by Mervyn Peake
It was the sound of these six voices that the man among men heard and he cried out at the thought of action. But it was too soon, for the only sound the bearers could hear was the cracking dry undergrowth and an expletive of rage when an overhanging branch snapped back into an eye or an arm or a chest of a fellow soldier.
But as men digging a tunnel for years from opposing directions know that at some time they will meet, so with the same intensity of feeling did the seven men concerned in this rescue operation know that the light would glimmer in the darkness on the unknown wanderer and their own commanding officer.
As the time of fusion came there was no excitement, no sense of achievement, just ennui that there was only a vagrant and his dog as reward. Nevertheless, the stern voice of command acted upon the four stretcher-bearers and their two puerile leaders with the intensity of a rainstorm after a month of drought. Any inebriation they might have felt was quickly dispelled, and at the sound of ‘Well, come on then, look to it, you curs’ they ran to attention, as though being chased by an infuriated cockerel.
The two young officers held the flares which lit up Titus’s body, and the stretcher-bearers laid the roughly made haven on the ground by the exhausted man. Dog whined but seemed to sense that there was no harm intended at that moment. Orders were issued to deal gently but expediently with the body of the exhausted man and he was lifted with rigid care on to the roughly made bed by the four young recruits who had no knowledge of the gentle arts and displayed very little consideration for the wellbeing of the stricken and foreign wanderer.
By dint of youth and strength they lifted him on to the stretcher, and a sigh that would have shattered more sensitive mortals vibrated against the undergrowth. The man among men raised his voice for the stretcher party to advance, and Dog yelped in thanksgiving for his master’s deliverance.
The flares were raised overhead and an uncanny light led the procession onwards and away and back. The return journey was slow and stumbling, interspersed by crude expletives, while Dog faithfully brought up the rear.
17
Back at Camp
Dawn was breaking as the party entered the clearing. The flares had been extinguished, as nature was well enough equipped to throw a dramatic light on the characters in the play. The players acted the parts assigned to them despite the almost unbearable fatigue felt. First their duty was to lay the foreigner in a bivouac and cover him with rugs, and let him sleep away the past and the present, until his stirring would lead him into a future. Dog lay exhausted at his feet.
The officer commanding had plans for this unknown captive. Titus knew nothing of these plans, but he was, as he hovered between dream and reality, tiring of forever being rescued, forever owing his being to others. He did not count Dog, for he was on the same side. He heard voices that spoke a language he could not fathom, but he was becoming used to belonging nowhere. ‘This is self-imposed,’ he thought hazily. ‘It always has been. I want no one. I need no one, and I shall neither give nor take, except when the giving and the taking are for mutual self-satisfaction. Why should I not leave Dog here, as I have wanted to leave him before in other places. Somewhere within me there must be a chink of what others might call humanity, or love or – or – or,’ and he sank again, dreaming of a world where he was beholden to no one, and where his physical strength was no longer warped by hunger and cold.
Titus awoke one morning with the eyes of a stranger upon him. Cold and hard eyes, small like a rhinoceros in a face of crinkled grey leather, that were so vicious and intelligent that the hardness Titus had thought he possessed evaporated as though it had never existed, and he put out his hand for comfort to touch Dog.
Words as harsh as the eyes were spat at him, then a gesture he interpreted as ‘Get up’, for they were followed by the unceremonious peeling of the bed coverings. The chill of contempt hit him as hard as the chill of the day, as his body lay semi-nude and defenceless in front of the iced-leather face. He made to cover himself, as had the many girls in the past covered their breasts in front of him. Fleetingly Titus understood that what he had always thought of as a coy and provocative gesture in them was actually a wish to belong to themselves, until they succumbed to a sensation of which they were no longer mistress.
He felt unclean and depraved and, as his temper rose, so did he attempt to rise and pull back the coverings, which the creature had wrested from the bed. Dog crouched, awaiting a word, but infected also by the tension that warped the air. A thin laugh, like the scraping of chalk on a blackboard, reached Titus and fed his irrational hatred towards the unpleasant character who looked down upon him.
Titus’s barely concealed arrogance broke through and he rose, defying his nakedness and his weakness, and leaned towards the malevolent eyes, hitting the leather face with a powerless fist, exhausting the small reserve of energy that he had been hoarding. He fell back, drained by the unexpected effort.
Titus knew what he had done was foolish, without stratagem and something for which he would certainly pay – but in what way?
Night came and the sounds of night with it. The human sounds of male voices, some raucous, some raised above the others in a rich baritone or a bass so deep that it all but merged with the darkness. Firelight flickered and the smell of roasting meat filled Titus with a hunger that betokened his early return to health.
He had been fed and cared for, and whereas before he had wished to recompense his saviours for their charity, he now wished to escape from what he feared might lead to an intrusion on his liberty. For he knew that he was in a military camp and he had a suspicion that he was to be used in some plot as yet to be revealed.
He did not wish it to be known that his strength was returning, yet his hunger became unbearable as it rampaged through his body, and the one and only thought in his mind was how it could be assuaged. It was too dangerous to show himself, but more than he could bear to stay confined and inert.
