by C. S. Lewis
‘Have done with it, Psyche,’ I said sharply. ‘Where is this god? Where the palace is? Nowhere—in your fancy. Where is he? Show him to me? What is he like?’
She looked a little aside and spoke, lower than ever but very clear, and as if all that had yet passed between us were of no account beside the gravity of what she was now saying. ‘Oh, Orual,’ she said, ‘not even I have seen him—yet. He comes to me only in the holy darkness. He says I mustn’t—not yet—see his face or know his name. I’m forbidden to bring any light into his—our—chamber.’
Then she looked up, and as our eyes met for a moment I saw in hers unspeakable joy.
‘There’s no such thing,’ I said, loud and stern. ‘Never say these things again. Get up. It’s time—’
‘Orual,’ said she, now at her queenliest, ‘I have never told you a lie in my life.’
I tried to soften my manner. Yet the words came out cold and stern. ‘No, you don’t mean to lie. You’re not in your right mind, Psyche. You have imagined things. It’s the terror and the loneliness . . . and that drug they gave you. We’ll cure you.’
‘Orual,’ said she.
‘What?’
‘If it’s all my fancy, how do you think I have lived these many days? Do I look as if I’d fed on berries and slept under the sky? Are my arms wasted? Or my cheeks fallen in?’
I would, I believe, have lied to her myself and said they were, but it was impossible. From the top of her head to her naked feet she was bathed in life and beauty and well-being. It was as if they flowed over her or from her. It was no wonder Bardia had worshipped her as a goddess. The very rags served only to show more of her beauty; all the honey-sweetness, all the rose-red and the ivory, the warm, breathing perfection of her. She even seemed (but that’s impossible, I thought) taller than before. And as my lie died unspoken she looked at me with something like mockery in her face. Her mocking looks had always been some of her loveliest.
‘You see?’ she said. ‘It’s all true. And that—no, listen, Maia—that’s why all will come right. We’ll make—he will make you able to see, and then—’
‘I don’t want it!’ I cried, putting my face close to hers, threatening her almost, till she drew back before my fierceness. ‘I don’t want it. I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Do you understand?’
‘But, Orual, why? What do you hate?’
‘Oh, the whole—what can I call it? You know very well. Or you used to. This, this—’ and then something she had said about him (hardly noticed till now) began to work horribly in my mind. ‘This thing that comes to you in the darkness . . . and you’re forbidden to see it. Holy darkness, you call it. What sort of thing? Faugh! It’s like living in the house of Ungit. Everything’s dark about the gods . . . I think I can smell the very—’ The steadiness of her gaze, the beauty of her, so full of pity yet in a way so pitiless, made me dumb for a moment. Then my tears broke out again. ‘Oh, Psyche,’ I sobbed, ‘you’re so far away. Do you even hear me? I can’t reach you. Oh, Psyche, Psyche! You loved me once . . . come back. What have we to do with gods and wonders and all these cruel, dark things? We’re women, aren’t we? Mortals. Oh, come back to the real world. Leave all that alone. Come back where we were happy.’
‘But, Orual—think. How can I go back? This is my home. I am a wife.’
‘Wife! Of what?’ said I, shuddering.
‘If you only knew him,’ she said.
‘You like it! Oh, Psyche!’
She would not answer me. Her face flushed. Her face, and her whole body, were the answer.
‘Oh, you ought to have been one of Ungit’s girls,’ said I savagely. ‘You ought to have lived in there—in the dark—all blood and incense and muttering and the reek of burnt fat. To like it—living among things you can’t see—dark and holy and horrible. Is it nothing to you at all that you are leaving me, going into all that . . . turning your back on all our love?’
‘No, no, Maia. I can’t go back to you. How could I? But you must come to me.’
‘Oh, it’s madness,’ said I.
Was it madness or not? Which was true? Which would be worse? I was at that very moment when, if they meant us well, the gods would speak. Mark what they did instead.
It began to rain. It was only a light rain, but it changed everything for me.
‘Here, child,’ said I, ‘come under my cloak. Your poor rags! Quick. You’ll be wet through.’
