by Dylan Thomas
‘I prayed to the tree,’ said the child.
‘Always pray to a tree,’ said the gardener, thinking of Calvary and Eden.
‘I pray to the tree every night.’
‘Pray to a tree.’
The wire slid over the teeth.
‘I pray to that tree.’
The wire snapped.
The child was pointing over the glasshouse flowers to the tree that, alone of all the trees in the garden, had no sign of snow.
‘An elder,’ said the gardener, but the child stood up from his box and shouted so loud that the unmended rake fell with a clatter on the floor.
‘The first tree. The first tree you told me of. In the beginning was the tree, you said. I heard you,’ the child shouted.
‘The elder is as good as another,’ said the gardener, lowering his voice to humour the child.
‘The first tree of all,’ said the child in a whisper.
Reassured again by the gardener’s voice, he smiled through the window at the tree, and again the wire crept over the broken rake.
‘God grows in strange trees,’ said the old man. ‘His trees come to rest in strange places.’
As he unfolded the story of the twelve stages of the cross, the tree waved its boughs to the child. An apostle’s voice rose out of the tarred lungs.
So they hoisted him up on a tree, and drove nails through his belly and his feet.
There was the blood of the noon sun on the trunk of the elder, staining the bark.
• • • •
The idiot stood on the Jarvis hills, looking down into the immaculate valley from whose waters and grasses the mists of morning rose and were lost. He saw the dew dissolving, the cattle staring into the stream, and the dark clouds flying away at the rumour of the sun. The sun turned at the edges of the thin and watery sky like a sweet in a glass of water. He was hungry for light as the first and almost invisible rain fell on his lips; he plucked at the grass, and, tasting it, felt it lie green on his tongue. So there was light in his mouth, and light was a sound at his ears, and the whole dominion of light in the valley that had such a curious name. He had known of the Jarvis Hills; their shapes rose over the slopes of the county to be seen for miles around, but no one had told him of the valley lying under the hills. Bethlehem, said the idiot to the valley, turning over the sounds of the word and giving it all the glory of the Welsh morning. He brothered the world around him, sipped at the air, as a child newly born sips and brothers the light. The life of the Jarvis valley, steaming up from the body of the grass and the trees and the long hand of the stream, lent him a new blood. Night had emptied the idiot’s veins, and dawn in the valley filled them again.
‘Bethlehem,’ said the idiot to the valley.
The gardener had no present to give the child, so he took out a key from his pocket and said: ‘This is the key to the tower. On Christmas Eve I will unlock the door for you.’
Before it was dark, he and the child climbed the stairs to the tower, the key turned in the lock, and the door, like the lid of a secret box, opened and let them in. The room was empty. ‘Where are the secrets?’ asked the child, staring up at the matted rafters and into the spider’s corners and along the leaden panes of the window.
‘It is enough that I have given you the key,’ said the gardener, who believed the key of the universe to be hidden in his pocket along with the feathers of birds and the seeds of flowers.
The child began to cry because there were no secrets. Over and over again he explored the empty room, kicking up the dust to look for a colourless trap-door, tapping the unpanelled walls for the hollow voice of a room beyond the tower. He brushed the webs from the window, and looked out through the dust into the snowing Christmas Eve. A world of hills stretched far away into the measured sky, and the tops of hills he had never seen climbed up to meet the falling flakes. Woods and rocks, wide seas of barren land, and a new tide of mountain sky sweeping through the black beeches, lay before him. To the east were the outlines of nameless hill creatures and a den of trees.
‘Who are they? Who are they?’
‘They are the Jarvis hills,’ said the gardener, ‘which have been from the beginning.’
He took the child by the hand and led him away from the window. The key turned in the lock.
That night the child slept well; there was power in snow and darkness; there was unalterable music in the silence of the stars; there was a silence in the hurrying wind. And Bethlehem had been nearer than he expected.
