Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [26]
‘And lose my own? Who’d be so foolish?’
‘I am not used to happiness,’ she said. ‘It makes me afraid.’
‘Never be afraid. Or if you are tell no one.’
‘I understand. But trying does not help me.’
‘What would?’ She did not answer that, then one night whispered, ‘If I could die. Now, when I am happy. Would you do that? You wouldn’t have to kill me. Say die and I will die. You don’t believe me? Then try, try, say die and watch me die.’
‘Die then! Die!’ I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what’s called loving as I was – more lost and drowned afterwards.
She said, ‘Here I can do as I like’ not I, and then I said it too. It seemed right in that lonely place. ‘Here I can do as I like.’
We seldom met anyone when we left the house. If we did they’d greet us and go on their way.
I grew to like these mountain people, silent, reserved, never servile, never curious (or so I thought), not knowing that their quick sideways looks saw everything they wished to see.
It was at night that I felt danger and would try to forget it and push it away.
‘You are safe,’ I’d say. She’d liked that – to be told ‘you are safe.’ Or I’d touch her face gently and touch tears. Tears – nothing! Words – less than nothing. I did not love her. I was thirsty for her, but that is not love. I felt very little tenderness for her, she was a stranger to me, a stranger who did not think or feel as I did.
One afternoon the sight of a dress which she’d left lying on her bedroom floor made me breathless and savage with desire. When I was exhausted I turned away from her and slept, still without a word or a caress. I woke and she was kissing me – soft light kisses. ‘It is late,’ she said and smiled. ‘You must let me cover me up – the land breeze can be cold.’
‘And you, aren’t you cold?’
‘Oh I will be ready quickly. I’ll wear the dress you like tonight.’
‘Yes, do wear it.’
The floor was strewn with garments, hers and mine. She stepped over them carelessly as she walked to her clothes press. ‘I was thinking, I’ll have another made exactly like it,’ she promised happily. ‘Will you be pleased?’
‘Very pleased.’
If she was a child she was not a stupid child but an obstinate one. She often questioned me about England and listened attentively to my answers, but I was certain that nothing I said made much difference. Her mind was already made up. Some romantic novel, a stray remark never forgotten, a sketch, a picture, a song, a waltz, some note of music, and her ideas were fixed. About England and about Europe. I could not change them and probably nothing would. Reality might disconcert her, bewilder her, hurt her, but it would not be reality. It would be only a mistake, a misfortune, a wrong path taken, her fixed ideas would never change.
Nothing that I told her influenced her at all.
Die then. Sleep. It is all that I can give you …. I wonder if she ever guessed how near she came to dying. In her way, not in mine. It was not a safe game to play – in that place. Desire, Hatred, Life, Death came very close in the darkness. Better not know how close. Better not think, never for a moment. Not close. The same … ‘You are safe,’ I’d say to her and to myself. ‘Shut your eyes. Rest.’
Then I’d listen to the rain, a sleepy tune that seemed as if it would go on for ever … Rain, for ever raining. Drown me in sleep. And soon.
Next morning there would be very little sign of these showers. If some of the flowers were battered, the others smelt sweeter, the air was bluer and sparkling fresh. Only the clay path outside my window was muddy. Little shallow pools of water glinted in the hot sun, red earth does not dry quickly.
******
‘It came for you this morning early, master,’ Amélie said. ‘Hilda take it.’ She gave me a bulky envelope addressed in careful copperplate. ‘By hand. Urgent