Day's End and Other Stories (12 page)

But the child would never cease to cast his great swollen eyes about the hut, fidget on trembling haunches and show that he was afraid of the dark and oppressive silence and the growls of thunder which dropped into it, reminding him dreadfully of the voices of cows and dogs. So he saw nothing tiresome in repeating:

‘What's the matter, Grandfather? What makes it dark?'

Each time he said this it seemed that there was less to be seen in the hut, and not much outside either, where the three thunderstorms grew angrier and angrier with each other, and that in the wood the trees were beginning to open their arms in readiness to catch the approaching rain. And when this did not come the old man wetted his soft lips, told the boy he would sing him something and began a ballad.

Beyond the first note or two, however, the boy did not listen, and in a few moments the thin tune gave up its exploration of the stagnant air and the man said again:

‘You sit still. There's nothing to hurt.'

‘What's it dark for, then?' persisted the boy.

‘It's going to rain,' he was told.

This he could not understand.

‘Yesterday it rained and the sun shone,' he said. ‘Why doesn't the sun shine now?'

‘The sun ain't here.'

‘Then where's it gone?' he naively asked.

‘Don't you worry.'

And again it thundered, the boy could scarcely see his grandfather and when all was silent went to the door and peered out. On coming back he caught a smell like bad fish from the dirty floor of the hut, wondered why it smelt like that and before long began to cry.

‘What makes the sky green?' he asked.

‘It ain't green!' his grandfather declared.

‘It is,' he persisted, blubbering. ‘It's green like Nancy's hat. What makes it green?'

‘It's going to rain,' was the answer. ‘That's all. You be quiet.'

He wept again in reply. As he looked up through the window the film of his tears made it seem as if the black sky was pushing the trees down on the hut and that before very long would crush it and bury him. ‘I want to go home,' he whispered, but the man did not answer and for a long while there was a sultry silence. The boy felt himself sweating, could not see his grandfather and wanted to find him desperately but dare not move an inch. And as he stood there it began to rain, at first desultorily, then thickly and with a great hissing sound.

‘Grandfather! Grandfather!' He wept and ran at last between the man's dark knees. ‘Grandfather!' he whimpered.

There were sleepy grunts in reply.

‘Wake up!' the little one whispered. ‘It's raining. I want to go home. Wake up!'

When the old man aroused himself it was to hear immense shaking rolls of thunder, the boy's voice in tears and the rain throwing itself against the window in a sort of grey passion.

‘I want to go home!' the boy cried. ‘It's night. Mamma'll have gone to bed.'

‘You be quiet,' comforted the man. ‘It ain't night.'

‘Then what time is it?'

Like a white eye a watch came out in the gloom, a bluish match-flame spurted over it and for a minute the boy was unafraid, gazed awfully at the leaf-shaped light, its reflections on his grandfather's face, the watch and the roof of the hut and forgot the storm and his fear.

‘It's only eight o'clock,' his grandfather growled without ill-will. ‘You sit quiet.'

But at that moment the flame seemed to get swallowed by the darkness and as if by some malicious miracle next moment appear again in a frenzied light that gave the sky a yellow wound which in turn spilt yellow blood on the wood and the dark floor of the hut. There came thunder, as if a great beast sat roaring on the roof. The hot peaceable air seemed to cry out like a sensitive child, the trees were distressed, the great confusion made the boy's head thick and hot with terror.

He buried his head in the friendly cavern between the man's thighs and there groaned and wept in darkness.

And as the thunder and lightning made their terrifying duet above his head, he tried to think of his home, his mother's cool face, the windows where there were blinds and harmless moths, but managed it all vaguely and felt that what prevented him was the storm, which was something black and cunning and old, and against which he had no chance. Only if he remained half-eaten up by the shadows and were mistaken for a dog or sack might he perhaps escape.
And so he crouched there, very still, trying not to listen but hearing everything in a greater tumult than ever, and knew that the storm went on without heeding his fear.

