by Айрис Мердок
As Ducane swam in the great pool of the cavern he had a sudden mental image of the picture in Through the Looking Glass of Alice and the mouse swimming in the Pool of Tears.
He had a clear memory of the grace with which Alice swam, her dress so elegantly spread out in the water. Something about that picture must have affected him when he was a child. Girls and their dresses. He called again. Silence.
He could see more clearly now in the brown tea-coloured light of the cavern, and discerned to his left a blackness in the cavern wall which seemed like a hole. He swam towards it, breast stroke now, keeping his head well up and listening.
Then it was as if someone had touched his head very lightly with a black cushion and he had swum in through the entrance of the hole.
Ducane was not afraid of the sea, but he was very much afraid of confined spaces. He back-paddled, touching the wall.
Then he called out. A very very faint cry answered. Ducane let the water sweep him back against the wall. He listened to the silence which was edged by the faint hiss of the moving water.
He turned away from the dim light behind him and looked into the jet dark and called again. He had not imagined it. The faint cry replied, eerie, distant, lost.
Ducane began to have a new kind of picture. He saw Pierce somewhere at the end of the tunnel with cramp perhaps, hurt in some way, trapped in some way, calling out desperately for help. At the same time, as if the darkness itself had become a screen upon which the contents of his mind could be projected physically, he saw before him with absolute clarity the sallow anxious face of Mary Clothier. 'I'm coming!' he shouted, and launched out into the current.
The faint light behind him diminished and went out. The current now took him so quickly along that he scarcely needed to swim. The tunnel seemed to be turning sharply. Ducane caught hold of something, wet smooth rounded rock, and tried to hold on. Then he was whirled away by the current and twisted around as if some great hand had spun him between its fingers. He swallowed some water.
Ducane felt panic. He reached out trying to find something to hold on to. He was afraid he might at any moment strike his head violently against some projection of rock. The thick shutin darkness frightened him. He struck his knee against a knob of rock just beneath the water and managed by resting against it and bracing his hands against the side of the tunnel to stop himself from moving. He called out out as loudly as he could: 'Pierce! Pierce!'
'Pierce! Pierce!'
It's an echo, Ducane said to himself. He said it coldly, utter= ing it articulately inside his head. He called again, 'Hello!'
'Hello!' I must get back, he thought. He let go of his rock and struck out vigorously to swim back the way he had come. But the strong current seized hold of him and hurried him with it, on, on.
Ducane was now very much afraid. He fought his way to the wall where the water seemed less swift and tried to cling to it.
The absolute darkness confused his sense of direction, confused his sense of his body. He had to use mental imagery to tell himself how to swim. He thought to himself, strength will do it, every bit of strength I have, supernatural strength. He began half to edge, half to swim, along the wall of rock in what seemed to be the direction from which he had come. He moved very slowly, but at least now he seemed to be moving.
He thought he was coming back to the place where the tunnel turned. For a moment he seemed entirely out of the current.
Then he sensed a change of direction and the tunnel seemed airier, wider, and the force of the water less strong. He must be nearly back in the main cavern.
Ducane felt an enlargement and the tunnel wall, which he had been touching, disappeared. He could swim quite easily now. He took several strokes. He must have reached the main cavern. But it was dark now. There was a faint greenish line ahead of him of subaqueous light. But the low sun-streaked gap of the cavern mouth was not to be seen. The cave was closed.
Now there were new pictures. Ducane seemed to have been swimming for some time. Coloured images appeared upon the darkness with such brightness that it seemed as if he must be able to see the cavern walls by their light. He saw Alice standing upon the mantelpiece, at the moment when the looking glass begins to turn into a silvery gauze through which she can pass. He saw Mary Clothier's face, no longer anxious but looking tender and sad. We have both died, he thought, and then could not recall who 'we' were. Himself and Pierce of course. He called out to Pierce at intervals but received no reply. The sound echoed close about him as if unable to penetrate further, but telling him at least that the channel along which he was swimming was still reasonably large.