His problem was resolved more quickly than he might have hoped. ‘Old Rhino Eyes’, as Titus called him to himself, appeared with no ceremony and raised his voice to two figures outside who were waiting for a command, which was given to them by the peremptory clapping of two hands, as dry and hard as inflammable tinder.
The whiffs of roast meat glided in and through and over Titus, so that his mouth almost filled with its imaginary juices, and it took a self-control he hardly knew he possessed not to dribble the overflow down his beard, which had grown during his delirium.
A table was brought and laid by two men dressed in white, and a chair was placed on either side of the table. A gown was given to Titus of an ordinary dark brown wool and Old Rhino Eyes with mock bows and courtesy indicated that Titus should robe himself and be seated. With difficulty he pulled on the robe and with as little loss of dignity as possible he put his unused limbs to work. He felt the mean little eyes on his every movement, and the dilemma of wanting to appear both weaker than he felt and yet strong enough to eat was rather more than his intellectual resources could cope with. However he resolved it, the eyes were X-raying him whether he liked it or not, so that he decided to empty his mind, in order that it should not give him away in any degree.
Titus sat with relief on the chair and recoiled at the hospitality he was about to receive from one whom he had so recently but ineffectually struck.
One of the men dressed in white appeared, carrying a plate and a covered dish, which he placed on the table in front of Titus, who noticed that despite the two chairs there was only one place laid for eating. He immediately felt at a disadvantage – eating alone, under scrutiny, nullified the pangs of hunger that had recently surged through him. The distant past of his childhood, where ornate, almost architectural meals had been served and left to crumble untasted, flitted across his mind and then the sordid and mean meals that he had scrounged in his journeyings over the past ten years superimposed themselves, and he felt that he no longer wished to eat and give away that primitive part of his being to Rhino Eyes. He rememb
ered, with disgust, a hyena he had seen fighting one of its own kind over the membrane of a newly born zebra, too frail to get away, which they had torn into, in all its bright pink rubberiness, and the unholy sound of their glutinous chewing.
‘Eat.’ His host appeared to gesture, as the lid of the dish was lifted by one of the white-robed men. Dog lay on the ground by Titus and, following his master’s restraint, lifted only his eyes to watch. Titus indicated that his canine companion should also be fed and with a clap of his hands the rhino-eyed autocrat ordered that this should be done. A plate was put in front of Dog, but he made no movement until Titus, with a supercilious gesture belying his hunger, lifted a fork and toyed with what he imagined to be a most tender suckling pig; then Dog, with his muzzle, almost like an echo, played with the food on his plate, which was of the same quality as his master’s.
This pantomime began to annoy the man, who sat opposite Titus, awaiting the weakness of his captive guest. Impatiently he urged him to eat. He plainly wished to see Titus in a subservient position, and when Titus merely played with the food in front of him, the creature indicated that there would be no more hospitality, the plates were removed and he left the table imperiously, followed by the two men in white.
Titus, almost weaker than before he came to table, rose and practically fell, his head dizzy with hunger and drowsiness, yet he felt that he had scored a victory, but how it could be used he was uncertain. Still, as he limped his way back to his bed, he knew he must plan to escape the servitude he felt was being prepared for him.
18
Plans of Escape
Later that night the fitful sleep, compounded of gnawing hunger and a dizziness both spiritual and temporal that had enveloped Titus and to a lesser degree Dog, was gently interrupted by the faintest sound. It was a cold night, a supernatural ice immobilised Titus. At the slight movement of the flap of the tent the ice melted within him, and his stomach muscles tautened and he moved one leg and then the other. A hand feeling for the opening of the tent, hardly to be seen in the darkness, groped tentatively and silently. Titus felt the soft paw of comfort on his arm, it was a communication that lessened his fear. No time for theory, no time for introspection; action was the only antidote to thought. Now was the time for action, if only the body’s response was capable of smothering the traitor in his brain.
The flap of the tent opened more widely, and silently a form made itself felt, slithering like a grass snake along the ground until Titus was aware of the body beside his trestle bed. He knew that he had no friends in this camp and that there was no means of verbal communication. Who could it be? No enemy would come with such silence. Could it be one of the two white-clothed servitors who had placed food in front of him? They had seemed without character or personality – only ciphers to do what they were told by the imperious Rhino Eyes. Perhaps it was a look of barely perceptible compassion, rather than indifference, which one of them had cast at him as he had taken away the plate of food?
A hand grasped his hand as though for reassurance. It touched his face and traced the nose and mouth and chin as a blind man learns a face. Then Titus felt his hand being lifted and his fingers being led over the contours of the head and features belonging to the exploring hand, and as he touched the mouth, he felt the lips smile, not in hatred but in friendship, and within a moment the hand had gone, and all that belonged to it had gone, and Titus was left not knowing if he had dreamed the sensation or sensed a dream. He must have slept again, and awakened when the light began to filter through the tent.
As he lay waking, his foot moved and a faint sound of an object falling to the ground alerted him, and he turned his head to follow the sound. Wrapped in a dock leaf was what appeared to be a knife.
