Spells of Dusk and Dawn

By Niels Hammer

Having fought to extricate himself from a devastating relationship with a charming but fickle woman, and desperate to reach a state of serenity, William leaves her to live alone in an old dilapidated house by the sea and devote himself to music and astronomy; but his distraught state of mind induces him to seek temporary relief and he meets Dorothy, a carefree and vigorous women, to whom he, in spite of his resolution, feels strongly attached. Fearing his loss of independence he tries to quench a wild fire with a circumscribed fire and seduces a compassionate but unsuspecting women whom he hopes can shelter him till his infatuation has subsided; however, after a while he nevertheless more or less unconsciously gives her a good reason for leaving him, and he has then no option but to confront Dorothy.

Too indecisive to run away he fights his inclination, while she, being susceptible to his repressed feelings, which she has inspired, becomes eager and frustrated enough to take the initiative. As his feelings for her become manifested in action he has to accept them and this ignites an increasing interanimation which suggests a shared consciousness. And yet, his longing for serenity and her longing for absolute love are apparently incompatible and this insoluble conflict forces him to leave her, but while running away he feels the double bond between them strengthen to a point where he is pulled back to her and together they reach a state of reciprocal acceptance; and yet he suddenly leaves her for the freedom of the jungle though expecting her to join him shortly and thus get the best of both worlds; so the anagnōrisis leaves him in similar though not identical situation as that from which he tried to escape a year ago. Character determines fate and an all-consuming love is not easily reconciled with the an urge for the numinous.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803138206

Niels Hammer

Niels Hammer is the author of a book on Sanskrit poetics and of articles dealing with etymology, birds, aesthetics and consciousness research. He studied Sanskrit at the University of Copenhagen and has travelled extensively in South-East Asia photographing wildlife and temple iconography.

Book preview

Contents

1.1

1.2

2.1

2.2

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

3.5

4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

6.1

6.2

6.3

7.1

7.2

7.3

7.4

8.1

8.2

8.3

9.1

9.2

9.3

10.1

10.2

10.3

11.1

11.2

12.1

12.2

13.1

13.2

13.3

14.1

14.2

14.3

15.1

16.1

17.1

17.2

17.3

18.1

18.2

18.3

18.4

18.5

18.6

19.1

20.1

21.1

22.1

22.2

23.1

23.2

23.3

23.4

24.1

25.1

25.2

26.1

26.2

26.3

27.1

28.1

28.2

1.1

Greenish tussocks of grass and clusters of frail-leafed Oaks in sheltered gullies approached and disappeared in his bleak reference frame of glass and running water. The sweat felt sticky against his breathless skin – and weary of the habits of the human condition he wished that this journey in the gloom of the autumn afternoon would end before he became too weak to hide from the shadows of the past. Living had dwindled to convulsions between pits of apathy – and in the heavy drizzle the wizened fields and lichened cliffs continued to change – although they remained almost identical – to further the threat or to keep the promise of repetitive struggles between the tiresome goading of hope and the icy inertia of despair.

Cooling his brow on the window he closed his eyes and shuddered – absence of thoughts – brief respites – each chain of words was barbed by images. On the inside of his eyelids – the spidery incarnation of the scavenger – wrapt in dark-sliding clothes – fondled the legal briefs with dough-like fingertips. Waves of dis-ease surged up from the hollow of his stomach – but the windows to the world were stuck – yet the urge subsided slowly in his throat to reveal the blotchy cavern of the office where the correct and bony secretary shuffled the sheets of cellulose around on the surface polish and solicited him to sign. Regurgitating reluctantly to integrate the past he saw again the exegete of graceless deeds and heard the echo of his suave and empty voice as he promised to take care of the proceedings and offered his professional word of honour only to write in case of a disaster – while also discreetly emphasising the advantages his mercenary wheedling had accomplished – though only to let him share the slimy guilt. Complicity by association. But in spite of habits – fear and fardels he had persevered and thrown the moorings ashore to set sail again across the shoreless ocean – to leave the nether world of mundane busyness – as it flashed the tricks of its trade in the gaudy glare of commercial exchange for common salt-licks hedged its horizons and dry-rotting mould withered its senses – when aproned with stolen mahogany it munched the fine-printed tomes of the lore of vested interests to stuff its grizzly gizzards with yet more acquisitions – emitting puffs of irremeable decay as prognostications about the general catastrophe caused by commercial terrorism.

So this morning – after all the awkward delays – he had left the populated desert – the unreal hoarding of stones – the treasured haunt of the bellicose breed who manufactured grease and soot to befoul the starry Sky. He had felt lost among glib towers of business – among right angles and terribly straight lines. He had been oppressed by the stale air of long lonely rooms and enveloped in a dead taste of greyish metal. He had been marooned beneath roofs of anguish and wounded in acrid silence by imploring eyes or by faces gnawed by angry airs – but now came hours of sun and wind in peace among fair Brambles and friendly willows – alone παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης.

Huddling up in the corner of the seat – as if to brace himself against the coming ordeal – he thought about the five strangers whom he – at the instigation of the solicitor on behalf of the former owners – had agreed to entertain for a human while – though without being able to honour such obligations – but having been too scorched by the Sun and soaked by the rain he would have found it discourteous to refuse for they had trusted the next day’s weather knowing naught about his idiosyncrasies or dispositions – a part-time gardener – an elderly man who had tended orchards all his life – two enterprising younger women – a cook who came twice weekly and a competent housekeeper.

