Ice - Anna Kavan [16]
The short steep stair led to one room only, large, sparsely furnished, its polished floor bare like a dance floor. I was immediately struck by the unnatural silence, a curious hushed quality in the air, which reduced her movements to mouselike scratchings. Not a sound penetrated from outside or from other parts of the building. I was puzzled, until it dawned on me that the room had been sound-proofed, so that whatever took place there would be inaudible beyond its four walls.
Then it at once became obvious why this particular room had been allotted to her.
She was in bed, not asleep, waiting. A faint pinkish glow came from a lamp beside her. The wide bed stood on a platform, bed and platform alike covered in sheepskin, facing a great mirror nearly as long as the wall. Alone here, where nobody could hear her, where nobody was meant to hear, she was cut off from all contact, totally vulnerable, at the mercy of the man who came in without knocking, without a word his cold, very bright blue eyes pouncing on hers in the glass She crouched motionless, staring silently into the mirror, as if mesmerized. The hypnotic power of his eyes could destroy her will, already weakened by the mother who for years had persistently crushed it into submission. Forced since childhood into a victim's pattern of thought and behaviour, she was defenceless against his aggressive will, which was able to take complete possession of her. I saw it happen.
He approached the bed with unhurried steps. She did not move until he bent over her, when she twisted away abruptly as if trying to escape, buried her face in the pillow. His hand reached out, slid over her shoulder, strong fingers feeling along her jawbone, gripping, tilting, forcing her head up. She resisted violently, in sudden terror, twisting and turning wildly, struggling against his strength. He did nothing at all, let he go on fighting. Her feeble struggles amused him, he knew they would not last long. He looked on in silence, in half-smiling amusement, always tilting her face with slight but inescapable pressure, while she exhausted herself.
Suddenly she gave in, worn out, beaten; she was panting her face was wet. He tightened his grip slightly, compelled her to look straight at him. To bring the thing to a finish, he stared into her dilated eyes, implacably forced into them his own arrogant, ice-blue gaze. This was the moment of her surrender, opposition collapsed at this point, when she seemed to fall and drown in those cold blue mesmeric depths. Now she had no more will. He could do what he liked with her.
He leaned further, knelt on the bed, pushed her down with his hands on her shoulders. Will-less, she submitted to him, even to the extent of making small compliant movements fitting her body to his. She was dazed, she hardly knew what was happening, her normal state of consciousness interrupted, lost, the nature of her surrender not understood. He was intent only on his enjoyment.
Later she did not move, gave no indication of life, lying exposed on the ruined bed as on a slab in a mortuary. Sheets and blankets spilled on to the floor, trailed over the edge of the dais. Her head hung over the edge of the bed in a slightly unnatural position, the neck slightly twisted in a way that suggested violence, the bright hair twisted into a sort