A Severed Head

I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.

To lose somebody is to lose not only their person but all those modes and manifestations into which their person has flowed outwards; so that in losing a beloved one may find so many things, pictures, poems, melodies, places lost too: Dante, Avignon, a song of Shakespeare's, the Cornish sea.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship...

This sort of quiet gazing, which was like a feeding of the heart...

I was now, all the time, unutterably tired as if simply keeping alive was a terrible effort.

Your love for me does not exist in the real world. Yes, it is love, I do not deny it. But not every love has a course to run, smooth or otherwise, and this love has no course at all . . . But that is remote from love and remote from ordinary life. As real people we do not exist for each other.

There is a time limit to how long a spirited young person can be kept in cold storage.

The trouble with people nowadays is they don't know how to do nothing.

We did really love each other . . . didn't we? Didn't we? In the name of that reality — M.

I said, "Your brother is in bed with my wife." I added, "I just took them up some wine in bed.

I could scarcely believe what I saw and I had the sense as in a nightmare of being involved in something both wildly improbable and relentlessly inevitable. This had to happen. Yet how could it have happened?

Was it unpleasant?" "I don't know," I said. "Everything is so unpleasant nowadays it's hard to tell.

I could not see other human beings at present.

I lit another cigarette and wondered distantly how I would get through the day. It was a problem demanding some ingenuity.

Cambridge by moonlight was light blue and brownish black. There was no mist here and a great vault of clear stars hung over the city with an intent luxurious brilliance. It was the sort of night when one knows of other galaxies. My long shadow glided before me on the pavement. Although it was not yet eleven o'clock the place seemed empty and I moved through it like a mysterious and lonely harlequin in a painting: like an assassin.

You've got to see me, Martin. I'm to blame. I've never been quite and entirely myself with you. The situation didn't let me be. The untruthfulness infected everything. I must break out a little? Do you see at all?

I shook myself out of these dreams. There were places where my thoughts must not go; and as I then reflected how few places were left where they could now go without incurring pain or guilt I decided that I needed some more whisky.

I touched the Waterford glass with my finger: and in its ring I heard the echo of a voice saying You do not really want your wife back after all. I answered the voice in my heart: a bond of this kind is deeper and stronger than wanting or not wanting. Wherever I am in the world and whenever I am I shall always be Antonia.

I wanted consolation, I wanted love, I wanted, to save me, some colossal and powerful love such as I had never known before.

It was for me a moment of great peace. I did not know then that it was the last, the very last moment of peace, the end of the old innocent world, the final moment before I was plunged into the nightmare of which these ensuing pages tell the story.

—Tu amor por mí no vive en el mundo real. Sí, no niego que sea amor. Pero no todos los amores tienen un cauce por el que correr, y este amor no tiene ningún cauce en absoluto. Debido a lo que yo soy y a lo que viste, represento para ti un terrible objeto de fascinación. Yo soy una cabeza cortada, como las que usaban las tribus primitivas y los antiguos alquimistas, que las ungían con aceite y colocaban un pedazo de oro sobre la lengua para hacerlas pronunciar profecías. Y quién sabe si un largo trato con una cabeza cortada no puede llevar a un extraño conocimiento. Por tal conocimiento, ya se habría pagado lo suficiente. Pero está muy lejos del amor y muy lejos de la vida corriente. Como personas reales, no existimos el uno para el otro. —Al menos contigo, yo he pagado todo el tiempo —dije—. Esto es precisamente lo que te hace real para mí. Me das esperanza. —No es esa mi intención. Esto debe quedarte claro. —Pero ¿qué hace un amor que no tiene cauce? —Se convierte en otra cosa, en algo pesado o afilado que se lleva dentro y que se une con la propia esencia hasta que deja de hacer daño. Pero eso es asunto tuyo.

Her curving Jewish mouth, with its natural red against the yellow tinge of the skin, was fixed in a stiff smile, while the hand moved and moved. She looked very tired.

Her solemn face of a Hebrew angel regarded me, ready, stripped of expression.

And she looked back out of her sallow Jewish mask, the line of her mouth dead straight between the curving lips, the narrow eyes black.

I remained, leaning a little on her shoulder, my cheek touching her crown of golden hair. It was fading into grey. One day, without having noticed the transition, I would see that it was gold no longer.

Then as she dwindled away to nothing he glided on towards me with increasing speed, his huge Jewish face growing like a great egg above the silken wings of his gown. I swung the sword in an arc before him but as it moved the blade came away and flew upwards into the winter darkness which had collected above us. Clinging in fear and guilt to what remained in my hand I recognized my father.

Only the curve of her nostril and the curve of her mouth hinted, with a Jewish strength, a possible Jewish refinement.

Her short straight oily hair, a lustrous black, sat like a cropped wig about her pale rather waxen Jewish face.