Kora & Ka Read online

  2.

  We had the padrone’s niece bring the tray upstairs again. Kora explained in the sort of French we talk here, “Monsieur is tired out,” vaguely indicating papers, profusion of books and notebooks, “writing.” My writing has been a symbol and a myth. We hold to it; I am writing. I will not have invalidism thrust on me but it is Kora does the writing. She had straightened the couch cover, flung down books there and her note-books. She has neglected the cushions, re-covered with some of her stuff from London. There was a print in the dull gold one, like a marble head in velvet. I found myself surreptitiously smoothing over that print of Kora’s heavy small stone head. The heavy stone head and the various bits of marble, foot, hand and severed torso had been re-assembled. Kora had gone to bits; it seemed as if each separate bit of her, had needed re-adjustment, as if I must say over and over, to hand, to thigh, to line of tortured eye-brows, “it’s all right. Love is this.” I had not kissed her, after that first kiss of my condonation as I smoothed red poppy-heads about her. I condoned not this present lapse but the fact that, till now, she had astonishingly hidden the fact that she had not loved me. I had simply thought her proud and reserved. I remembered Jeanette saying, “I never gave myself to anyone but Larry.” At that time, I had considered Jean infallible, a woman older even than was Larry. I had taken Jean and Larry as final court of appeal, in the sheer technique of loving, and with final severance, my own bruised being had accepted things as they were. Looking at Kora, as she sat with the circles from the lamp shade, dramatically, insisting that the ear-ring and the chin were an anomaly, I realised that, but for Larry, I might have gone on . . . not understanding anything. I realized that my odd dissociation had left me free and that the ten years were not wasted. I said, “Kora, that jade ear-ring doesn’t go with pre-fifth Attica.”

  Her hand went up to her ear. She looked at me across a space of white cloth. On the cloth, arranged out of a Flemish gallery, were two tumblers with bulbous cups, with stocky rooted stems and solid bases. One tumbler lay at my right, one placed exactly, like the Grail, in front of Kora. “Take, eat,” I said and shoved the flat plaque toward her. To-night, it held a pseudo mondaine assortment of “town” fruit, bananas, of all things, and some oranges. I said, “what has happened to the cherries?” and Kora answered, “I imagine they think we like change. We had cherries last night, and we had cherries at noon.” “I seem to disbelieve in those bananas, they strike some wrong note. It reminds me of a restaurant in Soho where I once took Jeanette after we’d seen off Larry.” Now when I say Jeanette, Larry, I am one with them, we are of one age, there are four of us here. I do not say “Larry” now with that back-fire of resentment. I see mother sitting far off; she should be an American mother, from the back of a magazine, sitting in a rocking chair. I say, “I seem to be American. I see mother in a rocking chair.” Then I see Kora as something flagrant herself, out of a bright painted advertisement, as she lifts the flat plaque and calls through the open door in the sort of French we talk here, “Hedweg, Monsieur would like again the cherries.” Hedweg comes back with cherries, a marionette pulled in on a wire. She takes the bananas, does not seem perturbed about it. She probably herself, for a change, would like bananas.

  I say, “Kora, you started some time back, before you drew the curtains, while you were running flat elastic in your knickers, to give me one of your admirable treatments.” It is as if I had flicked a little whip in her face. I had not meant to be ironical. Something in one, instinct of defence, protection, incredibly stupid habit, made that tone flick in her face. I had not meant to be ironical, had not really linked up that Kora yet with this one. Seeing her, with her half-emptied goblet, a Grail, before her, I had not thought that anything I could say would now seem incongruous to her. It seemed now that Kora had second sight but Kora had not. I expected her to see through my remarks as I myself see through them.

