Collected Stories (16 page)

He stands in the middle of the road and turns his head slowly around, scanning the soft horizon. Sooner or later there will be a patch, lighter than any other, as if a small city has appeared just over the edge, a city with its lights on. Then it will get bigger and then it will get hot, and before that he will have settled one of the questions concerning east and west.

He turns towards the east. He looks down the road in the direction he has known as “east” for two weeks, for two weeks until he was crazy enough to watch the sun set. He watches now for a long time. He stands still with his hands behind his back, as if bound, and feels a prickling along the back of his neck.

He stands on the road with his feet astride the double white line, in the at-ease position. He remains standing there until an undeniable shadow is cast in front of him. It is his own shadow, long and lean, stretching along the road, cast by the sun which is rising in the “west”. He slowly turns to watch the windmill which is silhouetted against the clear morning sky.

It is sometime later, perhaps five minutes, perhaps thirty, when he notices the small aeroplane. It is travelling down from the “north”, directly above the wire and very low. It occurs to him that the plane is too low to be picked up by radar, but he is not alarmed. In all likelihood it is an inspection tour, a routine check, or even a supply visit. The plane has been to the other posts up “north”, a little further along the line.

Only when the plane is very close does he realize that it is civilian. Then it is over him, over the caravan, and he can see its civilian registration. As it circles and comes in to land on the road he is running hard for the caravan and his carbine. He stuffs his pockets full of clips and emerges as the plane comes to rest some ten yards from the caravan.

What now follows, he experiences distantly. As if he himself were observing his actions. He was once in a car accident in California where his tyre blew on the highway. He still remembers watching himself battle to control the car, he watched quite calmly, without fear.

Now he motions the pilot out of the plane and indicates that he should stand by the wing with his hands above his head. Accustomed to service in foreign countries he has no need of the English language. He grunts in a certain manner, waving and poking with the carbine to add meaning to the sounds. The pilot speaks but the soldier has no need to listen.

The pilot is a middle-aged man with a fat stomach. He is dressed in white: shorts, shirt, and socks. He has the brown shoes and white skin of a city man. He appears concerned. The soldier cannot be worried by this. He asks the pilot what he wants, using simple English, easy words to understand.

The man replies hurriedly, explaining that he was lost and nearly out of petrol. He is on his way to a mission station, at a place that the soldier does not even bother to hear — it would mean nothing.

The soldier then indicates that the pilot may sit in the shade beneath the wing of the aircraft. The pilot appears doubtful, perhaps thinking of his white clothing, but having looked at the soldier he moves awkwardly under the wing, huddling strangely.

The soldier then explains that he will telephone. He also explains that, should the man try to move or escape, he will be shot.

He dials the number he has never dialled before. At the moment of dialling he realizes that he is unsure of what the telephone is connected to: Yallamby base which is on the “outside”, or whatever is on the “inside”.

The phone is answered. It is an officer, a major he has never heard of. He explains the situation to the major, who asks him details about the type of fuel required. The soldier steps outside and obtains the information, then returns to the major on the phone.

Before hanging up the major asks, what side of the wire was he on?

The soldier replies, on the outside.

It takes two hours before the truck comes. It is driven by a captain. That is strange, but it does not surprise the soldier. However, it disappoints him, for he had hoped to settle a few questions regarding the “outside” and “inside”. It will be impossible to settle them now.

There are few words. The captain and the soldier unload several drums and a handpump. The captain reprimands the soldier for his lack of courtesy to the pilot. The soldier salutes.

The captain and the pilot exchange a few words while the soldier fixes the tailboard of the truck — the pilot appears to be asking questions but it is impossible to hear what he asks or how he is answered.

The captain turns the truck around, driving off the road and over the scorpion grid, and returns slowly to wherever he came from.

The pilot waves from his open cockpit. The soldier returns his greeting, waving slowly from his position beside the road. The pilot guns the motor and taxis along the road, then turns, ready for take-off.

