La bambola, Daphne du Maurier

E non inganno che me stesso quando dico che lei sarebbe venuta da me. Non la seguii perché sapevo che non vi era speranza. Non mi avrebbe mai amato - e mai amerà qualcuno.
A volte mi capita di pensarci in modo spassionato e provo pietà per lei. Manca così tanto - così tanto - e nessuno saprà mai la verità. Com'era la sua vita prima che la conoscessi, com'è ora?
Rebecca - Rebecca, quando penso a voi, il volto pallido e serio, i grandi occhi fanatici da santa, la bocca sottile a nascondere i denti, aguzzi e bianchi come l'avorio, e l'aureola di capelli selvaggi, elettrici, scuri, fuori controllo - mai è esistita qualcuna di più bella. Chi potrà conoscere il vostro cuore, chi la vostra mente?
Intensa, compunta, senz'anima; sì, dovete certo essere senz'anima per aver fatto quel che avete fatto. Possedete quel dono fatale che è il silenzio - quel severo contegno che suggerisce un fuoco nascosto - un fuoco che brucia implacato. Cosa non ho fatto con voi nei miei sogni, Rebecca?
Sareste fatale a ogni uomo. Una scintilla che s'accende ma non bruccia, una fiamma che ravviva altre fiamme.
Cosa amavo in voi se non l'indifferenza e quel che essa cela?
Vi amai troppo, vi volli troppo, provavo per voi un affetto troppo grande. E ora tutto ciò è come una radice contorta che affonda nel mio cuore, un veleno mortale per la mia mente. Mi avete reso folle. Mi pervadete di un tale orrore, di un odio devastante che è simile all'amore - una fame che è nausea. Se solo riuscissi a essere calmo e lucido per un istante - un istante solo...

[Traduzione di Annie and the cherry(c), brano tratto da The Doll, racconto dell'orrore di Daphne du Maurier che potete leggere qui]

Claude Buck, Seated Woman with Violin.

Night of Horror

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkempt, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognize, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered. The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its former self, with gravel surface gone, and choked with grass and moss. The trees had thrown out low branches, making an impediment to progress; the gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws. Scattered here and again amongst this jungle growth I would recognize shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things of culture and grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had been famous. No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them. On and on, now east now west, wound the poor thread that once had been our drive. Sometimes I thought it lost, but it appeared again, beneath a fallen tree perhaps, or struggling on the other side of a muddied ditch created by the winter rains. I had not thought the way so long. Surely the miles had multiplied, even as the trees had done, and this path led but to a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, and not to the house at all. I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions, and I stood, my heart thumping in my breast, the strange prick of tears behind my eyes.

[Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca]