The Wine-Dark Sea

by Robert Aickman

  ‘When the trouble passes a certain point – a point far short of never sleeping at all, I assure you – the victim is driven out. Sleepers cannot live for long with an insomniac. It is like living with something supernatural: people who are normal come to feel it as a shadow on their own lives. And they come to feel it quite soon. I speak from knowledge. I told you that my marriage was little more than a formality. I am sure you thought that I was born to be an old maid, as so many Englishwomen are, in spite of all the pretences and defences. Whether I am one of that kind or not, it was my inability to sleep that ended my marriage. Marriage – anyway the usual kind of marriage – is one of the things that insomnia makes impossible. One of the many and important things.’

  ‘I suppose I can imagine that,’ said Margaret, ‘or begin to imagine. But I still find it unbelievable. I’m glad to say I’ve always been a good sleeper myself – though, as a matter of fact, always a little afraid of not being – yet I’ve naturally known people who aren’t. It’s awful for them, as I quite see, but it doesn’t have to be quite as bad as you say. I’m sure it doesn’t.’

  ‘That is the usual reaction,’ replied Mrs. Slater, still quite calmly. ‘At least, the usual first reaction. The answer is that the people you have known aren’t real insomniacs at all. They are just people who from time to time have difficulty in sleeping as much as they would like to, or think they ought to. It may be a matter of personal psychology, or temporary stress, or even digestion. But, in the very great majority of such cases, it is simply a matter of the person not really needing anything like as much sleep as he supposes – or, more usually, wants. People want sleep, just as they want love, or want what they call distractions, or even want death. In purely biological terms, most people sleep far more than they need to. Twice as much, or even more.’

  Margaret felt that she herself was incriminated by her admissions and by Mrs. Slater’s didactic stare.

  ‘The quantity of sleep required to eliminate the poisons from the blood stream is much less than people like to think,’ continued Mrs. Slater. She broke off. ‘You do know that that is the physiological function of sleep?’ she asked.

  ‘I think I learnt it at school,’ said Margaret, caring less and less for the conversation, feeling more and more aware of a threat, but unable to stop listening, or even asking, however empty her inside.

  ‘As I say, much less sleep is required physiologically than people choose to think. In fact, it is perfectly possible to eliminate the poisons without sleeping at all. Some people, a few people, are built like that.’

  Margaret, secure in her steady sleepiness and in all it stood for, had given so little conscious thought to the biology of it that she was in no position to argue.

  ‘That’, said Mrs. Slater, ‘is the plight of the true insomniac. He is one who has little need for sleep at any time; or none.’

  ‘I suppose there might be certain advantages,’ said Margaret.

  ‘That is often the second reaction,’ said Mrs. Slater. ‘There are no advantages; or at least not by the standard of the world outside. The man or woman who in the true sense cannot sleep is a kind of troll, as they call it here. Life is so made that without sleep only a troll can endure it. The sleepers have no alternative to driving us out.’

  ‘I’ve heard the word, but I’ve never quite known what a troll is.’

  ‘Those who are kept out. The unearthly and mysterious, as people say,’ replied Mrs. Slater. She seemed to speak with some slight relish.

  ‘Is lack of sleep as disastrous as that?’

  ‘Even the most normal people teeter all their lives along a narrow line between good and evil; between impulse and judgement, as we may say. Sleep does two things for the normal person. It gives him constant, long periods of respite from the conflict. It also enables his impulses to find a certain fulfilment in dreams, especially his most lawless impulses. You doubtless have dreams of that kind, Mrs. Sawyer?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Think for yourself what life must be like for one who has neither dreams nor tranquillity. Such a life is unendurable, and those condemned to it must become trolls, as I just said.’

  Margaret produced a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her trousers and offered one to Mrs. Slater.

  ‘No thank you,’ said Mrs. Slater. ‘When we cannot sleep, the narcotics soon cease to have power over us. All of us here have to live with reality for twenty-four hours out of twenty-four … This is not a place for a holiday, Mrs. Sawyer; still less for a rest. None the less, I so much hope you won’t go.’

