Titus, with his eyes sharp as pine needles, saw the trees – he would find bait and make a hook – the green trees, some twisted and some with fronds hanging from them as though eager to catch the fish. ‘Dog, help me to pull that frond which bends, then we must find one even more delicate.’
Titus pulled and pulled, but the frond clung to life as madly and with as much strength as the fish swimming unaware of its fate.
The dog had disappeared with the suddenness of a fog descending on an unsuspecting day, where the sun glowered.
A terrible sense of aloneness enveloped Titus and he suddenly foresaw, with an appalling intensity, the emptiness of a life led only to survive from day to day. Titus had felt that he had no need for patter, for parlance, for the rigmarole of society, but a life of only basic food, water, warmth without companionship would be meagre.
In the meantime the most urgent need was to survive. Even raw meat, raw fish, seemed palatable to Titus. But his thoughts raced back to his childhood. Dim, distant memories, of a boy, older than the rest, more knowledgeable in the lore of self-survival, who began to teach his companions the art of fire-making without which they might have frozen to the marrow. He almost forgot Dog’s absence as these remembrances surfaced.
He searched around him for a blunt stick, until he came upon one that seemed right enough to rub backwards and forwards on another piece of wood lying like a sacrifice upon the ground. He remembered his friend of long ago, issuing orders to his satellites, to rub and rub until their arms ached and the stick lying on the ground had a groove made in it. They didn’t really know how it suddenly happened when a spark, a little miracle of red heat, appeared at the tip of the mutilating stick, and their commander quickly took it and laid it under the neatly stacked wood already waiting to be ignited. It was cold in the forest, but gradually, gradually, a glow from underneath the pile began to warm them, and Titus remembered the screeches of joy that cleaved the air, from the throats of his young, frightened companions. Another memory that came to him was the command to keep a smouldering stick, so that the effort of lighting another fire would be eased, and to keep it smouldering, so that when the weather became damp, it would still be possible to light.
So Titus searched until he found, and built a small pyre – from branches, snapped briskly, because there was no rain – and he built, and he built, and he rubbed and rubbed, until once more, as years ago, the small red spark appeared and soon the pyre from sudden beginnings of rose colour began to crackle with sound. There was neither wind nor rain as the smoke mixed with the fire and spiralled upwards. Since leaving the hut of the lovers with his dog, he had not felt so warm, and now his anxiety, which had been quelled by his concentration in making the fire, became paramount. He missed his dog. If to no human being he could show the success of making fire, at least he should to Dog.
‘I am quite alone now.’
As Titus said this to himself there was a cry of pain and the undergrowth being parted, and Dog appeared carrying an animal in his mouth and laid it at Titus’s feet.
14
Lagoons – Fires
So fire had been learned – skinning had been learned – the barbaric acts of survival had been learned. No longer did the plucking or the skinning of the beautiful nauseate. So close is barbarity to civilisation.
Titus and his hound rested themselves, in the knowledge that they could now both survive where they were, until impetuosity, necessity, or the sheer desire to move bade them take to other shores, or other lands or peoples, for whom Titus was beginning increasingly to find a need. He had forgotten the physical desire for a woman, while he lay by the waning fire he felt he was no longer a man. When he thought of a woman, he could hardly envisage one. He took a stick and, oppressed by loneliness, drew upon the earth a woman.
No skill, no subtlety – breasts to suckle and breasts for suckling, round, pink-nippled, he made with tiny pink stones; a waist, and then that most urgent of all womanhood, plundered by man. Frustrated, he ceased drawing and lay face down on the coral-coloured earth, wept until all feelings ceased. His dog, who sensed every deprivation of his master, would lie at his feet after his morning’s hunting and remain silent, until Titus was stirred by physical hunger of another kind.
‘We have been gradually moving, Dog, and that water we see ahead of us has the tang of salt in it. Our diet will be saved. Salt is as much a part of my diet as a woman. It savours, it flavours, it adds desire to the beauty of this coral land. Even so, I want other company and when it comes I shall want it to go. I shall want to flee from it. I am no longer, or perhaps never was, a part of the human race.’
During the days Titus searched for a tree, blown down by the elements, that with rough hand-hewn tools he could fashion into a boat, which could negotiate the lagoons to which they had unwittingly drifted.
He made one and with long poles for oars he sat in it and glided with the grace of a swan on the water, and his one and only companion howled with despair, thinking that he was to be left alone.
‘Oh, how cruel I am.Where has that desire come from that wishes to hurt?’
Titus drifted back and Dog, as the tree trunk edged itself to the shore, put one paw tentatively, and then his other fearingly, then gently lowered his two back legs into the boat, until he attained his position as sentinel.
The sun, along with so many other things, made its gleaming way on to Titus’s face and his hands, and poured solace over man and beast. They drifted in and out of waters, close to coral reefs, hunting, fishing, making fires. Titus sang, and Dog howled with the abandon that comes but seldom, with an awareness of the glories that life can hold but manifests with solemn rarity.
