The Boat in the Evening (9 page)

It does not occur to him that these are birds of prey following him; he likes them. Everything is out on a journey. And now he can take a nap and rest for a while, he thinks vaguely, and is on the point of plunging down into desperation again.

He is hindered by a small promontory jutting out fairly close to him. It suggests the idea of making a crawling motion with his arms in order to try to swim ashore. Nothing comes of it; he has no extra strength at all. Presumably he will have to be satisfied with floating passively on a river.

But it looks as if he will not get any sleep. At that instant he knocks his skull on something with a thud that is repeated many times. It is a sinking log with only the root sticking up above water. The man has his own log to cling to, but opens his eyes wider all the same,
sensing
that he has a means of saving himself for the time being.

They float past the sinking log, which resembles a dark, empty face sticking up.

It is a blessed relief to come to full knowledge of the log, to hold on to something that does not go under at once. But something is fluttering close above him. The bird and death. The bird alights on the log and inspects it closely, but flies up again. No death yet, apparently. The grey-black bird flaps its wings heavily and in annoyance as it flies out of sight in order to wait a little longer.

It looks as if he will be in the company of the bird at the last. No savage death after all: a supine, quiet death, the kind that dwells in the hollows in the wood and which the crows never miss. The man understands something, and is about to lose his hold on the log, but quickly seizes it again when the bird rises. Wood is a capital material to hold on to in deep water. Not down there, he thinks.

*

The annoying, meddlesome mirrors are stubbornly trained on the drifter. There they are, wherever he turns his exhausted head, adding still more confusion to all that he wants to think about. Can all this really be true?

It is not true, he tries to say as soon as it clears for a moment. I don't see them. Nothing has been true today, he thinks.

Up and down. In a little while he is not up to holding on to the log any more; he lets go. At once he bobs under, long enough to notice how various creatures down there shoot away from him sideways, creatures that have collected and followed him on his journey. He catches small side glances from them and gathers that they are not friendly. But they are too small to swallow him whole.

He is below for only an instant, then grasps the log above him and floats up again. He has no energy, except the small amount needed to cling to the saving yellow timber. He is not thinking deeply about weight and sinking, but he senses that he is lighter.

Very well, rise up to the open surface again. A thought forms through all obstacles, the thought that this is extraordinary. Something more too, but he stops and comes no further.

The beginning of something: That this is extraordinary.

A short while after: How much is needed?

He comes no further.

This was thought in the fresh air, for his head is on the surface again. Up on the shining expanse, in the gentle pull of the waterway.

He still does nothing himself, merely holds on, as still as a mouse, floating along and thinking the thought that it is extraordinary. It has stayed with him like a solace together with the log he lost and found again.

The current has hold of him, and the current seems kindly disposed and will perhaps set him carefully on land sooner or later like any other piece of driftwood. Like any other reject. They usually end up on land.

Don't come here! he thinks all of a sudden. A new shutter of thought had opened.

I'm thinking about the bird, he thinks.

Don't come.

Come, say the water-mirrors in their own way, from their own point of view.

He drifts with the current towards all that must be ahead, without bothering about it in the slightest. With him he has his retinue of birds and death and the water that he will never be rid of, and the fantasy mirrors.

Come! insist all the others. He will not.

*

He thinks: What is this? Over and over again. What does this mean? Where am I journeying?

He does not think, Is this for me?

Sleep. Dead tired.

Can't sleep. No one may sleep. There is a bird in the air waiting for those who sleep.

Sailing through fire and water. It may look like water but it is full of fire. Sailing through aeons of time away from a threatening fire. Sailing in a great retinue, which is the water, along the banks, across the sky. Together with the bird who keeps company with death. Together with the countless trees on land.

The mirrors are there too, and fill him with many fragments of turmoil, bringing back memories and covering them up again before they are distinct.

He is reminded of a number of the scents on land. They do not reach him. The mirrors nag at it and he goes along with them. Solid land. Earth, trees, grass. And aeons of time. He gains a hint, too, of all the rest, which does not exist when your head is only just rippling the surface.

And a wall of faces that has appeared, it seems to him. Impossible to be rid of. The bewildered wall of faces lined up along the shores, so close that they can only be seen as a wall. The mirrors display them in their merciless fashion. The wall and the pleasant land. He sails past. The wall shuts off the scents.

The mouths in the wall. He will not think about it. He sails past with aversion.

They are calling something.

I won't.

The mirrors sway, enjoying themselves.

There are faces that crack and are not yawns, are not faces, except to resemble the face of a flower that one can hide under. But one cannot do that when sailing past. One sees them—they leap out and are simply there.

Through aeons of time.

He sees faces in the wall shrink and disintegrate like ashes, and at the same moment there stands another severe, staring person in the empty space. It is all familiar, he has had it all around him, in love and in aversion; the mirrors have found it, the mirrors have aeons of time.

The mouths are calling about something, out across the water and far beyond the drifter. He cannot hear what it is.

The black birds sweep above him in silent patience. They fly on ahead and wait further down. They follow, after waiting behind. The drifter goes too slowly for them. But their patience has been won through aeons of time and has always received its just reward.

