Legenda Maris

by Tanith Lee

  Gregeris says, “A memorable dream.”

  S’what I thought. Course I did. You don’t want to go nuts in my situation, either. They cart you off to the asylum first chance they can get.

  No, I went and scrounged some breakfast at a place I know, well, to be truthful, a garbage-bin I know. Then I went for my usual constitutional round the town. It was by the church I found them.

  “Found what?”

  Ah, what indeed. Sea shells. Beautiful ones, a big white whorled horn that might have come from some fabled beast, and a green one, half transparent, and all these little striped red and coral ones. They were caught in a trail of seaweed up in the ivy on this wall. People passed, and if they looked, they thought they were flowers, I suppose, or a kid’s expensive toy, maybe, thrown up there and lost.

  “Perhaps they were.”

  It didn’t happen again for seven days. I’d forgotten, or pretended I’d forgotten. And once when I went back to that church, the shells were gone. Someone braver or cleverer or more stupid and cowardly than me, had taken them down.

  Anyway, this particular evening, I knew. Knew it was going to be another Night. Another Awake Night. I’ll tell you how I knew. I was at the Café Isabeau, to be honest round the back door, where the big woman sometimes leaves me something, only she hadn’t, but I heard this conversation in the alley over the wall. There’s a young man, and he’s trying to get his girl to go with him into the closed public gardens, under the trees, for the usual reason, and she’s saying maybe she will, maybe she won’t, and then I keep thinking I know her little voice. And then he says to her, all angry, “Oh please yourself, Jitka.”

  And then she says to him, “No, don’t be angry. You know I would, only I think I ought to be home soon. It’s going to be one of those nights when I have that peculiar dream I keep on having.”

  “Come and dream with me,” he romantically burbles and I want to thump him on the head with one of the trash pails to shut him up, but anyway she goes on anyhow, the way a woman does, half the time—if you were to ask me, because they’re so used to men not listening to them.

  “I keep dreaming it,” she says. “Five times last month, and three the month before. I dream I’m walking in the town in my nightclothes.”

  “I’d like to see that!” exclaims big-mouth, but still she goes on.

  “And seven nights ago, at full moon, I dreamed it. And I knew I would, all the evening before, and I know now I will, tonight. I feel sort of excited—here, in my heart.”

  “I feel excited too,” oozed clunk-lips, but she says:

  “You see, the town slips her moorings. She sails away. The town, that is, up as far as King Christen’s Hill. I watched it, I think I did, drifting back, like the shore from a liner. And then we sail through the night and wonderful, wonderful things happen—but I can’t remember what. Only, I have to go home now, you see. To get some sleep before I wake up. Or I’ll be so tired in the morning after the dream.”

  After she stops, he gives her a speech, the predictable one about how there are plenty of more sophisticated girls only too glad to go in the park with him, lining up, they are. Then he walks off, and she sighs, but that’s all.

  By the time I got round into the alley, she was starting to walk away too, but hearing me, she glanced back. It was her all right, even in her smartish costume, with her hair all elaborate, I knew her like one of my own. But she looked startled—no recognition, mind. She didn’t remember meeting me. Instead she speeds up and gets out of the alley quick as she can. I catch up to her on the pavement.

  “What do you want? Go away!”

  “There, there, Jitka. No offence.”

  “How do you know my name? You were spying on me and my young man!”

  Then I realise, a bit late, what I could be letting myself in for, so I just whine has she any loose money she doesn’t want—and she rummages in her purse and flings a couple of coins and gallops away.

  But anyway, now I know tonight is one of those Nights.

  In the end, I climbed over the municipal railings and got into the public gardens myself. There’s an old shed in among the overgrown area that no one bothers with. Lovers avoid it, too; there are big spiders, and even snakes, so I’m told.

  I went to sleep with no trouble. Woke and heard the clock striking in the square, and it was eleven. Then I thought I’d never get off, and if I didn’t I might not Wake at the right time—but next thing I know I am waking up again and now there’s a silence. By which I mean the sort of silence that has a personality of its own.

