The Collected Short Fiction Read online

  'Don't earthquakes usually do damage?' he asked.

  'Elsewhere they do,' replied Lek, splintering a nut. 'Not here.'

  'Our earthquakes are not like other people's earthquakes,' said Vin. She did not say it banteringly, but rather as if to discourage further questions. She too, was carefully picking scraps of nut from splinters of shell.

  'I see,' said Grigg. 'Or rather, I don't see at all.'

  'We do not claim to be like other people in any way,' explained Lek. 'As I told you, we are sorceresses.'

  'I remember,' said Grigg. 'What exactly does that mean?'

  'It is not to be described,' said Lek.

  'I feared as much,' said Grigg, glancing again at Tal, who so far had not spoken at all.

  'You misunderstand,' said Lek. 'I mean that the description would be without meaning. The thing can only be felt, experienced. It is not a matter of conjuring, of turning lead into gold, or wine into blood. We can do all those things as well, but they are bad and to be avoided, or left behind.'

  'I think I have heard something of the kind,' said Grigg. 'I am sorry to be inquisitive. All the same, it might have been nice if you could have prevented that earthquake.'

  'There was no reason to prevent it.'

  'Sorry,' said Grigg, tired of the mystification. 'It is none of my business, anyway.'

  'That depends,' said Lek.

  'Upon whether you decide to stay or go,' said Vin. As she spoke, she took off her plain, greeny-brown dress. She did it casually, as a woman might remove a scarf when she finds it too hot. Vin was wearing no other garment, and now lay naked on the cushions, her back against the low wall, behind which stretched the sea.

  'On this island,' continued Lek, 'we live as all people once lived. But long ago they thought better of it and started looking for something else. They have been looking, instead of living, ever since.'

  'What have they been looking for?'

  'They call it achievement. They call it knowledge. They call it mastery. They even call it happiness. You called it happiness just now, when Vin threw a nut at you, but we are prepared to treat that as a slip of the tongue by a newcomer. And do you know who started it all?'

  'I would rather you told me.'

  'The Greeks started it. It was their stupidity. Have you not seen how stupid the Greeks are?'

  'As a matter of fact, I have. It is not at all what one is led to expect. I have been continuously surprised by it.'

  'Nothing to be surprised at. It is the same quality that made the Greeks separate man from nature in the first place, or rather from life.'

  'You mean the ancient Greeks?' asked Grigg, staring at her.

  'The same Greeks. All Greeks are the same. All stupid. All lopsided. All poisoned with masculinity.'

  'Yes,' said Grigg, smiling. 'As a matter of fact, I have noticed something like that. It is not a country for women.' His eyes drifted to Vin's naked body, gleaming in the starlight.

  'Once it was. We ruled once, but they drove us out,' said Lek, more sadly than fiercely. 'We fought, and later they wrote silly plays about the fight, but they defeated us, though not by the superior strength on which they pride themselves so much.'

  'How, then?'

  'By changing our world into a place where it was impossible for us to live. It was impossible for them to live in such a world also, but that they were too stupid to know. They defeated us in the same way that they have defeated everything else that is living,'

  'Tell me,' said Grigg. 'What makes you think that I am any different? After all, I am a man, even though not a Greek. Why on earth should I be any kind of an exception?'

  'There is no earth here,' said Lek. 'Haven't you noticed?'

  'Nothing but rock,' cried Grigg. 'But there are more flowers than anywhere? And these wonderful nectarines?'

  'They live on rock,' said Tal, speaking for the first time.

  'You are different,' said Lek, 'simply because you have both set out and arrived. Few try and fewer succeed.'

  'What happens to them?'

  'They have set-backs of various kinds.'

  'I didn't find it in the least difficult,' said Grigg.

  'Those meant to succeed at a thing never do find the thing difficult.'

  'Meant? Meant by whom?'

  'By the life of which they are a part, whether they know it or not.'

  'It is very mystical,' said Grigg. 'Where is this life to be found?'