So he would gently – gently – have to encourage them to seek brighter opportunities elsewhere – and perhaps his sullen misanthropic moods would entice them to leave as soon as they could – though it would be absurd to form opinions or hope – however – women were still the lesser evil beneath the visiting Moon. Nevertheless – such an experiment could easily flounder – but as he knew nobody and nobody knew him he might find peace there for having at last left her alone music and starlight would shine as soft beacons from a cloister of independence. Yet another draught eased the strain of staying alive – so sitting back in a velvet burning haze he praised the healing spirit of variegated wounds by licking his lips. The bitter-sweet grapes were better than the long pipes which made him numb with commonplace sensations coated in the pink candyfloss of nausea.

Drifting around on the misty rocks outside he looked in to tease the cause from the effect or to gauge the difference between the origin and the result of ontological evolution while the Protean images of bygone memories mutated or dissolved in the shifting foci of his attention – though the bare outlines tended to remain constant.

Once upon a time he may have been impetuous – demanding an ideal – and if that had not been feasible – disdainful – despairing or even haughty – then only illusions – hollowed out by misery or masticated by disgust – had been left to stir. So stoic and trembling he clung to the wreck of the future while waiting for the terminal stillness with ambivalence – though also with a vague periconscious wish to escape the likely end. However – the universe had to be one single unified process and change determined time – so the rhythm of the wheels – jumping the small gaps between the rails – widened the space–time distance to the prolonged operation of having cut through his heartstrings to separate himself from the womanly woman with whom he had grown together through endless days of frost and brief nights of thaw. Their separation had gone against the grain and transgressed the laws of nature – and while the blood may have coagulated the scars were still too sore to be touched by straying thoughts – though in a little while the Sea – the Sky and the forest would soothe him in her absence – but only if blessed by the acute presence of oblivion.

A gradual slackening of the speed pushed his premonitions aside as the wheels ground the noise they made to milling splinters in his ears. Lifting his khamsīned eyelids he stared out – through melted sand – into the blinded darkness of the night. Still a smell of ashes hung in the used air of the cabin – for there was nothing that was not of his own doing – so donning his dark blue coat and scarf he took the suitcase and the canvas back with the lute – staggered out of the door and came to the end of the wagon just as the train stopped. Fumbling with the handle of the immobile door he fell forward as it swung open and saw – fuming in the night rain – a human being – looking up at him with coal-bright friendly eyes – a fellow mortal.

Easy! Easy! Good evening. Now, let me?

The elastic steps were softly trying to evade his probing feet. On legs of jelly – into the welcoming sea wind – he stumbled through space and time – needled by grimy light from shabby lamps. Only the will to do or die was left.

Thank you, indeed, the weather here, is this your cab?

Sure it is, an’ has been, better than eleven years ago now, but do you have any other luggage?

Standing beside this dapper little man – who seemed so neat – so full of energy – like a sprightly Dormouse – he sensed his innate acceptance of himself and of the world in his brisk and quick demeanour. Black-shining drops ran down from the eaves of the sou’wester that sheltered him in a smooth and seaworthy skin. Genuinely altruistic – the storm – to blow into his face – the rain – to wash his crowded thoughts away. This salt and wrack-scented air was cold but the burning increased – in the puddles his shoes had become wet – in the gusts he sucked the air out of the water. A looming silhouette – in the yellow yawning of the wagon – gesticulated impatiently but the words from his lips were caught by a squall before they reached his ears.

There are only three suitcases.

Let’s seek shelter in the car for it’s very fond of the rain today, before we pick them up.

Hollowed out by inertia the horizon to imagine an alternative caved in and he nodded complacently. They walked side by side over to the dry vehicle awaiting them but when the driver opened the door to let him in his appreciation faded out as a still-born gesture. Crawling forward to collapse on the hard seat he hoped that the heating system could dry his clothes or assuage his listlessness. The bilge water in his shoes came from the one-hundred-and-forty-five-million-year-old Atlantic Ocean – the banging of the door re-echoed in his ears and a smell of wet woollen clothes was stuck in his throat.

Would it be possible to activate the heating system of the car? It seems to be rather rough and cold here to-day.

Words – mainly when communion failed.

Naboc’lesh! Wait a minute and you’ll do be feelin’ warm and cosy. As soon as the engine heats up.

The car came alive moaning and trembling – a Bactrian Camel shaking icicles off the guard hairs. In front of the wagon the driver braked and jumped out to place the luggage in the boot but left the door ajar – in honour of the wind upon which life in the Sea depended – but it had to be him – he was the only passenger here as far as the eye could see. This fever made him feel weird – and lonely – though it was his own choice – having come through at last to force her spells down below the lithosphere to lie dormant for an aeon or to erupt all of a sudden. There would be a deep affective depression at the moment though autumn serotonin ought to be flying high – but as soon as the Cuckoo came to save the season – though she might still – no – pray – or he would have to blast away the rails and the roads discreetly camouflaged as a local shepherd or if that failed to follow the whale’s way once again.

Do you know the shortcut across the heath?

The rasping of the tyres on the road sanded the contours of his weakened voice.

Like the backside of my hand; about thirty miles, I should say.

The day must have drained him of strength so more Armagnac became imperative but it would be best to take it easy now in case of an accident on this narrow twisting road – though the more twisting and dilapidated the safer he would be. Warm air was coming in even here to dry him and he closed his eyes because it felt so good to do just that and nothing more – dark outside it was and wet and dark everywhere inside as well. Correspondence or synchronicity. The droning sound of the motor and the lurching trot along the winding road fostered drowsiness except when a hidden hole frightened the car enough to make a jump. The creaking sounds – the age of the springs – but he would have to relax and follow the path of least resistance – to nod and accept the approach of fate while moving darkly across a surface of double curvature – like any other tetrapod.