  The smoke from Margaret’s cigarette rose perpendicularly in the still, warm air. Through it, she had been quietly inspecting the aspect of Mrs. Slater. Margaret could see neither horns nor tip of tail, neither exceptional wrinkles nor even unusually tragic eyes. Mrs. Slater’s eyes were not happy eyes, but her total appearance, eyes included, was unreservedly typical of her age, type, and station. She might have been the Acting Vice-Chairman of a Woman’s Institute in East Sussex.

  ‘What is everyone doing now?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘They are resting,’ said Mrs. Slater. ‘At night the insomniac is at his most active. No kind of repose is possible. But much rest is needed when you do not sleep, however hard it is to find. In the afternoon most of us can at least stop moving about. Some persuade themselves that this cessation of movement even amounts to a kind of sleep.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Margaret. ‘I’m not keeping you from your rest, am I?’

  ‘No, Mrs. Sawyer. I was restless this afternoon in any case. In so far as the idea of rest has any meaning for people like me, I have been restless all day.’ Whatever Mrs. Slater’s plight, Margaret was, among other things, beginning to find her continuous self-pity as jarring as her paradoxes were unconvincing. She had noticed before that a person’s troubles, the pity the person has for those troubles, and the pity a second person feels for the first person, are all independent from one another. ‘Perhaps I have been restless today,’ continued Mrs. Slater, ‘because I knew that a stranger was coming.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think that’s very likely,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Many of us here acquire such foresight,’ said Mrs. Slater. ‘It is likely that we should, when you think about it. It’s another of the reasons why people dislike and fear us, and drive us out. All the same they’re not above sneaking back to us when they’re in trouble themselves. They creep back during the night in search of our guidance. I have always thought that the Witch of Endor was one of us.’

  While Mrs. Slater had been speaking, an elderly couple had come out of the building and sat down in silence at a table on the other side of the terrace. They were followed almost immediately by another similar couple, who seated themselves at the next table but one to that occupied by Margaret and Mrs. Slater.

  Margaret could not help asking a question.

  ‘These couples … Are both of them sufferers?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Mrs. Slater; ‘but they are not couples in the usual sense.’ She spoke in a lowered voice, as if she had been intercepted in the drawing room of a private hotel at Eastbourne. ‘They are merely unhappy people who have found another unhappy person. Most of us remain alone. It makes little difference really. Though now, of course, Mrs. Sawyer, I have found you.’ Mrs. Slater did not smile. Margaret wondered whether it would have been any better if she had smiled.

  ‘Even to a lost soul like me, it still means something to find another English gentlewoman.’ Mrs. Slater glanced again at Margaret’s somewhat ungentle womanly costume. ‘Most of the people here are, naturally, foreigners; people with whom one has merely this one, dreadful thing in common. The only other English at the moment are two very old women, so old that they are both more than a little dotty. As soon as it is four o’clock, you and I must have tea together, Mrs. Sawyer.’

  A young man in a black suit and wearing a black tie, had appeared; and then a dark, swarthy woman, who looked like a middle-aged
stage gypsy. They had each taken up a table, so that five tables were now occupied, but in the manner of a continental café, there were still many more tables that were empty. Margaret noticed that none of the residents greeted any of the others – or, for that matter, acknowledged her own arrival. They all sat quite silent, and, it seemed to Margaret, almost motionless; though ideas of that sort, she at once reflected, were probably morbidity on her part.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Margaret to Mrs. Slater. ‘If you’ll forgive me, I must first go and wash.’ She rose and picked up her anorak.

  ‘As you wish,’ said Mrs. Slater, in her tiresomely resigned way. ‘I shall sit here and wait for you. It will be nice to talk about the London shops, which I shall never see again.’

  ‘Actually, I live near Manchester.’ It was doubtless silly to be unkind, but, whatever happened, Margaret did not intend her friendship with Mrs. Slater to ripen.

