A Severed Head

'Are you going to tell her?'

I was completely cool by now. I said, 'I don't know, Palmer. I honestly don't know.'

Palmer turned to face me. His voice was deep with earnestness and his countenance had a stripped quality which I had never seen before. He put his whisky on the mantelpiece and took a step towards me. For a moment he put his two hands on my arms, pressing me slightly. Then he let them drop to his sides. It was a supplication. He said, 'This is desperately grave, Martin. There are some things we must get clear.'

Looking back on the scene, I felt admiration for the way in which, from the start, Palmer took it that something catastrophic and irrevocable had occurred. He did not attempt –and indeed it would have been difficult – to explain away the scene I had witnessed upstairs. Nor did he attempt to minimize its importance or cover it with any veil of distracting mystification. He faced me frankly as one faces a conqueror or a judge; and as our interview progressed it was with a certain sick giddiness mingled with an agony of compassion that I so felt, for the first time, the scales of power inclined in my direction. We were indeed on the other side of the mountain.

I said, out of an immediate sympathy for him, 'Palmer, I'm sorry.'

'Don't,' said Palmer. 'You've acted cleverly, resolutely, doubtless properly. I didn't know you had it in you. Let's have no nonsense here. It's just that what has happened may prove fatal. And I want us to understand each other.'

'Please,' I said, 'in one way at least don't misconstrue me. I don't disapprove of incest. I don't think that you're committing any sin by embracing your sister: that is, not any sin that arises from the fact that she's your sister.'

'You are being frivolous as usual,' said Palmer. 'You don't disapprove of it. You feel total horror of it. You are trembling with horror at this very minute. But your feelings are not important. The person we must think of is Antonia.'

'And Honor,' I said. I saw again the vision of her dark breasts; and I felt in a sudden agony her presence close to me in the house and the probability that if she did not detest me already she would detest me for this. I found I was indeed trembling and with an effort made myself still.

'Honor is my business,' said Palmer. 'Honor will be all right in any case. She is a great person. What is at stake is Antonia's happiness. I will not say exactly her sanity. But a revelation of this kind could disable her for life.'

'You are positively suggesting,' I said, 'that I say nothing of this to Antonia?'

'Of course I am positively suggesting that. It is not, you understand, like the revelation of an ordinary unfaithfulness. We have to do with something which can shake the mind to its foundations. Antonia stands on the brink of a new life and a new happiness. Either she goes forward into that – or she suffers a shipwreck from which, given her temperament, she may take years to recover. It depends on you which of these things will happen.'

'What about you?' I said. 'Are you also on the brink of a new life and a new happiness, with her?' I eyed him closely. I was trying to see him as a man desperately fighting himself free from a binding obsession. I could see nothing. He retained his wide-eyed resolute look which by its very frankness revealed nothing.

'I want Antonia,' said Palmer, 'and I want only Antonia. And let me say to you in the profoundest and most faithful seriousness that what you saw tonight will have no sequel. No sequel. Do you believe me, Martin?'

'But it had antecedents,' I said.

'That is not your business.'

'It might concern Antonia.'

'If you are here to torment and blackmail me,' he said, 'you had better go at once. But if you want to understand what you are doing before you do it, then stay.' He was desperate to keep me with him.

'Sorry, Palmer,' I said. 'I have no desire to torment you, you know that perfectly well. I am confused and shaken and I honestly don't know what I shall do.'

'If you imagine,' said Palmer, his voice becoming sharper, 'that you can get any advantage for yourself out of destroying Antonia's peace of mind, if you imagine that you can settle down again happily with her after –'

'Oh shut up,' I said. 'It's enough that my marriage has been wrecked. Don't now accuse me of selfishness because I hesitate to shield an adulterer who has got himself into a muddle.'

'You are the adulterer,' said Palmer. 'Stop thinking of yourself and think of Antonia. I beg you, Martin, to reflect carefully. Do not be offended at my words. You and I know each other too well to play at scoring points. As I have said, the thing has no sequel.'

I wanted, in this perhaps unique moment, to find out something more. I sought for the right words. I said, 'I think I have a right to know a little more. I conjecture that you have had a long-standing liaison with your sister. Many things point to it. Am I to understand that now by mutual consent it is coming to an end?'

