Briefing for a Descent into Hell Part 7

Now we reach it, now now now,

Now we reach it, now,

Now now now now now now now now ...

and the three boys my sons who were as b.l.o.o.d.y-drunk and as crazed as their mothers kept up a stamping dance of their own and sang Now we reach it, now, now, over and over again. They were all laughing at me, laughing with malicious pleasure because I had joined this b.l.o.o.d.y feast, and later I saw that it was over, the women were walking soberly away, leaving the fire burning, and the piles of stinking b.l.o.o.d.y meat lying to one side of it. I looked for the baby, but it was not there. Then I saw that it was dead and had been thrown on the heap of meat that was waiting there, quite openly in the glade, all purply red and bleeding, for the coming night's feast. The baby was naked now, a little reddish newborn babe, smeared with blood, its genitals, the big genitals of a newborn boy baby, exposed at the top of the b.l.o.o.d.y heap. I understood that I was naked. I could not remember when I had lost the clothes with which I had left the s.h.i.+p. Presumably I had landed naked on the beach off the dolphin's back, but I had not thought once about being naked, but now I needed to cover myself. The b.l.o.o.d.y hide of the dead cow lay in its rough folds to one side of the glade, where the women and the boys had thrown it. I ran to it, and was about to wrap myself in it, all wet and raw as it was, when I chanced to look up and saw that the sun stood over the trees and the treacherous moon had gone. And so was the fire, the pile of b.l.o.o.d.y meat, the dead baby-everything. There was no evidence at all of that night's murderous dance.

I walked back through the forest, which was now full of a calm morning light, and then across gra.s.slands, and then into the suburbs of the empty ruined city until I reached the central square, and I examined it anxiously to see if the past night had affected it at all. But no, there it lay, exposed and tranquil under the clean sunlight, and there was no sound but the invisible water's running, and the song of birds.

I was terribly afraid of the coming night. I was afraid of the laughing murderesses and their songs. I knew that when the moon rose that night I would be helpless against its poisons. It tried to think of ways I could tie myself, bind myself, make myself immune from the Moon Light, but a man cannot tie himself, or not with bonds that cannot be undone-can't, that is, unless he kills himself. There is no way of making himself immune to the different person that may come to life in him at any moment-and who does not know the laws of being of his host. But I was already beginning to doubt that I knew who was stronger, which was host, what was myself and what a perverted offshoot.

Finally, I worked out that if I walked as fast as I could away from the city, and kept walking until the moon rose that night, then it would be too great a distance for me to get back to the forest before the sun rose in its turn and banished the witches and their feast. While I was myself, the sun's child, I would have the will to walk away from what the night would lure me to. And so I did walk, at a fast steady pace, away to the South, skirting the river by going between the great chasm and the cliff's edge, across the dry riverbed, and then on across the savannah, all through that long hot day, and when the moon rose I was twenty miles away in a higher, dryer air where there were few trees and those stunted and meagre. I looked back over the plain where I could see the herds of cattle grazing, but from this height and distance, they were small cl.u.s.ters of light moving on the moon-green of the gra.s.s. I could see, too, but far away, the tiny dark that was the edge of the forest where the women must be. The moon was three days from its full. I was in despair. I knew that I should rather go on walking all night straight on, straight on and away from the tug of that forest, but I did not. I turned around and walked straight back, down off this rare highland where the air was so pure and so fine, down, and by the time the moon lay at my left hand, low over the mountains which I would have reached by now and understood had I not been waylaid by the ruined city, I was at the city's outskirts, and I ran like a maniac through it, but skirting the centre of it, the square with its circle, because I did not want to see the reproach of that clean waiting landing-ground, and then I ran through the suburbs on the other side, and into the forest and there, exactly as I had seen them the night before, were the three women, the three half-grown boys, the baby, dead and festering on the pile of meat. But it was late, the moon was down, and the sun would soon rise. The women were about to move away. I had saved myself by walking so hard and fast in the opposite direction. They all went off into the trees without looking at me, and one of the boys leaped on a young steer he had tethered by its horns, and he went galloping on this crazed beast around the glade, kicking the embers of the fire, the piles of meat, the baby's corpse, scattering them about. And then he rode off while the beast roared and screamed. And again the glade was empty and clean in a morning sunlight.

