The Girl with the Peacock Harp

by Michael Eisele

  I moved the chair nearer and began carefully to open the crumpled mass and separate the sheets, smoothing out the creases so that the writing became legible. It was immediately apparent that I had discovered the missing logbook pages, or at least a great many of them. The order was completely random, but as most seemed to be dated I began slowly to put the flattened mass into some kind of order.

  There were several that consisted mainly of tables of measurements that I could make nothing coherent of, but which seemed to relate to tidal variations. There were comments such as ‘the work is nearly completed’, and ‘success beyond my wildest dreams’, which excited my interest as it appeared as if they might refer to the installation of the speaking tube. Then I happened on a page that seemed to belong near to the end, judging from the date, which was relatively recent. The handwriting, which in the early pages had been clear and precise, now appeared disordered and scrawling, as if the writer had been under some sort of emotional stress. I could make out several references to some un-named woman, and phrases such as ‘I must not do as she wants’ and ‘Her voice haunts my dreams’ seemed to imply that my predecessor had suffered the pangs of some guilty passion, perhaps with one of the local females.

  My indulgent smile at his expense was extinguished however as I read what might have been the final entry: ‘No use, nothing shuts her out’, and then, scrawled over half the page, ‘May God have mercy on my soul.’ The final writing was smudged, as if in a passion he had torn the pages out before the ink had dried to stuff them into the speaking tube.

  After attending to the searchlight mechanism I sat pondering the mystery. It seemed clear that my unfortunate predecessor had been the victim of some form of mania. I recalled a story read during my schooldays of the Sirens that had called to Ulysses, and how it had seemed to him as he was tied to the mast of his ship that he heard the voices of women calling to him. One imagines all manner of strange things at sea, and my feeling was that the more fabulous tales, such as seeing mermaids or hearing singing voices coming from nowhere were the products of an imagination overheated by loneliness and monotony. I remembered the strange sounds that had come from the speaking tube just now, and it seemed possible that hearing them in the silent watches of the night, it would be quite easy to twist them into intelligible words.

  For in thinking it over it seemed quite clear that what had been done was to extend the brass tube down into the foundations of the lighthouse itself, down to where there was some sea cave open to the ocean. So what issued forth was simply the voice of the sea and its myriad creatures, magnified and concentrated by the hollow tube. A curiosity, no more.

  That is what I told myself, and bolstered by my well reasoned arguments I moved the chair over to the brass tube and removing the heavy wooden bung, letting it dangle on its chain. Silence, save for the low grinding sound of rocks moving underwater, was all that issued forth. In a spirit of mischief I cupped my hand over the opening and shouted down as I might have done from the bridge of a ship,

  ‘Halloo! Anyone there?’ The chuckle at my own wit died in my throat in the next instant as a voice issued from the tube, a low, quiet voice that brought the hair up on the back of my neck.

  ‘John?’ it said, and there was a such a throb of sadness, of longing, of hope tentatively reborn in that voice that I blushed to think that I had thoughtlessly intruded on some private grief. ‘John, is that you?’

  I know it will seem incredible to any rational mind, a mind such as I had always felt I possessed, that a mere voice whatever the source should have such an immediate and devastating effect. I can only assert that it was so, nor can any written description carry with it the pathos, the quality of intimacy with which it was imbued, so that it seemed to be speaking not to my mortal ear, but vibrating directly into my soul. In vain wild speculation fought for credence, which somehow the tube connected not with the sea but with some household on the land. Yet even as the thought came I knew it was not so, for simultaneously with the tones of human language was a murmur of other sounds, those like whale song that I had heard at first, now muted into a rhythmic counterpoint, and the low grinding of the rocks in the ocean current. Then who—or what?—was the source of the voice? Where intellect grasped in vain for an explanation, my heart supplied the answer: she (for there was no doubt in my mind as to the gender), whether spirit or corporeal being, was a denizen of that same deep ocean!

