Sudden Traveler

by Sarah Hall

  Halime watches them eat, her youngest baby drowsing on her breast. She seems a little sad, a little withdrawn. Perhaps the given coin has made her nervous. The men—boys, most of them—laugh and joke, eat like their wives and mothers never feed them. Would-be butcher, laborer, vintner, clerk, an almost-soldier, storyteller, and a falconer, though there’s little use in birds. One blue-eyed, one so shy he cannot look her in the eye, one so calm it seems his world is reconciled. Weak and cunning souls, strong and humble. Which of them will leave the village? Who will prosper, who will fail? Who will call the fate of others? The women talk of it, when they gather for the washing, or for prayers.

  Halfway through the meal—click—the hard edge is bitten, the coin discreetly transferred into a pocket. Once the bowls are emptied, the donkey tacked to the cart, the bottles rattled on board, the men loaded, the trumpet unsnapped from its shabby case, buffed on Fikret’s sleeve and sounded, they are off. Yarak! Laughter. These are friends for a lifetime, they think, friends who could survive battles, even with each other. Through the village they ride, past the church, past the mosque, past the paddocks of bearded goats. Jokes about sisters, jokes about last year’s rakı—who got sick, who fell over? Fiko! But he’s not allowed to stop playing the trumpet, can’t speak in his own defence. Past the firestone where Fatma is patting dough, as she has for sixty years. She holds up her hand—three fingers, like three horns. Past the first, magnificent trees, their trunks turned and twisted like art forms, and into the ancient, green light of the forest. Lamb led behind on rope, bleating.

  Adnan has the reins; he’s that type, getting ready for action, military papers sitting on his father’s desk. Selim is wondering if Nermin will come, how will she wear her hair, up off her shoulders or loose? Did the girls say that they were coming? Sait has a book of verse, and reads while the trumpet rests . . . My eyes can’t get enough of the trees . . . It is respectfully appreciated. Young men are nothing if not understudy poets—imams, kings, despots, loafers, all of them. The trumpet sounds again, popular songs, almost in tune, then quietens. For the forest has its own music. It is played by the wind like a thousand reeds, by the birds with their lilts and trills. Even the momentary silence is orchestral. The donkey, dumb and obedient, trots on, takes the uphills and unevens without fuss, pauses, shits, continues.

  Evening begins to smoke between the branches. The leaves are luminescing, lit by the sun’s day-long love. The men are quiet now. The lamb is quiet too, tired, given over to its destiny. Shadows seem to follow in the trees. The glimmer of an amber eye. Kurt, someone whispers. But no, the shadows do not lope like hunters, they simply melt away. Nearly there, to the Well of Simeon, or Mevlâna, the Well of Souls. Some of the women might already be waiting, with cut cucumber and mint and tomatoes, smiles. Hope’s honey, Sait says. The beer is getting warm. The knife is blind, needs sharpening. Soon there will be a fire.

  It is very green in the clearing by the well—there might be lamps of tsavorite hung between the branches. There might be spirits in the air above the void. They arrive and marvel for a moment. But time is getting on. They unload. The donkey is released, let loose in the tender grass. The men set to, preparing the ground, whittling a spit, rigging the fire and setting it alight. They put blankets down, just in case. Nazım, butcher’s boy, though twenty-three, runs the knife along a steel. He steps to the side, trips the lamb, drags it struggling only a little, and sits astride. He tells Sait to hold the bowl below the neck, finds the gentle spot. Bismillah. A few kicks, and its head bucks back, the quick, bright river is released. A different kind of poetry, my friend, he says. The dismantlement begins—legs, shanks, ribs, liver put to float in the red bowl like a prize, indifferent head. Not much will go to waste. The others watch, with varying degrees of keenness for suffering, then resume their occupations in the camp.

