The Inheritors

by William Golding

  Lok looked down on Liku, happy in the sight of her round belly and the quiet now that Tanakil was no longer using her stick. He thought of the new one at the fat woman's breast and smiled sideways at Fa. Fa grinned at him wryly. She did not seem to be as happy as he was. The feeling inside him had sunk away and disappeared like the frost when the sun finds it on a flat rock. The people who were so miraculously endowed with possessions no longer seemed to him the immediate menace they had been earlier. Even outside-Lok was lulled and not so sharp on sounds and smells. He yawned hugely and pressed his palms into his eye-sockets. The flock was swarming, drifting along as when in high summer a wind cards it out of the bushes of the plain and the air is full of drifting streamers. He could hear Fa whispering out- side him.

  “Remember that we shall take them when it is dark." A picture came to him of the fat woman laughing and giving milk.

  “How will you feed him?"

  “I will half-eat for him. And perhaps the milk will come." He thought of this. Fa spoke once more.

  “Presently the new people will sleep."

  The new people were not yet asleep or anything near it. They were making more noise than ever. Both logs were in the clearing, lying across thick, round branches. The people were grouped round the last one and screaming at the old man. He was pointing fiercely at the way into the forest and making his bird-noises flutter and twist. The people were shaking their heads, freeing themselves from the lines of skin, moving away towards the caves. The old man was shaking his fists at the sky where the air was darkest blue, was beating his head with his fists; but the people moved in their dream of walking to the fire and the caves. When he was quite alone by the trunks of wood he fell silent. There was the beginning of darkness under the trees and the sunlight was lifting from the ground.

  The old man walked very slowly towards the river. Then he stopped and they could see no expression on his face, but he went back quickly to his cave and disappeared inside. Lok heard the fat woman speak and then the old man came out. He walked towards the river slowly, in the same footsteps, and this time he did not pause by the logs but came straight on. He passed under the tree, stood between the tree and the river, looking down at the children.

  Tanakil was teaching Liku to catch, the stick forgotten. When she saw the old man she stood up, put her hands behind her and rubbed one foot over the other. Liku did this too as well as she could. The old man said nothing for a while. Then he jerked his head at the clearing and spoke sharply. Tanakil took the end of the strip of skin in her hand and walked under the tree with Liku following. Turning carefully in the tree, Lok saw them go into a cave. When he looked back on the river side the old man was standing and making water over the edge of the bank. The sunlight had left the river and was caught in the treetops on the other side. There was a great redness over the fall and the gap and the water sounded very loud. The old man came back to the tree, stood under it and peered carefully towards the thorns where the guard was standing. Then he went to the other side of the tree and looked again, and all round. He came back, and leaned against the tree facing the water. He put his hand inside the skin of his chest and pulled out a lump. Lok smelt, saw and recognized. The old man was eating the meat that had been intended for Liku. They could hear him as he leaned there, head bent, elbows out, tearing, pulling and chewing. He sounded busy at his meat as a beetle in dead wood.

