The Breaking Point: Short Stories

by Daphne Du Maurier

  I stood and listened. It might be that I should hear a rifle shot again. Any sound would be welcome in such barren solitude. Yet when one came I was shocked out of immobility, for it was no rifle shot, but a whistle. That same lewd whistle to attract attention, coming from fifty feet above my head, from the jutting ledge, the overhanging rock. I saw his horns, his questing eyes, his satyr’s face staring down at me, suspicious, curious, and he whistled again, a hiss, a mockery, and stamped his hoofs, releasing a crumbling stone. Then he was gone - the chamois was gone, my first live chamois - he was away and lost, but crouching below me, on a narrow lip over a precipice, clinging to the rock-face, his rifle vanished, was a white-faced man who could not speak from fear, my husband, Stephen.

  He could not move. I could not reach him. That was the horror. I could not reach him. He must have edged his way on to the lip of rock and found that he could go no further. In some extremity he had dropped his rifle. The thing that appalled me most was the terror on his face. Stephen, who rode rough-shod over the feelings of his friends, Stephen the cold, the calculating. I threw myself down full-length on the ground and stretched out my hands. There was a gap between us of a few feet, no more.

  ‘Keep your eyes turned to the rock,’ I said softly - instinct warned me not to speak too loudly - ‘edge your way inch by inch. If you got yourself there you must be able to return.’

  He did not answer. He moistened his lips with his tongue, He was deadly pale.

  ‘Stephen,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to try.’

  He tried to speak, but nothing came, and as though to mock us both the lewd warning whistle of the chamois sounded once again. It was more distant now, and the chamois itself was out of sight on some unattainable fastness of his own, secure from human penetration.

  It seemed to me that if Stephen had had his rifle with him he would not have been afraid. The loss of the rifle had unmanned him. All power, all confidence had gone, and with it, in some sickening way, his personality. The man clinging to the rock face was a puppet. Then I saw the goatherd, staring down at us from a rock above our heads.

  ‘Please come,’ I called gently, ‘my husband’s in danger.’

  He disappeared. A loose stone crumbled and fell past Stephen’s head. I saw my husband’s knuckles turn white under the strain. A moment’s horror suggested that the crumbling of the stone had been intentional, that the goatherd had vanished on purpose, leaving Stephen to his fate. A movement behind me told me I had misjudged him. He was by my side.

  I crawled away to let him have my place. He did not look at me, only at Stephen. He threw off his burnous, and I was aware of something lithe and compact, with a shock of black hair. He leapt on to the narrow lip beside Stephen and seized hold of him as an adult would seize a child, and all the six feet two of my husband’s body was thrown like a sack across the goatherd’s shoulder. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the cry that must surely come. He was going to throw Stephen into the depths below. I shrank away, my legs turned to jelly, and the next moment the goatherd was back on the track beside me, and Stephen too; Stephen was sitting hunched on the ground, his face in his hands, rocking from side to side. When I looked back from him I saw that the goathered was dressed in his burnous again, and was standing some little distance away from us, his head averted.

  I was quietly sick into a hole I scooped out of the snow. Then I shut my eyes and waited. It seemed a very long time before I heard Stephen rise to his feet. I opened my eyes and looked up at him. The colour had returned to his face. The goatherd had gone.

  ‘Now do you understand?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘Understand what?’ I asked weakly.

  ‘Why I must shoot chamois.’

  He stood there, defenceless without his rifle; and although he was no longer pale he was somehow shrunken in stature. One of his bootlaces was undone. I found myself staring at that rather than at his face.

  ‘It’s fear, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Have you always had it?’

  ‘Always,’ he answered, ‘from the very first. It’s something I have to conquer. The chamois gives the greatest chance because he climbs the highest. The more I kill, the more I destroy fear.’ Then absently, as if thinking of something else, he pointed downward. ‘I dropped my rifle,’ he said. ‘I fired when I saw the brute, but it whistled at me instead of taking to its heels, and then the giddiness came, the giddiness that’s part of fear.’

  I was still much shaken, but I got up and took his arm.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ I said. ‘I want a drink. Thank God for the brandy flasks.’

