Dark Skies
Page 4
Fortunately I don’t have many fears and I’m not an anxious person. I don’t want to die, I don’t like clowns, and spiders are an inconvenience, but I love flying, dogs, sharks, snakes, spaces of all sizes and talking in public. When it comes to darkness, however, it can go two ways. I like to think I’m rational. I can walk around the flat alone at night and enjoy a solitary stumble back from the pub, but as soon as the thought of something creepy hooks onto my brain I’m an irrational mess. Walking through the countryside, which during the day is my favourite place to be, suddenly becomes hellish, full of ghosts and rapists and all kinds of non-existent threats that make me jitter about like Donald Gennaro before he’s eaten by the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.
There is something in our core that revolts against darkness. Perhaps because we cannot control it or maybe because we know darkness is the default. Lightbulbs, candles, fire, even the sun – every light source we have is temporary, and when they all go out there will be only blackness, just as Lord Byron wrote at the end of his poem ‘Darkness’: ‘She was the Universe.’ One of Byron’s rare forays into science-fiction, ‘Darkness’ was written in 1816, also known as the Year Without a Summer and the same year Mary Shelley devised the idea for Frankenstein.
In 1816 the world became locked in a volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the year before. Thought to be one of the largest eruptions of the last 2,000 years, it caused climate abnormalities, flooding and food shortages across the northern hemisphere, with temperatures decreasing by 0.4 to 0.7°C. Aged just 18, Mary Shelley had travelled with her future husband, Percy, to visit Lord Byron and their friends at the Villa Diodati on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was so miserable they were forced to spend most of the summer indoors, and it was during one famous evening, circled around a burning log fire, that the group decided to spend the night reading aloud a collection of German ghost stories from the anthology Fantasmagoriana. Inspired by the tales, Byron suggested they each write their own ghost story; Mary wrote in her journal the idea that ‘perhaps a corpse would be re-animated’ and went on to create Frankenstein, a now-iconic text in the literary canon 200 years after publication.
Although Britain was still a predominantly Christian country at this point, philosophers and scientists had started to anonymously declare themselves atheist, questioning the truth behind religion in favour of evidence revealed by a growing interest in the natural sciences. An unknown author, later identified as Matthew Turner, wrote a pamphlet in 1782 suggesting the universe had no need of God to guide it, as the world possessed its own ‘energy of nature’ that enabled it to constantly move forward and adapt. Natural scientists like Georges-Louis Leclerc and Georges Cuvier had been studying prehistoric remains of mammoths and mastodons, species long extinct that proved the animals on earth – supposedly created by God and unchanged since their creation – were actually subject to changes in their environment and could live or die at Nature’s whim rather than God’s.
Other Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge reconciled these changes by suggesting Nature and God were intertwined. Being a generally benevolent force, Nature would only be cruel if it was treated cruelly, epitomised in the lines from Wordsworth’s poem ‘Tintern Abbey’:
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.
Nonetheless, it is no surprise that when Byron wrote ‘Darkness’, Europe was gripped by an obsession with the apocalypse. Lacking the knowledge to understand what had caused the Year Without a Summer, all kinds of theories were thrust into the public arena, such as the idea of sunspots reported in the London Chronicle:
The large spots which may now be seen upon the sun’s disk have given rise to ridiculous apprehensions and absurd predictions. These spots are said to be the cause of the remarkable and wet weather we have had this Summer; and the increase of these spots is represented to announce a general removal of heat from the globe, the extinction of nature, and the end of the world.
In July of that year, around the same time Frankenstein was born, Byron wrote a biblically charged, apocalyptic poem about the end of all life on earth after the sun goes out. Some view it as an attack against the Old Testament visions of Christianity, while some claim it was a product of the existentialist gloom that had been taking hold of society for the last few decades. Either way, as we edge closer to the ecological apocalypse we are warned about on a daily basis, ‘Darkness’ is more relevant now than ever before. It is a poem of despair, of horror and of the fragility of life on earth:
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,
And shivering scrap’d with their cold sk
eleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.
