Kora & Ka Read online

  2.

  I am most at home with Helforth in this green space. The mind of Helforth has seized on one young grape-leaf. The leaf is, just this morning, flattened as if the sun had ironed it out. It still has the tenderness of the young incurved leaves. The leaf is vertebrate. A flawless spine sends out side branches and those again break off into little veins. The flat young leaf blown sideways, insists on inference. Its underside is like the rose leaves that Helforth and Kora exclaimed over, in the smoke-amethyst rose-bowl Kora brought from her room last night, to place on their dining table. Kora had said, “the room lacks something” and made Helforth try to guess what it was.

  Last night, it was rainy in spurts. They had drawn the grey stuff curtains that Kora had brought from London with other things of her own, boxes, candlesticks and this sort of glass bowl. Helforth, looking at the glass bowl, knew, now that the bowl was set there, what it was the room lacked. So, Kora will ask a question in words, then answer it in action. She is, herself, oracle and answer. She said, as she stood, looking down at the rose-bowl, “the light from here, is gouged out like a rainbow in a pope’s amethyst . . . stand here, you’ll see. The convex bulge at the base, is one huge amethyst.” But Helforth does not stand. He sees the grey-rose pulse of the silver of the leaves. Two of the leaves had bent under when Kora put the rose-stems into water. The amethyst tinted clear water in the bowl turns their under-sides, old-silver. Helforth’s eyes rest on that silver. He discarded last night, as well as Kora’s pope’s amethyst, the cluster of blossoms. His eyes discarded the royal-red of the lordly blossom, uncurled Jacqueminot and the half-opened Gloire de Dijon, as just now he discarded the royal purple and the king-rose of the flat wide clematis. His eyes are at rest in silver and in green and in a rotation of silver-green, green-silver.

  Colour has rotated in his mind but he now discards it. If he watches colour in his mind, he will be watching . . . to watch anything at the moment is dangerous. Green has been kind. At the moment, it is the one colour that disregards him. Green does not try to snatch back at him, mitigate, suggest billow of open-curtain or red, red, red. Green is most removed from red, from memory and the mole-trap of his office in the city. If he lets go the hold that I have over Helforth, Helforth will begin the old tread wheel and the iron ferris-wheel of Helforth’s fatigue will grind, across colour, odour, perception, will crush me beneath it like an iron heel, a glow-worm or just hatched moth, on grit and pebble. If Helforth lets his mind catch in rotation, even the memory of this half hour of crowded perception, his mind will jerk back to all vicissitudes. His mind trod ferris-wheel, trod old, old round of balance and account, of one, two, three, of nine plus seven makes sixteen. His mind rotated to this rhythm, ground round and round, till Helforth forgot man, men, women. Helforth forced Helforth to go on in ferris-wheel of iron circle against an iron grey sky. One day his mind, just casually set in motion, discarded all the preconceived occupations of that mind. He saw the under-manager as under layers of green water, violet-laced and the numbers on his ledger shone violet-laced, nine, six, up through transparent seaweed. Helforth told Helforth, “you must see a doctor.”

  The doctor said, “shut your eyes, Mr. Helforth.” He did so. The doctor said, “open your eyes, Mr. Helforth.” He did so. The doctor said, “now is the large A, to the right or the left of the small script?” He told him. The doctor said, “look at the small O above the circle and tell me if the twin brackets are in or outside that circle.” Helforth saw a sort of chart, placed at some distance from him. The wooden frame, on which the chart was balanced, reminded him of just such an arrangement of wood and cardboard from which he had learned his letters. Helforth said casually, “I will learn my letters.” The doctor said, “I asked, was the bracket in or out” and he shoved the frame thing gradually nearer. As the huge page loomed before Helforth, he felt himself grow smaller. Helforth felt himself draw away, back and back, the length of the doctor’s room and out of the wall behind it. Helforth became Helforth, minute at the minimizing other-end of an opera-glass. Although Helforth was miles away, projected into space, Helforth himself sat there. Helforth said tonelessly, “I don’t see anything.”

  The doctor turned a page of the A, B, C, Chart, said, “don’t you even see the lines across the blank space?” Helforth did not tell the doctor what he saw.

