Legenda Maris (22 page)

Oh, to be no more, to be no more,
the seals were crying.
To be lost, to
be lost. The hurt of the death was less, far less, than the hurt of the loss.
Where now are we to go?

If he felt the hurt they cried of, he
did not know himself, most likely. But he was close to it as generally no man
comes close to anything, and rarely to his own self.

And then one of the yellow-eyed towers
was before him, and he swam up into the light and the light enclosed him—

—and he was in the corridor above the
mainland bar with Morna opening a door.

Then they were in the bedroom, and she
was not sulky or covetous, but smiling and glad. And she took her stockings off
her white legs and bared her rosy breasts and combed her liquorice hair with
her hands. He forgot the seals that moment, and the water and the crying. “Lie
down with me, sweetheart,” said Morna, and took him to her like her only love.
And he had something with her that hour he never had had with any woman before,
and never would have again so long as he lived.

A
while before dawn, just as the sky was turning grey under the hill, he woke up
alone in his bed in the croft. That he thought he had been dreaming is made
nothing of by the fact he came instantly from the covers, flung on his clothes,
and went to the door. He meant to go and look in the outhouse, doubtless, but
he had no need. What he sought lay on the rocky edge of Dula, less than twenty
strides below him.

The whole sky was higher, with the
darkness going fast. He had a chance to see what he was staring at.

There by the ocean’s brink a woman
knelt, mourning over a thing that lay along the rock and across her lap. Her
showering hair covered what remained of this thing’s face, and maybe Huss
Hullas was thankful for it. But from her hair there ran away another stream of
hair that was not hers, richer and more golden, even in the ‘tween-light. And
beyond the hair stretched the body of a young man, long-limbed and wide in the
shoulder, and altogether very large and well-made, and altogether naked. At
least, it would seem to be a body, but suddenly you noticed some two or three
shallow cuts of a knife, and then you would see the body had no meat to it and
no muscle and no bone—it was an empty skin.

There came some colour in the sky within
the grey, and the woman, with a strange awkward turn, slipped over into the
water and dragged the human skin with her, and both were gone.

And then again, as the sun came up over
the hill of Dula, and Huss Hullas was still standing there, he saw the round
head of a seal a half mile out on the water, with an odd wide wake behind it as
if it bore something alongside itself. He did not go to fetch his gun. He never
shot a seal from that day to this. Nor did he go drinking or to find women in
the town. Indeed, he went inland, over the hill, to live where he might not
heed the noise of the sea. He kept away from his own kind; that did not change.

Do you think it was guilt then that
turned him from his outward ways, deeper into those inner ways of his? Perhaps
only he saw the seal tracks on the rock and sand, or found a strip of seawrack
in between the covers of the bed, and knew what he had lain with, even if it
had passed for rosy Morna. The Shealcé are an elder people. It is said in the
stories they can take each form as they will, the seal or the human, as it
suits them, or some older form that maybe they have, which no one knows anymore
who has not entered the heart of their city of coral and pearl, and remembered
it.

But it is true they were in the islands
long before men came there. And who knows but they will be there long after we
are gone.

Leviathan

The
seven islands lay at various distances from the mainland, four in a sort
circle, like a frozen dance, three completely isolate.  The general impression,
if seen from the air—birds, the occasional plane—was that they belonged to
another landmass, once partnered to the original, now snapped off, carried away—then
carelessly dropped, and broken on the sea.

Perhaps something had
taken
this
chunk of the continent, to feed itself and its offspring? If so, it and its
descendents had not finished their meal.

The
Leviathan stirred slowly. It raised its head and looked about. It had no memory
of anywhere. It had no memory of itself, only a sort of familiar driving force,
which was its own forward motion, probably physical.

Once the Leviathan had been a monster
beast of legend and myth, a symbol of vast Empires of the East. Also, a cipher
for an ultimate Wickedness and Power.

Now, like a discarded, grey-silver
crystal case, it lay at the shore-line.

The ground showed through its glassy
body. In its eyes only the night showed, where the sweep of dawn had cast it
aside.

Some
time passed. A handful of fishermen landed on the beach, quietly assessed their
catch, and went away, unnoticing.

A storm flew up the pebbles, and rushed
shrieking into a cave, coughing with urgency.

In the end, the Leviathan rose. It
looked about in all directions, at the night, the stars, the smoothing of the
ocean. Into the past.

