* * *
—
HE THINKS: What is this? Over and over again. What does this mean? Where am I journeying?
He does not think, Is this for me?
Sleep. Dead tired.
Can’t sleep. No one may sleep. There is a bird in the air waiting for those who sleep.
Sailing through fire and water. It may look like water but it is full of fire. Sailing through aeons of time away from a threatening fire. Sailing in a great retinue, which is the water, along the banks, across the sky. Together with the bird who keeps company with death. Together with the countless trees on land.
The mirrors are there too, and fill him with many fragments of turmoil, bringing back memories and covering them up again before they are distinct.
He is reminded of a number of the scents on land. They do not reach him. The mirrors nag at it and he goes along with them. Solid land. Earth, trees, grass. And aeons of time. He gains a hint, too, of all the rest, which does not exist when your head is only just rippling the surface.
And a wall of faces that has appeared, it seems to him. Impossible to be rid of. The bewildered wall of faces lined up along the shores, so close that they can only be seen as a wall. The mirrors display them in their merciless fashion. The wall and the pleasant land. He sails past. The wall shuts off the scents.
The mouths in the wall. He will not think about it. He sails past with aversion.
They are calling something.
I won’t.
The mirrors sway, enjoying themselves.
There are faces that crack and are not yawns, are not faces, except to resemble the face of a flower that one can hide under. But one cannot do that when sailing past. One sees them – they leap out and are simply there.
Through aeons of time.
He sees faces in the wall shrink and disintegrate like ashes, and at the same moment there stands another severe, staring person in the empty space. It is all familiar, he has had it all around him, in love and in aversion; the mirrors have found it, the mirrors have aeons of time.
The mouths are calling about something, out across the water and far beyond the drifter. He cannot hear what it is.
The black birds sweep above him in silent patience. They fly on ahead and wait further down. They follow, after waiting behind. The drifter goes too slowly for them. But their patience has been won through aeons of time and has always received its just reward.
* * *
—
THE DRIFTER SAILS with his motley retinue through the landscape. It is his own countryside and at the same time one that is completely unknown to him. They are his shore and his birds, his face in the wall, his cry in the call.
His own riddles wall him in, as he himself was a riddle on the paths on land.
His own sorrow is there too. Sorrow that neither he nor anyone else can explain.
* * *
—
GRADUALLY the knowledge of what it is he is journeying away from awakens in him. The mirrors search along the shores and find it whether it is there or not. Sometimes the journey takes him close to the banks and in other places farther out, but the mirrors find it. They have many shapes and many errands. They flash and force their way through, reaching their goal in spite of obstacles and layers of slime. They cut right through it all. They may not cease to be a part of him.
Things may be dancing on the banks, but theirs is no dance of joy. The drifter cannot grasp it, since only a part of him is alive, seeing to it that his nose is kept out of the warm summer water instead of letting the water snuff him out, as it would prefer to do.
Now the known is unknown. Those he knows are not with him today, he pretends. He says nothing about having fled from them.
Nor does the drifter realize that he is moving so slowly, that only the precious time is passing. He mutters about aeons of time like a simpleton.
I was my cry, he thinks with incredulity. He is not uttering any cries, yet it is I who am crying, he tells himself.
He examines the mouths in the wall as he says so – and of course it is his cry. He can draw breath, he is not dying.
He seems to have no body, he cannot yet use his arms in order to swim. But he has with him the large retinue on the earth, in the air and in the water, and senses it along with the wind and shadows and muted cries that are found on the long waterways.
There are more and more of them. They come because of the pull of the journey. They are released from their old ways and join in before they are aware of it. It is a mighty pull, and offers no comfort, digging them up, prying them loose and forcing them into it.
Creatures large and small, but not a single human being.
The innocent drifter in the lead has gradually become a mere pretext.
* * *
—
A NEW ELEMENT.
The living bark of a dog explodes from behind the trees on the shore. Loud and giving warning, with the correct silence afterwards. Then a whole series of signals from the hidden dog.
A house? Not a house to be seen. That is his first thought. It was a shocking sound. There is nobody in sight. The watchdog keeps himself hidden.
The dog’s bark is echoed back from the hillside opposite. This must encourage him, for he goes on barking. Sounds are hurled past each other and split in two – meaningless, but unspeakably joyous among all that is here already.
The man in the water lets it rain down over him. He is lying in the middle of the din and feels curves and stripes forming in his skull during the ten-fold howling of the dog. None of his own cries have been heard. This is the cry. A growl starts up in his throat, in the slime and the taste of the water, and he startles himself when he opens his mouth wide and howls more horribly than he realizes: “Wowwow wow!”
There is a sudden silence on the shore. Then a frightened bark. What the man said must have sounded dreadful to the dog’s ears; he only manages to squirt a sound out from between his teeth.