  Coming down the Kurhus steps was a girl who looked hardly more than a child. She was tiny and slender, with very pale, fair hair, hanging to her shoulders. She wore the simplest possible white cotton dress, without sleeves, and showing almost no figure. Her legs were bare, but white sandals were on her feet. As she descended, her eyes met Margaret’s. They were exceedingly blue eyes, but singularly lifeless; more like screens than like pools. Margaret would have expected sleeplessness to manifest most of all in the eyes, but these were the first unusual eyes she had seen in the Kurhus, and it was inconceivable that this very young girl could be among Mrs. Slater’s insomniacs; even if all the other people were, about which Margaret felt considerable doubt.

  Margaret fancied that self-pity might not be Mrs. Slater’s only aberration – or, to say the least, hyperbole; but she knew with certainty that the Kurhus was now spoiled for her, Margaret, and that she wanted to escape from it. She wanted not least to escape from Mrs. Slater personally.

  The big hall was quite full of people, who seemed to be converging from all directions, but still without speaking. There were many assorted ages, and various palpable indicia of different nationalities. All the same, it was a perfectly commonplace group; seemingly remarkable only for its silence. The silence, however, chilled Margaret’s nerves. Escape she must. The crowd rambled forward to the sunny terrace.

  ‘I’ve decided to follow your example,’ said a voice in Margaret’s ear: actually a voice; but, unfortunately, it was the voice of Mrs. Slater. ‘I’m going to spruce myself up before we have tea together.’

  Margaret could only nod. Mrs. Slater passed her and ascended the staircase between the wood-nymphs that were half trees.

  There was now a young Swede behind the hotel desk. It was he who had booked her in and taken away her passport when she arrived. He had fair hair with tight curls, and looked like a boxer or a bison.

  Margaret decided not to beat about the bush. She told the hotel clerk that though she had known the Kurhus was partly a sanatorium, she had not realised that so many of the inmates would be patients rather than guests, and that she wanted to go elsewhere. This would surely be understood, though it might not be popular. She thought she would just make off in a taxi; and, if she could devise nothing better, merely return to the hotel in Sovastad.

  The first difficulty proved to be that the reception clerk seemed to have very little English, so that he was unable properly to understand her. Margaret had met few Swedes with whom she had been so unable to communicate. But she recognised that her message was unusual and her request arbitrary. So she concentrated on the essential: immediate departure.

  ‘Your passport,’ said the clerk. ‘It has gone. It will not be back until tomorrow. I told you.’

  It was true that he had. It was the kind of thing that often happened in continental hotels, and Margaret, knowing that she was booked in for two days, had not worried about it.

  ‘Where is it?’ she asked the clerk.

  ‘Gone. It has gone. I told you.’ The clerk stared at her, faintly pugilistic, faintly bovine.

  Margaret knew from experience what a hopeless morass this sort of thing could be, even at the best of times; even when it was only that Henry’s business compelled the two of them suddenly to go elsewhere.

  ‘I’m not leaving Sweden. I’ll come back in a taxi and collect my passport tomorrow. I want to go now just the same. I’m sorry about it, but all these sick people depress me. I quite understand that I shall have to pay. I am prepared to pay for the whole reservation now, if you’ll get me a taxi.’ She produced a wad of notes from her other trouser pocket. Suddenly her mountain costume, which for a brief time had meant so much to her, had become a middle-aged folly, and a conspicuous one. All the other, rather horrible people were dressed with utter conventionality.

  ‘No taxi,’ said the reception clerk, sulky but firm.

  ‘What do you mean?’ cried Margaret; less and less dignified, as she all too well knew.

  ‘No taxi after four o’clock,’ said the reception clerk.

  ‘Why ever not?’ cried Margaret; even while she knew it was not the way to put it if she wanted to get results.

  ‘Not after four o’clock,’ repeated the reception clerk.

  Margaret began a foolish altercation; feeling all the time like an English innocent abroad in some banal farce. Quite protracted the dispute must have been, as well as foolish; because in the middle of it, Margaret realised, with something not far short of alarm, that Mrs. Slater had reappeared on the staircase in a pink silk tea gown with polka dots; with too much rouge on her cheeks; and with her grey hair so frizzed up that it all stood on end.

