Inner Circle Read online

  Our father has counted all my ages.’ He knew my thoughts whenever he wanted to know them. And he always called the Sky Man ‘Our father.’

  ‘Do you see him? It didn’t sound right. ‘Does he show himself to Adam?’

  ‘No. He speaks to me. Sometimes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I can’t tell.’ My husband’s blue eyes became lost in their own colour, no longer his, but wider and deeper, ready for a descent of appearances. ‘I can’t, Eve. 1 don’t remember.’

  I wished his eyelids would close to give him a healing shade, but I had to watch his face until my next question hit it hard. What would his lips do—twitch? open? let the tongue out?

  ‘Does the Sky Man know that three of my daughters are wifed to the treemen?’

  ‘He knows.’ Every wrinkle in that large and changeable face seemed darker with pain, but the lips remained calm. ‘And there are no treemen, Eve. I named them apes in their beginning.’

  ‘Is he against my daughters?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You could gather all your sons and kill the treemen who defile my daughters?’

  His answer had the music that didn’t belong to his voice:

  ‘This I say, you shall not kill.’ He got up, his grey head almost touching a bough in the roof. ‘I shall not kill,’ he said in his usual tone.

  Then something pierced a thought deep under my skull. It felt like being touched by lightning. Was he telling me where my secret thought lay, or was he receiving it from me, despite myself?

  ‘That’s why I have come to your land,’ he said.

  ‘It’s mine and Amo’s.’

  ‘That’s why I have come. But Amo is no name. I called him after his dead brother, so that the sound which was killed might live again in him.’

  ‘I will never call him Abel.’

  Neither did my husband use that name when talking to Amo. He called him nothing. This was the first time I noticed fear in his manner of speech. Why not say simply: my son? And Amo, too, treated his father as if he had no name, no memories to share, but were a breed by itself, some odd creature from the sky, just as the treeman said.

  Yet they talked together of this and that. Was the lake a lake or a sea? It might be worth trying to cross it by boat. Why couldn’t we keep more cattle? What did the last herd die of? Now and again my husband sounded like a tired name-maker who had to repeat aloud his bits of knowledge so that he wouldn’t lose them before passing them on safely into our heads. And he also echoed himself from that earlier likeness which was as faint as music between the skies.

  You shall not punish those you cannot judge, you shall not kill those you cannot bring to life; you shall not, shall not, you, you. This was Adam talking to Adam, Adam thinking of Adam, knowing Adam. He shut us off, he exhausted our listless minds with that voice in the likeness of the voice. Then at last I heard silence, and after the silence Amo’s words even more soothing than silence.

  ‘Teach me to draw a spiky eel, a giant beaver, a dragon too, I will have them on the wall and many others besides, when I build a new wall along the lake against the creatures of the slime.’

  ‘I don’t know how to make drawings.’ He hesitated and, again, the name of Abel couldn’t leave his mouth. ‘But this full moon inside a ring, you drew it yourself, I was told you did.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. But first there was a command in my understanding. I had to put the same sign in every home my children were to build.’

  ‘Is it against the evil stare of the moon? An eye in another eye?’

  ‘They are not eyes. Circle is their name. One inside the other.’

  ‘A big circle and a small circle,’ Amo said and laughed.

  ‘Yes, the inner circle is just as round as the one outside.’

  And he began to speak about his ‘Our father’, the Sky Man, whose image sometimes appeared in the likeness of two circles, although there was yet another, and this third circle could not be understood by man until it became visible and until man broke it with his own weak hands. Amo listened and smiled. His thoughts went in circles, too, trying to catch a few of his father’s words, but I felt how dizzy they were. I was standing near my son, sure that we could never grow separate, because my husband had already put himself beyond Amo’s reach. Yet Amo wanted to learn at least about drawing a small thing like that circle inside.

  ‘And could I make this one myself, on the wet clay, with a long, sharp nail!’ He showed all his fingers, expecting his father to choose one of them.

  ‘Yes, you could, Abel.’ The name seemed to spill blood as it opened an old scar in both of us. ‘Because, Abel my son, the inner circle is what has to be filled or emptied inside you.’