Nearly an hour passed: often the boy wanted to cry out but felt as if choked by fear and darkness and kept silent. His knees grew cold, one leg fell into a tingling sleep, only his head was warm and throbbed madly like an old clock. Once there was a smell of burning from the wood, but it passed and the boy forgot it in wondering if animals were terrified as he was, and where all the birds had gone and why they were silent. Then by some lucky chance he caught the silvery ticks of his grandfather's watch and was comforted.

So it grew quiet and a clear darkness came. The boy got up and opened his eyes. The rain no longer growled and soon the thunder passed off. Outside the cobwebs hung like ropes of leaden beads and the ground was covered with great shadow-printed pools over which the man lifted the boy. From the edge of the wood were visible the blue storms, retreated far off in a mist, and a star or two in the course they had used.

‘There's the cuckoo!' the man said.

It was true, and as the boy listened he forgot the last of his fear. When he tried to walk he discovered his legs were stiff, and that when he set it down one foot tingled as if a thousand pins had been pressed into it, and he laughed.

For diversion the man told old stories, which the child heard vaguely, and when that grew stale, held the boy's forefinger in his own rugged palm and counted the stars.

‘Fifty-one, fifty-two.'

And though once or twice lightning came there was no thunder, and because of the increasing stars it seemed to the boy that the storm had lost all terror for him, that perhaps he had been asleep when the most terrible flashes came and that soon the village would come and from then onwards no fear.

‘I'm not frightened, Grandfather,' he said a dozen times.

Then, as it struck nine o'clock and the boy listened to the notes roaming about the dark fields, he saw a star shoot.

‘A star fell down! A star fell down!' he immediately cried. ‘Oh! it fell like—'

He was seized with joy, punched the man's legs, jumped into a pool and cried again:

‘A star fell down!'

But his grandfather said nothing.

In the superstition that a falling star means death the man did not wholly believe, but for some reason he could not help recalling it suddenly. As he went down the hill his mind became restive, and he thought of his wife, of her death, then of his own age, his stale limbs and the possibility of his dying. And gradually it seemed he was doomed to die soon and he began to sweat, as the boy had done, and was
oppressed by the idea of something terrible and black waiting in readiness to crush the life from him, and that against it all he had no chance but felt weak and depressed in body and soul.

One or two birds began to chirp and the boy heard them, but like the man, thought only of the star. He remembered he must ask why in the hut there was a smell of fish, if animals were afraid and where birds hid during the storm, but looking up into his grandfather's face saw it serious with fearful shadows and gleams and dared only say:

‘Did you see the star fall?'

There was no reply. As they walked down the hill the man, becoming more and more stricken by the fear of death, could not hold himself still. But the boy would only laugh and while watching for other stars to shoot, wonder with perplexity why his grandfather looked stern and miserable, hurried along as if it were going to rain again, and never spoke to him.

The cage where the dove sat looking at the children had been hung just beyond reach of the almond tree, at a point where it caught the sun from early morning to late afternoon. Standing alternately on a stool they had laboriously dragged out there the children spent long hours with their faces close to the wires, their fingers seeking to touch with gentle timidity the breast of the dove, their wondrous gazes fixed upon its shy eyes.

Now and then, in voices which did not disturb the warm silence of the summer afternoon, they spoke softly to the motionless bird sitting far back in the corner of the cage. They carried on their conversations with supreme care, with unintelligible words which it seemed to them the dove must understand. They whispered names, whistled softly and clicked their tongues in order not to lose for a moment the attention of its still, bright eyes. Then for long intervals they spoke some much more subtle language, with their eyes alone, as if seeking to understand the silence and shyness of the dove, as if to arouse it to some faint flutter or cry.

The patience of the boy often succumbed. ‘It never moves!' he would say. And he would give up his place on the stool with a despairing sigh.

