The Collector

 I can't sleep. I've got up again and put on G.P.'s clavichord record. Perhaps he's been listening to it, too, and thinking of me. The Invention I like best is the one after the one he loves best -- he loves the fifth, and I the sixth. So we lie side by side in Bach. I always used to think Bach was a bore. Now he overwhelms me, he is so human, so full of moods and gentleness and wonderful tunes and things so simple-deep I play them over and over again as once I used to copy drawings I liked.

 I think, perhaps I'll just try putting my arms round him and kissing him. No more. But he'd grow to like that. It would drag on. It's got to be a shock.

 All this business, it's bound up with my bossy attitude to life. I've always known where I'm going, how I want things to happen. And they _have_ happened as I have wanted, and I have taken it for granted that they have because _I_ know where I'm going. But I have been lucky in all sorts of things.

 I've always tried to happen to life; but it's time I let life happen to me.

    _November 30th_

 Oh, God.

 I've done something terrible.

 I've got to put it down. Look at it.

 It is so amazing. That I did it. That what happened happened. That he is what he is. That I am what I am. Things left like this.

 Worse than ever before.

 I decided to do it this morning. I knew I had to do something extraordinary. To give myself a shock as well as him.

 I arranged to have a bath. I was nice to him all day.

 I dolled myself up after the bath. Oceans of Mitsouko. I stood in front of the fire, showing my bare feet for his benefit. I was nervous. I didn't know if I could go through with it. And having my hands bound. But I had three glasses of sherry quickly.

 I shut my eyes then and went to work.

 I made him sit down and then I sat down on his lap. He was so stiff, so shocked, that I had to go on. If he'd clutched at me, perhaps I'd have stopped. I let the housecoat fall open, but he just sat there with me on his lap. As if we had never met before and this was some silly party game. Two strangers at a party, who didn't much like each other.

 In a nasty perverted way it was exciting. A woman-in-me reaching to a man-in-him. I can't explain, it was also the feeling that he didn't know what to do. That he was sheer virgin. There was an old lady of Cork who took a young priest for a walk. I must have been drunk.

 I had to force him to kiss me. He made a sort of feeble pretence of being afraid that he might lose his head. I don't care if you do, I said. And I kissed him again. He did kiss me back then, as if he wanted to press his wretched thin inhibited mouth right through my head. His mouth was sweet. He smelt clean and I shut my eyes. It wasn't so bad.

 But then he suddenly went away by the window and he wouldn't come back. He wanted to run away, but he couldn't, so he stood by his desk, half turned, while I knelt half-naked by the fire and let my hair down, just to make it quite obvious. In the end I had to go up to him and bring him back to the fire. I made him undo my hands, he was like someone in a trance, and then I undressed him and I undressed myself.

 I said, don't be nervous, I want to do this. Just be natural. But he wouldn't, he wouldn't. I did _everything_ I could.

 But nothing happened. He wouldn't thaw out. He did hold me tight once. But it wasn't natural. Just a desperate imitation of what he must think the real thing's like. Pathetically unconvincing.

 He can't do it.

 There's no man in him.

 I got up, we were lying on the sofa, and knelt by him and told him not to worry. Mothered him. We put our clothes back on.

 And gradually it all came out. The truth about him. And later, his real self.

 A psychiatrist has told him he won't ever be able to do it.

 He said he used to imagine us lying in bed together. Just lying. Nothing else. I offered to do that. But he didn't want to. Deep down in him, side by side with the beastliness, the sourness, there is a tremendous innocence. It rules him. He must protect it.

 He said he loved me, even so.

 I said, what you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me.

 I don't know what it is, he said.

 And then I made a mistake, I felt it had all been a sacrifice in vain, I felt I had to make him appreciate what I'd done, that he ought to let me go -- so I tried to tell him. And his true self came out.

 He got beastly. Wouldn't answer me.

 We were further apart than ever. I said I pitied him and he flew at me. It was terrible. It made me cry.

 The terrible coldness, the inhumanity of it.

 Being his prisoner. Having to stay. Still.

 And realizing at last that this is what he is.

 Impossible to understand. What is he? What does he want? Why am I here if he can't do it?

 As if I'd lit a fire in the darkness to try and warm us. And all I'd done was to see his real face by it.

 The last thing I said was -- We can't be further apart. We've been naked in front of each other.

 But we are.

 I feel better now.

 I'm glad nothing worse happened. I was mad to take the risk.