  Scrambling out of the hut, I stand at the edge of the bushes, and I look straight up. The stars flash bright as the points of gramophone needles, playing the circling record of the world. And now, now I can feel the world rocking. Or, the town, rocking as it rides forward on the swell of the sea. And then I saw this thing. I just stood there and to me, Anton, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw till then. It was like the winter festival at the farm, when I was a child, you know, Yule, when the log is brought in, and I can recall all the candles burning and little silver bells, and a girl dancing, dressed like a fairy. That was magical to me then. But this.

  “What did you see?” Gregeris asked, tightly, almost painfully, coerced into grim fascination.

  It was fish. Yes, fish. But they were in the air. Yes, Anton, I swear to you on my own life.

  They were wonderful fish, too, painted in all these colours, gold and scarlet, and puce, mauve and ice blue, and some of them tiny, like bees, and some large as a cat. I swear, Anton. And they were swimming about, in the air, round the stems of the trees, and through the branches, and all across the open space of the park, about five feet up in the air, or a little lower or higher. And then two or three came up to me. They stared at me with their eyes like orange jewels or green peppermints. They swam round me, and one, one was interested in me, kept rubbing his tail over my cheek or shoulder as he passed, so I put up my hand and stroked him. And, Anton, he was wet, wet and smooth as silk in a bath of rain. So I knew that somehow, now, we weren’t only on the sea, but in the sea, maybe under the sea. Even though I could breathe the air. And I thought, That’s how those shells got stranded up on the church wall.

  Well, I stayed sitting there in the park, watching the fish swimming, sometimes stroking them, all night. And once a shark came by, black as coal. But it didn’t come for me, or hurt the others. Some of them even played round it for a while. No one else came. I thought, Jitka will be sorry to have missed this, and I wondered if I ought to go and find her, I knew she wouldn’t be scared of me now, and find those others I’d seen, the rich man and the two old ducks, and bring them here. But they’d probably seen it before, and anyway, there were other things going on, maybe, they were looking at.

  I suppose I drifted off to sleep again, sitting on the ground. Suddenly I was blinking at a grey fish flying out of a pine tree and it was a pigeon, and the sun was up.

  “What’s that?” said Gregeris abruptly.

  The clock in the square, striking six.

  “I should leave. I have an appointment.” Gregeris didn’t move, except to beckon the waiter. He ordered another brandy, another beer. “Go on.”

  After that Night, I’ve had three others. I’ve always known, either in the afternoon or in the evening, they were coming on. Like you know if you have an illness coming, or someone can feel a storm before it starts. Only not oppressive like that. Like what the girl said, an excitement. Only it’s a sort of cool green echo in your chest. In your guts. It’s like a scent that you love because it reminds you of something almost unbearably happy, only you can’t remember what. It’s like a bitter-sweet nostalgia for a memory you never had.

  Oh, I’ve seen things, these Nights. Can’t recall them all, that’s a fact. But I keep more than the others. They think they dream it, you see, and I know it isn’t a dream. We’re Awake, and God knows there are precious few of us who do come Awake. Most of the town sleeps on, all those houses and flats,
those apartments and corners and cubby-holes, all packed and stacked with sleepers, blind and deaf to it. Those buildings become like graves. But not for us. I’ve only met ten others, there are a few more, I should think. A precious few, like I said.

  Jitka and I danced under the full moon once. Nothing bad. She’s like a daughter to me now. She even calls me Dadda, in her dream. That was the night I saw her. I do remember her. Never forget. Even when I die, I won’t forget her.

  “The woman who was on the plinth,” said Gregeris, “where the statue was taken down?”

  Oh but Anton, she wasn’t a woman.

  “You said ‘She’.”

  So I did. It was the last Wake Night, when I woke up in the square. Something had made me do that, like it always seems to make me choose a different place to sleep, when I sense a night is coming. Full moon, like I said, already in the sky when I bedded down, just over there, under those cut trees that look like balls on sticks.

