The Collector (16 page)

Everything’s locked and double-locked. There’s even a burglar-alarm on my cell door.

He’s thought of everything. I thought of putting a note in laundry. But he doesn’t send any. When I asked him about sheets, he said, I buy them new, tell me when you want some more.

Down-the-place is the only chance.

Minny, I’m not writing to you, I’m talking to myself.

When I came out, wearing the least horrid of the shirts he’d bought for me, he stood up (he’s been sitting all the time by the door). I felt like the girl-at-the-ball-coming-down-the-grand-staircase. I knocked him over, I suppose it was seeing me in “his” shirt. And with my hair down.

Or perhaps it was just shock at seeing me without the gag. Anyway I smiled and I wheedled and he let me be without the gag and he let me look round. He kept very close to me. I knew that if I made the slightest false step he would leap at me.

Upstairs, bedrooms, lovely rooms in themselves, but all fusty, unlived-in. A strange dead air about everything. Downstairs what he (he would) called “the lounge” is a beautiful room, much bigger than the other rooms, peculiarly square, you don’t expect it, with one huge crossbeam supported on three uprights in the middle of the room, and other crossbeams and nooks and delicious angles an architect wouldn’t think of once in a thousand years. All massacred, of course, by the furniture. China wild duck on a lovely old fireplace. I couldn’t stand it, I got him to retie my hands in front and then I unhooked the monsters and smashed them on the hearth.

That hurt him almost as much as when I slapped his face for not letting me escape.

He makes me change, he makes me want to dance round him, bewilder him, dazzle him, dumbfound him. He’s so slow, so unimaginative, so lifeless. Like zinc white. I see it’s a sort of tyranny he has over me. He forces me to be changeable, to act. To show off. The hateful tyranny of weak people. G.P. said it once.

The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.

But he’s so ordinary that he’s extraordinary.

He takes photographs. He wants to take a “portrait” of me.

Then there were his butterflies, which I suppose were rather beautiful. Yes, rather beautifully arranged, with their poor little wings stretched out all at the same angle. And I felt for them, poor dead butterflies, my fellow-victims. The ones he was proudest of were what he called aberrations!

Downstairs he let me watch him make tea (in the outer cellar), and something ridiculous he said made me laugh—or want to laugh.

Terrible.

I suddenly realized that I was going mad too, that he was wickedly wickedly cunning. Of course he doesn’t mind what I say about him. That I break his miserable china duck. Because suddenly he has me (it’s mad, he
kidnapped
me) laughing at him and pouring out his tea, as if I’m his best girlfriend.

I swore at him. I was my mother’s daughter. A bitch.

There it is, Minny. I wish you were here and we could talk in the dark. If I could just talk to someone for a few minutes. Someone I love. I make it sound brighter so much brighter than it is.

I’m going to cry again.

It’s so unfair.

I hate the way I have changed.

I accept too much. To begin with I thought I must force myself to be matter-of-fact, not let his abnormality take control of the situation. But he might have planned it. He’s getting me to behave exactly as
he
wants.

This isn’t just a fantastic situation; it’s a fantastic variation of a fantastic situation. I mean, now he’s got me at his mercy, he’s not going to do what anyone would expect. So he makes me falsely grateful. I’m so lonely. He must realize that. He can make me depend on him.

I’m on edge, I’m nowhere near as calm as I seem (when I read what I’ve written).

It’s just that there’s so much time to get through. Endless endless endless time.

What I write isn’t natural. It’s like two people trying to keep up a conversation.

It’s the very opposite of drawing. You draw a line and you know at once whether it’s a good or a bad line. But you write a line and it seems true and then you read it again later.

Yesterday evening he wanted to take a photograph of me. I let him take several. I think, he may be careless, someone may see me lying around. But I think he lives quite alone. He must do. He must have spent all last night developing and printing them (as if he’d go to the chemist’s! I don’t think). Flashlit me’s on glossy paper. I didn’t like the flashlight. It hurt my eyes.

Nothing has happened today, except that we have come to a sort of agreement about exercise. No daylight yet. But I can go in the outer cellar. I felt sulky so I was sulky. I asked him to go away after lunch and I asked him to go away after supper, and he went away both times. He does everything he’s told.

He’s bought me a record-player and records and all the things on the huge shopping-list I gave him. He wants to buy things for me. I could ask for anything. Except my freedom.

He’s given me an expensive Swiss watch. I say I will use it
while I am here
and give it back when I go. I said I couldn’t stand the orangeady carpet any more and he’s bought me some Indian and Turkish rugs. Three Indian mats and a beautiful deep purple, rose-orange and sepia white-fringed Turkish carpet (he said it was the only one “they” had, so no credit to his taste).

It makes this cell more liveable in. The floor’s very soft and springy. I’ve broken all the ugly ashtrays and pots. Ugly ornaments don’t deserve to exist.

I’m so superior to him. I know this sounds wickedly conceited. But I
am
. And so it’s Ladymont and Boadicaea and
noblesse oblige
all over again. I feel I’ve got to show him how decent human beings live and behave.

He is ugliness. But you can’t smash human ugliness.

Three nights ago was so strange. I was so excited at leaving this crypt. I felt so nearly in complete control. It suddenly seemed all rather a grand adventure, something I’d one day soon be telling everyone about. A sort of chess-game with death I’d rather unexpectedly won. A feeling that I
had
run a terrible risk and now everything was going to be all right. That he was going to let me go, even.

Mad.

I have to give him a name. I’m going to call him Caliban.

