Darkscapes

by Anne-Sylvie Salzman

  ‘Some nights she did not come. No doubt she was sick. In February there were several nights when she was absent. Mackay thought he had lost her once more, and shutting his shop, took himself to the town and returned the same day, an almost impossible feat that brought a drop of blood to his lips. He had bought a dress of Indian blue and a little girl’s petticoat, which he laid out on a chair in his room. That evening he had to resist an urge to add another mirror to his arrangement, but Flora reappeared two days later, emaciated, as it seemed, her head covered with a red shawl which had belonged to Mackay’s mother and which he still kept in his wardrobe. The memory of the shawl and the illness then came back to him.

  ‘He saw her for much longer that night, for, worn out, she sat down in mid-way, and Mackay heard the snipe two or three times; they also made the little girl lift up her eyes. She gathered up some pebbles which she placed at her feet, dried her fingers on a handkerchief, which a gust of wind tore from her hand, she shivered, stood up and departed.

  ‘But on every other day she was there. When she departed Mackay went out in the night, descended to the sea-shore and looked around him, his head empty. He no longer prayed; to tell the truth he only waited for the next night.

  ‘So passed the winter of that unhappy year in which a whole ship’s crew died in the sea off Plodish—and three families shut up their houses and embarked for the mainland. Mackay followed the funerals of the sailors and sold biscuits to the emigrants. Some days he had the radiant feeling that he held in a human cage the warm and singing bodies of all the birds of the shore.

  ‘One morning at the beginning of April as he went out he heard the cry of a snipe, then its drumming, and he stayed a little while at the door, his eyes seeking in the sky and keeping in view the bird that swooped and soared above his roof.

  ‘Then, without his understanding why—but the snipe must have struck against one of the chimneys or the wind had dazed it—the bird fell into his hands motionless, blood at its beak. Mackay took off his hat, made a bed in it for the bird, took several steps towards the village. Then we went back into his house, trembling all over. He went to his room, put the bird on Flora’s dress, lay down, and died, that day or that night, no one knows: died in the pleasure and then in the unequalled grief of following his child along her road to the bridge, and seeing her there, a little later, beneath a fine hazy sky, slip, poor soul, under the handrail and disappear.’

  II

  Crucifixions

  PASSING FORMS

  for William Charlton

  I

  BALE had chosen, pretty much at random, to spend a week at Baintree. This comprised an inn and a filling station at the foot of the mountains on the main road from Inverness to Glen Shiel; nothing more.

  ‘How are you coming?’ he was asked when he telephoned the inn.

  ‘By bus, I think. The bus from Inverness to Portree goes past you, doesn’t it?’

  In summer the bus passed at least three times a day.

  ‘There’s nothing but the hotel here, you know?’

  Bale knew; he was coming to do some walking.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes, for this once, alone,’ he replied. The room was booked.

  And here was the inn, just off a bend in that unending road—thank goodness unending. Bale was the only passenger to get off, the driver following on his heels to dive into the bus’s hold and retrieve Bale’s luggage, a green canvas rucksack. The driver murmured a good wish for his stay, and Bale thankfully went off to take possession of his room even before the bus, in a cloud of exhaust fumes, had resumed its journey from Inverness to Portree.

  ***

  Bale walked. There was really nothing else to do in these spongy mountains. The Scots have little taste for marked paths, and Bale, in his chosen solitude, had no desire to go and kill himself on peaks that were reputed dangerous. He found a little road that led through the rain to the ruins of a village. As he proceeded he kept thinking of his wife, from whom he had been divorced the year before. Next day he walked the length of another small road which took him over a pass and then down to a loch, which he crossed by two bridges that had nearly disintegrated. Between the bridges was a damp island, birches growing on it out of black soil. Bale did not wish to linger on the island. On the far side of the loch the road continued through a pleasanter piece of forest. Big funguses sprouted among the roots of the trees. Breathless, eventually, and his fingers numbed, Bale retraced his steps. He stopped two or three times beside the road and felt his legs tremble.