  And when I woke and stood up, I was so used to it by then, the movement of the town sailing, and the smell of the sea and the wind of our passage—but then the scent of the ocean was stronger than before, and I turned and looked, across the square, to where the plinth still is. It was draped in purple, and it was wet purple, it poured, and ran along the square. It ran towards the sea, but then it vanished and there was just the idea—only the idea, mind—that the pavement might be damp. You see, she’d swum up from the sea, like the fish, through the air which is water those Nights, and she’d had to swim. She couldn’t have walked. She was a mermaid.

  Gregeris considered his drink.

  I won’t even swear to you now, Anton. You won’t believe me. I wouldn’t expect it. It doesn’t matter. Y’see, Anton, truth isn’t killed if you don’t believe in it—that’s just a popular theory put about by the non-believers.

  “A mermaid, you said.”

  A mermaid.

  She was very absolutely white, not dead white, but live white. Moon white. And her body had a sort of faint pale bluish freckling, like the moon does, only she wasn’t harsh, like the moon, but soft and limpid. And her skin melted into the blue-silver scales of her tail. It was a strong tail, and the fork of the fins was strong. Vigorous. Her hair was strong too, it reminded me of the brush of a fox or a weasel or ermine—but it was a pale green-blonde, and it waved and coiled, and moved on its own, or it was stirring in the breeze-currents of the water-air. And it was like currents and breezes itself, a silvery bristly silky fur-wind of hair. Her face though was still, as if it was carved like a beautiful mask, and her great still eyes were night black. She had a coronet. She was naked. She had a woman’s breasts, the nipples water-colour rose like her mouth. But you couldn’t desire her. Well, I couldn’t. She was—like an angel, Anton. You can’t desire an angel. I’ve heard, the old church fathers said the mermaid was supposed to represent lust and fornication. But she wasn’t like that. She was holy.

  The funniest thing is, I looked at her a while and then, as if I’d no need to linger, as if the marvellous was commonplace and easy, I just turned and went off for a stroll. And on the esplanade I met Jitka, and I said, “Did you see the mermaid?” and Jitka said, “Oh yes, I’ve seen her.” It was like being gone to heaven and you say, Have you seen God today, and they answer, But of course, He’s everywhere, here. Then we danced. I don’t know a thing about Jitka, but her father’s dead, I’d take a bet on that. The rich man was a soldier, did I say? The old couple are in the hospital. I don’t know how they get out, but maybe everyone that doesn’t wake up just can’t wake up. And they get strong those Nights, they told me. It’s the cruise, they said, this bracing cruise on this liner that’s sailing to the East, India or China or somesuch. And there’s a little boy I see now and then. And a woman and her sister—

  I do think some of them are beginning to cotton on it’s not a dream. But that doesn’t matter. Nor who we are, we precious few, we’re nothing, there and then. We’re simply The Awake.

  Ercole had ceased to speak. They must have sat speechless, unmoving, Gregeris thought with slight dismay, for ten minutes or more.

  “So you see a mermaid?” Gregeris asked now, businesslike.

  “No. That was the last Night. I saw her that once. I haven’t Woken since. Which means there hasn’t been a Night. I don’t think there has. Because I think, once you start, you go on Waking.”

  “You didn’t speak to the mermaid. Stroke her.”

  “Come on, Anton. I wouldn’t have dared. Would you? It would have been a bloody cheek. I could have dropped dead even, if I touched her. Think of the shock it would be. Like sticking your hand on the sun.”

  “Take off thy shoes from thy feet, this ground is holy.”

  “Yes, exactly that, Anton. You have it. By the way, you know, don’t you, why God says that, in the Bible? It’s to earth you, in the presence of galvanic might. Otherwise you’d go up in smoke.”

  Gregeris rose. “I must get on. I’ll be late for my appointment.” He put another of the cheerful notes on the table. “It was an interesting story. You told it well.”

  The beggar grinned up at him. His face was fat now, bloated by beer and talk, by importance, power. “But where does the town go to at night?” he repeated, “more to the point, why does the town come back at dawn?”

  “Yes, a puzzle. Perhaps inquire, the next time.”

  Gregeris reached the awning’s edge. Instinctively, perhaps, he glanced across the square at the plinth of King Christen’s fallen statue. In his mind’s eye, transparent as a ghost, he visualised the mermaid, reclining in the opal moonlight, relaxed and thoughtful, her living hair and flexing tail.

