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Authors: Martin Armstrong

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BOOK: Adrian Glynde
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“Don't go, Adrian.”

“I … I thought perhaps … you were busy.”

“So I was, but I shall be very glad to be interrupted. You see, I wasn't getting along very well.”

“Were you writing a poem?” asked Adrian, feeling that he was being rather personal.

“I was trying to,” said Oliver, “but it won't start. They don't always start when you want them to, you know.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Adrian. He stood therewith his hands in his trouser-pockets, shyly treading on one foot with the other. He hoped that his grandfather would pursue the subject. But for a while the old man said nothing: he seemed to be thinking, and next moment
Adrian, blushing at his own boldness, asked: “What was it about?”

“It's about a Chinese sage—a wise man, you know,” said his grandfather, “who was oppressed by the feeling that one never really gets to know anything of the things we see around us—things such as human beings, mountains, birds, beasts, water, rocks, and so on. We know something
about
them all, he said to himself, but we don't really
know
them. There is always some final barrier. We know, for instance, that water is transparent and wet and thirst-quenching and made up of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen, but we can never say what it is, never know all there is to know about it. We remain apart from it, baffled, somehow, of true experience of it.”

“Yes, I've felt that,” said Adrian, sitting down in a basket-chair beside his grandfather. “We know all about them but we can't ever get at them.”

“That's it. You've seen what I'm driving at. Well, this poem of mine is going to be a sort of parable made out of that idea. The old Chinee resolves that he will seek patiently for knowledge, real knowledge, of one thing in the world. If he could really get to know even one thing only, he would, he felt, be content. In fact, he half suspected that if he did get to know this one thing completely, he would discover that he had got to know everything—that he had found the key, I mean.”

“Yes, I see,” said Adrian. “I like the story.”

“Well, this old Chinee chose water as the door through which he would attain to knowledge; and he went off into the mountains where there was a lonely lake and built himself a little hut on the edge of it. The lake was cupped in a circle of mountain-tops and was fed by waterfalls that tumbled from their rocky sides. And all day long the old man studied the water, watching and touching the waterfalls as you were doing to the fountain
there just now, putting his hands into the lake, and sometimes even flinging off his cloak and diving headlong into it. And he would spend whole days and nights imagining himself to be water, water lying calm and passive under a blue sky or a cloudy sky or a starry sky, still water reflecting all above it and around it and darkly revealing all within it, water with all its glassy skin ruffled by wind or pitted by rain-drops, water wavering out from a centre into widening, undulating circles when a stone is dropped into it, water abandoning itself to leap after leap down cliffs, flinging itself without shrinking or hesitating against stones and rocks and shattering into thousands of drops, each drop having a shape perfect and unique in accordance with the speed and direction in which it is moving; water evaporating, drying, steaming up into the air, giving up its being to another state of being, and turning again into its former being and dropping down through great heights of air to the earth. So he spent his days.

And one day when he was leaning from the window of his hut and gazing intently into the lake, he saw, deep down in the gloomy crystal of the water, a passing of slim ghosts. It was a shoal of fish. They passed and repassed, moving with an unhurrying perfection of motion which entranced him. It was as if the water itself had taken on bodily life in shapes that perfectly expressed its nature.

Then he saw that among these shadowy shapes was one smaller and more lovely than the others, a creature that seemed to be made from the frail rainbow stuff of which bubbles are made, and he knew that this fish was the Genius of the Water, that it was water become alive. And he knew that if only he could tame this fish, not capture it by force or guile, but take it by its own desire, he would come at the knowledge which he sought.

So the old man went away and collected the proper tools for what he had decided to do, and first he set about hewing out of the mountain-side a great rough block of crystal. For days and weeks and months he hewed, till at last, at a final blow from his hammer and chisel, the great block broke away from the mountain-side and went bounding down to the edge of the lake. And there the old man set himself to carve it into a crystal tank, a tank, that should be so transparent and so beautifully wrought that it should be worthy of the Genius of the Water. Slowly and patiently he worked at the block, and months went past and years, and at last he had hollowed it out and polished it till it caught the rays of the sun and shattered them into a hundred rainbow lights. Then, binding ropes round it, he lowered it carefully into the lake, and for the rest of the day he leaned from his window gazing down into the water.

And towards evening the shoal of fish came sliding, dim and arrowy, through the dark water, and among them was the Genius of the Water faintly shining like a delicate slip of rainbow. And the shoal curved suddenly towards the tank and swam three times round the edge of it, while the old man watched from above, breathless with hope. But when they had completed the third circle, with a sudden flick of their tails they curved sideways and vanished into the dimness.

Then the old Chinee knew that his tank was not yet worthy, and he hauled it up again, and for months and years he carved and polished it until it had become like the finest glass. Then again he lowered it with ropes into the lake and watched.

And again the shoal of fish came in the evening, and they swam three times round the lip of the tank, but this time the Genius of the Water dived suddenly over the lip and, followed by the rest, swam three times round the
inside of the tank, while the old man leaned staring from his window, trembling with hope.

But having swum three times round the inside of the tank, the fishes with a sudden spiral curve slipped out of it and vanished again into the dimness of the lake. But the old Chinee patiently hauled up his tank again, and again for many months and years he worked upon it, grinding and polishing it till it was as thin as the frailest shell, and he carved upon its walls the shapes of trailing water-weeds and the leaves and flowers of water-lilies.

The crystal tank was now so marvellously fine and frail and perfect that its walls were no thicker than the walls of a bubble, and it was so light and so fragile that it was no longer necessary nor safe to bind ropes about it. But the old man flung off his cloak and with infinite care took it in his arms and waded into the water. And the water crept up to his navel and then to his chest, and then to his shoulders and neck, and then it closed over his head. And holding his breath he waded on, till, stooping down, he set the precious tank in its place. Then, stretching out his arms and clapping them suddenly to his sides, he shot upwards to the surface of the lake and swam ashore. And, hurrying to his cabin, he leaned out of the window and watched.

