Ice by Anna Kavan Read Free Book Online

ruined forts jutting into the greengage sea, the huge slab-steps of a giant's staircase where the great wall had fallen, subsiding in solid sections. Everywhere the ubiquitous ruins, decayed fortifications, evidences of a warlike bloodthirsty past. I searched for buildings of a more recent date. There were none. The dwindling population lived like rats in the ruins of a lost martial supremacy. If one place became uninhabitable its occupants moved to another. The community was gradually dying out, each year its numbers declined. There were enough disintegrating structures to last them out. At first it was hard to distinguish the inhabited buildings; I learnt to look for the signs of occupation, the reinforced door, the boarded-up windows.
    I made an appointment to see the warden at the High House, which dominated the town, a fortresslike mass built at its highest point. At the time agreed, I climbed a steep road, the only one that led to it. From the outside the place looked like an armed fort, enormously massive, thick walls, no windows, some narrow slits high up that might have been meant for machine guns. Batteries flanked the entrance, apparently trained on the road. I assumed they were relics of some old campaign, though they did not look especially obsolete. I had spoken to a secretary on the telephone; but now was met by four armed guards in black tunics, who escorted me down a long corridor, two walking in front, two behind. It was dark. High above, thin pencils of daylight, entering through the slits in the outer wall, dimly revealed glimpses of other corridors, galleries, stairs, bridgelike landings, at different levels, radiating in different directions. The invisible ceiling must have been enormously high, the full height of the building, for all these indistinct ramifications were far overhead. Something moved at the end of one vista: a girl's figure. I rushed after her as she started to climb some stairs, her silvery hair lifting, glimmering in the darkness, at every step.
    The short steep stair led to one room only, large, sparsely furnished, its polished floor bare like a dance floor. I was immediately struck by the unnatural silence, a curious hushed quality in the air, which reduced her movements to mouselike scratchings. Not a sound penetrated from outside or from other parts of the building. I was puzzled, until it dawned on me that the room had been sound-proofed, so that whatever took place there would be inaudible beyond its four walls.
    Then it at once became obvious why this particular room had been allotted to her.
    She was in bed, not asleep, waiting. A faint pinkish glow came from a lamp beside her. The wide bed stood on a platform, bed and platform alike covered in sheepskin, facing a great mirror nearly as long as the wall. Alone here, where nobody could hear her, where nobody was meant to hear, she was cut off from all contact, totally vulnerable, at the mercy of the man who came in without knocking, without a word his cold, very bright blue eyes pouncing on hers in the glass She crouched motionless, staring silently into the mirror, as if mesmerized. The hypnotic power of his eyes could destroy her will, already weakened by the mother who for years had persistently crushed it into submission. Forced since childhood into a victim's pattern of thought and behaviour, she was defenceless against his aggressive will, which was able to take complete possession of her. I saw it happen.
    He approached the bed with unhurried steps. She did not move until he bent over her, when she twisted away abruptly as if trying to escape, buried her face in the pillow. His hand reached out, slid over her shoulder, strong fingers feeling along her jawbone, gripping, tilting, forcing her head up. She resisted violently, in sudden terror, twisting and turning wildly, struggling against his strength. He did nothing at all, let he go on fighting. Her feeble struggles amused him, he knew they would not last long. He looked