The momentum changed abruptly – he opened his eyes but felt too warm and lethargic to move in his damp clothes. Beneath the low heavy clouds the house was invisible but dim fourth-magnitude stars in the black drizzle beckoned him in to be at the tender mercy of the strangers hibernating there. Stumbling out he became drenched by the rain from the invisible night-sky but a ghostly glow above the door showed him the only way forward. His teeth were chattering as he caught hold of the canvas bag and scaled the slanting steps. The water from the roof hit his bare head and continued down along his back in a little linn – so hurrying forward he crossed the lintel to his new home – and sheltered in the hall he paid the driver who smiled gaily at the sight of the tip – and his smile of solid silver would be passed on and on to sustain the life of each recipient in turn. Once more he braved the weather – to be drenched by a cataract of roof-gathered drops – but there was something amiss with the lock of the boot and the driver attacked it from different angles while the steady splashing along the wall – and the tigerish hissing – which swept across the stones – shred his mutterings to smithereens before they were flushed down the drains together with the leafy relics of the year. The rain had soaked through the night from west to east – and through his clothes it came to leave him cold and numb – but on every surface that could yield a little sound it played its primal rhythms of fertility and bliss. A frore drumming had taken possession of the air – music played by the clouds upon the Earth – but then a twist of the key made the boot spring open and while the driver snatched up two of the suitcases he picked up the third as in a sudden haze – broke through the streams of water that guarded the welcoming door and slumped into the unknown house – perhaps to be bitten – for vipers might be hiding in the corners even here where there should be none. The hall was chilly and forbidding with wobbly stone tiles but also alive with approaching steps and turning round he looked straight into the dark curious eyes of a woman with dawn-red-apple cheeks. All five pieces of luggage stood aligned attentively beside him while they gazed at each other and the water ran down along his legs to end in a small meandering river on the floor. A stranger – in his wet clothes – the dense black void everywhere came closer – but he shook his head quickly to fight it off and find his lost sea legs.

Good evening! Here I am at last, at the end of the journey. Well, maybe you would need a dram or two before going back. Do you think you could find a good bottle of –

Yes, just wait a minute.

And, by the way, I must change clothes, so maybe you could show me my bedroom?

She nodded reassuringly – a thistledown touch – and then he listened to the light tune of her feet as she went down the hall towards the kitchen – but to keep afloat he had to lean up against the bannister – close his eyes and wait till her steps approached again with the rhythm of a fully fledged purpose.

Here you are, help yourself. You can sit in the corner over there if you like.

No spare room here for speckled doubt.

Thanks, I’m famished for a braon, and good evening to you. I’ll be off in a minute or two.

Good evening, then. I hope you will get back all right in this weather.

Sure, as long as it doesn’t get into the drink.

A distinctly Indo-European –

This way, come, it’s upstairs.

He followed her unsteadily to ascend a flight of tall uneven steps – down a dimly lit corridor smoothed with a carpet smelling faintly of touchwood and disinfectant. Her stalwart hips kept rolling on and on to tug him forward and as she swung the door open to the large corner room the hinges ululated – fish-owlishly – with eerie forebodings – but his morning gown purpled the august bed with a soft gesture of welcome. The apparent horizon – of the present journey between Earth and Heaven came closer – his legs disappeared beneath him as he fell down on the floor and tried to reach the ceiling which swam away to hide in space –

Oh dear me! Take care!

Her fingers were pleasantly dry and cool as she took hold of his wrist to drag him all the way up upon the lofty bed.

Oh! You’re hot like fire. You must be running a temperature! Shall I call the doctor?

Menschliches – allzumenschliches –

Well maybe not yet, but I do feel rather indisposed at the moment. However, if you could open a good bottle of Bordeaux – find something to eat and help me into bed – I will, wind and weather, be all right by to-morrow morning. And the fire, please, I am shivering, a long touch of malaria.

I’ll call Molly and Miss Simpson. By the way, my name is Jane.

Yes, I thought so.

Oh did you?

Smiling inly – she rushed out of the door – the emergency made her slightly knock-kneed but her legs were strong and shapely – however – he should definitely not try to seek illusionary shelter by courting a new-found quickland. His shoelaces were wet – muddy and stiff like they used to be once upon a time when everything was fresh – unknown and vast – but here – three pairs of feet hurrying down the corridor – first came Jane – eager and blushing – then Miss Simpson – stately and frail like an Avocet in black and white – but behind her rose Molly with a large wicker basket full of hearty logs. Pushing Miss Simpson aside with a neat little twist of her hip – she smiled – sumer is icumen in – and stood still to catch her breath.

Good evening, Miss Simpson! Good evening, Molly! I regret being thus incapacitated on my belated arrival, but if you could open the bottle it would sustain my chance of recuperation, and by the way, do you think I could possibly get something to eat?

Hunger – a rare spice nowadays – pretending to be brave – the only effort he could muster – Molly – two or three years younger than Jane and less self-conscious or less conventional for she looked steadily at him with direct honest curiosity. The fire could easily wait awhile – but Miss Simpson – indecisive on account of opposing stimuli – wrung her stilty hands instead of opening the bottle to thwart disasters.

We have been expecting you all afternoon. Dinner’s not ready yet, but we’re making some nice sandwiches.

Jane took the bottle between her knees and pulling at the cork a flush touched her cheeks and like a ripe jujube falling into a dark and silent river was the sound that spread throughout the room.

When I have had a sandwich or two I will just fall asleep; I cannot eat much more than that, I’m afraid.

Carefully she gave him the tall glass to hold but had to help him as the choppy red seas almost broke above the transparent rim. A flavour in his nose of Blackcurrants – mouldy earth and oak trunks with emerald green moss. The flickering sheen of the fire was reflected on her cheeks – the steady rhythm of her breath swept across his face – lays of offshore winds in days gone by –

As you have a temperature we should perhaps help you to get out of these dreadfully wet clothes right away?

Royal plural was rare – however – her benevolent doctoring was caused by his incapacity and her spontaneous release of oxytocin.

