day dawned the same, hot and relentless.

The wind did not weaken in its power, nor the sea lessen in its fury. The brig still rolled at her moorings amongst the fishing boats. The fishermen leant with the sailors against the harbour wall, drinking and smoking, without thought, without energy, cursing the wind. The women idled at their cooking, neglected their mending. They stood at the doors of the cottages, new scarves round their shoulders, scarlet handkerchieves upon their heads, impatient with the children, restless, waiting for a smile.

The day passed thus, and another night, and yet another day. The sun shone, the sea shuddered and crashed, the wind blew. No one left the harbour to fish, no one worked on the land. There seemed no shade on the island, the grass lay brown and withered, the leaves hung parched and despondent from the few trees. Night fell once more and the wind had not ceased. Guthrie sat in the cottage, his head between his hands, his brain empty. He felt ill and tired, like a very old man. Only one thing could prevent the sound of the wind from screaming in his ears and the heat of the sun from scorching his eyes. His lungs were dry, his throat ached. He staggered from the cottage and went down the hill to the church, where the sailors and the fishermen lay in heaps upon the floor, the brandy running from their mouths. He flung himself amongst them and drank greedily, senselessly, giving himself to it, forgetting the wind and the sea.

Jane closed the cottage door behind her and ran out onto the cliffs. The tall grass bathed her ankles and the wind leapt through her hair. It sang in her ears, a triumphant call. The sea flung itself upon the rocks below and loose flecks of foam scattered up towards her. She knew that if she waited he would come to her from the chapel. All day his eyes had followed her as she walked amongst the sailors by the harbour wall. Nothing mattered but this. Guthrie was drunk, asleep, forgotten, but here on the cliffs the stars shone upon her, and the East Wind blew. A dark shadow appeared from behind a clump of trees. For one moment she was afraid. One moment only.

‘Who are you?’ she called, but her voice fled to the wind.

The sailor came towards her. He flung off her clothes with deft, accustomed fingers; she put her hands before her eyes to hide her face. He laughed, and buried his lips in her hair. She stood then with arms outstretched, waiting, naked and unashamed, like a white phantom, broken and swept by the wind. Down in the chapel the men shouted and sang. They fought amongst themselves, mad with drink. One fisherman threw a knife and pinned his brother against the wall. He writhed like a serpent, screaming with pain.

Guthrie rose to his feet. ‘Quiet, you dogs!’ he shouted. ‘Can you not drink in peace, and leave men to their dreams? Is it like this you wait for the wind to change?’

Jeers and laughter drowned his voice. A man pointed a trembling finger at him. ‘Aye, talk of peace, Guthrie, you weak-limbed fool. With your wife even now shaming your bed with a stranger. We’ll have new blood in the island, I reckon.’ A chorus of voices joined in, laughing, and they pointed at him. ‘Aye, Guthrie, look to your wife!’

He leapt at them with a cry of rage, smashing their faces. But they were too many for him, they threw him from the chapel, flinging him onto the rough quayside. He lay stunned for a moment, then shook himself like a dog and rose to his feet. So Jane was a wanton. Jane had deceived him. He remembered his wife’s body, white and slim. A haze of madness came over him, mingled with hatred and desire. He stumbled through the darkness, up the hill to the cottage. There was no light in any of the windows; the rooms were empty.

‘Jane,’ he called, ‘Jane, where be ye hidin’ with your damned cur lover?’ No one answered. Sobbing with rage, he tore an axe from the wall – a great clumsy tool, used for chopping firewood. ‘Jane,’ he called once more, ‘come out, will ye?’

His voice was powerless against the wind that shook the walls of the cottage. He crouched by the door and waited, the axe in his hands. Hours passed and he sat in a stupor, awaiting her return. Before dawn she came, pale and trembling, like a lost thing. He heard her footfall on the path. A twig snapped under her feet. The axe uplifted.

‘Guthrie,’ she screamed, ‘Guthrie, let me alone, let me alone.’ She spread her hands in supplication, but he pushed them aside and brought the axe down upon her head, crumpling her, smashing her skull. She fell to the ground, twisted, unrecognisable, ghastly. He leant over her, peering at her body, breathing heavily. The blood ran before his eyes. He sat down by her side, his senses swimming, his mind vacant. He fell into a drunken sleep, his head pillowed on her breast.