  His confidence was returning; nevertheless, he allowed me to lead him like a child. We made short work of the descent. When we came to the hut the two dogs were waiting on guard by the entrance, and the goatherd was gathering chips of wood to make kindling for a fire. He took no notice of us, and the dogs ignored us too. We went into the hut and took a good swig at our flasks.Then we lighted cigarettes and smoked for a while in silence, watching the goatherd with his armfuls of wood and scattered cones.

  ‘You’ll never tell anyone, will you?’ Stephen said suddenly.

  I looked at him, startled by the harsh note in his voice, betraying the strain he would not otherwise show. ‘You mean about the fear?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I don’t mind you knowing - you were bound to find out one day. And that fellow there - well, he’s not the kind to talk. But I won’t have anyone else knowing.’

  ‘Of course I won’t say anything,’ I replied quickly, to reassure him, and after a moment I turned away and began wrestling with the Primus stove. First things first. We should both of us feel more normal if we had hot food inside us.

  Baked beans have never tasted more delicious. And the retsina wine on top of brandy helped to dull speculation. The short day faded quickly. We had scarcely eaten and put on warmer jerseys when the temperature fell at least twenty degrees, the sky deepened, and the sun had gone. The fire at the threshold of the hut threw leaping flames into the air.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Stephen, ‘I’ll go and find my rifle.’

  I looked at him across the flames. His face was set, the face of the man I knew, the old Stephen.

  ‘You’ll never find it,’ I said. ‘It might be anywhere.’

  ‘I know the place,’ he replied impatiently, ‘amongst a heap of boulders and some dwarf pines. I marked it down.’

  I wondered how he proposed to get himself down there, knowing his limitations as I did now. He must have read my thoughts, for he added, ‘I can get round to it from here. There shouldn’t be any difficulty.’

  I threw my cigarette into the heart of the fire. It was a mistake to smoke it. Somehow I had not much stomach for cigarettes tonight.

  ‘If you do find it,’ I said, ‘what then?’

  ‘A last crack at the chamois,’ he said.

  His fanaticism, instead of cooling, had intensified. He was staring intently into the darkness over my shoulder. I turned and saw Jesus, the goatherd and his saviour, come towards us to drop more chips into the fire.

  ‘Kalinykta,’ said Stephen.

  It was the Greek for good night. And a sign of dismissal. The goatherd paused, and with a little gesture bowed to each of us in turn. ‘Kalinykta,’ he said.

  The voice was as shrouded as he himself in his burnous, the childish timbre of it muted in some strange fashion because of darkness. The hood was thrown further back than it had been, so that the sharp outline of his face was more revealed, and the firelight turned his skin ruddy, the staring eyes bright like live coals.

  He withdrew and left us together. Presently the sharp air, for all the leaping flames, drove us to our sleeping-bags inside the hut.We lit candles and read our Penguins for a time.Then Stephen fell asleep, and I blew out the candles and did likewise, worn with the emotion I’d been unable to express. What shocked me were my dreams. The goatherd had stripped off his burnous, and it was not Stephen that he carried in his arms but myself. I put out my hands to feel th
e shock of hair. It rose from his head like a black crest.

  I woke, and lit the candle. Stephen was sleeping still. I went to the door of the hut, and saw that the fire had died; not even the ashes glowed.The moon, past its quarter-mark and swelling, was hanging like a half-cheese in the sky. The dogs, the goats, the goatherd had all gone. Silhouetted on the skyline beyond the blasted pine stood a chamois buck, his sharp horns curving backward, his listening head uptilted to the moon, and grazing beneath him, silently, delicately, were the does and the yearling kids.

  3

  It was a curious thing, I considered, as I brewed our breakfast tea on the Primus and spread cheese over slices of pork-ham, but danger shared had brought Stephen and myself together. Or else I had turned compassionate. He was human after all, weak like the rest of us. He must have sensed my sympathy, because he talked at breakfast, telling me of adventures in the past, of near escapes.

  ‘I remember once,’ he said, ‘falling some fifteen feet, but I only sprained an ankle.’

