‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Your mother – ’
‘My mother is a wicked woman. She crushed him. He lived no life at all because of her. How he must have thought of you, how he must have loved you all the more because of her.’
‘He was with me for three days,’ she cried. Her voice was trembling. ‘He told me that he loved me more than anything in his life. But she … she would have known. He said it was no use. He said she was too strong. Three days,’ she repeated, and I felt she would have cried if her body was not so dry. ‘For three days only, and we were never lovers …’
‘Never?’ I whispered through my tiny throat.
‘Never.’
By now the moon was up.
The moon was up as we walked beside the sea. It was just clear of the water and, by some trick of refraction or mirage, was huger than it should have been: it hung in the sky like a round, silent, yellow lamp. In its glow we could see the fine debris washed up by the water: tiny shells, sticks, weed, and the transparent bodies of crabs. There were rocks here and there, pushing up out of the sand. To the right the dense wall of vegetation rose in a clear ridge against the sky. If we had turned to look behind us, we might have been able to see the light of her house a little way behind, but before us, other than the swollen moon, there were no lights at all. There was only the dim strip of sand, like a narrow white highway, caught between the land and the sea.
We were walking along the curve of a bay. I could make out, not too far ahead, the jumble of rocks towards which we were headed. She’d pointed them out as we got down to the sand. ‘He loved it there.’ I was as eager as she to reach this site that had so appealed to him, but even I found it difficult to walk in the heavy sand. Beside me, holding my arm with a hard, sore grasp, she staggered and stumbled in her haste. Her breath streamed out on the still air like the note of a whistle.
‘Wouldn’t you like to sit?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t you like a rest?’
‘No,’ she gasped, and didn’t pause. ‘When I was young this was an easy, an easy walk to do.’
And on we walked. We didn’t talk, partly because we were moving and partly because there truly was no more to say. I felt great pity for the thin pale woman at my side, and even greater pity for my quiet father who had loved her all his life and yet had never had the courage to love her properly. The rocks came closer. And, once again, he was with me there: I saw them in my mind’s eye, walking in this way on such a night as this. They were side by side, she clutching to his arm as she was to mine, but for very different reasons. Now and then he would bend his head to hers and they would exchange a few words:
‘I love you,’ said my poor dead father. ‘I wish I could marry you.’
‘Do,’ said the woman, young and bright. ‘Why don’t you do it?’
‘I can’t,’ said he. ‘You don’t understand. There is a force in my life that is stronger than I. I am not brave enough to give up everything for you. She would not, would not let me go. If I had only met you first, before, before …’
So they walked on towards the cool grey rocks through the dark.
We came upon them almost unexpectedly after such a long haul. I raised my eyes to see them in front of me, close, rising from the sand like a crypt. I came to a stop. She had already halted beside me and was looking with tired and frightened eyes at the luminous mass of stone. There was a smell in the air, such as is given off by water that stands still too long. I breathed through my mouth.
‘Is this where – ?’ I began, but fell silent when I saw her face.
‘Let’s sit,’ she said. ‘Shall we watch the moon?’
She took my hand and led me to a small knoll at the edge of the water. We sat down. She was next to me and had not let go of my hand. I looked out over the ploughed surface of the sea. The moon was high now and had shrunk to a more acceptable size.
She was speaking. ‘I remember,’ she said, ‘when I was a girl, I used to hope for nights like these. I didn’t know that they were possible then.’
I listened, but did not reply.
‘Is my house too much for you?’ she said. ‘Is there too much in it? There are people who say it is an overwhelming house. I love the pictures on the walls, the puppets hanging behind the door, the masks in the cupboard, the mess … If you do not like it, I will throw it all away. Do you hear? If you ever leave me I shall empty my house of everything I do not need.’
Her hand, which had been stroking mine through all this, grew more urgent and insistent in its touch. I could think of little other than this soft, appalling caress.
‘I should miss you if you went away,’ she said. ‘I should miss you more than anything. I miss you now. I miss you when I am with you. Can you understand that?’
At this I tried to protest, but my voice was too thick in my mouth. I grabbed her hand in mine to stop her stroking, but she shook it free as if it had no strength. I could only watch her, lame and dumb, as she continued to launch her appeal:
‘Why do you speak so little? You are either too stupid or too wise. I think you are wise, I think you have secrets you know you must not share. You are a silent man. You give no clues. But you have told me that you love me, what bigger secrets can you have? Tell me. I demand to know. Tell me now.’ She tugged my hand.
I shook my head. The tide was coming in; a wavelet hissed across the sand and sank away, leaving only bubbles. I shook my head again.
A silence fell. It was cold out here. The air had lost its warmth and a small breeze was coming in off the sea. Also the smell of stagnant water, trapped somewhere in the rocks, was stronger than ever. ‘Why do you like it here,’ she said, ‘Ivor?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I don’t know. It must be the view.’
‘Do you mind if we go back now? I’m tired.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Let us go back.’