She gazed at me wonderingly. ‘How should I get wet, Maia,’ she said, ‘when we are sitting in-doors with a roof above us? And “rags”?—but I forgot. You can’t see my robes either.’ The rain shone on her cheeks as she spoke.
If that wise Greek who is to read this book doubts that this turned my mind right round, let him ask his mother or wife. The moment I saw her, my child whom I had cared for all her life, sitting there in the rain as if it meant no more to her than it does to cattle, the notion that her palace and her god could be anything but madness was at once unbelievable. All those wilder misgivings, all the fluttering to and fro between two opinions, was (for that time) quite over. I saw in a flash that I must choose one opinion or the other; and in the same flash knew which I had chosen.
‘Psyche,’ I said (and my voice had changed). ‘This is sheer raving. You can’t stay here. Winter’ll be on us soon. It’ll kill you.’
‘I cannot leave my home, Maia.’
‘Home! There’s no home here. Get up. Here—under my cloak.’
She shook her head, a little wearily.
‘It’s no use, Maia,’ she said. ‘I see it and you don’t. Who’s to judge between us?’
‘I’ll call Bardia.’
‘I’m not allowed to let him in. And he wouldn’t come.’
That, I knew, was true.
‘Get up, girl,’ I said. ‘Do you hear me? Do as you’re told. Psyche, you never disobeyed me before.’
She looked up (wetter every moment) and said, very tender in voice but hard as a stone in her determination, ‘Dear Maia, I am a wife now. It’s no longer you that I must obey.’
I learned then how one can hate those one loves. My fingers were round her wrist in an instant, my other hand on her upper arm. We were struggling.
‘You shall come,’ I panted. ‘We’ll force you away—hide you somewhere—Bardia has a wife, I believe—lock you up—his house—bring you to your senses.’
It was useless. She was far stronger than I. (‘Of course,’ I thought, ‘they say mad people have double strength.’) We left marks on one another’s skin. There was a thick, tangled sort of wrestling. Then we were apart again; she staring with reproach and wonder, I weeping (as I had wept at her prison door), utterly broken with shame and despair. The rain had stopped. It had, I suppose, done all the gods wanted.
And now there was nothing at all left that I could do.
Psyche, as always, recovered herself first. She laid her hand—there was a smear of blood on it; was it possible I could have scratched her?—across my shoulder.
‘Dear Maia,’ she said, ‘you have very seldom been angry with me in all the years I can remember. Do not begin now. Look, the shadows have already crept nearly all the way across the courtyard. I had hoped that before this we should have feasted together and been merry. But, there—you would have tasted only berries and cold water. Bread and onions with Bardia will be more comfort to you. But I must send you away before the sun sets. I promised that I would.’
‘Are you sending me away forever, Psyche? And with nothing?’
‘Nothing, Orual, but a bidding to come again as soon as you can. I’ll work for you here. There must be some way. And then—oh, Maia—then we shall meet here again with no cloud between us. But now you must go.’
What could I do but obey her? In body she was stronger than I; her mind I could not reach. She was already leading me back to the river, back through the desolate valley she called her palace. The valley looked hideous to me now. There was a chill in the air. Sunset flamed up behind the black mass of the
saddle.
She clung to me at the very edge of the water. ‘You will come back soon, soon?’ she said.
‘If I can, Psyche. You know how it is in our house.’
‘I think,’ said she, ‘the King will not be much hindrance to you in the next few days. Now, there’s no more time. Kiss me again. Dear Maia. And now, lean on my hand. Feel for the flat stone with your foot.’
Again I endured the sword-cut of the icy water. From this side I looked back.
‘Psyche, Psyche,’ I broke out. ‘There’s still time. Come with me. Anywhere—I’ll smuggle you out of Glome—we’ll go for beggarwomen all over the world—or you can go to Bardia’s house—anywhere, anything you like.’
