Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (32 page)

It remained
unstated, yet both felt an acute sense of loss. It was there,
implicit in the silence, in the sighs each gave as they walked the
shoreline.

Where the beach
narrowed, they stopped and sat on a low, gently sloping table of gray
rock, side by side, facing back toward the cottage. The flat expanse
of mud lay to their right now; while to their left, no more than ten
paces away, the steep, packed earth bank was almost twice their
height, the thickly interwoven branches of the overhanging trees
throwing the foot of the bank into an intense shade. It could not be
seen from where they sat, but this stretch of the bank was partly
bricked, the rotting timbers of an old construction poking here and
there from the weathered surface. Here, four centuries before, French
prisoners from the Napoleonic Wars had ended their days, some in
moored hulks, some in the makeshift jails that had lined this side of
the creek.

Ben thought of
those men now. Tried to imagine their suffering, the feeling of
homesickness they must have felt, abandoned in a foreign land. But
there was something missing in him—some lack of pure
experience—that made it hard for him to put himself in their
place. He did not know how it felt to be away from home. Here was
home and he had always been here. And there, in that lack of
knowledge, lay the weakness in his art.

It had begun
long before last night. Long before Meg had come to him. And yet last
night had been a catalyst—a clarification of all he had been
feeling.

He thought of
the words his father had quoted back at him and knew they were right.
Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more
than he already knows. What one has no access to through experience
one has no ear for.

It was so. For
him, at least, what Nietzsche had said was true. And he had no
access. Not here.

He was restless.
He had been restless for the past twelve months. He realized that
now. It had needed something like this to bring it into focus for
him. But now he knew. He had to get out.

Even before last
night he had been thinking of going to College in the City. To
Oxford, maybe, or the Technical School at Strasbourg Canton. But he
had been thinking of it only as the natural path for such as he; as a
mere furthering of his education. Now, however, he knew there was
more to it than that. He needed to see life. To experience life
fully, at all its levels. Here he had come so far, but the valley had
grown too small for him, too confined. He needed something more—
something other—than what was here in the Domain.

"If I were
to . . ." he began, turning to face Meg, then fell silent, for
at the same time she had turned her head and begun to speak to him.

They laughed,
embarrassed. It had never happened before. They had always known
instinctively when the other was about to speak. But this ... it was
like being strangers.

Meg shivered,
then bowed her head slightly, signaling he should speak, afraid to
repeat that moment of awkwardness.

Ben watched her
a moment. Abruptly, he stood and took three paces, then turned and
looked back at her. She was looking up at him from beneath the dark
fall of her hair.

"I've got
to leave here, Meg."

He saw at once
how surprised she was; how much it meant to her. There was a
momentary widening of her eyes, the slightest parting of her lips,
then she lowered her head. "Ah . . ."

He was silent,
watching her. But as he made to speak again, she looked up suddenly,
the hurt and anger in her eyes unexpected.

"Why? Is it
because of last night?"

He sighed and
shook his head. "It has nothing to do with us, Meg. It's me. I
feel constrained here. Boxed in. It feels like I've outgrown this
place. Used it up."

As he spoke he
stared away from her at the creek, the surrounding hills, the small,
white-painted cottages scattered among the trees. Overhead, the sky
was a lid of ashen gray.

"And I
have
to
grow. It's how I am." He looked at her fiercely,
defiantly. "I'll die if I stay here much longer, Meg. Can't you
see that?"

She shook her
head, her voice passionate with disagreement. "It's not so, Ben.
You've said it yourself. It's a smaller world in there. You talk of
feeling boxed in, here, in the Domain. But you're wrong. That's where
it's really boxed in. Not here. We're outside of all that. Free of
it."

He laughed
strangely, then turned aside. "Maybe. But I have to find that
out. For myself." He looked back at her. "It's like that
business with memory. I thought I knew it all, but I didn't. I was
wrong, Meg. I'd assumed too much. So now I've got to find out. Now.
While I still can."