Palmer was silent, staring, and breathing hard. Then he moved away from me and put one hand to his brow for a moment. I found the gesture, the sign of weakness, infinitely touching. He spread his hands. 'I have nothing to say here,' he said. 'There are things which are not one's own property. I have told you what is relevant. If Antonia is never told you may be quite certain that I shall never betray her by thought or deed. What you saw tonight was an ending. Indeed your arrival sealed it as such. But it was an ending in any case.'

'If I had not appeared there might perhaps have been a sequel?'

'No, I have told you no,' said Palmer impatiently. 'Martin, have the grace to understand plain words.'

'I don't know how much to believe you,' I said. 'I don't say this to persecute you, but just to express what is the case. And I don't know what I shall do. I can tell you now that I think it is very unlikely that I shall tell Antonia. But I can't at the moment promise not to tell her.'

'You will be wise and generous not to tell,' said Palmer. He had recovered himself and gazed at me, dignified, his cropped head thrown back, his dressing-gown falling open to reveal a white chest shadowed with grey hair. He looked touchingly old, an old warrior.

I said, 'My arrival at any rate has sealed the end of my friendship with you.' I said this to provoke him, indeed in some wild need myself of comfort.

Palmer, and again I admired this as I remembered it, took it full in the face. He replied quietly, 'We shall have to see about that, Martin. This has been a terrible shock for both of us — we do not yet realize how terrible. We shall begin to realize it tomorrow morning. And you will find that it is scarcely less of a shock for you because you saw what you expected to see. There are some things which imagination cannot do for one. After such an experience a friendship, if it is to survive, must be very deeply altered and reorganized. It remains to be seen whether our friendship can be so altered. I hope sincerely that it can – and for myself I shall make every effort to see that it is.'

'Provided I don't tell Antonia,' I said.

He looked at me sombrely. 'If you tell Antonia we are all done for.'

In the silence that followed I finished my whisky, and then addressed myself to departure. With a strange spontaneous formality I bowed to Palmer. He inclined his head; and as I left the room I saw him with head still bowed staring into the fire. He caressed the fender with a naked foot. But even as I closed the front door I could hear him emerging from the room and making for the stairs.

As I stopped for a moment to look back at the lighted window I wondered in what terrible and unimaginable colloquy those two were now wrapped.

Twenty-one

I followed my sister up the steps. Outside the house the fog was golden yellow, thick with sulphurous grains. It was hard to breathe. I hurried after her retreating figure which had become almost at once invisible. It was exceedingly cold and our footsteps made a small crackling sound as they crushed the thin layer of ice which had formed upon the paving stones. When I caught her up I took her ungloved hand in mine and pressed it against my side to warm it a little, but it remained cold and limp. She walked a little faster than I did and as I began to hurry she always hurried a little more. Her face was averted from me, but I could see the drops of moisture upon her short black hair which seemed like a bedraggled cap set with small gems. The pavement seemed to become more thick with ice so that our feet no longer broke through the crystalline layer. The ice was stronger. At last very gently and without difficulty we began to skate. Her hand was warmer now as we began to move at first slowly and then faster upon the wide expanse of ice which showed yellow in the baleful winter light, its edges lost to view. As we moved effortlessly onward I turned her a little to face me. She had shaken the water from her hair which seemed now to be a furry hat, and in her high black skating boots she looked to me like a Cossack. But her face was sad. I drew her closer and we began to waltz together on the endless ice. As we danced I attempted to embrace her: but I was impeded by the sword which hung down stiffly between us, its hilt biting into me and causing a sharp pain. I lowered my hand and put it upon the hilt and felt immediately her hand trying to prevent me. We moved more slowly in a circle as I increased my pressure and then broke suddenly through her restraining grip. The sword came out with a rush as still facing each other we drew apart. Over her shoulder I could see on the far horizon a tiny figure approaching. Steadily as he approached she receded until for a moment they were the same size, stiff and rounded like twin images in the middle distance. Then as she dwindled away to nothing he glided on towards me with increasing speed, his huge Jewish face growing like a great egg above the silken wings of his gown. I swung the sword in an arc before him but as it moved the blade came away and flew upwards into the winter darkness which had collected above us. Clinging in fear and guilt to what remained in my hand I recognized my father.