Who Are You? by Anna Kavan

isn't too late to do as the letter writer suggests, and take up her scholarship at the university. Why should she stay out here, in this vile climate, tied to a man twice her age she ought never to have married, who neglects her, and whom she doesn't care twopence about ? He gets quite excited while he is talking, and is disappointed because at the end she says nothing. Her face is half hidden from him by her hair, which falls forward as she bends over the letter, carefully returning it to its envelope.
    He always likes to look at her hair. She must have washed it today, as it is slightly ruffled and there seems more of it than usual. The straight, fair hair refuses to conform to the shape in which it's been clumsily cut, and strands keep on escaping. The fan stirs individual hairs on the surface, and their tiny movements, amplified by the mass of hair, create constantly changing eddies with shining highlights. But, attractive as it is in itself, the hair's perpetual motion accentuates its owner's unmoving silence, which begins to make him slightly impatient. He can't understand why she puts up with the situation, without even trying to change it, which he thinks she could easily do.
    'All you've got to do is walk out and book your passage,' he tells her: and, as she still doesn't speak, adds impatiently: 'You're not in prison !' Still he waits in vain for her to say something, and finally bursts out: 'You've only got one life, you know ! Are you always going to let other people run it for you, as if you were six years old?'
    Even now she can't think of an answer. She knows that however often he repeats that it's quite easy for her to get on a boat or a plane, the proposition will remain purely theoretical to her; it will never, for a single instant, appear as something she might actually do. She looks at him appealingly, as if to beg him not to be angry with her. She doesn't want to annoy him, but feels incapable of explaining how impossible it is for her to resume her old life where it was broken off. She'll never make him understand that an impassable barrier separates her from her past for him, impassable barriers don't exist. The only thing seems to be to put forward the obvious obstacle of having no money.
    And this he immediately sweeps aside with the greatest of ease, disposing of it at once. He will pay her fare for her. She can pay him back any time. Or never. It doesn't matter. His parents are rich, it appears, and have only sent him out here for a year or so to toughen him up, and because of certain youthful escapades he refers to with a wry grimace, without going into details.
    At last she now lifts her head, putting back her hair with one hand, and wonderingly looks him full in the face. No one has ever treated her generously before; she is touched and astonished by his generosity. She can't bear to seem ungrateful, and hasn't the heart to refuse his offer, although the project seems just as unreal as it did before. To please him, she promises to think it over, and meanwhile continues to look at him — her expression almost makes him get up and hug her.
    Instead, he changes the subject, reverting to one they've already discussed several times, which involves a, question nearly as difficult for her to answer. He wants to take her out in his car for a picnic; they can drive down to the river, where there's generally a cool breeze, or go a little way into the jungle she's never seen. There's nothing in the world she'd like better. Yet whenever lie asks her to fix a day she always becomes evasive and puts him off, in spite of the fact that they could easily get back before her husband, who often works late at his office. He can't understand it — he would never guess her real reason in a thousand years.
    It is that she has a superstitious desire to keep everything the same between them. Any innovation seems dangerous, a threat to her precarious present happiness. If it were possible, she'd like to go on forever