  Someone was coming. Lok heard him but the old man, caught between the sounds of his two jaws, did not. The man came round the tree, saw the old man, stopped, howled with fury. It was Pine-tree. He ran back to the clearing, stood by the fire and began to shout at the top of his voice. Figures pulled themselves out of the dark caves, men and women. The darkness was swarming over the ground and Pine-tree kicked the fire so that sparks and flames shot up. Then there was a flood of firelight to wrestle with the swarm of darkness under the still, bright sky. The old man was shouting by the logs; Pinetree was shouting and pointing at him and the fat woman came out of a cave with the new one squirming over her shoulder. All at once the people made a rush. The old man jumped into one of the logs, picked up a wooden leaf and brandished it. The fat woman began to scream at the people and the noise was so great that birds flapped in the trees. Now the old man's voice had the dusk to itself. The people were a little quieter. Tuami who had said nothing, but stood by the fat woman, said something now and the people took up and repeated what he said. Their voices were louder again. The old man was pointing at the stag's head where it lay by the fire but the noise of the people saying one word over and over again sounded as if they were coming nearer. The fat woman ducked into her cave and Lok could see the people fasten their eyes on the entrance. She came out not with the new one but with the animal that wobbled. At this the people shouted and clapped their hands. They moved away quickly and brought the hollow pieces of wood and the animal on the fat woman's shoulder made water into them. The people drank and Lok could see how the bones of their throats moved in the firelight. The old man was waving them back to their caves but they would not go. They came back to the fat woman and got more to drink. The fat woman was not laughing now but looking from the old man to the people and then to Tuami. He was close to her and his face was smiling. The fat woman tried to take the animal back into the cave but Pine-tree and a woman would not let her. At that the old man rushed forward and the knot of them began to struggle together. Tuami stood by the struggle watching as though the people were something he had drawn in the air with his stick. More of the people joined in. The crowd was turning round and round and the fat woman was screaming. The wobbling animal slid off her shoulder and disappeared. Some of the people fell on top of it. Lok heard a watery sound and then the heap of people sank a little. They staggered apart and there was the animal flat on the ground, flat as the stag that Tuami had made, but far more dead-looking. The old man made himself very tall, Lok yawned. These sights would not join together. His eyes closed, jerked open. The old man had both arms stretched up in the air. He was facing the people and the voice he used was frightening them. They had moved a little back. The fat woman sneaked into a cave. Tuami had disappeared. The old man's voice rose, finished, his hands fell. There was silence and fear and a sour smell from the dead animal.

  For a while the people said nothing but stayed, crouched a little, leaning away. Suddenly one of the women rushed forward. She screamed up at the old man, she rubbed her belly, she held out her breasts for him to look at, she spat at him. The people began to move again. There was nodding and shouting. The old man shouted the others down and pointed to the head of the stag. Then there was silence. The people's eyes turned in and down to the stag that still watched Lok with its little eye through the spy-hole.

  There was a noise in the forest outside the clearing. Gradually the people became aware of it. Someone was howling. The thorns moved, opened; Chestnut-head, blood glistening all down his left leg, hopped through, holding on to Bush. When he saw the fire, he lay down, and a woman ran to him. Bush came forward towards the people.

  Lok's eyelids fell and bounced open again. For a dreamy moment he saw himself in a picture telling all this to Liku who would not understand it any more than he did.

  The fat woman appeared by the cave and she had the new one sucking at her breast. Bush was asking a question. A shout answered him. The woman who had held out her empty breast was pointing to the old man, the dead tree, and to the people. Chestnut-head spat at the stag's head and the people shouted again, moving forward. The old man lifted up his hands and began that same high, menacing speech but the people jeered and laughed. Chestnut-head stood by the stag's head. They could see his eyes gleaming in the firelight like two stones. He began to draw a twig from his waist and he held the bent stick in his other hand. He and the old man watched each other.

  The old man took a step sideways and talked rapidly. He reached the fat woman, put out his hands and tried to take the new one from her. She bent quickly and snapped at his hand with her mouth as any
woman would, so that the old man danced and howled. Chestnut-head put the twig across the bent stick and pulled the red feathers back. The old man stopped dancing and went towards him, hands out, palms facing the twig. He stood still almost within reach of Chestnut-head, curled the fingers of his right hand all except the long one. This one he moved sideways until it was pointing at one of the caves. All the people were very silent. The fat woman laughed in a high voice and was still again. Tuami was watching the old man's back. The old man glanced round the clearing, peered out to where the darkness was crowded under the trees and then back at the people. None of them said anything.

  Lok yawned and backed down into the hollow of the treetop where he was protected from the sight of the people and their whole camp was nothing but a flicker of reflected light over the trees. He looked up at Fa, inviting her to sleep at his side but she did not notice him.

