by Ann
What did that mean? I hadn’t the slightest idea. I was a spoilt, demanding child whom a too-indulgent great-grandfather had perhaps wanted to convert to patience and gentleness by lectures on moral philosophy. But he had reasoned through the use of symbols which remained a mystery to the child. Still, it was that venerable old man that I thought of that day, and seeing the chameleon take on the colour of my cloth, I not only decided not to look back but also to adapt myself to the bush, to understand its language, to bow to its laws, without, however, forgetting that I was a human being, the only creature who would not be forgiven voluntary subservience. I was born to grow big and to live even beyond death…
A small noise startled me; I did not pay any heed and continued making my way through the thorns that tore my cloth. A long snake carelessly passed between my legs, a boa rolled itself around a tree towards which I was heading. I was unafraid, beyond caring. My only concern was to discover the source of the river. I had met the chameleon that perhaps still retained the colour of my garment in memory of our chance encounter or had swapped it for that of some of the distinctly green or red leaves I remembered seeing.
From among creepers and thorns I emerged into another clearing. In its immobility, the canopy of leaves above my head sealed off the place in tragic solitude. I felt the void within me as if I were nothing thenceforth but a wretched carcass draped with black skin. At that moment, the skeleton appeared a few steps away from me, wrapped in its big white lappa which covered its head. I felt no emotion, or more precisely, I was not afraid since I considered it as something I was used to. Still, I rubbed my eyes as if to rid myself of an optical illusion, to make sure of what I was seeing. It drew closer; I did not rush towards it as in our first encounter, for I had to preserve my dignity. In my view, it represented nothing. It was nothingness in motion, and I was a man. This certainty, due to the realization of the difference between us, fortified me not with courage – that I didn’t care about – but with cockiness, and I saw my body rising to its level.
This was not the time for any more concessions. I felt that the bush was not supposed to be the abode of the dead but of the living. Wasn’t I one of them? We converged as on a one-way track where no provision has been made for people to pass one another. I did nothing to let it pass when we were face to face. Then it stretched out its hand to me. At that moment I would have liked to cross my arms, to sport a scornful countenance since last time it too had snubbed me; but I decided to let bygones be bygones and gathered its bony hand in mine. Instead of forcing me to retrace my steps it did the opposite, still holding my hand. I thus followed it, eager to discover where it was taking me.
We wended our way side by side without my feeling the slightest apprehension. After all, what was there to be afraid of? Holding in my hand the hand of a human skeleton? Human. That was just the word I needed. Was I not with something human? Was I not sure now that my first encounter was not simply the effect of a delusion? No, really, I was no longer afraid. I was eight years old when my grandmother and great-grandfather stopped living. I remember having cried a great deal by their bodies, seated beside the mortal remains of these old people in their barely gnarled height during my vigil, despite my parents’ vain efforts to spare me what they called too violent shocks. Yes, I still remember: I hurled myself on my grandmother when they wanted to put her in the coffin; I took her hand and squeezed it very hard so as to communicate all my warmth to her. O the piercing coldness she left in my hands and which is still there, evermore! It was her that I felt again all along, while the skeleton kept my hand in its own. It did not hold it in a tight grip, did not apply any pressure, and we just wandered along like two friends.
Still, I did not forget that I was a man, a human being, a child barely twelve years old, while it was a skeleton. Had it been a man or a woman? I never found out. Besides, this was of no importance. With wide open eyes I stared at the bush in front of me. Not a single time did it occur to me to have to look at my fellow-traveler. And why should I have looked at its skeletal visage since I was feeling its hand in mine? Had it suddenly vanished I would most assuredly not have worried about its disappearance but would have continued on my way amidst the trees, the thorns and the beasts. But I have to admit today that I had realized that from the moment we walked together the thorns no longer tore my cloth; everything slipped smoothly off me as it did off the skeleton.
A wild boar and his mate emerging from their lair took to flight on seeing us. My uncle had told me that the bush was not dangerous; all the same, we saw more than one pair of lions and panthers, but they had passed us by with something approaching indifference. To be precise, they had invariably passed on my side; they had all sniffed at me and then walked away in haughty grandeur. Why? I wouldn’t know. I may have appeared vile-smelling and undesirable to them, unless they just happened not to be hungry just then. We had been walking like that for a time that seemed reasonably long to me but I was not tired. I did not feel the slightest fatigue. I paid attention to everything.
Then, to my great surprise, I stopped seeing the bush around me and realized that we were in an underground tunnel hung with tree-roots. The walls were oozing moisture but the ground was dry. The ear perceived the gentle, distant murmur of a stream. I thought of the river while striding along with my strange companion. At certain places the walls of the long gallery through which we were proceeding had been discreetly adorned with symbolic graffiti: snakes biting their own tails; arms cut off and placed on top of each other in the form of an X; sexual organs; copulation scenes; shin-bones; human skulls; horses without heads but galloping at full speed, tails and manes flying in the wind; fire shaped like an open lily blossom flaring from a pit; coffins; people performing a ritual dance; a clumsily drawn rectangle representing a mirror.
