No skill, no subtlety – breasts to suckle and breasts for suckling, round, pink-nippled, he made with tiny pink stones; a waist, and then that most urgent of all womanhood, plundered by man. Frustrated, he ceased drawing and lay face down on the coral-coloured earth, wept until all feelings ceased. His dog, who sensed every deprivation of his master, would lie at his feet after his morning’s hunting and remain silent, until Titus was stirred by physical hunger of another kind.
‘We have been gradually moving, Dog, and that water we see ahead of us has the tang of salt in it. Our diet will be saved. Salt is as much a part of my diet as a woman. It savours, it flavours, it adds desire to the beauty of this coral land. Even so, I want other company and when it comes I shall want it to go. I shall want to flee from it. I am no longer, or perhaps never was, a part of the human race.’
During the days Titus searched for a tree, blown down by the elements, that with rough hand-hewn tools he could fashion into a boat, which could negotiate the lagoons to which they had unwittingly drifted.
He made one and with long poles for oars he sat in it and glided with the grace of a swan on the water, and his one and only companion howled with despair, thinking that he was to be left alone.
‘Oh, how cruel I am.Where has that desire come from that wishes to hurt?’
Titus drifted back and Dog, as the tree trunk edged itself to the shore, put one paw tentatively, and then his other fearingly, then gently lowered his two back legs into the boat, until he attained his position as sentinel.
The sun, along with so many other things, made its gleaming way on to Titus’s face and his hands, and poured solace over man and beast. They drifted in and out of waters, close to coral reefs, hunting, fishing, making fires. Titus sang, and Dog howled with the abandon that comes but seldom, with an awareness of the glories that life can hold but manifests with solemn rarity.
They drifted, and the beauty surrounding them became almost commonplace. Titus’s hair began to burnish, and his face to tan – his body emanated a sensuousness to which there was no woman to respond. In the heat of the afternoon he pulled in, stripped off the remnants of what few clothes he had left and lay in the sun, and then with the dog he sought the shade, and they lay with arms and legs and paws outstretched, with their own respective dreams and the sounds that come from sleep – the heavy breathing, the calling from a distant subconscious and the balm of sleep – names from the past, sights, the illness of the past, and sometimes an echo that might be an intimation of the future.
Only hunger roused them.
The boat lilted up and down, with the ease of a craftsman. Titus awoke as the sun cooled, and he searched for his remnants of clothing. It took less time for his dog to position himself on the craft than for Titus to pull on his rags, and their drift in the dusk began again.
* * * * *
‘I AM COLD.’
Ahead was the sinister vermilion. Fire. No longer did the sun warm them. They were cold, yet felt the heat. The flames performed the most skilled permutations of movement that could be imagined. The flames tore upwards to the sky, raging, tormented, tormenting, and the sound of heat coming through the air was terrifying; it was the crackling of ancient tribes, the scream of a hare torn to pieces, the violence inflicted by religion on its heretics. It was far away and it was beautiful. Its colour, unknown, unlearned by any artist. It was a distant sight and distant sound, yet where they were anchored Titus and his dog lay in silence, terrified.
Because the fire was far enough away Titus could afford to philosophise. Any closer he and his companion might well have been reduced to charcoal. ‘Is all beauty hurtful?’ he wondered, remembering the damage done to the walls of Gormenghast by the creeper in all its red and gold glory.
‘Oh, Dog, let us go in another direction, away, away from it all. We might chance upon something we recognise.’
15
Among the Soldiers
A GALE, OVER life-size, limbered up on the two pathetic exiles. Their boat was tossed, they were sick. Titus lay weakened from hunger, wandering, cold, despair, but there is always a hope, hidden subterraneously. Hope keeps man alive amidst all horrors. Even in the worst of men there is a little weakness, a flicker of hope, whether it be stirred by the golden hair of a child, or the grey hair of age, or some long forgotten memory. It was one such harsh man who descended on the river and drifted silent and mysterious as any ghost.
Hearing the sounds – a rhythmic moaning – he trod gingerly in the direction of the river, pushing the mist away from him as though it were a gauze curtain. His voice, used to command, was tossed by the wind into a parody of a voice, until it reached Titus’s ears like the sound of frogs at night, insistent, harsh, removed from his experience.
Dog lifted his head painfully, alert to the new sound, so the croak drifted once more through the topsy-turvy mist, and Dog moved his right paw, and gently tapped Titus’s cheek.
The voice of the man reached Dog again and in reply he let out an unearthly howl.
It generated knowledge in both, and curiosity in both: who or what would find the answer first? The man had the advantage, in that he had no care for any living soul but his own. Dog had the advantage in that he had the care of a living soul and, in his tactile way, exhausted as he was, that living soul was more important to him than anything else in his small circumscribed world.
The man was a soldier, a man used to issuing commands and to being obeyed. Behind the mist were a group of men, rough and used to hard living, to all the elements that nature can devise. They warmed themselves and threw their untidy shadows across each other by a fire on which was stretched the body of a suckling pig.
Laughs and whistles, a song, a harsh command from one man to another broke through to the man in the mist. He knew the men he commanded. The vilest of them was putty to him. ‘Oh, let them sack and burn and prey – laugh, rape and be gay, but when the time comes and I say ‘‘stop’’ or when the time comes and I say ‘‘go’’ then they will. I have only to whistle to them and they will, like automata, rush to my bidding, but I want to discover the source of this sound, this nebulous lament. What I do with what I have found is of importance to no one but myself.’
Dog yelled. His voice eerie as a foghorn, reached the soldier, master of men. His howl broke through the darkness and the dim shape was silhouetted, black against grey with its jaws open.
The master of men clutched the silhouette in his mind’s eye and, forcing his way with blade on felt undergrowth, he ran with utmost clumsiness towards the howl.
He came to the sound – water lapping, a panting, both of fear and achievement – and the strong wind was enough to part the veil dividing them for the master of men to see a ghostly Dog. He leaned across the nettles and the eggs in nests to touch until the creature surrendered to the hand of man.
Dog was the first to perceive that if not a friend at least not an enemy was at hand. His howl became more frenzied, as he sought the voice that shouted in an unknown tongue. The man yelled orders to the men behind him to come – one or two of them to help him reach forward to waylay the wandering bark before it was lost in darkness.
Crude men who had dined off their suckling pig wiped their hands across their lips, until the grease dripped down their unshaven chins leaving a trail, like the silver line made by a snail on its slow peregrinations from one purposeful destination of its own to another.
They had heard the voice of the man who commanded them and had no wish to concede to his commands, but his natural authority forced them to draw lots in their own way, which was to order the two youngest members of their group to forge into the darkness towards the water.