  It was only as he turned and began to walk quickly inland, that Ercole called after him. “Anton! It’s tonight!”

  The flat-house had been stylish in the 1700’s, he thought, about the time of the heyday of the clock. Now it was grimy, the elegant cornices chipped and cracked and thick with dirt, and a smell of stale cabbage soup on the stairs.

  He rang the bell of her apartment, and Marthe came at once. She confronted him, a thin woman who had been slender and young twelve years ago, her fair hair now too blonde, and mouth dabbed with a fierce red, which had got on to her front teeth.

  “You’re so late. Why are you so late? Was the train delayed? I was worried. I have enough to worry about. I thought you weren’t coming, thought you’d decided to abandon us completely. I suppose that would be more convenient, wouldn’t it? I can’t think why you said you’d come. You could just send me another money order. Or not bother. Why bother? It’s only me, and him. What do we matter? I’ve been just pacing up and down. I kept looking out of the window. I got some ice earlier for the wine but it’s melted. I smoked twenty cigarettes. I can’t afford to do that. You know I can’t.”

  “Good evening, Marthe,” he said, with conscious irony.

  To Gregeris it sounded heavy-handed, unnecessarily arrogant and obtuse. But she crumpled at once. Her face became anxious, pitiable and disgusting. How had it been he had ever—? Even twelve years ago, when she was a girl and he a younger man and a fool.

  “I’m sorry. Forgive me, Anton. It’s my nerves. You know how I get. It was good of you to come.”

  “I’m sorry, too, to be so late. I met an old business acquaintance at the station, a coincidence, a nuisance, an old bore who insisted we have a drink. He kept me talking. And of course, I couldn’t make too much of it, of being here, or anything about you.”

  “No, no, of course.”

  She led him in. The apartment wasn’t so bad, better than her last—or could have been. Everywhere was mess and muddle. The fair-ground knick-knacks, some clothes pushed under a sofa cushion. Stockings hung drying on a string before the open window. The ashtrays were as always. Twenty cigarettes? Surely a hundred at least. But there was the cheap white wine in its bucket of lukewarm water. And she had made her bed. She had said, she gave the bedroom over to the boy.

  “How is Kays?”

  “Oh—you
know. He’s all right. I sent him for some cigarettes. Oh, he wanted to go out anyway. He’ll be back in a minute. But—I know—you don’t like him much.”

  “What nonsense, Marthe. Of course I like him. He’s only a child.”

  Taking him by surprise, as she always did for some reason, when she flared up, she shrilled, “He’s your son, Anton.”

  “I know it, Marthe. Why else am I here?”

  And again, the shallow awful victory of her crumbling face.

  Once he had sat down, on a threadbare seat, the glass of tepid vinegar in his hand, she perched on the arm of the sofa, and they made small talk.

  And why had he come here? The question was perfectly valid. It would have been so much simpler to send her, as she said, a cheque. That too, of course, was draining, annoying. Keeping it quiet was sometimes quite difficult, too. He was generally amazed no one had ever found him out, or perhaps they had and didn’t care. His brief liaison with this woman had lasted all of two weeks. Two months later, when she reappeared, he had known at once. It was damnable. He had taken every precaution he could, to protect both of them from such an accident. He wondered if her pregnancy owed nothing to him at all, he was only a convenient dupe. The story-telling beggar, Ercole, had had him to rights, Gregeris thought, bourgeois politeness and the fear of a sordid little scandal. It was these which had made him set Marthe up in the first flat, made him pay her food bills and her medical expenses. And, once the child was born, had caused him to try to pay her off. But however much he awarded her, in the end, she must always come creeping back to him, pleading penury. Finally he began to pay her a monthly sum. But even that hadn’t been the end of it. Every so often, she would send a frantic letter or telegram—and these, if ignored, had on two occasions persuaded Marthe to appear in person, once with the child, (then a snivelling, snotty eight years old, clinging to her hand), in the doorway of Gregeris’s mother’s house, during her sixtieth birthday dinner.