by Brian Aldiss
‘For all his troubles, José married a good girl from the nearby town and was happy with her. She possessed the sound sense to love him for his crossed eye and to smell sweet even when she sweated from labouring in the field with him. He planted his vines closer to the mountain and worked harder than before, in order to support her and the government.
‘A son was born to José. José rejoiced, and planted his vines closer to the lake. A second son was born, and the vines were planted closer to the big rock. In due season, the next year to be precise, a third son was born. After the rejoicing was done, José planted his vines closer together. And he worked a little harder, and got a little drunk when he thought he worked too hard.
‘The years came and went as fast as governments, and the sons grew up tall and scraggy because there was not overmuch to eat. The eldest son drifted into town and became full of the theories of the current régime. He came back to see his father wearing a steel-grey suit and said: “Father, you are a reactionary and obtuse old fool of a goat, if you will pardon my saying so. If you let the government buy your land for a reasonable pittance, you could go on working on it and they would come with dynamite and blast that elephant’s foot out of the way, so that you could grow many more vines than you do – increase production, as we call it in the city.” He even got a man to photograph the rock with a foreign-made camera, but José was not to be moved.
The government fell, and the first son was shot for his ideas. The second son joined the army. One day, he came back to see his father dressed in a captain’s uniform and said, “So, Dad, you antiquated old numbskull, I see you are still toiling your life out round the elephant’s foot! Did you never learn what graft was when you were young? The army are going to build a new road a couple of kilometres from here. Give me the word and I’ll send them the rock to build the road with, and they can haul it away with bulldozers.” He even got a sergeant to survey and photograph the rock, but José was no more to be moved than his rock.
‘There was a revolution, and the second son was shot for the good of the country. The youngest son grew up very crafty, perhaps because he had starved the most, and went into banking. He saw what little effect his brothers’ words had had on his father, and addressed the old man thus, “My dear and hardworking old paternal pop, my informed friends in the city tell me there is every reason to suspect that there may be a great well of oil under the elephant’s foot. You could be rich beyond the dreams of avarice and buy mother two new frocks if that were so. Why do you not look? If you and mother broke down a barrow-load of rock each day and flung it into the lake, at the end of two years or maybe less or maybe more, you would have the land clear. I can get you a barrow wholesale if you agree.” He even induced a fellow banker to take a colour photograph of the rock, but José was not to be moved.
‘The next day, the president of the country absconded with all the gold from the bank, and the government fell. But José’s wife sent the three photographs of the rock that looked so like an elephant’s foot to a big magazine, whereupon it became a great tourist attraction at twenty-five cents a time, and José never had to grow vines any more.’
The elder and the philatelist greatly enjoyed this story, the latter especially since he was by profession a banker and appreciated the dig his friend had had at him.
‘So I must now tell my José story,’ he said, ‘which I certainly shall not enjoy as much as yours. To ensure that it has at least some merit I will borrow elements from both your tales, the peasant and the rock. But if you don’t mind we will leave such trivial items as bankers and revolutions out of it and look at the whole matter in its proper perspective.’
So saying, he embarked upon his story.
‘Imagine a sheet of ice, miles and miles wide, covering much of the world. At its most extensive, it reached only half way up the mountain. Then it grew grey, and crumpled and melted and disappeared. In its place, a lake formed; lying at the foot of the mountain.
‘Slowly the weather grew warmer. It became hot by day, though the nights remained cool. Several times, the mountain split and its flanks fell into the lake. Things grew on these piles of stones, and along the new ground exposed by the lake as it shrank. In spring, the whole shelf was covered with yellow flowers.
‘Distantly, a river broke through on a new course and poured its waters into the lake, whereupon the lake stopped shrinking. Things swam in the lake; some of them climbed out of the lake. Some of those that climbed out died in the field, but others gained new qualities and flourished.
‘One of the animals was ungainly and slow. In the palm of its skull lay a pool of mud through which trickled the waters of its new discovery called thought. It sank into the rock. Of its thought there remained no trace, but the pattern of its bones lay in the quiet strata, making a blueprint more pleasing than in life.
‘Another animal was full of a vast and automatic fury. Its cry when it hunted cut like a knife and struck the rocks with the force of a hammer. One day, a slab of the mountainside fell upon it, and the slab resembled the head of a serpent.
‘Another creature was patient. It tilled the soil between the mountain and the lake and planted vines in the soil and tended them year by year. When it was young, it carved its name JOSÉ on the rock shaped like a serpent head, and spent the rest of its life in the field, working everywhere round the rock. One day it staggered into the shade of the rock and never rose again.
‘Another being learned to extract the energy it required direct from the soil. It bloomed and ferreted and crackled, and again part of the mountain fell, making an avalanche that splashed in to the lake for half a day. The thing slowly annihilated the rubble from the mountain, until it disintegrated from ripeness.
‘Now a being of splendour arose which could extract its necessary energy from the whole universe, and so needed to pay no attention to mountain, field, or lake. Because it was sufficient to itself, it destroyed all other life and sat through an eternity sketching elaborate patterns of light in its being, until it was itself translated into light.