Yes, certainly, Jane, by all means, please do.

She pulled off his socks. A dexterous touch of experience – she must have helped her sisters or her brothers.

Molly dear, see if you can find one of the large bath towels.

Feeling relieved to see that Jane could manage the delicate undressing of a wayward stranger Miss Simpson sought refuge in adjusting the cutlery on the table – a little solemn tragedy hopefully unacknowledged. His shirt was wet on the back – his vest was drenched in sweat and stuck to his skin but Molly came with a towel and Jane began to dry his hair vigorously or to suffuse him with her sane and stealthy air – and yet the entire language suggested unconsciously a misogynistic prejudice – but he had to be quite ill or drunk or both – thus already to accept the healing of her hands – and the bottle of Armagnac was almost empty – so it would be best to get another one for the long dark night ahead. She was rubbing him warm and dry – but then his underpants – which were wet as well – were in her way. Molly and Jane smiled surreptitiously to each other – pretending to play a game like poker for the natural liberty with the dying was grounded in the expectation that they would be dead soon – and such a prospect removed the narrow constraint of social obligations. Jane looked at him to ask with a bright flicker in her eyes – so he nodded – and she wrung them down with a quick twist while Miss Simpson turned away to stir the fire – but Molly watched closely to be certain of what it was she saw – perhaps a pageant or a vision of spring? Jane did not any longer care to temper her smile as she covered his nakedness in the eiderdown – though she subtly chanced to disregard his eyes. A compliment – true to nature – for he was not able to influence his disposition due to acetylcholine and nitric oxide dilation of the blood vessels – thin abstract prevarications – and yet – the lie of the promised land determined excitation of the arginine-vasopressin system – and yet – that was what he had come here to escape and familiarity would sooner or later form knotty complications – so that his well-laid plan would go agley. Gie the Deil an inch and she would soon snatch an ell. But appearing in the door frame – an angle of loitering grace – Molly came – bringing sandwiches and a hot water bottle. Putting it in under the slightly damp slip Jane touched his leg – inadvertently – if only she would touch him again – touch him to sleep – touch him to forget – though it would by far be best if she did not.

Shall I cut them –

Yes, please, do!

Pale yellow lunar slices of lemon bordering brown rye bread with wafer-thin slices of venison and crisp green Watercress. Balancing the ancient plate adroitly on her knees Jane fought the sandwiches with a long leafy knife and the movements of her hand on the polished tiller fired the blade to flash – six or seven white-blue stars – as reflections from the trembling flames or from his rosy cross of memories. Harshly against the acidified limonene scraped the tannic acid as she watched him close his lips around each morsel she had on the fork – softly aware of his strangely fluttering attention between that which had been and that which came alive. Chewing and swallowing had become acts of will to live – and yet – all too soon his hunger was appeased so he could not eat them all but had another glass of wine to blunt his anguish.

Thank you very much, but could you please give me a carafe of water and a bottle of Armagnac before you leave me to the night?

He found a brittle excuse in her smile of reassurance – a grass-halm –

And Jane, do you think you could do me a favour and read a little story for me – till I fall asleep?

Well, of course I can!

How could he really look at her and be in doubt?

You see, I feel dizzy with fever, so maybe I’ll not be able to sleep, but it would be very soothing if you could read a story or two.

I’ll do my best. Is there anything in particular you would –

Yes, you know, in the largest of the suitcases, did you unpack it?

The small phonemes that set the air in motion were formed by his reluctant lips and stumbling tongue – to touch her through the air they also shared.

Yes, and we placed all the books in the library.

"See if you can find The Arabian Nights. It’s an old collection of fairy tales, of love and adventure. There are many volumes. Just take any one of them. Such stories will fit the atmosphere here quite well, and I hope you will not find them dull; however, if you do you should find something else which you really would enjoy reading."

She threw him a long inquisitive glance. A stranger still to her he was – a stranger – but her feeling for the story would determine the vividness of his imagination now and the depth of his grief later when he tried to fall asleep.

Yes, I know it quite well and I can remember some of the stories.

As she left Miss Simpson came in to see if there were anything –

Jane can bring you the water and the brandy, and if –

Oh, very good, Miss Simpson. Good evening and good night.

Good evening, sir, I hope you will be better tomorrow.

As the door closed she left a vague impression behind her in the air – as if to suggest a potential source of commotion in the future – but he tried to thrust the notion aside – or rather – he had not strength enough left to keep it alive in his present memory – so floating to and fro he lay waiting – half ways anchored to the bed – and half ways drifting back in time to see indistinct images of the seething airport – the frothy clouds below – the slow steady trek in the train across the rural landscape and the long drive down the narrow road to reach this house – the end of the journey – and Jane? Why did he straight away have to strike a course of action that might result in a dew-fresh bloom of problems? Abandoned hopes fused with bluish shadows. Had he not come here to be free – free from her eschatology – to be able to leave her supple wiles and sly demands behind? And now he was already gathering logs for a brand-new fire – into which he could throw himself – as a burnt offering – doomed beforehand by physiology and fate – though if he could remain serene – tāṭasthyaḥ – perhaps no harm would come his way – perhaps and yet the die was loaded.

At last Jane knocked and before he could summon up the strength to answer she burst in to place the water and the Armagnac on the bedside table – epitomising efficiency and grace. He would just have to neglect the images that formed themselves out of the air – out of the thin air. Sitting down beside him she placed the book primly in her lap and took a pair of thin spectacles out of her breast pocket. A school-mistress metamorphosis added another dimension – but still she was pretty enough – the only criterion that mattered in this world – where beauty was that which came from within as a function of felt reality.

Well, where shall I begin?

Wherever chance or fancy leads you.

