Love by Angela Carter

Author:Angela Carter [Carter, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448104420
Publisher: Vintage Digital
Published: 2012-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

NOW LEE KNEW they would not let Annabel come home until his brother was expelled from the household, he saw Buzz as if he had never known him. He watched the variously obsessed figure intently. It continued to go busily about the absurd tasks it set itself as if they were perfectly natural. It sharpened its knives; it splashed in its acids; it snipped, stitched and dyed its commedia dell’arte rags; it rolled its joints with a pompous ritual worthy of a sacrament; it squatted for hours on the floor in those hollow, interminable silences with which it passed its excess wastes of useless time, and Lee saw all this as the motions of an unfamiliar object. He marvelled that he could have endured its aberrations so long and began to harden against the thing he saw. Until this time, he had scarcely differentiated between his brother and himself; Buzz was a necessary attribute, an inevitable condition of life. But now the circumstances were altered. Annabel freshly defined Lee as having no life beyond that of a necessary attribute of herself alone, and, in this new arrangement, Lee knew his brother for an interloper who might do harm. So now a cancer lodged at the core of his heart, where Buzz had been. Besides, he found the pictures which Buzz had taken of Annabel in the bathroom, before he called the ambulance.

Once the process of dissociation began, it quickly gathered impetus. He felt a sharp distaste at the close physical contact which had been bred of their extreme intimacy. If, at first, he believed he felt a new distaste rather than a positive revulsion, he could no longer drink from a cup Buzz had used unless he rinsed it out and the casual embraces they had always exchanged so thoughtlessly became intolerable for him. Their affection dissipated with extraordinary speed for, had they not been brothers, they would have had little in common and they could not maintain between them an uncommitted state of mutual forbearance without the sustenance of love. Buzz was helpless, incredulous and a little fearful as he perceived the growth of Lee’s aversion and strove to protect himself from pain by jeers, by coldness and by the pretence of disdain. He schooled himself in dislike and waited for the blow to fall.

Lee expected a display of panic and violence when he told Buzz he would have to leave the flat but Buzz, well prepared, showed no anger or surprise. He continued to sit before the fire in perfect silence, drumming his fingers on his knee, while Lee wondered nervously what the unguessable response might be. But, when it came, it was scrupulously cool.

‘Going straight?’ asked Buzz in a normal voice, though with a touch of contempt.

Lee shrugged. They did not look at one another. Time passed. Coals fell in the grate. It was night-time.

‘Where shall I live?’ said Buzz.

‘We’ll find somewhere for you easily,’ said Lee with false cheerfulness.

‘When shall I move out?’

‘As soon as you can find a place.

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