There are two things that mitigate against me. One is my mind, one is the lack of it. I, John Helforth, go on existing in that beam of sunlight. As I stand now, stretching, the bar of light that underlined that triangle, (sun-serpent) is exactly parallel to the threshold of the doorway. Parallels, parallels . . . are two things that travel along, equidistant, and never quite meet. Parallels? I am John Helforth, I say, yawning and I endeavour to banish, in that yawn’s exaggeration, the monster I call, for lazy lack of definition, “Ka.” Ka is far off now; Ka partook of symptom, was neurotic breakdown; Ka, it is true, led me, made me, having made me, preserved me—but yawning, I say, for what? If I, Helforth, get rapt back into this Ka thing, contemplating vine-green leaf, Helforth will be good for nothing. There is so much to be done, so much to be thought of; Kora.
Kora is everything. Without Kora, Ka would have got me. Sometimes I call Kora, Ka, or reverse the process and call Ka, Kora. I am on familiar terms with Kora, with Ka, likewise. We are, it is evident, some integral triple alliance, primordial Three-in-One. I am Kora, Kora is Helforth and Ka is shared between us. Though she repudiates affiliation with Ka, and refuses to discuss it, yet the fact remains. Ka is Kora, Kora is Ka. The waif must be shared between us.
Ka weeps, wails for attention and then must be put to sleep like any tired infant. Though Ka, unhappily it seems, in that too, like most infants, is never really tired. Ka wears me to a shred. It is I who am bone-thin. Soul is, I have proved it, octopus. Nevertheless, octopus cannot devour utterly. I am frame still, albeit, bone and sinew. I stretch arms. They are my arms. I, I am John Helforth.
I stamp feet, John Helforth’s feet. Feet are no longer amputated brown lumps lying flat in burnt grass. They are my feet and the shoes are from Thornton’s, Bond Street. I look at shoes, my shoes. I remember how I bought these shoes, my particular shoes. I will remember. I will to remember. For one instant, for some long or short space of time, memory was eradicated. Ka brushed across my mind, a sponge on a slate. Ka then was the shape of a drop of water, magnified to the size of a universe. Ka was a universe. In it, I swam, one microbe in a water-bead. Kora and I do not talk of this thing. Kora says, “forget that.”
Kora tells me to forget Ka that, in London, brushed out my mind. I tell Kora to forget other things. Kora’s eyes strain forward, they are too big and blue, like bruised flower texture. They are flower petal, ruined in soggy down-pour, they are no longer flower, they are not good stuff, they are not rain nor sun nor water. I hate Kora when her eyes get that poked-out, bruised look. I will not look at Kora. I say, “the kids would stifle you, after this taste of freedom. Don’t set up lurid iron bars. For God, his sake, don’t set up iron bars of memory.” I will to be John Helforth, an Englishman and a normal brutal one. I will strength into my body, into my loins. I say, “for God’s sake Kora, you’re crippling your integrity . . . Lot’s wife. Stop thinking of the children. Anyhow, you don’t really want to see them, it’s (to use your own phrase) guilt-complex.” She turns on me, “children. You never had a child.” I do not retaliate, as I well might do. There are so many things that I might say at this moment, that I don’t say anything. I could concentrate everything into one word, and that word, “Kora.” I don’t even say that. I don’t reach out my hand as I might do, hand sculptured, she says, of meagre metal, an Aztec (she says) or archaic edition of Rodin’s somewhat bloated (she says) Hand of God. I do not say “Kora.”
I do not say “Kora,” for why should I? I insist on masculinity and my brutality. I drag out, perhaps, tobacco, lift up and let fall disgustedly, books on a table or upset her work-box. I deliberately do something that Helforth would not do, could not do. I become a small lout in my mother’s drawing room and let resentment flare up, I remember Bob and Larry, hating each equally for their several betrayals.
I let red flares eat out my mind, red Verey light shall burn up Ka who is a jelly fish, who is a microbe, who is (a specialist all but told me) a disease. I will burn away my soul with my mind, or should I say my body? I have a right like any man, like any woman, like any other ill-begotten creature, to a body.
