We spent the morning there, with dozens of doctors coming and going. Then we left. All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself.
‘That scared ’em, Pudgie!’ he chuckled. ‘A man they can’t x-ray – that scared ’em! We must put that down in the diary –’
‘Wasn’t it ripping!’ I chuckled back.
He kept a sort of diary or record. He gave it to me afterwards, but they’ve borrowed it. It was as big as a ledger, and immensely valuable, I’m sure; they oughtn’t to borrow valuable things like that and not return them. The laughing that Benlian and I have had over that diary! It fooled them all – the clever x-ray men, the artists of the academies, everybody! Written on the fly-leaf was ‘To My Pudgie’. I shall publish it when I get it back again.
Benlian had now got frightfully weak; it’s awfully hard work, passing yourself. And he had to take a little milk now and then or he’d have died before he had quite finished. I didn’t bother with miniatures any longer, and when angry letters came from my employers we just put them into the fire, Benlian and I, and we laughed – that is to say, I laughed, but Benlian only smiled, being too weak to laugh really. He’d lots of money, so that was all right; and I slept in his studio, to be there for the passing.
And that wouldn’t be very long now, I thought; and I was always looking at the statue. Things like that (in case you don’t know) have to be done gradually, and I supposed he was busy filling up the inside of it and hadn’t got to the outside yet – for the statue was much the same to look at. But, reckoning off his sips of milk and snatches of sleep, he was making splendid progress, and the figure must be getting very full now. I was awfully excited, it was getting so near . . .
And then somebody came bothering and nearly spoiling all. It’s odd, but I really forget exactly what it was. I only know there was a funeral, and people were sobbing and looking at me, and somebody said I was callous, but somebody else said, ‘No, look at him,’ and that it was just the other way about. And I think I remember, now, that it wasn’t in London, for I was in a train; but after the funeral I dodged them, and found myself back at Euston again. They followed me, but I shook them off. I locked my own studio up, and lay as quiet as a mouse in Benlian’s place when they came hammering at the door . . .
And now I must come to what you’ll called the finish – though it’s awfully stupid to call things like that ‘finishes’.
I’d slipped into my own studio one night – I forget what for; and I’d gone quietly, for I knew they were following me, those people, and would catch me if they could. It was a thick, misty night, and the light came streaming up through Benlian’s roof window, with the shadows of the window-divisions losing themselves like dark rays in the fog. A lot of hooting was going on down the river, steamers and barges . . . Oh, I know what I’d come into my studio for! It was for those negatives. Benlian wanted them for the diary, so that it could be seen there wasn’t any fake about the prints. For he’d said he would make a final spurt that evening and get the job finished. It had taken a long time, but I’ll bet you couldn’t have passed yourself any quicker.
When I got back he was sitting in the chair he’d hardly left for weeks, and the diary was on the table by his side. I’d taken all the scaffolding down from the statue, and he was ready to begin. He had to waste one last bit of strength to explain to me, but I drew as close as I could, so that he wouldn’t lose much.
‘Now, Pudgie,’ I just heard him say, ‘you’ve behaved splendidly, and you’ll be quite still up to the finish, won’t you?’
I nodded.
‘And you mustn’t expect the statue to come down and walk about, or anything like that,’ he continued. ‘Those aren’t the really wonderful things. And no doubt people will tell you it hasn’t changed; but you’ll know better! It’s much more wonderful that I should be there than that they should be able to prove it, isn’t it? . . . And, of course, I don’t know exactly how it will happen, for I’ve never done this before . . . You have the letter for the S.P.R.? They can photograph it if they want . . . By the way, you don’t think the same of my statue as you did at first, do you?’
‘Oh, it’s wonderful!’ I breathed.
‘And even if, like the God of the others, it doesn’t vouchsafe a special sign and wonder, it’s Benlian, for all that?’
‘Oh, do be quick, Benlian! I can’t bear another minute!’
Then, for the last time, he turned his great eaten-out eyes on me.
‘I seal you mine, Pudgie!’ he said.
Then his eyes fastened themselves on the statue.
I waited for a quarter of an hour, scarcely breathing. Benlian’s breath came in little flutters, many seconds apart. He had a little clock on the table. Twenty minutes passed, and half an hour. I was a little disappointed, really, that the statue wasn’t going to move; but Benlian knew best, and it was filling quietly up with him instead. Then I thought of those zigzag bunches of lightning they draw on the electric-belt advertisements, and I was rather glad after all that the statue wasn’t going to move. It would have been a little cheap, that . . . vulgar, in a sense . . . He was breathing a little more sharply now, as if in pain, but his eyes never moved. A dog was howling somewhere, and I hoped that the hooting of the tugs wouldn’t disturb Benlian . . .
Nearly an hour had passed when, all of a sudden, I pushed my chair farther away and cowered back, gnawing my fingers, very frightened. Benlian had suddenly moved. He’d set himself forward in his chair, and he seemed to be strangling. His mouth was wide open, and he began to make long harsh ‘Aaaaah-aaaah’s!’ I shouldn’t have thought passing yourself was such agony . . .
