The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels

by William Golding

  “I think he’s thirsty.”

  “Of course he is,” said the Liar impatiently. “That’s why he’s dying.”

  “Why didn’t he have any water?”

  “Because I needed it,” shouted the Liar. “Have you any more silly questions? We’re wasting time!”

  “All the same——”

  “Listen. Did anyone see you come here?”

  “No.”

  “Could you bribe people?”

  “The Head Man would find out. He knows everything.”

  “You’re too small to carry a ladder. But you could bring a rope. You could tie it round a rock and let the end down——”

  The Prince jumped to his feet and clapped his hands.

  “Oh yes, yes!”

  “That sister of yours—she wouldn’t have a rope—of all the ignorant, thick-headed, maddening, beautiful—Could you find a rope?”

  The Prince would have danced in his happiness and excitement, had he not been so near the edge of the pit.

  “I’ll find one,” he cried. “I’ll look!”

  “And another thing. You’ve more jewels than you’re wearing.”

  “Of course.”

  “Bring them.”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “A rope. Jewels. After dark. You swear?”

  “I swear! Dear Liar!”

  “Go on, then. It’s my—it’s our only chance.”

  The Prince turned away from the pit and was a few yards down the rock, before he remembered and crouched sideways under cover. But the guard was not lounging by the postern gate. There was nobody in sight at all; and the gate was shut. He decided to pick his way towards the shade of the palms and the flooded fields, then wade through the few inches of water round the side of the Great House to the main gate. But at the edge of the fields he found two naked boys playing with a reed skiff. He told them to take him to the main gate and they did so at once, not speaking, in awe of his bracelets and necklace, his sandals, his Holy Tail and pleated skirt. So he walked through the forecourt and went straight to his rooms; he woke his nurses out of their siesta, and because he was so nearly a god, they found it easy to obey him in his new determination. Jewels he must have, many jewels; and when they dared to ask why, he looked at them and they went. Finally he had the jewels heaped before him; and it was a strangely pleasant task to hang them on himself, till he clattered and tinkled as he moved.

  The rope was another matter. The Great House seemed short on available rope. There were ropes at the wells by the kitchens but they were too long and too hard to get at. There were rope falls and guys to each of the masts that stood, their pennants hanging limp before the main gate. The Prince became a little vague and sat tinkling in a corner to consider what he should do. In the end he saw one thing clearly. He could not find a rope. Those servants he asked, bowed, sidled off and did not come back. He heaved a deep sigh, and began to tremble. If you really needed a rope, there was only one man to ask for it—the man who knew everything. Slowly, and tinkling, he got to his feet.

  *

  The terrace was raised, and the balcony fronted on the swollen river. An awning was spread over it, and the fabric hung dead in the motionless air. Pretty Flower was in the shade of the awning. She sat, staring at the water. She was changed, and reduced. Her long hair had been cut across the forehead and right round lower down so that it did not quite reach her shoulders. Though her head was bound with a fillet of gold from which rose a cobra’s head in gold and topaz, she was thinner in figure and face, and the only make-up she wore was the heavy malachite that lay on her eyelids and matted her eyelashes into necessary shade. So she stared sullenly at the water; and if her expression was to be read, it was as one of shame, brazened out.

  The Head Man stood before her. He held his chin in his right hand and rested his right elbow in the palm of his left. He was smiling still, but his smile was tight.

  Pretty Flower lowered her chin and stared at the pavement.

  “You see—I failed. I know He’s angry with me. All the time I know it.”

  “With me too. With all of us.”

  “I shall never, never forgive myself.”

  The Head Man stirred. His smile became wry.

  “We may none of us have the time.”

  She looked up, startled. Her bosom went in and out.

  “You mean he’ll drown us all?”

  “There is a—strong possibility. That is why I have ventured to thrust myself on you. I said there is little time. None the less, we who are responsible for the people must do what can be done. We must take thought. You see, Pretty Flower—in this emergency I may call you Pretty Flower, may I not?”

  “Anything.”

  “What distinguishes man from the rest of creation?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “His capacity to look at facts—and draw from them a conclusion.”

  He began to pace to and fro on the terrace, hands clasped behind his back.

  “First,” he said, “we must establish the facts.”

  “What facts?”

  “Who kept the sky up? Mm?”

  “Well—He did.”

  “Who, year after year in His—paternal generosity—made the river rise?”

  “He did, of course.”

  “This time—is there another God yet?”

  “No,” said Pretty Flower heavily. “Not yet.”

  “Therefore—who makes the river rise now?”

  “He does. I thought——”

  The Head Man held up one finger.

  “Step by step. Yes. He does. We have established the first fact. Now for the second. How high was the water when He entered His Motionless Now?”

  “At the Notch Of Excellent Eating.”

  “Which was after the occasion when you say you failed. But at that time He must have been pleased. You see?”

  “But——”

  “Your woman’s heart must not struggle against the granite durability of rational demonstration.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “What does that mean?”

  The Head Man meditated for a moment.

  “The words are difficult admittedly; but they mean that I am right and you are wrong.”

