Kora & Ka Read online

  2.

  Kora knows, the specialist knows, everybody knows that if I had said this ten years ago, I might now be all right. Kora knows and Kora will not retaliate, at least not now, not while I beat my head actually or metaphorically on the floor . . . I look up, I am really standing in bright sunlight, finishing out a yawn with an extra gape and a gulp like a fish, all but caught on a fish-hook. I disentangle fish-hook. I see where I stand. One foot is on brown grass, the other half is shoved in, against a cottage garden border of fire-blue lobelia. Sweet-alyssum ought to be there too; who plants lobelia without sweet-allysium? I remember my mother’s garden, her drawing room. I remember Larry. The doctor told Kora if I could have remembered sooner . . . I ask myself, who is Larry? I should never have talked to Kora. I would never have told Kora, if she had not licked up that ice, in the Bay-tree, like a starved cat. I hate suffering in animals. I used to walk round and round the squares in London, to escape children. I do not like children. I do not like cats. When Kora pushes back the second plate in the Bay-tree and said, “yes, coffee,” I knew decisively that she was more cat than caterpillar. I said to her, “you are more cat than caterpillar.” It was the sort of remark that, in Bob, would have been called “whimsical.” Larry and I used to practise at Bob being “whimsical.”

  Mother could have kept Larry at home. I was too young. Larry was of course vicious to have told me, in precise detail, all that he did. It was a perverse sort of sadism. I loved Larry. I would have gone on, loving men and women if it hadn’t been for Larry. How could I love anyone after Larry? My mother used to say, “Bob would have been too noble-minded to have regretted Larry.” Bob? But Bob went that first year, dead or alive he was equally obnoxious. He was the young “father,” mother’s favourite. I was sixteen. By the time I was ready, the war actually was over. Mother reiterated on every conceivable occasion, “Larry is only waiting to get out there.” I don’t know what mother thought “there” was. It was so near. It was “here” all the time with me. Larry was sent to avenge Bob, I was to be sent to avenge Larry. It was already written in Hans Anderson, a moron virgin and a pitcher. We were all virgin, moron. We were virgin, though Larry saw to it that I was not. Larry.

  I, John Helforth, kick at a scrubby little border of lobelia. I hear a voice call “Helforth.” I scowl out, under hard blue eyes. There is no Ka anywhere now visible. There is Kora standing on the uneven flag-stones, she says, “tea is ready. What were you doing all this time here, sleeping?” I say, “yes, Kora, sleeping.” Ka has gone off. He lives in water and I say, “I’m going to-morrow up toward Grangettes to get you water-lilies.” Kora is looking better. Her eyes are lobelia-blue, fire-blue now in her burnt face. Her arms are the colour of the chiffon scarf that she wore last night at dinner. The hollow in her neck is as fragrant as tobacco and her flesh tastes, I tell her, of waterlilies and of pears. She says, “water-lilies and pears . . . what a mutinous sort of salad,” and I say “for God’s sake, don’t be whimsical.”

  My shoes are too heavy. I must get a pair of light ones or some sort of sand-shoes. What can I get here? Kora has pulled off stockings; women always have half and half sort of things to suit any odd occasion. Her low-heeled one-strap shoes are of soft café-au-lait leather. Her ankles above them and her bare legs are just one shade lighter. She has really gone a sort of honey-colour. I wait for some sort of opening to tell her, before I forget, that she is honey colour. I pull off an apposite spray of honey-flower that seems, telepathically, to have forestalled me. “Honey-flower,” I say as I tickle her behind the ear, “is a prettier word than honey-suckle.” “Is it?” says Kora. We can argue this sort of thing out, endlessly.

  She blows out electric spark of the burner and pours my tea. “Now,” says Kora, “you are back in London; you are having your first affair; you are happier.” . . . I look at Kora; I see no wide blue of fire-blue lobelia but a camelia that has opened under the touch of Larry. I see Jean and I see Larry. I wish Kora wouldn’t be so blatantly and conspicuously tactful. I know the doctor told her not to let me slip out into a sort of impersonal way of seeing. I know they told her to drag out things, to make me talk, to make me tell things. Well, I will tell things, “Kora.”

