The Wine-Dark Sea

by Robert Aickman

  ‘Drink is absolutely forbidden?’ She feared that again she was tending merely to bait poor Mrs. Slater.

  ‘Nothing is forbidden,’ replied Mrs. Slater, in a very English way. ‘If we don’t smoke or drink, it’s because we’ve all learnt better. When you can’t sleep, the consequences of drinking are indescribable. You do know that the physiological function of alcohol if soporific? For us, it would be like an impotent man taking an aphrodisiac.’

  Margaret especially disliked Mrs. Slater’s occasional shafts of modern frankness. Besides she had always understood that it was exactly what impotent men did do.

  ‘Of course it’s entirely different for you,’ said Mrs. Slater. ‘I am sure that if you were to stay longer, something could be arranged with the doctors. I myself shouldn’t mind your drinking all you wanted.’

  ‘Doctors!’ said Margaret. ‘I hadn’t realised that there were doctors.’

  ‘Oh yes. Though of course they’re no use to us. There’s no cure for our condition.’

  ‘Then why are they here?’

  ‘Old people, like Mrs. Total and Mrs. Ascot, can’t settle down unless there are doctors about. And I am sure it applies to foreigners too. Don’t you think it applies to most people today, whatever their age? They must all have doctors, be the cost what it may.’

  ‘I suppose I should have expected doctors,’ said Margaret. ‘Where are they now? Have we seen one?’

  ‘The surgery is on the very top floor The kirurgi, as it’s called in Swedish. There are two doctors on duty at all times, night and day, in case there’s a crisis. You will help yourself to rödkål from the bowl?’

  They were seated by a window, outside which summer night was falling.

  ‘What sort of crisis is commonest?’

  ‘I’m afraid our most frequent crises are sudden mania and sudden death. For this reason, the doctors have to be fairly young and strong. The same applies to the male staff in general, as you may have noticed. With insomnia, there is often a quick snap. The strain can be borne no longer. That is still another of the reasons why we have always been made to live apart. The provincial mental hospital finds many of its recruits here, but few of its so-called cures. You’d hardly believe it, but even there people like us don’t sleep. And as for our dead, there is a special place for them in the wood: not easy to find unless you know where to look. Even after death, it’s the same old story of exclusion. But I fear that all this is hardly the way to make you extend your visit. I know only too well that instead of arousing love and pity, as one might hope, the facts do just the opposite. We poor folk are doomed to eternal self-sufficiency, whether we like it or not. So eat up your mört, Margaret, and take no notice of all these gloomy thoughts.’

  Margaret decided that, in fact, she did not feel as gloomy as she should have done. Mrs. Slater still wallowed too much; and Margaret’s main feeling about the Kurhus as a whole was acute and ever-growing curiosity, reprehensible though that might be. She felt mildly stimulated by a community so entirely novel and unpredictable, however unconvivial. Besides, her experience in what Mrs. Slater called ‘the wood’, had perceptibly shifted the four points of her inner compass. Life’s terms of reference had changed … Conceivably, she reflected, as Mrs. Slater helped her to a crumbling wodge of efterrättstarta, the unaccustomed liberty and isolation would have gone a little to her head, wherever she had found herself; but the real wonder lay in taking only one short step and lighting upon an entire world so different. These people round her might, in a sense, be outcasts, as Mrs. Slater said. Quite possibly, they suffered; looking at them, it was hard to be sure. What Margaret did know was that the Kurhus had already recharged the battery of her life, rewound the spring. After long inertia, she was again, mysteriously, on the move.

  ‘Cream?’ enquired Mrs. Slater, holding high a silver boat. ‘Or as the Swedes call it, grädde?’

  On the move once more, and so soon after starting, Margaret could not be expected to think about how to stop.

  ‘Why do you smile?’ asked Mrs. Slater.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Margaret. ‘It must have been something in my own thoughts.’

  *

  ‘No, there’s no coffee,’ said Mrs. Slater. ‘As everybody knows, the physiological consequence of coffee is wakefulness. But in your case it may this time be just as well that there is none. Because if I were you, I should go straight to bed.’

