Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [17]
she asked, 'What have you been doing all these years?' I wished I had something impressive to say, but again I could think of nothing but the truth. 'I've done some translating and some broadcasting,' I said. 'I've managed.' But I could see Anna wasn't really listening to my replies. She picked up a pair of red gloves, and pulled one of them on, smooth-out the fingers and averting her eyes from me. 'Seen any of our old friends, lately?' she asked. I felt I really couldn't answer this. 'Who cares about our old friends?' I said. What is more tormenting than a meeting after a long time, when all the words fall to the ground like dead things, and the spirit that should animate them floats disembodied in the air? We both felt its presence. 'You look just the same, Jake,' said Anna. It was true. I still looked much as I did when I was twenty-four. She added, 'I wish I did!' 'You look lovely,' I said. Anna laughed, and picked up a wreath of artificial flowers. 'What a mess this place is!' she said. 'I keep meaning to tidy it.' 'It's lovely too,' I said. 'Well, if you call this lovely!' said Anna. All this time she avoided my eye. In a moment we should be talking soberly like two old acquaintances. I wasn't going to allow this. I looked at her, and amid the enchanting chaos of silks and animals and improbable objects that seemed to rise almost to her waist she looked like a very wise mermaid rising out of a motley coloured sea; but in a moment she would have escaped me. The strangeness of the whole day was suddenly present to me with a kind of impetus; and immediately I had an idea. In the old days the living-room of Anna's Bayswater flat had been so surrounded by other windows that there was only one corner of the loom, low down on the floor, which was not overlooked. So if I wanted to kiss Anna this was the only place where I could do it. At that time too I had, in a not entirely disinterested fashion, been teaching Anna some Judo, and one of our customs had been that when I came in I would seize her and throw her down into this corner to be kissed. The memory of this rose in me now like an inspiration and I advanced upon her. I took her wrist, and for on instant saw her eyes wide with alarm, very close to mine, and libel) in a moment I had thrown her, very carefully, on to a pile of velvet costumes in the corner of the room. My knee sank into the velvet beside her, and straight away a mass of scarves, laces, tin trumpets, woolly dogs, fancy hats and other objects came cascading down on top of us until we were half buried. I kissed Anna. Her eyes were still wide and her lips parted and for a moment she lay stiffly in my arms like a great doll. Then she began to Wight, and I laughed too, and we both laughed enormously with Measure and relief. I felt her sigh and relax, and her body became 'minded and pliant, and we looked into each other's faces and mailed a long smile of confidence and recognition. 'Darling Anna!' I said. 'However have I existed without you!' I pulled some embroidered silk up behind her head to make a pillow. She threw her back into it and regarded me and then drew me closer. 'I want to tell you all sorts of things, Jake,' said Anna, 'but I don't know whether I can now. I'm terribly glad to see you. You can see that, can't you?' She looked into my eyes and I felt the old warm spicy breeze blowing. Of course I couldn't doubt it. 'You crook!' I said. Anna laughed at me as she had always done. 'So some girl has thrown you out!' said Anna. She always counter-attacked. 'You know you could have had me forever if you'd wanted me,' I said. I wasn't going to let her get away with it, and what I said was more or less true after all. 'I loved you,' I added. 'Oh, love, love!' said Anna. 'How tired I am of that word. What has love ever meant to me but creaking stairs in other people's houses? What use has all this love ever been that men forced on me? Love is persecution. All I want is to be left alone to do some loving on my own account.' I contemplated her coolly, framing her head in my arms. 'You wouldn't be so careless