The Collected Short Fiction Part 16

'Sorry,' said Grigg, tired of the mystification. 'It is none of my business, anyway.'

'That depends,' said Lek.

'Upon whether you decide to stay or go,' said Vin. As she spoke, she took off her plain, greeny-brown dress. She did it casually, as a woman might remove a scarf when she finds it too hot. Vin was wearing no other garment, and now lay naked on the cushions, her back against the low wall, behind which stretched the sea.

'On this island,' continued Lek, 'we live as all people once lived. But long ago they thought better of it and started looking for something else. They have been looking, instead of living, ever since.'

'What have they been looking for?'

'They call it achievement. They call it knowledge. They call it mastery. They even call it happiness. You called it happiness just now, when Vin threw a nut at you, but we are prepared to treat that as a slip of the tongue by a newcomer. And do you know who started it all?'

'I would rather you told me.'

'The Greeks started it. It was their stupidity. Have you not seen how stupid the Greeks are?'

'As a matter of fact, I have. It is not at all what one is led to expect. I have been continuously surprised by it.'

'Nothing to be surprised at. It is the same quality that made the Greeks separate man from nature in the first place, or rather from life.'

'You mean the ancient Greeks?' asked Grigg, staring at her.

'The same Greeks. All Greeks are the same. All stupid. All lopsided. All poisoned with masculinity.'

'Yes,' said Grigg, smiling. 'As a matter of fact, I have noticed something like that. It is not a country for women.' His eyes drifted to Vin's naked body, gleaming in the starlight.

'Once it was. We ruled once, but they drove us out,' said Lek, more sadly than fiercely. 'We fought, and later they wrote silly plays about the fight, but they defeated us, though not by the superior strength on which they pride themselves so much.'

'How, then?'

'By changing our world into a place where it was impossible for us to live. It was impossible for them to live in such a world also, but that they were too stupid to know. They defeated us in the same way that they have defeated everything else that is living,'

'Tell me,' said Grigg. 'What makes you think that I am any different? After all, I am a man, even though not a Greek. Why on earth should I be any kind of an exception?'

'There is no earth here,' said Lek. 'Haven't you noticed?'

'Nothing but rock,' cried Grigg. 'But there are more flowers than anywhere? And these wonderful nectarines?'

'They live on rock,' said Tal, speaking for the first time.

'You are different,' said Lek, 'simply because you have both set out and arrived. Few try and fewer succeed.'

'What happens to them?'

'They have set-backs of various kinds.'

'I didn't find it in the least difficult,' said Grigg.

'Those meant to succeed at a thing never do find the thing difficult.'

'Meant? Meant by whom?'

'By the life of which they are a part, whether they know it or not.'

'It is very mystical,' said Grigg. 'Where is this life to be found?'

'Here,' said Lek, simply. 'And it is not mystical at all. That is a word invented by those who have lost life or destroyed it. A word like tragedy. The stupid Greeks even called the plays they wrote about their fight with the women, tragedies.'

'If I stay,' began Grigg, and then stopped. 'If I stay,' he began again, 'how do I make payment? I do not necessarily mean in money. All the same, how?'

'Here there are no bargains and no debts. You do not pay at all. You submit to the two G.o.ds. Their rule is light, but people are so unaccustomed to it that they sometimes find it includes surprises.'

'I have seen one of the G.o.ds. Where is the other?'

'The other G.o.d is female and therefore hidden.'

Grigg noticed that a considerable tremor, very visible in the case of Vin, pa.s.sed through all three of their bodies.

'I still do not understand,' he said, 'why there is no one else. We are not all that far away. And the voyage is really quite easy. I should have thought that people would be coming all the time.'

'It might be better,' said Lek, 'to rejoice that you are the one chosen. But if you wish to go, go now, and one of us will guide you.'

Grigg didn't go. It wasn't Lek's riddling talk that prevented him, but much simpler things: Tal; the charm and strangeness of the empty rooms; not least the conviction that the women were right when they said he could not return to his starting-point, and uncertainty as to where else he could practicably make for. He told them that he would stay for the night. A plan would be easier to evolve in the sunshine.

'You don't mind if I grow a beard?' he said. 'I've brought nothing with me.'

They were very nice about his having brought nothing with him.

'Enchanted islands are hard to understand,' he said. 'I've always thought that. It worried me even as a child. The trouble is that you can never be sure where the enchantment begins and where it ends.'

'You learn by experience,' said Tal.

'Do you do we really live entirely on fruit?'

'No,' said Lek. 'There is wine.'

Vin rose and walked out through the gateway that led down to the harbour. She moved like a nymph, and her silhouette against the night sky through the arch was that of a girl-athlete on a vase.

Wine was not the sustenance that Grigg, fond though he was of it, felt he most needed at the moment, but he said nothing. They were all silent while waiting for Vin to return. The tideless waves flapped against the surrounding rock. The stars flickered.

Vin returned with a little porcelain bowl, not spilling a drop of the contents as she stepped bare-footed over the uneven stones. The bowl was set among them, small cups appeared, and they all drank. There was little wine left when all the cups had been filled. The wine was red. Grigg thought it was also extremely sweet and heavy, almost treacly in texture; he was glad that he did not have to drink more of it. They followed the wine by drinking water from a pitcher.