He was beginning to feel cold and his limbs were very tired, but the swimming had now become automatic, as if he were in a natural element. Something very dreadful moved along with him, just above his head, a noiseless black crow made of ectoplasm.
It was fear, panic fear, such as would disfigure a man and make him disintegrate and scream. Ducane was very conscious of its presence. He tried to breathe slowly and evenly.
He pictured the cavern rising, rising, into the dry safety of the cliff side. He tried not to picture other things. At least the cavern went on and there was nothing else to do but go on with it, to go on and on as far as one could go. But so far there had been nothing to touch, as he constantly tested his surroundings with outstretched hands, except the sheer walls of wet stone containing the moving water. No cranny of pebbles, no strand, no rock even on which to rest. And now he was seeing Alice falling down the rabbit hole, falling slowly, slowly.
Ducane thought, in this sort of darkness I could pass within a yard of the way to safety and not know. It's all chance, utter chance. The current was not very fast now and he could easily swim to and fro across it touching the walls of the channel which were now about fifteen feet apart. The channel seemed to be narrowing very slightly. There were irregularities in the wall, but these were merely bumps, projections, worn to a slimy roundness by the water which proceeded onward into the depths of the cliff along its black interminable pipe. The air was still fresh, but it carried a faintly rotten sea smell, as if the water itself were decomposing, and indeed it did seem as if the stuff were becoming thicker and oilier. Amid the extinction or derangement of all his other senses Ducane smelt the smell with a monstrous clarity as if the smell itself were a black structure of gluey air and water within which, perhaps without moving at all, he made, more and more feebly, the yearning movement of swimming, of praying.
It seemed to him that he had not called out for some time and he called now, hoarsely, not very, loudly, 'Pierce!'
'Hello.'
'Pierce!'
'Hello there.'
The cry was from near. Ducane stopped swimming. Everything was changed. He inhabited his body again, he felt his extremities moving in the water. All round him he could feel things resuming their sizes. The darkness was no longer a stuff of which he was part, but a veil, an accident.
'Where are you?»
'Here, here.'
Ducane was suddenly brought up against a ridge of rock, its surface soft with slime. He could feel the water dividing about him, holding him against the rock.
'Where?'
'This way.'
Ducane edged round the rock and let the water take him.
His knees suddenly touched bottom, then his hand. He was no longer swimming but crawling. He felt something touch his shoulder and grip him. The touch was painful, as if dazzling.
He realized he must be almost anaesthetized by cold. He crawled further and lay full length. He could feel pebbles under his hand.
'I am terribly sorry,' said Pierce's voice beside him.
The earnest serious boy's voice sounded strange in the blackness, with its ring of the ordinary world, apologizing.
'Could you just try to massage me or something,' said Ducane. 'I feel absolutely numb.' The brilliant pain returned and moved over his back. He began to twist and stretch his limbs. He now felt so tired he could not understand h
ow a moment ago he could have been capable of swimming. 'What's that? V 'It's Mingo. He followed me in. I am so very sorry – '
'That's enough. Is there any way on here?'
'I don't know,' said Pierce's voice. 'I've just arrived. At any rate we're out of the water, for the moment. I tried one of the other channels and it just ended in a wall and the roof was pretty low so I thought I'd better get out quick. It wasn't too easy to get back against the tide. Then I came in here and reached this – place – and then I heard you call.'
'Are you all right?'
'yes, I'm fine. Are you warmer now?'
'Yes.' If I don't drown I shall die of exposure, Ducane thought. He sat up, chafing his arms and legs. His flesh felt alien to him, like ice-cold putty.
'We'd better move on,' said Pierce. 'This one may be a culde-sac too. Or shall I go ahead and look and then come back for you?'
