Briefing for a Descent Into Hell. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ friends? Administering justice, are they, from the folds of fire, looking at me eye to eye out of the silkily waving fronds of fire. Look, there’s a man, that’s an air creature, they think, breathing yellow flame as we breath H₂0. There’s something about that gasping gape, they think—George? poor Charlie—? that merits recognition. But they are beyond air now, and the inhabitants of it. They are flame-throwers. They are fire-storms. You think justice is a kindly commodity? No, it razes, it throws down, it cuts swathes. The waves are so deep, they crash so fast and furious I’m more under than up. They are teaching men—men are teaching men—to have fishes’ lungs, men learn to breathe water. If I take a deep breath of water will my lung’s tissues adapt in the space of a wave’s fall and shout: Yes, yes, you up there, you, sailor, breathe deep and we’ll carry you on water as we carried you on air? After all They must have had to teach my friends George and Charles and James and the rest to take deep lungfuls of fire. You’re not telling me that when the Crystal swirl enveloped me with the others it was ordinary air we breathed then, no, it was a cool fire, sun’s breath, the solar wind, but there are lungs attached to men that lie as dormant as those of a babe in the womb, and they are waiting for the solar wind to fill them like sails. Air lungs for air, but organs made of crystal sound, of singing light, for the solar wind that will blow my love to me. Or me onwards to my love. Oh, the waves rear so tall, they pitch and grow and soar, I’m more under than up, my raft is a little cork on the draughty sea and I’m sick, oh, I’m so sick, pitch and toss, toss and pitch, my poor poor head and my lungs, if I stay on this thick heavy slimy barnacled raft which is shrieking and straining as the great seas crash then I’ll puke my heart out and fall fainting away into the deep sea swells. I’ll leave the raft, then.

      Oh no, no, no, I’ve shed my ship, the good ship Why, and I’ve clung like limpets to my new, hard bed the raft and now how can I leave, to go spinning down into the forests of the sea like a sick bird. But if I found a rock or an islet? Silly, there are no rocks or isles or islands or ports of call in the middle of the wide Atlantic sea here at 45 degrees on the Equator. But the raft is breaking up. It breaks. There were only ordinary sea ropes to fasten the balsa poles side by side and across and through, and what ropes could I ever find that could hold this clumsy collection of cross rafters steady in this sea? It’s a storm. It’s a typhoon. The sky is thunder black and with a sick yellowish white at the cloud’s edge and the waves are blue Stephen’s black and higher than the church tower and all the world is wet and cold and my ears are singing like the ague. And there goes my raft, splitting apart under me like bits of straw in the eddy of a kitchen gutter. There it goes, and I’m afloat, reaching out for straws or even a fishbone. I’m all awash and drowning and I’m cold, oh, I am so cold, I’m cold where all my own inside vital warmth should be held, there along my spine and in my belly but there it is cold cold as the moon. Down and down, but the corky sea upsends me to the light again, and there under my hand is rock, a port in the storm, a little peaking black rock that no main mariner has struck before me, nor map ever charted, just a single black basalt rock, which is the uppermost tip of a great mountain a mile or two high, whose lower slopes are all great swaying forests through which the sea buffalo herd and graze. And here I’ll cling until the storm goes and the light comes clear again. Here at last I can stay still, the rock is still, having thrust up from the ocean floor a million years ago and quite used to staking its claim and holding fast in the Atlantic gales. Here is a long cleft in the rock, a hollow, and in here I’ll fit myself till morning. Oh, now I’m a land creature again, and entitled to a sleep steady and easy. I and the rock which is a mountain’s tip are solid together and now it is the sea that moves and pours. Steady now. Still. The storm has gone and the sun is out on a flat, calm, solid sea with its surface gently rocking and not flying about all over the place as if the ocean wanted to dash itself to pieces. A hot, singing, salty sea, pouring Westwards past me to the Indies next stop, but pouring past me, fast on my rock. Fast Asleep. Fast. Asleep.

      NURSE. Wake up. Wake up, there’s a dear. Come on, no, that’s it. Sit up, all right, I’m holding you.

      PATIENT. Why? What for?

      NURSE. You must have something to eat. All right, you can go back to sleep in a minute. But you certainly can sleep, can’t you?

      PATIENT. Why make me sleep if you keep waking me up?

      NURSE. You aren’t really supposed to be sleeping quite so much. You are supposed to be relaxed and quiet, but you do sleep.

      PATIENT. Who supposes? Who gave me the pills?

      NURSE. Yes, but—well, never mind. Drink this.

      PATIENT. That’s foul.

      NURSE. It’s soup. Good hot soup.

      PATIENT. Let me alone. You give me pills and then you keep waking me up.

      NURSE. Keep waking you? I don’t. It’s like trying to wake a rock. Are you warm?

      PATIENT. The sun’s out, the sun …

      Who has not lain hollowed in hot rock,

      Leaned to the loose and lazy sound of water, Sunk into sound as one who hears the boom Of tides pouring in a shell, or blood Along the inner caverns of the flesh, Yet clinging like sinking man to sight of sun, Clinging to distant sun or voices calling?

      NURSE. A little more, please.

      PATIENT. I’m not hungry. I’ve learned to breathe water. It’s full of plankton you know. You can feed your lungs as you feed your stomach.

      NURSE. Is that so, dear? Well, don’t go too far with it, you’ll have to breathe air again.

      PATIENT. I’m breathing air now. I’m on the rock, you see.

      See him then as the bird might see

      Who rocks like pinioned ship on warm rough air, Coming from windspaced fields to ocean swells That rearing fling gigantic mass on mass Patient and slow against the stubborn land, Striving to achieve what strange reversal Of that monstrous birth when through long ages Labouring, appeared a weed-stained limb, A head, at last the body of the land, Fretted and worn for ever by a mothering sea A jealous sea that loves her ancient pain.

      NURSE. Why don’t you go and sit for a bit in the day room? Aren’t you tired of being in bed all the time?

      PATIENT. A jealousy that loves. Her pain.

      NURSE. Have you got a pain? Where?

      PATIENT. Not me. You. Jealously loving and nursing pain.

      NURSE. I haven’t got a pain, I assure you.

      PATIENT. He floats on lazy wings down miles of foam,

      And there, below, the small spreadeagled shape Clinging to black rock like drowning man, Who feels the great bird overhead and knows That he may keep no voices, wings or winds Who follows hypnotized down glassy gulfs, His roaring ears extinguished by the flood.

      NURSE. Take these pills dear, that’s it.

      PATIENT. Who has not sunk as drowned man sinks,

      Through sunshot layers where still the under-curve Of lolling wave holds light like light in glass, Where still a jewelled fish slides by like bird, And then the middle depths where all is dim Diffusing light like depths of forest floor. He falls, he falls, past apprehensive arms And spiny jaws and treacherous pools of death, Till finally he rests on ocean bed.

      Here rocks are tufted with lit fern, and fish

       Swim shimmering phosphorescent СКАЧАТЬ