  And the well waits. Waits, with its deep, invisible eye, its patience of saints, the patience of eternity. Until! The warm beer! It can be lowered and cooled to perfect temperature in that ice-cold water. Good idea, Ahmet! Today he’s full of them. They load the bottles in a sack, cast about for rope like sailors in a fever. Surely there is some? No? Yes! The lamb’s lead! It’s dry, a bit shabby, but long enough, and good for purpose. It is wound around the sackcloth’s neck and knotted, the clinking clanking load sent across the wall and down into the borehole. Down, down, it goes, and disappears into the dark. A telltale splashing echo when it meets the water. Give it half an hour, Ahmet says, it will be like drinking frost. Meanwhile, the fire’s flames have lifted and settled. The first meat is skewered on the spit and roasted on the charcoal. But where are the girls? Aren’t they coming?

  There’s talk of opening the rakı, but it is foolish talk. Not before the food, boys! Fikret plays the trumpet again, something fast to speed the cooling of the beer. Twenty minutes? Good enough, and they are thirsty. Selim and Ahmet take up the rope and begin to pull the prize. Clink, clank, go the bottles. The sack is wet and heavy, heavy as an ox! They heave. They haul. Up, up, the thing comes dripping, swaying, almost to the wall. But look, the knot at the sack’s neck has slipped—none of these men know how to perform murder yet, only to imagine—and its throttle-hold softens. The rope goes slack. The men stagger back. The beer splashes down, into the well of Simeon, Mevlâna, into the Well of Souls. Can anyone see the bottles? Are they lost? Are they floating? That’s a lot of beer! Hassiktir! Now what?

  It is Adnan who volunteers, of course. He will go in and get it. Can’t have their last week’s wages go to waste. The others aren’t so sure. The well is wide, its stones are smooth, polished by some prehistoric mason’s hand, or by the sea, or rubbed imperviously by heaven—it can’t be climbed. Adnan is not a spider. So lower me, then, he says, it’s only water. He picks the rope, puts it around his waist, threads it through his legs and underneath his balls. Laughter. Jokes about opera, and doesn’t he want children? No, I want a beer, he says, before the army dries me out.

  He climbs across the wall, clings and braces. His friends take up the strain. He tests the tautness of the rope, tugs and bounces, faces the dark tunnel. Hazırım! Then, hand over hand, the boys release their burden, and down goes Adnan. Heavier than an ox! Jokes about ravioli, how many pieces has he eaten? One hundred? Laughter. And the gold, he calls. Gold, comes up the echo. What’s that, Captain? Gold, gold! The rope sings uncertainly against the wall, its strands begin to struggle. It was me, he shouts. Me. Me. I got the coin. The coin. The words come up from nowhere, like a confession from a dungeon. The company cheers, sending flocks of birds fluttering from the treetops. Hand over hand, steadily, they send their friend into the world below. The rope is running out, fraying and unraveling—get a move on, boys. He must be nearly there, about to secure the beer, a hero for the day, a legend in the making.

  The borehole swims in darkness; no light inside this wound. The unreflecting surface seems to wink. And so the rope, by choice or by collusion, by chance or fate’s intention, breaks. The men fall back and over, one on top of the other, scrambling to get up and calling out and calling down. Adnan! Adnan! Tamam? But there is only silence. Strange silence. Silence, like the spirit’s longest suffering. In their dreams to come across the years, they’ll never hear a plunging cry, a shout for help, not even one small ripple. It is as if that fall is endless.

  And where are the women? Still no sign. They are not riding those noble horses bred from Arabians, bowing low under the heavy trees. They are not weaving through the forest, one behind the other, like wolves, taking turns to flatten down a path. They are at home. They are sitting around Halime’s table, perhaps discussing their lives, their children, the children they would have or the men they might marry, the roads out of the village, the wars their grandmothers endured. The usual things.

  No. Not this time. Tonight, as the moon rises above the roof of forest, they are sitting quietly, holding hands. On the table in front of them is an unopened bottle of rakı, glasses, a jug of ice water that will charm the solut
ion milky. A coiled length of rope. Good rope, fit for any purpose, salvage, cattle, the binding of wives and daughters by an uncivil army, the hanging of those who will not change their names. Who sees? Who pays? Always the women. They have agreed. If one of them breaks hold of her sisters’ hands, they will all stand, and they will go immediately, as fast as they can, into the forest, as if late for a party or an accidental rescue. It is hard. One of them is his cousin. They played together when she and he were small; she thought that it was play. How can the weight of one man go on to break a country? How can knowing be unseeing, or visions free to ruin? Their grip is tight. Their knuckles white and risen. Fatma, half-handed daughter of the last violence, says to them, do not, do not ask to be forgiven.