'No, no. I'll come too.' For God's sake don't leave me, he thought. He got to his knees and then to his feet. Something touched his head lightly. It was the roof of the tunnel. 'What's that noise?'
'I think it's the tide running through holes in the rock.'
There was a slightly irregular moaning sound nearby, punctuated by soft hollow reports.
'That's the water hitting the roof of the next cave,' said Pierce. 'It seems to be getting more excited.'
The water, which had flowed so calmly on into the darkness, now seemed in these more confined inner spaces to be becoming violent. Ducane felt an impact at his feet. 'Get on, Pierce. The bloody sea's beginning to arrive.'
'Have you got shoes?'
'Get on.'
They began to shuffle forward in the blackness. The ground seemed to be rising a little but in such complete darkness it was hard to tell, and Ducane's feet, contracted into rounded hobbling balls of pain, could not discern whether he was still walking in the water. The low keening noise and the echoing slapping noise continued.
'It goes on anyway,' said Pierce. His voice sounded a little high and wavery. The noise behind them, which was increasing a little, was hard to bear. 'You'll have to stoop here.'
'It's so damn black. Keep on talking, I don't want to lose you., 'Oh God, it's coming right down. I think we'll have to crawl.'
'What's the point of this,' said Ducane, stopping. He had an image of crawling onward, onward, to end wedged in some narrow pocket of wet rock waiting for the tide. 'If this one's packing up we'd better try another one while there's still time, The water's just behind us.'
'It's here,' said Pierce in a cracked voice. 'Stay still, I'm coming back past you.'
Ducane stood rigid and felt Pierce's hands fumble him while the wet jersey slid past. There was barely room in the space for them to pass each other. There was a damp warmth on his legs as Mingo scrabbled by after Pierce.
In a moment Pierce's voice came out of the darkness. 'I'm afraid the water has practically filled the entrance. It seems to be coming up much faster now. We've had it in here one way or the other.'
Ducane gripped himself, almost physically, as one might grip and shake an alter ego, and then realized that he had hold of Pierce who had blundered up against him. 'Well, we must go on, then.' Ducane's voice was high too, raised as if to cross a vast auditorium. It seemed to echo away into the hidden spaces and honeycombs of the dark.
The water was making a new noise now, a grinding sucking sound of advance and retreat over pebbles in a narrow place.
Pierce, who had got past Ducane, moved away.
Ducane ran his knuckles along the slimy descending rock and began to stoop. Bent double he moved forward, reaching out to touch the limp tail of Pierce's jersey. Mingo passed him again, a long sliver of darkened warmth. The roof rose a little, then began to fall again. It was difficult to tell if they were going upward. Movement had become something different, a slow and painful pistoning of bones inside a mass of black matter.
'We are rising, aren't we, Pierce?'
'I think so.'
'Are we walking in water?'
'No, we're out of the water. Watch out, the roof's coming down again.'
Ducane was moving three-legged, one hand touching the pebbly floor of the cave. His head came into contact with Pierce's back. Pierce seemed to be on his knees.
'What is it?'
'It's come to an end.'
'Feel, feel, feel all round,' said Ducane. He moved his hands about him, stroking the smooth damp chunks of solid blackness which hemmed them in.
, No good,' said Pierce in a new calm voice. 'It's a dead end.'
The calmness was the final tone of despair.
Ducane said, 'Let's move back a bit. I can't stand this rock on the back of my neck.' He thought, I would rather die standing up. As he moved back and straightened up he could feel the pebbles shifting underneath his feet. The sea had followed them.
'It'll rise quite fast in here,' said Pierce. 'I'm afraid we've had it.' He uttered a low long-drawn-out moan.
Ducane began to take in, more from that dreadful sound than from the words, what was to be. He began to say something aloud to himself. But at that moment something extraordinary happened, something pierced through the sphere of darkness and black wet masses and noisy water. It seemed like light. But it was not light. It was the smell of the white daisies.