'Where do you find water?' asked Grigg.

'From springs in the rock,' answered Lek.

'More than one spring?'

'There is a spring of health, a spring of wisdom, a spring of beauty, a spring of logic, and a spring of longevity.'

'And the water we are drinking?'

'It is from the spring of salutation. Alas, we do not drink from it as often as we should like.'

Here Tal departed and came back with the green cask which Grigg had earlier seen her carrying. It contained a different wine, and, to Grigg, a more accustomed.

Tal had also brought a lantern. They settled to ancient games with coloured stones, and lines drawn with charcoal on the rocky floor. These games again were new to Grigg: not only their rules and skills, but, more, the spirit in which they were played. The object appeared to be not so much individual triumph as an intensification of fellow-feeling; of love, to use Lek's word of welcome to him. Most surprising of all to Grigg was the discovery that he no longer felt underfed, although he had eaten neither meat nor grain. He felt agog (it was the only word) with life, air, warmth, and starlight. Time itself had become barbless and placid.

'Sleep where you will,' said Lek. 'There are many rooms.' Vin picked up her dress and they all entered the citadel.

'Good night,' they said.

'He tried to catch Tal's eye, but failed.

They were gone.

Grigg did not feel like sleep. He decided to walk down to the harbour.

The lizards were still sprawling and squirming on the steps, which Grigg thought odd for such creatures, and unpleasingly reminiscent of his dream. The scent of the ma.s.sed flowers was heavier than ever. He went slowly down through the stars and the blossoms, and climbed aboard his boat, now lying alongside the much bigger sailing-ship; looked at the engine, which appeared to be untouched (though he could think of no real reason why it should be otherwise); and sat on the stern seat thinking.

He decided that though the way of life on the island seemed to him in almost every way perfect, he was far from sure that he himself was so innately the designated partic.i.p.ant in it as to justify his apparently privileged journey and landfall. He was far from pleased by this realisation. On the contrary, he felt that he had been corrupted by the very different life to which he had been so long accustomed, and much though he normally disliked it. He doubted whether by now he was capable of redemption from that commonplace existence, even by enchantment. The three women had virtually agreed that enchantment has its limitations. Grigg felt very much like starting the outboard forthwith, and making off to face the difficult music.

'Be brave.'

Grigg looked up. It was Vin who had spoken. She had resumed her dress and was leaning over the gunwale of the ship above him.

'But what does courage consist in? Which is the brave thing to do?'

'Come up here,' said Vin, 'and we'll try to find out.'

Grigg climbed the narrow harbour steps, walked round the end of the little basin, and stepped over the side of the curved ship. Vin had now turned and stood with her back against the opposite side, watching him. Grigg was quite astonished by how beautiful she looked, though he could hardly see her face through the darkness. It mattered little: Vin, standing there alone, was superb. She seemed to him the living epitome of the elegant ship.

'We don't really exist, you know,' said Vin. 'So, in the first place, you need not be scared of us. We're only ghosts. Nothing to be frightened of.'

He sat on a coil of rope in front of her, but a little to the side, the harbour-mouth side.

'Do you chuck about ropes like this?'

'Of course. We're strong.'

'Do you eat absolutely nothing but fruit?'

'And drink the wine I brought you to drink.'

'I thought it was no ordinary wine.'

'It makes you no ordinary person.'

'I don't feel very different.'

'People don't feel very different even after they have died. The Greek Church says that forty days pa.s.s before people feel any different.'

'Is that true?'

'Quite true. Not even the Greeks are wrong all the time. And the dead still feel the same even after forty days unless the proper ma.s.ses are said. You can't go to Heaven without the ma.s.ses, you know.'

'Or, presumably, to h.e.l.l?'

'As you say, Grigg.'

Grigg was struck by a thought.

'Is that in some way why you're here now?'

Vin laughed, gurgling like her own thick, sweet, red wine. 'No, Grigg. We're not dead. Feel.'

She held out her left hand. Grigg took it. It was curiously firm and soft at the same time, strong but delicate. Grigg found himself most reluctant to relinquish it.

'You're alive,' said Grigg.

Vin said nothing.

'Tell me,' said Grigg, 'what there is in the wine?'

'Rock,' said Vin softly.

Grigg was absurdly reminded of those claims in wine-merchants' catalogues that in this or that brand can be tasted the very soil in which it was grown.

'Don't laugh,' said Vin, quite sharply. 'The rock doesn't like it.'

Grigg had no idea what she meant, but he stopped laughing at once. The mystery made her words all the more impressive, as sometimes when an adult admonishes a child.

'Where did you all come from?' asked Grigg. 'To judge by what you say, you can't be Greek. And you don't sound Greek. You speak English beautifully, which means you can't be English. What are you?'

'Lek comes from one place. Tal from another. I from a third. Where I come from the people wear no shoes.'

'Lek spoke of you as sisters.'

'We are sisters. We work and fight side by side, which makes us sisters.'

'Are there no more of you?'

'Men have broken through from time to time, like you. The rock is surrounded, you know. But none of the men have stayed. They have killed themselves or sailed away.'

'Have none of them sailed back? After all, it's not far.'

'Not one. They have always had something to make it impossible. Like your stolen boat.'