I helped her to her feet. We walked back towards the house in a night that had suddenly grown old. Above the line of the horizon, safe from the bleaching light of the moon, a few scattered stars were burning. I thought of their light, and the distance it had travelled, the time that it had crossed. As we walked without speaking back down the beach, my head was full of visions of her and him and things that had taken place before my life. I saw, once again, my mother as she sat in the wooden straight-backed chair and stared out at the garden.
But that was ridiculous, for it was late and she would have been in bed.
We came to the pathway that led up to her house. I had to help her climb, as she was very tired and the ground was slippery. I wondered how she managed to get up here alone, if she did. She seemed to my eyes far older than when I’d arrived, as if the cells of her body were ageing at terrible speed. Her skin was without colour; it covered her bones like pulp. But I was not repulsed by her. Quite the opposite, in fact: there was in her numb, ancient face a kind of gentleness that made me tender. I touched her with care.
‘Thank you,’ she said as we came out of the trees and onto the grass below her house. ‘You are very kind.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is you who are kind.’
We went in. The hanging lamps continued to burn, flickering now and then, but never going out. She lifted one of them from its hook and held it up. The room was swirling with shadows now, like my mind. I took the lamp from her.
‘Let me do that,’ I said.
I led her by the hand. Holding the lamp above, we moved with slow steps down the long bare corridor, passing the rooms on either side in which she had expended her life. They were empty as vaults. As we went, we came to the other lamps that she had lit and hung before I came. Here I would stop very briefly, just to put out the flame. They gave off a scent of sweet oil and smoke. Darkness followed behind us, lapping through the house. We walked on without fear, following the trail of yellow light to the room at the end.
In it there was a mirror and a large white bed. There was a cupboard. The window had no curtains and gave onto the forest that grew so close about. I turned away from
the sight of tangled trees, of twisted leaves, to her. She was waiting for me, hesitant and uncertain. She seemed about to speak, but her lips were trembling too much.
‘Hush,’ I said. ‘There is nothing to say.’
She nodded at that. But her mouth went on trembling, as if she were cold.
I kissed that mouth to still its fear, and mine. It felt and tasted of nothing, like the lips of a ghost. When I raised my face to look at her, I saw that her eyes were closed, or else they were blank and cold like the eyes of a fish. I stroked her hair.
‘I love you,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Let me take you to bed.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Then I put out the last lamp there was, which I held in my hand. A faint moonlight came through the window like water. It cast the shadow of bars across the bed. I took her hand. In the smell of extinguished fire, I undressed her. Her body did not seem old in the blue dark. Only when she moved, as she did when I helped her onto the bed, could I hear the age of her creaking bones and painful sighs. She lay and waited for me.
She didn’t wait long. But I did pause a moment to think before I performed this final act – perhaps the only act of kindness allowed me in my life. But it was more than that. There was a kind of love in it, and a passion too. It gave her peace, and him. Perhaps it also gave me peace. I cannot say for sure.
Afterwards, as she lay sleeping, I dressed beside the bed. I looked at her one final time. Then I left the room, closing the door behind me. I walked back through the darkened house, passing the lamps that hung like steel fruit from the ceiling. The front door was open and I went through, out onto the cold grass. I stood there for a minute, just to tuck in my shirt and to look for the moon which had already gone. The sky in the east was beginning to go pale, for the world had turned once and the sun had returned. I walked across the grass, leaving footprints in the dew. I reached the path and started down to my car.
I stopped only once on the way down. There was a smell, a weight, you could say, of honeysuckle on the air. It lasted only a moment and I could have been mistaken. I pressed on.
SHADOWS
The two of us are pedalling down the road. The light of the moon makes shadows under the trees, through which we pass, going fast. Robert is a little ahead of me, standing up in his seat. On either side of his bike the dogs are running, Ben and Sheba, I can never tell the difference between them.
It’s lovely to be like this; him and me, with the warm air going over us like hands.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Oh, oh, oh …’
He turns, looking at me over his shoulder. ‘What?’ he calls.
I shake my head at him. He turns away.
As we ride, I can see the round shape of the moon as it appears between the trees. With the angle of the road it’s off to the right, above the line of the slope. The sky around it is pale, as if it’s been scrubbed too long. It hurts to look up.
It’s that moon we’re riding out to see. For two weeks now people have talked about nothing else. ‘The eclipse,’ they say. ‘Are you going to watch the eclipse?’ I didn’t understand at first, but my father explained it to me. ‘The shadow of the earth,’ he says, ‘thrown across the moon.’ It’s awesome to think of that, of the size of some shadows. When people ask me after this, I tell them, ‘Yes,’ I tell them. ‘I’m going to watch the eclipse.’
But this is Robert’s idea. A week ago he said to me, ‘D’you want to go down to the lake on Saturday night? We can watch the eclipse from there.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We can do that.’
So we ride down towards the lake under the moon. On either side the dogs are running, making no sound in the heavy dust, their tongues trailing wetly from the corners of their mouths.
The road is beginning to slope down now as we come near to the lake. The ground on either side becomes higher, so that we’re cycling down between two shoulders of land. The forest is on either side, not moving in the quiet air. It gives off a smell: thick and green. I breathe deeply, and my lungs are full of the raw, hairy scent of the jungle.
