Nuns and Soldiers (64 page)

He turned and looked up at the etched folded rocks. Against the bluer sky they looked like Egyptian silver. Why do I suddenly think that, he wondered. It must be some sudden memory of his mother who had had a bracelet made of Egyptian silver, as she must have told him. He had not thought of that since he was a child. He was so unkind to his mother. He got up and began to walk along the edge of the canal. He passed the grove of pines and gazed, without any pleasure, at the clean edges of the hard cut stone which now enclosed the canal as it curved to the right. The sparkling raging water rushed faster now, darkening the walls as far as the wavelets reached. At the outside of the curve the water rose into a white foaming tidal wave and then where the bed of the canal evidently descended towards the weir, humped itself into tossed swooping billows. The noise increased as it surged towards the check of the waterfall, over which it leapt to glide down the slope into the whirlpool below; after which the whole canal vanished, stooping to enter the tunnel, filling it to the brim.

Tim stood beside the weir, watching the extraordinary transformation as the wild flickering waters sprang onto the top of the rock wall of the weir and ran with smooth docility down the vivid green slope and entered the white churning frenzy below before crowding themselves into the tunnel. He felt himself as mad, as self-destructive as that water, as wild and unpredictable as its atoms; and the substance of his madness was misery and remorse. And, oh he felt so tired. It was time to climb the rocks and return to the village and go back to England.

He retraced his steps along the curving stone verge to where the long green grasses and the thorny acacia bushes leaned down over the racing stream. A jay cried and passed, then posed momentarily in the acacia. Blue dragonflies zoomed over the water. The sun was already hot and a warm wind was blowing. A grasshopper took flight, opening rose madder wings. Brown butterflies swarmed near the pine trees. All these things which could have given pleasure were metamorphosed into things of sadness because the world was cursed. Tim looked upstream at the long vista of the turbulent grey cool water between its abundant banks of green. He looked, then suddenly he saw that there was a bulky dark object, tossed about in the current, approaching him fast. Immediately Tim was terrified. Was it a body, a drowned man, what should he do? It was a darkish and palish thing, turning over and over in the speeding foam. He stared, then recognized it as a dog. He saw the shape of the doggy head and the wet muzzle lifting. It was a large black and white dog which was being bundled along by the canal. Tim grimaced at the miserable portent, for he took it to be another bloated corpse, like the one which he had seen with Gertrude.

Then he saw, as the thing came near, that the animal was not dead but very much alive. It was a black and white beast, not unlike an English collie, and it was struggling desperately, making evident hopeless efforts to check its progress and get some hold on the steep grassy banks. Tim saw the helpless white paws reach up and touch the overhanging grass. In a moment the animal would be swept past him, would whirl round the corner between the stone verges, and over the weir to drown in the tunnel.

Tim’s body had already identified itself with that drenched form, that desperate lifted muzzle, those white clutching paws. He threw himself down, as he had done when he wanted to drink, and slithered down the bank until one hand was in the water while the other hand held onto the grass. As the dog approached Tim reached out to grip it as it passed. His hand touched the long drenched fur and touched the warm slippery body (he felt its warmth). A paw brushed his wrist (he saw the claws). Then the dog, wrenched round by the water in an eddying whirl, moved out of his reach and passed him by. Tim slipped head first into the stream.

The translation, the cold, the shock deprived him of sense for a second. Then he found himself trying to swim. His instinct still was to rescue the dog. He could see the beast struggling only a yard or two ahead of him. With his utmost strength Tim contested with the swift water, to gain on it, to reach the dog and pull it to the shore. But the stream, not his efforts, determined their relative velocity.

At the next moment Tim had stopped thinking about the dog, he was thinking about himself. He tried to grasp the bushes and the trailing grasses which were fleeting by, but the stream jerked them from his grasp. He was breathless with swallowing cold water and wearied with his brief strenuous attempt to swim. He kept clutching at the banks and trying to veer off the main stream and arrest himself in their shelter, but against the flow he could not control his limbs or alter the direction in which he was being hustled along. His leg struck violently upon an underwater obstruction. Then his clutching hand touched smooth wet stone and was being whirled round the curve of the canal.