We turned to the left and I had the impression that we were changing our direction from north to sunrise. A light entering the place from heaven knows where gently lit up the underground passage sloping downwards in front of me. We walked unceasingly, descending the slope, and arrived at a kind of crypt where human skeletons without the tiniest bone missing were stretched outside by side. My guide stopped in front of one of them, uncovering his cavity-riddled face. I looked straight at him. He bowed slightly to one of the skeletons which sat up, crossed its legs, then its arms; he continued his homage and each one of his fellow-skeletons took the same posture as the preceding one. And I saw seventy-seven skeletons thus sitting up and leaning their backs against the wall of the crypt. Did they want to impress me? I had experienced fear before, but fear held no more meaning for me. I had heard people talk a lot about death, but since the death of my grandparents I no longer feared it. Death had become for me such a familiar companion that I gave it no more thought. But looking at the skeletons attentively, I had a feeling that each one of them represented a human being I had known, and to which I had perhaps been close. It was good to see them again but I had not come here for them.
‘Where is the source of the river?’ I suddenly cried in a tragic voice which struck the walls in a zigzag line, provoking a long and sonorous echo. And again I heard murmurings of the water, then a groan followed by the sound of a torrent rushing away.
The skulls all seemed to have been raised again to look me straight in the face.
‘You see that I have come to visit you without misgivings. I’m not afraid of you because you used to be men; for me you still are and I don’t believe in death!’
I heard my voice re-echo. It ricocheted away from me along the underground passage.
‘Why don’t you answer? Should you really be so useless?’
All I received for an answer was my own voice and its echo which garbled any utterance.
‘You hear me?’
‘You hear me?’
‘– ear me?’
‘– me?’
‘– e?’
‘Why did you bring me here?’
‘– bring me here?’
‘– me he
re?’
‘– ere?’
I looked around me and noticed that my guide had disappeared; maybe he had quietly slipped back to his little niche among his peers. So I thought of setting out on my return journey but as the passage stretched out farther before me, I preferred not to retrace my steps; so I moved forward. Thus I continued marching at a normal walking pace, looking all the while at the walls covered with graffiti fraught with symbolism. Despite my casual and almost leisurely gait I was feeling tired. I later realized that the way was sloping upwards. Moreover, the certainty that I was advancing towards the sun became more and more acute.
As if in a fog I saw a shadow passing before my eyes; then the shadow became a reality: a majestic skeleton without any clothes on, his right hand clutched to his heart and his left holding a shinbone with a skull on top. I stopped short in front of him. He made to let me pass and the moment I was going to continue on my way he slightly stroked my head with the skull resting on the shin-bone. I did not react, did not look back. The light entering the cavern was becoming more and more intense, I breathed in the air charged with a thousand smells from the fields…Abruptly I felt myself carried off into a long sleep and saw myself in a place, the name of which someone seemed to murmur into my ear: ‘Wassaï.’
O Wassaï! Wassaï! Disturbing, exciting paradise of entwined bodies! Here was a pathway divided into five branches, each leading to clearly defined places. On one side of the main path stood a hedge of hibiscus, bougainvillea and Campeachy separating the path from a vast area planted with kola-nut trees dwarfed by iroko and silk-cotton trees. In the hollows of those giant trees nested night birds; their lugubrious shrieks did not frighten me. Wisps of white smoke rose from the foot of the trees. Little did I care about their origin and meaning! Let the sorcerers abandon themselves to their orgies, let them devour the souls of their victims. I was in Wassaï!
On the other side of the road was Wassaï, little house of joy without a keeper.
I entered. Ravishing young beauties with sturdy breasts, black skin, athletic bodies. And their nimble legs with prettily proportioned muscles, readily intertwining, pushed me gently into voluptuous depths. At Wassaï I experienced unforgettable little tremors brought about by girls I did not know, their names have remained unspoken, I’ve forgotten their seductive faces; the form of their lithe and supple bodies remains in my arms, the freshness of their jet-black skin still vibrates through my nerves. In their midst I underwent my sexual initiation till all the flowers of the world blossomed within me, till the hard egg whose unwonted presence I had felt deep within was hatched.
No outburst of rebellious sex will ever surprise me. I have explored all its domains in Wassaï, fearsome black flower slowly unfolding in the deep nights of a dwelling without a master.
When I came to myself, I went my way without slowing down my pace and thus I came out into the open air. Let it be said in passing that I did not for a single moment feel like a prisoner in that underground gallery. But instead of finding myself on even ground, at the edge of the forest as I expected, perhaps because I had scented the wind and the sun, I realized that I was perched high up on a mountainside studded with shrubbery. A little further down, beneath my feet, a spring gushing out from this imposing height I had not known before, flowed into the plain before me with a murmur. And the glittering reflections of lights, a vast imaginary ocean, seemed to undulate on the surface of the stream. I climbed on all fours up to the summit, stood erect and saw the top of the forest covering the villages all around. Far away thin columns of smoke rose above the trees.
