The Collector

by John Fowles

There were even times I thought I would forget her. But forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn’t happen to me.

That was the day I first gave myself the dream that came true. It began where she was being attacked by a man and I ran up and rescued her. Then somehow I was the man that attacked her, only I didn’t hurt her; I captured her and drove her off in the van to a remote house and there I kept her captive in a nice way. Gradually she came to know me and like me and the dream grew into the one about our living in a nice modern house, married, with kids and everything.

I thought, I can’t ever get to know her in the ordinary way, but if she’s with me, she’ll see my good points, she’ll understand. There was always the idea she would understand.

What she never understood was that with me it was having. Having her was enough. Nothing needed doing. I just wanted to have her, and safe at last.

This crypt-room is so stuffy, the walls squeeze in, I’m listening for him as I write, the thoughts I have are like bad drawings. Must be torn up at once.

I listened for traffic, but there was none. I heard an owl. And an aeroplane. If only people knew what they flew over. We’re all in aeroplanes.

The ordinary man is the curse of civilization. But he’s so ordinary that he’s extraordinary.

It’s the very opposite of drawing. You draw a line and you know at once whether it’s a good or a bad line. But you write a line and it seems true and then you read it again later.

The floor’s very soft and springy. I’ve broken all the ugly ashtrays and pots. Ugly ornaments don’t deserve to exist. I’m so superior to him. I know this sounds wickedly conceited. But I am. And so it’s Ladymont and Boadicaea and noblesse oblige all over again. I feel I’ve got to show him how decent human beings live and behave. He is ugliness. But you can’t smash human ugliness.

I could scream abuse at him all day long; he wouldn’t mind at all. It’s me he wants, my look, my outside; not my emotions or my mind or my soul or even my body. Not anything human. He’s a collector. That’s the great dead thing in him.

I said I was too busy to see him. I wouldn’t go round that evening, no. If he had pressed, I would have refused. But he seemed to be about to ring off, and I said I’d go round the next day. I so wanted him to know I was hurt. You can’t be hurt over a telephone.

He said, men are vile. I said, the vilest thing about them is that they can say that with a smile on their faces.

Do shut up. You’re ugly enough without starting to whine.

When I looked round he was standing there with his mouth open, trying to say something. And I knew I’d hurt him, I know he deserves to be hurt, but there it is. I’ve hurt him. He looked so glum. And I remembered he’d let me go out in the garden. I felt mean.

It was funny, we sat in silence facing each other and I had a feeling I’ve had once or twice before, of the most peculiar closeness to him—not love or attraction or sympathy in any way. But linked destiny. Like being shipwrecked on an island—a raft—together. In every way not wanting to be together. But together.

I would have gone to bed with him that night. If he had asked. If he had come and kissed me. Not for his sake, but for being alive’s.

Sleeping in the shade, waking up staring through the leaves at the cobalt blue sky, thinking how impossible things were to paint, how can some blue pigment ever mean the living blue light of the sky. I suddenly felt I didn’t want to paint, painting was just showing off, the thing was to experience and experience for ever more.

As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can’t have affected you.

She said, what I mean is he’s so terribly good-looking, one could forget he’s so stupid. You might think, I could marry him and teach him. Couldn’t you? And you know you couldn’t. Or you could go to bed with him just for fun and one day you’d suddenly find you were in love with his body and you couldn’t live without it and you’d be stuck with his rotten mind for ever and ever.

I am one in a row of specimens. It’s when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I’m meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it’s the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead.

He said, the New People are still the poor people. Theirs is the new form of poverty. The others hadn’t any money and these haven’t any soul.

But sometimes it is frightening, thinking of the struggle life is if one takes it seriously.

He doesn’t believe in any other world but the one he lives in and sees. He’s the one in prison; in his own hateful narrow present world.

He’s not human; he’s an empty space disguised as a human.

But I lay in the bath and thought. I decided it must be done. I had to catch up the axe and hit him with the blunt end, knock him out. I hadn’t the least idea where on the head was the best place to hit or how hard it had to be.

I keep on having thoughts today. One was: uncreative men plus opportunity-to-create equals evil men. Another one was: killing him was breaking my word to what I believe. Some people would say—you’re only a drop, your word-breaking is only a drop, it wouldn’t matter. But all the evil in the world’s made up of little drops. It’s silly talking about the unimportance of the little drops. The little drops and the ocean are the same thing.

If he really loved me he couldn’t have sent me away. If he really loved me he would have sent me away.

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.

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.

It’s him. And it’s this weird male thing. Now I’m no longer nice. They sulk if you don’t give, and hate you when you do. Intelligent men must despise themselves for being like that. Their illogicality.

I said his case was tragic, he needed sympathy and psychiatry. Forgiveness. I wasn’t being noble. I despise him too much to hate him. It’s funny. I probably should speak for him. I knew we shouldn’t be able to meet again. I could never cure him. Because I’m his disease.

I’m sick of being young. Inexperienced. Clever at knowing but not at living.

It’s like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it’s silly. A toy I’ve played with too often. It’s a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.

The power of women! I’ve never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke.

We’re so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we’re stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can’t stand ours.

A strange thought: I would not want this not to have happened. Because if I escape I shall be a completely different and I think better person. Because if I don’t escape, if something dreadful happened, I shall still know that the person I was and would have stayed if this hadn’t happened was not the person I now want to be. It’s like firing a pot. You have to risk the cracking and the warping.

I hate God. I hate whatever made this world, I hate whatever made the human race, made men like Caliban possible and situations like this possible. If there is a God he’s a great loathsome spider in the darkness. He cannot be good.

Those last days I had to be sorry for her (as soon as I knew it wasn’t acting), and I forgave her all the other business. Not while she was living, but when I knew she was dead, that was when I finally forgave her. All sorts of nice things came back.