When he awoke, sober, himself again, he found her dead body at his feet. He gazed at it in horror, not understanding. The axe was still upon the floor. He lay stunned, sick and frightened, unable to move. Then he listened, as if for an accustomed sound. All was silent. Something had changed. The wind. He could no longer hear the wind.

He staggered to his feet and looked out upon the island. The air was cool. Rain had fallen while he slept. From the southwest blew a cool, steady breeze. The sea was grey and calm. Far on the horizon lay a black dot, her white sails outlined against the sky.

The brig had gone with the morning tide.

The Doll

Foreword.

The following pages were found in a shabby pocket book, very much sodden and discoloured by salt water, tucked away between the crevices of a rock in — Bay.

Their owner has never been traced, and the most diligent enquiries have failed to discover his identity. Either the wretched man drowned himself near the spot where he hid his pocket book, and his body has been lost at sea; or he is still wandering about the world trying to forget himself and his tragedy.

Some of the pages of his story were so damaged by exposure as to render them completely illegible; thus there are many gaps, and much of it seems without sequence, including the abrupt and unsatisfactory termination.

I have placed three dots between sentences when words or lines were undecipherable. Whether the wild improbabilities of the story are true, or whether the whole is but the hysterical product of a diseased mind, we shall never know. My sole reason for publishing these pages is to satisfy the entreaties of many friends who have been interested in my discovery.

Signed. D
R
E. S
TRONGMAN
.

— B
AY
,
S. E
NGLAND
.

I
want to know if men realise when they are insane. Sometimes I think that my brain cannot hold together, it is filled with too much horror – too great a despair.

And there is no one; I have never been so unutterably alone. Why should it help me to write this? . . . Vomit forth the poison in my brain.

For I am poisoned, I cannot sleep, I cannot close my eyes without seeing his damned face . . .

If only it had been a dream, something to laugh over, a festered imagination.

It’s easy enough to laugh, who wouldn’t crack their sides and split their tongues with laughing. Let’s laugh till the blood runs from our eyes – there’s fun, if you like. No, it’s the emptiness that hurts, the breaking up of everything inside me.

If I could feel, I should have followed her to the ends of the earth, no matter how she pleaded or how she loathed me. I should have taught her what it is to be loved by a man – yes – a man, and I would have thrown his filthy battered body from the window, watched him disappear for ever, his evil scarlet mouth distorted . . .

It’s the hot feeling that has filled me, the utter incapacity to reason.

And I am deceiving myself when I say she would have come to me. I did not follow her because I knew that it was hopeless. She would never have loved me – she will never love any man.

Sometimes I can think of it all dispassionately, and I pity her. She misses so much – so much – and no one will ever know the truth. What was her life before I knew her, what is it now?

Rebecca – Rebecca, when I think of you with your pale earnest face, your great wide fanatical eyes like a saint, the narrow mouth that hid your teeth, sharp and white as ivory, and your halo of savage hair, electric, dark, uncontrolled – there has never been anyone more beautiful. Who will ever know your heart, who will ever know your mind?

Intense, restrained, and soul-less; for you must be soulless to have done what you have done. You have that fatal quality of silence – of a tight repression that suggests a hidden fire – yes, a burning fire unquenchable. What have I not done with you in dreams, Rebecca?

You would be fatal to any man. A spark that lights, and does not burn itself, a flame fanning other flames.

What did I love in you but your indifference, and the suggestions that lay beneath your indifference?

I loved you too much, wanted you too much, had for you too great a tenderness. Now all of this is like a twisted root in my heart, a deadly poison in my brain. You have made of me a madman. You fill me with a kind of horror, a devastating hate that is akin to love – a hunger that is nausea. If only I could be calm and clear for one moment – one moment only . . .

I want to make a plan – an orderly arrangement of dates.

It was at Olga’s studio first, I think. I can remember how it rained outside, and the rain made dirty streaks on the window-pane. The room was full, a lot of people were talking by the piano – Vorki was there, they were trying to make him sing, and Olga was screaming with laughter.

I always hated the hard thin reed of her laugh. You were sitting – Rebecca was sitting on a stool by the fire.

Her legs were twisted under her, and she looked like an elf, a sort of boy.