  ‘Is the circle then mine just like a boat, a spear or Damo the dog (‘ He mentioned his dog, though it had been kicked to death by a bison, long ago.

  ‘Yes, it’s yours. And when the circle coils itself up Our father will dwell in the centre of the coil.’

  ‘Is the Sky Man no bigger than a snail? I thought he was very very big.’

  My husband didn’t answer. He took Amo’s hand and then mine, and joined them together.

  ‘This is your mother Eve,’ he said to Amo, ‘This is your son Abel,’ he said to me.

  And I trembled at the foreknowledge within the warning that his words enclosed, a condemned circle inside a noose of a circle.

  There was one more joining of hands on my husband’s departure. The listening bird caused this, unwittingly. With his beak glistening through the feathery palm leaves he must have spied on us for a long while before he dared to drop his disrespectful cry:

  ‘Aadam and Eeve, Aadam and Eeve.’

  And my husband, without looking up at the caller, took both my hands, held them in a firm grip, himself rooted to the earth like a tree. We were poised for the clouds, the plants and the beasts to see us as we were in the beginning, a coupled life, a dance in a still moment, a deathless peace. The bird seemed frightened by what he had done and hid his beak farther in the branches.

  ‘It’s the listening bird, Adam. He says he’s learnt speech from me.’

  ‘The parrot!’ My husband let a smile raise his heavy lips, and the smile vanished at once. ‘It’s already named. So much life is named. It saddens me.’

  ‘The parrot, I remember now. Why didn’t I remember it on that day?’

  ‘He’s the great liar of the forest. He goes everywhere, listens to what is being said, repeats the words he understands and those he doesn’t understand, and in the end ties them all up into lies with his clever red beak.’

  ‘But the parrot spoke our true names.’

  ‘Yes, he said our names.’ And the warm strength of my husband was flowing from his hand into mine in the likeness of begetting which I knew hadn’t been meant for this time.

  I complained, of course, about the animals. That was usual on our partings. They were pushing us out, I said, multiplying to please their lust, feeding on our lands, and only sometimes paying a small homage to Adam. Why, why was it said that we owned the earth! They possessed it with their greedy snouts, their hooves, their defiant tails.

  Either we killed the beasts, hunting them in the grass and in the trees, or they would hunt us down when we became weak in our children. We needed a new breed of men, ferocious and ruthless.

  As usual, Adam answered with silence. And as usual, animals waited for his blessing at the boundaries of my homestead.

  The night swelled up after his departure, pregnant with thunder. Sweat was pouring down Amo’s thighs as I looked at them, saying through my desire:

  ‘I know you’re not afraid. I’ll take you back into my body. For this was meant.

  You knew it in your touch, your fingers, Amo.’

  Amo was rubbing his right arm where the fox’s teeth left a scar, his back bent and touching the wall. When both his arms stretched out, I saw that he was leaning against the place marked with a double circle.

  Book Two

/>   Surface

  1

  ‘We’re not allowed to see death,’ I said and covered my eyes. But 1 had seen the heads, and if they were drowned and now merely touching the surface of the water, I could not erase the sight by rubbing my eyelids. Either I was already a contaminated witness of death, and the others had shared the experience with me, or there was nothing to fear, and death had no dominion over us now as under the domes before.

  I opened my eyes and saw that none of them had listened to my warning. We all, in fact, had our eyes fixed on the heads, hoping perhaps that some might turn round and look at us. That would be a sort of answer.

  ‘If I should die,’ Joker intoned, ‘bury me underground. I don’t want to be afloat.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Sailor put on his best faraway look. ‘Did they teach me how to swim when we were living down below, me and Joke?’

  ‘Things. Things that keep coming back to me. . . .’ Joker’s moon face was in full ascent. ‘I think there was a pond on the other side of time and I sat in a blue plastic saucer. A cat came along and asked for milk.’

  ‘You know what, Dover. . . .’ Leeds sounded knowing and his arm lay with weighty confidence on September’s shoulder. ‘The road to the tree has been paved for us.