  ‘Mrs. Slater, please,’ shouted the reception clerk. ‘Please explain to this lady –’

  But Margaret was saved from final public shame. At this moment, a senior personage appeared from a room behind the desk. He was, like his subordinate, a noticeably muscular-looking man, but his thick black hair was greying, his face was still and worn.

  ‘Forgive me, madam,’ he said to Margaret, in more or less perfect English. ‘I have been listening, and I have to give you my personal assurance that tonight nothing can be done.’

  Mrs. Slater had put her hand on Margaret’s left elbow, and was standing expectantly. Margaret would not have hesitated to offend her, had there seemed any real prospect of departure from the Kurhus; but, as things were, she was rather glad that nothing the Manager had said, and that Mrs. Slater could have heard, had been particularised.

  ‘Come on and let’s have our tea,’ said Mrs. Slater breezily.

  Margaret could only turn away from the desk and follow her; quite unwashed.

  *

  Margaret had noticed on other occasions how differently one can feel about a group of people seated around a picturesque hotel terrace after one has come to learn a little more about them; after the hopeful, even happy, expectation one feels at first sight, has been tempered by some degree of real contact.

  Emerging down the Kurhus steps, with Mrs. Slater’s red hand pressed lightly against her forearm as if to guide her, Margaret recollected that these were the people who had looked so gay when three days before she had sped past in the superlatively hospitable Volvo.

  Mrs. Slater guided her back to the same table; which she had ‘reserved’ by leaving copies of Vogue and The Lady lying about.

  ‘Please call me Sandy,’ said Mrs. Slater.

  There was something queer about the look of the people sitting on the terrace, though it was nothing obvious. To a passerby, they would still be a perfectly average assembly of respectable citizens. Their oddity lay in their quietness and aloofness. By now, some of them were occasionally exchanging a few words, but the words were palpably functional, connected with the tea, the coffee, the fluffy, flaky cream cakes, or the heat of the afternoon: Margaret felt that they had long ago said absolutely everything they could possibly say. She had a frightening glimpse into how long they had probably had in which to say it. In any case, most of them were solitaries, as Mrs. Slater had remarked: scattered about one at a table, o
ften with head sunk, and in no case making any attempt at communication or affability. An unusual proportion of the whole group was, however, reading, including, in several cases, two at the same table; and reading, almost always, not merely glossy ephemerae, as in Mrs. Slater’s case, but heavy, austerely bound volumes with many hundreds of pages. That was only to be expected, Margaret supposed, recollecting the remarkable little library in her own bedroom. There was more and more evidence that Mrs. Slater had not drawn as long a bow as Margaret had assumed and hoped.

  ‘Please call me Sandy,’ said Mrs. Slater a second time.

  Margaret supposed she had again been rude in making no specific response.

  ‘If you wish,’ she said, trying to sound neither too ungracious nor too gracious. ‘So long as you don’t call me Molly.’

  ‘Oh but I want to do that,’ said Mrs. Slater. The tips of all her red fingers were on the edge of the white, wooden table.

  ‘You may call me Margaret.’ It sounded feeble, but the right note was so difficult to strike.

  ‘I have ordered a real English tea for both of us, Margaret. I have one every day. The two old ladies used to do the same, and we all had tea together, summer and winter; but now they don’t come down until nightfall. I don’t think they eat during the day any more.’

  ‘You make them sound like vampires,’ said Margaret. Really Mrs. Slater had to be regulated.

  ‘You are quite right, Margaret,’ replied Mrs. Slater seriously. ‘I have often thought that the origin of the vampire belief lies in the insomniacs. There is something not quite nice about us, as I have told you.’ Mrs. Slater actually giggled. It was a most unusual thing to do on the Kurhus terrace.

  A young waiter in a linen jacket arrived with a double English tea on a heavy brass tray; including sandwiches, near-Dundee cake, and even hot scones in a silver calabash, from which the sun glinted and sparkled, like a tiny display of white fireworks.