And then I gave a scream – for he seemed to be thrusting himself back in his chair again, as if he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to pass himself at all. But just you ask anybody: when you get yourself just over half-way passed, the other’s dragged out of you, and you can’t help yourself. His ‘Aaaaah’s became so loud and horrid that I shut my eyes and stopped my ears . . . Minutes that lasted; and then there came a high dinning that I couldn’t shut out, and all at once the floor shook with a heavy thump. When all was still again I opened my eyes.
His chair had overturned, and he lay in a heap beside it.
I called ‘Benlian!’ but he didn’t answer . . .
He’d passed beautifully; quite dead. I looked up at the statue. It was just as Benlian had said – it didn’t open its eyes, nor speak, nor anything like that. Don’t you believe chaps who tell you that statues that have been passed into do that; they don’t.
But instead, in a blaze and flash and shock, I knew now for the first time what a glorious thing that statue was! Have you ever seen anything for the first time like that? If you have, you never see very much afterwards, you know. The rest’s all piffle after that. It was like coming out of fog and darkness into a split in the open heavens, my statue was so transfigured; and I’ll bet if you’d been there you’d have clapped your hands, as I did, and chucked the tablecloth over the Benlian on the floor till they should come to cart that empty shell away, and patted the statue’s foot and cried: ‘Is it all right, Benlian?’
I did this; and then I rushed excitedly out into the street, to call somebody to see how glorious it was . . .
They’ve brought me here for a holiday, and I’m to go back to the studio in two or three days. But they’ve said that before, and I think it’s caddish of fellows not to keep their word – and not to return a valuable diary too! But there isn’t a peephole in my room, as there is in some of them (the Emperor of Brazil told me that); and Benlian knows I haven’t forsaken him, for they take me a message every day to the studio, and Benlian always answers that it’s ‘all right, and I’m to stay where I am for a bit.’ So as long as he knows, I don’t mind so much. But it is a bit rotten hanging on here, especially when the doctors themselves admit how reasonable it all is . . . Still, i
f Benlian says it’s ‘all right . . . ’
The Ascending Dream
To dream that you are ascending steps denotes danger. –
Popular Belief
A few ages ago, on a sunny sea-shore, a young man was building a boat. It was early morning, and grey vapours still dappled the sea, so that now the horizon could be seen, a thin silver thread, and again all was lost beyond the line of glittering surf, no farther away than the young man could have thrown a stone. The surf broke on shining dove-grey sands; then innumerable white boulders strewed the beach; then these became great rocks that formed a talus, and thence the cliffs rose sheer, hundreds of feet, with a thousand sea-birds wheeling and crying about their ledges.
The young man had made a little clearance among the boulders, and on the patch of sand lay his tools and appliances – a flint axe, various other sharpened stones, a few poles and branches for levers and rollers, and, most important of all, the hearth that held his handful of fire. He was a smallish but comely young man, with dark and watchful and brilliant eyes and long black hair. About his middle he wore a skin tied with twisted sinews, and the strips of hide that shod him patterned the sands as he moved.
His boat was a log that he had claimed from the sea. Many tides had tossed it about, now within swimming-distance, now a speck far away, before a higher tide than usual had lifted it to where he could get at it with his levers and rollers. He hoped he had not offended the sea in thus snatching its log from it. He knew the sea as a creature capable of being offended, but he had long ardently wished for just such a log. Only at certain carefully chosen times could he swim unaided to the little island of rock hidden in the mists, and he wished to be able to go there at all times. There were delectable fish to be caught there, much superior to those in the pools among the white boulders. And perhaps the fish were not all he coveted. Beyond the rock nothing could be seen from the shore even in clear weather, but there must be something – perhaps more desirable fish still – perhaps another island – perhaps a better home for himself and his than his present one, the crevice high up in the cliffs where the sea-birds floated and screamed.
And so, with the assistance of certain gods he knew, the young man was earnestly fashioning his boat.
He made much of these gods, since he found that by propitiation they could be made to serve him. He was propitiating two of the most powerful of them that morning, the one that watched and winked at him from his hearth on the sand, and that other one, that stirred his long hair, ruffled the line of surf, and carried the smoke of his fire away over the white boulders. Otherwise the fire would never have consented to be placed in the log’s hollow, nor would the wind have driven it as he wished it to be driven. He had his poles and rollers in readiness to alter the log’s direction should the caprices of these powers change. By the favour of a third god, who lived in the head of his flint axe, he chipped out the charred wood. The other gods, in the levers and rollers, he allowed to slumber until he wanted them.
At the edge of the cleared patch a young woman also sat. She was sewing a garment of skins, but she gave an occasional glance towards the three naked children down by the water’s edge, and from time to time left her needle sticking in her work in order to put more sticks on the fire. She, too, wore a single skin, with a chain of bright shells about her neck, threaded on a plait of her own hair. This still hung in wet points from her tumbling with the children in the surf, and one strand of it encircled her upper arm like an armlet. So lustrous was her skin that it dimly reflected surrounding objects, the gleam of a sunburst through the mists softly lighting a shoulder, the whiteness of a near boulder dimly lurking in a glossy thigh. One breast, too, polished as the head of the young man’s axe, gave back the sky overhead.