  Ka, it appeared however, still belongs to Helforth, his personal little dragon; it seemed, with the assistance of this personal little pest, that I could see around and, as it were, through walls and into tree-trunks. I could see through the wall behind Kora and I saw Kora sitting in a Florentine frame, her head encompassed with an aura of lilies. I saw Kora then just as the Kore-Persephone and I realised that I too have proper affinity with her. I see that all this turn of chin and inapposite jade ear-ring, belonging to this minute, to me and postwar Kora and to dead Larry. Larry was dead, dead, dead, wail O Adonis, but Larry wasn’t that youth. Larry was the young Dionysus, tramped to filth with the sacrificial entrails of dead mules, likewise slain for the whole world’s atonement and the horror that had so often rasped me at the thought of those Alsatian dogs that ran, for their young Saxon masters, straight into the Allies’ gunfire, was appeased strangely. “Dogs and horses, Kora,” I said “and Larry.”

  I could feel Ka across my forehead like a hand placed there. I saw the Grail, I saw Kore-Persephone, I saw goblets out of a Venetian gallery and fruit now off a Flemish platter. I saw the planes of the wall, like the perspective in Tintoretto, and I saw red fire and incense across an altar. I said, “that day, I ran across you, Kora, I saw incense across an altar. It was one of those red braziers, you know, they melt tar in . . . You had a fur like a caterpillar. You had on a green hat.” Kora looked up, reduced now to a portrait, in a subsidiary French room, in an art gallery. With a cherry between her teeth, she had, at that moment, a somewhat blatant prettiness; now she is French. Her cheeks are brushed with rose, her eyes are French-blue, exaggerated with soft shadow. Kora says, “it wasn’t a green hat but a grey one.”

  I am willing to admit, now, that it was a grey one. Admitting even that technically the hat had been green, it must have been in that mist and underground etched-in sort of city, smudged in with so dull a green smear that, for process of today’s comparison, it might have been grey. I see Kora now standing, by the sooty iron railings, and a tree etched above her with metallic outline and the smoke, from beyond, mingling with the grey mist. I realise one tone, no mist can smudge out, I remember the fire embers of that brazier, as promise of a fire that had not then sprung between us. We were Kora of the Underworld and Dionysus, not yet risen. I was then Larry and those others, had no place then in any living landscape. Now we are Kore and the slain God . . . risen.

  MIRA-MARE

  VAUD

  1930.

  I.

  Mira. Mare. Miramare. A pencil traced words in a pocket diary. The blue suède covers were worn, the pages were headed with inept dates; it was a pocket-diary she had discarded as one does discard pocket-diaries, post-dated three years. Then she had scraped it up from somewhere, scratched out an ancient laundry-list, jotted down train time. The volume had been spared for that pencil. The pencil, almost virgin, still fitted beautifully. The tiny pencil fitted, with clean minute bevelled edge, into the suède loop. The loosened pages fluttered now, broken gilt, as Alex shut the volume. The pages were gilt-edged. Gilt-edged securities. She wanted this security.

  The place smelt of paint. The boy said, “no, madame. Yes, but madame, the apartments run from 13,000 francs.” He repeated the 13,000. The girl had already written it in the note book. Alex fluttered open the post-dated pages to be sure again the girl had written it. The girl was standing; she said, “we’d better call him up now.” The boy said, “no, it’s the 14th. He won’t be in the office.” Alex said, “yes, July 14th. I am here on visit. Monsieur is now waiting for me. If you will give me the—the thing, I will go. I will come back. I will come back to-morrow—” “At eleven,” the girl said. The boy said, “at ten.” Alex noted the boy wore a perforated white pull-on, punctured regularly like a sieve. His dark hair stood up on separate wires, his eyes were not blue enough in his pale face. Yet she saw his point. He was, in a small way, another of what Christian called, “beach-bums.” The padrone and herself and a hypothetical monsieur and a conference at eleven, that might be late, would spoil his day. Her flat wide eyes caught blue in his, none too blue. She said, “at
ten. Monsieur cannot be later. To-morrow is our last day.” Her smile was for the boy who jerked up loose trousers about thin flanks.

