The Collector (Vintage Fowles) by John Fowles

Author:John Fowles [Fowles, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409059820
Publisher: Random House
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When you use words. The gaps. The way Caliban sits, a certain bowed-and-upright posture – why? Embarrassment? To spring at me if I run for it? I can draw it. I can draw his face and his expressions, but words are all so used, they’ve been used about so many other things and people. I write ‘he smiled’. What does that mean? No more than a kindergarten poster painting of a turnip with a moon-mouth smile. Yet if I draw the smile …

Words are so crude, so terribly primitive compared to drawing, painting, sculpture. ‘I sat on my bed and he sat by the door and we talked and I tried to persuade him to use his money to educate himself and he said he would but I didn’t feel convinced.’ Like a messy daub.

Like trying to draw with a broken lead.

All this is my own thinking.

I need to see G.P. He’d tell me the names of ten books where it’s all said much better.

How I hate ignorance! Caliban’s ignorance, my ignorance, the world’s ignorance! Oh, I could learn and learn and learn and learn. I could cry, I want to learn so much.

Gagged and bound.

I’ll put this to bed where it lives under the mattress. Then I’ll pray to God for learning.

October 22nd

A fortnight today. I have marked the days on the side of the screen, like Robinson Crusoe.

I feel depressed. Sleepless. I must, must, must escape.

I’m getting so pale. I feel ill, weak, all the time.

This terrible silence.

He’s so without mercy. So incomprehensible. What does he want? What is to happen?

He must see I’m getting ill.

I told him this evening that I must have some daylight. I made him look at me and see how pale I am.

Tomorrow, tomorrow. He never says no outright.

Today I’ve been thinking he could keep me here for ever. It wouldn’t be very long, because I’d die. It’s absurd, it’s diabolical – but there is no way of escape. I’ve been trying to find loose stones again. I could dig a tunnel round the door. I could dig a tunnel right out. But it would have to be at least twenty feet long. All the earth. Being trapped inside it. I could never do it. I’d rather die. So it must be a tunnel round the door. But to do that I must have time. I must be sure he is away for at least six hours. Three for the tunnel, two to break through the outer door. I feel it is my best chance, I mustn’t waste it, spoil it through lack of preparation.

I can’t sleep.

I must do something.

I’m going to write about the first time I met G.P.

Caroline said, oh, this is Miranda. My niece. And went on telling him odiously about me (one Saturday morning shopping in the Village) and I didn’t know where to look, although I’d been wanting to meet him. She’d talked about him before.

At once I liked the way he treated her, coolly, not trying to hide he was bored.

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