The young man wished the young woman would look up from her stitching. He knew that at the least unusual movement among the children down by the surf she would have been on her feet, but he, hardly his own length away from her, could not attract her eyes. But he remembered that she had always been like that, even in the tribe before he had brought her away. Many times his head had turned to watch her, in glade or at cave-mouth, but her head had never turned, though she had wanted to turn it never so much. When he wanted to do a thing he did it, but when she wanted a thing done she had some sort of a magic that made him do it for her.
But just once in a while this magic failed her. For example, she did not wish him to make his boat. When he had spoken of superior fish at all times instead of only occasionally, she had said she hated fish, and, the last time he had swum out for them, had refused them, and had cooked one of the common cliff-top animals for herself instead.
As for his wish to know what lay behind the island, that he had never mentioned to her.
So he furtively watched her, divided between his work and his desire to sit down by her, take her stitching from her, put his head in the skin about her knees, and tell her of something that troubled him.
The thing that troubled him was a dream that he had had; and he had had it, the same dream, not once, but many times. It had to do with their cranny in the cliff, high up where the sea-birds wheeled. His eyes sought the way up there as he idly moved the embers this way and that in the hollow of his log. As far as the talus of boulders the white stones made a narrow path. Then the path wound in and out among the great rocks. But where the talus ended and the sheer ascent began, an almost imperceptible snail’s track rose up the cliff’s face. It zigzagged, made use of the ledges, took in a crannied bush here or a short hand-rope of plaited fibre there, but always rose, until it came to the last flight, which had been cut out with the young man’s own axe. Then it ended. A stone at the mouth of that eyrie made the entrance secure against the wild beasts. Inside was their litter, their skins, their fish-hooks and axes, and their winter store of food.
Suddenly the young man came and sat down by the young woman’s side. He took her sewing from her, and began to fringe out the damp hair across her shoulders. She made no movement. Then he began to rub the sand from her bare feet. Still she made no response. Then he gave a little tug to her hair that turned her eyes towards him.
The instant her eyes met his they became alive, alert and anxious.
For dumb people still talk, and deaf people still hear, very much as these two conversed – with all their senses save the lacking one. They had very few names for things. He had hardly a name for her. She was the Comfort-thing, but so contrary that she could be ill with good fish, the Soft-to-the-Touch-thing, but so perverse that she could thrive on rank berries when she had a mind. What need, indeed, had they of names, with one god winking and watching them restlessly from the hearth, and another playing about their bodies and entering their nostrils, and another creeping in at their ears from the line of glittering surf? Even the names they knew they avoided for fear of mischief. The stairs to their eyrie were the Climbing-things (since a man might slip on them), the smooth-worn stump of bush was the Holding-thing (since it might break), and the dream was the Night-thing (since it filled the heart with bodings unknown to the day). Thus their tongues faltered, but their fingers streamed intelligence. Currents of meaning, quicker than light on water, ran back and forth between their eyes. And a few numerals, spaces and times illuminated the rest.
So he told her what had happened so many times while she had slept on the litter by his side.
He was always (in his dream) ascending that snail-track to their home. But whereas, many warm weathers ago, he had stood upon the lower portions of it, since then he had stood higher and higher with each recurrence of the dream. On the night when the cliff-fall had carried away his observation-tree, he had stood on the ledge where they had seen the half-swallowed fish carry the bird back again into the water. On that other night, when the wild cat had scratched at their rock, he had reached the niche where the cliff-god had dislodged the stone that had so narrowly missed her head. Sometime after that he had beg
un to keep a rough tally, as he did for the births of his children and the days when it was possible to swim out to the rock. Now his tally had begun to frighten him. He not only knew where he stood (in his dream) now, but where he would stand the next time.
Once or twice she interrupted him. This was to know how many steps remained yet to mount.
‘The wolves – that time – over there,’ he said.
She remembered. There had been fifty or sixty wolves that time, where he pointed – fifty or sixty steps still to climb.
And again: ‘As the fish on the stick.’
That, too, was plain. There were perhaps a score of the split and salted fish on the stick in their cliff-larder.
Then, as at another point he made a light gesture with both hands, she started.
Ten fingers! Ten! Only ten left!
But apparently even that had been some time ago. There came a point in his story where his bright eyes, following the smoke that flattened out over the shining sands, rested on the children at play. She clutched his arm, and up shot three of her fingers in a swift question.
But he shook his head. Fewer than three –
There are only two numbers fewer than three. Which of these it was appeared when, with a quick movement, he took her into his arms.
She herself was his numeral – the symbol that only a single step now remained between him and the top.
Then, his narration over, their eyes severed, and he continued to sit with his head in the soft scallop between her arm and breast.
As for her, she sat looking blankly before her, her foreknowledge come true. He had offended the sea-god, who was doubtless a kinsman of the god of the Night-thing. Dully she asked him how frequently the Night-thing visited him.
The Dead of Night Page 15