Who gave me this broken duality? Who gave me this curse of intimate perception? I curse Ka. I say, “I hate you, Kora; when your eyes go poking forward, you are really ugly.” I look at Kora as she stands, looking down into the courtyard where that wretched child is pulling its wooden cow on the wooden platform, making the uneven wooden wheels vibrate, dot and tick of some wretched S.O.S. between himself and Kora. I say, “I’d like to smash that kid and its wretched wood cow. Anyhow, I’ve had enough of cows for one lifetime.” I underline cow, spew out, “cow, cow, cow, mother-love or mother-lust I call it.” I say, “this cow passion is the disintegrating factor of modernity. I mean you and your sort keep back the world.” I say, “mother, mother, mother,” and I say, “Larry.”
I have meant to be robust; I have meant to smash furniture. I find myself seated on the low rush-bottomed arm-chair. I beat my hands on its sides. I say, “everything in this damn place is rushes and wood and cow, cow, cow.” I say, “when are we going back? I can’t stay here forever.” It is her turn, at this moment, to retaliate, she does not. Then I sway. Ka is coming; there is green of a pale grape tendril. I hear a voice, it is only Kora but still I say, “Ka shan’t get me.” I regret temporary weakness, I am strong again, I say, “rushes and reeds and cows.” I say, “your mother complex is ugly, Kora. You look into yourself with those ugly poked-out eyes, like a beggar, in Naples, cashing-in on siphilitic scars.” I go on, I say, “cow,” I say, “mother, mother, mother.” Then I fling myself down, anywhere, head on the table, or head that would beat through the wooden floor to the rooms that lie beneath it, “Larry.”
Kora knows, the specialist knows, everybody knows that if I had said this ten years ago, I might now be all right. Kora knows and Kora will not retaliate, at least not now, not while I beat my head actually or metaphorically on the floor . . . I look up, I am really standing in bright sunlight, finishing out a yawn with an extra gape and a gulp like a fish, all but caught on a fish-hook. I disentangle fish-hook. I see where I stand. One foot is on brown grass, the other half is shoved in, against a cottage garden border of fire-blue lobelia. Sweet-alyssum ought to be there too; who plants lobelia without sweet-allysium? I remember my mother’s garden, her drawing room. I remember Larry. The doctor told Kora if I could have remembered sooner . . . I ask myself, who is Larry? I should never have talked to Kora. I would never have told Kora, if she had not licked up that ice, in the Bay-tree, like a starved cat. I hate suffering in animals. I used to walk round and round the squares in London, to escape children. I do not like children. I do not like cats. When Kora pushes back the second plate in the Bay-tree and said, “yes, coffee,” I knew decisively that she was more cat than caterpillar. I said to her, “you are more cat than caterpillar.” It was the sort of remark that, in Bob, would have been called “whimsical.” Larry and I used to practise at Bob being “whimsical.”
Mother could have kept Larry at home. I was too young. Larry was of course vicious to have told me, in precise detail, all that he did. It was a perverse sort of sadism. I loved Larry. I would have gone on, loving men and women if it hadn’t been for Larry. How could I love anyone after Larry? My mother used to say, “Bob would have been too noble-minded to have regretted Larry.” Bob? But Bob went that first year, dead or alive he was equally obnoxious. He was the young “father,” mother’s favourite. I was sixteen. By the time I was ready, the war actually was over. Mother reiterated on every conceivable occasion, “Larry is only waiting to get out there.” I don’t know what mother thought “there” was. It was so near. It was “here” all the time with me. Larry was sent to avenge Bob, I was to be sent to avenge Larry. It was already written in Hans Anderson, a moron virgin and a pitcher. We were all virgin, moron. We were virgin, though Larry saw to it that I was not. Larry.
I, John Helforth, kick at a scrubby little border of lobelia. I hear a voice call “Helforth.” I scowl out, under hard blue eyes. There is no Ka anywhere now visible. There is Kora standing on the uneven flag-stones, she says, “tea is ready. What were you doing all this time here, sleeping?” I say, “yes, Kora, sleeping.” Ka has gone off. He lives in water and I say, “I’m going to-morrow up toward Grangettes to get you water-lilies.” Kora is looking better. Her eyes are lobelia-blue, fire-blue now in her burnt face. Her arms are the colour of the chiffon scarf that she wore last night at dinner. The hollow in her neck is as fragrant as tobacco and her flesh tastes, I tell her, of waterlilies and of pears. She says, “water-lilies and pears . . . what a mutinous sort of salad,” and I say “for God’s sake, don’t be whimsical.”
