– I’ll find her, said Flapping Eagle.
– Touch wood, said Virgil Jones. He walked to a tree and did so.
– In a structure of reality where anything is possible, he said shamefacedly, I find it better to be safe than sorry. Hence my somewhat ridiculous predilection for superstition. There might be an evil spirit in that tree, after all. There might be an avenging god. It might be possible to conjure demons. The lines on one’s palm might speak the truth. Symbols might be as real as people. One theory has it that in this dimension, as indeed in yours, we overlay our symbolic natures with this vast, obscurantist weight of personality. Thus making it very difficult for us to know the true forces that move us. Given this never-ending stream of possibilities, I find my little foibles a comfort.
Flapping Eagle was sitting very still, his knuckles white, his fists locked shut, his mouth a thin, tight line.
– Come, come, Mr Eagle, said Virgil Jones. I had thought you were a more flexible soul than this.
– I’m going up the mountain today, said Flapping Eagle. I want to find Bird-Dog and Sispy and get myself out of this whole vile mess.
– O, but you mustn’t, said Virgil Jones.
– Why not? shouted Flapping Eagle.
– It’s the Grimus Effect, said Virgil Jones. It gets more powerful all the time. To tell the truth, it’s just a question of waiting until its power reaches down here. I really wouldn’t advise you to climb.
Flapping Eagle felt ill again.
– What Effect? he asked, wearily.
– Grimus. The Grimus Effect.
– What the hell is that?
– Ah, said Virgil, I think you’ve had enough for one day. Suffice to say this: the slopes of Calf Mountain are full of monsters, Mr Eagle. You’d never survive without a guide. Possibly not even then.
Flapping Eagle shook his head, an utterly bewildered man, and buried his face in his hands. Virgil Jones came over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
– I’m very sorry, he said. I’m very, very sorry.
– No. It’s my turn to apologize, said Flapping Eagle. I’m behaving like a bad-tempered child.
– Entirely understandable, my dear fellow, said Virgil Jones, good-naturedly,
– Perhaps you could explain about the monsters?
Virgil Jones nodded sadly.
– You are quite resolved, are you not? he said.
– Yes, said Flapping Eagle. For better or worse.
– What I have been describing are the Outer Dimensions, said Mr Jones. There are Inner Dimensions as well. One never knows what universes may lie locked within one’s mind. The Effect can work upon the mind with devastating effects.
He fell silent. Flapping Eagle pressed him for more, but he would only say:
– There are some things about Calf Mountain which cannot be explained, only experienced. I hope you never experience them, Mr Eagle. I have grown fond of you. There is a great deal of spirit in that questing frame, is there not?
Flapping Eagle smiled uncertainly.
– Consider this well, gestured Virgil quickly to cover his embarrassment. It is physical proof that not all superstitions are effective. It was, as a matter-of-fact, the use of a divining-rod that settled me on this spot; and as you see it is bone-dry. But one does not have the heart to fill it up; one hopes against hope that water will begin to seep through those parched walls.
– But you didn’t need a well, said Flapping Eagle. There’s the stream. He pointed at the freshwater rivulet that ran through the trees.
Virgil Jones snorted. -It was something to do, he said, even if it was a bad idea.
– It’s a sad ambition you have, Mr Eagle, said Virgil Jones. To grow old, to die; how is it that someone like you, so young in mind and body, can have such an ambition?
Flapping Eagle replied, with a bitter tone in his voice which surprised him: -I want to return to the human race.
A dark look flashed across Mr Jones’ face: shock first, then something more like… apology? He seemed to apologize a lot, thought Flapping Eagle.
– Interesting, said Virgil, that you should think of death as such a humanizing force.
Flapping Eagle’s confusions had settled into a slough of unwanted depression; Virgil Jones appeared to be no merrier. He stood up, shook himself, straightened his hat, dusted his trousers, and attempted to lighten the atmosphere.
– Calf Mountain, I’ve always thought, is rather like a giant lingam weltering in the yoni that is the Sea, he offered, and was forced to explain to the uncomprehending Flapping Eagle: A Sanskrit circumlocution, my dear Eagle. Small pleasantry. I fear I have a rather obscure sense of humour.
