The Complete Short Stories, Volume 2 Page 11

  ‘How pleasant for you.’

  ‘People who marry for money earn it. I really earned mine.’

  ‘Thank you, Charles.’

  Gifford chuckled to himself. ‘One thing, Louise, you do know how to take an insult. It’s a matter of breeding. I’m surprised you aren’t more choosy over Lowry.’

  ‘Choosy?’ Louise laughed awkwardly. ‘I hadn’t realized that I’d chosen him. I think Richard is very obliging and helpful – as you knew when you made him your assistant, by the way.’

  Gifford began to compose his reply, when a sudden chill enveloped his chest and shoulders. He pulled weakly at the blanket, an immense feeling of fatigue and inertia overtaking him. He looked up glassily at his wife, their bickering conversation forgotten. The sunlight had vanished, and a profound darkness lay over the face of the delta, illuminated for a brief interval by the seething outlines of thousands of snakes. Trying to capture the image in his eyes, he struggled forward against the incubus pressing upon his chest, and then slid backwards into a pit of nausea and giddiness. ‘Louise … !’

  Quickly his wife’s hands were on his own, her shoulder supporting his head. He vomited emptily, struggling with his contracting musculature like a snake trying to shed its skin. Dimly he heard his wife shout for someone and the cradle topple to the ground, dragging the bedclothes with it.

  ‘Louise,’ he whispered, ‘one of these nights … I want you to take me down to the snakes.’

  Now and then, during the afternoon, when the pain in his foot became acute, he would wake to find Louise sitting beside him. All the while he moved through ceaseless dreams, sinking from one plane of reverie to the next, the great mandalas guiding him downwards, enthroning him upon their luminous dials.

  During the next few days the conversations with his wife were less frequent. As his condition deteriorated, Gifford felt able to do little more than stare out across the mud-flats, almost unaware of the movement and arguments around him. His wife and Mechippe formed a tenuous bridge with reality, but the true centre of his attention was the nexus of beaches on to which the snakes emerged in the evenings. This was a zone of complete timelessness, where at last he sensed the simultaneity of all time, the coexistence of all events in his past life.

  The snakes now made their appearance half an hour earlier. Once he caught a glimpse of their motionless albino forms exposed on the slopes in the hot noon air. Their chalk-white skins and raised heads, in a reclining posture very like his own, made them seem immeasurably ancient, like the white sphinxes in the funeral corridors to the pharaonic tombs at Karnak.

  Although his strength had ebbed markedly, the infection on his foot had spread only a few inches above the ankle, and Louise Gifford realized that her husband’s deterioration was a symptom of a profound psychological malaise, the mal de passage induced by the potently atmospheric landscape and its evocation of the lagoon-world of the Paleocene. She suggested to Gifford during one of his lucid intervals that they move the camp half a mile across the plain into the shadow of the ridge, near the Toltec terrace city where she and Lowry carried out their archaeological work.

  But Gifford had refused, reluctant to leave the snakes on the beach. For some reason he disliked the terrace city. This was not because it was there that he had inflicted on himself the wound which now threatened his life. That this was simply an unfortunate accident devoid of any special symbolism he accepted without qualification. But the enigmatic presence of the terrace city, with its crumbling galleries and internal courts encrusted by the giant thistles and wire moss, seemed a huge man-made artefact which militated against the super-real naturalism of the delta. However, the terrace city, like the delta, was moving backwards in time, the baroque tracery of the serpent deities along the friezes dissolving and being replaced by the intertwined tendrils of the moss-plants, the pseudo-organic forms made by man in the image of nature reverting to their original. Kept at a distance behind him, as a huge backdrop, the ancient Toltec ruin seemed to brood in the dust like a decaying mastodon, a dying mountain whose dark dream of the earth enveloped Gifford with its luminous presence.

  ‘Do you feel well enough to move on?’ Louise asked Gifford when they had received no word of Mechippe’s messenger after a further week. She gazed down at him critically as he lay in the shade under the awning, his thin body almost invisible among the folds of the blankets and the monstrous tent over his leg, only the arrogant face with its stiffening beard reminding her of his identity. ‘Perhaps if we met the search party halfway …’

  Gifford shook his head, his eyes moving off across the bleached plain to the almost drained channels of the delta. ‘Which search party? There isn’t a boat with a shallow enough draught between here and Taxcol.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll send a helicopter. They could see us from the air.’