When he had watched for several hours he became aware of a shadowy movement in the water, and the shoal of fish took shape out of the dimness of the water, and the Genius of the Water was among them. And, as before, they swam three times round the outside of the tank and three times round the inside, and then with a sudden dart aside they slipped over the rim and away into the dark water. And the old man's heart sank, for he was now very old and very weary and his bodily strength and his hope were almost at an end. And he peered down again upon the tank, wondering how it
would be possible to make it more perfect; but when his eyes had found it they were caught by a sudden rainbow glimmer within it, and, trembling with delight he saw that, though the other fishes were gone, the Genius of the Water was still there, swimming slowly and quietly round the inside of the tank. Then, rushing out of his hut and flinging off his cloak, he dived into the lake, and before the circles made by his leap had spent themselves, his head rose again above the surface of the lake and he waded out carrying the precious tank. And there, more beautiful than anything that can be imagined, was the Genius of the Water swimming slowly and quietly round.

The old Chinee set the tank in his hut, and it stood there between the four wooden walls like a great crystal moon. Then the Genius of the Water began to swim swiftly round and round. Swifter and swifter it whirled, until at last it was invisible and the tank held only a shining whirlpool of water.

Then the old Chinee got his cup and ladled out some of the water and drank it; and as he drank there entered into him perfect wisdom, so that he knew and understood everything. But however much he drew from the tank, to quench his thirst or wash his body or cool his head in the summer-time, the tank never grew empty, but remained always a little whirlpool of living water drawn from some deep and unquenchable spring.”

“And did the old Chinee die in the end?” asked Adrian, waking up as if from a dream.

“No,” said his grandfather, “the old man, according to the story, never died.”

“And what does it mean?” Adrian asked.

“It means just what it says,” replied his grandfather.

“But doesn't it mean something else too?”

“It is a poem, and so, like all poems, it means a great
many things. It means whatever you can find in it, but whatever it means cannot be more clearly said than it is said in the poem. After all, it's quite a clear story, isn't it?”

“Yes,” said Adrian,” and when you come to think of it, it would be rather a bother, wouldn't it, to hunt out the other meanings.”

“Yes. So long as you know they're there, you don't want to hunt them out, just as you don't want to shoot all the birds in this garden so as to be able to count them up and prove they were really here.”

Adrian laughed and then was silent. His grandfather rose from his chair, “I'm beginning to feel as if it were tea-time, aren't you?” he said. “Shall we go and see?”

“Well,” said Adrian as they walked back together through the shrubbery, “I hope you manage to write the poem.”

Tea was ready, and as they sat down Stock brought in the teapot and a plate of buttered toast; and to Oliver, looking across the tea-table at the small, neat, brighteyed boy sitting opposite him, it seemed once again as if the last twenty-three years had shrunk to nothing and Sandy was sitting there again.

As if in response to that dream, Adrian raised his eyes and said: “Sometimes Father and I used to have tea alone together.”

“Your father? But …” For a moment the old man was bewildered. Then his mind righted itself. No, Sandy was no longer here: he was dead. But he was here, none the less, in the boy's heart and in his own heart too—the three of them alone together.

“And you liked that?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Adrian with conviction.

“Better than …?”

“Better than when Mother was there?” The boy
paused for a moment with a wistful inward gaze. “Yes,” he said, “best of all. But it didn't happen very often.”

“And what did you talk about at those teas?”

“Oh, everything. We always had lots to talk about. I don't remember what it was. We just talked, you know.”

The old man nodded. “Yes, that is the best kind of talk, isn't it? When you just talk without knowing why, like birds singing. Sandy and I used to talk like that.”

“Here, I suppose,” said Adrian.

“Yes, here. He often sat where you are sitting now. He and I often had tea alone together. You see, your Aunt Clara was seven years older than your father, and she and your grandmother would be out together sometimes paying calls, and he and I would be left to ourselves.”

The old man paused, dreaming to himself. Then he said: “You're very like what your father was as a boy.”

Adrian looked up, blushing a little. “Me?” he said. “I never knew I was like Father. I'm … I'm very glad.” In his mind had risen once more the memory of that occasion on which he and his father had had tea alone together after his mother had rushed from the house in a rage. Why was she like that? She had rushed away from them that day, but it didn't much matter then, because he had had his father whom he loved more, much more than his mother; but after his father had gone to France and never come back, his heart had fixed itself entirely upon her, and it hurt and bewildered him that she still ran away from him, avoided him, kept him at arm's length when he longed to get at her. What was it that was so strange and unreliable about her? He had never been able to understand it.

He looked across the tea-table at his grandfather and said: “Aunt Clara doesn't like Mother, does she?”

He saw his grandfather's face change. Something which had been there the moment before went out of it. For a moment he did not reply. “Well, you see,” he began at last, “they are so different. You can't expect people so different to be great friends.”

“But Mother likes
her
.”

“Do you think she does?”

Adrian nodded. Then, as if a sudden doubt had assailed him, he added: “Well, I
think
she does.” Then he asked: “Do you like Mother?”

The question troubled the old man. He wished neither to tell the boy a lie nor to pain him by the truth. “I used to feel angry with her,” he said, after a pause, “because I thought she behaved badly to your father.”

“Yes, she did,” said Adrian with a brightness of tears in his eyes.

“But it's different for you, of course,” said Oliver, “because she's your mother and you love her, don't you?”

“Yes,” the boy replied simply, and then added after a moment's consideration, “at least I want to, but it seems as if she wouldn't let me.”

BOOK: Adrian Glynde
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