The Haunted Storm (31 page)

It took a moment or two to sink in. And as soon as it had done, he had to fight against the urge to lie down and give in; but then slowly, as if »a mist was clearing in his head, he saw the edge of something tantalising, and knew he was nearly there… what was it? He was on the edge of realizing something: come on, come on, he said to himself excitedly, let me see what it is, let me see… It was something huge and paradoxical. He couldn’t get it in focus. It was something about the nature of the world.

At the very heart of it was the consciousness of his position now, trapped in a cave far below the surface of the earth, with the only entrance blocked – how could the first worshippers get in and out, then? How had Alan managed? His heart leapt for joy, and then he thought: obviously it was drier then. It’s been raining for weeks – this must be an overflow channel from the lake – and the source of that current! – until it stops, I’m stuck here –

Again came the flutter of panic in his breast, but it sub sided: something else was clearer as a result, another part of the realisation… It was like waking up and remembering a dream. A fierce cold joy possessed him, and he sat down on the stone floor and turned off the torch, in order to see it more clearly.

It was a compound of knowledge, joy, consciousness, and will, and it was burning on its own, now, burning steadily inside him. A feeling of claustrophobia, of the pressure of the earth above him, swept through his mind for a moment, but he dismissed it: it was irrelevant. There was something more important here. He urged himself forward at it – the feeling was almost sexual, the leading-up to orgasm. It was burning and simultaneously pulling him for ward, to a greater blaze, but not fast enough for him; he strained with it, sweating, his hands to his head.

He realised that now, trapped in a cave and probably doomed to die, he was more exultant than he had ever been in his life. He could have danced and sung for joy: but there was still a little further to go. And was that absurd? No, not at all; it was part of the meaning.

In a way, he saw, it was evil. Evil, ignorance, stupidity. Darkness. Death; with exultation at its heart. The nature of it all was paradoxical; the nature of everything was double edged.

Darkness had this blaze of exultation at the centre of it. The blazing sun had sunspots –

That was clearer, that was closer to it. Sunspots: he remembered that though they looked dark against the sun, in fact they were brighter, far brighter than anything on earth. It was only a difference in temperature that made them appear dark.

Morality was a description of the difference, a law for defining and not for commanding; like a scientific law, the law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics.

He got up and paced the floor in his excitement.

That was absolute. Everything was converging. And there was nothing of human life in this chamber: this was as free as the space beyond the stars. He was at home here, with the cold silent dance in the darkness and the invisible sun, and the image of it and the joy of it were imprinted on his mind and on the cells of his body just as the image of its nesting-place was imprinted on the soul of a bird.

Yes! Of course birds had souls. Everything was conscious: consciousness was more fundamental than matter, and consciousness was will, and will was joy, and joy was knowledge…

Everything he had said or done in the past had tended towards this. He had been right, instinctively right, all along. He’d said it and done it without wholly knowing why: but now he knew, he saw it all at once, and he felt his heart melting with gratitude that he’d been so lucky. Luck was branded on him, like Alan’s objective values. Was it luck, though, that led him here to this cell in the rock? Of course it was, and he was lucky still.

He wasn’t the murderer. Alan was; and that was over. But his false guilt had shown him in the only way possible that he was a part of the world.

He wasn’t a gnostic. Canon Cole’s philosophy had made such a profound impression on him because the priest himself believed it so passionately: but Harry’s view of the world had always been there as a counter-balance, and, poised between them, he could not see the truth in anything. Both views could not be true simultaneously, he had thought; there was no way they could possibly coalesce. And yet there was, in this sunlike paradox, this clear inscrutable fact at the heart of things, and in the starry joy he felt. The joy was the paradox, and the paradox, no less, was the joy. Things existed; that was it, that was all that could be said: things existed.

He lay back calmly, and thought of his dream of Alan and the little girl. He was laughing with happiness, like a baby. Then he thought:

I am at the source of things now, and whatever I do will be imprinted on me for ever – the first thing I do now will be my deepest instinct and my firmest habit from now until I die. And I and the world are one and the same thing, so I can set up the same patterns in the world as I do in myself. I can create my own fate, I can generate my own luck, because the world is with me and not against me and because if I help myself, the world cannot help but do the same. I am the future; I am beginning now…

He was suddenly conscious of Alan. Telepathy: it was as clear as a bell, the impression of his brother’s presence. Alan had known what would happen. He had the sudden, unarguable knowledge that it was only yesterday that Alan had been down here. So: there
was
a way of leaving, something he’d overlooked and he’d only been looking at the cave, after all: not at himself! It was some faculty of
his
, then, that held the key!

It was solid: he knew it for certain. He’d find it. He saw Alan’s face for a second, clearly. His brother was smiling at him.

He stood up slowly, and began to think.