I went back to the square, thankful that I had saved myself. But I knew that I was too tired now to walk away for the second night running from the approaching feast. And I knew that there were still two nights of a strong moon before the Full Moon. And I lay down and slept by the square-and that night joined in the b.l.o.o.d.y banquet under the trees, and this time they had killed the half-grown steer, and all the glade stank of blood and guts and murder, and now I knew that I would never do this again, for I was filled with strength from my sleep of the day and from the meat of the feast, and on that last day I walked twenty miles South as I had before, and turned around as the moon rose, as I had before-very nearly the full moon now-and I walked back through the night, not running, or wanting to go back to the forest, and I did not go back to the forest, for by the time I reached the city, it was too late. For the sun had come up out of a red sky over the ocean, and this was the day of the full moon. But I was tired. I was so very tired. I had not eaten that night, and I had walked forty miles. I washed myself carefully, using the largest of the water channels, sinking myself right down into it, so that the water came to my waist. I combed my beard and hair as well as I could with my fingers, and I watched the foulness run away from me with the water. And I drank and drank water as much as I could hold, hoping that its cleanliness would wash the insides of my body free of its loads of b.l.o.o.d.y meat that it could still feel from the night before last. And I lay down then to rest and wait. And, in the heat of that day, despite everything I could do, I fell asleep. I slept heavily and dreadfully, and my dreams were of that other life in a damp sunless country where my life was a weight of labour every hour, every minute, and when I woke it was long past moonrise, though I had meant to wake well before that Rising; and it was midnight. I had missed the descent of the Crystal, for it was here now. But I could not see it.

