Possession (33 page)

I read your Mind, my dear Mr Ash. You will argue now for a monitored and carefully
limited
combustion—a fire-grate with bars and formal boundaries and brassy finials
—ne progredietur ultra—

But I say—your glowing
salamander
is a Firedrake. And there will be—Conflagration—

Before Migraine-headaches there is a moment of madness. This has extended from the burning in the clearing—until this minute—and now speaks
.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed
.

Not that I have not dreamed of walking in the furnace—as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—

But we latter-day Reasonable Beings have not the miracle-working Passion of the old believers—

I have known—Incandescence—and must decline to sample it further
.

The headache proceeds apace. Half my head—is merely a gourd full of pain—

Jane will post this so it goes now. Forgive its faults. And forgive me
.

Christabel

My dear
,

What am I to make of your missive—I had almost writ missile—which as I foretold has crossed mine—but which as I had not the courage to foretell is not a cool denial but a most
heated
riddling, to take up your metaphor? You are a true poet—when you are agitated, or discomposed, or unusually
interested
in any matter—you express your ideas in metaphor. So what am I to make of all this scintillation? I will tell you—a Pyre from which you, my Phoenix, shall fly up renewed and unchanged—the gold more burnished, the eye brighter
—semper eadem.

And is it an effect of Love—to set beside each of us, like a manifest emanation some mythic monstrous and inhuman self? So that it becomes easy and natural for you to write as a Creature of the burning fiery furnace, a hearth-salamander turned Firedrake of the air, and easy and natural for you to see me in both mythic readings at once of my pliable name—the World-Tree consumed to its papery remnants. You feel—as I feel
—elemental
in this force. All creation rushed round us out there—earth, air, fire, water, and there we were, I beg you to remember, warm and human and
safe,
in the circle of the trees, in each other’s arms, under the arch of the sky
.

The most important thing to make clear to you is this. I make no threat to your solitude. How should I? How may I? Is not your blessed desire to
be alone
the only thing which makes possible what would else in very truth harm
someone?

This agreed—may we not, in some circumscribed way—briefly, perhaps, probably—though it is Love’s Nature to know itself eternal—and in confined spaces too—may we not steal some—I almost wrote small, but it will never be that—some great happiness? We must come to grief and regret anyway—and I for one would rather regret the reality than its phantasm, knowledge than hope, the deed than the hesitation, true life and not mere sickly potentialities. All of which casuistry is only to say, my very dear, come back to the Park, let me touch your hand again, let us walk in our decorous storm together. There may well come a moment when this will be impossible, for
many good reasons—but you know, and feel, as I know and feel that this moment of impossibility is not
yet,
is not
now?

I am reluctant to take my pen from the paper and fold up this letter—for as long as I write to you, I have the illusion that we are
in touch,
that is, blessed. Did you know, speaking of dragons as we were, and of conflagration and intemperate burning—that the Chinese dragon, who in Mandarin is
Lung—
is a creature not of the fiery but exclusively of the watery element? And thus a cousin of your mysterious Melusina in her marble tub? Which is to say, there may be cooler dragons, who may take more temperate pleasures. He appears, blue and winding, on Chinese dishes, with a sprinkling mane and accompanied by what I once took to be little flakes of fire, and now know to be curlings of water
.

What a page of prose to lie like some bomb in the Poste Restante. I am become, in the last two days, a restless Anarchist
.

I shall wait under the trees—from day to day, at your time—and look out for a woman like a steady upright flame and a grey hound poured along the ground like smoke—

I know you will come.
All along, what I have known, has been. It is not a state of affairs I normally experience, nor one I ever required—but I am an honest man, and recognise what is, when it is … So you will come. (Not peremptory but quiet, this knowing—)

Your R.H.A
.

Dear Sir

I am too proud—to say I knew, I should not have come—and yet came. I acknowledge my
Acts—
of which all that trepidant walk was
one
—from Mount Ararat Road to the Tempting Knoll—with Dog Tray circling and growling
—He
loves you not, Sir—and the end of that sentence could be—“and nor do I” as well as the more expected ending “whatever I may feel.” Were you
happy
I came? Were we
godlike
as you promised? Two earnest pacers, pointing diligent toes in the dust. Did you remark—setting Electrical Powers and Galvanic Impulses aside for the moment—how shy we are one with another? Mere acquaintances, if not on paper. We pass the time of day—and the Time of the Universe has a brief stop at our fingers’ touch—who are we? who?—would you not rather have the
freedom
of the white page? Is it alas too late? Is our primaeval innocence gone?

No—I am out—I am out of my Tower and my Wits. I have my cottage
to myself for a few brief hours—Tuesday afternoon—ca 1.00 p.m.—should you care to reconnoitre the humdrum truth of your imagined Bower—of—? Will you take Tea?

Oh, I regret much. Much. And there are things that must be said—soon now—and will find their moment
.

I am sad, sir, today—low and sad—sad that we went walking, yet sad too, that we are not walking still. And that is all I can write, for the Muse has forsaken me—as she may mockingly forsake all Women, who dally with Her—and then—Love—

Your Christabel

My Dear

So now I may think of you in truth—in your little Parlour—presiding over the flowering little cups—with Monsignor Dorato prinking and trilling, not, as I had hypothesised, in a Florentine palazzo but in a very Taj Mahal of burning brass wires. And over the mantel
, Christabel before Sir Leoline—
yourself caught like a statue with coloured light striking garishly across you and an equally frigid Dog Tray. Who ranged, busily seeking, with his hackles like porpentine quills and his soft grey lip wrinkled in a snarl—truly, as you say, he at least does not love me, and once or twice threatened my composed attention to the excellent seed cake, and rattled cup and saucer. And no porch with tumbling flowers—all vanishing froth and fantasy—but stiff tall Roses like a thicket of sentinels
.