Byron captures the fear of darkness and magnifies it; light brings life, warmth and joy, and without it the entire world will fall to nothing. It’s the ultimate horror story, and although we don’t immediately think of these things when we’re frightened by strange noises in the dark, perhaps at the core of our nyctophobia is the idea that at night almost everything we need to survive is in stasis. How relieved our eighteenth-century friends must have been when the world did not end, the darkness passed, the good weather returned – and with it the molten warmth of unimpeded sunlight.
I had booked into a highly recommended hostel and spa in a wild corner of the Black Forest in south-west Germany. It seemed perfect: cheap and cheerful, serving vegetarian food, with beautiful views of the forest outside and plenty of hiking trails to join. Dave and I had been seeing each other for a month by this point and, having booked the trip before we met, I was half-determined to enjoy a weekend alone because I-don’t-need-no-man and half-checking my phone every three minutes to see if he’d messaged me. I had used Google translate to book the trip online and had also enlisted the help of Dennis, a student intern at the farm that year who was on an exchange trip from Germany, to help me decipher some basic information. Confused, he told me that the spa was for nudists, to which I laughed arrogantly at his silliness. He must have read it wrong. But now I was here and the truth was staring right at me, complete with a friendly hello!
Never one to let testicles get in my way, I exchanged greetings with the naked man in front of me who informed me he was on his way to the steam room. I then walked up to my room, unpacked my things, headed out to the nearest tram stop and spent the rest of the day exploring the city. There was a beautiful medieval minster, coffee shops serving slices of Black Forest gateau, cuckoo clockmakers, and even a plaque on the old city wall that marked the spot where witch-burnings took place in the sixteenth century. Full of cake and clutching the tiny woolly mammoth I’d bought from the nature museum, I eventually found my way back to the hostel later that afternoon. After a quick rest, I decided to step back outside and explore the surrounding territory of the Black Forest into which the hostel was snugly tucked. Evening was starting to settle and there was something about the trees that seemed to call me in. Something in the air; an effervescence in the shadows.
Known as the Schwarzwald in German, the Black Forest takes its name from the dark canopy of evergreens that have given it such a sinister reputation. It is believed to be the forest that inspired the German fairy tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’, in which a young brother and sister are kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch living in a house made of gingerbread. Like most fairy tales that have been Disneyfied for a modern audience, their origins are much darker and grittier than we realise, with children regularly being killed, limbs chopped off, eyes pecked out and villains burned to death – all to discourage young people from straying outside the rules dictated by society. ‘Hansel and Gretel’ originated from the medieval period of the Great Famine, when some people resorted to abandoning young children and even to cannibalism to keep themselves alive.
Part of a vast area of deciduous woodland that had been growing in central Europe for thousands of years, the forest was almost entirely removed by intensive logging in the nineteenth century and then replanted with a monoculture of spruce and other evergreens. In the 1990s, three hurricanes ripped through the area and caused extensive damage to the trees, but as a result many parts of the forest were left to return to their natural state and the Black Forest is now a healthy mixture of both deciduous and coniferous species. As the valleys within the forest were fairly inaccessible, farmers started making cuckoo clocks from excess timber to boost their income. It is said that the first cuckoo clock was made by a clock master who loved how the chime of church bells told the local villagers what time it was, and that, as the craft developed during the long, dark winter months inside the Black Forest, more and more intricately detailed clocks were designed until it became a competition between the craftsmen.
Behind the hostel grounds, a path opened out into the woods and wound up the hill to the darkness within. The day was nearing its end and the air was thick with dusk, the sun vanished beneath the trees, the sky shifting into crushed indigo. As I stepped into the forest the temperature dropped and I was alone but for the invisible blackbirds calling down to me from a canopy of twisted spruce and fir.