A full white moonlight lay evenly over the empty city, and over the square floor of stone on whose edge I was sitting, dreadfully heavy with sleep and foreboding. The circle in the square was still clean and faintly glowing with colour, though some leaves had blown over it during the last few days' neglect. That the Crystal was present, there, quite close, a few yards from me, was evident to me because ... I knew it was. As I looked it was as if the light there lay more heavily-no, not that, it was not a heaviness, a weight, but more of an intensity. Just there, in the centre, it was hard to see quite through to the buildings on the other side-not impossible, no, but they quivered and hung in the air like stones in the quiver of air that comes off sizzling sand or rock. And more than by sight, it was through my ears that I knew, for they sang and keened so shrilly that I had to keep shaking my head to clear away the sound. It was almost too fine and high a sound to bear. If I had been a dog I would have howled and run away. And the effort of staring in was almost too much for me. My eyes tried to close, because whatever it was that I could not quite see, but was there, belonged to a level of existence that my eyes were not evolved enough to see. And more than that, my whole body, and the level of life in it, was suffering. Beating out from that central point came waves of a finer substance, from a finer level of existence, which a.s.saulted me, because I was not tuned to them. And I remembered how as I stood on the deck of the s.h.i.+p and watched the s.h.i.+ning crystal shape, the disc, that was at the same time in an unimaginably fast movement and stationary, a visible flat spiralling, and how when I saw it come in towards me and then envelop me, it was as if my whole being had suffered a wrenching away from its own proper level. I felt this again now. I was feeling sick and low and shaken, strained out of myself with the effort of seeing what I could not really see, and hearing what I could have heard with different ears, so that I had to hear it now as an intolerable shrill note. I got to my feet with difficulty and staggered in towards the centre. As I came closer the noise got shriller, my eyes pulsed and burned, and all my body felt blasted and empty. I knew that what I was doing was futile. I knew I had missed my opportunity-for the second time, for the first had been on the deck of the old s.h.i.+p when the Crystal had taken my friends but left me behind. But although I knew this was an empty attempt, because it had none of the quiet ease of confidence, which is in itself a sign or condition of success, I had to make it. Emptiness was in me and all about me. Pulling my eyes away from that central compulsion, to rest them, I looked about the quiet roofless houses lying there, and saw first of all, their quality of peaceful trust, a waiting. An emptiness very different from my frantic hunger. But they were turned inwards, to the centre; it was a city which had found its core, its resting place, in that whirl of intensity which laid claims on it and shot it through and through with its own fine substance, as a thought can take over a man and change everything about him. (Oh, for bad as well as for good, as I had learned so recently.) Looking at the houses, and then glancing in at the whirling presence in the centre, and glancing away again, for respite, I managed to come within fifteen yards of the thing-and could not come closer. Again I stood and looked from very near at a wall or sheet of s.h.i.+ning substance in which creatures were imprisoned by their nature, as I was imprisoned in the air I had to breathe. From so very close, and by not looking direct, but out of the side of my eyes, as star watchers observe stars in, paradoxically, a more delicate and finer vision, I could see it pulsing there, a shape of light; and (almost seen, more sensed, known, recognised) the creatures that belonged to that state in nature. Like the shadows of flames running liquid on a wall of fire, like the reflection of broken water on a fall of water, inside that pulsing light I could see, from the side of my eye, the crystallisations of the substance which were its functions, its reason for being, its creatures. There they were, beings divided away from me as fish in a wall of water are divided from the man six inches away in air, but they were known to me, I knew them, I felt that I ought to slide in there, somehow, in some way, by thinking differently, by breathing that fast spinning vibration-but I could not go nearer, and I knew it was because I had let myself be drawn into the forest with the blood-drinking women, and because I had slept like a dog in the hot sun. I tried to force myself in to the place, although the laws of my density held me back. I felt too ill even to stand. In a last effort of will, which I knew was wrong and useless, I collapsed, and fainted, my eyes blazing light as they were extinguished by dark. And when I woke up again it was morning, the hot sunlight lay everywhere about me, and I knew that the Crystal was gone. The square and the circle inside it were empty. I had been sick and my nose had been bleeding. I lay in blood and the smell of vomit. Where I had been lying smelled vile. And as I sat up, to stare inwards at my terrible loss, I knew again what I had known on the deck of the s.h.i.+p, when all my friends had vanished away with the s.h.i.+ning visitor. I had been left behind. I had not been taken. I had failed most dreadfully and through my own fault. I had had nothing to do but wait quietly for the moment of the full moon, and keep myself light and alert and wakeful. But I had not done it.

I stood up and looked about me at a city which seemed as if it had changed, though I could not say how it had. There was a new feeling about it, its peace and silence had gone. It had a look of frivolity, a sort of drunkenness. If a town, or a building, or a shape of stone could be said to giggle, then it was that: a silly silent giggling, an infantility, a coa.r.s.eness. It was like that moment when the women turned towards me in the firelight under the trees, and showed their faces smeared with blood, but they were laughing and smiling, as if nothing much was happening to them, or to me.

I dragged myself off towards the river, to bathe and become fresh again. But I stopped. For on to the square of stone stepped a-but I did not know what it was. I thought at first, that this must be a man, for he stood as tall as one, and had the shoulders and the arms and legs of one, though strained and distorted in their shape. But his head ... was it some kind of monkey, who shambled on to the square of stone, and then in right to the very centre? Here he squatted down and looked about him. But the body was covered all over with a fine close hide, s.h.i.+ning brown, like the hide of a dog, and the head was like a dog's, with sharp c.o.c.ked ears and dog's muzzle. Yet there was a ratlike look about it. The creature had a rat's long scaly tail. I was afraid. It was bigger and much stronger than I was. I thought it might come over and attack me. But I walked towards it and it looked at me without concern. I was thinking then that I should attack and kill it, for I found it disgusting and ugly, as it squatted there, exactly where last night the Crystal had lain s.h.i.+ning and vibrating. I thought that if I killed it then the city would have to be cleaned again. I came close to it. The creature looked idly at me and away, it moved about, scratched for fleas, sniffed the air with its sharp dog's or rat's nose. I understood that it probably did not see me, or, if it did, that I was of no interest to it whatsoever.

