The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ if Audoin ever had any Dreams. Nothing that left any memory, it would appear. Audoin seemed in a merry mood, and his own talk was enough for him, for a while. But at length he noticed his father’s silence, unusual even at breakfast.

      ‘You look glum, father,’ he said. ‘Is there some knotty problem on hand?’

      ‘Yes – well no, not really,’ answered Alboin. ‘I think I was thinking, among other things, that it was a gloomy day, and not a good end to the holidays. What are you going to do?’

      ‘Oh, I say!’ exclaimed Audoin. ‘I thought you loved the wind. I do. Especially a good old West-wind. I am going along the shore.’

      ‘Anything on?’

      ‘No, nothing special – just the wind.’

      ‘Well, what about the beastly wind?’ said Alboin, unaccountably irritated.

      The boy’s face fell. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I like to be in it, especially by the sea; and I thought you did.’ There was a silence.

      After a while Audoin began again, rather hesitatingly: ‘Do you remember the other day upon the cliffs near Predannack, when those odd clouds came up in the evening, and the wind began to blow?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Alboin in an unencouraging tone.

      ‘Well, you said when we got home that it seemed to remind you of something, and that the wind seemed to blow through you, like, like, a legend you couldn’t catch. And you felt, back in the quiet, as if you had listened to a long tale, which left you excited, though it left absolutely no pictures at all.’

      ‘Did I?’ said Alboin. ‘I can remember feeling very cold, and being glad to get back to a fire.’ He immediately regretted it, and felt ashamed. For Audoin said no more; though he felt certain that the boy had been making an opening to say something more, something that was on his mind. But he could not help it. He could not talk of such things to-day. He felt cold. He wanted peace, not wind.

      Soon after breakfast Audoin went out, announcing that he was off for a good tramp, and would not be back at any rate before tea-time. Alboin remained behind. All day last night’s vision remained with him, something different from the common order of dreams. Also it was (for him) curiously unlinguistic – though plainly related, by the name Númenor, to his language dreams. He could not say whether he had conversed with Elendil in Eressëan or English.

      He wandered about the house restlessly. Books would not be read, and pipes would not smoke. The day slipped out of his hand, running aimlessly to waste. He did not see his son, who did not even turn up for tea, as he had half promised to do. Dark seemed to come unduly early.

      In the late evening Alboin sat in his chair by the fire. ‘I dread this choice,’ he said to himself. He had no doubt that there was really a choice to be made. He would have to choose, one way or another, however he represented it to himself. Even if he dismissed the Dream as what is called ‘a mere dream’, it would be a choice – a choice equivalent to no.

      ‘But I cannot make up my mind to no,’ he thought. ‘I think, I am almost sure, Audoin would say yes. And he will know of my choice sooner or later. It is getting more and more difficult to hide my thoughts from him: we are too closely akin, in many ways besides blood, for secrets. The secret would become unbearable, if I tried to keep it. My desire would become doubled through feeling that I might have, and become intolerable. And Audoin would probably feel I had robbed him through funk.

      ‘But it is dangerous, perilous in the extreme – or so I am warned. I don’t mind for myself. But for Audoin. But is the peril any greater than fatherhood lets in? It is perilous to come into the world at any point in Time. Yet I feel the shadow of this peril more heavily. Why? Because it is an exception to the rules? Or am I experiencing a choice backwards: the peril of fatherhood repeated? Being a father twice to the same person would make one think. Perhaps I am already moving back. I don’t know. I wonder. Fatherhood is a choice, and yet it is not wholly by a man’s will. Perhaps this peril is my choice, and yet also outside my will. I don’t know. It is getting very dark. How loud the wind is. There is storm over Númenor. ‘Alboin slept in his chair.

      He was climbing steps, up, up on to a high mountain. He felt, and thought he could hear, Audoin following him, climbing behind him. He halted, for it seemed somehow that he was again in the same place as on the previous night; though no figure could be seen.

      ‘I have chosen,’ he said. ‘I will go back with Herendil.’

      Then he lay down, as if to rest. Half-turning: ‘Good night!’ he murmured. ‘Sleep well, Herendil! We start when the summons comes.’

      ‘You have chosen,’ a voice said above him. ‘The summons is at hand.’

      Then Alboin seemed to fall into a dark and a silence, deep and absolute. It was as if he had left the world completely, where all silence is on the edge of sound, and filled with echoes, and where all rest is but repose upon some greater motion. He had left the world and gone out. He was silent and at rest: a point.

      He was poised; but it was clear to him that he had only to will it, and he would move.

      ‘Whither?’ He perceived the question, but neither as a voice from outside, nor as one from within himself.

      ‘To whatever place is appointed. Where is Herendil?’

      ‘Waiting. The motion is yours.’

      ‘Let us move!’

      Audoin tramped on, keeping within sight of the sea as much as he could. He lunched at an inn, and then tramped on again, further than he had intended. He was enjoying the wind and the rain, yet he was filled with a curious disquiet. There had been something odd about his father this morning.

      ‘So disappointing,’ he said to himself. ‘I particularly wanted to have a long tramp with him to-day. We talk better walking, and I really must have a chance of telling him about the Dreams. I can talk about that sort of thing to my father, if we both get into the mood together. Not that he is usually at all difficult – seldom like to-day. He usually takes you as you mean it: joking or serious; doesn’t mix the two, or laugh in the wrong places. I have never known him so frosty.’

      He tramped on. ‘Dreams,’ he thought. ‘But not the usual sort, quite different: very vivid; and though never quite repeated, all gradually fitting into a story. But a sort of phantom story with no explanations. Just pictures, but not a sound, not a word. Ships coming to land. Towers on the shore. Battles, with swords glinting but silent. And there is that ominous picture: the great temple on the mountain, smoking like a volcano. And that awful vision of the chasm in the seas, a whole land slipping sideways, mountains rolling over; dark ships fleeing into the dark. I want to tell someone about it, and get some kind of sense into it. Father would help: we could make up a good yarn together out of it. If I knew even the name of the place, it would turn a nightmare into a story.’

      Darkness began to fall long before he got back. ‘I hope father will have had enough of himself and be chatty to-night,’ he thought. ‘The fireside is next best to a walk for discussing dreams.’ It was already night as he came up the path, and saw a light in the sitting-room.

      He found his father sitting by the fire. The room seemed very still, and quiet – and too hot after a day in the open. Alboin sat, his head rested on one arm. His eyes were closed. He seemed asleep. He made no sign.

      Audoin СКАЧАТЬ