Tim had by now pictured what was to come and had already made a plan. There was a precious crucial moment when the water paused at the top of the weir, when it checked and paused and hopped itself over the stone lip before it went streaming down the smooth green slide into the whirlpool. Tim felt that if he could only hang onto the stone at the top of the slope where the torrent became docile for a moment, or spread-eagle his body against the vertical wall below, he could gain enough control to cling there, to steady himself, then to edge along to the side of the canal and, rising to his feet upon the head of the weir, to climb out onto the brink.

He tried to straighten himself so that he could look ahead. This proved very difficult. If the stream had been straight it would have been possible to assemble his limbs for the operation. As it was, however, he was pinned against the outside wall of the curve by the centrifugal force of the water, and whisked along half choking by the high wave of foam. He was by now mainly concerned with keeping his head above the surface. He caught a sideways glimpse of the sudden glossy smooth line of the checked stream, and beyond it the stone wall above the tunnel mouth. He had a quick vision of the black and white dog appearing for a moment on the edge of the fall, then tumbling over and vanishing. Tim tried to prepare himself for the impact with the vertical edge, the near side of the weir. Then one of his knees banged against something very hard below him. He realized too late that there was an underwater stone ramp leading up to the head of the water slide. If he had been prepared for it, this ramp could have helped him to slow himself down in the shallower water against the tearing rush of the stream; but now the unexpected obstruction and the sudden knock simply confused him further and destroyed what was left of his intent to clasp the high point of the fall and stay there. He retracted his hurt knee, pushed his hands instinctively against the rising stones, turned sideways in the water, found his shoulder already upon the smooth lip of the weir, grasped helplessly at a green slimy surface, took the urgent current like a blow in the back, then found himself rolling over and over down the slope into the whirlpool.

When Tim’s head rose above the surface of the raging foam he was already close to the tunnel. He could see the waters contending, boiling, stooping as they constrained themselves into the tunnel whose entrance was below the surface. The smooth stone walls of the canal now rose high above on either side, cutting out the light of the sky. Tim thought, oh why did I have to drink this water and not the other? And he thought, oh Gertrude, Gertrude - He was fully conscious that he was about to die. He took a last gasping breath and instinctively ducked his head into the foam as he was sucked down under the submerged centre of the stone arch.

 

 

Tim had taken another breath. He was aware of the breath as a miracle, a precious amazing event. Then something hit him very hard on the head. He swallowed water, choking. He was in total darkness, at any rate if his eyes were open, which he was not sure about. With the realization that he was still alive came an instantaneous absolute death-fear identical with hope. The roof of the tunnel was at this point, and for the moment and only a little way, clear of the water. Tim took another breath. All the time he was, in some sort, swimming, that is he was agitating his limbs instinctively so as to keep his head above the surface. This was difficult since his legs seemed to have been swept below his head rather than behind it and the strong water in the narrower space had somehow imprisoned his arms. His dabbing feet could touch no bottom below. He made a schematic effort to float on his back with his nose and mouth towards the roof, but this failed, and he received in the process a hard bang on the brow. He had already grasped the problem, which was to keep his face above water while not being stunned and rendered unconscious by a blow from the roof. His body rather than his mind informed him that it was no use. In a moment the roof would descend to the level of the water or below it, or else the whole torrent would plunge headlong into some deep hole. He would die indeed like a rat, and perhaps no one would ever know what had happened to him. No one would know and no one would care. Oh let me live! he prayed. A little while ago he had seemed to want death, but now he desired so passionately to live. He thought, I must live, I must, I must!

The roof seemed to be descending, more and more often and more and more violently it struck him as he opened his mouth to breathe. He had by now established a rhythm, not just instinctively gasping, but taking a deep breath and holding it with his head ducked down in the water, then taking another. He even tried with one hand to gauge the height of the roof before he lifted his head to breathe. This was no help however since the darkness had deprived him of all sense of space and touch and it was difficult to manoeuvre his arms. Moreover his head was spinning with repeated blows and he was swallowing more water. Each time he took a breath he thought this may be the last. He thought this fear, this darkness,
is
death, this is what it’s like. But oh I so much want to live, please let me live, any life is better than death, oh let me only live ...