  Never could he remember having passed through country so deserted, so devoid of men or animals. Descending towards the lake he had heard jackdaws; he had also seen some small, light-coloured birds flitting without any cry above the heather. But human beings, sheep, the herds of deer that people presumably stalked in these valleys—where were they?

  Back at the inn, he lay down fully dressed on his bed, not even pulling off his walking boots. He looked at the ceiling and listened to the dull sounds his body was making. If this goes on, he said to himself, I shall find myself cracking up.

  He took a shower, went to dinner, and stood himself a half bottle of Chilean wine, which blackened his tongue. There was a loud racket in the bar. A man was laughing in great guffaws like a donkey, which caused hilarity in a whole party of cyclists.

  It was not yet night when he returned to his room. He lifted the sash of his window and watched the wide empty valley fade into darkness. Out of the corner of his eye, vehicles could be seen, still passing, barely audible on the main road. One night in Sutherland when he was staying with friends he had got out of bed, woken by an animal instinct. Waiting for him in a circle below his window was a herd of deer, come down from the mountains. In the end he had gone back to sleep and dreamed for half the night of things without form. He counted sheep in the peat-hags, black with peat to their necks. Then he saw himself running across the moor, shod in silver, beneath a glorious sky. A procession was approaching along the path. A young child was leading by halters a pair of young hinds with translucent ears. Bale, tears of happiness in his eyes, allowed the child to pass and dwindle into the distance, and he himself went off the other way.

  ***

  The following day it rained at Baintree from early morning. The clouds rolled down thick to the base of the mountains. Bale had walked too far the day before; nervous twitches ran through his arms and calves. He set himself to walk along the main road, a course almost as perilous, in the prevailing mist, as to go floundering without a map through the peat-hags. Every ten seconds a car passed and, oftener than he had expected, a lorry that stirred up a blast of air. The verge, however, was broad and flat, and Bale wisely kept to it.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is really walking for the sake of walking.’ In the rain the valley lacked even the funereal charm of the preceding day. Bale first counted the red cars and the grey; then he interested himself in what was lying on the verge: cigarette-packets, bottles in glass or plastic, jars and tins for preserves, newspapers, cigarette-stubs, clothes too, a pair of gloves, even a sort of anorak that was almost new, which he was tempted to save from the ditch. He recalled the little velvet jacket worn by the child with the hinds, and wondered how far he would have been able to follow the procession, lost in the confusion of the dream. Then, lying in the grass at the foot of a stake he saw the carcass of an animal, a fawn or a lamb—a fawn, probably. There were left only the bones with a little flesh and wisps of fur. Bale, who as a child brought up in the country had seen many dead animals, asked himself when the death had occurred. He felt a shiver of cold and continued on his path, head down. ‘This evening, though, I’ll mention it to the innkeeper, who’ll probably shrug it off.’ The small black island of the previous day returned to his mind, with its marshes and their crop of sickly herbs.

  ‘I’ll go as far as Glen Dhun,’ he thought, ‘I’ll have a coffee and a whisky, and then I’ll return to the inn. Eighteen miles on a day like this—that should be enough
.’ Enough for what? He did not know himself. Beyond a bridge from which he had watched the brown waters of a stream flowing between rowans towards a loch, he found another dead animal, decomposing in the same posture as the first, head thrown back, feet folded almost underneath the belly. The carcass was fresher, and gave off a strong smell. Bale shrugged his shoulders and sighed. ‘No, to Hell with it, I won’t go to Glen Dhun. I’ll go on one more hour from here and then turn back.’ It was all too grey, too mournful. The valley before his eyes grew more and more sombre. He had passed the bottom of the loch, and all he could see below it were the green and brown humps of the peat; a river in spate made its winding way down the middle of the valley. There was not a bird to be seen nor a sheep. On the far side of the road large red stones were embedded in a slope of loose soil, and Bale, his knees aching, gave a brief thought to the great prehistoric forests that had once flourished here. Under their giant ferns, how much of sky would you have seen?