  'Here,' said Lek, simply. 'And it is not mystical at all. That is a word invented by those who have lost life or destroyed it. A word like tragedy. The stupid Greeks even called the plays they wrote about their fight with the women, tragedies.'

  'If I stay,' began Grigg, and then stopped. 'If I stay,' he began again, 'how do I make payment? I do not necessarily mean in money. All the same, how?'

  'Here there are no bargains and no debts. You do not pay at all. You submit to the two gods. Their rule is light, but people are so unaccustomed to it that they sometimes find it includes surprises.'

  'I have seen one of the gods. Where is the other?'

  'The other god is female and therefore hidden.'

  Grigg noticed that a considerable tremor, very visible in the case of Vin, passed through all three of their bodies.

  'I still do not understand,' he said, 'why there is no one else. We are not all that far away. And the voyage is really quite easy. I should have thought that people would be coming all the time.'

  'It might be better,' said Lek, 'to rejoice that you are the one chosen. But if you wish to go, go now, and one of us will guide you.'

  *

  Grigg didn't go. It wasn't Lek's riddling talk that prevented him, but much simpler things: Tal; the charm and strangeness of the empty rooms; not least the conviction that the women were right when they said he could not return to his starting-point, and uncertainty as to where else he could practicably make for. He told them that he would stay for the night. A plan would be easier to evolve in the sunshine.

  'You don't mind if I grow a beard?' he said. 'I've brought nothing with me.'

  They were very nice about his having brought nothing with him.

  'Enchanted islands are hard to understand,' he said. 'I've always thought that. It worried me even as a child. The trouble is that you can never be sure where the enchantment begins and where it ends.'

  'You learn by experience,' said Tal.

  'Do you – do we – really live entirely on fruit?'

  'No,' said Lek. 'There is wine.'

  Vin rose and walked out through the gateway that led down to the harbour. She moved like a nymph, and her silhouette against the night sky through the arch was that of a girl-athlete on a vase.

  Wine was not the sustenance that Grigg, fond though he was of it, felt he most needed at the moment, but he said nothing. They were all silent while waiting for Vin to return. The tideless waves flapped against the surrounding rock. The stars flickered.

  Vin returned with a little porcelain bowl, not spilling a drop of the contents as she stepped bare-footed over the uneven stones. The bowl was set among them, small cups appeared, and they all drank. There was little wine left when all the cups had been filled. The wine was red. Grigg thought it was also extremely sweet and heavy, almost treacly in texture; he was glad that he did not have to drink more of it. They followed the wine by drinking water from a pitcher.

  'Where do you find water?' asked Grigg.

  'From springs in the rock,' answered Lek.

  'More than one spring?'

  'There is a spring of health, a spring of wisdom, a spring of beauty, a spring of logic, and a spring of longevity.'

  'And the water we are drinking?'

  'It is from the spring of salutation. Alas, we do not drink from it as often as we should like.'

  Here Tal departed and came back with the green cask which Grigg had earlier seen her carrying. It contained a different wine, and, to Grigg, a more accustomed.

  Tal had also brought a lantern. They settled
to ancient games with coloured stones, and lines drawn with charcoal on the rocky floor. These games again were new to Grigg: not only their rules and skills, but, more, the spirit in which they were played. The object appeared to be not so much individual triumph as an intensification of fellow-feeling; of love, to use Lek's word of welcome to him. Most surprising of all to Grigg was the discovery that he no longer felt underfed, although he had eaten neither meat nor grain. He felt agog (it was the only word) with life, air, warmth, and starlight. Time itself had become barbless and placid.

  'Sleep where you will,' said Lek. 'There are many rooms.' Vin picked up her dress and they all entered the citadel.

  'Good night,' they said.

  'He tried to catch Tal's eye, but failed.

  They were gone.

  Grigg did not feel like sleep. He decided to walk down to the harbour.