Then the gloom descended on him again, and he went on: -Though why I should see this wretched place as so overtly phallic, I cannot think. After all the one thing we have in common on the island is… He broke off.
– What? asked Flapping Eagle.
– But you must know, sir, said Virgil Jones, retreating behind a shell of formality. Sterility. Sterility. That is what I left unsaid. A tragic side-effect of the Drink of life. You will find no children on this rock, godforsaken as it is. Sterile, every manjack of us.
Including you.
Bitterness had now entered the voice of Virgil Jones.
Flapping Eagle walked away towards the hut. He left Virgil Jones deep in thought, absentmindedly snapping twigs in half.
XIV Enemies
IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, Flapping Eagle would have felt an instinctive sympathy for Mrs O’Toole, physically distorted as she was. He himself had suffered the social darts that fly at the freak; they should have had much in common. He now knew why they did not. If Virgil Jones was right in saying that Calf Mountain could not, should not be climbed without an experienced guide, it was obvious who that guide had to be. Flapping Eagle realized that he was impatient to set off, catching himself in the act of wondering how to persuade Mr Jones to accompany him. No wonder Dolores was distraught; no wonder she had turned against him after that polite, friendly beginning.
Could she be persuaded to come as well? That would be the neatest solution, he thought. If she would not come, then it had to be admitted that she and Flapping Eagle must now be enemies. The admission did nothing to lessen his depression.
XV The Trunk
O, IT WAS a certain thing, the trunk, so ponderous, so cobwebbed, so comforting, the trunk with its long-broken locks, never opened, captor of her life. O, it was a wondrous thing to be so sure, to hold her memories so fast. Open it now and let them flood her, washing her in certainties of days and griefs that could not change a jot. The moving finger writes and having writ moves on. Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. Nor tears nor the ghost of an eagle. Sure, sure, sure, as fixed in the fluid of the years as her immortal body, immortal now as souls, replenished daily, neither growing old nor young, static. The present is tomorrow’s past, as fixed, as sure, the trunk would tell her so. There, the creak, the weight of the lid lifted, the open gape of time. There, the candles, devoted servants of god, immortal invisible godonlywise, in light inaccessible hidfromoureyes. O thou who changest not abide with me. No, no, they can’t take this away from me. O, the candles, how did I lapse, how misuse them so, stark white pure candles? Look, the photographs, yellow as dust and half as crumbling, ashes to ashes, into the grave the great queen dashes. Grave Virgil, named for a poet, photograph him if only there were a camera and fix him there, yellow and crumbling, for evermore. Her eyes, better than any camera, conjure him now before them, hold him there, not yellow, not crumbling, warm flesh as she felt it in the night, folds enfolding her to make her safe and send the time away, nothing can change beneath the folds. There, the photographs. The little girl, poor dear thing said Auntie to have the hump. The hump, the hump, the cameeelious hump. She, La Belle Dame Aux Camelious. Or sans mercy. Merciful heavens that do not alter, there, see the uniform, the little nunkit, conventpure little girl, say seven ave marias and he won’t go away. There, the past. Put him in the trunk, dear gravedigger poet, put him there to stay unaltered, put him in the trunk and keep him, folded, enfolded, the same for ever and ever, world without end, our men. Fix me jesus, fix him in a song, the fat greekname, virgil virgil give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. And how could he leave, how return to all that pain? The wounds are closed here, the hurt half-healed, here he is safe and I to make him so, safe in the unchanging daytoday. No eagle can snatch him away, no eagle take him back to his past, the past is sure, it cannot be re-entered, fixed and yellow and crumbling, the past. The moving finger having writ. Close the trunk, put away childish things, it is done and he stays and nothing will change nothing nothing nothing there is nothing to change it and we shall stay virgil and dolores fixed and unchanging in the glue of love. Poor dear grave-digger jones, so much to remain forgotten in him, the weight of the past and its doings ensures the present will not change. Virgil, virgil, give me your answer do. There, the trunk, shut, sure, certain, fixed. Pat it so and be grateful. Now might I do it, pat. Pat, it is done.