The current gives the drifter a little nudge. The way south is open.
The drifter is inflamed by all his bewildering visions.
What is this? The first contact after having been at the bottom in the slime.
“Wow wow!” he hollers. A language he has only just learnt.
The hills reply.
Then the dog goes wild, with terror, joy or insult. He forgets to stay hidden, leaps out on to an isolated rock on the shore and barks at the top of his voice, abusing the object he can see out there.
The man with his nose above water lifts himself up as far as he can and frees his mouth. They greet each other in angry or possibly unpleasant terms, filling the valley with this hostile language.
The drifter has excited himself far too much, beyond his strength. In the middle of a howl he collapses once more, and gets a dunking. He has enough to do paying attention to more immediate matters.
The dog falls silent and disappears.
The journey continues as before. The drifter survives the latest dunking too, but is down in a trough of misery where even the provocative mirrors mean nothing.
What now?
It is evening.
* * *
—
IT IS THE ONSET of evening at the end of this wearying day. A warm fine evening.
The traveller has not gone very far. He has not yet come to any villages. The current allows itself ample time to exert its pressure.
A beautiful evening for those who could appreciate it. A drifter in the current like himself is not among them. He is floating southward as a part of the hopeless tangle, as a damaged consciousness.
But he is in contact with the dog.
After the first skirmish things go more gently. It turns out that the dog is keeping up with him behind the bushes, as the patient crow is keeping up with him still from tree to tree. The crow has
not yet lost its faith in a meal.
The dog has other, hidden motives. Contact with man. The howl told of a web of things known to the dog that the drifter in the current took up blindly and can answer.
Perhaps it is this that sustains him through the struggle when he is about to give up. He does not sink; he has the thought of the dog.
At each promontory the dog meets him and gives a short, sharp bark, no longer hostile. It waits for an answer and gets one. ‘Woof!’ comes the reply from out on the water, muffled or loud, according to his strength. He growls in dog fashion, quite taken up with this unfamiliar language and concentrating on it with all his might.
At every little promontory the dog stands waiting.
The echo that sang out with them has finished. The valley sides have taken on a different shape and do not send sounds back. They are frothing with the ripeness of late summer, but keep silent.
The evening is stealing on. The sun that once was reflected in the mirrors has gone; no one will be bewitched by it now. The twilight is setting in, and will bewitch instead. The dog has fallen silent, like one who has come home and forgotten everything out of doors. The crow disappears and will have to go to bed hungry. Evening is evening. It will probably find him tomorrow.
The drifter feels that much has gone. He appreciated his splendid retinue. He tries out his newly acquired language again and brings out a weak ‘woof’ a couple of times, without getting any answer. It did not carry far enough.
The lack of an answer upsets him, making him angry and depressed. He lies on his back with his mouth open ready to call should he have the strength, and in any language. The water is so still that it does not splash over his gaping jaws. He does not move a muscle – that time is past. He clings tightly to the log with his arm, his eyes wide open to the cloudy sky. The sky became cloudy just after sunset. The man lies looking at a darkening ceiling without thinking about it. Gaping at it. Nobody sees this. It is the kind of moment that nobody witnesses.
He is still afloat on the strength of the contact with the dog. He moves his lips slightly.
* * *
—
IMMEDIATELY afterwards the back of his head knocks against something hard. He is drifting head first.
Perhaps it hurt a little, but he does not know what pain is any more and it makes no impression on him. But it stops his forward movement. The restless current swings his body slowly towards solid ground. There he lies without coming any further.
Shortly after a large bird shoots over.
The drifter, who is gaping up into the evening sky and appears to be dead, does not even start. He lies still where he has drifted against the shelf of rock.
The bird comes back and drops heavily, alighting on his breast and folding its wings. The drifter starts and notices it. He writhes and shrieks, an ordinary human shriek.
The shriek is piercing. The bird, which is a quiet night bird, rises quickly and noiselessly. It had made a mistake.
The sudden movement fills the drifter’s mouth with water. The shock passes like a ray through his paralyzed body. He thrashes about him with the one arm, as if the bird were still there. He strikes his hand against something, and seizes it. It is a tree-root. A tree at the outermost edge of the shore where the water has washed away the soil. He has run aground on stones and roots.
His hands dig into the roots of their own accord. Both hands. He is lying on solid ground and can scrabble like this without thinking. A reminder goes through his brain about holding fast, about pulling. He is able to do it because of the sudden stimulation. He can drag himself a little way out of the everlasting water. His feet are still lying in it, that doesn’t matter. There he lies. He is seized with a great fit of trembling.
The twilight deepens, very slowly; he can see objects around him, but is not sure what they are. He can see with his eyes. He moves and says something. He sees the water and trembles. Water? he wonders. His thoughts are still paralyzed.
He thinks he sees the bird approaching in the twilight and barks a loud, scared yell of terror at it.
