this little world of mine. I shut my door and cast off my artificial life with other people along with my shoes and clothes, and I pottered around the house at will. I was completely alone there. I couldn’t hear voices or people breathing and I didn’t have to look at other people’s bodies. For the first time in my life a heavy burden was lifted from my heart, the burden of living in a house shared by others.
In the middle of the night I opened my eyes to the sound of the heartbeats thudding in my chest like the weary marching feet of a defeated army. My breathing grated beneath my ribs with a noise like the squeaking of a worn-out water-wheel. My open eyes saw only blackness, and my ears drummed in the terrible deadly silence. I was frightened that my heart would stop creeping along, my breathing grate to a halt, the darkness quench the light of my eyes and my hearing be lost amid the drumming.
I stared into the darkness, testing out my sight, and strained my ears. I saw the big mass of blackness splitting up into lots of smaller masses with heads and tails and horns, and sounds spread into the dead silence: whispering, rustling, wailing. I buried my head under the covers and the apparitions and noises vanished. The thudding in my chest abated and the squeaking noise died away. The warmth of the bed coursed into my joints and along my limbs and I yawned contentedly, stretching out my arms, feeling for sleep. But sleep wasn’t there, and I took something else in my arms, or someone — someone who had eyes like my father but wasn’t my father, and lips like my cousin but wasn’t my cousin. Who was he? The spectre which had haunted the nights of my youth began to visit me again. The nights grew longer and the bed wider. Solitude no longer seemed so attractive.
Where would I find him? How in this vast crowded world could I hope to come across the insubstantial being so familiar to my inner self, the spectre of a man lodged firmly in my imagination? I knew the look in his eyes, the timbre of his voice, the shape of his fingers, the warmth of his breath, the depths of his heart and mind. I knew, I knew. I can’t tell how, but I knew.
Did he exist in real life or was he entirely a figment of my imagination? Would I meet him one day or go on waiting for him for ever? And what about this giant longing to love and be loved which lay dormant inside me? Should I exclude it from my life or try to satisfy it? But how could I satisfy it when it preferred total deprivation to spurious or incomplete satisfaction? I wanted a perfect man like the one in my imagination and a perfect love and I wasn’t going to abandon either of these goals, however long it meant I had to be alone. ‘All or nothing’ was my abiding principle and I’d never accept half measures.
I decided to search for him everywhere: in palaces and caves, in night clubs and monasteries, in the factories of science and the temples of art, in bright lights and in pitch dark, on lofty summits and down deep chasms, in bustling cities and in wild deserted forests.
Why were people staring at me in amazement? Hadn’t I wasted enough of my life to satisfy them? Did they want me to sit at home, chin in hand, waiting for some man to come and buy me like a cow? Wasn’t it my natural right to choose my man? And how was I supposed to do it? By meeting only other women, or looking at pictures in books, or taking the only man who chose me? Obviously I had to look at lots of men to find him. I had to move around, looking at their faces and into their eyes, listening to their voices and the way they breathed, touching their fingers and their moustaches, examining their hearts and minds. How could I possibly recognize my man in the darkness or from behind a window blind or from a kilometre away? Wasn’t it vital for me to see him in the light, try him out and get to know him? Didn’t experience precede knowledge, or did they want me to go wrong like last time? I had no
In the middle of the night I opened my eyes to the sound of the heartbeats thudding in my chest like the weary marching feet of a defeated army. My breathing grated beneath my ribs with a noise like the squeaking of a worn-out water-wheel. My open eyes saw only blackness, and my ears drummed in the terrible deadly silence. I was frightened that my heart would stop creeping along, my breathing grate to a halt, the darkness quench the light of my eyes and my hearing be lost amid the drumming.
I stared into the darkness, testing out my sight, and strained my ears. I saw the big mass of blackness splitting up into lots of smaller masses with heads and tails and horns, and sounds spread into the dead silence: whispering, rustling, wailing. I buried my head under the covers and the apparitions and noises vanished. The thudding in my chest abated and the squeaking noise died away. The warmth of the bed coursed into my joints and along my limbs and I yawned contentedly, stretching out my arms, feeling for sleep. But sleep wasn’t there, and I took something else in my arms, or someone — someone who had eyes like my father but wasn’t my father, and lips like my cousin but wasn’t my cousin. Who was he? The spectre which had haunted the nights of my youth began to visit me again. The nights grew longer and the bed wider. Solitude no longer seemed so attractive.
Where would I find him? How in this vast crowded world could I hope to come across the insubstantial being so familiar to my inner self, the spectre of a man lodged firmly in my imagination? I knew the look in his eyes, the timbre of his voice, the shape of his fingers, the warmth of his breath, the depths of his heart and mind. I knew, I knew. I can’t tell how, but I knew.
Did he exist in real life or was he entirely a figment of my imagination? Would I meet him one day or go on waiting for him for ever? And what about this giant longing to love and be loved which lay dormant inside me? Should I exclude it from my life or try to satisfy it? But how could I satisfy it when it preferred total deprivation to spurious or incomplete satisfaction? I wanted a perfect man like the one in my imagination and a perfect love and I wasn’t going to abandon either of these goals, however long it meant I had to be alone. ‘All or nothing’ was my abiding principle and I’d never accept half measures.
I decided to search for him everywhere: in palaces and caves, in night clubs and monasteries, in the factories of science and the temples of art, in bright lights and in pitch dark, on lofty summits and down deep chasms, in bustling cities and in wild deserted forests.
Why were people staring at me in amazement? Hadn’t I wasted enough of my life to satisfy them? Did they want me to sit at home, chin in hand, waiting for some man to come and buy me like a cow? Wasn’t it my natural right to choose my man? And how was I supposed to do it? By meeting only other women, or looking at pictures in books, or taking the only man who chose me? Obviously I had to look at lots of men to find him. I had to move around, looking at their faces and into their eyes, listening to their voices and the way they breathed, touching their fingers and their moustaches, examining their hearts and minds. How could I possibly recognize my man in the darkness or from behind a window blind or from a kilometre away? Wasn’t it vital for me to see him in the light, try him out and get to know him? Didn’t experience precede knowledge, or did they want me to go wrong like last time? I had no
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