I stayed where I was. So did the creature. I hated everything about it, it was a creature alien to me in every way. Yet I was thinking that someone standing a hundred yards away might say, at a casual glance, that it and I were of a similar species, for I stood nearly as tall as it did, and I had a head growing where this dog-rat had one, and roughly similar arms and legs. Coming closer this observer would see that I was hairless whereas this animal had a hide ... well, not quite hairless. I now had thick curling brown hair to my shoulders, and a deep curling brown beard to my waist and thick dark hair on my chest and from my navel to my crotch. Dark brown hair on skin burned brown by wind and sun. I was covered and decent! Whereas this beast ... but I felt too disgusted with it to stay there matching myself point by point, and I walked away off the square, and as I did so the creature gave a high squeaky call, and it was answered by other calls, half bark, half rat's high shrilling, and on to the stone square came running and scampering and shambling, a dozen or so of these creatures. They were all males. They had the genitals of a big dog, large globular t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and p.e.n.i.ses like rods, for they all seemed in a state of s.e.xual excitement. Later I saw that this was more or less permanent with them. Then they stood upright, they looked as close-haired dogs look when made to stand on their hindlegs, the lower part of the belly all genital. They stood in a group right in the centre and faced outwards. They were on their hindlegs. They had sticks or stones in their hands, and were keeping some sort of a watch. Then I saw others moving in from the avenues in troops. I ran out, to the very edge of the escarpment, where I flung myself down and lay looking out over the land that lowered itself through the deep old forests to the blue ocean. I lay there, with the sun beating down from overhead, and knew that I had to wait another month until the moon again came to the full, and that the city, in which I had lived quite alone, was now full of these hideous dog-rats. I could hear their barking and whistling and scuffling all over the city.

I did not feel I was able to bear living there, waiting, with such companions. I made every sort of wild plan-to go back to the coast again and build myself a raft from driftwood, to make my way to the mountains and construct there a new landing-ground and hope that the Crystal might take pity on me and descend there instead, or to return to that cold damp country where from time to time I seemed to live, and labour out my time there, giving up all hope of the Crystal ... but I knew quite well that I would stay here. I had to. At last, knowing that I had no alternative but to do exactly what I was doing, I went to the river, careful to move out of sight of the Rat-dogs, and washed and bathed. I gathered some fruit. I cut fresh branches of the aromatic bush and laid them down at the edge of the escarpment, looking out and away from the city and its restless noisy inhabitants. I slept. In my sleep one or more of the Rat-dogs came to examine me, for I saw their spoor and dung when I woke. But they did not harm me. I dreamed of them though, and cried and struggled in my sleep, imagining myself their prisoner.

It was now a question of arranging matters so that I could last out a month without becoming a slave to the moon and being forced back into the b.l.o.o.d.y ritual in the forest, or falling a victim to the curiosity of these invaders in this city which I had been thinking of as mine.