  Paddy said the French tried for places like this, would take anything, these Bretons. The boy was ill, was janitor. There were three doors, Alex noted as she passed through the middle one. She flicked open the flat suède covers to read again, Monsieur le Colonel Darso. It sounded more Italian than French, a bastard tongue, this Monagesque. She read Miramar, Bd. des Moulins from 13,000 francs. The girl had spelt it Miramar. But the letters carved on the stone coping at the stairs’ foot, read Mira-Mare. Alex turned to stare at them. M-i-r-a she spelt, to make certain; the Wonderful. She ran her fingers, Braille fashion round the letters. The Wonderful; she read M-a-r-e. It was obvious you must pronounce that last e, a Italian, though the way the girl wrote it, was French. Miramar didn’t mean anything, it must be Mira-Mare. But French or Italian, it was much the same thing here in Monte Carlo. She thought of Monaco as a bastard little principality, stuck like a beauty-patch, on the face of Europe. Europe wore its Monte Carlo like a beauty patch, humourously and out of fashion. Mira the beautiful, Mare the Sea, obviously.

  She hunched the “thing” under her right arm. This “chose” was an exaggerated towel, rolled tight, containing shoes, cap, swimming suit. The cap was slate blue, the shoes were cobalt, shining paint-box blue. The cap fitted like a Lindburgh helmet. She stepped carefully in sandals that had loosened at the heel, in five days. Five days ago, the low-heeled, wicker-work, Deauville sandals had been snug, had fitted. In a few days, if she could have stayed, she would have managed without stockings. The trouble was keeping them up. Stockings, half way up the thigh, clipped tight with four garter straps, were a sort of obscenity. In the whole world, there was nothing obscene she felt, but her garter belt, an anomaly.

  Alex slid forward with slightly racing movement. She should almost float down these steep stairs; each step shelved into a low sloping separate platform; each stone required one or two steps or three mincing steps. Her feet moved differently. Every movement of foot, hand, thigh, body, was a fresh invention. She had not felt feet curl under, this way, in years. She thought, “I haven’t used my feet like this since I was—since I was a child.” She remembered that she hadn’t been happy like this since childhood. And remembering back, she remembered that, then, she had not been too happy. A child is not too happy. She had never been happy, she thought, equally in spirit and body like this. She had been happy with one, with the other, not both. She had never been happy like this, in her life. Happiness was a new garment, fitted her like her Lingburgh helmet. It was snug, fitted her like her paint-box blue rubber beach shoes. She said under her breath, “I am perfectly happy.”

  The gates, at the railway crossing, were, as usual, slammed tight. The first one could be pushed open with automatic knee. She picked her way across the track, looking right, left. She had not yet seen a train pass. She supposed trains did pass or there would not be these gates. Safe against the second gate, her eyes drugged themselves on more blue; a glorified morning-glory made a burnt tree blossom. The burnt tree, with unfamiliar spider leaves, was drenched with a new variant on blue, this very dark blue, “paint-box blue,” she said again; her mind would seek no new word, would not forfeit privilege. For the first time now in years (ten?) her mind was subservient to her. She realised that her mind was subservient; she let thought stand separate from her, like steel barred sluice-gates. Thought was steel, was platinum, was silver-coloured sluice-gates. Those gates stood wide open. Through her mind, sensation poured, drowning. Pressed away from the rails against the second railway gate, she felt it give before her. She let the gate slam back, with its own weight. Her feet were crunching tobacco-shaped, dried magnolia leaves. Christian said that they were not magnolia. She turned the corner where palms made Egyptian pattern on a wall. The road that made exact perpendicular with this wall, was a dusty common-place engineer’s perfection. The new walls, the tunnel, the whole length of magnificent boulevard was punctuated now and again with date, epigraph, such and such a stone and the arms of the Princelet. The wall, the outer wall, the tunnel, appeared scrubbed, new stone. Below the new wall, there were heaps of builders’ rubbish; beyond, patches of apparent refuse, dumps. The sea came in, in low even breakers, like the Atlantic. The tunnel was cool. Alex overtook the three girls in the new unfaded kimonos and the paper sunshades. They were earlier to-day, rather it was she, delayed at Miramare, who was later. She passed them, bending slightly forward to catch up the few minutes she had lost.

