Judith (39 page)

It was difficult to see inside the building because there was no light except from the opening in which I stood: so when
you moved, it was yourself, as usual, who made the shadows. There was a faint smell: I had wondered – Perhaps I am going into some sort of charnel-house? But the smell was not of anything rotting: it was dry, acrid: of things that have remained the same for a very long time; almost of incense. When my eyes became accustomed to the dark I saw that this was, yes, a building where bodies were piled up and stored: the bodies, of course, were dummies: it was like the burial ground of some old king; a heap of heads and arms and legs – perhaps even those spectacles in piles – against a side wall almost to the roof: an atrocity, perhaps: but, as always here, for the purposes of a game. You remember those businessmen in Düsseldorf who bought flocks of plastic sheep and piled them into attics? I thought – Well here, in some storehouse of the mind, are businessmen who are kept as food for sheep? At the edge of the pile of bodies there was even a pram. I thought – What on earth would these people want with a pram? Except that, I suppose, if you want to play at killing, it would be quite fashionable to find some representation of children.

– And the child – he would have been looking up towards the leaves, the shadows?

– Or is he looking down at the temple where he might see himself being dismembered by hags.

I moved further into the building. At the end on the left (left as you look at it; right, do you think, if you are looking at the brain?) tucked away behind the pile of bodies as if it might be of old hair, teeth, spectacles, there was an area which had been cleared and in which some sort of order had been formed. I do not know, as usual of course, how to talk about this: but it does not seem too difficult. There had been set up, had occurred, a group of figures (of course we have been here before!) in a semicircle facing inwards: some of them were propped with their backs against the walls: one or two were wedged with their legs in positions as if they were kneeling: I mean there was a group of these stuffed dummies, three or four in uniform, one or two with sacking round their shoulders – well, do you not know where this is that we have
been before? They were facing towards the centre where indeed there was, of course, nothing; or no more than an empty nest of stones. But one of the group of these adoring figures, as if in that painting in the National Gallery, was a sheep. I thought at first it must be a dummy sheep: it sat, or lay, with its legs underneath it so still: and I thought – But this is not quite right, is it? again a bit corny? But then I realised that the sheep was alive, and that it had two heads. This is a shock (you have thought you know where you are?). One head might have been growing out of the other: but each head seemed to be equal in relation to the other: it was as if each had grown to balance the whole – as if on some tightrope. As I approached, the sheep did not move. I thought – Poor old humanity! of course we are on some tightrope: if I move straight enough, you may be still. When I got close to the sheep I saw that, although one side of each head had a perfectly formed ear and eye and even a nose, in between – and it was this that was stretched like a tightrope – was a third eye. I suppose it was some conjunction of what might have been the other eyes of the two heads: an enormous eye, watery and flickering: some heroic attempt to attain that third eye – I mean, the eye of Shiva. This is the eye that looks inwards, isn't it? Perhaps it was just the strain of this attempt that made the third eye, in what was otherwise so still, seem always to be moving. I knelt down in front of the sheep. I thought – What can I offer you? – frankincense, love, myrrh? Precious humanity! You are at least honoured: you are, I mean, able to offer worship in terms of that painting. In addition to what seemed to be the semicircle of adoring figures, I noticed that there had been placed in front of the sheep, as if it had come from the place where the nest of stones had once been, a bowl of what looked like milk and a tray of greenstuff. I thought-Dear God, so where is the child? Then – You mean, he is, this is, somewhere just outside the picture?

When I looked into the huge central eye of the sheep there did seem to be both reflections of the building – the charnel-house and the semicircle of figures – and things going on
within the eye: here were snakes, and networks, and notes of unheard music: here were the nerves and branches of a tree.

And I was sure that there was someone watching me. I did not want to look round. I thought – We are all in this painting: we will be getting on with whatever we are to be doing.

Then – The child is in the branches of the tree which is all around me.

What had he hoped for when he tended the sheep? that it would live? that he would help it to die?

I felt that the child might be up on one of the cross-beams of the roof. He would have hidden because he would not know who might be coming into this strange territory.

I thought – You mean, within the eye, there is that which we would discover: which is watching: which is also in the outside world all the time?

Lilia had said – Bert told him stories of a place where there is the Tree of Life.

I became aware – perhaps as a reflection of what was going on in those branches – that the child, in fact, was climbing down from one of the cross-beams that supported the roof; he had been lying there, I suppose, like the snake: no, not the snake! what was it that you thought was in the corner of the ceiling looking down?

Hullo, hullo, my little one.

He was seven or eight years old at the time. (Of course, you know this: you see, now, I am talking to
you!)

He had a round face and fair hair. He was dressed in jeans and a football jersey.

Everything was happening at once. I felt I should not move.

When he had climbed down he came and knelt beside me and together we looked at the sheep. I thought – How long did this journey take? thousands of years – from the time when those first men came down from the trees?

He said ‘It's called Hopeful Monster.'

I said ‘That's a good name.'

I had feared that one might not be able to speak at all in this strange territory.

He said ‘What is a hopeful monster?'

He pushed the bowl of milk towards the sheep.

I said ‘It's when something is born which things outside are not quite ready for. Or perhaps they might just about be ready; that is the hope.'

He said ‘I sometimes feel like that.'

I said ‘Yes.'

He said ‘Do you?'

There is something here that perhaps I should put in about the child.