During the three or four days of the moon's wane from the full, more and more of these ratlike dogs came in to the city. Since they did not harm me, I decided to move among them and observe them. They did not seem to have any particular pattern to their lives. Some moved about in mixed groups or packs, males and females together, with or without young. These tended to have one animal dominant, either male or female, but not always. They bickered and quarrelled incessantly, and individuals went to other groups, so it was the groups that were continuous, not the individuals in them. Some separated into smaller groups based on a mating couple, and these appropriated separate rooms in the houses. Some were solitary, a great many, and they did not seem to have any particular function in any group, large or small, but they tried to attach themselves to groups and couples, and while occasionally they were tolerated for a short while, more often they were driven away or ignored. These solitary ones sometimes met together in what looked like efforts to relieve loneliness, and sat about in twos and threes, watching the larger groups. But mostly they moved around, watching, and this was an unpleasant mirror to what I was doing, and I imagined that I saw in their sharp forlorn postures, and sharply critical but avid eyes, what I might appear like to them-if they looked at me at all. But these were a species which seemed extremely busy all day, or rather, occupied, and self-absorbed. They were always moving about, never still, gathering fruit and eating it, moving from room to room and from building to building, settling in one for a day or an hour and then moving on, talking in their gruff squeak in a way that suggested that most of the talk was for the sake of relieving a pressure of energy, scuffling and fighting-and s.e.xual activity. These animals seemed extraordinarily highly s.e.xed, but perhaps it was because of their always displayed genitals. The males I have described. The females had scarlet-edged slits from a.n.u.s to their lower belly. The males were roused to s.e.xual excitement any time a female of any age approached, and the females were nearly as sensitized. And a greater part of their time was spent in s.e.xual display, in attracting each other's attention, appropriating each other's s.e.xual partners and in watching other animals' s.e.xual behaviour. When a pair had actually come together and had agreed to mate, they went off behind a wall or a bush, for a part-private mating, and these had the variety of human matings. Others came to watch the s.e.xual act, and let out high excited yappings and squeakings and, stimulated past bearing, fell on each other and went off to nearby bushes or sheltered places. So that one mating might start off a frenzy that could last half a day. It was noticeable that this s.e.xuality was strongest while the moon was nearer the full, and lessened as the nights grew darker. Yet the matings were as common in the day as at night. It seemed that these animals were afraid of the dark, congregating together more as night fell, and this fear was the first time I was able to achieve some pity or affection for them, for they really did seem so very forlorn, and bravely so, rounding up the younger animals as the sun went down, posting lookouts on the high walls, moving about with fearful looks over their shoulders. Yet there was no enemy that I could see. And now I had experienced an impulse of fellow-feeling for them, I began to see them more sympathetically and I disliked them less. For instance, it became evident to me that these animals had only recently begun to walk on their hind legs, which accounted for their way of staggering, or jerking from a precarious balance to another, at each step, as a big dog does, when made to stand on its hind legs. And this accounted for more: their most pitiable and characteristic gesture. As their eyes, like a rat's or a dog's were made to be used as they moved forward on all fours, their sharp pointed noses tended, now they were upright, to point upwards to the sky, while their eyes squinted to either side downwards, in their effort for a clear view. And they kept bending their heads down and sideways, first on one side and then on the other as they walked or staggered about, all the time trying to force down their neck muscles. Putting myself in their position I saw that they must have a view of the world as two different semicircles, one on either side. And unlike men, who are blind at their backs, so that they continually have to turn their heads to one side and then the other, for the most part on a horizontal axis, and are nevertheless blind around two thirds of a possible sweep of vision, these animals were always squinting up, skywards, and their head and neck movements were very rapid, to correct this, and this continuous jerking about of the head contributed to their look of general restlessness. It was the younger and more flexibly-muscled of them that seemed able to keep open a fairly-wide scope of vision by the fast jerkings-about of their sky-pointing muzzles, each sideways jerk an interruption in a cross-sweep usually diagonal. These head movements gave the effect of the stills of an old film or cartoon running together not quite fast enough.

I noticed too that when they were tired, or believed themselves to be alone, they would let themselves down on all fours and run about for a time like this. And they ran very fast and ably indeed, for this was how their bodies had been designed to move. But when an individual or a group behaved like this for too long, the others would begin to make irritable movements, and then would set up a chiding critical chattering, while the culprits looked defiant, then guilty, and sooner or later staggered back to the upright position.