• • • •
On Christmas morning the idiot walked into the garden. His hair was wet and his flaked and ragged shoes were thick with the dirt of the fields. Tired with the long journey from the Jarvis hills, and weak for the want of food, he sat down under the elder-tree where the gardener had rolled a log. Clasping his hands in front of him, he saw the desolation of the flower-beds and the weeds that grew in profusion on the edges of the paths. The tower stood up like a tree of stone and glass over the red eaves. He pulled his coat-collar round his neck as a fresh wind sprang up and struck the tree; he looked down at his hands and saw that they were praying. Then a fear of the garden came over him, the shrubs were his enemies, and the trees that made an avenue down to the gate lifted their arms in horror. The place was too high, peering down on to the tall hills; the place was too low, shivering up at the plumed shoulders of a new mountain. Here the wind was too wild, fuming about the silence, raising a Jewish voice out of the elder boughs; here the silence beat like a human heart. And as he sat under the cruel hills, he heard a voice that was in him cry out: ‘Why did you bring me here?’
He could not tell why he had come; they had told him to come and had guided him, but he did not know who they were. The voice of a people rose out of the garden beds, and rain swooped down from heaven.
‘Let me be,’ said the idiot, and made a little gesture against the sky. There is rain on my face, there is wind on my cheeks. He brothered the rain.
So the child found him under the shelter of the tree, bearing the torture of the weather with a divine patience, letting his long hair blow where it would, with his mouth set in a sad smile.
Who was this stranger? He had fires in his eyes, the flesh of his neck under the gathered coat was bare. Yet he smiled as he sat in his rags under a tree on Christmas Day.
‘Where do you come from?’ asked the child.
‘From the east,’ answered the idiot.
The gardener had not lied, and the secret of the tower was true; this dark and shabby tree, that glistened only in the night, was the first tree of all.
But he asked again:
‘Where do you come from?’
‘From the Jarvis hills.’
‘Stand up against the tree.’
The idiot, still smiling, stood up with his back to the elder.
‘Put out your arms like this.’
The idiot put out his arms.
The child ran as fast as he could to the gardener’s shed, and, returning over the sodden lawns, saw that the idiot had not moved but stood, straight and smiling, with his back to the tree and his arms stretched out.
‘Let me tie your hands.’
The idiot felt the wire that had not mended the rake close round his wrists. It cut into the flesh, and the blood from the cuts fell shining on to the tree.
‘Brother,’ he said. He saw that the child held silver nails in the palm of his hand.
The True Story
The old woman upstairs had been dying since Helen could remember. She had lain like a wax woman in her sheets since Helen was a child coming with her mother to bring fresh fruit and vegetables to the dying. And now Helen was a woman under her apron and print frock and her pale hair was bound in a bunch behind her head. Each morning she got up with the sun, lit the fire, let in the red-eyed cat. She made a pot of tea and, going up to the bedroom at the back of the cottage, bent over the old woman whose unseeing eyes were never closed. Each morning she looked into the hollows of the eyes and
passed her hands over them. But the lids did not move, and she could not tell if the old woman breathed. ‘Eight o’clock, eight o’clock now,’ she said. And at once the eyes smiled. A ragged hand came out from the sheets and stayed there until Helen took it in her padded hand and closed it round the cup. When the cup was empty Helen filled it, and when the pot was dry she pulled back the white sheets from the bed. There the old woman was, stretched out in her nightdress, and the colour of her flesh was grey as her hair. Helen tidied the sheets and attended to the old woman’s wants. Then she took the pot away.
Each morning she made breakfast for the boy who worked in the garden. She went to the back door, opened it, and saw him in the distance with his spade. ‘Half past eight now,’ she said. He was an ugly boy and his eyes were redder than the cat’s, two crafty cuts in his head forever spying on the first shadows of her breast. She put his food in front of him. When he stood up he always said, ‘Is there anything you want me to do?’ She had never said, ‘Yes.’ The boy went back to dig potatoes out of the patch or to count the hens’ eggs, and if there were berries to be picked off the garden bushes she joined him before noon. Seeing the red currants pile up in the palm of her hand, she would think of the stain of the money under the old woman’s mattress. If there were hens to be killed she could cut their throats far more cleanly than the boy who let his knife stay in the wound and wiped the blood on the knife along his sleeve. She caught a hen and killed it, felt its warm blood, and saw it run headless up the path. Then she went in to wash her hands.