Piero. I’ve spent the whole day with Piero, I’ve read all about him, I’ve stared at all the pictures in the book, I’ve lived them. How can I ever become a good painter when I know so little geometry and mathematics? I’m going to make Caliban buy me books. I shall become a geometrician. Shattering doubts about modern art. I thought of Piero standing in front of a Jackson Pollock, no, even a Picasso or a Matisse. His eyes. I can just see his eyes.

The things Piero says in a hand. In a fold in a sleeve. I know all this, we’ve been told it and told it and I’ve said it. But today I really felt it. I felt our whole age was a hoax, a sham. The way people talk and talk about tachism and cubism and this ism and that ism and all the long words they use—great smeary clots of words and phrases. All to hide the fact that either you can paint or you can’t.

I want to paint like Berthe Morisot, I don’t mean with her colours or forms or anything physical, but with her simplicity and light. I don’t want to be clever or great or “significant” or given all that clumsy masculine analysis. I want to paint sunlight on children’s faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain.

The essences. Not the things themselves.

Swimmings of light on the smallest things.

Or am I being sentimental?

Depressed.

I’m so far from everything. From normality. From light. From what I want to be.

G.P.—You paint with your whole being. First you learn that. The rest is luck.

Good solution: I must not be fey.

This morning I drew a whole series of quick sketches of bowls of fruit. Since Caliban wants to give, I don’t care how much paper I waste. I “hung” them and asked him to choose which one was best. Of course he picked all those that looked most like the wretched bowl of fruit. I started to try to explain to him. I was boasting about one of the sketches (the one I liked best). He annoyed me, it didn’t mean anything to him, and he made it clear in his miserable I’ll-take-your-word-for-it way that he didn’t really care. To him I was just a child amusing herself.

Blind, blind, other world.

My fault. I was showing off. How could he see the magic and importance of art (not my art, of
art
) when I was so vain?

We had an argument after lunch. He always asks me if he may stay. Sometimes I feel so lonely, so sick of my own thoughts, that I let him. I
want
him to stay. That’s what prison does. And there’s escape, escape, escape.

The argument was about nuclear disarmament. I had doubts, the other day. But not now.

M.
(I was sitting on my bed, smoking. Caliban on his usual chair by the iron door, the fan was going outside)
What do you think about the H-bomb?

C.
Nothing much.

M.
You must think something.

C.
Hope it doesn’t drop on you. Or on me.

M.
I realize you’ve never lived with people who take things seriously, and discuss seriously.
(He put on his hurt face.)
Now let’s try again. What do you think about the H-bomb?

C.
If I said anything serious, you wouldn’t take it serious.
(I stared at him till he had to go on.)
It’s obvious. You can’t do anything. It’s here to stay.

M.
You don’t care what happens to the world?

C.
What’d it matter if I did?

M.
Oh, God.

C.
We don’t have any say in things.

M.
Look, if there are enough of us who believe the bomb is wicked and that a decent nation could never think of having it, whatever the circumstances, then the government would have to do something. Wouldn’t it?

C.
Some hope, if you ask me.

M.
How do you think Christianity started? Or anything else? With a little group of people who didn’t give up hope.

C.
What would happen if the Russians come, then?
(Clever point, he thinks.)

M.
If it’s a choice between dropping bombs on them, or having them here as our conquerors—then the second, every time.

C.
(check and mate)
That’s pacifism.

M.
Of course it is, you great lump. Do you know I’ve walked all the way from Aldermaston to London? Do you know I’ve given up hours and hours of my time to distribute leaflets and address envelopes and argue with miserable people like you who don’t believe anything? Who really deserve the bomb on them?

C.
That doesn’t prove anything.

M.
It’s despair at the lack of
(I’m cheating, I didn’t say all these things—but I’m going to write what I want to say as well as what I did)
feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It’s despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It’s despair that so few of us care. It’s despair that there’s so much brutality and callousness in the world. It’s despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they’ve won a lot of money. And then do what you’ve done to me.

C.
I thought you’d get on to that.

M.
Well, you’re part of it. Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don’t care.

C.
I know your lot. You think the whole blooming world’s all arranged so as everything ought to be your way.

M.
Don’t be so wet.

C.
I was a private in the army. You can’t tell me. My lot just do what they’re told
(he was really quite worked up—for him)
and better look out if they don’t.

M.
You haven’t caught up with yourself. You’re rich now. You’ve got
nothing
to be hurt about.

C.
Money doesn’t make all that difference.

M.
Nobody can order you about any more.

C.
You don’t understand me at all.

M.
Oh, yes I do. I know you’re not a teddy. But deep down you feel like one. You hate being an underdog, you hate not being able to express yourself properly. They go and smash things, you sit and sulk. You say, I won’t help the world. I won’t do the smallest good thing for humanity. I’ll just think of myself and humanity can go and stew for all I care.
(It’s like continually slapping someone across the face—almost a wince.)
What use do you think money is unless it’s used? Do you understand what I’m talking about?

C.
Yes.

M.
Well?

C.
Oh… you’re right. As always.

M.
Are you being sarcastic again?

C.
You’re like my Aunt Annie. She’s always going on about the way people behave nowadays. Not caring and all that.

M.
You seem to think it’s right to be wrong.

C.
Do you want your tea?

M.
(superhuman effort)
Look, for the sake of argument, we’ll say that however much good you tried to do in society, in fact you’d never do any good. That’s ridiculous, but never mind. There’s still yourself. I don’t think the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has much chance of actually affecting the government. It’s one of the first things you have to face up to. But we do it to keep our self-respect to show to ourselves, each one to himself or herself, that we care. And to let other people, all the lazy, sulky, hopeless ones like you, know that someone cares. We’re trying to shame you into thinking about it, about acting.
(Silence—then I shouted.)
Say something!