  ‘But I don’t feel in the least like sleep.’ Margaret spoke without thinking. At the Kurhus, even new clichés were needed. ‘Oh, I’ve said the wrong thing. I do apologise.’

  Mrs. Slater gazed back with fishy eyes.

  ‘Even if you don’t sleep, stay in your room.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘At night we walk. After dinner, we begin; and many of us walk till dawn. It is not a thing for you to see.’

  ‘Mrs. Slater,’ began Margaret.

  ‘Sandy, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sandy, of course,’ Again Margaret smiled. ‘Sandy, if what you say is true, I’m very sorry for you all, but you can’t suppose that I could come here, and listen to what you’ve told me, and not want to see for myself? It may be wrong of me, but I just can’t help it.’

  ‘I suppose it’s natural,’ said Mrs. Slater, ‘and I’ve known it often. With the world what it is today, I imagine we’re lucky that people aren’t brought in buses to stare at us, like they used to stare at the lunatics in Bedlam. I expect it will come to that in the end, though they won’t get the local people to drive the buses for them. We’re unlucky, and on the unlucky is a curse. I warn you, Margaret. The local people know and are right.’

  Margaret looked down at the gay table mats.

  ‘Since you’re warning me, please tell me exactly what you’re warning me of. What could happen to me?’

  But Mrs. Slater was entirely unspecific. ‘Nothing good,’ was all she said. ‘Nothing that you would wish. I am speaking to you as a friend.’

  It was very unconvincing. Margaret even wondered whether she was not being merely warned against making undesirable acquaintances. It was difficult to decide what to do.

  The dining room was rapidly emptying. All seemed to be quiet once more. The diners were leaving in silence; almost stealthily, Margaret thought. It was nearly dark, but the air was still faintly crimson from reflections of the sunset.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Margaret, ‘what happens in winter, when the snow is on the mountains? They talk a lot about that in Sovastad.’

  ‘We suffer the more,’ replied Mrs. Slater. ‘We sit all night and wait for the spring. What else could we do?’

  ‘All right,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ll stay in my room. And tomorrow I think I’d better go somewhere else.’

  ‘Please don’t go before you have to,’ pleaded Mrs. Slater. ‘You’ll be all right. You’ll sleep since you’ve had no coffee. There is nothing to keep you awake. You’ll have an excellent night.’

  The big hall was lit, though only rather faintly, by pretty lamps, in which the brass nymphs on both sides of the staircase gleamed and flickered. A well-built elderly man whom Margaret had noticed dining by himself stood in a far corner, apparently musing. There was no one else to be seen. Mrs. Slater once more put her hand on Margaret’s arm.

  ‘I’ll see you to the door of your room,’ said Mrs. Slater.

  ‘No,’ said Margaret. ‘Let’s part here.’

  Mrs. Slater paused.

  ‘You won’t forget your promise?’

  ‘It wasn’t a promise,’ said Margaret. ‘But I’ll not forget.’

  Mrs. Slater withdrew her hand, then held it out as if to bind Margaret in a pledge. But all she said was, ‘Then, good night.’ Bravely she added, ‘Sleep well.’

  ‘See you in the morning,’ said Margaret, wondering if she would, and if these were appropriate words. Was it possible that at this moment Mrs. Slater was preparing to ‘walk’?

  A middle-aged woman, perhaps eight or ten years older than Margaret, but still no
ticeably beautiful, descended the staircase in a costly-looking fur coat, although the evening was very warm, tap-tapped across the white, tiled floor, and went out into the darkness.

  Mrs. Slater went up the staircase without once looking back at Margaret. She disappeared down a corridor which was not Margaret’s corridor.

  Margaret had intended herself to go up almost immediately, having delayed for a moment only from anxiety to avoid a bedroom colloquy with Mrs. Slater; but on the instant she was alone, the elderly man in the corner of the hall advanced towards her and said, ‘Forgive me, but I was bound to overhear what Mrs. Slater, a dear friend of us all, was saying to you. There is little conversation here, and most that is said, is heard not by one alone. You would be mistaken altogether to accept Mrs. Slater’s sad view of our curious community. There is, I assure you, a different side to us. We are not sad all the time. You felt that yourself when you walked this evening in our wood.’