  He could see her face and her eyes peering through the ivy and unblinkingly open. So concentrated was she that even when he touched her leg with his hand she did nothing but went on staring. He saw her mouth open and her breathing quicken. She gripped the rotten wood of the dead trunk so that it crunched and crumbled into wet pulp. Despite his tiredness this interested Lok and frightened him a little. He had a picture of one of the people climbing the tree, so he struggled back and began to stir the leaves open. Fa glanced sideways quickly and her face was like the face of a sleeper who wrestles with a terrible dream. She grabbed his wrist and forced him down. She gripped him by the shoulders and burrowed her face against his chest. Lok put his arm round her and outside-Lok felt a warm pleasure in the touch. But Fa had no wish to play. She knelt up again, pulled him towards her and held his head against her breast while her face looked downwards through the leaves and her heart beat urgently against his cheek. He tried to see what it was that made her so afraid but when he struggled she held him close and all he could see was the angle of her jaw and her eyes, open, open for ever, watching.

  The flock came back and her body was warm. Lok yielded, knowing that she would wake him when the people slept and they could run away with the children. He burrowed close, holding/pillowed over the thumping heart with the tight arms round him so that the flock, swarming now in the darkness became a whole world of exhausted sleep.

  NINE

  He awoke to fight with arms that were pressing him down, arms holding his shoulder and a hand smothering his face. He talked and bubbled against the fingers, ready almost to bite them from the new habit of terror. Fa's face was close to his and she was holding him down as he threshed against the leaves and moulded tinder wood.

  “Quiet!"

  She had spoken louder than ever before in the tree, had spoken in more than an ordinary voice as though the people were no longer all round them. He ceased to struggle and was properly awake, noticing how the light was leaping over the dark leaves making spots in their darkness that jumped this way and that together. There were many stars over the tree and they were small and dying by contrast. Sweat was streaming down Fa's face and the skin of her body where he touched it was wet. As he noticed her he heard the new people also for they were noisy as a pack of wolves in cry. They were shouting, laughing, singing, babbling in their bird speech, and the flames of their fire were leaping madly with them. He turned over and poked his fingers into the leaves to see what was happening.

  The clearing was full of firelight. They had pulled ashore the great logs that had swum across the river behind Pine-tree and stood them on end over the fire so that they leaned against each other. There was nothing warm and comfortable about this fire - it was like the fall, like a cat. He could see part of the log that had killed Mai leaning against the pile and the hard, ear-like fungi were red hot. The flames came squirting out of the top of the pile as though they were being squeezed from below, they were red and yellow and white and they shot small sparks straight up out of sight. The tops of the flames where they faded out were level with Lok and the blue smoke round them was almost invisible. From the pile with its fountain of flame, light beat round the clearing, not warm light but fierce, white-red and blinding. This light pulsed like a heart so that even the trees round the clearing with their drifts of curling leaves seemed to jump sideways like the holes between the leaves of ivy.

  The people were like the fire, made of yellow and white, for they had thrown off their furs and wore nothing but the binding of skin round their waists and loins. They jumped sideways in time with the trees and their hair was fallen or awry so that Lok could not easily tell the difference between the men among them. The fat woman was leaning against one of the hollow logs, her hands braced on either side of her and she was naked to the waist so that her body was yellow and white. Her head was back, throat curved, mouth open and laughing while her loose hair swung down into the hollow of the log. Tuami was crouched by her, his face against her left wrist; and he was moving, not only jerkily back and forth with the firelight but up, his mouth creeping, his fingers playing, moving up as though he were eating her flesh, moving up towards her naked shoulder. The old man was lying in the other hollow log, his feet sticking out either side. He held a round stone thing in his hand which he put to his mouth every now and then and in between whiles he was singing. The other men and women were scattered round the clearing. They held more of these round stones and now Lok saw that they were drinking from them. His nose caught the scent of what they drank. It was sweeter and fiercer than the other water, it was like the fire and the fall. It was a bee-water, smelling of honey and wax and decay, it drew toward and repelled, it frightened and excited like the people themselves. There were other stones nearer the fire with holes in their tops and the smell seemed to come particularly strongly from them. Now Lok saw that when the people had finished their drink they came to these and lifted them and took more to drink. The girl Tanakil was lying in front of one of the caves, flat on her back as if she were dead. A man and a woman were fighting and kissing and screeching and another man was crawling round and round the fire like a moth with a burnt wing. Round and round he went, crawling, and the other people took no notice of him but went on with their noise.