She shook her head. ‘How could I?’ she said. ‘I’m not my own. You forget, sister, that I’m a wife. Yet always yours too. Oh if you knew, you’d be happy. Orual, don’t look so sad. All will be well; all will be better than you can dream of. Come again soon. Farewell for a little.’
She went away from me into her terrible valley, and out of sight finally among the trees. It was already deep twilight on my side of the river, close in under the shadow of the saddle.
‘Bardia,’ I called. ‘Bardia, where are you?’
XII
Bardia, a grey shape in the twilight, came towards me.
‘You have left the Blessed?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said I. I could not talk to him about it, I thought.
‘Then we must speak of how to spend our night. We’d never find a way for the horse up to the saddle now, and if we did, we’d have to go down again beyond the Tree into the other valley. We couldn’t sleep on the saddle itself—too much wind. It’ll be cold enough here, where we’re sheltered, in an hour or so. I fear we must lie here. Not where a man’d choose; too near the gods.’
‘What does it matter?’ said I. ‘It will do as well as anywhere else.’
‘Then come with me, Lady. I’ve gathered a few sticks.’
I followed him; and in that silence (there was nothing now but the chattering of the stream, and it seemed louder than ever) we could hear, long before we came to the horse, the sound of the grass torn up by his teeth.
A man and a soldier is a wonderful creature. Bardia had chosen a place where the bank was steepest, and two rocks close together made the next best thing to a cave. The sticks were all laid and the fire alight, though still sputtering from the late rain. And he brought out of the saddle-bags things better than bread and onions; even a flask of wine. I was still a girl (which in many matters is the same thing as a fool) and it seemed to me shameful that, in all my sorrow and care, I was so eager for the food when it came. I never tasted better. And that meal in the firelight (which had made all the rest of the world a mere darkness as soon as it blazed up) seemed to me very sweet and home-like; mortal food and warmth for mortal limbs and bellies, no need (for a space) to think of gods and riddles and wonders.
When we had ended Bardia said, somewhat shamefacedly, ‘Lady, you’re not used to lying in the open and you might be cruelly chilled before day. So I’ll make so free—for I’m no more to you, Lady, than one of your father’s big dogs—as to say we’d best lie close, back to back, the way men do in the wars. And both cloaks over us.’
I said yes to that, and indeed no woman in the world has so little reason as I to be chary in such matters. Yet it surprised me that he should have said it; for I did not yet know that, if you are ugly enough, all men (unless they hate you deeply) soon give up thinking of you as a woman at all.
Bardia rested as soldiers do; dead asleep in two breaths but ready (I have seen him tested since) to be wide awake in one if need were. I think I never slept at all. First there was the hardness and slope of the ground, and after that the cold. And besides these, fast and whirling thoughts, wakeful as a madman’s: about Psyche and my hard riddle, and also of another thing.
At last the cold grew so bitter that I slipped from under the cloak (its outer side was wet with dew by now) and began walking to and fro. And now, let that wise Greek whom I look to as my reader and the judge of my cause, mark well what followed.
It was already twilight and there was much mist in the valley. The pools of the river as I went down to it to drink (for I was thirsty as well as cold) seemed to be dark holes in the greyness. And I got my drink, ice-cold, and I thought it steadied my mind. But would a river flowing in the gods’ secret valley do that, or the clean contrary? This is another of the things to be guessed. For when I lifted my head and looked once more into the mist across the water, I saw that which brought my heart into my throat. There stood the palace, grey—as all things were grey in that hour and place—but solid and motionless, wall within wall, pillar and arch and architrave, acres of it, a labyrinthine beauty. As she had said, it was like no house ever seen in our land or age. Pinnacles and buttresses leaped up—no memories of mine, you would think, could help me to imagine them—unbelievably tall and slender, pointed and prickly as if stone were shooting out into branch and flower. No light showed from any window. It was a house asleep. And somewhere within it, asleep also, someone or something—how holy, or horrible, or beautiful or strange?—with Psyche in its arms. And I, what had I done and said? What would it do to me for my blasphemies and unbelievings? I never doubted that I must now cross the river, or try to cross it, even if it should drown me. I must lie on the steps at the great gate of that house and make my petition. I must ask forgiveness of Psyche as well as of the god. I had dared to scold her (dared, what was worse, to try to comfort her as a child) but all the time she was far above me; herself now hardly mortal. . . . if what I saw was real. I was in great fear. Perhaps it was not real. I looked and looked to see if it would not fade or change. Then as I rose (for all this time I was still kneeling where I had drunk), almost before I stood on my feet, the whole thing was vanished. There was a tiny space of time in which I thought I could see how some swirlings of the mist had looked, for the moment, like towers and walls. But very soon, no likeness at all. I was staring simply into fog, and my eyes smarting with it.