  As I sat there momentarily speechless she spoke again, but this time growing fainter as if withdrawing, ‘No,’ she said, accepting loss, accepting grief, ‘he is gone, forever gone . . .’

  Then as the words trailed off into silence I suddenly felt that I could not bear that the owner of that matchless voice should suffer so, and in desperation I cupped both hands around the tube and stuttering called, ‘Wait! Don’t go!’ The sweat that broke out on my forehead was partly embarrassment to find myself, a mature man of fifty-four, pleading like a schoolboy, but in a deeper sense I knew it was in truth the loneliness of those fifty-four years that was pleading, to hold on to the one bright miracle I had ever encountered in a life that suddenly seemed uniformly dull and joyless.

  There was an instant of silence and I despaired, but then I felt a rush of gladness as the voice returned. ‘You . . . are not John,’ it said, and now although still low and grave there was a tone of wonderment in it.

  ‘No!’ I half shouted, ‘My name is Harald, Harald Rasmussen!’

  ‘Harald . . . Rasmussen . . .’ she said slowly and, by all that was wonderful, in the exact intonation of my Nordic forebears. ‘But there is no need to speak so loudly, Harald,’ she continued in mild reproof. ‘So, it is you who lives in the white tower now?’

  ‘Yes!’ I said joyfully, happy beyond words simply to have heard my Christian name spoken as my own mother might have spoken it, the ‘a’ broad, the ‘r’ slightly rolled, ‘I mean,’ I continued, abashed, in a quieter tone, ‘I mean, yes, I am the keeper of the lighthouse now. And you are . . . ?’

  ‘You are now the keeper of the light, who feeds the flame,’ said the voice in a musing tone, paying no heed to my last words, ‘and if you should fail of your trust, what then, Harald, what then . . . ?’

  Now it seemed as if the person on the other end were once more turning away, having lost interest, perhaps.

  ‘I have told you my name,’ I said desperately, ‘may I not know yours?’

  What issued forth from the tube then was an indescribable cacophony composed of whistles, deep moans, and a wavering tone that migrated between the two. For no rational reason I was sure it was laughter. Finally the voice came back. ‘Call me . . . Ligeia,’ she said.

  Just then came the sound of the bell signalling the need to wind up the clockweight. ‘Ligeia,’ I said, thrilling to the sound of her name on my lips, ‘I must go, there is something I have to do.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said; and what a world of regret, of teasing, of subtle coquetry was contained within that single syllable! ‘Well, if you must . . .’

  ‘It is only for a moment or two,’ I protested, ‘I will return!’

  ‘But I, perhaps, shall not be here,’ she said gently, implacably and though I alternately pleaded and called in the intervals between my necessary tasks for the remainder of that long night, the tube remained mute save for the omnipresent voice of the sea itself. Finally as the horizon brightened with the first hint of dawn I thrust home the bung and staggered down the steps to my cold bunk, utterly crushed beneath the most complete dejection.

  I awoke in the low golden sunlight of late afternoon, and for a space of time I was sure that what seemed to have transpired during the night had been only an unusually vivid dream. Voices from the depths of the sea? Absurd! It had been merely the finding of those pages from the log, I told myself as I went about my morning ablutions, those madman’s ravings, and could not understand why the thought caused me such instant anguish. Impatiently I put the feeling aside. There was no reason to concern myself, I thought, simply becaus
e some other man, my predecessor no doubt, had dreamed the same dream of someone from the sea called. . . . what had her name been? ‘Ligeia,’ I said aloud, and with the sound all the memories of the night before came flooding back, and I knew with a pang that it had been no dream, that I had actually talked with a . . . I found I could put no bounds on my vision of her by some common name, nor did I wish to.

  All through the rest of that day as I numbly performed the tasks of upkeep and maintenance I longed for the night to come, that I might once again hear the voice of Ligeia issuing from the speaking tube. Without knowing the source of my knowledge I was certain that if I uncapped the tube before then, I should hear nothing. At last the sun was extinguished in a sanguine sea and I seated myself before the dully gleaming brass tube and carefully, slowly, withdrew the plug.

