Read Online I Am Lazarus (Peter Owen Modern Classic) by Anna Kavan - Free Book Online
Authors: Anna Kavan
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bird's mournful cry thousands of miles away underneath the world?
She put her glass down on a little table amongst cactuses. It must be obvious, she was thinking. It must be obvious to everyone that she felt the way she was feeling. Ken surely would notice something.It was suddenly imperative that she escape from the eyes that were surely collecting. This was the sort of thing you got let in for by being the way she was. This was the work of the saboteur in the nerves.
‘I must go, Ken,’ she said, hoping it didn't sound stupidly urgent.
He did not express surprise. He said, ‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Come back to my place, then. It's not far and we'll have something to eat there. One can't talk at a party, anyway.’
The words came without thought, and then, seeing the hesitation or whatever it was on his face, she remembered to think and said, ‘Oh, but of course you don't want to come away from the party. Good-bye.’
But he was behind her when she said something to the host and to Mia and when she went downstairs and pulled her coat from the pile he was still there and held it up for her while she put it on. Only when the closed door shut out the noise of the party and the sinister noise of the bombers was back again deep and strong and inevitable as if it would always be filling the sky day and night, as if it were the noise of the earth's self revolving, he hesitated and seemed to hold on to the handle of the closed door so that she wondered if he would really rather have stayed. But he came with her into the street.
‘Shall we go by bus or by tube?’ she asked him. With distant surprise she heard him answer at once, ‘By tube’, when he couldn't have known which was better, not knowing where she lived.
The moon was up now showing the empty bed of the street and the black bank of the opposite houses and the whitened, moon frosted roofs which might have been snowy escarpments. It was all very drear and deserted and becoming traditional and no different from the other cities unlighted and waiting amongst their ruins under the moon. In her travelling she had seen so many cities change over from darkness to light, and she remembered suddenly and completely a harbour at nightfall, the waterfront brilliant with lights, the lost sun still ghostly gold on the Kaikoura mountains across the Strait.
‘It's queer how it grows on you,’ he said. They were walking towards the tube station.
‘What?’
‘Having one's life up there instead of on the ground.’ She saw his face lifted up to the noise of the planes and his head tilted. ‘I don't feel at home down here. I don't belong any more. There seems to be no place where I fit in. I wanted to feel like other people again, so I thought I'd go to parties and talk to women and that would make it all right. But it doesn't work out somehow. I still feel outside. I'd like to be the same as I used to be and feel like other people again.’
‘I suppose you never write anything now?’
‘Good God, no.’
What a fiendishly efficient machine war is, she thought, remembering him as he was and the writing, a bit immature but sensitive and direct and with much integrity. Now he would never write the things he might have written when he had learned to write well enough. It destroyed very thoroughly this war machine, this incinerator of individuality and talent and life, forging the sensitive and creative young into the steel fabric of death, turning them out by the million, the murder men, members of Murder Inc., the big firm, the global organization. Suddenly, she felt acutely angry with him.
‘How could you let them do it to you?’ she said. ‘How can you let us all down?’
He was not listening, walking beside her in the uniform that he wore as if he had never worn anything else. He was walking too fast for her, like a man in a hurry to get somewhere, and now he said, looking up still at the throbbing sky, ‘They've got a great night for it,’ and she
She put her glass down on a little table amongst cactuses. It must be obvious, she was thinking. It must be obvious to everyone that she felt the way she was feeling. Ken surely would notice something.It was suddenly imperative that she escape from the eyes that were surely collecting. This was the sort of thing you got let in for by being the way she was. This was the work of the saboteur in the nerves.
‘I must go, Ken,’ she said, hoping it didn't sound stupidly urgent.
He did not express surprise. He said, ‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Come back to my place, then. It's not far and we'll have something to eat there. One can't talk at a party, anyway.’
The words came without thought, and then, seeing the hesitation or whatever it was on his face, she remembered to think and said, ‘Oh, but of course you don't want to come away from the party. Good-bye.’
But he was behind her when she said something to the host and to Mia and when she went downstairs and pulled her coat from the pile he was still there and held it up for her while she put it on. Only when the closed door shut out the noise of the party and the sinister noise of the bombers was back again deep and strong and inevitable as if it would always be filling the sky day and night, as if it were the noise of the earth's self revolving, he hesitated and seemed to hold on to the handle of the closed door so that she wondered if he would really rather have stayed. But he came with her into the street.
‘Shall we go by bus or by tube?’ she asked him. With distant surprise she heard him answer at once, ‘By tube’, when he couldn't have known which was better, not knowing where she lived.
The moon was up now showing the empty bed of the street and the black bank of the opposite houses and the whitened, moon frosted roofs which might have been snowy escarpments. It was all very drear and deserted and becoming traditional and no different from the other cities unlighted and waiting amongst their ruins under the moon. In her travelling she had seen so many cities change over from darkness to light, and she remembered suddenly and completely a harbour at nightfall, the waterfront brilliant with lights, the lost sun still ghostly gold on the Kaikoura mountains across the Strait.
‘It's queer how it grows on you,’ he said. They were walking towards the tube station.
‘What?’
‘Having one's life up there instead of on the ground.’ She saw his face lifted up to the noise of the planes and his head tilted. ‘I don't feel at home down here. I don't belong any more. There seems to be no place where I fit in. I wanted to feel like other people again, so I thought I'd go to parties and talk to women and that would make it all right. But it doesn't work out somehow. I still feel outside. I'd like to be the same as I used to be and feel like other people again.’
‘I suppose you never write anything now?’
‘Good God, no.’
What a fiendishly efficient machine war is, she thought, remembering him as he was and the writing, a bit immature but sensitive and direct and with much integrity. Now he would never write the things he might have written when he had learned to write well enough. It destroyed very thoroughly this war machine, this incinerator of individuality and talent and life, forging the sensitive and creative young into the steel fabric of death, turning them out by the million, the murder men, members of Murder Inc., the big firm, the global organization. Suddenly, she felt acutely angry with him.
‘How could you let them do it to you?’ she said. ‘How can you let us all down?’
He was not listening, walking beside her in the uniform that he wore as if he had never worn anything else. He was walking too fast for her, like a man in a hurry to get somewhere, and now he said, looking up still at the throbbing sky, ‘They've got a great night for it,’ and she
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