  Tuami had reached the fat woman's neck. He was pulling her and she Was laughing and shaking her head and squeezing his shoulder with her hand. The old man sang and the people fought, the man crawled round the fire, Tuami burrowed at the fat woman and spent the time the clearing jumped back and forth, sideways.

  There was plenty of light for Lok to see Fa. The jerking tired his eyes for they tried to follow it, so he turned his head and looked at her instead. She too was jerking but not so much; and apart from the light her face was very still. Her eyes looked as though they had neither blinked nor shifted since before he fell asleep. The pictures in his head came and went like the firelight. They meant nothing and they began to spin till his head felt as if it would split. He found words for his tongue but his tongue hardly knew how to use them.

  “What is it?"

  Fa did not move. A kind of half-knowledge, terrible in its very formlessness, filtered into Lok as though he were sharing a picture with her but had no eyes inside his head and could not see it. The knowledge was something like that sense of extreme peril that outside-Lok had shared with her earlier; but this was for inside-Lok and he had no room for it. It pushed into him, displacing the comfortable feeling of after sleep, the pictures and their spinning, breaking down the small thoughts and opinions, the feeling of hunger and the urgency of thirst. He was possessed by it and did not know what it was.

  Fa turned her head sideways slowly. The eyes with their twin fires were round like the eyes of the old woman moving up through the water. A movement round her mouth - not a grimace or preparation for speech - set her lips fluttering like the lips of the new people; and then they were open again and still.

  “Oa did not bring them out of her belly."

  At first the words had no picture connected with them but they sank into the feeling and reinforced it. Then Lok peered through t
he leaves again for the meaning of the words and he was looking straight at the fat woman's mouth. She was coming towards the tree, holding on to Tuami, and she staggered and screeched with laughter so that he could see her teeth. They were not broad and useful for eating and grinding; they were small and two were longer than the others. They were teeth that remembered wolf.

  The fire collapsed with a roar and a torrent of sparks. The old man was no longer drinking but lying still in the hollow log and the other people were sitting or flat and the singing noise was dying like the fire. Tuami and the fat woman passed erratically under the tree and disappeared so that Lok moved round to watch them. The fat woman made for the water but Tuami caught her arm and pulled her round. They stood like that looking at each other, the fat woman pale on one side from the moon, ruddy on the other from the fire. She laughed up at Tuami and stuck her tongue out while he spoke quickly to her. Suddenly he grabbed her with both hands and pulled her against his chest and they wrestled, gasping without speech. Tuami shifted his grip, got her by a hank of long hair and dragged it down till her face lifted, contorted with pain. She stuck the nails of her right hand into his shoulder and dragged down as her hair was dragged. Tuami thrust his face against hers and lurched so that one knee was behind her. He shifted his hand up until it was gripping the back of her head. The hand that was gripped into the flesh of his shoulder slackened, fumbled, reached round him and suddenly they were bound together, straining together, loins against loins and mouth against mouth. The fat woman began to slide down so that Tuami was bending over. He fell clumsily on one knee and her arms were round his neck. She lay back in the moonlight, her eyes shut, her body limp and her breast moving up and down. Tuami was kneeling and fumbling in the fur about her waist. He made a kind of snarling sound and threw himself upon her. Now Lok could see the wolf teeth again. The fat woman was moving her face from side to side and it was contorted as it had been when she struggled against Tuami.