Falls the Shadow
Page 9
The silence gradually became oppressive. After the years of exposure to noise pollution he had believed that he loved silence, that it was a treasure or a gift from another age. He had longed for the mute evenings that his solitary holidays brought-dumb among the deep hills. In a world of total comfort even pain is welcome.
But he could not have foreseen this heavy, dark, brooding, total silence. It was not, of course, pure silence. The sea and wind and bird-calls comprised a constant background, there was his breathing and the crack of burning driftwood. But it was silence, human silence.
He didn't notice at first, caught in his hand-spun web of work. There had been so much to do in so little time. The kitchen-garden, the boat, the arranging of provisions, and, perhaps most tiring and irksome of all, the financial dealings, the endless tax-forms and letters from the bank, a seemingly endless avalanche of paperwork. He was not to forget that he was a citizen, that his name and number had been noted down and stored. He could never escape his fact of life.
The difficult times began to ease as he quickly adapted to his new life. He was a large, smooth moving man, created for a life of effortless labour, and he soon mastered his new environment. Fetching water, rowing, cooking, feeding the chickens, or occasionally collecting birds' eggs, he found that after a few irritating and messy attempts he was able to perform all his tasks with surprising simplicity and agility. After all, wasn't he born to this indirectly? Like an addict he hadn't noticed the build-up of the drug. Silence entered him in small doses, gradually filling him until its presence could be almost physically felt. He couldn't allow himself to talk, that was too acquainted with the insane, but he could swear if things went wrong, or shout an exclamation of triumph when he netted a lobster (he couldn't bring himself to kill them, he exchanged them for bread with the farmer. Side-stepping guilt). But most of all he could sing. Fishing or searching for driftwood, repairing the boat or simply sitting by the fire at night he could sing, softly, sweetly, loudly, madly, songs of love and pain and stupidity and humour, humming when he forgot or never knew the words, tapping his hands on the table or keeping time with his oars, singing out of necessity and fear. Fear of the silence which crushes a man. Fear of the muteness that tells you that you are alone, unhearing and unheard.