  A globe rather the shape of the Venetian glass that Kora had set on the table last night, again reminded Helforth that man was a microbe. He saw a world like a drop of water and himself enclosed in it. It was a green world. Neither the doctor nor that Helforth, drawn graphically out, through the wall, into indeterminate space, was in it. Helforth repeated to the doctor, who seemed to be exacting some form of decisive answer, “I see nothing.”

  The doctor turned a luminous lamp-ray across the face of Helforth. As that consulting room incandescence made bar and cross-bar across Helforth’s haggard countenance, Helforth felt himself returning. From behind Helforth, a ridiculous dangling full-dress Helforth (seen at the wrong end of an opera-glass) rejoined him. Helforth saw Helforth at the other end of the opera-glass, then the two adjusted into one life-size Helforth. Helforth opened his eyes. Helforth saw pursed-forward mouth, chin elegantly shaved, stubble of inconsequential grey-white moustache. The doctor’s face was that of an intelligent elderly wire-haired terrier. Helforth did not like terriers, though, from time to time, he endeavoured to adjust himself to them, contemplated racially, through some friend’s dog. So he endeavoured to adjust himself to this man. He saw, over the doctor’s cloth shoulder, a case holding a stuffed bird and, in a corner, a cluster of speckled birds’ eggs, set in brown grass.

  The doctor said, “what do you see now?” Helforth told him about the speckled eggs and the stuffed bird. The doctor said, “nerves; you must stop work.”

  3.

  Helforth wondered as he stood waiting for a taxi, how he could do that . . . Helforth opened his eyes, saw the barn door and the sunlight and the triangle of sunlight as it lay on the barn floor. A ray of that light had crossed, gold sun-serpent, that barn floor. Helforth sat up. He examined long hands, the palms were less brown than burnt backs. Helforth lifted his throat to guillotine of sunlight. He jerked at the open collar; let sunlight sink deeper. He rose to his feet. He thought, “have I been sleeping?” He knew he was and knew he was not sleeping. Helforth slept, Ka watched or Ka was banished and Helforth stared out, calculating, hard-eyed. For a moment, he had been standing at a street corner, waiting for a taxi while speckled birds’ eggs, in dead grass, appeared in a plate-glass window. The speckled birds’ eggs were the heads of the new importation of French manikins, shaved that year and gilt or silvered over. He thought, “how can I stop work?” Then as he stepped into the taxi, he said, “yes, I will stop work.” He wondered how he could climb out of the ferris-wheel that had been going on for so long. He was dizzy, as he thought of that, and then abstract problem became concrete, how will I step out of this taxi? How will I manage legs, arms and how will I get at my little change-purse or manage to extract loose change from my pocket? Will it be easier to reach in for my wallet which is flat and manageable? Will the taxi man be able to change a note? He wondered if he were hungry, wondered if the taxi man would think he was drunk. He hadn’t smoked for some time.

  The taxi stopped with a jerk, beside a pile of wooden building-blocks. The blocks were stacked each side of the road, like neolithic stone-blocks. Beyond the double doorway of neolithic wood blocks, there was a blazing brazier. Helforth saw fire. He thought, “I am cold.” It was, he remembered, autumn. There was a mist creeping across the brazier flame, it was incense across an altar. He thought of incense, thought of an altar. He remembered that he had left the stack of letters unstamped and wondered, in neurotic agony, if the office boy would drop them into the post-box, without looking at them. He hadn’t been sure of the stamps and had intended to have the lot weighed. They were all of a bulk, the usual quarter-form, sent out to the share-holders. He remembered it was autumn because o
f the usual form that he had forgotten to stamp, neurotically wracked for fear the boy would just sweep the lot up into his office satchel and not see they weren’t stamped.

  Now John Helforth, staring at sun-serpent on barn floor, stood up. I stood up. My legs were stiff. My legs were too long. The same legs had been too long that autumn, late afternoon, cramped sideways in the taxi. I had been sitting crouched down, flung down, I now remembered, like a tailor’s dummy or a rag doll. I recalled exact panic of mental calculation, how will I get out of this taxi?

  I got out finally because the taxi man poked his head around and said, “the street’s up, sir, shall we wait till the traffic block this end’s cleared or shall I drive round it?” Taxi drivers ask these things, lest they be maligned for extorting undue tax. The frayed edges of my mind would not then stand argument. With the frayed edges of my mind, I could not stand up “wait” or “go around” and watch the two naked gladiators fight the thing out. I could not any more stand, watching the contest in the blood-stained sand of my own mind’s arena. I got out.