  In the Well of Souls, the water is so cold that it can shatter bones; it can sting the brain and seize the heart within a minute. It is so clear that it can strip the body of all reason, rob the mind of all possession and ambition, stop those who are, as if they never were, so they will never be. Extraordinary, intolerable, uncorrupted water. Water, born from the middle of the earth, that pure and secret place no sun or human hand has ever warmed. Water, come from the past, in one form or another, rain, river, sea, thoughts like tears in clouds, as old as it is new, designed to serve no purpose other than its future.

  Orton

  It had taken three buses to get to the village and she was very tired. She was tired all the time, tired in the mornings as if she’d worked a whole day, and breathless at night. This journey was the longest she’d made all year. One bus to Kendal, one to Shap Junction, and then, finally, the last, over the moors to Orton. There had been a lot of waiting between connections, watching teenagers rattle coins into vending machines and paw chocolate bars out of the flaps. The buses were all old, with steep steps. On the last, the driver had risen from his seat to help her up, nice man. She hadn’t any bags, just her favorite purse, and so she told him she could manage, and she did manage, just.

  She sat near the front, watching the yellow grassland flush past, the brinjal and sorrel hills beyond. Lumpy cloud. Emptiness. Travelling back up the county this way had been strangely moving, like watching a history of her life playing. She’d come less and less over the years. Gatherings, funerals—lots of people she’d known were gone, even her younger brother. The motorway spooled over a bridge above the moorland. Dark ponies with ragged manes cropped the turf, and a few sheep stumbled on to the road without attempting to cross. The bus trilled over a series of shiny new cattle grids. The stuffy air, growling engine and petrol waft reminded her of those provincial school buses she’d taken. Hard, vibrating seats that the older girls said could give you an orgasm if you sat right, legs open. Go on, Sharon, give it a go. Sometimes one of them shrieked loudly and the others would laugh. She looked down at her legs, very slender under the silk frock. She inched them apart.

  In her purse she had the mobile phone Mia insisted she keep, fully charged, a bit of cash, the code to her setter and its little black remote. Dr. Ong had given her these items after the operation, with a folder of information about how everything worked and possible side effects of the surgery—there weren’t any, it turned out, other than a tiny scar below one breast, and the peculiar knowledge that she was no longer an automatic being. There was lots of paperwork to sign, pages and pages of it, legal documents too. That had been more tiring than the anesthetic.

  The implant was half the size of her little fingernail—extraordinary considering the job it did. She’d been told to memorize the code, like a bank number, then destroy the hard copy. She hadn’t, of course; she was never any good at remembering numbers. They’d given her echo pictures of her heart too—before and after. She couldn’t tell the difference.

  Shall I frame them? she’d asked Dr. Ong.

  A slight smile from the tidy, suited woman who had been the one to part her ribs and position the thing, and whose consulting room was full of old-fashioned medical diagrams of the organ, its open valves and chambers.

  If you have any questions, come back and see me, the doctor had told her. Do you understand everything, Mrs. Lydford?

  Yes.

  You understand your options?

  Yes.

  A controlled environment is best for any reprogramming that you may wish to consider.

  Yes.

  She did understand. The off switch was hers. Non-compulsory intima assistance was the official term for this new generation of devices, for those with terminal failure. Enders, as she’d joked to her husband. I’m an ender, Kenneth. She hadn’t voted for the current government, they’d always seemed a bit middle-ish and over-clever, but they’d got the health service back up out of its throes, and this new legislation was fine by her. How could you not own yourself, anyway? Who else would, some hound-master God? Anyway, she didn’t have to worry about that. All she had to do was ring in to a call center and answer several questions, to make sure she wasn’t loopy, then proceed. It did seem simple enough to be dangerous, she supposed.

  She’d thought about wearing a hat for the journey, but it seemed too formal, a bit overdone. The blue silk dress was her favorite, though, and the long wool coat—good choices. There were no photographs in her purse. She’d taken them all out before leaving home. Too difficult having all their faces along with her, making her sentimental. She’d tidied, paid the bills, turned the water off, made sure the neighbor would feed Poss. That was enough.