* * * * *
FOR THE NEXT week, as Titus gathered strength, there were no visitations from anyone, except for two plates of rudimentary food to be placed outside the tent three times a day, then removed with as little ceremony.
Titus’s plans to leave were progressing as his health improved but he had need of an ally to help him translate his thoughts into deeds. Dog might be a hindrance to him, he thought. He needed someone who knew the surrounding terrain and despite the fact that no force had been used on him, he was aware that he was a prisoner in all but name. Where was that man who had ventured so stealthily into his tent several nights earlier? Titus could not know that he was also a captive, and that when the next chance arose the man would come, also with hopes of escape. Day and night there was activity, which through lack of knowledge of the language Titus could only guess at. But that it was of a martial and aggressive nature there could be no doubt. The harsh voice of command must sound the same in any language, and the regimentation of men to whatever creed or philosophy, as demeaning to the individual spirit. There was no sound of firearms, but the sense of an oppressive mastermind at work lay heavily on him.
During the days when his strength had returned, Titus walked outside his tent. It seemed to be removed from the main area of the bivouacs, as though to mark it out and perhaps prevent any attempt at escape. There was only one larger tent close to his, and on his excursions he was bidden what he took to be a ‘good morning’ by Rhino Eyes, who stood at the opening flap of this tent and bowed in a sardonic gesture of respect. He realised that he was to be used as a decoy, but for what he did not know. By whom he was fairly sure. Titus knew that to circumvent this villain would take more knowledge, more cunning and more strength than he possessed.
The days were interminable and the nights scarcely less so. Each night at dusk, when the fires lit up the tent, the sense of isolation became intolerable. The sounds of men talking together, laughing and singing, interspersed with altercations between those who had imbibed too much liquor had a bonhomie that Titus both despised yet sought. Each night he thought that he would join the conviviality. Each night he argued against it, talking to his only companion, Dog.
One night there was an unnatural silence, with no firelight to lighten the gloom. His plate of food was left as usual outside his tent, but he had become morose and even the thought of food became obnoxious. On lifting the flap of the tent to remove the plate he saw beside it a flagon of red liquid. The idea of drink, which would perhaps dilute his weariness of soul, his sense of boredom, lifted his sense of fruitlessness. His sleeplessness might be assuaged by a flagon of wine.
‘Dog, I shall put myself to sleep, despite the fact that I shall have to wake again, but I long for annihilation if only for a night.’
He took his plate and put it aside, and as he lay on his bed and held the flagon to his lips to fulfil this wish, he was aware of a movement, a sound, a feeling that he was no longer alone. By the pricking of Dog’s ears he knew this to be so.
19
Escape
As Titus lifted the wine to swallow at a gulp as much of it as possible, the flagon was knocked out of his hand with a complete lack of ceremony and it was not until he found himself lying flat on his back, wine splashed about him with the profligacy of blood, that he connected the sensation of another being, close to him, with the unexpected overthrow of his wine, his road to Lethe.
The face that looked at him from the ground by his bed was the one he had been hoping would reappear and, as their eyes met, a terrible yearning for his distant past, the true love that he had abandoned, almost suffocated Titus, until he remembered that he was living here and now, and that there was a great problem to be overcome.
The eyes were close together, that much he could vaguely distinguish. Their reflection of earlier eyes set close together discomforted him, until a humorous intelligence came into them, and he perceived gestures in the gloom. A pantomime was being enacted. Hands criss-crossed at speed in front of his face, then a falling back into a deep sleep, after the mimed quaffing of the contents of the flagon, and the figure lay prone on the ground as if dead.
Titus understood from this charade that the wine had indeed been drugged and he understood at the same time the re
ason why. The silence that reigned around him was the silence of an empty camp. Surely now was the time to take his leave of the place, but he did not believe that Rhino Eyes would have left the way so clear for him to escape, even if he had taken the drink that was to have immobilised him.
The figure in the tent stood up, and Titus recognised one of the white-robed men who had put food in front of him and whose eyes had registered the minimum of compassion. It was also he who had paid the silent visitation to his tent. But why? Was he also a captive? Useless to ask, as there was no common tongue, only the language of the hands, the eyes, the body.
Titus stood up and, for the first time since he had been brought to the tent, felt the potential strength of his twenty-six years. His muscles were slack from lack of use, but he felt an exhilaration that had been sadly absent over the last months, an urge for action, to be master of his own fate.
With a gesture that signified haste, speed-flight, the man beckoned to Titus and Dog to follow him. Titus feared there was danger and that he might be following him into a wily trap. But there was something in the man’s face which belied suspicion. He pushed the sleeve of his right arm up to his elbow, and deeply branded on the inside Titus saw a series of numbers and two letters. Was this a symbol of servitude? It was no good to stand asking questions that could not be answered, and Titus decided to follow. He had no possessions to hamper his departure, no love to leave, nothing familiar that would torment his going. He picked up the knife the man had left and stepped out into the dawning light, followed by Dog.
There was an uncanny silence, such as is felt in oppressive heat, when the sky darkens and a storm is awaited. No sounds of birds, or humans, no wind, no rain, no thing, nothing.