And now, you who read, give judgement. That moment when I either saw or thought I saw the House—does it tell against the gods or against me? Would they (if they answered) make it a part of their defence? Say it was a sign, a hint, beckoning me to answer the riddle one way rather than the other? I’ll not grant them that. What is the use of a sign which is itself only another riddle? It might—I’ll allow so much—it might have been a true seeing; the cloud over my mortal eyes may have been lifted for a moment. It might not; what would be easier than for one distraught and not, maybe, so fully waking as she seemed, gazing at a mist, in a half light, to fancy what had filled her thoughts for so many hours? What easier, even, than for the gods themselves to send the whole ferly for a mockery? Either way, there’s divine mockery in it. They set the riddle and then allow a seeming that can’t be tested and can only quicken and thicken the tormenting whirlpool of your guess-work. If they had an honest intention to guide us, why is their guidance not plain? Psyche could speak plain when she was three; do you tell me the gods have not yet come so far?
When I came back to Bardia he was just awake. I did not tell him what I had seen; until I wrote it in this book, I have never told it to anyone.
Our journey down was comfortless, for there was no sun and the wind was always in our faces, with scudding showers at times. I, sitting behind Bardia, got less of it than he.
We halted somewhere about noon, under the lee of a small wood, to eat what was left of our food. Of course my riddle had been working in my mind all morning, and it was there, out of the wind for a little and somewhat warmer (was Psyche warm? and worse weather soon to come) that I made up my mind to tell him the whole story; always excepting that moment when I looked into the mist. I knew he was an honest man, and secret, and (in his own way) wise.
He listened to it all very diligently but said nothing when I had ended. I had to draw his answer out of him.
‘How do you
read it all, Bardia?’
‘Lady,’ said he, ‘it’s not my way to say more than I can help of gods and divine matters. I’m not impious. I wouldn’t eat with my left hand, or lie with my wife when the moon’s full, or slit open a pigeon to clean it with an iron knife, or do anything else that’s unchancy and profane, even if the King himself were to bid me. And as for sacrifices, I’ve always done all that can be expected of a man on my pay. But for anything more—I think the less Bardia meddles with the gods, the less they’ll meddle with Bardia.’
But I was determined to have his counsel.
‘Bardia,’ I said, ‘do you think my sister is mad?’
‘Look, Lady,’ he answered, ‘there at your very first word you say what’s better unsaid. Mad? The Blessed—mad? Moreover, we’ve seen her and anyone could tell she was in her right mind.’
‘Then you think there really was a palace in the valley though I couldn’t see it?’
‘I don’t well know what’s really, when it comes to houses of gods.’
‘And what of this lover who comes to her in the dark?’
‘I say nothing about him.’
‘Oh, Bardia—and among the spears men say you’re the bravest! Are you afraid even to whisper your thought to me? I am in desperate need of counsel.’
‘Counsel about what, Lady? What is there to do?’
‘How do you read this riddle? Does anyone really come to her?’
‘She says so, Lady. Who am I to give the Blessed One the lie?’
‘Who is he?’
‘She knows that best.’
‘She knows nothing. She confesses she has never seen him. Bardia, what kind of a lover must this be who forbids his bride to see his face?’
Bardia was silent. He had a pebble between his thumb and forefinger and was drawing little scratches in the earth.
‘Well?’ said I.
‘There doesn’t seem to be much of a riddle about it,’ he said at last.