Guilty: The Lost Classic Novel (16 page)

I took to going about a good deal with the elder of Link’s sisters, who showed a flattering readiness to cancel other engagements to be my companion. For some time I’d been aware that the family hoped I’d eventually marry and settle down with one of the two, and this girl herself certainly gave me no reason to fear a rebuff if I were to propose. I used to wonder what was restraining me, for the arrangement would have been a happy and appropriate one, establishing me permanently in the position I wanted to hold – I could never again become an outsider then. It seemed like pure contrariness on my part to resist this apparently preordained move. Or was I afraid of embarking on a relationship that would invade my inmost privacy? I thought I’d outgrown whatever, during my schooldays, debarred me from close friendship with anyone. But I seem to have been mistaken, judging by a remark Link made, the cause of which I’ve forgotten, though the words remain in my memory. ‘You
are a funny chap, Mark,’ he said. ‘One gets on so well with you; and then you suddenly put up a No Trespassing sign.’

But I might very well have drifted into an engagement in the end, simply because it seemed the obvious thing to do, if I hadn’t met Carla, which at once changed my whole life completely.

I’d gone with Link and the girls to dance somewhere. I wasn’t much of a dancer, and it was understood that I only functioned in this capacity while no one else was available. When, later that evening, a suitable alternative partner appeared, I was free to leave.

A dance was in progress as I slowly made my way around the room to the door, watching the circling figures intently, searching among them for the one I’d been keenly aware of ever since we arrived, though she was a stranger to all of us. It was the first time in my life I had felt this peculiar interest in someone I didn’t know, which made me reluctant to leave without a final glimpse of her.

Link passed, grinning, signalling to me over his part ner’s shoulder, and, seeing that I was in danger of being reclaimed by our party if I hung about any longer, I went out to the cloakroom. Here a young man I didn’t know seemed to be having an altercation with the attendant, but I found my coat for myself and returned to the vestibule, where I at once came face to face with the girl I had been looking for. Oblivious of good manners, I stood staring in a way that would have embarrassed most girls. But she was completely unruffled and cool. Already wearing her coat, she stopped at a mirror beside me and, with almost statuesque composure, began arranging a scarf over her dark hair. I had only to take one long step to reach a position from which I could see her reflection beyond the dim ghost of my own.

It was in the glass that I first perceived a change in the atmosphere, a softer, brighter radiance, reminding me of the setting sun reflected on snow. This limpid brightness I identified with her, as though she were its source; with its delicate glow on her face, she was beautiful and mysterious as a dream; magic was all about her. Spellbound, I ceased to be aware of my surroundings. I no longer had the feeling that I was indoors. That one step I had just taken had carried me over the threshold of magic without transition, as had sometimes happened during my childhood. I was alone with her in some fairy-tale country; a bubble of mirror-magic enclosed us both, outside time and reality.

She hadn’t looked at me in the real world; but in the mysterious secret depths of the mirror our eyes met – hers were very large, dark and luminous, almost startlingly brilliant in her clear pale face. She had been from the moment I first saw her immensely, immediately attractive to me; but in ordinary circumstances I would never have dared to stare at her as I was doing now, in the undefined hope of magic coming somehow to my aid – after all, I’d once believed myself a citizen of the enchanted land to which she so clearly belonged. Almost holding my breath I watched her lips part – could she be going to speak to me? Quietly, and as easily as if we’d been old friends, she asked, ‘Are you leaving now?’

I suppose I must have said ‘Yes’, though I was only thinking about her voice, which I found quite enthralling, exceptionally deep for a girl’s, with a musical vibrance, in perfect accord with her whole appearance.

Now she turned to ask, in the same natural way, as if we’d known each other for years, in which direction I would be going. But this abrupt transition from magic to reality was too much for me; seeing her, lustrous-eyed and mysterious, no longer mirrored in magic but face to face, I became confused.
It occurred to me, meeting her calm gaze directly, that she’d mistaken me for somebody she knew. Then, with sudden exultance, I realized that she was as aware as I that we’d never met, yet she had made the first move towards me. Magic had overflowed into reality. I felt a quick sort of melting pang, a release of confused feeling; my heart began beating faster. The whole rhythm of my being changed. In astonishment, I supposed this must be falling in love, as, from the midst of the emotional turmoil, I heard my ordinary voice saying firmly, ‘I’m going your way.’