To the end of the rainbow – in the greensward. Looking almost defiantly at him she cleared her throat while he settled down – into the dreaded night ahead – and closed his eyes to feel her experience of the Third Kalandar’s Tale. Reading slowly and distinctly she paused from time to time to let the impact of her words unfold for she wanted to make herself understood – unequivocally as a woman – so his straying associations were mainly shaped by her imagination – and the magnetic mountain – Koṇārkam maybe – surrounded by tall palm trees swaying in the onshore wind from the Bay of Bengal – began to bristle with the flying nails from the disintegrating ship – though in a sudden pause between two sentences he opened his eyes to see the present mise-en-scène. When she felt his cat’s paw glances slide along her knees and hips – like water following the shape of a seabed – he lapped up the flush of her cheeks and smiled – but caught simultaneously a glimpse of how her pearl necklace had shimmered in the light from the open fire they had made on the river brink. Shaking his head he looked away and sighed inaudibly – hoping that she had not been made too keenly aware of how he had been watching her – or of how his haunted memory had twisted the common reality into the semblance of a past event. In the future he would have to be more careful – in the future – to-morrow and to-morrow. It was this fever – swathes of löss kept drifting into the stale air from a leafless horizon but as she turned the page her hand was a light mist at dawn – rain-bringing and star white – a wain of sweet water – the soul of that which was – even if floundering on the black-shining anvil of the desert. He seemed now to be half asleep – for some words only – carried along with a veering wind – reached him from her lips as she sat there in the near distance while the incense of the story coiled up under the ceiling and her knees shone like harvest Moons below the cloudy book. Then only the diaphanous image was left – and a sudden fall down into unawareness.

1.2

Cloud-light trickled down through the swaying branches of spring-dreaming Oaks and willows – his subliminal attention kept flickering – trying to ascertain how the day would sound – bereft of the mellifluous colours of summer and abundant norepinephrine α-receptor activity – as the long nights darkened – so never to have seen the light of the Sun might after all have been best – μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἅπαντα νικᾷ λόγον – τὸ δ’ ἐπεὶ φανῇ βῆναι κεῖθεν ὅθεν περ ἥκει πολὺ δεύτερον ὡς τάχιστα – hardly anything had changed – by far the best perspective – and the second best – to hurry back from where he had come as quickly as he could – to shed the human spin – the golden grid of ontology – but the implacable instinct of life – which he shared with bacteria – plankton – mice and beetroots – pushed the decision from the present out into the future although the shadows lengthened thought by thought. All that remained was this day’s furtive steps towards the day to-morrow – so suffering to be alive he languished as if in love with oblivion while still patiently sifting weariness from pure despair – conditioned by the blind ubiquitous will to survive in spite of corrosive agony – abysmal emptiness and tempting self-pity – but then a repeated knocking on the door changed his half-conscious spleen to pin-pointed awareness – and after a deep breath he found courage enough to respond in kind.

All right, come in!

Her inquisitive gaze was shrouded in priggish concern – maybe he was going to die soon – the distant tolling of silver bells – the lowing of homesick cattle.

Good morning, sir! I think we ought to summon the doctor. He has a good reputation here and I am sure he could suggest an appropriate remedy, for I am sorry to say so, but you do not seem to be much better now than when you came, eight days ago now, I believe.

A blethering broadside in the morning greylight. It would not further her honest interests if he should vanish – a whiff of bluish smoke – from the surface of the planet just now – to linger as a ghost – but his natural courtesy would prevent him from telling her not to intervene between him and his star-crossed fate.

Well, Miss Simpson, I am feeling quite all right, though still slightly indisposed, perhaps on account of the weather –

The wounds sustained – any prescribable viṣam – poison or panacea – would always cut both ways.

But in a day or two I will be fine. I appreciate your timely concern, and I will not hesitate to let you know when I think my condition has aggravated to an extent where the attention of a physician –

Or of a clerk even –

Could be considered pertinent.

He had not strength enough to balk her sober besieging – for she would of course insist – and she would of course be right – that she had the best intentions – just like every decent busybody would to soothe a mottled conscience – to kindle his all-too-human ruminations.

Considering your condition, I thought it was my duty to ask.

Yes, certainly, just to be on the safe side?

Of the fence – the only fence.

I was rather worried, you know?

Of course, Miss Simpson, and it was indeed very considerate of you to assure me of the qualifications of the doctor.

Feeling not too offended perhaps by his firm rejection of her timely offer to help she left as if in a girlish hurry to get out. Human pity – a wounding balm – but she had such a vestal air – seething with sympathy for the wretched – but this choiceless incapacity was wearing him out and his misery caused him to be so unfair as to let her – an innocent human being – suffer. She did indeed mean well – wringing her hands in frustration – but the creaking sound – an iron nail drawn slowly across a frosty windowpane – lengthwise to split his bones.

Jane had given him a local dose of diurnal venom but he had not felt able to digest it – however – she took more care with her coiffure now and they shared both tea – scones and suspense when she was reading the tales to distract him or to amuse herself – for the life-affirming stories within stories of obsessive love – wanton lust and serendipitous or grievous adventure sustained her innate disposition as a woman while simultaneously undermining the fortifications of social inoculations – and then she was not so reserved or condescending any longer – but inclined to linger afterwards as if she would like to play and ease the strain of living – and he felt grateful for her patience as she alleviated the pain of abandoning accustomed dendritic pathways and encouraged new connections to form so that he could face the portending meteors that came in both over the inward and the outward horizon.