I think your house did not love me, and I should not have come
.

And it is true, as you said, across the whole hearth, that I too have a house, which we have not described or even spoken of. And that I have a wife. You asked me to speak of her and I was speechless. I know not how you construed that—I grant it was your
absolute right
to ask—and yet I could not answer. (Though I knew you must ask.)

I have a wife, and I love her. Not as I love you. Now, I have sat for half-an-hour, having written those bleak little sentences, and quite unable to go on. There are good reasons—I cannot discuss them, but they are good, if not absolutely adequately good—why my love for you need not hurt her. I know this must sound bald and lame. It must, most probably, be what many men, philandering men, have said before me—I do not know—I am inexperienced in these matters and never thought to find myself writing such a letter. I find I can say no more, only aver that
I believe what I have said to be true
and hope that I shall not lose you by this necessary uncouthness.
To discuss this any further would be the most certain way to betray
her.
I should feel the same if the question were ever to arise of discussing
you—
with anyone at all. Even the implicit analogy is distressing—you must feel it. What you are is
yours—
what we have—if anything—is ours
.

Please destroy this letter—whatever you do or have done with the rest—because in itself it constitutes such a betrayal
.

I hope the Muse has not indeed forsaken you—even briefly, even for so long as a Teatime. I am writing a lyric poem—most intransigent—about Firedrakes and Chinese Lung dragons—a conjuration, it might rightly be called. It is to do with
you—
as everything I do these days, or think, or breathe, or see is to do with you—but it is not addressed to you—those poems are
to come.

If any answer comes to this plain letter—I shall know both that you are generous indeed, and that our small space is ours—for our short time—until the moment of impossibility makes itself known—

Your R.H.A
.

My dear Sir
,

Yr plainness and yr reticence can do you nothing but Honour—if that might be thought to be pertinent in this—Pandora’s Box—we have opened—or wet Outdoors we have ventured into. I find I can write no more—indeed and indeed my Head Hurts—and matters in this House—of which I shall not speak, from something the same motives of I hope honour—enfin, they do not go well. Can you be in the park on Thursday. I have matters to impart that I would rather
speak.

Ever, C
.

My dear

My Phoenix is temporarily a woebegone and even bedraggled bird—speaking uncharacteristically small and meek—and even from moment to moment deferential. This will not do—this may not be—I will renounce all, all my heart’s happiness, I say—to see you brighten and flare as you were wont. I would do all in my power that you might sparkle in your sphere as ever before
—even renounce
my so-much-insisted-upon claim on you. So tell me—not
that
you are sad, but
why
you are so, and truthfully, and I will take it upon me to mend what’s ill, if it lies in my power. Now write back to me as you may, and come again on Tuesday
.

Always, R.H.A
.

Dearest Sir
,

In faith I know not why I am so sad. No—I know—it is that you take me out of myself and give me back—diminished—I am wet eyes—and touched hands—and
lips
am I too—a very present—famished—fragment of a
woman—
who has not her desire in truth—and yet has
desire
superabundantly—ah—this is painful—

And you say—so
kind
you are—“I love
you.
I love
you.”—
and I believe—but who is she—who is
“you”?
Is she—fine fair hair and—whatever yearns so—I was once something else—something alone and better
—
I
was
sufficient unto my
self—
and now I range—busily seeking with continual change. I might be less discontented if my daily Life were happy, but it is become a brittle tissue of silence and needle-sharp reproach punctuating. I stare proudly—and seem most ignorant where I am most sharply knowing—and
known—
but this costs—it is not easy—it is not good
.

I read yr John Donne
.

This is a fine phrase—“inter-assured of the mind.” Do you believe it is
possible
to find such—safe mooring—in the howling gale?

And I have now a new word in my vocabulary, much hated, to which I am enslaved—it goes “And if—” “And if—” And if we had time and space to be together—as we have allowed ourselves to wish to be—then we would be free together—whereas now—caged?

My dear
,

The true exercise of freedom is—cannily and wisely and with grace—to move inside what space confines—and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted. But we are human—and to be human is to desire to know what may be known by any means. And it is easier to miss lips hands and eyes when they are grown a little familiar and are not at all to be explored, the unknown calling. “And if” we had a week—or two—what would we not make of it? And maybe we shall. We are resourceful and intelligent persons
.

I would not for the whole world diminish you. I know it is usual in these
circumstances to protest—“I love you for yourself alone”—“I love you essentially”—and as you imply, my dearest, to mean by “you essentially”—lips hands and eyes. But you must know—we do know—that it is not so—dearest, I love your soul and with that your poetry—the grammar and stopping and hurrying syntax of your quick thought—quite as much essentially you as Cleopatra’s
hopping
was essentially hers to delight Antony—more essentially, in that while all lips hands and eyes resemble each other somewhat (though yours are enchanting and also magnetic)—your thought clothed with your words is uniquely you, came with you, would vanish if you vanished—

The journey I spoke of is not finally decided on. Tugwell finds himself greatly involved in his work at home—and though the project was long ago decided upon for when the weather should be clement—to be civilised these days requires an intelligent interest in the minuter forms of life and the monstrous permanent forms of the planet—it now hangs fire. And I who was all enthusiasm—now hang fire
—hang upon fire—
for how should I willingly go so far from Richmond?

Until Tuesday then

P.S
. Swammerdam
is almost ready once more
.

Dearest Sir
,

My dubious Muse is back. I send you (unperfected) what She has dictated
.