For the girl there was none of this weariness. Much more endearing, much less puzzled and desperate than the boy, she had many words and signs that even he did not understand. Her murmurs were as if echoed from the language of the dove itself. This was instinctive in her: in its two days of captivity she had not once heard even the faintest cooing from this head lolled always a little to one side, as if baffled or weary.

Like the boy she brought it things to eat. At the bottom of the cage lay the wheat and pale-green peas that had fallen there with a harsh sound, without ever being taken up again. This did not trouble the girl as much as her brother. If only the dove would move, if only it would talk to her, she thought, she would be content. And she would whisper questions designed in the softness and sweetness of their seductiveness to draw from it some word unawares, some sign given against its melancholy will.

It was the dove's sadness which also troubled the girl. For her it deadened the purple and grey of the bird's head, the green and silver of its breast gleaming in the sunshine. Once or twice she sought to banish it by thrusting a lock of her hair through the wires, as if with a sort of shy faith in her own beauty.

‘Oh! why won't you talk?' she beseeched.

But except for a faint scratch of its pink feet against
the perch and some low sound of its unopened mouth, the dove never spoke to them.

Sometimes, suddenly dubious of all this constant attention, they edged quietly away to within the shadow of the almond tree and listened. Only the lightest of sounds came through the stillness, only the most intangible of summer murmurs.

The silence of the dove grew terrible. ‘Oh! why doesn't it speak?' they asked, ‘grandfather said it would!' They had given it everything, they told themselves. It needed nothing – surely it needed nothing.

They would return in order to see if it had moved ever so slightly from its position of melancholy, as if suffering, endurance. Again and again nothing had happened. It was hard for them that this creature to whom they gave everything could not even lift up its eyes, could not emerge from this mysterious serenity so like sleep.

In unfailing hope they hovered about the cage until it was deep in shadow. They could no longer distinguish the delicate colours of the bird's breast. The pink of its feet had turned to black. They left it at last with earnest whispers, with many tappings upon the wires, and with the last earnest entreaty:

‘Talk to us to-morrow!'

In the morning one of those things they had most desired had taken place. The dove had moved. It lay among the wheat and peas strewn about the floor of the cage, in a position the children had never seen
before. Its feet, changed from black to pink again, gleamed like silk in the sunshine coming through the wires. The bright colours of its breast were visible again. But there was a change in these things; it struck the children so much like a blow that they gazed only once before running screaming away.

All day the dove lay in this position, its head on the floor, its feet in the air. The children did not come near again. As though resenting this strange negligence the dove never seemed to cease watching that quarter from which they had always come. The stillness of its bright eyes seemed to convey a look of hopelessness. They seemed to lack faith – they were solemn and cold.

To the children, sitting with their grandfather far away from the almond-tree, there was nothing to wonder at so much as the silence and death of the dove. All afternoon this wonder possessed them. Their little eyes were round and serious. They played with their fingers while pondering on it. Once again only faint sounds reached them – only summer murmurs, low and soft, from the trees above.

One sound, more softly persistent than all others they did not understand. ‘What is it?' they asked.

Their grandfather spoke sleepily, as if part of it himself. ‘The doves talking in the woods,' he said.

Slowly the children turned their eyes on him, then on themselves, and lastly to the sky. The doves talking!
They did not speak. Their faces seemed to reflect from somewhere indefinable a look of wistful unbelief, of sad conviction, as if knowing this could never be.

‘Two ham and tongue, two teas, please, Miss!'

‘Yessir.'

The waitress retreated, noticing as she did so that the clock stood at six. ‘Two ham and tongue, two teas,' she called down the speaking-tube. The order was repeated. She put down the tube, seemed satisfied, even bored, and patted the white frilled cap that kept her black hair in place. Then she stood still, hand on hip, pensively watching the door. The door opened and shut.

She thought: ‘Them two again!'

Wriggling herself upright she went across and stood by the middle-aged men. One smiled and the other said: ‘Usual.'