  For a time there issued forth merely the rhythmic sounds of the ocean deep below, long moments during which I concentrated on breathing regularly and calming the anxious pounding of my heart. Finally it seemed that I could call softly and I did so, feeling an oddly sensuous pleasure in feeling the syllables of her name once more upon my tongue. ‘Ligeia . . . Ligeia,’ I said softly.

  ‘Yes. I am here,’ came the remembered voice in answer. There came a sigh like a breaking wave accompanied by the melodious undercurrent as before. ‘I have been thinking of you, Harald . . .’

  ‘Of . . . me?’ I repeated rather stupidly.

  ‘Mmmm,’ was the reply, ‘Such long, long, thoughts . . . must you rush away as you did last night?’

  ‘No,’ I answered recklessly, thinking that the counterweight being newly wound would be some time in descending and not caring overmuch in any case. I cupped the speaking tube in both my hands, feeling the cold metal grow warm as Ligeia spoke.

  ‘It is a hard glaring place where you live, Harald,’ she said, her voice caressing my name, making of the two syllables a song it seemed I could listen to forever ‘Here all is beauty, ah, you cannot imagine how beautiful.’ And she went on to describe what seemed an underwater city, ‘Towers so tall, Harald, oh I wish you could see them, reaching almost to the surface which is our sky . . . and it is not dark, you know, such lights we have, the living lights of the sea.’

  My heart filled with longing as she spoke, seeing in my mind’s eye what I never in a thousand years could have imagined, fragile fairy-like castles reaching upward out of the depths, lit by a thousand drifting lights, and among them darting like birds, wonderful shapes of beings moving in floating arabesques, their pale bodies clothed only in a nimbus of floating hair that seemed to move with a life of its own, revealing and concealing, all the while accompanied by a soft music that seemed like many different bells sounding somewhere in the depths of the sea.

  I came to myself with a start hearing Ligeia laugh, realising two things simultaneously, that the lens of the lighthouse lamp was motionless and that the bell had sounded some time previously signalling the need to rewind the weight.

  ‘Oh,’ I heard her say with mock solicitude, ‘I fear I have made you forget your duties, dear Harald . . . what a pity if some poor ship had come to grief, and all on my behalf.’

  I all but writhed upon the hard seat of the chair, unbearably torn between the desire to remain and the guilty pang of having failed to attend to my responsibilities.

  ‘Go now,’ she said, laughter gurgling under her voice, ‘see, I release you . . . for now. . . .’ and her voice started to fade as before.

  I grasped the speaking tube as if by so doing I could prolong our contact. ‘Please,’ I said, the words coming in a rush, ‘Could I, is it possible, that I could see you, Ligeia?’

  ‘You wish it? To meet with me?’ her voice was stronger now, sounding surprised and pleased. ‘Oh, but that is perilous, most perilous. But if you truly wish it.’

  ‘I do, yes,’ I replied fervently.

  ‘Then come you to the base of the rocks below the white tower at high tide tomorrow, dear Harald. . . . perhaps I might have a small gift for you, if you dare . . . if you dare . . .’ and then her voice faded and was gone.

  As if a spell had truly been lifted I rushed from the lamp chamber to the mechanism for raising the weight and started the lens revolving, sending the warning beam forth once more. Distantly over the water I heard a ship’s horn sound and flushed at the imagined rebuke, although as I well knew there might have been a multitude of reasons for the signal. For the rest of the night I was a model of assiduous devotion to my tasks, carefully trimming the wick when needed and oiling and cleaning the machinery wherever possible.

  When dawn broke I raised the clockweight one final time, closed the stopcock that fed oil to the lamp and sought my bunk, thinking of nothing but the rendezvous to come. I knew that high tide in these latitudes would be around midday and caught myself wondering how I should live the hours until then. I was certain I should be unable to sleep but almost immediately slumber claimed me, and I drifted through a series of images of fantastic submarine landscapes until some hours later when a peremptory knock on the door awakened me.