Worn out by thoughts and emotions he slept again but woke in the dull-dark afternoon – feeling grainy and gluey – stuck to the past – immovably fastened in amber. The will to live was floundering like a fledgling day with oily feathers – like all days of all sentient creatures – as Time sought for more and more food with its long and tendril tongues. Trying to survive and trying not to care were both dead ends for the very notion of having to try was a failure. To be beyond both alternatives – that would be a sweeter life – a sweeter death – yet habits and customs were reflected out into the future to lie in wait. The snug comfort of identity – and the horror of it a little later. The weariness of self-contempt – of soft arguments pitted against harsh judgements – superseded each pass to forgive himself his memories while the mycelium of experience continued to spread out along predetermined pathways in the hippocampus. He was unredeemable – a peripatetic wreck adrift in a wrong century – disoriented and rootless – having lost his way somewhere on the stairs in the fire – though with little remorse and less religion yet trying to carve out a corner of tentative peace in a hostile environment. Standing on a frail rock ledge of a perpendicular cliff his tender self-preservation was suffused by the vertigo in the pit of his stomach for he was still hopelessly confounded by his own species – but by her in particular by her – though most of all by himself – yet he had to be stoical so as to confront the face of Death wearing the mask of vanished life.

Unable to sleep soundly – lacking live silence and harmony – he had asked Jane to come with yet another volume – to read the sombre afternoon away – but he could not follow the convoluted trail of the story as he lost his orientation among the interrelated plots – a herd of Fallow Deer – lost – in a dense thicket converged later by instinct or smell to continue close together through a clearing they could not otherwise have found. Her ardent breathing coloured the denotation of the words with connotations and sustained his longing to come through the thickening mist by glimpses of felt reality – though he lost his orientation in the stroboscopic effect of the purport of each sentence – never – probably – ever to hear it again – but the way she looked at him when she finished the story reformed an image – from the distant past – of her lavender-blue eyes as she stood watching him running around in a field of Lucerne traversed by suns of males and moons of female Brimstones – while her father – at the fringe – with his face boiled tender red – gesticulated and shouted something which he – in his twin-edged eagerness – failed to heed – till later.

Twilight outside and inside. Sky-blue Poppies in the mountain meadow – once vanity had sparkled like hail around them for a human while. The bathroom was cold – he shivered to touch the pipe – wet with small drops of condensing water – the climate matched the plumbing. Barely able to get back to the bed but grateful to lie down under the indifferent ceiling without having to do anything – he suffered patiently with nought to do but wait – till darkness obscured the morose furniture of the room – in spite of the splendid windows which – because of the photographs – had been one of the main reasons – before he could begin to sip his evening Port of rain and sunshine.

After dinner and quiet wine together Jane continued reading – but having begun to sleep intermittently he had again not been able to follow the plots – however – the familiarity was now softening his conditioned anguish each time he woke up startled to find himself lying in a strange room while a strange woman – who sat upon his bed – read aloud to focus his flagging attention. The living flames formed huge changing shadows and her lips formed words which had been written down as a translation of an original that had been stitched together by a scribe on the basis of a tale once told by a weaver of yarns in a bustling sūk for a dish or two of kuskus or a mouthful of ma‘jūn. Her timbre and intonation which were alive with the emotions that reflected her own experience of life – were just as good – to be engrossed in – for there was no point in delineating where the versions of the tetrapla might converge or differ.

In the dead of night he woke – his heart was beating to the rhythm of a dream too devastating to be remembered. At first he tried to ignore the urge for maybe the warmth of the bed would slow the firing but as it only increased he had no choice in the matter and stepped out into the twilight of the bathroom to seek relief. Pleased by having accomplished such an arduous task he returned unsteadily to find his way in the low light from the fire which threw fountains of small rainy sparks up in the hearth and spells of black Trolls or indulgent Jinnīyeh out across the walls. Blazing houses of thoughts – generations of Phoenices – were arising and dying – as moments of experience – each thought a woe treading upon the last one’s heel. As the long black night swelled up in his mouth he might stir ashes and memories trying to reach a stage of apathy or equilibrium – and be unable to fall asleep again before daybreak. Gibbous and solitary the dispiriting autumn Moon travelled through the Sky and watching her from the womb of the bed he coloured the glass with Armagnac and sipped the liquid flames slowly from the rim – but bloodthirsty and nourishing the seven female stars of strife and navigation pearled in silver through the other window. Sucking out the last drops he fell back astonished to be asleep already while still sensing – as if from afar – how the glass silently rolled in under the bed – but also how forgetfulness and weeping eventually would weave a fragile shelter in the future.

2.1

Transparent dream images – through glittering eyelashes – against clouds or bookcases – days – opening and closing – nights – heaving and subsiding – left him with fleeting impressions while the tales formed a coherent lifeline – rosaries on a brittle string – fondled by homeless fingers – determining his mood – for she coloured the stories by her vivid imagination – spontaneously inspired by past experience – and being curious by nature she read occasionally even the long remarkable footnotes – at least for herself – although he had told her that they sometimes could be unreliable – and yet – in spite of this rapprochement – he was still to her a wandering wretch momentarily stranded on her rocky shores till the tide would wash him seawards once again – but this afternoon the tension had eased – his tattered spirit had soared up towards the Sky – beyond the figure-forming cracks in the ceiling – and he had stretched himself out – feeling quite hale in spite of his trudging thoughts – and watched her gently till she had looked up and caught his eyes – but recognising the false dawn of fervour she had glanced away to continue reading with a slight quiver honing the edge of her fragrant voice. Moving now leisurely around in the bed he had begun to appreciate its length and breadth while internalising the shape of her knees which shimmered like dewy tea rose buds in the glow from the fire. Thirsty – agile hinds had come out at twilight to invite him shyly to follow faster – and then he knew that she felt his heartbeats tangibly as physical touches that deepened her primal yearning to grow – and yet he had woken in the night of the heart to shiver with unassuaged regret – for the full features of her face – her – whom he now had left below the western horizon as if for ever – had still shone jasmine-fresh in the radiant glare of his memory. Slow corrosive tears of how and why had silently fallen down to encrust him in acrid salt for his longing remained as he lacked the necessary courage – so the unstitched wound of his being alive in this world was still licked by her unquiet ghost.