They drifted, and the beauty surrounding them became almost commonplace. Titus’s hair began to burnish, and his face to tan – his body emanated a sensuousness to which there was no woman to respond. In the heat of the afternoon he pulled in, stripped off the remnants of what few clothes he had left and lay in the sun, and then with the dog he sought the shade, and they lay with arms and legs and paws outstretched, with their own respective dreams and the sounds that come from sleep – the heavy breathing, the calling from a distant subconscious and the balm of sleep – names from the past, sights, the illness of the past, and sometimes an echo that might be an intimation of the future.
Only hunger roused them.
The boat lilted up and down, with the ease of a craftsman. Titus awoke as the sun cooled, and he searched for his remnants of clothing. It took less time for his dog to position himself on the craft than for Titus to pull on his rags, and their drift in the dusk began again.
* * * * *
‘I AM COLD.’
Ahead was the sinister vermilion. Fire. No longer did the sun warm them. They were cold, yet felt the heat. The flames performed the most skilled permutations of movement that could be imagined. The flames tore upwards to the sky, raging, tormented, tormenting, and the sound of heat coming through the air was terrifying; it was the crackling of ancient tribes, the scream of a hare torn to pieces, the violence inflicted by religion on its heretics. It was far away and it was beautiful. Its colour, unknown, unlearned by any artist. It was a distant sight and distant sound, yet where they were anchored Titus and his dog lay in silence, terrified.
Because the fire was far enough away Titus could afford to philosophise. Any closer he and his companion might well have been reduced to charcoal. ‘Is all beauty hurtful?’ he wondered, remembering the damage done to the walls of Gormenghast by the creeper in all its red and gold glory.
‘Oh, Dog, let us go in another direction, away, away from it all. We might chance upon something we recognise.’
15
Among the Soldiers
A gale, over life-size, limbered up on the two pathetic exiles. Their boat was tossed, they were sick. Titus lay weakened from hunger, wandering, cold, despair, but there is always a hope, hidden subterraneously. Hope keeps man alive amidst all horrors. Even in the worst of men there is a
little weakness, a flicker of hope, whether it be stirred by the golden hair of a child, or the grey hair of age, or some long forgotten memory. It was one such harsh man who descended on the river and drifted silent and mysterious as any ghost.
Hearing the sounds – a rhythmic moaning – he trod gingerly in the direction of the river, pushing the mist away from him as though it were a gauze curtain. His voice, used to command, was tossed by the wind into a parody of a voice, until it reached Titus’s ears like the sound of frogs at night, insistent, harsh, removed from his experience.
Dog lifted his head painfully, alert to the new sound, so the croak drifted once more through the topsy-turvy mist, and Dog moved his right paw, and gently tapped Titus’s cheek.
The voice of the man reached Dog again and in reply he let out an unearthly howl.
It generated knowledge in both, and curiosity in both: who or what would find the answer first? The man had the advantage, in that he had no care for any living soul but his own. Dog had the advantage in that he had the care of a living soul and, in his tactile way, exhausted as he was, that living soul was more important to him than anything else in his small circumscribed world.
The man was a soldier, a man used to issuing commands and to being obeyed. Behind the mist were a group of men, rough and used to hard living, to all the elements that nature can devise. They warmed themselves and threw their untidy shadows across each other by a fire on which was stretched the body of a suckling pig.
Laughs and whistles, a song, a harsh command from one man to another broke through to the man in the mist. He knew the men he commanded. The vilest of them was putty to him. ‘Oh, let them sack and burn and prey – laugh, rape and be gay, but when the time comes and I say ‘‘stop’’ or when the time comes and I say ‘‘go’’ then they will. I have only to whistle to them and they will, like automata, rush to my bidding, but I want to discover the source of this sound, this nebulous lament. What I do with what I have found is of importance to no one but myself.’
Dog yelled. His voice eerie as a foghorn, reached the soldier, master of men. His howl broke through the darkness and the dim shape was silhouetted, black against grey with its jaws open.
The master of men clutched the silhouette in his mind’s eye and, forcing his way with blade on felt undergrowth, he ran with utmost clumsiness towards the howl.
He came to the sound – water lapping, a panting, both of fear and achievement – and the strong wind was enough to part the veil dividing them for the master of men to see a ghostly Dog. He leaned across the nettles and the eggs in nests to touch until the creature surrendered to the hand of man.
Dog was the first to perceive that if not a friend at least not an enemy was at hand. His howl became more frenzied, as he sought the voice that shouted in an unknown tongue. The man yelled orders to the men behind him to come – one or two of them to help him reach forward to waylay the wandering bark before it was lost in darkness.
Crude men who had dined off their suckling pig wiped their hands across their lips, until the grease dripped down their unshaven chins leaving a trail, like the silver line made by a snail on its slow peregrinations from one purposeful destination of its own to another.
They had heard the voice of the man who commanded them and had no wish to concede to his commands, but his natural authority forced them to draw lots in their own way, which was to order the two youngest members of their group to forge into the darkness towards the water.