My shoes are too heavy. I must get a pair of light ones or some sort of sand-shoes. What can I get here? Kora has pulled off stockings; women always have half and half sort of things to suit any odd occasion. Her low-heeled one-strap shoes are of soft café-au-lait leather. Her ankles above them and her bare legs are just one shade lighter. She has really gone a sort of honey-colour. I wait for some sort of opening to tell her, before I forget, that she is honey colour. I pull off an apposite spray of honey-flower that seems, telepathically, to have forestalled me. “Honey-flower,” I say as I tickle her behind the ear, “is a prettier word than honey-suckle.” “Is it?” says Kora. We can argue this sort of thing out, endlessly.
She blows out electric spark of the burner and pours my tea. “Now,” says Kora, “you are back in London; you are having your first affair; you are happier.” . . . I look at Kora; I see no wide blue of fire-blue lobelia but a camelia that has opened under the touch of Larry. I see Jean and I see Larry. I wish Kora wouldn’t be so blatantly and conspicuously tactful. I know the doctor told her not to let me slip out into a sort of impersonal way of seeing. I know they told her to drag out things, to make me talk, to make me tell things. Well, I will tell things, “Kora.”
“Darling?” “This is not London. This is no first affair. If you are trying to get me to talk about Larry, well you will do. Larry would have withered you with a pseudo-sarcastic whimsicality as he did everyone but Jeanette. Larry did not love Jeanette, she did not love him. They clung together in a world that was made for them, a world of flickering lights and long corridors,” (I fling about my rhetoric) “of single floating wicks in glass lamps, of music behind curtains and of wind in country gables. There was a world made for Larry, there was a world made for Jeanette” (here my breath dramatically catches) “and it was taken from them. Kora, who took it from them? Was it you, was it me?” (I pause forensically.) “It was our Mother.”
This may or may not have been true. I don’t think poor madre, personally, prevented wicks from floating in glass lamp bowls or wind from howling in country gables. But mother had become symbol. I should have seen it sooner. I had, in Kora’s language, “inhibited” the fact that Larry really need not have gone so early. I blamed mother for the death of Larry and I was not noble like Bob. Kora declares that I was in love with madre and that Bob taking the place of father, was my rival. Fantastic explanation yet gives us topic of conversation over our little dinners. One has to talk at dinner. Kora says my attitude is fantastic and linked up with mother-complex. I say I do not think so. I explain it lucidly, as if she herself were a complete outsider, and herself had never heard of that war. I demonstrate how, systematically, we were trained to blood-lust and hatred. We were sent out, iron shod to quell an enemy who had made life horrible. That enemy roasted children, boiled down the fat of pregnant women to grease cannon wheels. He wore a spiked hat and carried, in one hand, a tin thunderbolt and, in the other, a specialised warrant for burning down cathedrals. He was ignorant and we were sent out, Galahad on Galahad, to quell him. His men raped nuns, cut off the hands of children, boiled down the entrails of old men, nailed Canadians against barn doors . . . and all this we heard mornings with the Daily Newsgraph and evenings with the Evening Warscript. The Newsgraph and the Warscript fed out belching mothers, who belched out in return, fire and carnage in the name of Rule Britannia. I said, “Kora, go back to London. What is the matter with you? Forget sometimes that you are a mother.”
Kora has a look in her eyes that means sure death. I say “fire away, old die-hard.” There is a look in Kora’s eyes that does not go with a green helmet and a caterpillar coat. It goes, she is right, with grey and with a sort of undressed leather primitive pelt or polished steel-edge aegis. I say, “when you look like that I understand old Stamford.” Stamford was, or I suppose I should say, is Kora’s husband. I had vaguely known Kora Morrell. I think I had seen her as one of those window-dressed brides who carry out-of-season lilies. Bob was to have been a brother-officer sort of property of Stamford’s at that wedding. Bob was otherwise engaged about then; even Larry was not available. I “ghosted” for them both, soon, veritably, to take on that rôle for life.