  ‘Helicopter? You’ve got a bee in your bonnet, Louise. We’ll stay here for another week or so.’

  ‘But your leg,’ his wife insisted. ‘A doctor should –’

  ‘How can I move? Jerked about on a stretcher, I’d be dead within five minutes.’ He looked up wearily at his wife’s pale sunburnt face, waiting for her to go away.

  She hovered over him uncertainly. Fifty yards away, Richard Lowry sat in the open air outside his tent, watching her quietly. Involuntarily, before she could prevent herself, her hand moved to straighten her hair.

  ‘Is Lowry there?’ Gifford asked.

  ‘Richard? Yes.’ Louise hesitated. ‘We’ll be back for lunch. I’ll change your dressing then.’

  As she stepped from his field of vision Gifford lifted his chin slightly to examine the beaches obscured by the morning haze. The baked mud slopes glistened like hot concrete, and only a thin trickle of black fluid leaked slowly along the troughs. Here and there small islands fifty yards in diameter, shaped like perfect hemispheres, rose off the floors of the channels, imparting a curious geometric formality to the landscape. The whole area remained completely motionless, but Gifford lay patiently in his stretcher-chair, waiting for the snakes to come out on to the beaches.

  When he noticed Mechippe serving lunch to him he realized that Lowry and Louise had not returned from the site.

  ‘Take it away.’ He pushed aside the bowl of condensed soup. ‘Bring me whisky soda. Double.’ He glanced sharply at the Indian. ‘Where’s Mrs Gifford?’

  Mechippe steered the soup bowl back on to his tray. ‘Miss’ Gifford coming soon, sir. Sun very hot, she wait till afternoon.’

  Gifford lay back for a moment, thinking of Louise and Richard Lowry, the image of them together touching the barest residue of emotion. Then he tried to wave away the haze with his hand.

  ‘What’s that –?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Damn it, I thought I saw one.’ He shook his head slowly as the white form he had fleetingly glimpsed vanished among the opalescent slopes. ‘Too early, though. Where’s that whisky?’

  ‘Coming, sir.’

  Panting slightly after the exertion of sitting up, Gifford looked around restlessly at the clutter of tents. Diagonally behind him, emerging from the lengthening focus of his eyes, loomed the long ridges of the Toltec city. Somewhere among its spiral galleries and corridors were Louise and Richard Lowry. Looking down from one of the high terraces across the alluvial bench, the distant camp would seem like a few bleached husks, guarded by a dead man propped up in a chair.

  ‘Darling, I’m awfully sorry. We tried to get back but I twisted my heel –’ Louise Gifford laughed lightly at this ‘– rather as you did, now that I come to think of it. Perhaps I’ll be joining you here in a day or two. I’m so glad Mechippe looked after you and changed the dressing. How do you feel? You look a lot better.’

  Gifford nodded drowsily. The afternoon fever had subsided but he felt drained and exhausted, his awareness of his wife’s chattering presence only stimulated by the whisky he had been drinking slowly all day. ‘It’s been a day at the zoo,’ he said, adding, with tired humour: ‘At the rept
ile enclosure.’

  ‘You and your snakes. Charles, you are a scream.’ Louise paced around the stretcher-chair, downwind of the cradle, then withdrew to the lee-side. She waved to Richard Lowry, who was carrying some specimen trays into his tent. ‘Dick, I suggest we shower and then join Charles for drinks.’

  ‘Great idea,’ Lowry called back. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Much better.’ To Gifford she said: ‘You don’t mind, Charles? It will do you good to talk a little.’

  Gifford gestured vaguely with his head. When his wife had gone to her tent he focused his eyes carefully on the beaches. There, in the evening light, the snakes festered and writhed, their long forms gliding in and out of each other, the whole darkening horizon locked together by their serpentine embrace. There were now literally tens of thousands of them, reaching beyond the margins of the beach across the open ground towards the camp. During the afternoon, at the height of his fever, he had tried to call to them, but his voice had been too weak.

  Later, over their cocktails, Richard Lowry asked: ‘How do you feel, sir?’ When Gifford made no reply he said: ‘I’m glad to hear the leg is better.’

