The Cleft (18 page)

And now I really cannot stop myself from intervening again. It is because I feel so much for that youngster there, Horsa, lying hurt on the sand and dreaming of that other place, which he could not reach. He did try, though … I feel that he is my younger self, perhaps even a son. What was he longing for, when
he saw that distant shore and wanted it? I know there are those who think the Greeks said the last word on aspirations. But I am not one to yield to the Greeks, not in this field. I am of the party that believes we Romans have bettered the Greeks. Horsa was not after finer dimensions in life, I see him as an ancestor of us, the Romans. What we see we need to conquer; what we know is there we have to know too. Horsa was in himself a coloniser, but that was before the word and idea was born. I see poor Horsa lying there crippled and think of how Rome has hurt itself in our need to expand, to have. I think of my two poor sons, lying somewhere in those northern forests. Rome has to outleap itself, has to grow, has to reach out. Far and further, wide and wider, our Roman empire's bounds are set. Why should there ever be an end to us, to Rome, to our boundaries? Subject peoples may fight us, but they never can stop us. I sometimes imagine how all the known world will be Roman, subject to our beneficent rule, to Roman peace, Roman laws and justice, Roman efficiency. Truly we make deserts bloom and the lands we conquer blossom. Some greater power than human guides us, leads us, points where our legions must go next. And if there are those who criticise us, then I have only one reply. Why, then, if we lack the qualities needed to make the whole earth flourish, why does everyone want to be a Roman citizen? All, everybody, from any part of our empire and beyond, wants to be a free man inside Roman law, Roman peace. Answer that, then, you carpers and
doubters. As for me, I imagine poor Horsa, lying there on his patch of sand, crippled because of his need to know that other wonderful land – and I think of him, secretly, as a Roman. One of us. Ours.

He lay like a child with his arm across his face, and when he could speak and the others wanted to listen, he told about the wonders of the other shore. For while this land, their own, had noble trees and birds and animals, whose eyes gleamed at them from the bushes, the shore he had failed to reach and from which he had been ejected so fiercely by the tyrant wind, this land, the new one, was seductive and desirable in a way their own land could never be.

But the others did not seem inclined to listen. There were tasks, and difficulties, first of all the disposal of the dead youth's body, thrown into the waves, which brought it back again to lie brokenly not far from Horsa. One of the girls who had lost a baby came to insist that the sea did not accept the dead; it was much better to bury this body. So Horsa's comrade was put under the sand and Horsa lay nearby and thought that it could have been himself who disappeared into the choking sand. Another girl brought him water and food at the evening's feast, but what all these big boys and young men were
talking about was the smaller boys, who had brought back a carcass from their hunting, but were cooking it at a separate bonfire not far away, instead of adding it, as was usually done, to the common supply. The children were dancing and singing, wild with their independence and mocking their elders who were around their own fires. Horsa shouted at them to come over and join the main feast but the children ignored him. Horsa was being generally ignored, and he did not understand it, nor did he see that an air of hilarity and anarchy that prevailed was because he was not there, leader of them all, in command, always visible as central focus of authority. No, he was lying on the sand, or crawling, trying to sit up, and weak with pain.

The sea had tossed up a piece of wood, and Horsa grabbed it, tried to raise himself up on it. People turned to stare and then to smile, glancing at each other; the crooked stick beside the crooked leg was like a mocking echo and the little boys at the other fire, seeing Horsa with three legs, one dangling, began to jeer and point. The older youths did the same. Horsa stood tottering, holding hard on to the stick, but then he fell and there was a shout of laughter. Horsa tried to rise, but failed. The girl who had lost her baby came to lift him, but she failed. She wandered off. Horsa lay, helpless and like a shamed beast. He felt he had become cast out from them, and when
the little boys came over to stand around him, pointing and jeering, he lay huddled into the sand, trying to be invisible. They wandered off too, back into the forests near the shore. The big boys were planning a hunt for tomorrow. No one seemed to see him. He had to crawl away from them all to meet a demand of his bowels, and when he returned lay behind a long rock that hid most of him. No one spoke to him. He did not understand what he felt. He had always been whole and strong and handsome, and he wished he could disappear altogether.

In the morning he woke, in bad pain, raging with thirst – and had to crawl slowly to the container where the water was. He could not lift the great seashell. Few of the others were awake. The older youths had gone off to hunt, the little boys were not there. Some girls with their babes, apart from the main body of people, saw him and did not seem to want to help him. At last, seeing that he was going to let slip the shell and waste the water, a girl did come and give him water. She was not unkind, but he was used to a greater … what was it he lacked, and what was it she did not offer him? It was respect, which he always had, and needed.