When they were huddled together in their roofless rooms or on the stone of the square, at night when there was no moon, they sat like dogs or monkeys, squatting, their front limbs straight down in front of them for support, and they moved about on all fours much more in the dark. They seemed so very different in these two different conditions, their clumsy half-staggering on their hind legs, with their awkward jerky vision that gave them such a look of pomposity and self-importance, and the rapid running and scampering when on all fours, that they really seemed like two different species, and I suppose I was unconsciously thinking of them as such, for I do remember very clearly that at the first appearance of the apes, I did not at once react with alarm at a new invasion, but thought vaguely that perhaps the Rat-dogs were moving in yet a third way.

These apes were of a kind familiar to us humans. They were a variety of chimpanzee, but larger than the ones we keep to show off in zoos. They came swinging into the city through trees and along the walls, and when they saw the Rat-dogs their reaction was not one I could at once interpret. Although they stopped still and ma.s.sed together, they did not seem particularly afraid, nor did they seem pleased. They conferred among themselves, on the North side of the city, till there were a couple of hundred or so ma.s.sed there. Meanwhile, the Rat-dogs, turning their squinting eyes this way and that towards the newcomers, also ma.s.sed together, and did not make any aggressive action as the monkeys came in further, and then scampered and swung all over the city finding out corners and rooms that were not inhabited. There was a great deal of sharp scolding and complaint as the newcomers tried to take places that were occupied, but it seemed as if both species recognised the right of the other to live in this place. More and more of the apes came trooping in. The city was crammed with animals. It seemed that the first kind, the Rat-dogs, saw the monkeys as inferior, and the monkeys agreed, or were prepared to appear to agree. They would do small services for the big staggering beasts, and tended to move out of their way. Yet to me, a man, the monkeys were altogether more likable and sympathetic, perhaps because I was familiar with them. I felt no strong antipathy, as I still did for the Rat-dogs, in spite of my growing compa.s.sion for them. And it seemed to me that the eyes of the monkeys showed sympathy for me, a comprehension, although they neither made attempts to approach me, nor molested me, ignoring me for the most part, as the others did. A monkey's eyes, so sad, so knowledgeable, they are eyes that speak to the eyes of a human. We feel them to be human eyes. And what sort of self-flattery is that? For the eyes of most human beings are sharp, knowing, clever and vain, like the eyes of the Rat-dogs. The depth that lies in a monkey's eyes by no means lies behind the eyes of all men. I found now that I moved around that populated, noisy, scuffling, dirtied city, avoiding the big Rat-dogs when I could, meeting with relief the monkeys who seemed so very much more human. But there were more and more of both species, the city was crammed, and the days were pa.s.sing, so that only half the moon's lit face showed on our earth, and then more of a dark back than her lit face, and it was dark, all dark, and I knew that soon, not much more than two weeks away, I must be ready for the Crystal's descent. Yet all of the central square was always full of animals, as once long ago it must have been full of people meeting to talk or exchange or barter, and every inch of it was littered with fruit rinds, dung, stones, bits of stick or branch or blown leaves. I might never have cleaned the place.

The dark of the new moon held the city in a warm bad-smelling airlessness, and all the animals were ma.s.sed together, watching the tiny sickle of light in the sky, and with sentinels posted on trees and walls everywhere. They were quieter than usual. It was not a good quiet. On the big square were mostly Rat-dogs, except for the monkeys who had chosen to groom them, or play the fool to amuse them. I went boldly into the square late one evening, as the sun went, thinking that perhaps in that sad hour when every creature seems to be thoughtful that these creatures would be ready to listen and to understand. I stood there like a fool and said to them in human speech: "My friends, we have only fourteen days. Two weeks is all we have. For they are coming, and they will land here, on this circle in the centre of the square. But they will not land on a place which is foul and littered, so please, for your sake as well as for my sake, for the sake of all the creatures that live on this poor sick earth, let us clean this place, let us sweep it with branches, and then bring water and wash away the stains of the filth that is here." I kept my voice steady and I smiled, and I tried to show by gestures what we should do, but they moved about as I spoke, or turned their pointed noses down sideways so that one of their two planes of vision could include me, and the servantlike monkeys hopped closer and looked at me with their sad eyes, trying to understand-but of course they could not understand, how could they? Perhaps I was half-hoping that the meaning of my words would communicate itself to these so differently planned brains, because of the desperation of my need that it should.