Her back was turned to me, and she wore a funny little fur cap on her head. I remember being amused at her position, I wanted to see her face. I called out to Olga to introduce me.

‘Rebecca,’ she said, ‘Rebecca, show yourself.’ . . . flinging off her cap as she turned. Her hair sprung from her head like a savage, her eyes opened wide – and she smiled at me, biting her lip.

I can remember sitting down on the floor beside her, and talking, talking – what does it matter what I said, dull stuff, nonsense of course, but she spoke breathlessly, with a sort of constrained eagerness. She did not say much, she smiled . . . eyes of a visionary, of a fanatic – they saw too much, demanded too much – one lost oneself in them, and became incapable of resistance. It was like drowning. From the moment I saw her then I was doomed. I left her, and came away, and walked down the embankment like a drunkard. Faces spluttered up at me, and shoulders brushed me, I was aware of dim lights reflected on wet pavements, and the hazy throb of traffic – through it all were her eyes and her wild impossible hair, her slim body like a boy . . . all coming clear now, I can see each event as it happened, each moment of the game. I went to Olga’s again and she was there.

She came right up to me and said ‘Do you care for music?’ gravely, like a child. Why did she say this, I don’t know, there was no one at the piano – I answered vaguely, and noticed the colour of her skin, pale coffee, and clear, clear as water.

She was dressed in brown, some sort of velvet I think, with a red scarf round her neck.

Her throat was very long and thin, like a swan’s. I remember thinking how easy it would be to tighten the scarf and strangle her. I imagined her face when dying – her lips parted, and the enquiring look in her eyes – they would show white, but she would not be afraid. All this in the space of a moment, and while she was talking to me. I could drag very little from her. She was a violinist apparently, an orphan, and lived alone in Bloomsbury.

Yes, she had travelled much, she said, and especially in Hungary. She had lived in Budapest for three years, studying music. She did not care for England, she wanted to go back to Budapest. It was the only city in the world.

‘Rebecca,’ someone called, and she glanced over her shoulder with a smile. How much could I write about Rebecca’s smile! It was so vivid, so intensely alive, and yet apart, unearthly, it had no relation to anything one said. Her eyes would be transfigured as if by a shaft of silver.

She left early that day, and I crossed the room to ask Olga about her. I was in an agony of impatience to know everything. Olga could tell me little. ‘She comes from Hungary,’ she said, ‘no one knows who were her parents, Jewish, I imagine. Vorki brought her here. He found her in Paris, playing the violin in one of those Russian cafés. She won’t have anything to do with him though, she lives entirely alone. Vorki says her talent is marvellous, if she only goes on there will be no one to touch her. But she won’t work, she doesn’t seem to care. I heard her at Vorki’s flat – it sent cold shivers down my spine. She stood at the end of the room, looking like something off another planet, – her hair sticking out, a sort of fur bush round her head, and she played. The notes were weird, haunting, I’ve never known anything quite like it, it’s impossible to describe.’

Once again I left Olga’s studio in a dream, with Rebecca’s face dancing before my eyes. I too could see her playing the violin – she would stand straight and firm as a child, her eyes wide open, her lips parted in a smile.

She was to play at Vorki’s flat the following evening, and I went to hear her. Olga had not exaggerated, with all her palpable, shallow insincerity. I sat like a drugged man, incapable of movement. I don’t know what she played, but it was shattering – stupendous. I was not aware of anything but that I and Rebecca were together – out of the world, away, lost – lost in unutterable bliss. We were climbing, then flying, higher – higher.

At one time the violin seemed to protest, and it was as if she were refusing me, and I were pursuing her – then there came a torrent of sound, a medley of acceptance and denial, a confusion of notes in which were mingled desire and sweetness, and intolerable pleasure. I could feel my heart beating like the throb of some mighty vessel, and the blood pounded in my temples.

Rebecca was part of me, she was myself – it was too much, it was too glorious. We had reached the summit, we could go no farther, the sun seemed to strike into my eyes. I looked up – Rebecca was smiling at me, the violin broke on a note of exquisite beauty – it was fulfilment.

I leant back exhausted on the sofa, my senses swimming – it was too wonderful, too wonderful. Three minutes passed before I came fully conscious again. I felt as if I had plunged in the black abyss of eternity to sleep – and had come awake once more.