  ‘Did you see me there?’ asked Margaret. ‘What you say is quite true.’

  ‘Just as most of the things that are said to one are heard by many, so most of the things that each of us does are known to all.’ ‘Would you do me the honour of taking a cup of coffee with me?’

  An elderly pair came down the stairs and went silently forth.

  ‘Mrs. Slater said there was no coffee. She also advised me against going out.’

  ‘Mrs. Slater, as you say in English, exaggerated, so let us then have coffee. You will see.’

  He pressed a bell on the reception desk. One of the white-jacketed waiters appeared. The elderly man gave the order in the most usual way.

  A man of about forty, who had not changed from his light suit for dinner, walked straight from the dining room, across the hall, to the steps down to the terrace.

  ‘Let me introduce myself. I am Colonel Adamski. You, I know, are Mrs. Sawyer.’

  For a member of a community that seemed so silent and so uninterested, it was amazing how much he knew.

  They shook hands.

  ‘The point that Mrs. Slater overlooks is that only by great sacrifice can we poor human beings reach great truth.’

  Margaret sat up straight. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand. I really do.’ She was astonished with herself.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Colonel Adamski. ‘The Italian man of the world, Casanova – if you’ll forgive my mentioning such a scamp – remarks on the basis of unusually wide knowledge of the world that, in his observation, only one human being in a hundred, or some such proportion, ever experiences the jolt that sets the faculty for truth in motion. Casanova’s faculty was set in motion by freemasonry – though that is something else that, as a good Catholic, I should not bring into the conversation, least of all with a charming lady. Nor is a jolt – a shock, a blow, a fatality – always necessary. I doubt whether you regard yourself as having suffered a jolt?’

  ‘I think that what Mrs. Slater had to say might have been a jolt,’ said Margaret. ‘This afternoon, I mean.’

  ‘You are right to name the time,’ said Colonel Adamski, lightly pouncing. ‘Already you understand much: so much more than you know. For the reason why Mrs. Slater is so sad and so uncomprehending is that she walks in the afternoon instead of at night.’

  ‘Does she not walk at night as well?’

  ‘Seldom.’ The Colonel broke off. ‘But here is our coffee. Will you please pour? Alas, my hand is not steady.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It was that terrible war we fought, where the powers of darkness were almost equally strong on both sides. Not a righteous war, not a necessary war, not a war in which victory was for one moment possible. You can see at once, I would suppose, that I take an unusual view for a Polish officer. It was towards the end of that war that I stopped sleeping – stopped entirely; and it has been here that I have seen the truth of things. Great sacrifice: great truth. It is something that Mrs. Slater, who walks in the afternoon as if she were on holiday at Royal Leamington Spa or Royal Tunbridge Wells, does not understand.’

  ‘Colonel Adamski,’ said Margaret. ‘I have to ask you whether you take milk?’

  ‘No milk. It is black coffee, pure but strong, that fortifies against the powers of darkness with which the world is filled.’

  All the time, people were passing through the hall in ones and twos, more commonly the former; and the night, now utterly black when viewed from the lamplight, was swallowing them. Warm though it had been, and in the Kurhus still was, Margaret was becoming aware of a little icy gust every time the door opened.

  ‘A long war,’ said Colonel Adamski. ‘Those so-called concentration camps, of which we hear so much. A bad illness. A heartbreak that is without hope. The suffering that grows with religion. These are among the things that set the faculty for truth in motion. Or sleeplessness. Shakespeare complains often of not sleeping, but see how much he owes to it! Even the absurd local poet, Strindberg, would be still more grotesque if shafts of truth had not occasionally struck home as he lay wakeful; at one time in this very place. It would have been better by far if he had never left it. Then think of your own great statesman, Lord Rosebery: recognised by all as a man marked out, a man in a different mould from the pygmies who swarmed around his feet; though few of those who knew this could say why. Some of them even wrote books to explain how unable they were to account for Lord Rosebery’s obvious greatness. Did you know, Mrs. Sawyer, that for many years Lord Rosebery hardly slept at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid he was rather before my time,’ said Margaret.