We’re moving quite fast on the downhill, so we don’t have to pedal anymore. Ahead of me, I see Robert break from the cut in the road and emerge again into the flat path that runs across the floor of the forest. A moment later I do so too, whizzing into the heavy layers of shadows as if they are solid. The momentum is wonderful, full of danger, as if we’re close to breaking free of gravity. But it only lasts a moment. Then we’re slowing again, dragged back by the even surface of the road and the sand on the wheels.
The turnoff is here. I catch up with Robert and we turn off side by side, pedalling again to keep moving. Ahead of us the surface of the lake is between the trees, stretched out greenly in the dark. The trees thin out, there’s a bare strip along the edge of the water.
We stop here. The path we were riding on goes, straight and even, into the water. That’s because it used to lead somewhere before they flooded the valley to make the lake. They say that under the water there are houses and gardens, standing empty and silent in the currents below. I think of them and shiver. It’s always night down there at the bottom of the lake; the moon never shines.
But we’ve stopped far from where the path disappears. We’re still side by side, straddling the bikes, looking out. The dogs have also stopped, stock-still, as if they can smell something in the air. There’s a faint wind coming in off the water, more of a breeze really. On the far side of the lake we can see the lights of houses. Far off to the right, at the furthest corner of the water, are the lights of my house. I glance towards it and try to imagine them: my father and mother, sitting out on the front veranda, looking across the water to us. But there are no lights where we are.
‘There,’ says Robert.
He’s pointing. I follow his finger and I also see it: the moon, clear of the trees on the other side. It really is huge tonight, as if it’s been swollen with water. If you stare at it for long enough you can make out the craters on its surface, faint and blue, like shadows. Its light comes down softly like rain and I see I was wrong – it makes the water silver, not green.
‘We’ve got a view of it,’ I say.
But Robert is moving away already. ‘Come,’ he says. ‘Let’s make a fire.’
We leave the bikes leaning together against the trunk of a tree and set out to look for firewood. We separate and walk out by ourselves into the forest. But I can still see Robert a little distance away as he wanders around, bending now and then to pick up bits of wood. The dogs are with him. It isn’t dense or overgrown down here. The floor of the forest is smooth. Apart from the sound of our feet and the lapping of the lake, it’s quiet here.
There isn’t much dead wood around. I pick up a few branches, some chunks of log. I carry them down to where the bikes are. Robert has already made one trip here, I see from a small pile of twigs. I don’t much feel like this hunting in the dark, so I delay a while, wiping my hands on my pants. I look out over the water again. I feel so calm and happy as I stand, as if the rest of my life will be made up of evenings like this. I hear Robert’s whistling coming down to me out of the dark behind. It’s a tune I almost recognise. I start to hum along.
As I do I can see Robert in my mind’s eye, the way he must be. When he whistles, small creases appear round his lips. He has a look of severe concentration on his face. The image of him comes often to me in this way, even when I’m alone. Sometimes late at night as I lie trying to sleep, a shadow cast in from outside will move against the wall and then he breaks through me in a pang, quick and deep. We’ve been friends for years now, since I started high school. It’s often as if I have no other friends. He has, though. I see him sometimes with other boys from the school, riding past my house in a swirling khaki pack down to the lake. It hurts me when this happens. I don’t know what they speak about, whether they talk of things that I could understand. I wonder sometimes if they mention me. I wonder if they mock me when I’m not the
re and if Robert laughs at me with the rest of them.
He comes down now, carrying a load of wood in his arms. ‘Is that all?’ he says, looking at what I collected. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, and smile.
He drops his wood along with the rest and turns. He’s grinning at me: a big skew grin, little bits of bark stuck to his hair and the front of his shirt.
‘Do we need any more?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘That should do fine.’
We build a fire. Rather – he builds the fire and I sit against a tree to watch. It always seems to be this way: him doing the work, me watching. But it’s a comfortable arrangement, he doesn’t mind. I like the way he moves. He’s a skinny boy, Robert, his clothes are always slightly loose on him. Now as I watch, my eye is on his hands as they reach for the wood and stack it. His hands are slender and brown. He’s brought a wad of newspaper on his bike. He twists rolls of paper into the openings between the logs.
Like me, the dogs are sitting still and watching. They stare at him with quiet attention, obedient and dumb.
He lights the fire. He holds the burning match and I’m looking for a moment at this white-haired boy with flame in his hand. Then he leans and touches it to the paper. Smoke. He shakes out the match.
The fire burns, the flames go up. In a minute or two there’s a nice blaze going. We’re making our own light to send across the water. I think of my parents on the wooden veranda, looking across to the spark that’s started up in the darkness. They point. ‘There,’ they say. ‘That’s where they are.’ I smile. The fire burns. The flames go up. The heat wraps over my face like a second skin. The dogs get up and move away, back into the dark where they shift restlessly, mewing like kittens.
In a little time the fire burns down to a heap of coals. They glow and pulse, sending up tiny spurts of flame. We only have to throw on a stick now and then. Sitting and staring into the ring of heat, it would be easy to be quiet, but we talk, though our voices are soft.
Small Circle of Beings Page 12