  ‘You know, Dick, I think it’s psychological,’ Louise remarked. ‘As soon as you and I are out of the way Charles improves.’ Her eyes caught Richard Lowry’s and held them.

  Lowry played with his glass, a faintly self-assured smile on his bland face. ‘What about the messenger? Is there any news?’

  ‘Have you heard anything, Charles? Perhaps someone will fly over in a couple of days.’

  During this exchange of pleasantries, and those which followed on the subsequent days, Charles Gifford remained silent and withdrawn, sinking more deeply into the interior landscape emerging from the beaches of the delta. His wife and Richard Lowry sat with him in the evenings when they returned from the terrace city, but he was barely aware of their presence. By now they seemed to move in a peripheral world, players in a marginal melodrama. Now and then he would think about them, but the effort seemed to lack point. His wife’s involvement with Lowry left him unperturbed; if anything, he felt grateful to Lowry for freeing him from Louise.

  Once, two or three days later, when Lowry came to sit by him in the evening, Gifford roused himself and said dryly: ‘I hear you found treasure in the terrace city.’ But before Lowry could produce a reply he relapsed again into his vigil.

  One night shortly afterwards, when he was woken in the early hours of the morning by a sudden spasm of pain in his foot, he saw his wife and Lowry walking through the powdery blue darkness by the latter’s tent. For a fleeting moment their embracing figures were like the snakes coiled together on the beaches.

  ‘Mechippe!’

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Mechippe!’

  ‘I am here, sir.’

  ‘Tonight, Mechippe,’ Gifford told him, ‘you sleep in my tent. Understand? I want you near me. Use my bed, if you want. Will you hear if I call?’

  ‘Of course, sir. I hear you.’ The head-boy’s polished ebony face regarded Gifford circumspectly. He now tended Gifford with a care that indicated that the latter, however much a novice, had at last entered the world of absolute values, composed of the delta and the snakes, the brooding presence of the Toltec ruin and his dying leg.

  After midnight, Gifford lay quietly in the stretcher-chair, watching the full moon rise over the luminous beaches. Like a Medusa’s crown, thousands of the snakes had climbed the crests of the beaches and were spreading thickly across the margins of the plain, their white backs exposed to the moonlight. ‘Mechippe.’

  The head-boy had been squatting silently in the shadows. ‘Dr Gifford?’

  Gifford spoke in a low but clear voice. ‘Crutches. Over there.’ As the head-boy passed the two carved sticks Gifford tossed aside the blankets. Carefully he withdrew his leg from the cradle, then sat up and lifted it on to the ground. He leaned forward into the crutches and found his balance. The bandaged foot, like a white club, stuck out in front of him. ‘Now. In the field-desk, right-hand drawer, there’s my gun. Bring it to me.’

  For once the head-boy hesitated. ‘Gun, sir?’

  ‘Smith & Wesson. It should be loaded, but there’s a box of cartridges.’

  Again the head-boy hesitated, his eyes roving to the two tents spaced in a line away from them, their entrances hooded by the dust canopies. The whole camp lay in silence, the light stirring of the wind muted by the still warm sand and the dark talcum-like air. ‘Gun,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Easing himself slowly to his feet, Gifford paused uncertainly. His head swam with the exertion, but the huge anchor of his left foot held him to the ground. Taking the pistol, he gestured with it towards the delta.

  ‘We’re going to see the snakes, Mechippe. You help me. All right?’

  Mechippe’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. ‘The snakes, sir?’

  ‘Yes. You take me halfway there. Then you can come back. Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.’

  Mechippe nodded slowly, his eyes looking out over the delta. ‘I help you, doctor.’

  Labouring slowly across the sand, Gifford steadied himself on the head-boy’s arm. After a few steps he found his left leg too heavy to lift, and dragged the dead load through the soft sand.

  ‘Christ, it’s a long way.’ They had covered twenty yards. By some optical freak the nearest snakes now seemed to be half a mile away, barely visible between the slight rises. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  They plodded on a further ten yards. The open mouth of Lowry’s tent was on their left, the white bell of the mosquito net looming in the shadows like a sepulchre. Almost exhausted, Gifford tottered unsteadily, trying to focus his eyes through the tinted air.

