Ice - Anna Kavan [15]
The business of the room was also settled without difficulty. I was having a run of good luck. Although the proprietor could not accommodate me himself, his sister who lived nearby had a spare room I could rent. 'She's a widow and can do with the extra money, you understand.' He went off to telephone to her; returned after rather a long absence, saying that it was all arranged. He would provide my two main meals at the café; breakfast would be brought to my room. 'You won't be disturbed there while you're working, it's very quiet. The house looks away from the street, faces the water; and nobody ever goes there.' His co-operation was valuable, so to keep the conversation going I asked why people avoided the vicinity of the fjord. 'Because they're afraid of the dragon that lives at the bottom.' I looked at him, thought he was joking; but his face was perfectly serious, his voice had been matter-of-fact. I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons. It amused me, and also contributed to my sense of the unreal.
The room proved to be dark and devoid of comfort or convenience. It was not warm enough. However, it had a bed, a table and chair—the basic necessities. I was lucky to get it as no other accommodation was available. The sister looked older and much less sophisticated than her brother, who must have persuaded her to take me in against her will during their long talk on the telephone. She was evidently reluctant to admit a foreigner to the house where she lived alone; I could feel her suspicious dislike. To avoid trouble I paid the exorbitant price she asked without question, a week in advance.
I asked for the keys, saying I would have a duplicate cut for the outer door: I had to be independent. She brought the two keys, but gave me only the key of my own door, hiding the other one in the palm of her hand. I told her to hand it over. She refused. I insisted. She became stubborn and retreated into the kitchen. I followed and took the key from her forcibly. I did not much care for this sort of behaviour, but a principle was involved. She would not oppose me again.
I went out and walked about, exploring the town: the empty lanes silent between shapeless shapes of decay, the ruined forts jutting into the greengage sea, the huge slab-steps of a giant's staircase where the great wall had fallen, subsiding in solid sections. Everywhere the ubiquitous ruins, decayed fortifications, evidences of a warlike bloodthirsty past. I searched for buildings of a more recent date. There were none. The dwindling population lived like rats in the ruins of a lost martial supremacy. If one place became uninhabitable its occupants moved to another. The community was gradually dying out, each year its numbers declined. There were enough disintegrating structures to last them out. At first it was hard to distinguish the inhabited buildings; I learnt to look for the signs of occupation, the reinforced door, the boarded-up windows.
I made an appointment to see the warden at the High House, which dominated the town, a fortresslike mass built at its highest point. At the time agreed, I climbed a steep road, the only one that led to it. From the outside the place looked like an armed fort, enormously massive, thick walls, no windows, some narrow slits high up that might have been meant for machine guns. Batteries flanked the entrance, apparently trained on the road. I assumed they were relics of some old campaign, though they did not