  Kora said, “hello.” I had to squint close in the town mist to see who it was. I saw chin, nose; eyes were drawn back under a dark green little sort of helmet. I remembered the hat was green because I remembered thinking her yellow fur, drawn tight across her shoulders and about her hips, made her look like a caterpillar. Or wasn’t the hat green? We have arguments about it. She said it was mole-grey; she afterwards called the thing taupe. (She would say, “how could you think I would wear green with that coat?”) I said, “I must pay this taxi.” She said, “O don’t. Do keep him. I’ve been looking for a taxi.” Kora and I got into the taxi like a pre-arranged rendez-vous. I said, “where are you going?”

  She didn’t seem to know where she was going, didn’t seem to care much. I could never watch again the crowded agonies of that blood-strewn arena, the thing my mind was, when I stepped out of a ferris-wheel. But I could watch some one else, wonder, now what exactly is this woman’s sort of worry? Has she too forgotten to put stamps on her letters. I said, “have you forgotten to put stamps on your letters?”

  Kora answered me, as if it were the one question in the whole world she had anticipated. Kora does answer that way. She said, “letters? I was thinking of letters.” She reached into her flat hand-bag, dragged them out. She gave me a little bundle. “Suppose you drop the whole lot in the river,” she said. She said, “look at them.” I sorted out the letters, just managed to make out, in the blurred light of the taxi window, that they were addressed in the same writing. The writing was decisive, the nib was stub and the down-strokes thick. But the writing was Ninevah to me. She said, “read out the address to me.” I said, “I’m afraid I can’t. I haven’t got my glasses.” I never wear glasses but I didn’t want to tell her about the doctor and I didn’t want to tax my mind to read things. I said, “if it were lighter, I could read them.”

  I said that evasively, not wanting to mean anything. She said, “I haven’t had tea, I’m hungry. Can’t we get out here?” We got out. I paid the taxi. We went in a half familiar little side-door, we were in the Bay-tree. Kora said, “just this once, just this once . . . dinner.” I said, “why just this once?” Kora said, “criminals condemned to die, have a last wish haven’t they?” I said, “yes, I think so. But why?” “Some,” Kora said, “ask just for a good meal.” I said. “I can’t apply anything just now.” She said, “I . . . but it’s all right since you’ve got hold of the letters.” I said, “I dropped them in the box outside the door here.” I said, “I must have done it automatically.” She said, “that’s done it.”

  I avoided looking at her over fish and entrée, but watched her lap up her ice like a starved cat. I slipped mine over to her. She never even noticed, went on lapping. Over coffee, I said, “done what?”

  II.

  1.

  There are two things that mitigate against me. One is my mind, one is the lack of it. I, John Helforth, go on existing in that beam of sunlight. As I stand now, stretching, the bar of light that underlined that triangle, (sun-serpent) is exactly parallel to the threshold of the doorway. Parallels, parallels . . . are two things that travel along, equidistant, and never quite meet. Parallels? I am John Helforth, I say, yawning and I endeavour to banish, in that yawn’s exaggeration, the monster I call, for lazy lack of definition, “Ka.” Ka is far off now; Ka partook of symptom, was neurotic breakdown; Ka, it is true, led me, made me, having made me, preserved me—but yawning, I say, for what? If I, Helforth, get rapt back into this Ka thing, contemplating vine-green leaf, Helforth will be good for nothing. There is so much to be done, so much to be thought of; Kora.

  Kora is everything. Without Kora, Ka would have got me. Sometimes I call Kora, Ka, or reverse the process and call Ka, Kora. I am on familiar terms with Kora, with Ka, likewise. We are, it is evident, some integral triple alliance, primordial Three-in-One. I am Kora, Kora is Helforth and Ka is shared between us. Though she repudiates affiliation with Ka, and refuses to discuss it, yet the fact remains. Ka is Kora, Kora is Ka. The waif must be shared between us.

  Ka weeps, wails for attention and then must be put to sleep like any tired infant. Though Ka, unhappily it seems, in that too, like most infants, is never really tired. Ka wears me to a shred. It is I who am bone-thin. Soul is, I have proved it, octopus. Nevertheless, octopus cannot devour utterly. I am frame still, albeit, bone and sinew. I stretch arms. They are my arms. I, I am John Helforth.