They carried burning torches but made no sound, except that of heavy boots threading and treading their way uneasily over lianas and twisted boles, night creatures scuttled in every direction unaccustomed to the smell of humans. Furtive and frightened, the two young men didn’t dare make their presence known to the man who dominated everything and every person with whom he came in contact. Fear harassed them. Each could sense the pumping of the other’s heart. It wasn’t the quickening throb that a beautiful woman can induce; it was the same organ but a different song. Trembling with fear, the two untried youths walked towards their mentor.
The shrill and despairing yell of Dog sounded through the forest as far as the revelling soldiers, surfeited on suckling pig, who lay grossly, coarsely, lecherously around the dying fire and made its way into their scarcely alive subconscious. Then, having heard it, they relapsed into drunken inertia, and left to the chosen young all decisions as to how to find the yelps and cries for help.
At last they heard the voice of command and, because of their own lack of confidence, they ran, tripping, falling, swearing, once more towards authority.
‘Quick – my men – shine your flares, we are reaching the unknown.’ Dog’s throat, hoarse with its demand, almost made its last appeal – smaller and more pitiful as though buried under the debris of an earthquake, a voice that had almost given up hope, tiny and defeated.
The flare picked up unknown silhouettes, and the sounds coming from the moving hulk were diminishing in as eerie a way as footsteps, lone footsteps, in the silence of the night disappear and make themselves heard to new ears, passing into new silence and out again.
‘Quick – one of you hold both flares and the other one come to my aid.’
The command rang out and one of the young men hastened towards the voice, giving the flare to his companion.
‘Here, here, hold fast to this hulk.’ The sound of the water in the silence was mysterious and the man in command tripped over a liana, and as he fell he caught hold of one of the vines and almost fell into the river.
‘Come here, you fool – you idiot,’ and a string of obscenities followed, tracking its way into the dithering jelly of a youth who had no idea what to do.
‘Hold my legs – tell that jackass to give us light.’
Suddenly the flares picked out a body lying spread-eagled, arms outstretched and holding with all its strength to the sides of the bank. In the gory light of the flare, the face appeared ashen, with the lips moving – a somnambulist upside down, lost and sleep-talking, and as the goldness moved over the body, leaving it in darkness, it tracked its way to the poor whimpering dog – tongue hanging out, but still poised to protect to his last whimper the living being he was guarding.
‘Come on, you fools!’ shouted the commander, and as he shouted and pulled at the boat, one of the young men in his nervousness dropped one of the flares into the water and the sound of the sizzling awakened the sleeper who called out in an unknown language, but Dog understood and made his way precariously towards his master to assuage his fear.
The commander wrenched Titus ashore. ‘Go back, you fools, and bring a plank covered with your capes, and two more men and more flares. Take the only flare there is left now and leave us in darkness, but return using my instructions for warmth, and soup and shelter for whatever, or whoever we have here. And hurry, you fools!’
16
Still Among the Soldiers
The foolish young men wended their way quickly. Out of their commander’s earshot, they tripped and swore. The slightly stronger of the two repeated the commands they had heard issued so recently, but his word didn’t carry authority. They both knew that speed and the return with their undoubtedly inebriated seniors was crucial.
Poor young men, with so little experience, except perhaps of rather innocent debauchery, they stumbled and they sang, and they swore, and they gavotted towards the dying embers of a fire, around which they knew they would have to bring the immigrants or intruders to their camp.
In disarray, with no presiding genius to instruct them on how to assemble a stretcher from the rough materials at their command, they swayed and swirled towards long lengths of poles, which could form the handles on which to bear the body towards sanctuary.
A roughly made stretcher grew precariously and amateurishly, and with capes stretched across and lashed together with lianas it appeared to be strong enough to take a human body. The silliness and facetiousness of the young soldiers increased as they performed their task, and the one who
had taken command with so little effect issued a giggling order to advance, which so infuriated the one to whom it had been addressed that he raised the cape stretcher and brought it down on the head of his non-commanding officer, who appeared to go through it, as a dog through a covered hoop in a circus. No applause accompanied the spectacle.
While this pathetic charade was being enacted, Titus still lay sprawled, neither knowing nor caring whether he lived or died, but Dog lay on the bank knowing and caring. The commander, frustrated by having no one to direct, save an unknown male of no known place of origin, paced the uneven ground with energy and petulance more suitable to a frustrated schoolmistress than a leader of men.
A light appeared to the south – only a tiny halo as glimpsed on the head of an Italian Baby Jesus, it couldn’t throw any light on the surroundings, but it was sign enough for the hungry man of action awaiting the return of his men to the river bank.
As the halo hovered and made its way, lingeringly as a lover’s kiss, towards the darkness, the sounds that accompanied it also made themselves heard. There was not the same religious calm about the sounds as the sight. Indeed, there was a degree of instability in the sound. When two young men given authority for the first time come to use it, they must be forgiven for a certain amount of misuse. They had managed between them to seduce four more inebriated young huskies, who had been lolling in the firelight with nothing to do, to act as stretcher-bearers by the promise of illicit traffic in women, drugs and gold.