Once,
the other beast had preyed here, vast, shapeless, nameless and indecipherable,
battering on these isles. It had literally
fed
on them, and left them in
tatters.

Then came the
other
creature. At
that time, the Leviathan was deep and heavy as new gold. It sprang into the
air, and grasped the predator in its jaws. The creatures perished, yowling, in
seconds.

Later, the Leviathan swam away. At that
hour, the world was its open country. Now and then, it would come back—but from
preference, not need. Yet years and centuries go by. It is their unbreakable
habit.

It was like withered crystal now, the
Leviathan, colossus of gold. It needed rest and sanctuary. Spells of soft
nullity, unstinting, recalling the gallant rescue of the past. The land gave it
these gladly, and more.

Safe
on the shore of honour, the Leviathan slept, its head between its paws, like
that of a huge and savage hound, grown slow and mild with age.

But now and then, behind the sleeping
eyes of it, a soft wild wonderful flash, as if new young stars ignited in its
brain. Perhaps they did. For look there, the sky was full of them.

Where Does the Town Go At Night?

“Where
does the town go at night?”

“What did you say?”

Gregeris turned, but some sort of
vagrant stood there, grinning at him out of a dirty, flapping overcoat.
Gregeris supposed he wanted money. Otherwise the broad square was deserted in
the pale grey afternoon, its clean lines undisturbed by the occasional
wind-breath from the sea, which hardly even moved the clipped oleanders behind
their prison-railings, or the ball-shaped evergreens on long bare stems, (like
lollipops), which flanked most of the municipal buildings.

“Perhaps this will help?” Gregeris
handed the man, the supposed beggar, a bank note. It was a cheerful,
highly-coloured currency, and the man took it, but his smile lessened at once.

“I can’t show you. You’ll have to see
for yourself.”

“Oh, that will be all right. Don’t
trouble.”

Gregeris turned to walk on. He had only
come to the square to kill a little time, to look at the clock-tower, a sturdy
thing from the seventeen hundreds. But it was smaller and much less interesting
than the guide-book promised.

“Don’t believe me, do you?”

Gregeris didn’t answer. He walked
firmly, not too briskly. His heart sank as he heard the scuffy footsteps fall
in with his. He could smell the man too, that odd fried smell of ever-unwashed
mortal flesh, and the musty dead-rat odour of unchangeable clothes.

“Y’see,” said the beggar, in his low
rough voice, “I’ve seen it happen. Not the only one, mind. But the only one remembers,
or knows it isn’t a dream. I’ve seen
proof
. Her, then, sitting there,
right there, where the plinth is for the old statue they carted away.”

There seemed nothing else for it. “The
statue of King Christen, do you mean? Over there by the town hall?”

“The very one. The statue struck by
lightning, and fell off.”

“So I believe.”

“But
she
was on the plinth. Much
prettier than an old iron king.”

“I’m sure she was.”

The beggar laughed throatily. “Still don’t
believe what I’m saying, do you? Think I’m daft.”

A flash of irritation, quite out of
place, went through Gregeris. It was for him an irritating time, this, all of
it, and being here in this provincial nowhere. “‘I don’t know what you
are
saying, since you haven’t said.” And he turned to face the beggar with what
Gregeris would himself only have described as
insolence
. Because facing
up to one’s presumed inferiors was the most dangerous of all impertinences. Who
knew what this bone-and-rag bag had once been? He might have been some great
artist or actor, some aristocrat of the Creative Classes, or some purely good
man, tumbled by fate to the gutter, someone worthy of respect and help, which
Gregeris, his own annoying life to live, had no intention of offering.

And, “Ah,” said the beggar, squaring up
to him.

Gregeris saw, he thought, nothing fine
or stricken in the beggar. It was a greedy, cunning face, without an actor’s
facial muscles. The eyes were small and sharp, the hands spatulate, lacking the
noble scars of any trade, shipbuilding, writing, work of any sort.

“Well,” said Gregeris.

“Yes,” said the beggar. “But if you buy
me a drink, I’ll tell you.”

“You can buy yourself a drink and a meal
with the money I just gave you.”

“So I can. But I’ll eat and drink alone.
Your loss.”

“Why do you want my company?” demanded
Gregeris, half angrily.

“Don’t want it. Want to tell someone.
You’ll do. Bit of a look about you. Educated man. You’ll be more flexible to
it, I expect.”