  I stamp feet, John Helforth’s feet. Feet are no longer amputated brown lumps lying flat in burnt grass. They are my feet and the shoes are from Thornton’s, Bond Street. I look at shoes, my shoes. I remember how I bought these shoes, my particular shoes. I will remember. I will to remember. For one instant, for some long or short space of time, memory was eradicated. Ka brushed across my mind, a sponge on a slate. Ka then was the shape of a drop of water, magnified to the size of a universe. Ka was a universe. In it, I swam, one microbe in a water-bead. Kora and I do not talk of this thing. Kora says, “forget that.”

  Kora tells me to forget Ka that, in London, brushed out my mind. I tell Kora to forget other things. Kora’s eyes strain forward, they are too big and blue, like bruised flower texture. They are flower petal, ruined in soggy down-pour, they are no longer flower, they are not good stuff, they are not rain nor sun nor water. I hate Kora when her eyes get that poked-out, bruised look. I will not look at Kora. I say, “the kids would stifle you, after this taste of freedom. Don’t set up lurid iron bars. For God, his sake, don’t set up iron bars of memory.” I will to be John Helforth, an Englishman and a normal brutal one. I will strength into my body, into my loins. I say, “for God’s sake Kora, you’re crippling your integrity . . . Lot’s wife. Stop thinking of the children. Anyhow, you don’t really want to see them, it’s (to use your own phrase) guilt-complex.” She turns on me, “children. You never had a child.” I do not retaliate, as I well might do. There are so many things that I might say at this moment, that I don’t say anything. I could concentrate everything into one word, and that word, “Kora.” I don’t even say that. I don’t reach out my hand as I might do, hand sculptured, she says, of meagre metal, an Aztec (she says) or archaic edition of Rodin’s somewhat bloated (she says) Hand of God. I do not say “Kora.”

  I do not say “Kora,” for why should I? I insist on masculinity and my brutality. I drag out, perhaps, tobacco, lift up and let fall disgustedly, books on a table or upset her work-box. I deliberately do something that Helforth would not do, could not do. I become a small lout in my mother’s drawing room and let resentment flare up, I remember Bob and Larry, hating each equally for their several betrayals.

  I let red flares eat out my mind, red Verey light shall burn up Ka who is a jelly fish, who is a microbe, who is (a specialist all but told me) a disease. I will burn away my soul with my mind, or should I say my body? I have a right like any man, like any woman, like any other ill-begotten creature, to a body.

  Who gave me this broken duality? Who
gave me this curse of intimate perception? I curse Ka. I say, “I hate you, Kora; when your eyes go poking forward, you are really ugly.” I look at Kora as she stands, looking down into the courtyard where that wretched child is pulling its wooden cow on the wooden platform, making the uneven wooden wheels vibrate, dot and tick of some wretched S.O.S. between himself and Kora. I say, “I’d like to smash that kid and its wretched wood cow. Anyhow, I’ve had enough of cows for one lifetime.” I underline cow, spew out, “cow, cow, cow, mother-love or mother-lust I call it.” I say, “this cow passion is the disintegrating factor of modernity. I mean you and your sort keep back the world.” I say, “mother, mother, mother,” and I say, “Larry.”

  I have meant to be robust; I have meant to smash furniture. I find myself seated on the low rush-bottomed arm-chair. I beat my hands on its sides. I say, “everything in this damn place is rushes and wood and cow, cow, cow.” I say, “when are we going back? I can’t stay here forever.” It is her turn, at this moment, to retaliate, she does not. Then I sway. Ka is coming; there is green of a pale grape tendril. I hear a voice, it is only Kora but still I say, “Ka shan’t get me.” I regret temporary weakness, I am strong again, I say, “rushes and reeds and cows.” I say, “your mother complex is ugly, Kora. You look into yourself with those ugly poked-out eyes, like a beggar, in Naples, cashing-in on siphilitic scars.” I go on, I say, “cow,” I say, “mother, mother, mother.” Then I fling myself down, anywhere, head on the table, or head that would beat through the wooden floor to the rooms that lie beneath it, “Larry.”