Something answers him.
Promptly an answer comes from some way off, the frightened baying of a dog once more, excited and aggressive baying, as if at something unlawful.
The man hesitates. He cannot produce a sound.
The dog goes on barking.
If he had wanted to answer he could not have got it in, for the dog is exciting himself more and more. He must be at the other end of the beach now. The drifter lies still, rocking in this rhythmical sound without attempting to join in.
A fresh series of unrelated pictures. It seems as if channels of light are passing through him, regardless of the late evening and the twilight. Curious channels of light. He cannot link them with anything. Impossible to understand when you are dead almost all over.
The dog continues with its warnings. In the drifter they turn into visions that he destroys at once. Then the dog stops. What does this mean?
Another sound from the shore.
“Hoy!” calls someone, even louder than the dog.
“Hoy! Hi!” he calls.
What is happening? Everything comes to a standstill – and then seems to go up in the air. The human call clangs in his ears. His paralyzed thought sequences shiver with tension. His excitement flares up, and he replies like thunder, so it seems to him, as best he can, “Wow wow!”
He cannot find anything to say except the dog’s cry. It was not what he had meant, but what he was able, to say. What he had meant to say had suddenly become far too perplexing and far too much to be shouted.
He paws at it with stiff fingers, with clenched fists in a web delicate as hair. Impossible, it falls to pieces.
He listens, lying on his back. He has drawn his feet up. His hands cling convulsively to the root.
Something is happening over there. No more calling. Something is happening.
He can hear it; something is approaching him. He hears growling and a few quiet barks, and some quiet splashes that awaken a memory. He cannot reach it.
Then he sees it in the semi-darkness. All of a sudden a boat appears. It is approaching from land, it is alongside at once.
The drifter sees it, but he has seen so much this afternoon. He sees this new vision approach, large and strange. He twists towards it.
“Be quiet, will you?” someone in the boat says to someone else.
“Hi there, what’s the matter?” comes again from the boat. Someone is standing up in the boat speaking to him.
The drifter finds it impossible to answer. If he were to say anything just now, everything would shatter and sink to the bottom. He is careful not to say woof, either, because it is not suitable. An avalanche of things from another existence is rushing in on him. He is speechless.
The boat is made fast to a root at the water’s edge, and a man and a dog on a leash take the few paces towards the drifter. When the dog reaches him he gives a cautious woof.
The drifter answers with a low woof, out of the enormous upheaval he feels is approaching.
The stranger leans over in a friendly fashion and acts as if he had heard nothing.
“I expect you’d rather come home with me, instead of lying here?” he asks, in such a normal fashion that it sounds unnatural.
It means nothing to the drifter. He is busy clarifying matters and does not reply. He is putting his thoughts in order. The mirrors have reached his channels of light, many of them and very close. They are transmitting their pictures through him. It is wonderful. He understands more and more. His body is still powerless.
The stranger grips him strongly under the arms and lifts him. He manages to carry him. His feet drag numbly along the ground. The dog walks close beside them without making a sound.
Beside the boat the man is forced to put his burden down. The wet body is as heavy as stone.
“You’re heavy.”
No answer.
The man points at the boat. “Boat,” he explains, pointing again, his voice tense with concern.
No answer. Putting his thoughts in order.
“Boat,” says the man, with emphasis. “Boat on water,” he says.
Yes! A glimmer of life then.
In confused mirror glimpses and an awakening sense of order he sees that it is a boat, and knows what boat means.
* * *
—
THAT WAS A GOOD GIFT from the mirrors. With the boat as his starting point he can go further and understand more and more.
He finds his voice. “Boat,” he replies, clearly, with understanding. It is too dark to see that his face has lighted up, but perhaps it can be heard.
The man cautiously pulls the heavy drifter close up to the boat. They say no more to each other.
The dog sits as if waiting for something, and the man says to him, “Yes, you’d better have a sniff at him, good dog.”
The dog does so for an instant, and then jumps into the boat.
The man pulls the drifter in over the gunwale, afraid he will be unable to bear it.
The Wasted Day Creeps Away on Its Belly
NOBODY TALKS ABOUT the wasted day.
The wasted day creeps away on its belly.
Only the chairs stand upright in place, in the halls, in the halls. Those empty chairs of ours in the halls – because this day is over.
The day that was no day, is over. We nodded and went out, went home. The day turned into a day of shame and will never show itself again. Nothing is nothing, the day is past, it is evening and the wind is rising.
The skulls went home. We sit there no longer. We nodded to everything, giving our approval. A nod is a nod. Then it is evening, and the wind is rising.
The chairs are deserted, nothing was done. Nothing will be done tomorrow either – but we shall occupy the chairs and the nods will be nodded, and the wind – yes, the wind is rising.
The Hills Reply Page 7