You can guess how difficult it had been for me to see the child; I mean, because of Lilia. Then there had been a time when I did; when I came with Bert to the seaside to visit where they were staying (you see I am saying ‘they' not ‘you'!). In the afternoon we played a catching game among the sand-dunes: there is a catcher, and when you are caught you have to stand still until you are rescued by being touched. The child and I had both been caught: we were standing quite close; we were in a hollow of the sand-dunes. The main part of the game seemed to get farther and farther away – the catcher, I suppose, driving the baby turtles towards the sea. The child said – Can I ask you something? I said – Yes. He said – Why does Mummy hate you? He was at that time – what? – five or six. We were in this little grove of trees in the sand-dunes: old hags, I suppose, were dismembering a child. I said – There's often hate, somewhere, you know, where there is love. He said – Who does Daddy love best, her or you? I said – He loves her: he loves your mummy: he loves her far the best! He said – Then why does she say he loves you? We were in this sort of temple: the hags do go on and on, don't they? so methodically dismembering a child! I said – It's all a game: people do play games: you know this, don't you? He said – Yes. I said – What's not a game, is that your mummy loves you. He said – Yes. Then he shouted – Rescue! Then Bert came roaring over the sand-dunes like some great lion, and he touched us and we were free.

The child and I were now kneeling side by side watching the sheep.

I said ‘Yes, I sometimes feel like that.'

He said ‘Can I ask you something?'

I said ‘Yes.'

He said ‘Did Mummy want to die?'

There were two long shadows coming in from the door. I did not think they had been there before. They went past us, on either side of us, as if they were some contraption to hold us, to pick us up, like tongs. I thought for a moment that they might be our own shadows, but they came from behind us; then I thought, I do not know why, that they might be the legs of a horse.

I said ‘No, she didn't want to die.' Then – ‘People sometimes have to fight in extraordinary ways to live.'

He said ‘That's not a game.'

I said ‘No, that's not a game.'

He said ‘She wants us all to live.'

He knelt down. He seemed to be hanging something round the neck of the sheep.

The light coming in through the door behind us did appear to be strangely red and bright. I supposed it to be the sun beginning to set behind the trees. It made bars and networks through the cracks and holes in the corrugated doors; these spilled all over us, around us, in the air, on the ground. I thought – This is the grid, the riddle, through which we do not fall: it is the branches of the Tree.

Then I said ‘Things are difficult not when you love too little, but when you love too much.'

He said ‘Then that's all right.'

There was the sound of a horse's hooves on the ground outside. I did not think this possible, because the shadows on the ground did not move. I thought – But of course, those shadows are not the legs of a horse.

The child had put his head down by the sheep. He looked up at me. I thought – He is that third eye; for which conditions will one day be ready, to look outwards, on the world outside.

I wanted to say – But pray that the other people will have found the Tree!

I thought I should go to the door and look out. After all, a bomb had gone off.

I thought – We will get used to living like this?

Outside there was the make-believe village square: there was also someone, quite still, on a horse. I thought – That wild-haired girl, having come to an end of riding across battlefields –

It was Lilia, sitting with her head down, her hands on the horse's neck. I thought – She has rescued the horse; she has brought home her string of dragons?

The horse seemed to be Eleanor's. Lilia was looking at an empty place on the ground. I thought – She overheard me talking to the child?

Lilia was in her white suit. She seemed, as usual, to be an angel. I thought – You mean, we have come on our long journey to this place in order to stay alive?

There was that cloud, like angry cherubs with arrows, drifting somewhere in the direction of the American air-base.

I thought – You mean, that is why we have been looking for the child?

There was an object that I had not noticed before; it was strange that I had not noticed it. Among the bars of light like a grid that ran across the ground of the square there were the two long shadows that I had imagined, impossibly, to be the legs of a horse: in fact they came from behind the horse, passing over and around it, with the strange red sun behind: they were from a large structure at the back of the square that was some sort of watchtower. I mean, it was extraordinary that I had not noticed it when I had looked down from the brow of the hill, or when I had come down to the buildings. It was a high wooden construction with four legs like telegraph poles; with a platform like a tin can on top. It was the four legs that made the shadows – two by two almost in line with the sun. Perhaps I had not noticed the watchtower because it was not in the same frame, as it were, as the rest of the village; I mean, it had been built not to be part of games, but to look
down: presumably to be used by observers, judges, referees: like those beings I had imagined, perhaps, reclining on clouds. And so one might not have noticed it: until – what? – one had done whatever one was to do? and then were out in the sun again: and saw whatever might be the seeing of things together with their shadows.

The sheep was coming out of the doorway of the building into the sun. It was being led, or followed, by the child: he held on to the wool of its back. The sheep walked cautiously – as if on its tightrope. The child let go of it when it got into the sun. He stood in the doorway and looked at his mother. The sheep went on across the square. It seemed to move with its central eye like some gyroscope. When the sheep got to the far side of the square it lay down in a patch of sun. One head looked into the distance; the other seemed to be observing the scene in the square.

Lilia sat with the reins loose on the horse's neck.

The sun had become very red over the tops of the trees; giving the impression that the landscape was lit with its own light because it was burning.

Lilia was crying.

Her child said ‘Mummy!' He ran to her. He tried to climb up on to her horse. He was like one of those figures in a cartoon film who run up a cliff on air. Lilia bent down to him.

I thought – We must not stay here too long: the air will run out in this bright atmosphere.

The child put his arms round his mother. Lilia held him.

Lilia said ‘A bomb went off by that pub. On the green.'

I said ‘By the pub?'

She said ‘Yes.'

There was a ladder going up one of the legs of the watch-tower. I wondered if I climbed up I might see what was going on.

I said ‘Were people hurt?'

She said ‘Yes.' Then – ‘One or two.'

I thought – One does not use the word ‘killed'. Then –
That officer? That woman like someone in drag? Then – But not you!

I got as far as the foot of the ladder of the watchtower; then sat down.