“Gullible, do you mean?” Gregeris saw
the man had also been assessing him, and finding not much, apparently. Less
than flattery, education, he sensed, in this case represented a silly adherence
to books—clerkishness. Well, Gregeris had been a clerk, once. He had been many
things. He felt himself glaring, but the beggar only grinned again. How to be
rid of him?

Up in the sky, the fussy clock-tower
sounded its clock. It was five, time to take an absinthe or cognac, or a cocktail
even, if the town knew they had been invented. Why hadn’t the ridiculous tower
been struck by lightning instead of a statue under a third its height?

“Where do you go to drink?”

Some abysmal lair, no doubt.

But the beggar straightened and looked
along the square, out to where there was a glimpse of the sky-grey rimmed,
sulk-blue sea. Then he pivoted and nodded at a side street of shops, where an
awning protected a little cafe from the hiding sun.

“
Cocho’s
.”

“Then take a drink with me at
Cocho’s
.”

“That’s very sportive of you,” said the
beggar. Abruptly he thrust out his filthy, scarless and ignoble hand. Gregeris
would have to shake it, or there would, probably, be no further doings. Ignore
the ignoble hand then, and escape.

Compelled by common politeness, the
curse of the bourgeoisie, Gregeris gripped the hand. And when he did so, he
changed his mind. The hand felt fat and strong and it was electric. Gregeris
let go suddenly. His fingers tingled.

“Feel it, do you?”

“Static,” said Gregeris calmly. “It’s a
stormy afternoon. I may have given you a bit of a shock. I do that sometimes,
in this sort of weather.”

The beggar cackled, wide-mouthed. His
teeth, even the back ones, were still good.
Better
, Gregeris resentfully
thought,
than my own
. “Name’s Ercole,” said the beggar. (
Hercules
,
wouldn’t you know it.) And then, surprisingly, or challengingly “You don’t have
to give me yours.”

“You can have my name. Anton Gregeris.”

“Well, Anton,” (of course, the bloody
man would use the Christian name at once) “we’ll go along to
Cocho’s
. We’ll
drink, and I’ll tell you. Then I’ve done my part. Everything it can expect of
me.”

This
was all Marthe’s fault, Gregeris reflected, as he sipped the spiced brandy.
Ercole had ordered a beer, which could be made to last, Gregeris ominously
thought, until—more ominous still—he watched Ercole gulp half the contents of
the glass at once.

It was because of Marthe that Gregeris
had been obliged to come here, to the dull little town by the sea. His first
impression, other than the dullness, had been how clean and tidy the town was.
The streets swept, the buildings so bleached and scrubbed, all the brass-plates
polished. Just what Marthe would like, she admired order and cleanliness so
much, although she had never been much good at maintaining them herself. Her
poky flat in the city, crammed with useless and ugly ‘objects d’art’, had
stayed always undusted. Balls of fluff patrolled the carpets, the ashtrays
spilled and the fireplace was normally full of the cold debris of some previous
fire. He suspected she washed infrequently, too, when not expecting a visitor.
The bathroom had that desolate air, the lavatory unwholesome, the bath green
from the dripping tap. And the boy—the boy was the same, not like Marthe, but
like the flat Marthe neglected .

“Thirsty,” mumbled Ercole, presumably to
explain his empty glass.

“Let me buy you another.”

“That’s nice. Not kind, of course. Not
kind, are you? Just feel you have to be generous.”

“That’s right.”

The waiter came. He didn’t seem unduly
upset that Ercole was sitting at the cafe table, stinking and degenerate. Of
course, Gregeris had selected one of the places outside, under the awning. And
there were few other patrons, two fat men eating early plates of fish, a couple
flirting over their white drinks.

When the second beer arrived, Ercole
sipped it and put it down. “Now I’ll tell you.”

“Yes, all right. I shall have to leave
at six. I have an appointment.”

So after all Marthe (the ‘appointment’)
would be his rescue. How very odd.

“You’ll realise, I expect,” said Ercole,
“I don’t have lodgings. I had a room, but then I didn’t any more. Sometimes I
sleep in the old stables up the hill. But there’s a couple of horses there now,
and they don’t like me about. So I find a corner, here or there. That’s how I
saw it. Then again, y’see, I might have been the type to just sleep right
through it, like most of them. It’s what’s in you, if you ask me, in yourself,
that makes you wake in the night, about a quarter past midnight.”