  ‘He would have understood well that we who live here are at once cursed as Mrs. Slater says, but chosen also. He had the blue eyes that are commonest among our kind.’

  ‘It seems to me that most of you look very much like the rest of the world.’

  ‘We have the commonplace aspect of monks. Remove the distinguishing clothing, and many monks resemble Mrs. Slater. If you will pardon the paradox.’

  The hall was now quite quiet.

  ‘May I give you some more coffee, Colonel Adamski?’

  ‘If you please.’

  She refilled both cups, and then sat thinking.

  ‘Are there boundaries?’ she asked, after a while. ‘Or frontiers? To me it seemed that the wood, this special wood that you all speak of, was just part of the whole Swedish forest.’

  ‘That is true,’ said the Colonel. ‘Every now and then one of us fails to return. Some find tracks into the further forest, and return never.’

  ‘Perhaps they have merely decided to leave the Kurhus, and find that the simplest way of doing it? I can imagine that. I wanted to leave this afternoon, but it seemed almost impossible … I am glad now that I stayed,’ she added, smiling, and unwrapping a lump of sugar from its paper.

  The Colonel bowed gravely. ‘They go,’ he said, ‘because they have reached their limit. For men and women there is to everything a limit, beyond which further striving, further thought, leads only to regression. And this is true even though most men and women never set out at all; possibly are not capable of setting out. For those who do set out, the limit varies from individual to individual, and cannot be foreseen. Few ever reach it. Those who do reach it are, I suspect, those who go off into the further forest.’

  Margaret’s eyes were shining. ‘I know that you are right,’ she cried. ‘It is something I have long known, without finding the words.’

  ‘We all know it,’ said the Colonel. ‘And we all fear it. Because beyond our limit is nothing. It is a little like the Italian parable of the onion: skin after skin comes away, until in the end there is nothing – nothing but a perfume that lingers a little, as the dead linger here a little after death, perfuming the air, and then are gone. Or, more grandly, it is like Nirvana, no doubt; though Nirvana is something no European can understand. For me, it is like a particular moment in the war; a moment when, having no weapons, I had to fight hand to hand. It was not a moment I care to recall, even when I walk in the wood. It is far from true, Mr
s. Sawyer, that we soldiers are men of strength and blood. New soldiers are like that in the least. But it was for me the moment when I stopped sleeping, stopped dreaming. Dreams, Mrs. Sawyer, are misleading, because they make life seem real. When it loses the support of dreams, life dissolves. But perhaps we have spoken enough of this funny little group to which I have found my way? Even I who am one of them do not deceive myself that it is the whole world, and you are only a visitor among us, here today and gone tomorrow, as your idiom puts it?’

  ‘I shall be sorry to be gone,’ said Margaret matter-of-factly. She tilted the coffee pot, then lifted the lid. ‘I’m afraid there’s no more. In England the coffee’s bad, but there’s more of it. I expect that’s symbolical too.’

  The Colonel laughed politely.

  ‘Should I enter the wood, Colonel Adamski? Now, I mean, when all of you are walking? Mrs. Slater forbade me most strictly. What do you advise?’

  ‘You will have realised by now that on many questions there is no one view amongst us. No more than in the rest of the world. No more than in a monastery, to return to that example. You might be surprised! I went to school with monks, and can assure you that they differ among themselves every bit as much as politicians or businessmen. Mrs. Slater’s view reflects Mrs. Slater. When I was stationed for years in Britain with the Polish forces, waiting and learning, but mainly waiting, I learned that Britain’s strength lay in women like Mrs. Slater, cautious and unimpassioned. It would be wrong for me to argue with so excellent an example of your fellow-countrywomen.’

  ‘But should I enter the wood, Colonel Adamski?’

  ‘Why ever not, Mrs. Sawyer, if you want to? Why ever not? Few of us night-walkers actually bite. And certainly we should never bite a lovely lady like you.’

  He moved in his chair.

  ‘Oh,’ said Margaret, remembering. ‘I do hope I haven’t been keeping you?’