The Collector

I said I was depressed. It had been a beastly day and Caroline had been so silly at supper.

He let me go up and made me sit on the divan and he put on some music and turned out the lights and the moon came through the window. It fell on my legs and lap through the skylight, a lovely slow silver moon. Sailing. And he sat in the armchair on the other side of the room, in the shadows.

It was the music.

The Goldberg Variations.

There was one towards the end that was very slow, very simple, very sad, but so beautiful beyond words or drawing or anything but music, beautiful there in the moonlight. Moon-music, so silvery, so far, so noble.

The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face.

Accepting the sadness. Knowing that to pretend it was all gay was treachery. Treachery to everyone sad at that moment, everyone ever sad, treachery to such music, such truth.

In all the fuss and anxiety and the shoddiness and the business of London, making a career, getting pashes, art, learning, grabbing frantically at experience, suddenly this silent silver room full of that music.

Like lying on one’s back as we did in Spain when we slept out looking up between the fig-branches into the star-corridors, the great seas and oceans of stars. Knowing what it was to be in a universe.

I cried. In silence.

At the end he said, now can I go to bed? Gently, making fun of me a little bit, bringing me back to earth. And I went. I don’t think we said anything. I can’t remember. He had his little dry smile, he could see I was moved.

His perfect tact.

I would have gone to bed with him that night. If he had asked. If he had come and kissed me.

Not for his sake, but for being alive’s.

November 1st

A new month, and new luck. The tunnel idea keeps nagging at me, but the difficulty till now has been something to dig the concrete out with. Then yesterday as I was doing my prison-exercise in the outer cellar I saw a nail. A big old one, down against the wall in the far corner. I dropped my handkerchief so that I could get a closer look. I couldn’t pick it up, he watches me so closely. And it’s awkward with bound hands. Then today, when I was by the nail (he always sits on the steps up), I said (I did it on purpose) run and get me a cigarette. They’re on the chair by the door. Of course he wouldn’t. He said, what’s the game?

I’ll stay here, I won’t move.

Why don’t you get them yourself?

Because sometimes I like to remember the days when men were nice to me. That’s all.

I didn’t think it would work. But it did. He suddenly decided that there wasn’t anything I could possibly do, nothing I could pick up. (He locks things away in a drawer when I come out here.) So he went through the door. Only a second. But I stooped like lightning and got the nail up and into my skirt pocket—specially put on—and I was standing exactly as he left me when he jumped back. So I got my nail. And made him think he could trust me. Two birds with one stone.

Nothing. But it seems a tremendous victory.

I’ve started putting my plan into effect. For days I’ve been telling Caliban that I don’t see why D and M and everyone else should be left in the dark about whether I still exist. At least he could tell them I’m alive and all right. Tonight after supper I told him he could buy paper from Woolworth’s and use gloves and so on. He tried to wriggle out of it, as usual. But I kept at him. Every objection I squashed. And in the end I felt he really was beginning to think he might do it for me.

I told him he could post the letter in London, to put the police off the track. And that I wanted all sorts of things from London. I’ve got to get him away from here for at least three or four hours. Because of the burglar alarms. And then I’m going to try my tunnel. What I’ve been thinking is that as the walls of this cellar (and the outer one) are stones—not stone—then behind the stones there must be earth. All I have to do is to get through the skin of stones and then I shall be in soft earth (I imagine).

Perhaps it’s all wild. But I’m in a fever to try it.

The Nielsen woman.

I’d met her twice more at G.P.’s, when there were other people there—one was her husband, a Dane, some kind of importer. He spoke perfect English, so perfect it sounded wrong. Affected.

I met her one day when she was coming out of the hairdresser’s and I’d been in to make an appointment for Caroline. She had on that special queasy-bright look women like her put on for girls of my age. What Minny calls welcome-to-the-tribe-of-women. It means they’re going to treat you like a grown-up, but they don’t really think you are and anyhow they’re jealous of you.