  The rain ceased. The mist, however, continued to stream down the mountains into the hollows of the valley. He stopped at the hour he had fixed, ate the inn’s sandwiches and two pieces of shortbread, and after five or six minutes he felt all over his hands and down his neck the countless small bites of the midges from the marsh. He beat the air, carefully folded his greasy papers and slid them into his trouser pocket; then he crossed the road to walk back towards the inn. He might have forced himself on to Glen Dhun and waited there for the bus, but he could not find the heart for it. He returned to counting the bottles and plastic bags.

  Well before the dam at the bottom of the loch—he was still five or six miles from the inn—he saw on the green turf of the verge the white outlines of a third carcass. Poor, poor fawns, his weary spirit repeated. He put his foot on the grass, leant over, leant, and was grasped by two invisible hands that slapped him and pushed him back. The remains in the ditch were those of a child. Bale shut his eyes. The inner surface of his eyelids bristled with miniscule bones. He smacked his forehead and let out a cry. Then he went back onto the road, legs shaking, arms uplifted. The first car that saw him stopped. No doubt he could have called the inn or the police; he had a mobile telephone; but the thought did not cross his mind. ‘If that fellow hadn’t stopped, I should have thrown myself under the wheels of the next car.’

  The kind driver bent in his turn over the ditch, then came back to Bale, lips pursed, forehead creased.

  ‘Listen, Mr. . . .’

  ‘Bale,’ said Bale, his eyes upon a jay that fluttered from one piece of bracken to another.

  ‘Mr Bale, we must call Inverness. We must wait here, all right?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘I’m going to call my wife, tell her that I’m delayed. My God!’

  The man was called Douglas. He had a farm on Skye, a sheep-farm, he said. He made Bale get into his car, which smelt of dogs, and offered him a cup of coffee. ‘It’s this morning’s. I made it at my sister’s house, in Cromarty.’

  ‘My ex-wife lives in Cromarty too,’ said Bale for no particular reason. He could see the remains of the child reflected in the windscreen.

  ‘What are you doing in a place like this?’

  ‘I came for a few days’ walking.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘St Andrews.’

  As he uttered the words, he wondered if St Andrews would still acknowledge him. Did he still belong to the land of the living? Had he not seen the fawns in a dream, along with the bright blue jacket of the child?

  To the police, who arrived two in a van and two in a car, after the rain had ceased and when blinding beams of sunshine were sweeping the bottom of the valley, he had to tell over again the story of his discovery and repeat the same senseless details. He was a teacher of Scandinavian languages at the University of St Andrews, he was taking a few days’ holiday at Baintree for the sake of the walking. ‘By yourself, out here?’ The officers expressed surprise. ‘That’s not very sensible.’

  ‘I see that,’ mumbled Bale, on the verge of tears. The farmer from Skye had continued on his way. The police in the car took Bale back to the inn. Those in the van stayed on the verge, intending, no doubt, to fence it off with stakes and strips of yellow plastic.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Might have been jolted out of a car.’

  ‘I’m not squeamish, but this. . . .’

  ‘You’re right there.’

  There were two of them in the car, a flying squad, a woman police constable with short red hair whose heavy-lidded blue eyes Bale could see in the rear mirror, and on the other seat in front, half turned towards him, a massive man in a waterproof who looked something like a bank clerk.

  ‘And people passing along the road all the time. What can you say?’

  In front of the inn Bale found it all too much for him. ‘I cannot stay a second longer at Baintree.’ The two police officers held council in the bar. The woman blew on the wrinkled surface of her white coffee, the man had unfolded a map and was speaking in low tones, his head leaning back against the panelling. Bale went up to his little room. From the windows it was possible to see the lake and the road he had followed on the first day. He had a shower and packed, the police from Inverness meanwhile making routine enquiries about him.