Having been awake awhile he had gone out into the bathroom to rinse her sweat off his feverish skin in the lukewarm water and suddenly felt how she goosefleshed to the touch of his memories. With wan fingers and distraught will he would have to dig through the dark congealing crust of the future – defying its increasing homogeneity – die Entropie der Welt strebt einem Maximum zu – to discern a needle tip of light – to find a mood in which he would dare to remain alive a little longer – but how he could escape the universal destiny of exponentially growing indifference was one of the basic questions that still mattered here beneath the smiling stars.

And yet – the following morning he had felt even better almost without fever – though the light lay fleecy with oil-glistening clouds – like shale – all around the low horizon and the room appeared like a vacant lot with the deserted ruins of his bygone days. Afraid of the lugubrious drumming of the winter rains – afraid that another relapse could lie lurking somewhere along his path – he preferred to stay indoors and rest at least for another couple of days – but walking to and fro in his dressing gown to probe the illness that still lingered as proprioceptions he felt an itching impatience with the square limitations of the room and a certain eagerness to shake himself free from the lethargy of his present dependence – and recognised a transformation from apathy to the suffering of coming alive.

By now their steps and habits had become diagnostic – Miss Simpson was rasping at the door with her bony knuckles – stale puffs of air drifted up from the gorge after the scree slide –

Do come in, Miss Simpson!

A long lean shadow prognosticating change.

As you may have noticed, I am better now, and as I said it would only be a matter of days, though it did take longer than I expected. Without optimism we would not survive.

I am certainly glad to see your condition has improved, sir. We have had some very wet weather lately, and, if you, as you say, just have come from overseas, you were probably not prepared for the cold rain and the wind we usually have here during the autumn months.

No, it came as a grim surprise and disasters are usually if not always unexpected.

A hoary truism – a millstone. Clearing her throat discreetly Miss Simpson fixed him with her gaze – and a light shrewd sheen arose from its depths. She was going to broach a quilly subject that would require his attention regardless of his aversion to focus on anything but the next breath.

Last week I was notified by a solicitor that my uncle, who died two months ago, had bequeathed me his house and a modest sum of money, so I have considered resigning my position here, but I have half a year’s notice, according to our agreement, and I wondered if you could do me the favour of finding a suitable person to replace me as soon as it might be convenient to you.

Of course, Miss Simpson; you are perfectly free to leave whenever you want. While I regret the death of your uncle, I congratulate you as you will now be able to live off the fat of the land, in quiet peace and comfort.

His hollow hypocrisy – a nauseating vacuum in the pit of his stomach but this was a godsent opportunity to escape the greatest of his obligations – and yet he suddenly felt adrift – at sea – unable to take hold of the tiller – drained of the natural resolution to accept the responsibility of getting his own bearings – a sliver of mist wafted away by a veering wind – passive – bereft of existentially oriented intentionality. Still conditioned by the recent past he would have to make a temporary arrangement – and yet it might be completely unnecessary – hail covering the pale fluffy grass – for why should he not be able to cope with the help of Jane and Molly till he was well enough to deal with all the daily transactions himself? Anyway – he could now escape the burden of her presence without a doubtful conscience or even of a questionable karmă.

And, Miss Simpson, though I suppose it will be difficult, though maybe not impossible to carry on without you, especially as I still feel slightly incapacitated, it would be unfair and against the laws of nature to delay your independence; so I suggest that you should leave as soon as you find it convenient to do so.

That’s very generous of you, sir, but I’ve just been doing my duty here, both now, you know, and when Mister and Mis’ess Thomson owned the house; and frankly, I don’t mind admitting that I have taken pride also in setting a certain standard, though it’s not so easy nowadays.

The general lack of integrity and the dire scarcity –

Exactly, sir. You’ve put the matter in a nutshell, but then at least I can begin to get ready.

Yes, indeed, and if there is anything I can do to assist you, you must not hesitate to ask.

Thank you, sir, but I don’t think that there is anything, actually.

As Miss Simpson nodded – pleased that the prudent conduct – which had saved her from both shoals and high tides now had given her her well-deserved dues – she turned round and went out of the door with a lightness of step that surprised him. Invariably regarding herself as the God-given mean she found the world just and reasonable and that was fair enough if remaining within her gilded reference frame as she would be bound to do till maybe a few moments before death. While congratulating herself on having been favoured by fate to escape his escalating idiosyncrasies she acknowledged his magnanimity but regarded it as being part and parcel of his irresponsibility for irrespective of foul or fair weather she had only been doing her duty – and duty was one of the most terrible concepts harrowing the surface of the planet – in palmy days the pillow – in dire straits the lifebuoy of those who had chosen to pawn their conscience in service and eschew the responsibility of personal relationships. He would be as glad to see her leave as she would be to get out of the house on account of him. Though lacking honey – bitterness and salt she was nevertheless fair and honest but too decent and too nice to be really real.

2.2

Standing in front of the French windows – watching the ceaselessly changing array of rain-swollen clouds from the Sea of life – he was thinking about thinking to thin the flow of thoughts to summer spider spin or even far beyond – the windy silence – splintered by a raucous knocking –

There’s an urgent telephone call for you –

Oh, as you may know, I do not yet feel capable of answering the tactless telephone.

If he should hear her voice again – Forget-me-not – forever – calling him home.

Yes, but it’s from a Doctor Seymour Balfour, and he insists very forcefully –

From Seymour? All right, thank you very much, Miss Simpson; I will take the telephone call in the library.

