Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee

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      10

      VIRGINIA

      1941. I am back in the gyre, water corkscrewing towards perdition. I am fifty-nine. I will never be older.

      The thing I wrote before I set out. That day in March. I remember it.

      The skies were clear, blue and bright, a great blue blank bearing down on me, dazzling, blinding, and naked terror, everyone would know, everyone would see me

      everyone would say the book was no good

      The day before, I had seen the doctor. Octavia asked me to

      take off my clothes take off my clothes so she could see me what did she know? too young to be a doctor!

      I told her no, there was nothing wrong.

      Why did Leonard make me visit her? sharp eyes peering at my nakedness that terrible look of pity, kindness, yes yes Octavia, yes, thank you, thank you, my hands are always cold (thank you, that hardly proves your brilliance)

      (I didn’t say it, I was polite) Leonard had told her to ask me to rest I saw his careful hand behind it now they would all gang up on me

      she asked me to ‘Try, try for Leonard’

      That night I could not sleep at all

      The morning, clear everything clear it was very cold

      I fetched my fur I needed one last touch of comfort

      flowers in the garden were too bright fat yellow daffodils, harsh, triumphant

      Yellow varnish this yellow room

      cruel that Octavia asked me to try ‘for Leonard’, as if I had no care for him, and she, a stranger, knew everything

       I have tried so hard. I can try no longer

       The Furies waiting where the path disappears

       The hideous old women bare their claws at me, wet-mouthed, whispering as they crawl towards me, brown scaly talons and hanging flesh

      I could smell their furious iron-rich breath, the great blades of their scissors wet with light, the hellish light of the blue spring sky, gnawing my fate before I was ready

      I loved my life but I had to go, once the Furies smell you you can only flee. I knew that day I could not outrun them, the sky was cloudless, they had me at bay –

      I wrote to Leonard & I wrote to Vanessa. Words I had practised many times. With the breath of the Furies hard in my ears & their split yellow nails, like torn bamboo, sharpened ready to gouge my eyes out.

      In this hostile, stinking, yellow room the dreadful words return to me, words that can never be unsaid, the deed, once done, that can never be mended

      the wound I dealt him, the grief I gave him

      darling Leonard how I struck at his heart

      knowing I must hurt him, I pulled on my coat, thrust my hand deep into the pocket as I almost ran down through the meadow, it was ready now for the fate it must carry, yes, I had gone too far to go back,

       a tiny voice like the voice of a child that wanted to be born

       was crying Stop a tiny part of me cried in the night

       small, stubborn, a scintilla of light

       trying to escape me, trying to get out

      but the path led straight to the river bank the Furies behind me every step of the way behind me, ahead of me, snapping at my ankles, tearing at my stockings like vicious brambles, battering my ears with icy hatred, whipping me onwards, flee, flee

      this time I knew they would never release me

      the river roaring

      full of crazed blue light Omega chunks of blue and brown

       feel certain I am going mad again

       can’t go through another of those terrible times

       begin to hear voices can’t concentrate

       I am doing what seems the best thing to do

       You have given me the greatest possible happiness I don’t think

       two people could have been happier

       could have been happier

       this terrible disease

       I can’t fight any longer

      ANGELA

      After a long silence, her voice came, hoarse. ‘I did it, didn’t I. That terrible thing.’

      VIRGINIA

      Sitting on the woman’s ugly bed, which was broken-backed under a yellow-gold cover, with nameless shadows, wine or blood – it groaned beneath me like the sea, as if my grief was too heavy for it, & I groaned louder, I groaned like old metal, I groaned like banks of black stones on a beach, moaned in pain like a wounded beast

       I remember

      the clumsy walk at midday with the voices shrieking and baying behind me, the yelps of the Furies hounding me down through the meadows I had loved for so long, the skin on my back crawling with terror, Virginia, you’re mad again

       I remember

      thrusting the stone in my pocket

      large, heavy, waiting for me, the stone like a toad on the river-

      bank

      I held it weighed it in my hand

      blind, brutal I choose you

      forcing the stitches of my pocket apart and as it started to tear, as I heard the silk split, I stopped myself, gently, be gentle with it, yes, I controlled it, the heavy bludgeon

       remember

      the brute knocking СКАЧАТЬ