Her eyes had
followed every movement in his face, noting the intense restlessness
there. Now they looked down, away from his. "Then I don't
understand you, Ben. There's no hurry. Surely there's no hurry?"

"Ah, but
there is."

She looked up in
time to see him shrug and turn away, looking out across the mud
toward the City.

The City. It was
a constant in their lives. Wherever they looked, unless it was to
sea, that flat, unfeatured whiteness defined the limits of their
world, like a frame about a picture or the edge of some huge
encroaching glacier. They had schooled themselves not to see it. But
today, with the sky pressed low and featureless above them, it was
difficult not to see it as Ben saw it—as a box, containing
them.

"Maybe . .
." she said, under her breath. But the very thought of him
leaving chilled her to the bone.

He turned,
looking back at her. "What were you looking for?"

She frowned. "I
don't follow you."

"Before the
wave struck. You were about to tell me something. You'd seen
something, hadn't you?"

She felt a
sudden coldness on the back of her hand and looked. It was a spot of
rain. She brushed at it, then looked back at her brother.

"It was a
shell. One I'd never seen before. It was attached to the rock but I
couldn't free it with my fingers. It was like it was glued there. A
strange, ugly-looking shell, hard and ridged, shaped like a nomad's
tent."

More spots of
rain fell, distinct and heavy. Ben looked up at the sky, then back at
her. "We'd best get back. It's going to fall down."

She went to him
and took his hand.

"Go,"
she said. "But not yet. Not just yet."

He leaned
forward, kissing her brow, then moved back, looking at her, his dark
green eyes seeing nothing but her for that brief moment. "I love
you, Megs. Understand that. But I can't help what I am. I have to go.
If I don't. . ."

She gave the
smallest nod. "I know. Really. I understand."

"Good."
This time his lips touched hers gently, then drew away.

She shivered and
leaned forward, wanting to kiss him once again, but just then the
clouds burst overhead and the rain began to come down heavily,
pocking the mud about their feet, soaking their hair and faces in
seconds.

"Christ!"
he said, raising his voice against the hard, drumming sound of the
rain. For a moment neither of them moved; then Meg turned and
pointing to the bank, yelled back at him.

"There!
Under the trees!"

Ben shook his
head. "No. Come on! There's half a day of rain up there. Let's
get back!" He took her hands, tugging at her, then turned and,
letting her hands fall from his, began to run back along the shore
toward the cottage. She caught up with him and ran beside him,
laughing now, sharing his enjoyment of the downpour, knowing—suddenly
knowing without doubt—that just as he had to go, so he would be
compelled to return. In time. When he had found what he was looking
for.

Suddenly he
stopped and, laughing, throwing his hands up toward the sky, turned
his eyes on her again. "It's beautiful!" he shouted. "It's
bloody beautiful!"

"I know!"
she answered, looking past him at the bay, the tree-covered hillsides
misted by the downpour, the dour-looking cottages on the slope before
them.

Yes,
she
thought.
You'll miss this in the City. There it never rains.
Never
in ten
thousand years.

THAT
NIGHT he dreamed.

He was floating
above a desert, high up, the jet-black lavatic sands stretching off
to the horizon on every side. Tall spirals of dust moved slowly
across the giant plain, like fluted pillars linking heaven and earth.
A cold wind blew. Over all, a black sun sat like a sunken eye in a
sky of bloodied red.

He had come here
from dead lands, deserted lands, where temples to forgotten gods lay
in ruins, open to the sky; had drifted over vast mountain ranges,
their peaks a uniform black, the purest black he'd ever seen,
untouched by snow or ice; had glided over plains of dark, fused
glass, where the image of his small, compacted self flew like a
Doppelganger under him, soaring to meet him when he fell, falling as
he rose. And now he was here, in this empty land, where color ended
and silence was a wall within the skull.

Time passed.
Then, with a huge, almost animal shudder that shook the air about
him, the sands beneath him parted, the great dunes rolling back,
revealing the perfect smoothness of a lake, its red-tinged waters
like a mirror.

