The Shadow by Neil M. Gunn Page A

it. Totem and not taboo. Magic. I burst it open. At first it’s not quite you. It’s hurry and swiftness and what I find. Then it’s you.
    I agree I should have more sense. I wish to goodness I hadn’t sent you that rigmarole about the thistledown. Yet I don’t care—for you do say some nice things about it. I mean I read, between the lines, your concern, and though I love your concern, I’m sorry too. Please don’t be concerned, Ranald. Believe me, that’s not what I need at all! I see now how selfish and emotional I must appear. Dreadful. In view of the way I did my job and carried on, it must now seem to you that I really am going to bits. When you write “Don’t give in, Nan,” you wring my heart. Listen, Ranald. I must have someone whom I can tell. Yet that seems selfish, too, for why should I? Without discipline, life is impossible. I know. Who should know better? I could write you nice encouraging letters. But that—put it down to my breakdown—would seem a blight. Do smile, Ranald. For, you see, what was I wanting? I was wanting news of you and of everything you’re doing. And instead of that you write about me as if I were an extra burden on your back. It makes me feel pretty hollow.
    But don’t think I am giving in to you. I am not. You say that I have got to watch this emotionalism with its queer images (you mean demented) or I may escape from you altogether and that would be dreadful. It would indeed! And it’s lovely of you to put it like that. But I am not deceived. I know what you are hinting at. Let me tell you then that I am not escaping out of sanity: I am trying to escape into sanity. I may go quite mad in the process. But that’s the way I’m going. It may be a terrible road, but I’m going. I think it may be terrible because the tears have sprung into my eyes. And lonely. But I’m going. I’ll never go back.
    All this talk about escapism. The talk is a horrible trick, a horrible trick of the intellect to guard its own deathly deeds. It’s the talk of the prison guards. It’s the young man with the machine gun on his knees and the cigarette in his mouth. Not to mention the smile, the murderer’s sneer, that Nan is going all D. H. Lawrence. For ages of time I seem to have lived among it. And I know the reaction to the way I have mentioned the intellect. I see their faces. Real faces, pale and avid, or laughing like hyenas. I am now quite mad, they think. In bottomless swamps of horrible emotion. Blood and myth and stuff. But I’m not! We have to rescue the intellect from the destroyers. They have turned it into death rays, and it should be the sun, the sun on our earth, bringing the blossom from the earth——
    I collapsed there and lay on the bed with your letter. These last words took an awful lot out of me, as if I had been shouting them. The door opened some time and Aunt Phemie was there quietly. I should have pretended to be asleep but I could not think in time. She asked me if there was anything wrong. She had called me for tea and wondered if I was asleep, she said. But I know what she is wondering and am dreadfully aware of my eyes, so I turn from her and put the pillow straight. I had such a lovely letter, I say to her. I hear her breathe for she understands this, quite understands that a letter could be so dear to the heart that the heart breaks in happiness over it. She smiles sensibly and goes out telling me to come when I feel like it. The elderly woman’s relief at the sight of no more than a child’s joy, and you love her for it.
    I feel strangely quietened after my collapse and enjoy my tea. Aunt Phemie reads the newspaper which comes by post every day. She tells me something about what’s happening in the world. I don’t need to answer, but probably say something in reply. I quite forget to ask her if the postman had any news and presently I am up here again,