‘The last thing was a thing of infinite love and infinite might. It grieved for the destruction that had been and determined to create a new system of life based only remotely on the old. It looked about at the silent mountain and lake; finally it built an entire new universe, shaping it out of the O in JOSÉ that was carved in the serpent head rock.
‘On planets in the new universe, mountains and lakes began to appear. They worked out their own enormous processes in solitude, for the being of love and might had built them a universe safe from life.’
The bon viveur and the elder both declared themselves impressed by this story, and the latter added, ‘You take a more bleak and long view of humanity than I dare to at my time of life. You don’t really find life as meaningless as all that, do you?’
The philatelist spread his hands. ‘Yes, sometimes I do – in a place like this, for instance. We are only passing through, and our mood will change. But look at the wretched old guide woman, for instance. What has life to offer her? And look at the region in which she lives, at this profound and aloof grandeur all about us. Is not its meaning greater and more enduring than man’s?’
The elder shuddered. ‘My friend, I prefer to believe that this mountain has no meaning at all until it is translated through man’s understanding.’
As he spoke, the servant touched him respectfully on the arm. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I think we really ought to be moving on, because we don’t want to be still up here in this exposed place when night falls.’
‘You are absolutely right, my friend. You are a practical man. All our endeavours should be devoted towards getting away from this lifeless tomb. Whoever José was, he has no interest for any of us now. Tell the old woman to lead on.’
They mounted their horses and turned away from the rock with its brief inscription. They followed the servant across the drab and stony soil. The old woman led them on, never once casting her eye back at the spot where, as a y
oung and passionate woman, she had blazed the name of her faithless lover.
One Role with Relish
They would both have called themselves professional men because, although neither was in a true profession, they certainly did not serve behind counters. They wore suits and coats. And they met in a horridly neutral place like a dentist’s waiting-room, Hector Bottrall with the shadows under his eyes like stains, Stoneward with his hard-hitting sensitivity.
On the waiting-room table were magazines. It so happened that together they put their hands on the same illustrated paper. Their heads swung round, their glances met. This for a moment only; looking quickly away, Bottrall said, ‘You’re welcome,’ and nursed his hand back on his lap. That was all, but it was enough to set Stoneward on the trail.
When Bottrall came out of the dentist’s, smudging blood away over his lip, Stoneward was waiting under the street lamp. He jumped as Stoneward moved forward.
‘Had one out? Nasty, eh? Pain’s something only lower organisms should feel. Come and have a coffee.’
‘Thanks. I’d better be getting back to Penelope – the wife,’ Bottrall said, gripping his overcoat belt, staring down the street.
‘Sorry. I shouldn’t, have asked. I sometimes forget other people aren’t lonely too. A stranger’s company is worth nothing beside a Penelope’s …’
‘Oh, now wait, mister,’ Bottrall said, again using the handkerchief on his mouth. The thought of making anyone unhappy was unbearable; he began to shake. He stood indecisively, aware of the dark and of the lead iceberg in his jaw. Stoneward drank it all in, murmuring only, ‘I thought back in there … you looked sympathetic.’
So Bottrall, won over by that easy flattery, went uneasily with him to the little café round the corner, where the wide windows steamed and the tough old poetry of urban desolation welcomed them both.
‘Mine was a filling,’ Stoneward said, poking a finger into his mouth, pleased to have got his way with Bottrall.
‘Mine was an extraction.’
They sat there mute under the clinking of thick white cups, Stoneward looking at Bottrall, Bottrall looking away. Bottrall grew very nervous. His face was ugly and crumpled, a deflated balloon where Stoneward’s balloon had been stretched to adhere to every plane of his skull.
‘I recognised you; your photo was in the local paper,’ Stoneward said, omitting all emphasis from his voice.
At once Bottrall was trembling again, grey as dawn as he pulled out a cigarette packet and began to smoke. Stoneward followed the performance eagerly.
‘You were beaten up by some hooligans,’ Stoneward said. ‘They thought you were watching them with their girls. Two of them beat you up properly, didn’t they? They jumped on you and broke nearly every bone in your face, didn’t they? The girls tried to stop them, but they threw you into the canal. It was pure luck you weren’t drowned.’
‘I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t watching them with their girls. I was just bird-watching. My hobby’s bird-watching. That was in the paper too; they put that in.’
He stared down into his coffee, frowning at a sea of self-pity. Every time he looked in his shaving mirror, he saw how clever they had been at the hospital; they had made his face look nearly as it had been before – but the difference was all the difference in the world, for the old face had belonged to a man who had not suffered a beating up. He was afraid of his new face.
‘I’ve only just come out of hospital.’
‘Your wife – Penelope – she must be so glad to have you back.’
‘Oh, she is. I – I don’t know what I’d do – what I’d have done – without her …’
‘I thought not,’ Stoneward said, taking in the sudden look of gratitude, catching the rasp of tears in the other’s voice. Into his mind, lusciously, came a horrible teddy-bear-mummy figure with the label ‘Penelope’ round its neck; he wanted badly to ask with what inner qualms she was accepting the new role Bottrall thrust upon her. But Bottrall would not know that.