*

The drifter sails with his motley retinue through the landscape. It is his own countryside and at the same time one that is completely unknown to him. They are his shore and his birds, his face in the wall, his cry in the call.

His own riddles wall him in, as he himself was a riddle on the paths on land.

His own sorrow is there too. Sorrow that neither he nor anyone else can explain.

*

Gradually the knowledge of what it is he is journeying away from awakens in him. The mirrors search along the shores and find it whether it is there or not. Sometimes the journey takes him close to the banks and in other places farther out, but the mirrors find it. They have many shapes and many errands. They flash and force their way through, reaching their goal in spite of obstacles and layers of slime. They cut right through it all. They may not cease to be a part of him.

Things may be dancing on the banks, but theirs is no dance of joy. The drifter cannot grasp it, since only a part of him is alive, seeing to it that his nose is kept out of the warm summer water instead of letting the water snuff him out, as it would prefer to do.

Now the known is unknown. Those he knows are not with him today, he pretends. He says nothing about having fled from them.

Nor does the drifter realize that he is moving so slowly, that only the precious time is passing. He mutters about aeons of time like a simpleton.

It was my cry, he thinks with incredulity. He is not uttering any cries, yet it is I who am crying, he tells himself.

He examines the mouths in the wall as he says so—and of course it is his cry. He can draw breath, he is not dying.

He seems to have no body, he cannot yet use his arms in order to swim. But he has with him the large retinue on the earth, in the air and in the water, and senses it along with the wind and shadows and muted cries that are found on the long waterways.

There are more and more of them. They come because of the pull of the journey. They are released from their old ways and join in before they are aware of it. It is a mighty pull, and offers no comfort, digging them up, prying them loose and forcing them into it.

Creatures large and small, but not a single human being.

The innocent drifter in the lead has gradually become a mere pretext.

*

A new element.

The living bark of a dog explodes from behind the trees on the shore. Loud and giving warning, with the correct silence afterwards. Then a whole series of signals from the hidden dog.

A house? Not a house to be seen. That is his first thought. It was a shocking sound. There is nobody in sight. The watchdog keeps himself hidden.

The dog's bark is echoed back from the hillside opposite. This must encourage him, for he goes on barking. Sounds are hurled past each other and split in two—meaningless, but unspeakably joyous among all that is here already.

The man in the water lets it rain down over him. He is lying in the middle of the din and feels curves and stripes forming in his skull during the ten-fold howling of the dog. None of his own cries have been heard.
This
is the cry. A growl starts up in his throat, in the slime and the taste of the water, and he startles himself when he opens his mouth wide and howls more horribly than he realizes: ‘Wowwow wow!'

There is a sudden silence on the shore. Then a frightened bark. What the man said must have sounded dreadful to the dog's ears; he only manages to squirt out a sound from between his teeth.

The current gives the drifter a little nudge. The way south is open.

The drifter is inflamed by all his bewildering visions.

What is this? The first contact after having been at the bottom in the slime.

‘Wow wow!' he hollers. A language he has only just learnt.

The hillsides reply.

Then the dog goes wild, with terror, joy or insult. He forgets to stay hidden, leaps out on to an isolated rock on the shore and barks at the top of his voice, abusing the object he can see out there.

The man with his nose above water lifts himself up as far as he can and frees his mouth. They greet each other in angry or possibly unpleasant terms, filling the valley with this hostile language.

The drifter has excited himself far too much, beyond his strength. In the middle of a howl he collapses once more, and gets a ducking. He has enough to do paying attention to more immediate matters.

The dog falls silent and disappears.

The journey continues as before. The drifter survived the latest ducking too, but is down in a trough of misery where even the provocative mirrors mean nothing.

What now?

It is evening.

*

It is the onset of evening at the end of this wearying day. A warm, fine evening.

The traveller has not gone very far. He has not yet come to any villages. The current allows itself ample time to exert its pressure.

A beautiful evening for those who could appreciate it. A drifter in the current like himself is not among them. He is floating southward as a part of the hopeless tangle, as a damaged consciousness.

But he is in contact with the dog.

After the first skirmish things go more gently. It turns out that the dog is keeping up with him behind the bushes, as the patient crow is keeping up with him still from tree to tree. The crow has not yet lost its faith in a meal.

The dog has other, hidden motives. Contact with man. The howl told of a web of things known to the dog that the drifter in the current took up blindly and can answer.

Perhaps it is this that sustains him through the struggle when he is about to give up. He does not sink; he has the thought of the dog.

At each promontory the dog meets him and gives a short, sharp bark, no longer hostile. It waits for an answer and gets one. ‘Woof!' comes the reply from out on the water, muffled or loud, according to his strength. He growls in dog fashion, quite taken up with this unfamiliar language and concentrating on it with all his might.

At every little promontory the dog stands waiting.

The echo that sang out with them has finished. The valley sides have taken on a different shape and do not send sounds back. They are frothing with the ripeness of late summer, but keep silent.

The evening is stealing on. The sun that once was reflected in the mirrors has gone; no one will be bewitched by it now. The twilight is setting in, and will bewitch instead. The dog has fallen silent, like one who has come home and forgotten everything out of doors. The crow disappears and will have to go hungry to bed. Evening is evening. It will probably find him tomorrow.