A fair gale of fresh air. He followed her efficiency down the creaking steps to puff up a smell of mildew – moths and disinfectant. Instinctual animosity – mutually reinforced – yet nevertheless – she walked alone in her own mind like he did in his – although they walked arm in arm down the same narrow road towards eternity. Slant-light through the tall and narrow windows – patterns on the herringboned worn floor. Thus was the day.

Seymour?

"Yes, what have you been doing? We haven’t heard a single word since that incoherent cri de cœur you wrote from –"

Woollen explanations of all that which he failed to understand about himself. Only flies in milk and tea.

Recuperating from a prolonged attack of Irrawaddy malaria and trying more or less in vain to disengage myself from all my memories of Geneviève.

"You will easily survive this strain of malaria and you will soon forget Geneviève. You clung too closely together, you wore each other out, so it’s quite a miracle that you managed to tear yourself apart; if not it would have ended in mutual murder, an unnecessarily melodramatic Liebestod for you have both exactly the same irreconcilable temperament, that’s all; and besides, you always worry far too much about far too many things not worth bothering about."

Buoyant and sprightly with hardly a care in the whole wide world. One disposition was a blessing – another a bane. The empty lot if life – or the plentiful –

"You do not appreciate the tragic dimension. Me vestigia terrent."

His sigh rattled the windows in their sun-shrivelled frames.

Not at all, your innate disposition is not at all fatalistic, and apart from your devastating fights with Geneviève you have so far had a charmed life so you have no reason to despair, but anyway, how’s your new house?

Large, old, dilapidated and in dire need of repairs; and, besides, I had no choice but to welcome the guardian angels of the place, a part-time cook, a retired gardener, two charming young women and a housekeeper, though only temporarily. I will encourage them all to seek prosperous opportunities elsewhere. The housekeeper has just told me that she wants to leave so the Sky is clearing and yet I feel incapable of concentrating on or even perceiving the necessity of mundane matters –

But a capable woman, let alone two, ought certainly to be able to take care of everything for you till you can fend for yourself again.

Not really, for Jane will soon be leaving to finish her education, and Molly only heeds her volatile passions if not obsessed by perfecting the flavour of her sloe gin. I cannot give you an impression of the atmosphere here, it’s too weird, yet it has an uncanny indefinable charm; but anyway, you ought to come for a week or two –

"Oh I see; ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων as always, and we will, we will, but I’m planning a prolonged field study of Gibbons in Manas, though I don’t know yet when we will be able to begin. Mary is, as you know curious, and she would like to see some pictures of your house and garden, or perhaps we might persuade Geoffrey to fly us over for a couple of days, but why don’t you join us in Manas? You would love it."

Oh yes, I would –

Invite Molly or Jane, or both for that matter, to cheer you up.

To leave me howling against the dispiriting Moon for the nth time? You have been lucky with Mary and you regard that luck as a simple law of nature.

That is not even serendipity, just a strictly causal chain of events determined by character compatibility.

But in meeting her you were favoured by fortune. Chance meetings are the cardinal points around which –

But fundamentally there is a general tendency of like-minded individuals to drift together, like raindrops, affinity for one’s own kind.

What kind of science is that?

Grant-repelling or worse – ostracising – in an Iron Age. Kaliyugam.

Meta-science. Science at its deepest level where general tendencies first manifest themselves –

So that the superficial bread-and-butter level of empiricism can devise strategies or tactics that will prove or disprove them?

Elementary, my dear Holmes. First of all the fundamental intuitive glimpse, then the painstaking empirical research.

"Doyle never wrote that, and εὕρηκα moments are rare; the general trend is technical Verschlimmbesserung."

The universe is so strange that we cannot even imagine how strange it is. Human quotidian imagination is linear, pragmatic, limited to analogy from a coarse-grained classical level.

It would be the long shadow of John Archibald Wheeler – Erwin Schrödinger – honoured by Éamon de Valera here – for quantum indeterminacy – though ontologically with loaded dice.

That monster custom who all sense doth eate. Nevertheless, I am shedding at least some of my past conditioning so soon I might be ready for human company again.

Having crept on hands and knees through yet another circle of Purgatorio?

And I hope then to see you both. Ask Geoffrey.

All right!

Regards to Mary, and a kiss in the dark.

The faint glimmer at the end of the long tunnel had brightened. Seymour’s grounded optimism – the prospect of Manas – Clouded Leopards – Elephants – Tigers – Otters – jungle wonder and serenity – the pull was physical like the pull of gravity. He climbed the stairs and took the lute down from the wall the better to see the leading beacons in the distance – and time left him alone – stilled by a softly falling rain of notes upon the bamboo leaves. Refreshed by a surge of inner silence he found the necessary courage to confront the glorious day. The warm crusty smell – coming from the oven – matched the bloom of her cheeks and a lock of her raven hair had been coloured white by flour as she impatiently must have brushed it aside – but now she was charmed by decanting a battery of large pink bottles.

Well, Molly, I would like to ask you if you know anybody here who could enlarge one of the windows in the roof so that I could construct a little platform for my telescope.

Your telescope?

Looking puzzled she straddled a chair to think – just like she – no –

Yes, I must make a small platform for the telescope, and it would require a large window, so, if you know somebody who might be willing to do that –

Beads on another string touched briefly by love-running fingers – images of faces or impressions of individuals would be passing through her mind in search of –

Well, well, let me see, yes, there’s always Henry, of course!

Henry?

Yes, Henry!

The tone of her voice implied that he still was suffering from an attack of mental fatigue or indisposition.

He has just fixed the roof of the church, you know, it was falling down like an odd angel, and Ferguson is rubbing his oily palms.

Do you know him well?

"Since I began going to school. Mary, his wife, had the best strawberries ever, along of hay and horse manure and something else no one knows about even now. She was always giving out and chasing us and the stares away, but Henry didn’t mind that or anything else, for as long as he has