The dark came up in a rush from the ocean and the forest, enveloping the plateau and the teeming city, and I went away to the edge of the escarpment and sat there, watching the stars and listening to the multifarious but subdued din from the animals behind me, who were also watching the skies, where the moon's back was a dark circle with a hairline of light at one side.

Perhaps it was their fear of the dark; perhaps that fear stopped a normal exuberance of movement and of voice and left them banked with unexpended energy; or perhaps it was simply that the city had grown too full for their civility to continue-however it was, that night the fighting started. I knew it first by the smell-the smell of blood, which by now I did know so very well. And there were sudden scuffles much louder than usual, and cries and shrieks. These last sounded like the blood-crazed women around their fire in the forest, and in the morning, after a long dark stuffy night, I walked into the city and saw corpses lying on the central square and also here and there among the houses. Most of these dead were the monkeys, though there were one or two of Rat-dogs. And now the two races had separated off, except that a few of the monkeys had chosen to stay as servants or jesters with the big beasts who tolerated them. The city was roughly divided, and now the sentinels on the trees and the walltops watched each other, were turned inwards instead of outwards.

The morning slowly pa.s.sed in this new hot suspicious tension. There was no new outbreak of fighting, and when the sun stood overhead, it seemed as if a truce had been declared in the barkings and squeakings and chatterings I had heard but not understood. Each army sent out representatives and the corpses were dragged away. These were not buried, but pulled through the city and then its suburbs, and thrown into the great hole where the river plunged down into the earth. I cried out to them No, No, No, not to foul the clean river and then the sea, but remembered how men had poisoned all the oceans and rivers so that beasts and fish were dying there, and so, feeling sick and hopeless, I went away, thinking that what corpses succeeded in making their way from out the dark riverine channels through the earth, and out to the waterfalls and cataracts, and from there to the wide level river, and at last to the sea-these corpses would at least be cleaner offal than the lethal filth men feed to the sea currents.

Towards night, and the light's draining away in sadness in a red-stained sky, the fighting broke out again, and they fought all night, and I sat on my cliff's edge and tried not to hear it or to follow the carnage too closely in my imagination. There were thirteen days to go to the moon's full, and I knew I had no hope of cleaning the city, no hope of the Crystal's coming, unless by some fortune I had no reason to expect, the animals went away from the city again, as apparently casually as they had come.

Next morning the dead lay in heaps, and the whole city smelled of blood. And now these animals, whose food was fruit and water, were gathered around piles of corpses and were tearing off lumps of hairy flesh and eating it. As I came in close to look, I felt afraid for the first time of these beasts, apes and Rat-dogs. I was now, as they were to each other, potential meat. They ignored me, though I was standing not twenty yards away, until I saw three of them become conscious of my being there, and they turned their pointed muzzles to me, with their sharp teeth white and smeared red, and I saw the blood dripping down as I had off the faces of my women. I went back to the edge of the sea and fell into a despair. I gave up hope then. I knew that the fighting would go on. It would get worse. They would now kill for food. I knew that I was in danger and I did not care. In such moods there are many arguments you can find to support the wisdom of despair. The advocates humanity has found to argue on the side of despair have always been more powerful than those other small voices. I lay myself down on the escarpment's edge and looked down into the deep forests which had taken so many centuries to grow, where my beautiful yellow beasts must be and where birds as brightly coloured as sunset or dawn skies followed the curve of lives as brief as mine. And then I slept. I wanted to sleep away time so that the end would come more quickly.