  Knuckling the sleep from my eyes I stumbled to the portal and opened it to reveal the member of the Authority who had employed me, his face set and unsmiling.

  My pangs of conscience for the lapse of the night before can only be imagined, nor was I mistaken, as his first words showed. ‘Th’art long abed, Friend. Dost find the night work not suit thee?’

  I stumbled through some fervent assurances that I was very well and found the hours most congenial, coupled with an awkward explanation of having had trouble with the mechanism for raising the weight. My interlocutor seemed somewhat taken aback at my intensity, and asked me sternly if some technical assistance were necessary. I hastily replied in the negative, assuring him that it had been a minor problem with the double ratchet, easily set right when I had identified the cause. This seemed to satisfy him, and he admitted that ‘Old Harry away by the docks’ had come banging on his door at an unseasonable hour the night before, complaining that the lighthouse’s beacon was out. Flushing in what might have been taken for anger, but was in reality simple guilt at my duplicity, I assured him again that the fault having been set right would not be repeated.

  This seemed to satisfy him, and to conclude the visit. After mentioning that further supplies would be forthcoming later that afternoon, he looked searchingly at me and remarked, ‘It is well th’art a good man of thy hands, Friend. Old Harry hath told of a monster storm soon to be with us, and a meddlesome old fool he may be but seldom at fault in the matter of weather, I find.’

  With that he turned on his heel and departed, leaving me weak with relief that I was not to be summarily dismissed, for at the moment I could imagine no worse fate.

  Some indication of my state of mind may be deduced by the admission that I spared no thought for what might have been the fate of any vessel depending on my light for guidance, but rather hearing the church clock up in the village strike the hour I hastened to put myself in order and foregoing breakfast set out to find a path through the tumbled boulders that made up the body of the lighthouse’s foundations.

  This proved no easy task, the surfaces being tilted in a wild confusion of angles with dangerous gaps between so that I was hard put to keep my footing. I was several times reminded of a lack of the youthful agility that had once been mine, but this had no effect on my determination to reach the tiny pebbled beach I glimpsed below me at the appointed time.

  Finally slipping down the last few yards I landed with a crunch of pebbles at the very edge of where the monolithic boulders descended into the mysterious green depths of the sea. Here the breakup of larger forms had produced an area of rough shingle soon to be overwhelmed as the tide reached its height, and I stood for a moment panting from my efforts, my back to a barnacle encrusted rock. I was in a kind of alcove; huge dolmen-like boulders on three sides, and in front only the sky and the open sea. There was no sign of anyone else present. Had I mistaken the rendezvous? A mental picture arose
of myself as I would have appeared to my fellow officers on board ship—where was the melancholy, the staid and unimaginative Captain Rasmussen? Who was this old man, this lunatic, clambering around on these deadly rocks as if searching for his lost youth? Overcome by a sudden depression I had actually turned in search of an easier way back up when a white flash of movement in the surf registered on my peripheral vision.

  Immediately all thoughts of futility vanished and I stumbled through the rapidly filling tidal pools to where I thought to have seen it. The low sunlight glittered on the spray and was broken into a million coruscating fragments, so between the dazzle and the sting of sea water in my eyes I could see nothing distinctly when I reached the spot. Something splashed sharply a few yards from shore and I saw a fresh spurt of foam that came from no natural wave, within which there was a brief glimpse of a sleek shape rainbow hued in the sunlight, simultaneously with a movement nearly at my feet.

  I looked down to see a bright metallic gleam from some object half buried in the pebbles, and the shape of a slender hand just being withdrawn back into the water. Impulsively I took a step forward to find myself nearly knee deep in the rising surf, my feet sliding precipitously downward. I threw myself back instinctively, landing heavily and immediately soaking the rear of my trousers. For an instant I simply lay there shocked past any rational thought while the cold water seeped further into my skin, then raised myself on my elbows to peer into the depths.