Ice by Anna Kavan Page B

she stood up, the draught from the door made her shiver. 'How am I supposed to find anything in the dark? Can't we have a light?' 'No. Somebody might see.' He flashed a torch briefly, saw her pick up a comb and start pulling it through her hair, snatched it away from her. 'Leave that! Get your coat on—hurry!' The irritable impatience radiating from him made her movements slower, more awkward. Feeling about the dark room, she found her coat but could not find the way into it; she held it the wrong way round. He seized it angrily, turned it, forced her arms through the sleeves. 'And now come on! Don't make a sound. Nobody must know we've gone.' 'Where are we going? Why do we have to go at this time of night?' She expected no answer, doubted whether she heard correctly when he muttered, 'It's the one chance,' adding something about the approaching ice. He grasped her arm then, pulled her across the landing and on to the stairs. The beam of the torch, intermittently stabbing pitch blackness, showed his looming repressive shadow, which she followed as if sleepwalking through all the ramifications of the huge building, out into the icy snowfilled night.
    Although snow was falling heavily, there was none on the black car; it had just been cleared away: yet no one had passed them, nobody was in sight. She shivered as she got in, sat in silence while he quickly inspected the chains. Yellow oblongs stained the pure white in front of the windows. In the air, the snow was transformed into showering gold as it passed the lights. A confused noise from the dining hall, voices, clattering plates, drowned the noise of the car starting up, and impelled her to ask: 'What about all those people who are expecting you? Aren't you going to see them?'
    Already in a state of irritable nervous tension, he was exasperated by the question, lifted one hand from the wheel in a threatening gesture. 'I told you not to talk!' His voice was frightening, his eyes flashed in the dark interior of the car. She moved fast to avoid the blow, but could not get out of reach, crouched down, shielding herself with her raised arm, made no sound when the glancing blow struck her shoulder and crushed her against the door; afterwards huddled there in silence, shrinking away from his silent rage.
    Snow-muffled silence outside; silence filling the car. He drove without lights, his eyes like cats' eyes, able to see through the snowy darkness. A ghost-car, invisible, silent, fled from the ruined town. The ancient snow-covered fortifications fell back and vanished in snow, the broken wall vanished behind. In front loomed the black living wall of the forest, ghostly whiteness fuming along its crest like spray blown back from the crest of a breaking wave. She waited for the black mass to come crashing down on them, but there was no crash, only the silence of snow and forest outside, and in the car, his silence, her apprehension. He never spoke, never looked at her, handled the powerful car recklessly on the rough frozen track, hurling it at speed over all obstacles, as if by the force of his will. The violent lurching of the car threw her about; she was not heavy enough to keep in her seat. Thrown against him, forced to touch his coat, she winced away as though the material burned. He seemed unaware. She felt forgotten, forsaken.
    It was incomprehensible to her, this extraordinary flight that went on and on. The forest went on for ever. The silence went on and on. The snow stopped, but the cold went on and even increased, as if some icy exudation from the black trees congealed beneath them. Hour after hour passed before a little reluctant daylight filtered down through the roof of branches, revealing nothing but gloomy masses of firs, dead and living trees tangled together, a dead bird often caught in the branches, as if the tree had caught it deliberately. She shuddered, identifying herself, as a victim, with the dead bird. It was she who had been snared by nets of black