In my exalted state it seemed to me that this should have been enough, as though our destiny were already decided, and – to put it crudely – we should be left alone to get on with it, uninterrupted. To my annoyance, however, there was some obstruction. Dimly peering towards this interference, I recognized the young man who had been in the cloakroom; now he hurriedly approached, apologizing for being so long away, and struggling into his coat as he came. He ignored me, only addressing Carla. She was, I observed, more than capable of handling him; she was telling him not to worry, not to break up the party. ‘Mark and I are going the same way – we’ll go together.’

The sound of my name on her lips gave me a delicious thrill; in her magic ambience it seemed quite natural that she should know it. Passively, I listened to her melodious voice, scarcely hearing the words which dealt so competently with her would-be escort that he was soon accompanying us to the door, smiling and acquiescent. I left the situation entirely to her, as she was so obviously in command of it and only waited impatiently for us to be alone, feeling when we came finally out into the empty street that I had attained something I’d been struggling for all the evening.

Until it happened, nothing could have seemed less likely
than that I should fall in love with a girl I didn’t even know and at first sight, too, in this headlong fashion. Nor could it ever have happened, I’m sure, had she not made that initial move which had such great significance for me and set free my blocked emotions. Some obvious integrity she possessed made it impossible to question the impulse on which she had spoken to me; I could only be deeply grateful to her for her courage and quickness in seizing the chance I’d have been too timid and too slow to grasp, prepared in return to give up on the spot the comfortable pattern of life I’d hitherto been determined to preserve.

‘There’s so little time,’ I remember her saying once, apropos of our first meeting. ‘And it’s all so precarious – senseless. Only pure accident decides whether one meets the right person or passes him in the street; any stranger, almost, might be the one, there’s no way of knowing. So if, by some miracle, one
does
know – don’t ask me how – isn’t it mad not to stop him?’

But this was later. Our conversation that night was devoted to getting to know the ordinary facts about one another, and long before we arrived at her home on the city’s outskirts we had ceased to be strangers. She told me she was the only child of rich parents, whose wealth had been devoured by war and taxation, so that, when her father died recently, he’d left little besides this house, in which she and her mother lived – they were even forced to let some of the rooms to make ends meet. I realized that our two worlds weren’t the same and had only happened to coincide because of the general chaos of the time. And, as the bus slowly jolted us along, I remember looking out at the maze of unfamiliar streets, contemplating the tremendous odds there must have been against our ever coming together and thinking it really did seem a miracle that we’d met.

And I remember her smiling at me, so that all my tension relaxed, and I smiled back a completely uncensored smile of pure joy; but then, afraid I might have given away too much by showing her my entirely unguarded face, which I never let anyone see, I looked out at the darkness again.

We arranged to meet again next day and were soon meeting daily, for our relationship advanced without a single setback until, after some weeks, with her mother’s consent, we became engaged.

Perhaps because I’d never really loved, or entirely trusted, anyone before, it continued to seem miraculous to me to have found a person on whose affection and understanding I could always rely and with whom I could share all my thoughts. That first gesture of Carla’s, in throwing a bridge to my isolation, had enabled me to love and be loved, and, gratitude making me all the more dependent, I lived only for her. All my other friends were abandoned without a thought; they just ceased to exist for me. Even Link, who, faithful in his dogged fashion, kept trying to win me back to a more sociable attitude, no longer mattered. Though I was aware of behaving shabbily towards his sister and the family from whom I’d received only kindness, I felt no guilt, for I had no sense of responsibility or obligation except to the girl I loved. With her I was wonderfully happy, living throughout that summer a completely carefree existence. Quite simply, I lost myself in my love and with a luxurious abandonment let everything else go.