It was in the first weeks of spring that she made up her mind to kill the old woman upstairs. She was twenty years old. There was so much that she wanted. She wanted a man of her own and a black dress for Sundays and a hat with a flower. She had no money at all. On the days that the boy took the eggs and the vegetables to market she gave him sixpence that the old woman gave her, and the money the boy brought back in his handkerchief she put into the old woman’s hand. She worked for her food and shelter as the boy worked for his, though she slept in a room upstairs and he slept in a straw bed over the empty sheds.
On a market morning she walked into the garden so that the plan might be cooled in her head. It was a fine May day with no more than two clouds in the sky, two unshapely hands closing round the head of the sun. ‘If I could fly,’ she thought, ‘I could fly in at the open window and fix my teeth in her throat.’ But the cool wind blew the thought away. She knew that she was no common girl, for she had read books in the winter evenings when the boy was dreaming in the straw and the old woman was alone in the dark. She had read of a god who came down like money, of snakes with the voices of men, and of a man who stood on the top of a hill talking with a piece of fire.
At the end of the garden where the fence kept out the wild, green fields she came to a mound of earth. There she had buried the dog she had killed for catching and killing the hens. On a rough cross the date of the death was written backwards so that the dog had not died yet. ‘I could bury her here,’ said Helen to herself, ‘By the side of the grave, so that nobody could find her.’ And she patted her hands and reached the back door of the cottage before the two clouds got round the sun.
Inside there was a meal to be prepared for the old woman, potatoes to be mashed up in the tea. With the knife in her hand and the skins in her lap, she thought of the murder she was about to do. The knife made the only sound, the wind had dropped down, her heart was as quiet as though she had wrapped it up. Nothing moved in the cottage; her hand was dead on her lap; she could not think that smoke went up the chimney and out into the still sky. Her mind, alone in the world, was ticking away. Then, when all things were dead, a cock crew, and she remembered the boy who would soon be back from market. She had made up her mind to kill before he returned, but the grave must be dug and the hole filled up. Helen felt her hand die again in her lap. And in the middle of death she heard the boy’s hand lift the latch. He came into the kitchen, saw that she was cleaning the potatoes, and dropped his handkerchief on the table. Hearing the rattle of money, she looked up at him and smiled. He had never seen her smile before.
Soon she put his meal in front of him, and sat sideways by the fire. As he raised the knife to his mouth, he felt the full glance of her eyes on the sides of his eyes. ‘Have you taken up her dinner?’ he asked. She did not answer. When he had finished he stood up from the table and asked, ‘Is there anything you want me to do?’ as he had asked a thousand times. ‘Yes,’ said Helen.
She had never said ‘Yes’ to him before. He had never heard a woman speak as she did then. The first shadow of her breast had never been so dark. He stumbled across the kitchen to her and she lifted her hands to her shoulders. ‘What will you do for me?’ she said, and loosened the straps of her frock so that it fell about her and left her breast bare. She took his hand and placed it on her flesh. He stared at her nakedness, then said her name and caught hold of her. She held him close. ‘What will you do for me?’ She let her frock fall on the floor and tore the rest of her clothes away. ‘You will do what I want,’ she said as his hands dropped on her.