Then, sated with water, he turned to look at the sea and there, far away, where the sea and sky met, was the gleam of light which he knew was his imagined place, his land where he would find everything
he wanted – though until he had seen the pinky-pearl shores where the great white birds decorated the trees like dreams, he had no idea what he longed for. He was there sheltering from the fierce sun in the shadow of the rocks, staring, always staring, while the enticing shore changed colour as the sun moved. No one came to offer him help, water, food, or to talk to him. He wanted so much to tell them all about this wondrous place he had seen, which he had nearly reached, where …

If you have had authority all your life, because of your nature, something you never knew you had, and then you lose it, then it is hard even to ask the right questions. What was it he had lost? What now did he lack that all the others had needed in him? Horsa had not decided to be a leader, the uniter of the many warring groups – if it was he who had personally done this thing, and not someone from whom he had inherited authority – he had not fought for authority over others, but had never not known it. Why now did his comrades seem to be deaf when he spoke to them? The same girl, whom he called to bring him water and did answer, sat near him while he talked about his wondrous land that he had seen, actually seen with his own eyes, before the wind blasted him back across the waves to his own beach. Then she said that he must not lie there mumbling about his vision, the others were saying he had gone mad, and they were
all disturbed by him. This enterprise of theirs was failing, and in dangerous ways. Decisions should be made and who was to make them? She seemed to take it for granted it could not be crippled and crawling Horsa. He, Horsa, must choose one of the older youths to work with him and make some kind of central command. While Horsa was muttering in his delirium about this other land, dangerous things happened.

The young men were taking no notice of Horsa, who was trying to stagger around on his crooked stick. The girls were no better. They had fewer infants, for some had died, and there were no girls swelling up with pregnancy. They kept apart from the men, when they could, in a group, though they got their share of food. The little boys sometimes joined in the general evening feasts, but mostly they were off somewhere: their voices could at times be heard echoing from the forest. There was no question now of controlling them. Children they might be, but if they had not achieved their men's bodies they were as brave and skilled as the men who, the truth was, were afraid to tackle them.

Some kind of central command or authority, it seemed, the girls were demanding and when they tried to assume control of the young boys, they were told they were just Clefts, and must shut up.

Another babe had been born and the young men told the girls to keep to themselves with their noisy
infants, and so the girls were always at a little distance from the general community.

Horsa could not get any of the big boys to take him on, or even accept him as a comrade. No one wanted to listen to his talk of the other land, which at sunset gleamed in its inky-pearl and gold colours under the heavy blue cloud.

No one wanted Horsa at all.

And yet, with the crippling of Horsa some kind of unifying spirit had finally gone from the company. How could it be possible, he wondered, lying wounded in the shade of his rock, that recently he had stood among these people as a being stronger, better, than they, and everything he said was attended to?

Except, of course, for the little boys: it had been some time now since they had listened to anyone.

Maeve, the girl who could be kindly and who had warned Horsa, came to tell him that the little boys had found a cave, or a system of caves, where they spent their time. Had he not noticed that they had not been around with the others recently? This was a shock to Horsa. He had not noticed. He seemed to notice nothing but his pain, his heavy dragging limb. He forced himself upright, using the stick, and practised walking, or rather pulling himself about, over the sand.

Once he was on his feet, even though he could not let go of the supporting stick, it seemed people saw
him again. They did not want to listen to his tales of the new land, but when he spoke they did pay attention.

Maeve asked about the children, and the young men were uncomfortable and even impatient. What were they supposed to do? Horsa saw that the absence of the children troubled the older boys and that there had been discussions and decisions among them he had not noticed.

Standing, Horsa said he must be taken up to this cave, or caves, and some kind of authority seemed to have returned to him, because with the aid of his stick, and a youth on either side, supporting him he dragged himself up the side of a cliff behind their beach and saw the entrance to a cavern that had a path to it, telling them all that the little boys used it well – and often.

And now here is a hint as to how many the children were. To make a ‘well-used' path takes more than, let's say, four, or six, or even ten; or perhaps we are seeing here a measure of time. These people had been on this new shore of theirs for much longer than they supposed. And outside the cavern's mouth was a space made by the hacking away of bushes and grass. From there the boys could look down at the beach where their elders built their fires and at meals where they should have been too, with their contributions from the hunt. Very easy was it to
imagine the childish sniggers and jeers of the children who were so well out of reach of supervision.

The cave itself was high, and large; on either side it fell into dark edges where it was easy to understand that no one, child or adult, would want to go. The main cave was smooth, and had been used – perhaps was used now – by animals. On some low rocks were the little boys' possessions: some animal skins, some fish-skin loincloths, a large shell with water, and some meat from a past supper. The smell was not pleasant. And where were the children? Not a sign of them. The adults called, shouted, even threatened and commanded, but silence answered them. Either the children had gone hunting, or they had taken themselves far into the cave, and were waiting to be left alone again. Horsa suggested to the big boys that they might go a little way into the back of the cave and saw them agreeing, but with reluctance: the big tunnel at the cave's back almost at once bifurcated. It seemed some of the youths had already gone a little way into the rear of the cave and had found a maze of caves. Horsa could see the young men were embarrassed, even ashamed. Yes, they should have kept an eye on the little boys, if they could be called that, while Horsa had been weak and not himself.