  The moor hadn’t changed. The grass was restless, bleached and occasionally bright auburn when the sun lit it. Long walls ran upwards towards the fells, and the cleaved limestone pavements sat pale and dull on the slopes. Wind-leaned trees, peat gullies, flocks of heather and the occasional darting thing. Under the clouds, great dark shadows moved across the hills. Nothing extraordinary, but still beautiful, she thought.

  The bus took the corners fast; the driver knew the exact speed and tilt he could get away with. There were only three other passengers, all dressed in walking gear, rucksacks propped like neon turtles on the seats behind them. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them there was the village. A cluster of stone gables, gray as the crayfish, streams running off the main channel, and the stout white church tower. Fifty-four years was how long it’d been since she’d seen Orton. And him. He was dead now too, she knew that. A friend she still corresponded with in Penrith had told her—some kind of male cancer. Maybe the same thing Kenneth had died of. What was it about men that they didn’t ring the doctor when they couldn’t piss straight? Ken would have been hurt to know she’d chosen to come here, instead of staying at home. Poor Ken. But the marriage had been mostly happy, a few years of low-grade depression and arguing after the baby, normal tensions really, but good on the whole, even if it was not what she’d expected. They’d felt comfortable with each other, which was what counted in the end, probably. He’d been a nice lover; he got very hot when they made love, dripped sweat on her. He didn’t take it personally if she couldn’t finish. They’d done it into their sixties—a lot of their friends hadn’t. When they’d handed him Mia, while they were stitching her, he’d cried and said, Oh my little one, oh poppet. He’d never forgotten birthdays. And he’d been there, kneeling on the kitchen floor with her, when the first palpitations hit. How could Orton match all that? he’d have asked her.

  But Ken was gone. Mia was in South Africa and seemed settled. She was tired.

  A controlled environment, Dr. Ong had said. That had made her smile. She’d pictured a white room, some stemless orchids, a hovering clock. She’d thought of her mother hanging laundry in the barn. And then she’d pictured the moors. Churned tracks, the riot of moss and tan, and a great, belting wind off the Pennines. There was pain in her back, her hips, her feet, she was so bloody bored of it. And a feeling had arrived she couldn’t quite explain, of nothingness underfoot, like crossing the river, hovering between stepping stones.

  The bus stopped outside the village shop. Bistro-style tables and chairs were set up on the pavement. The walk
ers disembarked, heaving their bags on to their backs. She pulled herself up and made her way down the steps and this time she didn’t prevent the driver holding her arm. The door shushed closed and the bus pulled away. There it was, that smell. Residents of coastal towns always talked about it—ions, salt and weed rot, the signature of the sea. She lived only a few miles away from the bay now, in the mild south of the county. Ken’s home, really. But moorland was different. It was not clean or simple, not a high note. All that bog and bark, the game of animals and wet feathers, flowers scented like discharge, mineral rain, and a cold black peaty sweat. It was like the smell of sex, the smell after sex, of everything combined and complicated and dying back. She couldn’t really separate it from him.

  Funny what stuck. He wasn’t even her boyfriend; she’d just met him for the day, on a sort of date one Saturday. He’d been looking at her across the bandstand in town most of one week. Then he’d asked her out. He’d picked her up in his dad’s car, and brought her for a walk. Orton was the village between their villages. He was quiet for one of the Grammar boys; they were usually confident and larky, would go for your neck and leave a sucked welt, or burrow a hand down the back of your underpants; they always tried to get things going. But this one was all put away and concentrated, not a talker or a hand-holder. They’d walked quite a long way over the moors on the sheep tracks; it was fairly awkward, she’d thought. At one point he’d pointed to a blackened area of burned gorse and told her he’d set it alight. Just him, not his brother, he said. As if that mattered somehow. She’d had on plimsoles and a long chiffon skirt, a little camisole and lilac lacy bra; her arms were bare. The groundwater had soaked her feet and stained the canvas of her shoes. It was May, hot in shelters, but the wind was cold on her skin, it still had winter’s sere. At the limestone pavement he’d stopped.