  He laughed in high good humour, and I thought that if he could joke at fear his battle was half won.

  ‘I’ll come with you today,’ I told him, ‘when you look for your rifle.’

  ‘Will you?’ he said. ‘Splendid. It’s going to be fine, after that sharp frost. No mist about, the bugbear of all stalkers.’

  The zest, the keenness had returned. And what was more, I shared it. I wanted to stalk with him. This was a new emotion, something I could not explain.We ate our breakfast and straightened our sleeping bags, and going out into the sunlight I kicked at the ashes of last night’s fire. There was no sign of the goatherd or his dogs, or of his flock either. He must have taken them to graze elsewhere. I hardly thought of him: I was anxious to be off. Stephen led the way down the forested mountain-side, for he knew by instinct where he wished to go, and we scrambled over scrub and slag, and stunted bushes, part box, part thorn, away from the overhanging crags above.

  High in the blue sky soared the eagle of yesterday, or perhaps his fellow, and as the sun rose and warmed us, so that we took off our jerseys and tied them round our waists, life seemed suddenly very good, very full. There was none of the strain that had been with us yesterday. I put it down to sleeping well, to the new bond shared, and to the absence of the goatherd Jesus.

  When we had scrambled thus for half an hour or more Stephen said, ‘There it is - look, the sun’s caught the barrel.’

  He smiled and ran ahead, and indeed I could see the shining metal, caught sideways between a thorn and a lump of rock. He seized his gun, and waved it above his head in triumph.

  ‘I could never have gone home if I’d lost this,’ he said.

  He handled the rifle with care, still smiling - it was almost a caress the way he stroked it. I watched him, indulgent for the first time in my life. He took a cloth from his pouch and began to polish it. I let my eyes roam above him to the rugged heights above, to the lips and ledges where we had climbed yesterday. It was sparse and naked, bare of vegetation. A black speck like a humped rock caught my eye that I had not remembered the previous day. The black speck moved. I touched Stephen’s elbow. ‘There . . .’ I murmured, and put my pocket spy-glass into his hand. Cautiously he lifted it to his eye.

  ‘He’s there,’ he whispered, ‘he’s there, my buck of yesterday.’

  I had not thought Stephen could move so stealthily or so fast. He was away from me in a moment, crawling upward through the scrub, and seized with a curious enchantment I crawled after him. He motioned me back, and I lay still and looked through my glass again. Now the picture was indistinct: one second it looked like the chamois, and the next like our goatherd, yes, our goatherd. I called to Stephen.

  ‘It isn’t chamois,’ I said, ‘it’s your saviour, Zus.’

  He glanced back at me over his shoulder, impatient, angry.

  ‘What the hell are you shouting for?’ he said. ‘He’ll get away from us.’

  Once again I thrust my glass into his hand, crawling close to him to do so. ‘Look there,’ I said, ‘it isn’t chamois.’

  He seized the glass, and after adjusting it to his eye gave it back with an exclamation of disgust.

  ‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘Of course it’s chamois. I can see the horns.’

  Then, shrill, unmistakable, came the whistle of warning, the mocking chamois call.

  ‘Do you still think it isn’t chamois?’ said Stephen, and he put his rifle to his shoulder and fired.The explosion was like an echo to the whistle. It ricocheted away from the rocks above us, and carried to the depths below. The black speck leapt and vanished. Loose stones fell upon our heads.

  ‘You’ve missed him,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Stephen, ‘I’m going after him.’

  There was a gully immediately above us. He climbed to the left of it, I to the right, and as we made towards the jutting ledge where we had seen the black speck leap, neck and neck on opposite sides of the gully, I knew, with sudden certainty, that we were after different quarry. Stephen was after chamois. I was after Man. Both were symbolic of something abhorrent to our natures, and so held fascination and great fear.We wanted to destroy the thing that shamed us most.

  My heart was singing as I climbed, and pounding too. It was worth having been born, having lived my span of years for this alone. There had been no other experience. Nothing else compared with the stalk, and I had my goatherd on the run. It was he who fled from me, not I from him.