‘Do you wish for revenge?’
‘They never caught the men – I couldn’t identify them.’
‘The paper said they were boys.’
‘Big boys.’ Obviously he wanted to change the subject, but did not know how without being impolite.
‘Please don’t think there’s anything abnormal in my curiosity,’ said Stoneward, smiling at his own words because he knew himself so well, ‘but I have a very strong sympathy for you. It would give me great pleasure if we could become intimate friends.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mr …, but I, well, I don’t go out much. I never did. I – we’re very much stay-at-homes, the wife and I.’
‘Except for the bird-watching, eh? And have you any other pursuits? Are you intellectual?’
‘We go to the theatre sometimes.’ He rolled his eyes round the café – at least they had not blinded him – taking in the wrapped pies and the customer beating a ketchup bottle with the heel of his hand. A cheerfully rowdy group of teenagers pushed through the door, seating themselves with much rattling of chairs. Catching the other’s nervous look, Stoneward began talking again as smoothly as a well-oiled rat trap.
‘What I was meaning by intimate friends was that we might see a lot of each other; I could come round to your house of an evening – you know how I’d like to meet Penelope. And we could unburden ourselves to each other – all our secret fears, all those little secrets we keep even from our wives.’
‘Uh … I don’t think my wife and me have any secrets from each other. I haven’t got any secrets like that. A few business secrets of course.’
‘Of course. And how is business?’
Bottrall took a sip of his shoe-coloured coffee and mopped his lip before replying.
‘I’ve got to get a new secretary. Can’t stand her whistling. She’s always whistling – always the best stuff, mind you, but it gets on my nerves … Look Mr …, I don’t wish to appear rude, but aren’t you a little familiar?’
Swigging all his coffee down at one gulp, Stoneward made a beastly face which showed the under-side of his tongue. He spread his hands wide and stood up.
‘I’m not nasty – just lonely. I felt that you and I – oh, what’s it matter? I’ll leave you to finish your coffee in peace if that’s how you feel about me.’
Bottrall got up. He could hardly understand why he hurried between the round tables to get to the door before Stoneward left. Stoneward had long dapper legs like scissors. Hector Bottrall walked through invisible mud in suedes. He puffed as the teenagers watched him.
‘I didn’t mean to be unfriendly. I’m not like that. I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ Bottrall said, as they went together into the darkness. ‘I don’t know why, but I couldn’t just let you go like that, offended.’
‘You mean that however aware you are, something always comes up from under and throws you – into the arms of your fate rather than your choice.’ Seeing the other’s puckered hopelessness as he tried to frame a sane reply, Stoneward added quickly, ‘Come and have a real drink at my flat round the corner. Just a nightcap.’
‘Well, that’s very kind, but Penelope –’
‘For heaven’s sake, man, you can phone her from my place. Or are you afraid there’s a lover creeping round there when you’re out?’
Hector Bottrall was not happy in Stoneward’s flat. It had no pictures on the walls. Although he wished to phone his wife, he was too shy to do so in Stoneward’s presence. He sat down in a hard chair, his coat bundled round him, conscious that his jaw was aching. Clutching the glass Stoneward had pressed upon him, he stared moodily down into it and thought how deep the whisky looked.
Stoneward sat close by on a desk, dangling his legs, watching.
‘Go on and unburden yourself,’ he said at last. ‘Say whatever you feel like. We must have more in common than a dentist.’
Bottrall made an effort speaking a little wildly.
‘This secretary of mine who whistles so much. She’s alright,
only her whistling gets on my nerves … All the time you know. Even when she’s taking letters – not loud of course …’ He took a drink of whisky.
‘Some people are just born conversationalists!’ Stoneward said bitterly, clicking his legs together like scissor blades.
‘I’m afraid I’m not a very brilliant conversationalist, Mr …’
‘Stebbings. Gerald Gibson Stebbings. No, you’re right there, and frankly I like you all the more for admitting it.’ He was standing over Bottrall now. ‘But if you’ve no gift of the gab, look at all the other assets you have. You’re likeable – great charm of manner – make friends easily, trusting, courteous, fun to have around … And you dress nicely. And you have a wife who sounds all a wife should be.’
When Bottrall stood up, his glass was empty. He faced Stoneward, staring up at him, silly and puzzled with his cold lower lip thrust forward.
‘You don’t mean all those things?’ he asked. ‘You – are you having a game with me?’
‘You’re a great kidder, Bottrall. And I must say I never saw a man knock back a whisky so fast, except on the films. Let me refill your glass.’
As he filled the glass, pouring gin onto the whisky, he watched his visitor covertly. Bottrall was unhappy. He rotated slowly, dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief.
‘The Gents is first on the right.’
‘Uh … I wasn’t …’ Bottrall smiled weakly, clasping the new glass like a friend’s hand.
‘Do you suppose we’ll ever have a nuclear war?’
‘… It’s too terrible to think about.’
‘How right you are, Mr Bottrall. What do you think of the political situation?’
‘… I don’t really hold with politics.’