  ‘This Mr Bale, how long has he been here? Is he a regular customer? Has he come here before? When was he going to leave? Hasn’t he a car?’

  At the Inverness police station two inspectors were already making lists of missing children. Journalists had been to look at the verge. A sheet of black plastic covered the child. The police took Bale back to the town. He was exhausted, and slept throughout the journey.

  II

  The weather was fine when Bale got back to St Andrews; the sky had cleared when he left Aberdeen. He slept in his seat, bathed in sunlight. Once home he emptied his rucksack on the floor of his sitting room and went to bed. He slept for more than fifteen hours at a stretch, dreamed that he was driving a van along a bypass through an avenue of palm-trees, and then woke up in the middle of the night seized with a horror that caused him to see the dead child in every cranny of his flat. He switched on the light in the sitting room and the television, swallowed a pill he was lucky enough to find in a drawer in his kitchen, and drank two glasses of whisky. Afterwards he slept for several hours more, not waking till it was full day with a blazing sun.

  During his time in the mountains several friends had written to him and others had left messages on his answerphone. He rubbed grease into his mountain boots, took a bath, went out to meet his colleagues at the Polar Bear. He had to repeat the story of his grim discovery: it had been reported in the Scotsman and on television and his friends wanted to hear all about it. He was happy to oblige, since summoning up his memory of the child did not cause the image of it to reappear; and though he described the incidents of the day, he said nothing of the dream that had preceded them.

  On Sunday he went, as he often did, to lunch with his parents. He spoke of the main road and of the black island.

  ‘You don’t look very happy.’

  ‘It never stopped raining.’

  Neither his parents nor Bale himself had courage to dig up the bones of the little child, which gradually sank into the mud of past experiences.

  ***

  The same week he returned to Inverness for the inquest, and had to look at the photographs taken at the ditch. The dead child had not been identified. There was talk presently of a child of illegal immigrants, a boy aged four to six, fallen, presumably, from a lorry. The body had been lying in the ditch for three weeks, and the newspapers, which published a picture mocked up by the police, deplored the incorrigible decadence of a society which, like Saturn, swallowed up its children in mass indifference—and then, thought Bale, spat out their bones into ditches.

  The following summer Bale ran into the farmer from Skye at Aberdeen Airport. Bale was heading for the United States via Iceland; Douglas and his wife were goi
ng to spend a week in Kenya.

  ‘The child has still not been identified,’ said Bale.

  ‘Yes, so I’ve read. It still bothers me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Douglas shrugged his shoulders. ‘And what are you going to do in Iceland?’

  ‘Work in the archives,’ Bale explained, ‘at the University of Reykjavik.’ After that he had a research post waiting for him at Salt Lake City.

  They drank a beer in one of the small airport bars. Mrs Douglas was a good looking woman with a soft laugh that made Bale wistful.

  III

  At Salt Lake City Bale for several months felt himself a new man. The day after his arrival a tornado burst upon the city. He went down into the shelter with the full complement of the Department of Scandinavian Studies, and felt the walls tremble. In the days that followed the air became so dry and dusty that he was amazed he had been able to survive for thirty years in the swampy dampness of his native Scotland.

  His state of renewal lasted throughout the whole university year. He shared a house on the outskirts of Salt Lake City with two other foreign professors, two Afghans so fed up with the questions to which they were subjected about their country that they had decided to pose as Turks. Bale learnt Parsee in his spare time, and in return taught them Swedish, a language, all three agreed, that would serve them well if there was a world war. Bale flirted with a Swedish lectrice and did his best to keep out of the intestine struggles of the department fomented by the rivalry of two savages from Minnesota. He arranged an American Christmas for his parents. At New Year he went to see the snow fall in the Valley of the Gods. He wept. Now and then, in quiet moments, what he had chased from his mind came back to him: in the valley the white of the snow beneath a flat grey sky recalled the child.