When I woke it was late afternoon and while the sunlight still lay sparkling over the distant ocean, beneath me, over the forest, it was almost night. The fighting still went on. I could hear animals chasing each other not more than a few yards away in the buildings that reached almost to the escarpment. I did not want to turn my head to look, for out of the corner of my eye I could see a dying rat-beast rolling and squeaking and kicking up puffs of dust in its death struggle. I looked forward and out again over the forest where Jaguar, Parrot and Lizard blazed and burned, older than man, and then I saw lying on the air in front of me a great white bird who, instead of sailing right past my eyes on its current of air, at the last moment turned and landed beside me on the cliff's edge, its great wings balancing it to a safe perch. It was not a species of bird I knew. It was about four feet tall as it sat, white plumaged, and it had a straight streak of a yellow beak that gave it a severe appearance. I thought enviously of how in a moment it would let itself slide off on a warm wave of evening air, as a swimmer slides off a warm rock into a swirling sea. As I thought this it turned and looked steadily at me with very round golden eyes. I went to it and it squatted low, like a hen settling in a smother of outstretched sheltering wings over its eggs, and I slid on to its back, and no sooner than I was safely there than it glided off into the air, and we were dropping down lightly over the rocky sliding hill, and the waterfalls and then over the deep forest now silent with the approach of night. The bird's back, its wing span was ten or twelve feet. I sat up, with a fistful of feathers to keep me steady, but a wind that came sweeping up from the sea nearly sent me toppling off and down over and over to the treetops, so I lay face down, with my arms on either side of the bird just above where the wings joined. The slopes of white feathers were sun-warmed still, and slippery, and smelled clean and wholesome like a hen's egg when it is fresh. The light shone off the white feathers immediately below my eyes like sun off a snowfield, and I turned away my face and laid it to one side, and looked down past the bird's neck and shoulders and we swooped out over the sea and sped along the waves' crests that still, even though all the land between sh.o.r.e and the plateau's edge was plunged in dark, sparked off light from the setting sun. It was a red sun in a ruddy sky, to match the carnage that went on in the city beneath it-which I could just see, white walls and columns in miniature, miles away, high through darkening air. And on we went over the waves and I breathed in great gulps of cold salty air that swept my lungs free of dirt and blood. And on we went until the sh.o.r.e and continent beyond had dwindled to a narrow edge of dark against a sky that was piled high and thick with glowing clouds, and then as my bird dipped one wing to swerve around and back I cried No, not yet, go on, and the bird sped on, while the air whistled past my cold-burning ears and I could taste the salt spray on my lips and beard. And on and on we went, and then I turned over carefully on my back, with my arms bent back and clutching at the finer feathers in the warm caverns under the bird's beating or balancing wings, and I looked up into a star-sprinkled sky where the moon was with her back to the earth, and showing a slice of its edge one finger wider than yesterday's to remind me of my sorrow and my failure. And now in front of us was the coast of Portugal and there was Conchita on her headland looking out to sea. Behind her the red blotch of new suburbs spread out like measles, and below the sea pranced and tossed. She was singing or half-chanting, or even speaking-for it was halting, worrying, blocked song-which showed poor Conchita was as little fitted for her nunhood as she had been happy in my arms, "Come on, shout!" the bra.s.s sun said,

The peac.o.c.k sea screamed blue, the turkey houses red,

Sun and sea, they challenged "Come!"

The earth sang out, but I was dumb.

Slow, slow, my feet down thick sand dunes,

Curled sh.e.l.ls recalling old sea tunes

Cut my slow feet until they bled.

"Who cannot dance must bleed," they said.

Not ape, nor G.o.d, to swing from tree to tree,

Or bid the sea be still from fear of me,

Divided, dwarfed, a botched thing in between,

I watched the sky burn on, the gra.s.s glow deeper green.

To sing! To sing! To squeeze the flaring afternoon

Like warm fruit in my hand! Then fling it out in tune!

To take the waves, the freedom of their beat,

And dance that out on sea-taught feet.

But blood and nerves are crucified too long

That I should find a sweet release in song.

Not I to sing as free as birds

Whose throat forms only human words.

Renounce the sea, the crooning sands,

My ease, bought not by loosed feet, hands,

Or love which breaks the mind in pain