No one had noticed me, Vorki was handing round drinks, and Rebecca was sitting by the piano turning over some music. When they asked her to play again, she refused, she was tired, she said. They implored her so she took up her violin and played once more – something quite short, but very lovely and pure, like a child’s prayer.

Later in the evening she came and sat beside me, for a few moments I was too moved to speak. Then I cursed myself for a fool, and turned to her, and looked into her face.

‘You gave me a marvellous sensation when you played,’ I told her, ‘it was beautiful, intoxicating, I shall never forget it. You have a rare – no – a very dangerous talent.’ She was silent, and then spoke in her restrained, breathless little voice. ‘I played for you,’ she said, ‘I wanted to see what it was like to play to a man.’ Her words bewildered me, they seemed utterly inexplicable. She was not lying, her eyes looked straight into mine, and she was smiling.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked her. ‘Have you never played for anyone before, do you use your gift just to satisfy yourself? I don’t understand.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said slowly, ‘perhaps, it’s like that, I can’t explain.’

‘I want to see you again,’ I told her, ‘I’d like to come and see you alone, where we can talk, really talk. I’ve thought about you ever since I saw you in Olga’s studio, you knew that, didn’t you? That’s why you played to me tonight, wasn’t it?’

I wanted to drag the answer from her lips, I wanted to force her to say yes. She shrugged her shoulders, she refused to be definite, it was exasperating.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I don’t know.’ Then I asked for her address, and she gave it to me. She was busy, she would not be able to see me until the end of the week. The party broke up soon after and she disappeared.

The days that passed seemed interminable, I could not wait to see her again. I thought about her ceaselessly.

On Friday I could stand it no longer, so I went to her. She lived in an odd sort of a house somewhere in Bloomsbury. She rented the top floor as a flat. The outlook was dull and dreary, I wondered how she could bear to live there.

She opened the door to me herself, and took me into a large bare room like a studio, with an oil-stove burning. I was struck by the cheerlessness of it, but she did not seem to notice anything, and made me sit down in a shabby arm-chair.

‘This is where I practise,’ Rebecca told me, ‘and have my meals. It’s a bright room, don’t you think?’ I said nothing to this and then she went to a cupboard and brought out some drinks, and a few stale biscuits. She took nothing herself.

I found her strange, detached – she seemed bored at my being there. Our conversation was forced and there were pauses. I found it impossible to say any of the things I wanted to say. She played to me for a while, but they were all classical things that I knew, and quite different from what she had played that evening at Vorki’s.

Before I left she showed me round her tiny flat. There was a little scullery place she used for a kitchen, a poky bathroom, and her own small bedroom which was furnished like a nun’s cell, quite plain and bare. There was another room leading from the studio, but she did not show me this. It was obviously a fair-sized room, as I saw the window from the street afterwards, and watched her draw the heavy curtains across it . . .

(
Note
. Here some pages were completely illegible, covered with blots, and discoloured. The narrative appears to continue in the middle of a sentence. Dr Strongman)

. . . ‘not really cold,’ she insisted, ‘I’ve tried to explain to you that I’m odd in some ways, I’ve never met anyone to care for, I’ve never been in love. I’ve always disliked people rather than been attracted by them.’ ‘That doesn’t explain your music.’ I broke in impatiently. ‘You play as if you knew everything – everything.’

I was becoming maddened by her indifference, it was not natural but calculated; she always gave me the impression of concealment. I felt I should never discover what was in her mind, whether she was like a child asleep, a flower before it has blossomed – or whether she was lying to me throughout, in which case every man would have been her lover – every man.

I was tortured by doubt and jealousy, the thought of other men was driving me insane. And she gave me no relief, she would look at me with her great pale eyes, pure as water, until I could swear that she was untouched – and yet, and yet? A look, a smile, and back would come my torture and my misery. She was impossible, she evaded everything, and yet it was this fatal quality of restraint that tore at me and broke at me, until my love for her became an obsession, a terrible driving force.

I asked Olga about her, asked Vorki, asked everyone who knew her. No one could tell me anything, anything.

I’m forgetting days and weeks as I write this, nothing seems to have any sequence for me, it’s like rising from the dead, it’s like being reincarnated from dust and ashes to live it again, to live my whole cursed life again – for what was my life before I loved Rebecca, where was I, who was I?