Legenda Maris (23 page)

Gregeris mutters that he knows the area,
he has his appointment near there.

Well, I say to this girl called Jitka, “You’ve
been sleep-walking, haven’t you. Best get back indoors.”

“No, I don’t think so,” says Jitka. Not
haughtily as you might expect, but kind of wistful. As if she’s saying, Just
let me stay up half an hour longer, Dadda. But I’m not her father, so I turn
away prudently, before I start trying to see through her flimsy nightie, past
the ribbons to the other pretty things inside.

Perhaps not very gallant to leave her
there, but I didn’t go so far, only about fifty yards, before I find another
one. Another Awaker. This was a gentleman sitting on a bench. He’s in his
nightclothes too, but with a silk dressing-gown fastened over. “Good evening,”
he says, and I can tell you, by day he’d have crossed the street not to see me,
let alone exchange a politeness. But I nod graciously, and when he doesn’t say
anything else, I walk on.

The esplanade runs for a mile, no doubt
you know that from that guide-book in your pocket. I amble along it, and after
another few minutes, I see these two old ducks tottering towards me, hand in
hand. He’s about ninety if he’s a day, and she’s not much less. He’s got on a
flannel nightshirt, the sort Grandfather would’ve had, and she’s in an ancient
thing, all yellow lace. And they’re happy as two kids out of school. We pass
within a foot of each other, and she calls out to me, “Oh isn’t it a lovely
fine night? What a lovely trip. Do you think we’ll reach China?”

So I generously say, “I should think so,
lady.”

And they’re gone, and I go on, and then
I stop dead. I stare out to sea, and then down below the terrace again at the
water rushing constant up the beach. What I’m thinking is this: But that’s just
what it’s like, the way the waves are and the whole ocean parting in front of
us—it’s like a
bow-wave
cutting up before a ship. A moving ship, sailing
quite fast. But then I think, Ercole, you’ve got no business thinking that.
And suddenly I feel dog tired. So I turn and go back to my place under the
columns of the library building, where I’d been sleeping. I lie straight down
and curl up and pull my coat over my head. At first I’m stiff as a plank. Then
I fall asleep. And asleep I can feel it, what I’d felt standing up when I
thought I’d gone dizzy. It’s the motion of a ship, you see. Not enough to make
you queasy, just enough you need to get your sea-legs. Then I’m really asleep.
I didn’t wake again until dawn. Nothing up then, not at all. A street-sweeper,
and a pony-cart with kindling, and then a girl with milk for the houses by the
park. A couple of cats coming back from their prowl. Moon down, sun up,
rose-pink and blushing after its bath in the sea. That’s all.

Gregeris says, “A memorable dream.”

S’what I thought. Course I did. You don’t
want to go nuts in my situation, either. They cart you off to the asylum first
chance they can get.

No, I went and scrounged some breakfast
at a place I know, well, to be truthful, a garbage-bin I know. Then I went for
my usual constitutional round the town. It was by the church I found them.

“Found what?”

Ah, what indeed. Sea shells. Beautiful
ones, a big white whorled horn that might have come from some fabled beast, and
a green one, half transparent, and all these little striped red and coral ones.
They were caught in a trail of seaweed up in the ivy on this wall. People
passed, and if they looked, they thought they were flowers, I suppose, or a kid’s
expensive toy, maybe, thrown up there and lost.

“Perhaps they were.”

It didn’t happen again for seven days. I’d
forgotten, or pretended I’d forgotten. And once when I went back to that
church, the shells were gone. Someone braver or cleverer or more stupid and
cowardly than me, had taken them down.

Anyway, this particular evening, I
knew
.
Knew it was going to be another Night. Another
Awake Night
. I’ll tell
you how I knew. I was at the
Café Isabeau
, to be honest round the back
door, where the big woman sometimes leaves me something, only she hadn’t, but I
heard this conversation in the alley over the wall. There’s a young man, and he’s
trying to get his girl to go with him into the closed public gardens, under the
trees, for the usual reason, and she’s saying maybe she will, maybe she won’t,
and then I keep thinking I know her little voice. And then he says to her, all
angry, “Oh please yourself, Jitka.”