  The lizards were still sprawling and squirming on the steps, which Grigg thought odd for such creatures, and unpleasingly reminiscent of his dream. The scent of the massed flowers was heavier than ever. He went slowly down through the stars and the blossoms, and climbed aboard his boat, now lying alongside the much bigger sailing-ship; looked at the engine, which appeared to be untouched (though he could think of no real reason why it should be otherwise); and sat on the stern seat thinking.

  He decided that though the way of life on the island seemed to him in almost every way perfect, he was far from sure that he himself was so innately the designated participant in it as to justify his apparently privileged journey and landfall. He was far from pleased by this realisation. On the contrary, he felt that he had been corrupted by the very different life to which he had been so long accustomed, and much though he normally disliked it. He doubted whether by now he was capable of redemption from that commonplace existence, even by enchantment. The three women had virtually agreed that enchantment has its limitations. Grigg felt very much like starting the outboard forthwith, and making off to face the difficult music.

  'Be brave.'

  Grigg looked up. It was Vin who had spoken. She had resumed her dress and was leaning over the gunwale of the ship above him.

  'But what does courage consist in? Which is the brave thing to do?'

  'Come up here,' said Vin, 'and we'll try to find out.'

  Grigg climbed the narrow harbour steps, walked round the end of the little basin, and stepped over the side of the curved ship. Vin had now turned and stood with her back against the opposite side, watching him. Grigg was quite astonished by how beautiful she looked, though he could hardly see her face through the darkness. It mattered little: Vin, standing there alone, was superb. She seemed to him the living epitome of the elegant ship.

  'We don't really exist, you know,' said Vin. 'So, in the first place, you need not be scared of us. We're only ghosts. Nothing to be frightened of.'

  He sat on a coil of rope in front of her, but a little to the side, the harbour-mouth side.

  'Do you chuck about ropes like this?'

  'Of course. We're strong.'

  'Do you eat absolutely nothing but fruit?'

  'And drink the wine I brought you to drink.'

  'I thought it was no ordinary wine.'

  'It makes you no ordinary person.'

  'I don't feel very different.'

  'People don't feel very different even after they have died. The Greek Church says that forty days pass before people feel any different.'

  'Is that true?'

  'Quite true. Not even the Greeks are wrong all the time. And the dead still feel the same even after forty days unless the proper masses are said. You can't go to Heaven without the masses, you know.'

  'Or, presumably, to Hell?'

  'As you say, Grigg.'

  Grigg was struck by a thought.

  'Is that in some way why you're here now?'

  Vin laughed, gurgling like her own thick, sweet, red wine. 'No, Grigg. We're not dead. Feel.'

  She held out her left hand. Grigg took it. It was curiously firm and soft at the same time, strong but delicate. Grigg found himself most reluctant to relinquish it.

  'You're alive,' said Grigg.

  Vin said nothing.

  'Tell me,' said Grigg, 'what there is in the wine?'

  'Rock,' said Vin softly.

  Grigg was absurdly reminded of those claims in wine-merchants' catalogues that in this or that brand can be tasted the very soil in which it was grown.

  'Don't laugh,' said Vin, quite sharply. 'The rock doesn't like it.'

  Grigg had no idea what she meant, but he stopped laughing at once. The mystery made her words all the more impressive, as sometimes when an adult admonishes a child.

  'Where did you all come from?' asked Grigg. 'To judge by what you say, you can't be Greek. And you don't sound Greek. You speak English beautifully, which means you can't be English. What are you?'

  'Lek comes from one place. Tal from another. I from a third. Where I come from the people wear no shoes.'

  'Lek spoke of you as sisters.'

  'We are sisters. We work and fight side by side, which makes us sisters.'

  'Are there no more of you?'

  'Men have broken through from time to time, like you. The rock is surrounded, you know. But none of the men have stayed. They have killed themselves or sailed away.'

  'Have none of them sailed back? After all, it's not far.'

  'Not one. They have always had something to make it impossible. Like your stolen boat.'