At this point it occurs to the soldier that the man may be about to fly across the “inside”, across what is the United States. It is his job to prevent this. He tries to wave the man down but he seems to be occupied with other things, or misunderstands the waving. The plane is now accelerating and coming towards the soldier. He runs toward it, waving.

It is impossible to know which is the “inside”. It would have been impossible to ask a captain. They could have court-martialled him for that.

He stands beside the road as the small plane comes towards him, already off the road. It is perhaps six feet off the road when he levels his carbine and shoots. The wings tip slightly to the left and then to the right. In the area known as the “west” the small aeroplane tips onto its left wing, rolls, and explodes in a sudden blast of flame and smoke.

The soldier, who is now standing in the middle of the road, watches it burn.

He has a mattock, pick, and shovel. He flattens what he can and breaks those members that can be broken. Then he begins to dig a hole in which to bury the remains of the aeroplane. The ground is hard, composed mostly of rock. He will need a big hole. His uniform, his dress uniform, has become blackened and dirty. He digs continually, his fingers and hands bleeding and blistered. There are many scorpions. He cannot be bothered with them, there is no time. He tells them, there is no time now.

It is hot, very hot.

He digs, weeping slowly with fatigue.

Sometimes, while he digs, he thinks he can hear the windmill clanking. He weeps slowly, wondering if the windmill could possibly hear him.

Homer has a fever.

His bedclothes have fallen. His face is contorted. His whispering mouth is like a small rose in a sea of soft chamois leather. His blind eyes look like the eyes of old statues that have lost their paint. His ageing naked body is soft and white with baby-creases where the arms and legs meet the body. The floor beside his bed is a mess of tangled clothes, as if the turbulent sea had spilled out of his raging mind and been left to run wild and crash around the room.

His dreams rage against the white walls and he curses them petulantly, telling them to go away.

But Echion won’t go away.

He can see Echion and Diomedes quite clearly. They are lying on a beach in a foreign land. It is unlike any land he has ever seen: a hot, humid tropical place left over from an old legend. Homer’s mind is a mass of old legends. They wind around each other like the bedclothes on his floor and in his confusion he tries to untangle them but succeeds only in winding them closer together. For a week this battle has continued and it shows no signs of abating.

Now there’s this damn Echion again. Echion on an unpleasantly beautiful tropical beach. The landscape is full of gaping white holes that Homer is desperate to fill in. Through the white holes are the fragments of landscape he cannot immediately imagine and now, from habit, he begins to work at them like a cunning old stone mason, patiently filling them in tree by tree, cloud by cloud, grain of sand by grain of sand. The work gives him no pleasure or satisfaction. It is merely one more problem to be solved.

The beach is lined with great tall trees that resemble palm trees but they are not palm trees at all. They bear large orange fruit the size of a man’s head. When the orange fruit fall they split open to reveal purple seeds and bright red flesh. These seeds now litter the
beach like beads from a broken necklace and Echion lies talking to a native girl who doesn’t understand his words.

Echion is stocky and squat and his body comprises a wild landscape of bumps and bulges that runs from his huge knotted calves to his wide powerful shoulders. His nose has been broken, a portion of his left ear is missing, and his black curling hair is beginning to bald, right in the centre of his great head. These marks are the result neither of battles nor of age, but of small spiteful injuries inflicted on him by Homer — repayments for imagined slights against a master Echion doesn’t even know exists. For Echion is a worrier. He worries at the reasons for his dreams, questions the logic of his terrible battles. He has nagged at Odysseus, asking him continual questions about the blind oracle he is known to consult.

The time has not yet come to kill Echion for the last time. When the time comes his death will be used to achieve a certain effect. Echion is an annoying small coin, but he will not be spent lightly. He is also a dangerous coin to keep. Sooner or later his infuriating questions will contaminate Diomedes and then the other men. Echion is the seed of the mutiny which Homer dreads.

But Echion is wearing down. His black eyebrows almost meet across his perpetually furrowed brow and his eyes look like windows onto a windswept sky, one instant the most brilliant blue and the next grey with heavy clouds. He looks like a man who has fought too many battles and wants nothing more than to lie down and die amongst his friends.

