The Wine-Dark Sea Read online

  The other rooms on that floor of the citadel were as the rooms below, spotless, sunny, but empty. On the second floor there were several rooms furnished as the hall; with in one place a mass of deep cushions, in another a mass of flowers, and nothing else. Sometimes the flowers were in big iron bowls mounted on tripods; sometimes in reservoirs forming a part (but the dominant part) of a statuary group. On the first and second floors, the rooms led into one another, and most of them had windows, overlooking the larger island from which Grigg had come, the other overlooking the open sea. It was true that there were doors, in coloured wood; but all, without exception, stood open. There was nothing so very unusual about the building, agreeable though it was, and nothing in the least mysterious in themselves about its appurtenances, but before Grigg had completed his tour and emerged on to the flat roof, he had begun to feel quite depressed by the recollection of how he and his neighbours dwelt, almost immersed beneath mass-produced superfluities, impotent even as distractions.

  On the roof was a single stone figure of a recumbent man, more than life-size. It reposed at one end of the roof with its back to the harbour, and it was from the other end of the roof that Grigg first saw it, so that he had a longish walk across the bare expanse before he came up to it, like a visitor to Mussolini in the great days.

  The figure was, inevitably, of the kind vaguely to be termed classical; but Grigg doubted whether, in any proper sense, it was classical at all. It was not so much that it was in perfect order, as if it had been carved that same year, and glossy of surface, both of which things are rare with ancient sculpture, but rather the sentiment with which the figure was imbued, and which it projected as an aura, the compulsive implication of the artist’s work, if indeed there had ever been an artist.

  It was a male of advanced years, or alternatively, perhaps, ageless, who reclined with his head on his right hand which rose from the elbow on the ground, a position which Grigg had always found to be especially uncomfortable. The hair straggled unkempt over the low cranium. The big eyes protruded above the snub nose, and from the thick lips the tongue protruded slightly also. There was a lumpy chin, unconcealed by a beard. The rest of the body was hirsute, long-armed, and muscular; hands, feet, and phallus being enormous. The man appeared to be lying on the bare and wrinkled earth; or possibly, it struck Grigg, on rocks. The folds in the stone ground of the statue (it seemed to be some other stone than the usual marble) were very similar to the folds in the rock which he had noticed as he walked up from the harbour. There was something compressed and drawn together about the man’s entire attitude, almost like a foetus in the womb, or an immensely strong spring, compressed against the moment of use. Grigg thought that the man did not much stare at him, though staring he certainly was, as right through him and beyond him, probably far beyond. As Grigg gazed back, a small spurt of dirty water bubbled from the man’s open mouth. It dribbled from his tongue and discoloured the forearm supporting his head. There must have been a pump to supply the fountain, and Grigg was not surprised, considering the obvious mechanical problems, that it did not work very well.

  Grigg advanced to the balustrade surrounding the citadel roof and looked over the harbour. The women were still at work unloading the ship. One of them, the smaller of the two with fair hair, who had been the last to speak when Grigg appeared, was carrying up the wide steps a large green cask, mounted on her right shoulder.

  Grigg felt very uncertain what to do. He could hardly just stand about while the women were working so industriously, but he felt that the rejection of his services had been singularly final, and he also felt that if he succeeded in insisting, then he would almost certainly make a fool of himself in the great heat and with a routine of which he was ignorant. He had nothing even to read, nor had he seen anything to read on the entire island. He decided, pusillanimously, to stay where he was, until things below perhaps quieted down.

  He sank upon the stones of the roof at a place where the balustrade gave a little shade. He had in mind to stretch out for a siesta, but the stones were so hard and so level that he found himself propping his head on his hand, like the stone man he had just been looking at. He gazed out to sea between the columns of the balustrade, but the attitude soon proved every bit as uncomfortable as he had always thought, and he began instead to sprawl upon his back, pushed as close against the balustrade as he could manage, in the need for as much shade as possible. He reflected that again he was imitating the stone man, so drawn in on himself.

  It was, in any case, quite useless, and, like most useless things, useless almost immediately. Not only was the sun unbearable, but the stored heat of the stone was even more unbearable and worse even than its hardness, though stone is harder in the Hellenes than anywhere else. After only a few minutes, Grigg felt as stiff and parched as an old tobacco leaf; so much so that he had difficulty in rising to his feet, and was glad that his middle-aged muddling, the dropsy of a welfare society, was not under observation.

  He descended to the floor below and sank himself on the cushioned area in one of the luxurious rooms; he neither knew nor cared which. Through the open windows had flown in some very tiny, curiously coloured birds. Grigg could not quite name the colour: some kind of bright blue, aquamarine perhaps. The birds fluttered immoderately, like moths; and, from their throats or wings or both, came a faint, high, silvery, unceasing chant, as of honey heard dripping from the very summit of Hymettus. Grigg normally liked a bird in the room no more than other men like it; but all he did about the birds now was fall dead asleep.

