A Letter

 

after Crimson Peak

My Lord:

I once dreamt I lived in a red house. I’d finger the rim of a sherry glass and the ghost of a drowned woman would sing back.  

Ah, why think of such things now? I suppose your new bride was never truly female, for I ache to be a writer, in essence I am a man, there truly is no place for women in such complexities of thought. No, in this house I have succumbed to the feeling that women should be seen and not heard... It would be far more pleasing to see them draped pale and lovely in the white claw foot tub or gliding down the serpentine mahogany staircase. Not chewing on the tip of her father’s gold pen and wrinkling her delicate brow, wishing she could write like anyone else.

The house - though ‘tis not a house but a hall, I must remember - it’s never dirty yet never quite clean. Corpses of flies litter the dainty sills. The dust won’t seem to rub off, it is as if it permeated the wood long ago. Someday, we shall make repairs. Someday, perhaps after the advent of the children. Even though... Even though.

My hair is down and I feel scandalous and think of you, yellow curls sighing and dripping along the crinkled silk of my nightgown. I fancy I see faces etched into the candle wax, and there are certain sad longings in the shadows. I’ve been collecting padlocks and planchettes. How I will run towards you upon the beach when you return, searching for the black beacon of your horse. I know we’ve not been close, and ‘tis my fault, this strange wantonness in me... A scarlet fever, if you will. You speak of chastity, such lofty virtue. I do not know what is wrong with me; I will not try to kiss you again during the day as I was wont to before you left.

Oh darling, red rain is falling through cracks in the roof! The books are scandalous, edges of gilt pages revealing unspeakable Oriental paradises. (The white lace chokes my neck like a pair of hands.) I wear too much yellow in the day though, it enfolds me in a sense of joy and cheerfulness but I am nothing but, rather a butterfly quivering in the palm of her master’s hand. Sometimes I know not which is fiercer, the longing to search the house or the longing for your embrace, gone from me so early. Today in the room with the water lily print I found an old steam trunk; the rusted hinge gave way to some ghastly mourning photographs, those silly mementos. Old letters in rotting envelopes, the unmitigable scroll of a woman. I reached for one but thought I heard a moan torn from your sweet mouth and I retracted my hand ever so swiftly. And how, these days, I grow lost in your eyes, your mouth alone, something so ungodly, unholy, a strange music pulling deep from within my being...

But the rooms have that charm of being thoroughly lived in, as if one had lived a whole lifetime in just one. I want to live my life in this house - this hall - there shan’t be nothing outside for me now. But your dear sister, so glum, always in deep blue velvet and the jet beads at her hemline scattering across the floorboards. Sometimes dark things slither behind the heavy satin curtains, behind her intentions. (Oh my love, my body seems to yearn and hum like a tuning fork.) Through the fog I am convinced I see your white livid face, so beautiful, so stern. How sometimes our love annihilates, then enervates me. Like water running down a drain. I remember secret glances at my father’s funeral, its sweet suffocation of top hats and umbrellas. A black coffin in the snow. Do you know I sometimes see the softest suicides in the gaslights? The sleek, scandalous curvature of the chairs. Every pane of glass, handpicked. My white throat bared for you, the tiny muscles twitching, handpicked.

Please return to me.

Your devoted wife,
Edith