An exquisite peace would descend on me as soon as we met, an almost languorous contentment. I’d have liked to stop all the clocks in the world, so that time would stand still. I might have been in a happy trance, and I suppose this was partly why I made no effort to hasten our marriage. But I also felt an instinctive aversion to thinking about the
future, as though it were darkened by some obscure foreboding I couldn’t even recognize consciously. My rationalization was that I couldn’t bear to interrupt our present idyllic companionship; I clung to the carefree serenity of those long summer evenings, which gained a dream-like quality from my knowledge of their impermanence. It was true enough that I dreaded the end of this blissful interlude, which came about so suddenly that I can recall it with extraordinary clarity.

I was in my flat, waiting for Carla at the open window, high above the town. Slanting sunshine was still warm on my face and hands, sunshine still gilded the rooftops and craggy ruins that reached my level, while in the street below dusk was already coagulating, where homebound crowds surged in every direction, like disturbed insects, in seemingly senseless haste. The obvious symbolism of the scene pleased me, the scurrying anonymous people down there in the shadow of darkness, while I was up here in the light. I’d been one of the crowd once, and if I liked I could be one of them again. For the present, I’d withdrawn of my own free will to my gilded tower. For the first time, I felt confident and in control of my life.

But my sense of power was short-lived, vanishing as I realized Carla had raised me up and that, but for her, I should still be priding myself on being just like everyone else. Only a second ago I’d considered the possibility of reverting to what I had been … Suddenly I frowned and began to pace the room, unable to avoid the suspicion that I was trying to enjoy both my love affair and my freedom at the same time. This would explain my unwillingness to think of the future and the fact that I never pressed Carla to fix a date for our marriage. Horrible as it was, I couldn’t escape the idea that I’d been using my happy entranced
state to hide a selfish reluctance to commit myself finally to married life; hating myself for it, I continued to prowl up and down till Carla arrived.

She had barely come into the room, I could barely wait to embrace her, before I begged her to marry me as soon as possible. She looked at me in surprise, smiling at my feverish urgency. Why this sudden tremendous rush? she wanted to know; weren’t we quite all right as we were? Her smiling questions, counter-checking my deadly seriousness, suggested a lack of enthusiasm on her part, which at once alarmed me. Perhaps she’d been hurt by my dilatoriness as a lover. Perhaps she was getting tired of me altogether. Increasingly agitated, I implored her still more insistently to decide on a date, finally declaring I’d get a special licence so that we could be married tomorrow.

‘And where shall we live? Here?’

Of course, I hadn’t overlooked this important point, but I hadn’t exactly considered it either, merely assuming that some suitable arrangement could be made without too much difficulty, since we were both the lucky possessors of homes. Now, with an ominous sense of approaching an obstacle I knew had been there all along, my memory began to throw off the oblivion I’d imposed upon it. Against my will and with a sinking heart, I recalled Spector’s words – almost the last he had spoken to me – as well as his earlier stipulation. I told myself that neither he nor the authorities could object to my sharing the flat with my wife; yet I was as certain as I’d ever been of anything that, if I were to ask permission for Carla to live here with me after our marriage, it would be refused. How this certainty arose I can’t explain; but it was positive enough to make me reply rather hopelessly, ‘No, I’m afraid that’s quite out of the question.’

Thanks to her, I’d gained confidence. I’d thought myself
independent of the man who was at once my landlord, employer and oldest friend. But that her influence hadn’t entirely freed me from his power now became clear, when her puzzled look reminded me of how little I’d told her about him. Of course, I’d often mentioned him and outlined the events in my life in which he’d played a part. Several times I’d been on the verge of describing my relations with him more fully, but, for some unknown reason, I’d always refrained at the last moment. Now I saw I’d be obliged to go into details when she said, ‘If he lets
you
live here, why not both of us? Surely, he would, in the circumstances?’

Her beautiful candid eyes were looking straight into mine. Suddenly I was ashamed of my secretiveness, unable to understand why I’d deliberately concealed from her Spector’s peculiar hold over me. Taking her hand between both of mine, I told her what he had said; continuing with the whole story, emphasizing his influence on my childhood, the sense I’d once had of being dedicated to him, and my ambivalent attitude towards him that sometimes attracted, sometimes repelled.