  “Darling?” “This is not London. This is no first affair. If you are trying to get me to talk about Larry, well you will do. Larry would have withered you with a pseudo-sarcastic whimsicality as he did everyone but Jeanette. Larry did not love Jeanette, she did not love him. They clung together in a world that was made for them, a world of flickering lights and long corridors,” (I fling about my rhetoric) “of single floating wicks in glass lamps, of music behind curtains and of wind in country gables. There was a world made for Larry, there was a world made for Jeanette” (here my breath dramatically catches) “and it was taken from them. Kora, who took it from them? Was it you, was it me?” (I pause forensically.) “It was our Mother.”

  This may or may not have been true. I don’t think poor madre, personally, prevented wicks from floating in glass lamp bowls or wind from howling in country gables. But mother had become symbol. I should have seen it sooner. I had, in Kora’s language, “inhibited” the fact that Larry really need not have gone so early. I blamed mother for the death of Larry and I was not noble like Bob. Kora declares that I was in love with madre and that Bob taking the place of father, was my rival. Fantastic explanation yet gives us topic of conversation over our little dinners. One has to talk at dinner. Kora says my attitude is fantastic and linked up with mother-complex. I say I do not think so. I explain it lucidly, as if she herself were a complete outsider, and herself had never heard of that war. I demonstrate how, systematically, we were trained to blood-lust and hatred. We were sent out, iron shod to quell an enemy who had made life horrible. That enemy roasted children, boiled down the fat of pregnant women to grease cannon wheels. He wore a spiked hat and carried, in one hand, a tin thunderbolt and, in the other, a specialised warrant for burning down cathedrals. He was ignorant and we were sent out, Galahad on Galahad, to quell him. His men raped nuns, cut off the hands of children, boiled down the entrails of old men, nailed Canadians against barn doors . . . and all this we heard mornings with the Daily Newsgraph and evenings with the Evening Warscript. The Newsgraph and the Warscript fed out belching mothers, who belched out in return, fire and carnage in the name of Rule Britannia. I said, “Kora, go back to London. What is the matter with you? Forget sometimes that you are a mother.”

  3.

  Kora has a look in her eyes that means sure death. I say “fire away, old die-hard.” There is a look in Kora’s eyes that does not go with a green helmet and a caterpillar coat. It goes, she is right, with grey and with a sort of undressed leather primitive pelt or polished steel-edge aegis. I say, “when you look like that I understand old Stamford.” Stamford was, or I suppose I should say, is Kora’s husband. I had vaguely known Kora Morrell. I think I had seen her as one of those window-dressed brides who carry out-of-season lilies. Bob was to have been a brother-officer sort of property of Stamford’s at that wedding. Bob was otherwise engaged about then; even Larry was not available. I “ghosted” for them both, soon, veritably, to take on that rôle for life.

  When Larry went I, in some odd manner, went “west” with him. It was my feet that were severed . . . a mule’s intestines . . . but I must stop this. The doctor said if I could encourage the sub-conscious to break into the conscious . . . but there is a limit even to that . . .

  It is Larry, at last analysis, I say, who is responsible for my mind. He shouldn’t have told me about Runner 32, as they called him . . . and those others. We had some mad idea of sharing things, life, war, love finally. I didn’t stop to reason nor think. I was the half of Larry. That half gone, I too went. I did what I presumed Larry would have done, if he had been left in my place. I took on the rôle of Robert, I was to go in his place. It was the only thing to do, I had not the courage to begin over on my own. I had not the heart to be debonnaire. That word had lost integrity like
a worm-gnawed apple. “Debonnaire,” “whimsical” were words rotted at the core. Larry had been “debonnaire” at the last, I am certain and old Robert, true to type, no doubt was no end “whimsical.”

  I never stopped to reason, to think. One does not reason, walking above a torrent on one thin plank. I did not realize that nothing depended on me, that a row of aunts was choros out of Hades, that the “family” was only another name for warfare and sacrifice of the young. I did not in the least realize that it would be a sort of crime if mother (“our” mother) did not have her lilies-of-the-valley on this and that occasion. Such were my erotic orgies, lilies for my mother. There was also the birth-day and the death-day of a father and two brothers. Around these days, aunts stood like crows, waiting their turn at carrion. It was not Larry who had been picked by vultures nor was it Robert. I began to curse Larry, to curse Bob. Because of their casual and affable “sacrifice,” I was left, flung high and dry.