And then
she
says to him, “No,
don’t be angry. You know I would, only I think I ought to be home soon. It’s
going to be one of those nights when I have that peculiar dream I keep on
having.”

“Come and dream with me,” he
romantically burbles and I want to thump him on the head with one of the trash
pails to shut him up, but anyway she goes on anyhow, the way a woman does, half
the time—if you were to ask me, because they’re so used to men not listening to
them.

“I keep dreaming it,” she says. “Five
times last month, and three the month before. I dream I’m walking in the town
in my nightclothes.”

“I’d like to see
that
!” exclaims
big-mouth, but still she goes on.

“And seven nights ago, at full moon, I
dreamed it. And I knew I would, all the evening before, and I know now I will,
tonight. I feel sort of excited—here, in my heart.”

“I feel excited too,” oozed clunk-lips,
but she says:

“You see, the town slips her moorings.
She sails away. The town, that is, up as far as King Christen’s Hill. I watched
it, I think I did, drifting back, like the shore from a liner. And then we sail
through the night and wonderful, wonderful things happen—but I can’t remember
what. Only, I have to go home now, you see. To get some sleep before I wake up.
Or I’ll be so tired in the morning after the dream.”

After she stops, he gives her a speech, the
predictable one about how there are plenty of more sophisticated girls only too
glad to go in the park with him, lining up, they are. Then he walks off, and she
sighs, but that’s all.

By the time I got round into the alley,
she was starting to walk away too, but hearing me, she glanced back. It was her
all right, even in her smartish costume, with her hair all elaborate, I knew
her like one of my own. But she looked startled—no recognition, mind. She didn’t
remember meeting
me
. Instead she speeds up and gets out of the alley
quick as she can. I catch up to her on the pavement.

“What do you want? Go away!”

“There, there, Jitka. No offence.”

“How do you know my name? You were
spying on me and my young man!”

Then I realise, a bit late, what I could
be letting myself in for, so I just whine has she any loose money she doesn’t
want—and she rummages in her purse and flings a couple of coins and gallops
away.

But anyway, now I know tonight is one of
those Nights.

In the end, I climbed over the municipal
railings and got into the public gardens myself. There’s an old shed in among
the overgrown area that no one bothers with. Lovers avoid it, too; there are
big spiders, and even snakes, so I’m told.

I went to sleep with no trouble. Woke
and heard the clock striking in the square, and it was eleven. Then I thought I’d
never get off, and if I didn’t I might not Wake at the
right
time—but
next thing I know I am waking up again and now there’s a
silence
. By
which I mean the sort of silence that has a personality of its own.

Scrambling out of the hut, I stand at
the edge of the bushes, and I look straight up. The stars flash bright as the
points of gramophone needles, playing the circling record of the world. And
now, now I can
feel
the world
rocking
. Or, the town, rocking as
it rides forward on the swell of the sea. And then I saw this thing. I just
stood there and to me, Anton, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw till
then. It was like the winter festival at the farm, when I was a child, you
know, Yule, when the log is brought in, and I can recall all the candles
burning and little silver bells, and a girl dancing, dressed like a fairy. That
was magical to me then. But this.

“What did you see?” Gregeris asked,
tightly, almost painfully, coerced into grim fascination.

It was fish. Yes, fish. But they were in
the
air
. Yes, Anton, I swear to you on my own life.

