KATHERINE MANSFIELD

What can one do, faced with this wonderful tumble of round bright fruits; but gather them and play with them—and become them, as it were. When I pass an apple stall I cannot help stopping and staring until I feel that I, myself, am changing into an apple, too, and that at any moment I can produce an apple, miraculously, out of my own being, like the conjuror produces the egg…. When you paint apples do you feel that your breasts and your knees become apples, too? Or do you think this the greatest nonsense. I don’t. I am sure it is not. When I write about ducks I swear that I am a white duck with a round eye, floating on a pond fringed with yellow-blobs and taking an occasional dart at the other duck with the round eye, which floats upside down beneath me…In fact the whole process of becoming the duck (what Lawrence would perhaps call this consummation with the duck or the apple !) is so thrilling that I can hardly breathe, only to think about it. For although that is as far as most people can get, it is really only the’ ‘prelude.’ There follows the moment when you are more duck, more apple, or more Natasha than any of these objects could ever possibly be, and so you create them anew.

Youth and Age walked hand in hand beneath the trees. A strange, half-frozen day, yet the air was drenched with thin sunshine, and the blue sky full of white winged clouds…The garden beds were smothered under a mauve mist of Michaelmas daisies, burning with the dusky fires of chrysanthemum blossoms. In the dew pearled grass white daisies, like butterflies, quivered and shone.

Age walked slowly. The riotous Autumn wind blew her black skirt about her shapeless body; her strange face gleamed like ivory in the silver setting of her hair. And she stared with faded eyes at the blackened boughs of the trees, at the leaves, falling in a fluttering crowd upon the dew pearled grass. One leaf touched her cheek - God! it was like a kiss from the withered mouth of Death! And in the bare trees she saw her naked soul, to be tossed, defenceless, in the fury of a thousand tempests, to be torn, limb from limb, by Winter, by her last lover, by Death…Her heart beat in her body like a frightened bird - a caged bird that beat its wings - in vain - in vain-

Youth suddenly stood still, her laughing child face lit with sunlight, and stretched out her white arms, her rosy tipped fingers to the blackened boughs. Ever the leaves fell in a shining shower upon her radiant face and bosom. Her heart beat in her body like a restless bird, like a strong bird that if it did but spread its wings would fly away - away - “See,” she cried to Age, “see the kisses of Summer, the golden leaves from the fairy book of Spring.”

Feodor slowly came to consciousness of his surroundings, and with this consciousness to the realization of his own poverty and helplessness and of his own longing for a different life—of his craving to go away from the city—far away—into that country place with fields and rivers and big yellow haystacks. ‘And soon it will all be too late,’ he thought, ‘soon I shall be sitting on this bend—and old man with white hair—but with no book of poems—with empty hands I’ll be sitting here, and all will be over.’ He began to breathe sharply and painfully as though he had been a running a very long way, and tears gushed into his eyes and flowed down his trembling face.

He began composing a poem. A feeling of divine happiness possessed him; his heart seemed to expand as he breathed. Suddenly, he saw the old man fumble in a pocket. He brought out something wrapped in a linen handkerchief and laid it on his knees. With infinite care he slowly parted the folds of the handkerchief and Feodor saw a book bound in parchment and tied with purple silk ribbons. He moved a little nearer the old man, who untied the ribbons and spread the book open. The pages were printed with large, black letters. Each page had a blue letter at the top embroidered in gold and by the bright moonlight it was quite easy to read what was written. Feodor moved nearer still. Then he saw that each page was a poem. He leaned over the old man’s shoulder and read for himself poems such as he had never dreamed of—poems that sounded in his ears like bells ringing in some splendid tower—like waves beating on warm sands—like dark rivers falling down forest-clad mountains.

One summer night he came out of the street into the courtyard. The moon was shining and the tops of the houses shone like silver. The houses themselves, half in light, half in shadow, looked as though they were draped in velvet. White like marble shone the courtyard and the chestnut tree stood like an immense bird with green wings in the pool of its own shadow.

Only the old people were silent. They stood at the windows, nodding to one another, and sipping the air. Each moment the sun grew warmer. It fell on our starved hair and lips and hands like kisses.

I look out through the window. A rhododendron bush sways restlessly, mysteriously, to and fro…The bare trees stand crucified against the opalescent sky.

In the next room someone is playing the piano. The sun shines whitely, touches the rhododendron leaves with soft color. To and fro the branches sway, stretching upwards, outwards, so mysteriously; it is as though they moved in a dream.

Through the open windows, the cold air, blowing in, stirs the heavy folds of the curtains…What is being played in the next room…Does the music float through this room - and out of the window to the garden? Does the plant hear it, and answer to the sound? The music, too, is strangely restless…it is seeking something…perhaps this mystic, green plant, so faintly touched with sun color…

…I dream…And there is no plant, no music - only a restless mysterious seeking, a stretching upwards to the light - and outwards - a dream like movement.

What is it?

I look out into the garden at the bare trees crucified against the opalescent sky…The sun is smothered under the white wing of a cloud - in the shadowed garden the plant is trembling.

Oh,wasn’t there anywhere where she could hide and keep herself to herself and stay as long as she liked, not disturbing anybody, and nobody worrying her? Wasn’t there anywhere in the world where she could have her cry out - at last? Ma Parker stood,looking up and down. The icy wind blew out her apron into a balloon. And now it began to rain. There was nowhere.

Before I met you” he said “I had never spoken of myself to anybody. How well I remember one night, the night I brought you the little Christmas tree, telling you all about my childhood. And you listened,and your eyes shone, and I felt that you had even made the little Christmas tree listen too,as in a fairy story.

It is true when you are by yourself and you think about life, it is always sad. All that excitement and so on has a way of suddenly leaving you, and it’s as though, in the silence, somebody called your name, and you heard your name for the first time.

The sun had set. In the western sky there were great masses of crushed-up rose-coloured clouds. Broad beams of light shone through the clouds and beyond them as if they would cover the whole sky. Overhead the blue faded; it turned a pale gold, and the bush outlined against it gleamed dark and brilliant like metal. Sometimes when those beams of light show in the sky they are very awful… But to-night it seemed to Linda there was something infinitely joyful and loving in those silver beams. And now no sound came from the sea. It breathed softly as if it would draw that tender, joyful beauty into its own bosom.

Tell me, what is the difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner. The only difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody’s ever going to let me out. That’s a more intolerable situation than the other. For if I’d been — pushed in, against my will — kicking, even — once the door was locked, or at any rate in five years or so, I might have accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies or counting the warder’s steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I’m like an insect that’s flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God’s earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I’m thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, ‘The shortness of life! The shortness of life!’ I’ve only one night or one day, and there’s this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, undiscovered, unexplored.

He was passionately fond of music; every spare penny he had went on books. He was always full of new ideas, schemes, plans. But nothing came of it all. The new fire blazed in Jonathan; you almost heard it roaring softly as he explained, described and dilated on the new thing; but a moment later it had fallen in and there was nothing but ashes, and Jonathan went about with a look like hunger in his black eyes.