  All we have to do is to step on those heads.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I heard Rain.

  ‘In the stampede style, Dover, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘It’s like swimming with both feet on the surface,’ Sailor said and Joker nodded.

  They were both prepared to follow Leeds and I didn’t expect September would linger behind them. What was I to do? Stay with Rain? try another route or back out altogether.

  ‘Funny, the light . . .’ someone whispered and I couldn’t recognize the voice broken off by fear.

  ‘We’re going blind.’ Rain was now close to my ear. ‘You were right, Dover, we shouldn’t have looked.’

  The last thing I saw was Leeds’s neck straining its sinews in all directions to inform us in time how deadly that death of ours was going to be. Then the neck, the rock, the still horror in the water, everything switched off in a second. From the dark two female hands grabbed me.

  ‘The circle! We must make a circle.’

  ‘Get hold of my belt,’ I answered Rain’s cry. ‘The hooks !’ But my brothers, who had more practice in finding the hooks, were already at my side, then Leeds fell in, pulling September with him. Their voices came after the touch, identifying each grip as it tightened.

  ‘Rain, where are you?’

  ‘My feet are sinking into the sand. I can’t move, Dover.’

  At that moment the whole sky rushed to free my eyes. It glittered with stars, it foamed downwards in white streaks, it chased the slender moon on the water. Clouds of scent broke with the waves, then almost hurt in the nostrils. The noise, too, seemed to push and bruise. More sky, more scent. And our circle split at its joints. Joker and Sailor were lying on their hacks, unable to turn over. The light from the open sky seemed to nail them to the ground. Leeds and September had fallen on the prostrated body of Rain. Neither of them could move.

  ‘Rain! Rain! Rain!’ I shouted again and again, thinking that s he was the first of us doomed to die.

  ‘She’s warm,’ Sailor answered me. ‘I am trying to get up. She’s trying, too. It’s no use.’

  ‘What is the sky gaping like that for?’ Joker said and then kicked the air with both his feet. ‘It should be asleep at night. I don’t like the look of it, do you, Sailor?’

  ‘When I get up I’ll tell you, not now.’ And to his own surprise, he got up and didn’t say a thing. With his hand at the level of his eyebrows, he was now scrutinizing the state of nautical affairs. Quite inaudibly, he muttered something long about the tree and the heads, then sighed and picked up his brother from the ground. Nothing else could be got out of Sailor, I knew that, for, faithful to his habits, he linked arms with Joker and both were sound asleep in a couple of minutes.

  The moon chase on the sea continued, making it impossible for me to distinguish either the rock or the heads paving the way to it. I had forgotten about Rain who needed help, as I had forgotten about death and our momentary blindness. Instead, a new sensation took possession of my mind. I could only think of food. Where would I find it, how would it taste when found? Should I dig for it or dive into the sea, or beg the starlit air to fill my stomach? Like my brothers and my wives, like Leeds my would-be kinsman, I must have been overwhelmed by hunger and sudden sleep.

  When I opened my eyes, I was back in my circle, standing, of course, as the custom and necessity demanded. And the hollow of hunger was gone. I felt I had eaten during my sleep.

  ‘They were juicy, weren’t they?’ said Joker, rubbing his eyes with his own and Sailor’s hand, for the circle kept revolving and we were all linked together. I noticed Rain on my right.

  ‘Fell straight into our yawning mouths, didn’t they, those flakes?’ Joker nodded to Sailor in solemn appreciation. Then September spoke, all gratitude and wonder, but in a calm unhurried voice:

  ‘I can see the last of the domes receding.’ Yes, it was still visible, a green line, immersed in clouds at one end. ‘They came at dawn, you know, as far as the sea-shore, and one of them, the blue dome, opened just over my head. I hadn’t slept, not even for an hour, I must have expected them without thinking. I don’t know why. They did come, you see.’

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ Leeds had to give her and us his official confirmation. ‘As I always say, we are being well looked after, remarkably well judging by the recent events.