'Pierce, the air is fresher here, I can feel air coming down from above. There may be some cranny, some shaft we could climb up '
They blundered against each other, their arms above their heads, feeling the blunt rock. Ducane felt as if his hands had become lumps of blackness, lumps without fingers. He could not now stop from shuddering and there was a hissing sound which he realized he must be making himself.
'There's something here,' said Pierce beside him.
Ducane's groping encountered a hole. There was a faint movement of air. 'Is it big enough to get up?'
'I think so. Stay where you are a minute.'
Pierce disappeared from beside him. There were soft slippery sounds and grunts and then Pierce's voice triumphant from above, 'I'm up. At least there's a ledge. I don't know if it goes farther: 'Are there footholds? How did you – 'Wait, I'm coming down. Keep clear.'
There was a slithering noise and Pierce landed heavily beside him, seizing his shoulder.
'How did you get up?'
'It's a chimney. One can brace oneself. Shoulders on one side and feet on the other. It runs diagonally, so it's quite easy, sixty degrees I should think. You can get into the hole just by hitching yourself up and sitting on the edge of it. It's awfully slippery, that's the only thing. I'll take Mingo up now.'
I can't do it, thought Ducane. Even as a boy he had not been able to do that particular trick. And now, out of condition, ex. hausted, paralysed with cold – He said, 'You can't climb up and carry Mingo. You'll fall and break a leg. We'll have to leave Mingo behind. Mingo, he thought, and me.
'I'm not going to leave Mingo behind,' said Pierce in a breaking voice. 'I can push him. Just help me lift him into the hole.
Here, feel it, feel it.'
Between them they lifted the wet warm heavy dog up into the hole. Fortunately Mingo was used to being lifted about like a sack.
'Push him up, he'll slide. I'm getting in now. Just put your hand behind me, that's right, not too hard, stand by in case we tumble back.'
The panting straining mass moved upward and for a moment Ducane could feel the boy's body braced like a bow and then his supporting hand was left in the air. A time passed. Then Pierce's voice: 'We're up! Only just though, my God he's a weight. Stay still, Mingo, lie down. I wonder if we can – Christ, there doesn't seem to be much room. Can you come up now?'
Ducane sat on the edge of the dark hole whose blackness was no thicker than the surrounding air, and with the sense of a hopeless ritual slowly bent his knees until his feet were against the opposing wall. Even this required an almost impossible effort. He sat there. He had not the strength even to try. He moved his back against the slimy rock. His body was witho
ut force.
The sea was moving just below him in strong regular surges, grinding the pebbles forward and back. The hollow clapping noise below had merged into a soft chaotic roar. But Ducane scarcely heard the sounds, scarcely knew if they were inside his head or not. He wondered, suppose I were to let the water itself lift me up the chimney? But no. It would rush up that narrow sloping hole like a demon and come sucking down again. Anything in that confined space would be battered to pieces.
, What is it, John?' said Pierce's voice sharply from above.
'I can't do it,' said Ducane.
, you must. Try. Keep your feet just a little lower than your head. Feel the wall for good foot places. Then just slide your shoulders and let your feet do the work like walking.'
'I can't try, Pierce. I haven't any strength. Don't worry. The sea will carry me up when the time comes.'
'Don't be crazy. Look out, I'm coming down.'
Ducane could not move his cramped body in time. Pierce arrived, tumbling him out of the hole on to his knees in the rising water.
'Sorry. Oh God. I could try and push you but I could only just manage Mingo. Oh God, what shall we do? If only I'd brought a rope – I never thought '
Ducane had managed to stand up. He thought, I haven't got much longer before some sort of collapse. He could not think if this would be a collapse of mind or of body. Mind and body seemed utterly fused now in cold aching pain, and darkness.
He said to himself deliberately, I must do everything that I can to survive. He said slowly, leaning back against the rock, 'We might – make – a rope – of our clothes – Pierce.'