  The usual cars stood outside the shaded huts of the garden pavilion, Larvotto. She and Christian had decided that the Larvotto people were not really “snobs” like the exaggerated types that drove restless cars disdainfully past them, toward the Monte Carlo (ipse) Plage, another half mile distant. By “snobs” they meant something mildly different. The Larvottos were not haughty people. They skipped ropes, swung weights, browsed in the private shade of their private palm trees or did intricate dance steps on the sun-lit raised platform. Larvotto people even slid through the chicken wire that vaguely separated goats and sheep. Larvotto patronized their breakers. They were on good terms with Larvotto whose sea-rosemary hedges perfumed their stretch of boulders. Larvotto with sea-rosemary and skeleton eucalyptus was at their right; beyond them, the Plage line, at their backs, the high wall of the villa, “the villa, in excelsis,” Christian called it.

  Christian was not yet here. A sea-pirate was doing physical jerks behind their rocks. His bathing drawers hung loose, his one-two-three-four was limp, his bare feet slithered as he did fragile knee-bends, his naked shoulders, baked adequately, served only as bone-rim for the basin shape between them. He was lava-baked mummy from Pompeii, doing one-two-three-four, slithering with weak feet on their stones. Now why had he chosen their rock? It occurred to Alex, immediately, that probably his was the prior claim. In less than a week, she and Christian had become ownerful, arrogant. Now that people couldn’t really tell them from the others (they flattered themselves unduly) they belonged here. The palm shadows on the villa-in-excelsis wall moved perfunctorily, like paper cut-out shadows. Christian said, “hello.”

  She said, “hello, Chris, did you get the money at the bank?” He nodded, his towel already slung across their rock. She said, drawing nearer, “there’s—someone—” and Christian said loudly, “damn.” The head of the sea-pirate emerged, jack-in-the-box, and trembled as he balanced on weak toes, then the sea-pirate sunk back. Christian jerked off his coat. The pocket bulged. “You can’t leave all our hotel money in your pocket.” He fumbled, handed her the packet. Now what good did that do? She jerked open her zip-bag and stuffed the thing in there. Now why had she screamed at Christian, “did you get the money at the bank?” He was already in his knitted pull-on, the shoulder straps tucked in at the waist.

  She regarded the beach, resenting the zip-bag and the roll of bank-notes. The usual bronze was perched on the usual rock-peak that divided their stretch. It was a bit sandier at and beyond the rock, there were fewer boulders that end, but this side was wilder, as a rule, less crowded. The habitués were already stretched out, a shoal of brown seals; here and there, one young herd-leader, perched on an outstanding pinnacle. She squinted, drew together wide blue to make out that one. Yes, it was their favourite, hardly to be distinguished, at this distance, save for his electric blue waist band. He wore nothing, a platinum-coloured rubber cap and that blue strip at his waist, and sometimes, his beach-sandals, his “winged sandals,” Christian called them. He sat, ran, dived, swam, each a separate entity. Their “favourite” was seen through prism glasses, never one, a varigated gallery. He sat, one of his pet poses, regarding nothing, far to lee.

  Her narrowed squint widened like a camera shutter. Light filtered in; she saw the far beach. They had kicked out their “store” shoes, as she called them, that first day, curious to see what lay beyond the familiar stretch. They were rewarded, for lack of faith in the herd instinct, with broken shin
s, cactus scratches, the fact that the further beach was more or less dedicated to a row of squalid bungalow huts, concealed this end and from the distant fashionable “plage” ipse, by flowerless oleander, dusty sea-rosemary and thorn-like bundles of dried gorse. There seemed to be a dead stream runnel. One fisherman was perched on the dividing wall that possibly ran, for some sordid purpose, on out toward deep sea. They decided the seals had already pegged out the best ground. They would follow from now on, herd instinct. They imagined a mild chuckle from the seals, on their return, though none spoke. No seal looked at them for some days. Then, seals looked. She had plunged to the nearest of the far rocks and had meant to sun herself nonchalantly on the furthest to-day, but here was that packet.

  Christian wouldn’t come with her out to the far rock. He was afraid of arms, not so brown as those arms, of back not so bronze and muscular. Incandescent mind, too, had gone from Christian. He was young male among other young males, many of whom, indeed most of whom, were browner. Why, just as they were being formally received into this herd, must they go back?