Coming from another world I discovered the immensity of space above the earth; then I went down from the mountain as if gently impelled and held back at the same time by a protecting hand. I had not succeeded in seeing what I was searching for: the source of the river. Disappointed, I had to rest content with following the stream which flowed into a natural canal, the banks of which were hemmed in by aquatic plants; and I saw the river again which here to my great surprise almost flowed alongside the railway line. My cloth was in shreds. I followed the railway line and then the usual path to town.
I arrived there at nightfall. In front of the door of my parents’ house I was stunned to see on either side an earthenware pot containing a decoction such as our customs prescribe for funeral ceremonies; I also heard a dirge gently syncopated by calabash rattles. I entered and saw a gathering of sad people. The women, including my mother, had untied their hair as a token of mourning. The people gathered there noticed my presence and started up. Some took to their heels, others, paralysed by fear, just looked at me. I stepped forward to my mother who had been quickly joined by my father.
‘What has happened? Who has died?’
Dead silence.
‘You have to forgive me for leaving without telling you about it.’
‘Where have you come from? Are you dead or are you a living person in our midst?’ my father asked.
‘I’m alive.’
‘What, alive?’ my mother said, weeping.
‘Nobody’s dead. Death doesn’t exist and if it does, no dead man will ever return,’ I replied firmly, but with my most casual expression.
The people had come back, more numerous now than when I had first set foot in the house.
‘Where have you come from?’
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘We thought you were dead.’
‘For the past three days we’ve been sure about it.’
‘The diviners have confirmed it.’
I was somewhat depressed by these comments and asked if the funeral ceremonies had anything to do with me. They said yes.
‘The diviners have all been telling you lies. I went for a walk, and I’ve come back with flesh and blood, body and soul, cured from the fear of death. I apologise for having given you so much worry.’
‘My son, tell me honestly where you have come from,’ my father said.
‘Just from a walk. I didn’t realize that it lasted three days.’
‘What did you eat?’ asked my mother.
‘Nothing.
‘Who did you stay with?’
‘Nobody.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘I’ve nothing to explain.’
‘Why?’
‘Such things can’t be explained. I am alive and life goes on.’
‘Oh, this child!’ my mother murmured.
‘I’m hungry, mother. You can see I’m alive and kicking since I’m hungry and thirsty.’
‘May you never again disappear like that!’
‘I promise, but don’t ever ask me for an explanation’, I said.
And everything was all right again.
How long did this dream last? I shall never know.
The Summer People
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) was an American writer best-known for her story ‘The Lottery’ (1948), although much of her other short fiction is as good or better. Her novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959) is considered one of the most important horror novels of the twentieth century. Her influence can be seen in the work of many fantasists, including Joanna Russ, Kelly Link, and Neil Gaiman. The founding of the Shirley Jackson Awards and publication in 2010 of a collected stories volume by the Library of America has helped to cement her popularity. ‘The Summer People,’ selected for Best American Short Stories in 1951, is a chilling yet subtle tour de force of the weird.
The Allisons’ country cottage, seven miles from the nearest town, was set prettily on a hill; from three sides it looked down on soft trees and grass that seldom, even at midsummer, lay still and dry. On the fourth side was the lake, which touched against the wooden pier the Allisons had to keep repairing, and which looked equally well from the Allisons’ front porch, their side porch or any spot on the wooden staircase leading from the porch down to the water. Although the Allisons loved their summer cottage, looked forward to arriving in the early summer and hated to lea
ve in the fall, they had not troubled themselves to put in any improvements, regarding the cottage itself and the lake as improvement enough for the life left to them. The cottage had no heat, no running water except the precarious supply from the backyard pump and no electricity. For seventeen summers, Janet Allison had cooked on a kerosene stove, heating all their water; Robert Allison had brought buckets full of water daily from the pump and read his paper by kerosene light in the evenings and they had both, sanitary city people, become stolid and matter-of-fact about their backhouse. In the first two years they had gone through all the standard vaudeville and magazine jokes about backhouses and by now, when they no longer had frequent guests to impress, they had subsided to a comfortable security which made the backhouse, as well as the pump and the kerosene, an indefinable asset to their summer life.
In themselves, the Allisons were ordinary people. Mrs. Allison was fifty-eight years old and Mr. Allison sixty; they had seen their children outgrow the summer cottage and go on to families of their own and seashore resorts; their friends were either dead or settled in comfortable year-round houses, their nieces and nephews vague. In the winter they told one another they could stand their New York apartment while waiting for the summer; in the summer they told one another that the winter was well worth while, waiting to get to the country.
Since they were old enough not to be ashamed of regular habits, the Allisons invariably left their summer cottage the Tuesday after Labor Day, and were as invariably sorry when the months of September and early October turned out to be pleasant and almost insufferably barren in the city; each year they recognized that there was nothing to bring them back to New York, but it was not until this year that they overcame their traditional inertia enough to decide to stay at the cottage after Labor Day.