  She straightened in the seat and smiled a little.

  “Partly, perhaps.”

  “Nevertheless, do not be too happy, Pretty Flower—not too happy!”

  “There is no fear of that.”

  “The fact, then. Something angered Him after he entered the House of Life.”

  He paused, and resumed his pacing. Then, at the point of a turn, he stopped and faced her.

  “They have said—and it would be false modesty to deny it—that all knowledge is my province. What a man can know, I know.”

  She looked back at him under her heavy fringe of lashes. A smile moved only one corner of her mouth.

  “You know about me, too?”

  “I know that you have been in this deep seclusion. Now these things have to be said, otherwise we cannot deal with them. His anger concerns a person in whom—unconsciously perhaps—you take a deep interest. There. I have said it.”

  For a moment her face was dusky with blood; but the smile stayed where it was.

  “Again, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I refer, of course, to the Liar.”

  The blush came and went but her eyes never left him. He continued in the same cool voice.

  “It is necessary, Pretty Flower. We cannot afford the comfort of self-deceit. There is nothing you cannot tell me.”

  Suddenly she buried her face in her hands.

  “Wrong upon wrong. Vice so ingrained, wickedness so deep, so dirty——”

  “Poor child, poor, poor child!”

  “Monstrous thoughts and indescribable——”

  He was close to her. He spoke gently.

  “Leave these thoughts where they are and they fester. Take them out and—they are gone. Come, my dear. Let us be two humble sou
ls, hand-in-hand, exploring the tragic depths of the human condition.”

  She slumped to her knees before him, face in hands.

  “When he sat at, at the God’s feet and told Him—told us—of the white mountains floating in water—how cold he was—a white fire; and he so poorly dressed, so helpless and so brave——”

  “And you wanted to warm him.”

  She nodded miserably, without speaking.

  “And little by little—you wanted to make love with him.”

  His voice was so detached that the strangeness, the impossibility of their conversation was taken away. He spoke again, mildly.

  “How did you justify yourself to yourself?”

  “I pretended to myself that he was my brother.”

  “Knowing all the time that he was—a stranger, as in his fantasies of white men.”

  Her voice came, muffled through her palms.

  “My brother by the God is only eleven years old. And the fact that the Liar was—what you said—can I tell you?”

  “Be brave.”

  “It put a keener edge on my love.”

  “Poor child! Poor twisted soul!”

  “What will happen to me? What can happen to me? I have shattered the laws of nature.”

  “At least, you are being honest.”

  She moved towards his knees and put out her hands to embrace them, face up.

  “But then—when we did make love——”

  There were no knees to embrace. They were a yard away, having removed themselves with the speed of a man avoiding a snake. The Head Man his hands clenched against his chest was staring at her past his shoulder.

  “You—you and he—you—the——”

  She sat back on her knees, arms wide. She stared at him and cried out.

  “But you said you knew everything!”

  He went quickly to the parapet and looked at nothing. For a while he said absurd, childish things.

  “Well. Oh dear. Well, well, well. Tut, tut. Bless me!”

  At last he stopped muttering, turned and came towards her—yet not directly towards her. He cleared his throat.

  “And all this, this—stood between you and your lawful desire for your father.”

  She said nothing. He spoke again, his voice raised and indignant.

  “Can you wonder that the river’s still rising?”

  But Pretty Flower was standing up. Her voice rose like the Head Man’s.

  “What do you want? You’re supposed to be doing your practice!”

  The Head Man followed her eyes.

  “Have you been listening, Prince?”

  “You’ve been spying,” cried Pretty Flower. “You nasty little boy! What have you got all those things on for?”

  “I like them,” said the Prince, trembling and tinkling. “I didn’t hear anything much. Only what he said about the river rising.”

  “Oh go away!”

  “I won’t stay,” said, the Prince quickly. “I was only wondering, as a matter of fact actually, if either of you had a piece of rope——”

  “Rope? What for?”

  “I just wanted it.”

  “You’ve been outside the gate again. Look at your sandals!”

  “I just thought——”

  “Go away and tell those women to clean you.”

  The Prince, still trembling, turned to go; but the Head Man spoke with sudden authority.

  “Wait!”

  Bowing slightly to Pretty Flower, as if asking for permission he went to the Prince and took him by the arm.

  “Be pleased to squat down, Prince. Here. Excellent. We want rope and we’ve been outside. You were attached to him, weren’t you? I begin to understand. And the jewels—of course!”

  “I just wanted——”

  Pretty Flower was looking from one to the other.

  “What is all this?”

  The Head Man turned to her.

  “This touches directly on our conversation. There is—but you would not know precisely where—a pit. When you say ‘Take him to the pit——’”

  “I know,” said Pretty Flower impatiently. “What has it to do with me?”

  “Some of the terrible causes of our danger cannot be undone. But one at least, can. The God is angry with His Liar and makes the waters rise, in part, because the Liar refused the gift of eternal life.”

  Pretty Flower jerked half out of her chair. Her hands were clenched on the arms of it.