After a minute she struggled out of his arms and ran softly across the room. With her naked back to the door that led upstairs, she beckoned him and told him what he was to do. ‘You help me, we shall be rich,’ she said. He smiled and nodded. He tried to finger her again but she caught his fingers and opened the door and led him upstairs. ‘You stay here quiet,’ she said. In the old woman’s room she looked around her as if for the last time, at the cracked jug, the half-open window, the bed and the text on the wall. ‘One o’clock now,’ she said into the old woman’s ear, and the blind eyes smiled. Helen put her fingers round the old woman’s throat. ‘One o’clock now,’ she said, and with a sudden movement knocked the old woman’s head against the wall. It needed but three little knocks, and the head burst like an egg.
‘What have you done?’ cried the boy. Helen called for him to come in. He stared at the naked woman who cleaned her hands on the bed and at the blood that made a round, red stain on the wall, and screamed out in horror. ‘Be quiet,’ said Helen, but he screamed again at her quiet voice and scurried downstairs.
‘So Helen must fly,’ she said to herself. ‘Fly out of the old woman’s room.’ She opened the window wider and stepped out. ‘I am flying,’ she said.
But she was not flying.
The Enemies
It was morning in the green acres of the Jarvis valley, and Mr Owen was picking the weeds from the edges of his garden path. A great wind pulled at his beard, the vegetable world roared under his feet. A rook had lost itself in the sky, and was making a noise to its mate; but the mate never came, and the rook flew into the west with a woe in its beak. Mr Owen, who had stood up to ease his shoulders and look at the sky, observed how dark the wings beat against the red sun. In her draughty kitchen Mrs Owen grieved over the soup. Once, in past days, the valley had housed the cattle alone; the farm-boys came down from the hills to holla at the cattle and to drive them to be milked; but no stranger set foot in the valley. Mr Owen, walking lonely through the country, had come upon it at the end of a late summer evening when the cattle were lying down still, and the stream that divided it was speaking over the pebbles. Here, thought Mr Owen, I will build a small house with one storey, in the middle of the valley, set around by a garden. And, remembering clearly the way he had come along the winding hills, he returned to his village and the questions of Mrs Owen. So it came about that a house with one storey was built in the green fields; a garden was dug and planted, and a low fence put up around the garden to keep the cows from the vegetables.
That was early in the year. Now summer and autumn had gone over; the garden had blossomed and died; there was frost at the weeds. Mr Owen bent down again, tidying the path, while the wind blew back the heads of the nearby grasses and made an oracle of each green mouth. Patiently he strangled the weeds; up came the roots, making war in the soil around them; insects were busy in the holes where the weeds had spr
outed, but, dying between his fingers, they left no stain. He grew tired of their death, and tireder of the fall of the weeds. Up came the roots, down went the cheap, green heads.
Mrs Owen, peering into the depths of her crystal, had left the soup to bubble on unaided. The ball grew dark, then lightened as a rainbow moved within it. Growing hot like a sun, and cooling again like an arctic star, it shone in the folds of her dress where she held it lovingly. The tea-leaves in her cup at breakfast had told of a dark stranger. What would the crystal tell her? Mrs Owen wondered.
Up came the roots, and a crooked worm, disturbed by the probing of the fingers, wriggled blind in the sun. Of a sudden the valley filled all its hollows with the wind, with the voice of the roots, with the breathing of the nether sky. Not only a mandrake screams; torn roots have their cries; each weed Mr Owen pulled out of the ground screamed like a baby. In the village behind the hill the wind would be raging, the clothes on the garden lines would be set to strange dances. And women with shapes in their wombs would feel a new knocking as they bent over the steamy tubs. Life would go on in the veins, in the bones, the binding flesh, that had their seasons and their weathers even as the valley binding the house about with the flesh of the green grass.
The ball, like an open grave, gave up its dead to Mrs Owen. She stared on the lips of women and the hairs of men that wound into a pattern on the face of the crystal world. But suddenly the patterns were swept away, and she could see nothing but the shapes of the Jarvis hills. A man with a black hat was walking down the paths into the invisible valley beneath. If he walked any nearer he would fall into her lap. ‘There’s a man with a black hat walking on the hills,’ she called through the window. Mr Owen smiled and went on weeding.