Jean Rhys: Voyage in the dark
06.09.2003
[19] She was twenty-eight years old and all sorts of things had happened to her. She used to tell me about them when we came back from the theatre at night. "You've only got to learn how to swank a bit, then you're all right," she would say. Lying in bed with her, her hair in two long yellow plaits on either side of her long white face.
"Swank's the word," she would say.
[28] I sat down on the bed and listened, then I lay down. The bed was soft; the pillow was as cold as ice. I felt as if I had gone out of myself, as if I were in a dream.
Soon he'll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He'll be different and so I'll be different. It'll be different. I thought, "It'll be different, different. It must be different."
[30] I took the money from under my pillow and put it into my handbag. I was accustomed to it already. It was as if I had always had it. Money ought to be everybody's. It ought to be like water. You can tell that because you get accustomed to it so quickly.
[35] "I was expecting
to have a letter from you all last week," he said,
"and you never wrote. Why didn't you?"
"I wanted to see if you would," I said.
The sofa was soft and fat, covered in chintz with a pattern of small blue flowers. He put his hand on my knee and I thought, "Yes...yes...yes..." Sometimes it's like that - everything drops away except the one moment.
[40] "Here's to us. Who's like us? Damned few. What a life!"
[45] "Don't be like that,"
he said. "Don't be like stone that I try to roll
uphill and that always rolls down again."
"Like a stone," he said. It's funny how you think, "It
won't hurt until I move." So you sit perfectly still. Even your face
goes stiff.
[49] That was when it was sad, when you lay awake at night and remembered things.
[60] When it was sad was when you woke up at night and thought about being alone and that everybody says the man's bound to get tired. You make up letters that you never send or even write.
***
But in the daytime it was all right. And when you'd had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world, because anything might happen. I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day.
[61] I was so nervous about how I looked that three-quarters of me was in a prison, wandering round and round in a circle. If he had said that I looked all right or that I was pretty, it would have set me free. But he just looked at me up and down and smiled.
[69] "Well, I didn't
think it mattered. He asked me."
He said, "My God, do you consider yourself bound to answer every
question anybody asks you? That's a tall order."
"I don't like this room much," I said. "I rather hate it.
Let's go upstairs."
He imitated me. "Let's go upstairs, let's go upstairs. You really
shock me sometimes, Miss Morgan."
[84] It's funny when you feel as if you don't want anything more in your life except to sleep, or else to lie without moving. That's when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running.
[92] "You both get on my nerves, if you want to know," I said. "If you could see yourselves when you're laughing you wouldn't laugh so much."
[95] Keep hope alive and you can do anything, and that's the way the world goes round, that's the way they keep the world rolling. So much hope for each person. And damned cleverly done too. But what happens if you don't hope anymore, if your back's broken? What happens then?
"I can't stand here staring at these dresses for ever," I thought.
[97] "Go on, make up your mind. Sometimes when you do things on the spur of the moment it brings you luck. It changes your luck. Haven't you ever noticed?"
[122] "Where are you
going when you leave here?" I said.
"Who - me? Why?"
"Because I'd just like to know. Because I can't imagine what you're
going to do when you leave here and I like to be able to imagine things."
[125] Everything was always so exactly alike - that was what I could never get used to. And the cold; and the houses all exactly alike, and the streets going north, south, east, west, all exactly alike.
