Chapter 40 #5
We lay beside each other on the rug. The rug was rough against my bare skin, and the roughness was a sensation that I noted with the detached precision of a person who is re-engaging the analytical machinery after a period of dormancy, and the re-engagement was gradual and imperfect, because the experience that had just concluded had left marks on the machinery that were not immediately repairable, like scratches on glass that distort the image without breaking it.
He was breathing heavily, and the heaviness of his breathing was the sound of a man who has given everything and who is now lying in the aftermath, depleted and defenceless and entirely without the energy for performance, and the defencelessness was the thing that I had always found most compelling about him, because Sebastian's defencelessness was not a performance of vulnerability but a genuine absence of the armour that most men wear, and the absence was the thing that had made him the only person I had ever been unable to manipulate completely, because the manipulation of a person requires the person to have defences that can be identified and exploited, and Sebastian, in his most honest moments, had no defences, and the absence of defences was the absence of targets, and the absence of targets was the absence of strategy, and the absence of strategy was the thing that had made every encounter between us, including this one, a thing that was not entirely under my control.
He turned his head and looked at me. His eyes were dark and wet, and the wetness was not tears but the moisture of exertion, and the exertion had been, I acknowledged, a thing that we had done together, and the together was the thing that made it different, because all the previous exertions had been, on my side, solo performances conducted with a partner who believed himself to be a participant but who was, in fact, an audience, and the audience had been managed and directed and controlled, and the management and the direction and the control had been the substance of the encounter, and the substance, in this encounter, was the absence of all three.
"If I were capable of feeling what you feel," I said, and the words were not rehearsed and not calculated and not delivered for effect, because the delivering was the first entirely honest speech act of my adult life, a statement of fact spoken without the mediation of strategy, "I would feel it for you. "
I paused. The pause was not strategic. The pause was the pause of a person who is encountering, in real time, the limitations of her own emotional vocabulary, and who is searching, with the desperate precision of a woman who has never searched for words before, for the words that will accurately describe the thing she is trying to say.
"I am not," I said. "But I will think about you for the rest of my life."
The words hung in the darkness. They were the most honest words I had ever spoken, and the honesty was the most terrifying thing I had ever done, because the honesty required the admission of the thing that I had spent my entire life concealing, which was the emptiness, the void, the absence of the emotional capacity that other people possessed and that I, through no fault of my own and through no possibility of remedy, did not possess.
The honesty was not redemption. The honesty was not transformation.
The honesty was simply the truth, spoken in a dark room to a man who already knew it, and the knowing did not make it easier, and the speaking did not make it better, and the truth, once spoken, did not change anything except the silence that had preceded it, and the change in the silence was the only change that was possible, and the change was enough, because the change was real.
He said nothing. The nothing was the most eloquent response he could have given, because any words would have been inadequate, and the inadequacy of words was the thing that we had both known, from the beginning, and the beginning was a long time ago, and the time between the beginning and now was the time of our entire acquaintance, and the acquaintance was ending, and the ending was the thing that neither of us could change, and the inability to change was the thing that sat between us like a stone, heavy and cold and permanent.
We lay in the darkness and did not speak, and the silence was the silence of two people who have said everything that can be said and who are now occupying the space that remains, which is the space of the unsayable, and the occupying of the space was, I acknowledged, the final thing that we would ever do together, and the finality of it was a thing that I could not feel but that I could recognise, and the recognition was, in the space where other people feel loss, a faint, cool sensation that was the closest my mind could come to the thing that loss would feel like if I were capable of it, and the capability was not there, and the absence of the capability was the thing that would, I knew, haunt me for the rest of my life, because the haunting was not the haunting of a person who regrets what she has lost but the haunting of a person who has gained, for the first and only time, an understanding of what her condition has cost, and the understanding was a kind of knowledge, and the knowledge was a kind of weight, and the weight was the thing that I would carry with me onto the ship and into the foreign city and through the remaining years of a life that would be lived, from this moment forward, in the shadow of an awareness that could not be named and could not be shared and could not, despite every effort of will and intellect, be resolved.
=== EPILOGUE: The Departure ===
The morning of the first of July was grey and warm, the kind of English summer morning that promises nothing and delivers exactly that, and the sky was the colour of old silver, and the air was thick with the particular humidity that precedes rain that will not come, and the streets of London were damp and quiet, as though the city itself were holding its breath, and the holding was fitting, because this was a morning of departures, and departures, even when they are voluntary, even when they are negotiated, even when they are the product of a system that is protecting itself rather than dispensing justice, carry with them a quality of finality that makes the world seem smaller and more fragile than it ordinarily appears.
I dressed with the particular care that I bring to significant occasions, which was the same care I brought to every occasion, because the appearance of effort was itself a liability, and the ideal was to look as though one had simply put on what was nearest to hand and happened, through some accident of fortune, to look impeccable.
I wore a travelling dress of navy blue wool, high-collared and long-sleeved, with a fitted bodice and a full skirt that would not wrinkle during the hours of travel that lay ahead, and a jacket of the same material, and a hat of straw that was trimmed with a ribbon of darker blue, and the effect was one of understated elegance, the elegance of a woman who is travelling and who wishes to be comfortable without appearing to have prioritised comfort over appearance, and the prioritisation was itself a communication, because the way a woman dresses for a departure tells the world how she wishes to be remembered, and the memory I wished to leave was the memory of a woman who was composed, controlled, and entirely without visible distress.
I was not wearing black. The absence of black was deliberate and significant, because black was the colour of mourning, and mourning was a performance, and I was done performing.
The navy blue was the colour of departure, and the departure was the thing that mattered, and the colour of the thing that matters is the colour that one should wear, and the wearing of it was the last sartorial decision I would make in this house, and the decision was, I acknowledged, the last in a lifetime of sartorial decisions that had been, without exception, strategic, because every garment I had ever worn had been chosen to produce a specific effect in a specific audience, and the audience, for this last decision, was not the social world of London but the version of myself that I would carry onto the ship and into the life that awaited me, and the version of myself that I wished to carry was a version that was capable of moving through the world without the armour of performance, because the armour was being left behind, along with everything else.
I moved through the house for the last time.
The hallway was as it had always been, the black-and-white marble floor, the grandfather clock, the staircase rising to the upper floors, and the smell of beeswax and lilies was fainter than it had been, because the flowers had not been replaced and the polishing had not been done, and the faintness was the smell of a house that was already becoming a memory, and the becoming was a gradual process, like the fading of a photograph in sunlight, that would, over the coming weeks and months, reduce this place to a collection of impressions that were beautiful and accurate and entirely inadequate.
Edmund was in his room. Dorothea was with him, kneeling beside the bed, adjusting the collar of his jacket with the careful, practised hands of a woman who has performed this small service ten thousand times and who performs it with the same attention each time, because Dorothea's attention to Edmund was the one thing in this household that had never been strategic and had never been performed, and the constancy of it was the thing that had made her the only person I trusted with the most precious thing in my possession.