He fell. Turning
in the air, he made an arrow of himself, splitting the dark, oily
surface cleanly. Down he went, the coal-black liquid smooth,
unresistant, flowing about his body like cold fire.

Deep he went, so
deep that his ears popped and bled. His lungs, like flowers,
blossomed in the white cage of his chest, bursting, flooding his
insides with a fiery hotness. For a moment the blackness was within,
seeping into him through every pore; a barrier through which he must
pass. Then he was through; freed from his normal, human self. And
still he sank, like a spear of iron, down through the blackness;
until there, ten miles beneath the surface, the depths were seared
with brightness.

The lake's bed
was white, like bone; clean and polished and flat, like something
made by men. It glowed softly from beneath, as if another
land—miraculous and filled, as bright as this was dark—lay
on the far side of its hard, unyielding barrier.

He turned his
eyes, drawn to something to his left. He swam toward it.

It was a stone.
A dark, perfect circle of stone, larger than his palm. It had a soft,
almost dusted surface. He touched it, finding it cool and hard. Then,
as he watched, it seemed to melt and flow, the upper surface
flattening, the thin edge crinkling. Now it was a shell, an oyster,
its circumference split by a thin, uneven line of darkness.

His hand went to
his waist; he took the scalpel from its tiny sheath, then slipped its
edge between the plates. Slowly, reluctantly, they parted, like a
moth's wings opening to the sun.

Inside was a
pearl of darkness—a tiny egg so dark, so intensely black, that
it seemed to draw all light into itself. He reached out to take it;
but even as he closed his left hand about the pearl, he felt its
coldness bum into his flesh then fall, like a drop of heaven's fire,
onto the bed below.

Astonished, he
held the hand up before his face and saw the perfect hole the pearl
had made. He turned the hand. Right through. The pearl had passed
right through.

He shivered. And
then the pain came back, like nothing he had ever experienced.

Ben woke and sat
upright, beaded in sweat, his left hand held tightly in his right,
the pain from it quite real. He stared at it, expecting to see a tiny
hole burned through from front to back, but there was no outward sign
of what was wrong. It spasmed again, making him cry out, the pain
unbelievable—worse than the worst cramp he had ever had.

"Shit!"
he said under his breath, annoyed at himself for his weakness.
Control the pain, he thought. Learn from it. He gritted his teeth and
looked at the timer on the wall beside his bed. It was just after
five.

He must have
damaged the hand, getting Meg out of the water.

When the pain
subsided he got up, cradling the hand against his chest, and began to
dress. It was more difficult than he had imagined, for the slightest
awkward movement of the hand would put it into spasm again, taking
his breath. But eventually it was done and quietly he made his way
out and down the passageway.

The door to
Meg's room was open. Careful not to wake her, he looked inside. Her
bed was to the left against the far wall, the window just above her
head. She lay on her stomach, her hair covering her face, her
shoulders naked in the shadow, her right arm bent above the covers.
The curtains were drawn, the room in partial darkness; but a small
gap high up let in a fragment of the early morning sun, a narrow bar
of golden light. It traced a contoured line across the covers and up
the wall, revealing part of her upper arm. He stared at it a moment,
oblivious of the dull pain in his hand, seeing how soft her flesh
seemed in this light.

For a moment he
hesitated, wondering if he should wake her.

And if he
did?

He shivered,
remembering how she had come to him in the night, and felt that same
strong stirring of desire. Though it disturbed him, he could not lie
to himself. He wanted her. More now than before. Wanted to kiss the
softness of her neck and see her turn, warm and smiling, and take him
in her arms.

The shiver that
ran up his spine was like the feeling he had when listening to an
exquisite piece of music or on first viewing a perfect work of art.
But how so? he wondered. Or was all art grounded in desire?

The fingers of
his damaged hand clenched again. He took a sharp intake of breath
against the pain and leaned his shoulder against the doorpost. It was
the worst yet and left him feeling cold and weak, his brow beaded
with sweat. He would have to have it seen to today. This morning, if
possible. But first there was something he must do.