  'I suppose that's inevitable. One couldn't think of finding a place like this and still being able to go back.' He thought about it, then added, 'or forward either, I daresay.'

  'Grigg,' said Vin, 'burn your boat. I will make fire for you.'

  The shock of her words made him rise to his feet, charged with the instinct of flight.

  On the instant her arms were round him, holding him very tightly. 'Burn it, burn it,' she was crying passionately. 'Will you never understand? You might have done it hours ago.'

  Without thinking of what he was doing, he found that his arms were round her too, and they were kissing.

  'Watch me make fire,' she shouted. In the instant they had become lovers, true lovers, sentiment as well as passion, tender as well as proud.

  She darted across the ship, leapt the gunwale, and ran round the little quay, all the while dragging Grigg by the hand. She seemed to part the thin painter with a single pull and drew the boat out of the basin. Despite the absence of tide or wind, the boat drifted straight out into the darkness of the open sea.

  'Day and night, the sea runs away from the rock,' cried Vin.

  They stood together, their arms tightly round one another's waists, watching the boat disappear.

  Grigg could not sense that she did anything more, but suddenly, far out, there was a beautiful rosy glow, like the sunset, it was contained and oval, and in the middle of it could be seen the transfigured outline of the boat, gleaming whitely, like the Holy Grail, too bright to stare at for more than a moment. Outside the fiery oval, the whole air was turning a faint, deep pink.

  'My God,' cried Grigg, 'the petrol in the outboard. It will explode.'

  'On to the ship,' said Vin, and hauled him back round the basin and aboard.

  They hid, clinging together, in a small hold made simply by thick planks stretched at gunwale-level across the bow. The flush in the night sky was intensifying all the time. Then there was a loud concussion; the sky turned almost scarlet; and, not more than a few minutes later, he possessed Vin as if she had been hardly more than a little girl.

  *

  Hand in hand, they ascended the wide steps to the citadel. At the gateway, they looked back. The burning boat had still not sunk, because it could just be seen, a faint horizontal cinder, drifting into the blackness. The pink in the air was once more faint, and apparently turning to silver.

  'The moon,' said Vin. 'The moon is drawing near and shining through the water.'

  'The flowers go to meet the moon even more eager
ly than the sun. You can hear them. Listen, Vin.'

  They stood in silence.

  'Sleep with me, Vin.'

  'We sleep apart.'

  It was as Tal had said 'We eat fruit'. And it proved to be equally true.

  *

  He stole through the empty rooms, seeing no one. Now very tired, he lowered himself on to a pile of cushions, but not the pile on which he had lain with Tal, and not in the same room.

  None the less, he could not easily sleep. It came to him with a nervous shock, as happens after long absorption, to recall that, only that same morning, the island, the rock, as the women always named it, had been no more than an obsessive premonition, he no other than an ordinary mortal, eternally going through the motions. He felt now that in the very moment he had first sighted the rock, he had begun to change. And there was almost certainly no going back; not just in symbol or allegory, but in hard, practical terms, as the world deems them.

  Grigg lay listening to the lapping, trickling waves; smelling the night flowers. Was it never cooler or colder than this? Never?

  *

  Grigg would not have believed it possible, as he reflected on his third morning, that he could live so happily without occupation. There were a few jobs to be done, but so far the women had done all of them, and Grigg had felt no real compunction, as the jobs had seemed to be as complete a part of their lives as breathing – and as automatic and secondary. There had been almost nothing else: no reading, no struggling with the environment, no planning. Grigg had always truly believed that he, like others, would be lost without tasks; that pleasures pall; and that ease exhausts. Now he was amazed not only by the change in his philosophy, but by the speed with which it had come about. Obviously, one had to say, it was far, far too soon to be sure; but Grigg felt that obviousness of that kind was, as far as he was concerned, already a thing of the past. Indeed, nothing, probably nothing at all, was obvious any more. Perhaps it was that Tal and Vin had purged him of the obvious within little more than his first twelve hours on the island.