THE WAVES (1931) - World eBook Library

young men in shirt-sleeves on ladders trimming roses. A man on a
horse canters over the field. His horse plunges as we pass. And
the rider turns to look at us. We roar again through blackness.
And I lie back; I give myself up to rapture; I think that at the
end of the tunnel I enter a lamp-lit room with chairs, into one of
which I sink, much admired, my dress billowing round me. But
behold, looking up, I meet the eyes of a sour woman, who suspects
me of rapture. My body shuts in her face, impertinently, like a
parasol. I open my body, I shut my body at my will. Life is
beginning. I now break into my hoard of life.'
'It is the first day of the summer holidays,' said Rhoda. 'And
now, as the train passes by these red rocks, by this blue sea, the
term, done with, forms itself into one shape behind me. I see its
colour. June was white. I see the fields white with daisies, and
white with dresses; and tennis courts marked with white. Then
there was wind and violent thunder. There was a star riding
through clouds one night, and I said to the star, "Consume me."
That was at midsummer, after the garden party and my humiliation at
the garden party. Wind and storm coloured July. Also, in the
middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard,
when, holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came
to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are
nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather, I was
wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across.
I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully,
drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of
the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed.
'So I detach the summer term. With intermittent shocks, sudden as
the springs of a tiger, life emerges heaving its dark crest from
the sea. It is to this we are attached; it is to this we are
bound, as bodies to wild horses. And yet we have invented devices
for filling up the crevices and disguising these fissures. Here is
the ticket collector. Here are two men; three women; there is a
cat in a basket; myself with my elbow on the window-sill--this is
here and now. We draw on, we make off, through whispering fields
of golden corn. Women in the fields are surprised to be left
behind there, hoeing. The train now stamps heavily, breathes
stertorously, as it climbs up and up. At last we are on the top of
the moor. Only a few wild sheep live here; a few shaggy ponies;
yet we are provided with every comfort; with tables to hold our
newspapers, with rings to hold our tumblers. We come carrying
these appliances with us over the top of the moor. Now we are on
the summit. Silence will close behind us. If I look back over
that bald head, I can see silence already closing and the shadows