  There isn’t and there never was a serious food shortage over this happy island. I once worked out the actual rate of flake-fall per second and per head, but I wouldn’t dream of tiring you with statistics. Nothing builds confidence better than confidence inside the tum.’ His belly received a few pats and the congratulating hand returned to our circle.

  ‘Tum-turn-tum.’ Both my wives laughed with him. ‘Now let’s cross the quaint head bridge, shall we, my sweet ladies.’

  Leeds pulled a really stupid face as he said this, for there were no heads in the water. Nothing floated between the sea-shore and the rock, and the rock itself had a belt of haze at the top. We couldn’t be sure, not even Sailor, that the tree was still there.

  Perhaps they took the poor little tree with them, Joker said, but none of us felt like speculating further, because it would have meant deciding who those ‘they’ were-the heads or the domes.

  For some reason, difficult to explain, my thoughts detached the domes from the skymen, as previously I had tried to accept the floating heads apart from the bodies which must have supported them from below.

  ‘I think I’d like to swim,’ Sailor announced, and waited for Joker to give him a push.

  ‘How far does one drown, if there’s two of us, Sailor?’

  ‘Only that far, up to your cat’s whiskers,’ Sailor answered and this time he pushed his brother out of the circle. Leeds called after them: ‘Brave lads! That’s the spirit. I’ll give a big yell if you get too far off your course, so keep your ears dry.’

  Sailor entered the sea at the point where the brown weeds formed a floating ring.

  Joker stepped right into it. We saw their heads close to each other, two hairy bubbles, now large now very small, then they seemed to knock at the waves, two quick knocks at a time, finally they vanished.

  ‘Shall I give them a big yell now, Dover?’

  ‘They’re on course, Leeds.’ I thought the tip of the rock emerged for a moment, but the sunlight was in my eyes. ‘Or they have sunk,’ I added, without meaning to upset the women. Rain and September grew pale, and Rain, who now trusted her movements more than her words, flapped both arms in imitation of Sailor’s first gesture on entering the water.

  ‘I wish we had made use of those heads yesterday,’ said Leeds. ‘Ah, how very obliging! there they are again.’ I couldn’t, of course, twist my neck as well as he could operate his turret, but 1 certai
nly tried, and noticed nothing resembling the horror we had seen. Only something like a dark line shifted on the sea surface, and once again the light of the sun confused me.

  It was September who decided to see for herself. She believed everything Leeds chose to tell us from his turret heights, and seemed eager to prove that she did. Now she rushed towards the shore, and I marvelled at both her resolution and the strength of her knees. They didn’t weigh her down. Neither did her hands need a support. Strange that we should have crawled on all fours not so long ago.

  Leeds was a master of indirect experience: he preferred to learn from September’s risk. Admittedly, I also stayed behind, being, as it appeared, responsible for my less irresponsible wife.

  Standing near the patch of weeds, September bent and lifted something from the water.

  ‘Clever girl,’ Leeds said over my head, ‘she needs so little guidance, doesn’t she!

  A mere hint is enough for a wife of her potentials. We can be truly proud of her, Dover, I mean the two of us.’ I disliked his obvious familiarity. Then he stepped between me and Rain, and took our hands. ‘Let’s go!’ He squeezed my wrist. ‘We must see what the clever girl has found down there.’

  Very carefully, eyeing us both in turn, Leeds moved his feet forward. We were slow in arriving, but when we reached September, she stood with a wet rope in her hand, watching the heads of Sailor and Joker out in the sea, safely above the water.

  ‘Someone untied the rope at this end, that’s why we couldn’t get hold of it at the start. And Joker thought it was a long piss tube, the longest that ever ran away to sea.’

  Sailor had much to tell us after emerging from his natural element. And he looked most virile with all those muscles glistening in the sun.

  ‘The heads, you know. . . .’ Joker began and immediately grabbed Sailor by the leg to keep himself steady as he came out. ‘They sure tried to hang on to that thing, but you can’t swim with your teeth biting ropes in the water, can you now!’

  ‘What is it attached to at the other end?’ I asked him.