  At some time during his sleep, he had a nightmare. He dreamed that lizards, not small blue ones, but quite large black ones, possibly eighteen inches long, were biting off his own flesh. Already they had devoured most of the flesh on his feet and legs, so that he could see the bare, red bones extending upwards to the knees. It was difficult to look, however. There was something in common between his attitude, lying uncomfortably on his back, and the attitude he had been forced into on the roof. He did not seem to be tied down in any way, or even drugged, but he was too stiff to move very much, none the less. Gnawing away even now were eight or ten lizards, with long angular legs, big clawed feet, and oversized necks, heads, and eyes; and there were many other similar lizards, standing silently in the background, a terrifying number, in fact. Perhaps they are waiting their turn, Grigg thought; and then remembered that it was something which animals are seldom observed to do. One curious thing was that the gnawing did not exactly hurt: it was quite perceptible, but Grigg felt it as a nervous frisson charging his whole body, half painful but half pleasurable, like a mild current of electricity from a machine on the pier. Grigg could not decide whether or not he was wearing clothes. When he looked, he could see his bare legs (very bare in fact); while, at the same time, he felt as if he were fully dressed. But, then again, the lizards had already pecked at other patches of his body. He trembled to think what it would be like when they reached his head.

  But before they did, Grigg was awake, or, rather, awakened.

  The scene seemed hardly less strange, because there were several things to be taken in at once.

  In the first place, the whole room was filled with a dim and dusky red light, which Grigg soon realised was probably just the last of the sunset, suggesting that he had slept a long time.

  In the second place, the room seemed to be what he could only regard as moving about. There was a steady pitching, up, down, up; and with it was incorporated a sick-making diagonal tilt. It was by no means a single lurch, but a persistent, though far from regular, heaving and plunging.

  ‘An earthquake,’ cried Grigg very loudly to the twilight; now much more fully awake.

  He tried to leap up, but then realised a third thing: in some way he was being restrained.

  He awoke completely. There was a weight on his chest, and bonds round his arms. He perceived that it was a human being who was imprisoning him, holding him down.

  It was one of the three women. She lifted her he
ad, though without releasing him, and he perceived that it was the woman he had last seen carrying the green cask on her shoulder up the steps.

  ‘It will end,’ she said. ‘Lie still and it will be over.’

  ‘It is an earthquake?’ enquired Grigg in a whisper.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘An earthquake.’ Her tonelessness was probably deliberate and intended to reassure. She tightened her hold on him, and as she moved her head, he felt her hair against his face in the near darkness.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Grigg in the same whisper.

  ‘My name is Tal.’

  ‘You are beautiful.’

  ‘You are strong.’

  Grigg had not, before she spoke, felt at all strong.

  ‘I could hardly hold you.’ She spoke as if she had saved him from some great peril.

  ‘I was dreaming. I still am dreaming.’

  ‘Then I am part of the dream.’

  ‘The whole island is a dream but it is a very lovely island.’

  ‘It is an island of love.’

  Suddenly he realised that she was naked.

  The last of the sunset, setting fire to his body, kindled it into a blaze. The two of them rolled onto the warm floor.

  ‘It is my first earthquake,’ he said. ‘I always thought earthquakes were bad.’

  And in a few flushed minutes before it was absolutely and finally dark, in that region where darkness comes quickly, he had possessed her, with uttermost rapture, a rapture not previously imaginable.

  *

  He heard her voice through the darkness speaking, he divined, from the doorway. She sounded as cool as the night was still warm.

  ‘There is a meal.’

  ‘I am hungry for it.’

  The earthquake had ended. It was as if they two had ended it.

  ‘Can you find your way down without a light?’

  ‘I’m sure I can.’ After all, she had given him the eyes of a cat, of a muscular, blonde cat.

  ‘We eat in the courtyard.’

  ‘I could devour an ox,’ commented Grigg happily, and abandoning all restraint.

  ‘We eat fruit,’ she said, and he could hear her leaving him through the darkness.

  ‘Tal!’ he cried after her, but softly. He wanted to kiss her, to ravish her again, but she did not return.

  *

  There she was, however, eating nectarines with the others, as soon as he had groped his way down. There were grapes, nuts, and oranges, not in dishes but strewn with the nectarines about the stones of the court. Grigg thought it was just as if all the fruit had been scattered from a cornucopia. There were also a whole chest of figs and heavy lumps of small dates in a big brown canvas bag. The three women had brought out cushions and were eating in what is supposed to have been the Roman style. There were cushions for Grigg too, and soon he was peeling an orange. The sky was now full of stars.

  ‘I am Lek,’ said the other fair woman.

  ‘I am Vin,’ said the dark woman. She was still bare-footed, Grigg noticed.

  As Tal said nothing, Grigg wondered how much was known.

  ‘I am Grigg.’

  ‘Be welcome, Grigg,’ said Lek, the woman who had spoken to him first, that afternoon in this same courtyard; ‘be assured of all our loves.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Grigg. ‘I am happy.’

  Vin threw him a nut; or rather, if he had not been able to see her warm smile in the now clear starlight, he might have supposed that she had thrown a nut at him, so hard did it hit. What was more, he noticed that there were no nutcrackers and no substitute for them. The women split the nuts open by biting them, which was entirely beyond him to do. It was quite a serious matter, because he really could not subsist entirely on fruit. He had, after all, eaten nothing since breakfast. However, he looked with surreptitious meaning at Tal, and felt compensated but less than reassured. Moreover, the night, instead of growing cooler, seemed to be growing steadily warmer.

  ‘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 fir
st 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.