I walked, and the path zigzagged higher and higher, an arboreal labyrinth inhabited by birds and beasts submerged in mouldering timber infested with fungi. Deep in the woods where the light failed and the forest floor swelled with the aroma of rotting earth and decay, I could see why this place had inspired the fairy tales that haunted German folklore. All the while there was a constant murmuring behind me, over my head, the sound of the wilderness whispering in my ear. I listened to the birds singing their symphonies to the night, and once – and only once – I saw another mammal. She crossed the track ahead of me, pausing at its far edge to glance back before disappearing again into the forest, her bushy, rusty fox brush the last thing I saw. There were no other hikers, no cuckoo clockmakers out to forage timber, no witches or students or lost naked sauna-lovers. I was utterly alone in the woods, and for an hour I wandered through the trees, the fragrance of night unfurling on the air.
At last, I found my way back to the hostel after emerging from the forest about a kilometre from where I started. Inside I discovered the spa was open until midnight, so I changed into my swimming costume (pointless), handed over a few euros to borrow a spa robe and wandered over to the entrance. I pushed open the door and found myself in an empty changing room and, ignoring the instinct to shield my body from the world, I undressed and swaddled myself in the robe before walking through another door that led into a stone garden.
It was pretty. In the middle a bright, clear pool was illuminated cornflower blue by the lights beneath its surface, and surrounding the pool were wildflower gardens and several wooden cabins, all of which represented a different stage in the spa process. I tried to decipher the correct order by using a German information board, but there was no way I was going in an icy plunge pool so I wandered over to one of the cabins with Dampf carved on the front, reluctantly removed my robe and stepped inside. It was a steam room, and there were two other people inside who were, of course, also naked. One was a young girl around my age, and one was an older man who looked almost asleep.
It felt strange to be naked in front of people I didn’t know, but then I realised how unnatural that was. Women spend our lives being told to cover up and hide our bodies away. At secondary school we were told off for our skirts being too short or our (school-regulation) shirts being too see-through, and as we get older our outfits are deemed skimpy, we’re told to ‘dress our age’ and made to
feel cheap if we flash too much skin. Unbelievably, even breastfeeding is made to feel ‘inappropriate’. It’s so ingrained in our minds that we are made to forget how amazing the human body is, particularly the female form which literally produces and nourishes other humans. Every curve and hair and bone is nature at its finest, and to be told to cover up is a sign of weakness in those who command it, frightened of how strong the female body can be. We are the only animal that frowns upon nakedness, taking the energy we could spend on healing the planet and instead using it to shame ourselves and others for the natural form of our bodies.
However, I wasn’t used to being naked in front of more than one person at a time, so for the first 20 minutes I felt awkward and hot. But then, as I started to relax, I realised how liberating it was. I could feel hot slabs of wood against my skin, and the other girl and I chatted about Germany and careers and books while the man snoozed on in the steam, and when I finally left the cabin I forgot about my robe hanging on the cabin wall.
Outside the air felt freezing after the heat of the steam room, but I let it linger on my skin and close up all my pores before moving over to the hot tub, and here I was alone, the only guest in a fizzing barrel of clear, warm water. I could hear nothing but the bubbling of water, and my lungs filled with the cold air that had been expelled from the trees earlier in the day; now they slept in the darkness just like us. All around the garden the forest encircled me like a diadem, spiked shadows jutting into the sky, now deepened into midnight black and scattered with a thousand white stars like salt grains. I felt light and free, looking up to the nothingness above my head, the universe empty of life and fear and pain, and for another hour I stayed out in the night alone, all the while gazing into the trees, the sky, the half-hidden wonder of the dark, slumbering forest.
CHAPTER THREE
Polar Night
Three months had passed since Dave and I broke up, and by the time December arrived I had been through so many emotions I felt exhausted. Except for a few texts here and there, we hadn’t spoken since the break-up, and I had been distracting myself with trips away and visits to friends, spending as little time in Hampshire as I possibly could, but I was starting to run out of money and stamina. I’m an expert at avoiding how I genuinely feel. I’d been angry with everybody, never allowing myself to cry or think about what had happened. It was textbook denial, preferring to pretend everything was fine rather than considering we might have made a mistake. Now it was Christmas, and although I had been looking forward to spending time with my family, a new surge of emotion had started to rise up in my belly. With another grunt of defiance, I quashed it and decided to escape one last time before the new year, before the reality of my situation would need to be dealt with.