  “The pit——”

  He bowed his head.

  “His Liar still endures the vexations, the insecurities, the trials of a moving Now.”

  He caught her just in time, lowered her gently to the chair and began to slap her hands. He muttered to himself again.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”

  The Prince found his voice.

  “Can I go now?”

  But the Head Man paid no attention to him. The Prince listened in silence as the Head Man gave orders to soldiers at the door, watched without comment though perhaps a little envy as Pretty Flower’s beauty was put back on her face by her women. A tiny old woman brought in a bowl of drink and placed it on a pedestal by the chair. Then the three of them waited and the sun lowered towards evening.

  Pretty Flower cleared her throat.

  “What will you do?”

  “Persuade him. Let me administer such consolation to you as I can; for you must be strong. You think yourself exceptional. And of course you are—exceptionally beautiful for one thing. But these dark desires—” he glanced for a moment at the Prince, then away—“you are not alone in them. In all of us there is a deep, unspoken, a morbid desire to make love with a, a—you understand what I mean. Not related to you by blood. An outlander with his own fantasies. Don’t you see what these fantasies are? They are a desperate attempt to get rid of his own corrupt desires, to act them out in imagination; because—by the laws of nature—they cannot be externalized. Do you suppose, my dear, there are real places where people marry across the natural borders of consanguinity? Besides, where would they live, the puppets in these fantastic lies? Suppose for a moment the sky to be so big it stretched out to cover these lands! Well—think of the weight!”

  “Yes. Madness.”

  “You admit the truth to yourself at last. A madman whose lies have—for all of us—stirred up the central, unspeakable plenum; a madman who is a peril to us all unless he agrees to serve the God.”

  He paused, turned away to look at the flooded valley. An empty boat came twisting and turning down the central current.

  “You see? We cannot afford to wait for a cure. If he cannot be persuaded—we will try, of course—then we must use force.”

  There was silence for a time. Pretty Flower began to cry again. She did not interrupt the silence with her crying. The water swam down her cheeks and the malachite came with it, like spill from a mine. The river continued to rise. The Prince sat, tinkling every now and then.

  Presently Pretty Flower stopped crying.

  “I must look a mess.”

  “No, no, my dear. A little—disarranged, perhaps. Becomingly.”

  She signalled for her women.

  “You know, Head Man? It shows how far I have been corrupted. I very nearly don’t care. Not quite, of course but very nearly.”

  He looked down at her, frowning, puzzled.

  “About the flood?”

  “Oh that—no. My face, I mean.”

  The women went away again. Pretty Flower settled herself firmly.

  “I’m ready now.”

  The Head Man spoke loudly.

  “Have him brought here.”

  The Prince scrambled to his feet.

  “Well—I think—I’ll go and have a drink——”

  The words came hissing from the chair.

  “Stay where you are, you runt!”

  The Prince sat down again.

  There were noises beyond the terrace and among them the sound of a well-known voice talking, voluble as ever but
at a higher pitch. Two tall black soldiers wearing nothing but loincloths dragged the Liar forward between them. The soldiers brought him round and held him before Pretty Flower. He stopped talking and looked at her. She looked back at him with eyes like stones and would have seemed secure as a dweller in the house of life, if it had not been for the way her dress shivered over her breast. The Liar caught sight of the Prince, squatting beyond her by the wall. He convulsed between the soldiers and yelled at the top of his voice.

  “You—traitor!”

  “I didn’t——”

  “Just one moment, Liar.’’ The Head Man turned to Pretty Flower. “Shall I?”

  She opened her lips, but no sound came out. The Head Man lifted a finger.

  “Let him go.”

  The two soldiers backed away from the Liar, glistening. They unslung their spears and held them pointed at him as if he were a beast in a net. He began to talk again, quickly, desperately, from person to person.

  ‘‘Poison is cruel. You may say it doesn’t hurt but how do you know? Come now, have you ever been poisoned? I have many secrets that would be of use to you. I could even stop the river rising—but I must have time, time! We don’t any of us like being frightened, do we? It’s horrible to be frightened—horrible, horrible!”

  The Head Man interrupted him.

  “We aren’t frightening you, Liar!”

  “Then why, when I stop speaking, do my teeth sing in my head?”

  The Head Man put out his hand to the Liar who flinched away.

  “Calm yourself, my dear man. Nothing is going to happen to you. Not at this moment.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. Let there be a pause. Relax, Liar. Just lie down and curl up comfortably on the mat.”

  The Liar looked suspiciously at him; but the Head Man only nodded and smiled. The Liar put out one hand to the floor, knelt, looking up sideways. He glanced round him, winced at the sight of the spears, then slowly laid himself down. He pulled himself into a parody of the foetal position; but no foetus was ever so tense, so quivering. No foetus ever stared so, up, sideways, and round.

  The Head Man glanced at the swollen river and winced from it as the Liar had winced from the spears. Visibly he pulled himself together.

  “Now, Liar. There’s nothing to be frightened of. We have all the time in the world.”

  He saw an unblinking eye, looking up warily as a crab under a rock.