  I could see him now, jumping from rock to rock. How Stephen could mistake him for a chamois, God alone could tell. He had thrown off his burnous, and his shaggy head was like a wave-crest, thick and black. It was glorious. I had no fear of the jutting rocks, and climbed them steadily and surely, with never a slip and never a moment’s pause. Silence no longer mattered, for he knew I was after him.

  ‘I’ll get you,’ I called, ‘you can’t escape. You know very well I’ve hunted you all my life.’

  Such savagery and power - I, who hated violence; intoxication, too, and wild delight. Once more the hiss, the whistle. Fear and warning and mockery in one. The rattle of stones, the scampering of hoofs.

  ‘Lie down,’ shouted Stephen, ‘lie down. I’m going to shoot.’

  I remember laughing as the shot rang out. This time Stephen did not miss. The black form crumpled to its knees and fell. As I hauled myself to the ledge I saw the honey-coloured eyes glaze in death. They would never stare at me again. My husband had destroyed the thing that frightened me.

  4

  ‘He’s smaller than I thought,’ said Stephen, turning the dead buck over with his feet, ‘and younger too. Not more than five years old.’

  He lit a cigarette. I took it from him. Sweat was pouring from both of us. The eagle was still soaring against the sun.

  ‘I shan’t carry him back,’ said my husband. ‘I don’t even want his head.That’s my last chamois. Don’t ask me why - I just know it, that’s all. We’ll leave him out here in grandeur, where he belongs. Nature has her own way of disposing of the dead.’ He glanced up at the eagle.

  We left the chamois on the ledge of rock under the sky and climbed down again, through the scrub and stones, back to the hut and our belongings. The rucksacks and the sleeping-bags seemed part of another life.

  ‘No sign of our host,’ said Stephen, ‘and we’ve finished all the rations. Let’s pack and spend tonight down at the store. We can catch the morning bus in the other direction. Go to Métsovon, and Ioánnina, and down the west coast to Missolonghi and across to Delphi. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  I did not answer, but I put out my hand to him for no reason. It was very peaceful, very still, on the quiet mountain. Suddenly Stephen kissed me. Then he put his hand in his pocket, and, bending down, placed two small metal objects in the white ash of the fire.

  ‘We’ll leave the empty cartridges for Jesus,’ Stephen said.

  The Lordly Ones

  Ben was thought to be backward. He could not speak. When he tri
ed to form words sounds came, harsh and ugly, and he did not know what to do with his tongue. He pointed when he wanted something, or fetched it for himself. They said he was tongue-tied, and that in a few years’ time he would be taken to hospital and something could be done. His mother said he was sharp enough, he took in what you told him all right, and knew good from bad, but he was stubborn, he did not take kindly to ‘no’. Because of his silence they forgot to explain things to him, arrivals and departures and changes of plan, and his world was made up of whims, the whims of older people. He would be told to dress for no reason, or to go out into the street to play; or some toy was denied him that had been given him an hour before.

  When the stress became too great to bear he opened his mouth, and the sound that came out of it alarmed him even more than it alarmed his parents. Why did it rise? How did it come? Then someone, usually his mother, picked him up and shut him away in the cupboard under the stairs, amongst the mackintoshes and the shopping baskets, and he could hear her calling through the keyhole, ‘You’ll stop there until you’re quiet!’ The noise would not be quelled. It did not belong to him. The anger was a force that had to have its way.

  Later, crouched beside the keyhole, spent and tired, he would hear the noise die away, and peace would come to the cupboard. The fear would then be that his mother would go away and forget to let him out, and he would rattle the handle of the door to remind her. A flash of her skirt through the keyhole meant reassurance, and he would sit down and wait until the grinding of the key in the lock spelt release. Then he would step out into the daylight, blinking, and glance up at his mother to gauge her mood. If she was dusting or sweeping, she ignored him. All would be well until the next moment of anger or frustration, when the performance would be repeated - either the cupboard again, or his bedroom with no tea, his toys taken from him. The way to ensure against their anger was to please his parents, but this could not always be done, for the strain was too great. In the middle of play, absorbed, he forgot their commands.