They were wonderful fish, too, painted
in all these colours, gold and scarlet, and puce, mauve and ice blue, and some
of them tiny, like bees, and some large as a cat. I swear, Anton. And they were
swimming about, in the air, round the stems of the trees, and through the
branches, and all across the open space of the park, about five feet up in the
air, or a little lower or higher. And then two or three came up to me. They
stared at me with their eyes like orange jewels or green peppermints. They swam
round me, and one, one was interested in me, kept rubbing his tail over my
cheek or shoulder as he passed, so I put up my hand and stroked him. And,
Anton, he was
wet
, wet and smooth as silk in a bath of rain. So I knew
that somehow, now, we weren’t only on the sea, but
in
the sea, maybe
under
the sea. Even though I could breathe the air. And I thought, That’s how those
shells got stranded up on the church wall.

Well, I stayed sitting there in the park,
watching the fish swimming, sometimes stroking them, all night. And once a
shark came by, black as coal. But it didn’t come for me, or hurt the others.
Some of them even played round it for a while. No one else came. I thought,
Jitka will be sorry to have missed this, and I wondered if I ought to go and
find her, I knew she wouldn’t be scared of me now, and find those others I’d
seen, the rich man and the two old ducks, and bring them here. But they’d
probably seen it before, and anyway, there were other things going on, maybe,
they were looking at.

I suppose I drifted off to sleep again, sitting
on the ground. Suddenly I was blinking at a grey fish flying out of a pine tree
and it was a pigeon, and the sun was up.

“What’s that?” said Gregeris abruptly.

The clock in the square, striking six.

“I should leave. I have an appointment.”
Gregeris didn’t move, except to beckon the waiter. He ordered another brandy,
another beer. “Go on.”

After that Night, I’ve had three others.
I’ve always known, either in the afternoon or in the evening, they were coming
on. Like you know if you have an illness coming, or someone can feel a storm
before it starts. Only not oppressive like that. Like what the girl said, an
excitement
.
Only it’s a sort of cool green echo in your chest. In your guts. It’s like a scent
that you love because it reminds you of something almost unbearably happy, only
you can’t remember
what
. It’s like a bitter-sweet nostalgia for a memory
you never had.

Oh, I’ve seen things, these Nights. Can’t
recall them all, that’s a fact. But I keep more than the others. They think
they dream it, you see, and I know it isn’t a dream. We’re Awake, and God knows
there are precious few of us who do come Awake. Most of the town sleeps on, all
those houses and flats, those apartments and corners and cubby-holes, all
packed and stacked with sleepers, blind and deaf to it. Those buildings become
like
graves
. But not for us. I’ve only met ten others, there are a few
more, I should think. A precious few, like I said.

Jitka and I danced under the full moon
once. Nothing bad. She’s like a daughter to me now. She even calls me Dadda, in
her dream. That was the night I saw
her
. I do remember
her
. Never
forget. Even when I die, I won’t forget
her
.

“The woman who was on the plinth,” said
Gregeris, “where the statue was taken down?”

Oh but Anton, she wasn’t a woman.

“You said ‘She’.”

So I did. It was the last Wake Night,
when I woke up in the square. Something had made me do that, like it always
seems to make me choose a different place to sleep, when I sense a night is
coming. Full moon, like I said, already in the sky when I bedded down, just
over there, under those cut trees that look like balls on sticks.

And when I woke and stood up, I was so
used to it by then, the movement of the town sailing, and the smell of the sea
and the wind of our passage—but then the scent of the ocean was stronger than
before, and I turned and looked, across the square, to where the plinth still
is. It was draped in purple, and it was
wet
purple, it poured, and ran
along the square. It ran towards the sea, but then it vanished and there was
just the
idea
—only the idea, mind—that the pavement might be
damp
.
You see, she’d swum up from the sea, like the fish, through the air which is
water those Nights, and she’d had to swim. She couldn’t have walked. She was a
mermaid.

Gregeris considered his drink.

I won’t even swear to you now, Anton. You
won’t believe me. I wouldn’t expect it. It doesn’t matter. Y’see, Anton, truth
isn’t killed if you don’t believe in it—that’s just a popular theory put about
by the non-believers.