Homer looks along the beach, walking his mind past the twenty-eight other men who are also there. Some sleep under the tall strange trees. Others recline under large wooden structures that have been built for them by friendly natives. In the shade of these shadow factories they retell old legends and bawdy stories. Others, like Echion, lie with women who are puzzled and afraid of these hairy light-skinned strangers.

The laughter on the beach is loud and coarse. There is a grim determination in it, as if the men were committed to being happy at any cost. They are soldiers on leave. They wish to behave like soldiers on leave but at the same time they cast silent glances at the palm trees and their giant orange fruit and examine the seeds carefully while they caress their girl or tell their story or pretend to gaze out at the misty sea. The girls accept the caresses silently and offer
their strange companions rich drinks from goblets shaped like pigs’ heads and the soldiers laugh and play at being happy.

For the thousand things they talk and joke about, they say nothing about their most recent experiences. They say nothing of the lands they have visited, driven on the seas of Homer’s fever, a great yellow storm which has washed them onto impossible shores where they have met threat and horror and deprivation.

They are suffering from the shock which is the necessary protection for those who are the victims of dreams. Their memories of their roles in Homer’s dreams seem simply to be recollections of nightmares too horrible to mention.

Thus they remember but dismiss the time that Odysseus was set alight and ran amongst them in panic, setting each of them alight in turn. Likewise Diomedes’ castration and decapitation. Likewise a thousand other horrible things.

Only Echion ponders on these matters. His brows knot continually as he tries to put down his memories.

Odysseus, of course, is excepted from all this. It is necessary that he collaborate. He alone is not protected and will clearly remember the pain and the hardships and soon he will come in search of Homer and accuse him once more of neglect and mismanagement.

Homer turns wearily in his bed, attempting to turn his back on the beach. If only he could remember where he was sending these men he could put everything to rights. But he’s lost. His memory has broken its anchor and is drifting loose and he’s stuck with this contingent of soldiers who lie on a foreign beach and drown the noises from their dreams with false laughter.

The seas shimmer.

A large white fluffy cloud in the sky threatens to solidify, to become granite. Homer, moaning, tastes the rock between his teeth.

Diomedes leans on his elbow. His flesh is smooth and unmarked. His wounds have been healed by Homer. Diomedes is a good soldier, tough and strong, delighting in discipline and comforting himself in the superiority of his leaders. Homer’s spite has not been visited on him. He is a strange contrast to the battle-scarred veteran who lies by his side.

“Are you awake?” he asks the veteran.

“Yes,” says Echion, “I’m awake.” He is staring at the granite cloud.

“Do you like your girl?” Diomedes’ voice is uneasy. He wishes to be continually assured that everything is excellent. He is young and Echion is old.

Echion smiles. He finds his friend’s concern for the quality of the girl amusing. “Yes, I like my girl. Do you like yours?”

Diomedes doesn’t look at his girl. It seems as if he wasn’t asking about the girl at all, that he wanted to know something more important. “Yes,” he says, “I like my girl.”

He picks up one of the purple seeds and examines it minutely. For a moment it seems that he is about to ask another question, the real question.

“Tell me,” Echion says gently, “tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Nothing,” says Diomedes, “I was just thinking how good it is that we both like our girls.”

Later, while Diomedes was asleep, Echion dug sullenly in the sand and puzzled at his problem. His problem nagged at him continually. It was something so stupid it made him angry to think about it. But he couldn’t leave it alone.

Echion’s problem was that he had forgotten the purpose of their mission. It was stupid of him. It was so stupid he couldn’t even ask any of the others. He had once made the mistake of broaching this subject with Diomedes and Diomedes, his closest friend, had flared into a wild temper and called him a traitor and a weakling and many other things which, his eyes brimming with tears, he came later to apologize for. He had, he said, been having bad dreams. They had upset him. He was sorry. Echion had forgiven him instantly but they had not discussed the matter since.