  Kora looked at me in hatred, the lobelia blue burnt to a fire blue in her eyes. Then there is no fire in her eyes. She had touched me on the quick with Larry. I will do the same with her brats. Her children are at school now, I will tell her what happens to small boys at school, things that happened to me, to Larry. Her eyes are steel. I will break through Kora for I hate her. I hate all women because of mother and because of . . . Jeanette. I say, “you don’t look the least like Jeanette.”

  Kora says, “what has Jean Drier got to do with me now?” I say, “you remember you sat there, you blew out the flame, you poured my tea. You said, ‘now you are back in London, you are having your first love affair.’ You remember you said that.” Kora says she remembers. I say, “don’t treat me like Bobby or Jo. Keep your brats out of it. I am not Bobby, look tootsie ottsie, mummy’s mended your bear. I don’t want your teddybearizing of this situation.” Kora says, “go on.” She settles down to it; she reaches for her work-box. “I don’t want this eternal prodding down, I tell you, Kora, this new sort of analysis stuff can’t get round the fact of Ka. I know more than any of these nerve-specialists. How can they treat me? If any one of them had had this over-mind or other-mind or over-world experience, I would listen.” Kora says quite steadily, “isn’t your over-world as you call it, simply substitution?” I say, “for what?” She says, “for this world.” I say, “you ask me, then, to accept this world? You are eternally compromising.” She is running flat elastic round the top of one of those tailored knickers. I say, “I like your knickers, Kora. I liked Jean’s but then that hardly counted. Do you know, Kora, my mother used to snatch her under-things out of the way, such things too, when she saw any of us boys coming.” Kora held up the silk tailored knickers for my inspection. “O, John,” she said, “the poor, poor, poor old darling.” I have not heard Kora speak that way of my mother. She looks up now, across the pile of fawn and puce and light taupe things that she’s mending. “O Johnny,” she seldom calls me Johnny, “don’t you see what a mess you make of all this? Can’t you just love your mother?” I turn on Kora, I will spew out fire and brimstone, I say “Larry.” “ O don’t, don’t, Johnny, that’s over.” She says, conclusively, that the war is over. “How can it be—when Larry?” “You,” said Kora, “are really as bad as all the fire-eating Anglo-Indians. You go on, you go on with it. Can’t you see the flowers growing and ignore the grave-yard?” “What flowers . . .” I take the taupe bit of silk thing from her. “Ours . . . Johnny.”

  III.

  1.

  Colour has rotated in his mind but he now discards it. His eyes are at rest in silver and in green and in a rotation of silver-green, green-silver. He sees a space of long room with a low ceiling. He sees the curtains Kora had drawn, now open. He sees Kora (in a chiffon sort of robe), draw aside the curtains. He sees shadow wavering across diminished sunlight and sunlight filtering through diminished green. He sees shadow wavering slightly like fern-fronds under water. He sees that the red and blue cluster of field flowers, stamped on the chiffon that Kora has drawn on, lie here, there, across bare arm, bare shoulder, the gallant little bulge her back makes, like field flowers, flung on to a statue sprayed with water. The chiffon robe is light, rain-colour or the texture of a sprayed-out garden fountain. The flowers seem to lie along the shoulder of Kora as if she had been rolling in a meadow. I see Kora as she steps into a pool of sunlight that is stippled over with leaf-shadow. Her feet are bare. They are whiter than her legs and the strap of her shoe has left a white strap on her foot. Her bare foot is shod in a whiter sheaf of white flesh. I see that the strap on the other foot is also white.