When Larry went I, in some odd manner, went “west” with him. It was my feet that were severed . . . a mule’s intestines . . . but I must stop this. The doctor said if I could encourage the sub-conscious to break into the conscious . . . but there is a limit even to that . . .
It is Larry, at last analysis, I say, who is responsible for my mind. He shouldn’t have told me about Runner 32, as they called him . . . and those others. We had some mad idea of sharing things, life, war, love finally. I didn’t stop to reason nor think. I was the half of Larry. That half gone, I too went. I did what I presumed Larry would have done, if he had been left in my place. I took on the rôle of Robert, I was to go in his place. It was the only thing to do, I had not the courage to begin over on my own. I had not the heart to be debonnaire. That word had lost integrity like a worm-gnawed apple. “Debonnaire,” “whimsical” were words rotted at the core. Larry had been “debonnaire” at the last, I am certain and old Robert, true to type, no doubt was no end “whimsical.”
I never stopped to reason, to think. One does not reason, walking above a torrent on one thin plank. I did not realize that nothing depended on me, that a row of aunts was choros out of Hades, that the “family” was only another name for warfare and sacrifice of the young. I did not in the least realize that it would be a sort of crime if mother (“our” mother) did not have her lilies-of-the-valley on this and that occasion. Such were my erotic orgies, lilies for my mother. There was also the birth-day and the death-day of a father and two brothers. Around these days, aunts stood like crows, waiting their turn at carrion. It was not Larry who had been picked by vultures nor was it Robert. I began to curse Larry, to curse Bob. Because of their casual and affable “sacrifice,” I was left, flung high and dry.
Kora looked at me in hatred, the lobelia blue burnt to a fire blue in her eyes. Then there is no fire in her eyes. She had touched me on the quick with Larry. I will do the same with her brats. Her children are at school now, I will tell her what happens to small boys at school, things that happened to me, to Larry. Her eyes are steel. I will break through Kora for I hate her. I hate all women because of mother and because of . . . Jeanette. I say, “you don’t look the least like Jeanette.”
Kora says, “what has Jean Drier got to do with me now?” I say, “you remember you sat there, you blew out the flame, you poured my tea. You said, ‘now you are back in London, you are having your first love affair.’ You remember you said that.” Kora says she remembers. I say, “don’t treat me like Bobby or Jo. Keep your brats out of it. I am not Bobby, look tootsie ottsie, mummy’s mended your bear. I don’t want your teddybearizing of this situation.” Kora says, “go on.” She settles down to it; she reaches for her work-box. “I don’t want this eternal prodding down, I tell you, Kora, this new sort of analysis stuff can’t get round the fact of Ka. I know more than any of these nerve-specialists. How can they treat me? If any one of them had had this over-mind or other-mind or over-world experience, I would listen.” Kora says quite steadily, “isn’t your over-world as you call it, simply substitution?” I say, “for what?” She says, “for this world.” I say, “you ask me, then, to accept this world? You are eternally compromising.” She is running flat elastic round the top of one of those tailored knickers. I say, “I like your knickers, Kora. I liked Jean’s but then that hardly counted. Do you know, Kora, my mother used to snatch her under-things out of the way, such things too, when she saw any of us boys coming.” Kora held up the silk tailored knickers for my inspection. “O, John,” she said, “the poor, poor, poor old darling.” I have not heard Kora speak that way of my mother. She looks up now, across the pile of fawn and puce and light taupe things that she’s mending. “O Johnny,” she seldom calls me Johnny, “don’t you see what a mess you make of all this? Can’t you just love your mother?” I turn on Kora, I will spew out fire and brimstone, I say “Larry.” “ O don’t, don’t, Johnny, that’s over.” She says, conclusively, that the war is over. “How can it be—when Larry?” “You,” said Kora, “are really as bad as all the fire-eating Anglo-Indians. You go on, you go on with it. Can’t you see the flowers growing and ignore the grave-yard?” “What flowers . . .” I take the taupe bit of silk thing from her. “Ours . . . Johnny.”