  There was a sudden flash and roar as the revolver discharged itself, cannoning out of his hand. He felt Mechippe’s fingers stiffen on his arm, and heard someone emerge from Lowry’s tent, a woman’s startled cry of fear. A second figure, this time a man’s, appeared and with a backward glance at Gifford darted away like a startled animal among the tents, racing head down towards the terrace city.

  Annoyed by these interruptions, Gifford searched blindly for the revolver, struggling with the crutches. But the darkness condensed around him, and the sand came upwards to strike his face.

  The next morning, as the tents were dismantled and packed away, Gifford felt too tired to look out across the delta. The snakes never appeared until the early afternoon, and the disappointment of failing to reach them the previous night had drained his energy.

  When only his own tent remained of the camp, and the naked shower scaffoldings protruded from the ground like pieces of abstract sculpture marking a futuristic cairn, Louise came over to him.

  ‘It’s time for them to pack your tent.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact but guarded. ‘The boys are building a stretcher for you. You should be comfortable.’

  Gifford gestured her away. ‘I can’t go. Leave Mechippe with me and take the others.’

  ‘Charles, be practical for once.’ Louise stood before him, her face composed. ‘We can’t stay here indefinitely, and you need treatment. It’s obvious now that Mechippe’s boy never reached Taxcol. Our supplies won’t last for ever.’

  ‘They don’t have to last for ever.’ Gifford’s eyes, almost closed, surveyed the distant horizon like a pair of defective binoculars. ‘Leave me one month’s.’

  ‘Charles –’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Louise …’ Wearily he let his head loll on the pillow. He noticed Richard Lowry supervising the stowage of the stores, the Indian boys moving around him like willing children. ‘Why all the hurry? Can’t you stay another week?’

  ‘We can’t, Charles.’ She looked her husband straight in the face. ‘Richard feels he must go. You understand. For your sake.’

  ‘My sake?’ Gifford shook his head. ‘I don’t give a damn about Lowry. Last night I was going out to look at the snakes.’

  ‘Well …’ Louise smoothed her bush shirt. ‘This trip has been such a
fiasco, Charles, there are many things that frighten me. I’ll tell them to dismantle the tent when you’re ready.’

  ‘Louise.’ With a last effort Gifford sat up. In a quiet voice, in order not to embarrass his wife by letting Richard Lowry hear him, he said: ‘I went out to look at the snakes. You do understand that?’

  ‘But Charles!’ With a sudden burst of exasperation his wife snapped: ‘Don’t you realize, there are no snakes! Ask Mechippe, ask Richard Lowry or any of the boys! The entire river is as dry as a bone!’

  Gifford turned to look at the white beaches of the delta. ‘You and Lowry go. I’m sorry, Louise, but I couldn’t stand the trip.’

  ‘You must!’ She gestured at the distant hills, at the terrace city and the delta. ‘There’s something wrong with this place, Charles, somehow it’s convinced you that …’

  Followed by a group of boys, Richard Lowry walked slowly towards them, signalling with his hands to Louise. She hesitated, then on an impulse waved him back and sat down beside Gifford. ‘Charles, listen. I’ll stay with you for another week as you ask, so that you can come to terms with these hallucinations, if you promise me that you’ll leave then. Richard can go ahead on his own, he’ll meet us in Taxcol with a doctor.’ She lowered her voice, ‘Charles, I’m sorry about Richard. I realize now …’

  She leaned forward to see her husband’s face. He lay in his seat in front of the solitary tent, the circle of boys watching him patiently from a distance. Ten miles away a solitary cloud drifted over one of the mesas, like a plume of smoke above a dormant but still active volcano.

  ‘Charles.’ She waited for her husband to speak, hoping that he would reprove and so perhaps even forgive her. But Charles Gifford was thinking only of the snakes on the beaches.

  1964

  THE DROWNED GIANT

  On the morning after the storm the body of a drowned giant was washed ashore on the beach five miles to the north-west of the city. The first news of its arrival was brought by a nearby farmer and subsequently confirmed by the local newspaper reporters and the police. Despite this the majority of people, myself among them, remained sceptical, but the return of more and more eye-witnesses attesting to the vast size of the giant was finally too much for our curiosity. The library where my colleagues and I were carrying out our research was almost deserted when we set off for the coast shortly after two o’clock, and throughout the day people continued to leave their offices and shops as accounts of the giant circulated around the city.