 

 

Suddenly and with no warning, perhaps his eyes were closed after all, Tim emerged into brilliant sunlight. There was nothing now above him except the bright blue morning sky. He gasped, taking another wonderful breath. As he did so he saw ahead of him, with a clarity which remained with him forever after, the sparkling canal, looking so peaceful and beautiful between its grassy banks, running a little to the left and leaving behind it on the outside of the curve a little yellow stony beach. And upon the beach Tim saw the black and white dog climbing out of the water.

Instinct moved his wearied limbs and somehow it seemed at that moment that the canal actually helped him. It deposited him gently on the beach and hurried on. It had finished with him. Tim crawled on hands and knees out of the water. Looking up he saw the dog again. It was shaking itself. After a good shake it began to sniff a nearby tuft of grass. It lifted its leg against the grass, and then trotted off with a preoccupied air.

Tim blessed the dog, he blessed the open sky and the sun, he even blessed the canal. He crawled up the slope of stones until he reached the grass and lay there spitting. He felt that his body was full of water, it had entered his mouth and his nose and his ears, it had soaked into his flesh. He sat for a while and concentrated on breathing, that wonderful wonderful operation, now suddenly so easy. The sweet air, smelling of dry grass, rushed gladly into his lungs. He breathed, not looking round him, letting the light dazzle his eyes.

Then he found that he was taking his shoes off. He was surprised to find that they were still on his feet. He recalled now how awkward they had felt in the first moments of his immersion. His feet seemed to have swollen inside them. When he had pulled them off he rested, lying flat. The sun was hot. Then he sat up, and with more difficulty took off his shirt and trousers and socks, and wrang the water out of them and spread them upon the grass. Then he rested again. Then he sat up and stared about.

He was in an unfamiliar valley, in a large flat meadow of yellow grass. There was no habitation, no person. On the other side of the canal (he noticed the canal with a kind of surprise as if he had forgotten it) there was a well-tended vineyard protected by three dense rows of cypress trees. Beyond the cypresses, far far away across the flat land, he could see the blue mountains. Behind him, on his own side of the canal, were the familiar rocks, rising up quite close to him out of dense dark green prickly undergrowth. He was glad that the stream had deposited him on the same side as the village. He would have been very reluctant to enter that water again.

Still sitting, he pulled his shirt and trousers on. They were still damp. He was aware of pains in his body. He had received a blow on the cheek bone and one on the brow and several on the top of his head. He felt these places carefully. He had a headache and felt giddy. The sun hurt his eyes and the landscape jumped about before him and became covered in dots. His hand was hurting and had started bleeding again. There was a nasty graze on his knee. He began to stop being glad to be alive, and to start feeling very ill and wretched. He felt very tired and very hungry. He tried to get up and failed, feeling too giddy. He got up at last and stood holding his shoes and socks in his hand and wondering which way to go.

He saw the wall of smooth stones out of which the canal was bubbling up like a spring, the opening being under water. Beyond it stretched the unbroken meadow, bordered by distant poplars and umbrella pines. He looked up at the rocks, trying to recognize something in their formation. Blinking hard, he thought he could descry at the skyline two of the humpy dome-shaped rocks which had been a feature of his night-wanderings, which now seemed so long ago. He could not estimate the length of time he had been in the tunnel or how far away the other end of it was. In any case he wanted to get away from the canal. He decided to see what the rocks looked like at the nearest point. He began to walk barefoot across the meadow, but the sharp dry grass hurt his feet. He sat down to put on his shoes and socks. The shoes would hardly go on, his feet seemed miles away, and he felt so dizzy and fatigued he could hardly get up again. At the least exertion lights flashed before his face. One of his eyes seemed to be closing up.