“And what have you seen?” Gregeris heard
himself prompt, dutifully.

Ercole smiled. He put his hands on the
table, as if he wanted to keep them in sight, keep an eye on them, as if they
might get up to something otherwise, while he revealed his secret.

“The town goes away.”

“You mean it disappears?”

“Nothing so simple, Anton. No, it goes
off. I mean, it
travels
.”

Generally,
I wake at dawn, first light,
said Ercole
. Like a damned squirrel, or a
bird. Been like that for years. Sleeping rough’s part of it, but I grew up on a
farm. It’s partly that, too. Well, when I woke the first time, which was about
two months ago, I think it’s dawn. But no, it’s one of those glass-clear, ink
black summer nights. The moon wasn’t up yet, but the stars were bright, and
along the esplanade the street lamps were burning cold greeny-white from the
funny electricity they get here. Nothing to wake me, either, that I can hear or
see.

The moment I’m awake, I’m
wide
awake, the sort of awake when you know you won’t sleep again, at least not for
two or three hours, and it’s better to get up and do something or you get to
thinking. So presently I stand up. And then, well, I staggered. Which scared
me. I hadn’t had anything in the way of alcohol for about five days, so it wasn’t
drinking bad wine. And you can’t afford to get sick, in my situation. But then
my head cleared, and I just thought, maybe I got up too quick. Not so young as
I was.

And then I go and take a stroll along
the esplanade, like the leisured people do by day, which is when a policeman
will generally come to move me elsewhere, if
I
try it. But no one’s
about now.

The sea is kicking away at the land,
blue-black. It looks rough and choppy, which strikes me as strange really, because
the night is dead calm, not a cloud. A sort of steady soft
thin
breeze
is blowing full in my face from the mouth of sea and sky. It has a different
smell, fresher, more starry
bright
.

When I looked over, down to the beach,
the sea was slopping in right across it. It wasn’t the tide coming in, I’ve seen
plenty of those. No, the sea wasn’t coming in, falling back—but constant,
gushing in up the beach, hitting the lower terrace of the esplanade, and
spraying to both sides. Drops hit my face. It reminded me of something, couldn’t
think what. It looked peculiar, too, but I thought, after all tonight was a
full moon and this moon would rise soon, maybe it was that making the sea act
crazy.

Just then, the clock strikes on the
tower in the square. It’s one in the morning, and I can tell I’ve been up and
about for around three quarters of an hour. That means I woke at a quarter past
midnight. I mention this, because another time I was in the square and when I
woke, I noted the clock. It’s always been that time, I reckon, that I wake, and
the other ones who wake, they wake up then too.

That minute, the first night on the
esplanade, I see one, of my fellow awakers—only I didn’t know it then, that we
were a sort of select club. No, I thought there was going to be trouble.

It’s a girl, you see, young, about
sixteen, a slip of a thing, all flowing pale hair, and she’s in her nightwear—barefoot—walking
slowly along the esplanade towards me. Her eyes look like veiled mirrors, and I
think she’s sleep-walking or gone mad, and going to throw herself into the sea,
and I’m asking myself if I should save her or let her do what she wants—have you
got any more right to force someone to live that doesn’t want to than to kill
someone?—or if I’d better just hide, because trouble isn’t what it’s best for
me to seek out, I’m sure you’ll understand. Anyway, then she blinks, and she
walks up to me and she says, “Where am I? What am I doing here?” And then I’m
really scared, because she’ll start screaming and God knows what’ll happen
then. But next she says, “Oh, but of course, that doesn’t matter.” And she
leans on the railing and looks out at the sea, calm as you please.

The moon starts to rise then. First a
line like spilt milk on the horizon’s edge. Then the sky turns light navy blue
and the disc comes up so fast it almost seems to leap out of the water.

“I was in bed, wasn’t I?” says the girl.

“Don’t ask me. You just came along.”

“They call me Jitka,” she says. And then
she says, “I think I looked out of the window at home. I think I remember doing
that. And the hill wasn’t there. You know, the hill with the old palace on it.”

I know the hill, because that’s where
the stables are, my bedchamber of old. That big hill, about half a mile inland.
Where all the historic splendour of the town is, the mansions and great houses
and overgrown gardens of cobwebby, bat-hung cedars. And then the slums start
all round it, either side.