  Colour has rotated in my mind and dissociation of ironclad idea. My mind was bound in, bound me in a little iron car of ferris-wheel perception. I went round or seemed to go round but all the time my mind, that seemed to lift me above earth, just as inevitably swung me down, back to it. I realize the triviality of that set of perceptions, think of the quarrel we have just had, think rather of a quarrel we had long, long ago before the curtains shut out sunlight as now the curtain lets in filtration of a green diminished shadow. When Kora drew the curtain, it was drawn, dramatically, across a sun-steeped late afternoon. Now Kora opens the curtain and it is still light but (almost imperceptible difference) early evening and not late afternoon. We could not have been there together on the low couch, an hour at the outside, three quarters of an hour, maybe. In that short sector of time, the world altered, slowly, slowly life drew off . . . life drew away, turgid stream, dragging with it silt and bed-rock of grinding memory. Kora was right then. It was right to prod and jab up surface anger. Surface anger can be got at, can be demolished with a like flare of anger. Kora’s anger is not like Helforth’s anger, but it allays and stills it. But Kora was not really angry. On the surface, Kora tells me she was angry. She sits beside me, she says, “must we ever be angry again, Helforth?” I say, “Kora it’s like this. If I could have had bouts of resentment, anger, hatred, all through those ten years, these great volcanic break-downs wouldn’t happen.” Kora says, “yes, Helforth. I too. If I could have hated Stamford, known what he was, if I could have loathed him, I might have loathed the children.” I take the small hand, it is clothed with a brown glove as if someone had lightly varnished it and lightly passed the brush up, toward the shoulders. I slip the chiffon from the shoulder and am half surprised when the cluster of print-poppies and corn-flowers slips off with it. I say, “you are a bit indecent this way. As if you had on long brown gloves and a silly little throat thing, a thing my mother used to call a ‘dickie’ in our wash suits.” I pull back the chiffon stuff and cover the discrepancy with the print-poppies and blue corn-flowers. I take Kora’s hand, almost as if I had not ever kissed her. I say quite solemnly like an apology or a pledge, “you must think better of me. I hate the children, not because they are your children, not even because they are Stamford’s. I hate them because they made you suffer.” She stares straight ahead now; a small hard little profile cuts against fern shadow and the evening afterglow as it filters through those trees. The feather clouds seem to have slipped like fish through the meshes of those trees, they lie, in light pattern, on the floor, they swim about the quaint strapped-over, bare feet like a swarm of gold fish. The shadows are gold-fish and rose-fish, from some Japanese aquarium. I say, “forgive me, Kora.”

  Her profile is hard. Sometime, somewhere, there was a jab, a sort of slice was taken out of Kora. You feel a certain sort of tenderness was removed, as one might have one’s appendix removed, on an operating table. The stability of Kora is not really stable. It is the stability of a frozen rabbit that hears the hounds not far off. She seems to be listening, to be waiting. “But Kora, they can’t ever take the children.” She does not accept me, she is looking far off. She says, “it’s odd. I would never have minded, none of it would have mattered, if I had ever loved him.” I say, “Kora you did love him.” I say even, “you do love him.” I feel with one last flagrant tendril that binds me to the past, that this is somehow what Larry would have said. I have forgiven La
rry, now, for dying and even as I said, “I will let Larry go,” Larry stood there near me. I feel, “this is what Larry would have said to Jeanette.” I feel with one last fibre that binds me to that past, that I must now (having discarded Larry) be once more with him, just this once, this once, Larry. I say, “you do really, Kora, love him.”

  My eyes are filmed over. I feel, in death, only the tenderness of dismissal. Kora has done this for me. Well, Kora reconciled me to death, I, appositely, will try to reconcile her to life. Kora has told me how she loved the children, she will go back to them. “Kora, you have only to go to them.” Her arms are round me, a terrible vice clutches, presses (octopus) breath from my body. I am frightened at this very sudden turn, this octopus-like clutch of those arms below my chest, crushing breath out. I am frightened at the strength and the intensity of those small arms. They are wire and fibre, they bind close, close. I bracelet her two wrists with my hands, I do not draw off those wrists. She lets go suddenly. She slips from me, lies on the floor; the print-poppies make poppy and corn-flower pattern on her back. I am amazed to see poppies and cornflowers convulsed, shaken like field flowers under high wind or down sweep of sharp scythe. Something has been cut down, it lies gasping among those silver and rose-fish from a Japanese aquarium. “Kora.” It is Kora lying there, gasping in her agony, among rose-fish and gold-fish that have now merged into one blur of shadow. In the shadow, the soft folds of chiffon stuff now lie still.

  I stoop. I lift her up, a drowned girl from the water.

  “But Kora darling, love is always like that.” I have lain her on the couch, smoothed the poppies round her, kissed her. “But Kora darling . . .” I am puzzled. Kora has been married ten years, has twice been a mother. I cannot imagine what has hurt her. I go back to Larry. I remember what Larry said of Jeanette, “her husband is that sort of plough-boy who lies heavy on a woman.” I didn’t understand. It occurred then to me that men were like that but they were plough-boys, they precisely were not gentlemen. It had never occurred to me that such things happened among ordinary even presentable sort of people. I tried to explain, tried to keep her quiet, stop her gasping, stop her endlessly, endlessly repeating, “it wouldn’t have mattered all the hideous mutilation, if just once, just once, I had known—this.”