Legenda Maris (25 page)

“Oh yes. You like Fat Anna’s.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Don’t be a baby, Kays. Fat Anna will
give you pancakes . “

“No, she doesn’t. No, not now.”

Held aside in a globe of distaste,
Gregeris watched the venomous serpent rise in Marthe and glare out from her
eyes. “You’ll do as I say, d’you hear?” The voice lifted, thin and piercing as
the doorbell. “Do as I say, or I’ll—” checking now, not to reveal herself as
hard or spiteful, unfeminine, unpleasant, before the benefactor— “Be a good
boy,” tardy wheedling, and then her hand gripping on the thin arm, working in
another dark-then-fade-yellow bruise. “I don’t see your Uncle Anton, except now
and then. He’s too busy—”

Kays was crying. Not very much, just a
defeated dew of tears on the white cheeks. But he made no further protest, well
lessoned in
this
school at least.

Later, in the restaurant, among the
nearly clean tablecloths, the wax stains and smell of meat sauce, Marthe
confessed, “Anna locks him in the small room, she has to, he runs away. But I
have to have him protected, don’t I, when I’m not there—”

Gregeris, who had helped escort the prisoner
to the woman’s tenement cave, (in one of the nastier streets, behind King
Christen’s Hill), considered that perhaps Marthe was often out, often away, at
night. Or, more likely, often had company in at night. (The boy shoved in the
bedroom and warned not to leave it.) It had been a man’s shirt pushed under the
sofa cushion. What a curious article to leave behind. Had Gregeris been meant
to notice it?

He
had intended to return that night to the city. But when he got free of Marthe
it was almost ten, and Gregeris felt he was exhausted. The dinner, naturally, had
been a mistake. They had parted, she with false sobs, and acrimony, Gregeris restrained,
starchy, and feeling old.

What on earth had they said to each
other? (Her excuse for demanding Gregeris’s presence had been some
conceivably-invented concern over Kays, that he slept poorly or something like
that. But presently she said that he often ran away, even at night. And then
again she said that she thought Kays was insane—but this was after the second
bottle was opened.)

Otherwise, the conversation had been a
dreary complaining recital of her burdensome life, leaving out, as he now
thought, her casual encounters with other men, her possible prostitution. When
at last he had been able to pay the bill, and put her in a taxi-cab for the
flat-house, her face was for an instant full of dangerous outrage. Yes, she had
expected more. Was
used
to more.

After this, surely, he must keep away
from her. During the meal, watching her scrawny throat swallowing, he had again
wondered, with the fascination of the dreamer who could only ever fantasise,
how much of a challenge it would be to his hands.

He found quite a good hotel, or his taxi
found it for him, on the tree-massed upper slope of the hill. It nestled among
the historic mansions, a mansion once itself, comfortable and accommodating for
anyone who might afford it. Thank God for money and hypocrisy, and all those
worthless things which provided the only safety in existence. He must never
visit Marthe again. Or the. awful boy, who surely could now only grow up to be
a thug, or the occupant of some grave.

Gregeris took a hot bath and drank the tisane
the hotel’s housekeeper had personally made for him. He climbed into the
comfortable, creaking bed. Sleep came at once. Thank God too for such sleep,
obedient as any servant.

Gregeris
woke with a start. He heard a clock striking, a narrow wire of notes. Was it
midnight? Why should that matter to him?

He sat up, wide awake, full of a
sensation of anxiety, almost terror—and excitement. For a moment he couldn’t
bring himself to switch on the lamp. But when he did so, his watch on the
bedside table showed only eleven. He had slept for less than a quarter of an
hour, yet it had seemed an eternity. The confounded clock in the square had
woken him. How had he heard it, so far up here, so far away—sound had risen, he
supposed.

In any case, it was the beggar, that
scavenger Ercole, with his tales of midnight and the town and the sea, who had
caused Gregeris’s frisson of nerves.

Gregeris drank some mineral water. Then
he got up and walked over to the window, drawing back the curtains. The town
lay below, there it was, stretching down away from the hill to the flat plain
of the sea. There were fewer lights, all of them low and dim behind their
blinds, only the street lamps burning white, greenish-white, as Ercole had
said. The clock-tower, the square, were hidden behind other buildings.

When did the town, that part of the town
beyond the hill, which went sailing, set off? Midnight, Gregeris deduced. That
would be it. And so the motion would gradually wake those ones who did wake, by
about a quarter past. After all, that hour, between midnight and one in the
morning, was the rogue hour, the hour when time stopped and began again, namelessly,
like a baby between its birth and its first birthday—not yet fully realised, or
part of the concrete world.

It was quite plausible, the story. Yes,
looking down from the hill at the town, you could credit this was the exact area
which would gently unhook itself, like one piece of a jigsaw, from the rest,
and slip quietly out on the tide.

Gregeris drank more water. He lit a
cigarette, next arranged a chair by the window. Before he sat down, he put out
his bedside lamp, so that he could see better what the town got up to.

This was, of course, preposterous, and
he speculated if months in the future, he would have the spirit to tell anyone,
some business crony, his elderly mother, jokingly of course, how he had sat up
to watch, keep sentinel over the roving town, which sailed away on certain
nights not always of the full moon, returning like a prowling cat with the
dawn.

“A beggar told me. Quite a clever chap,
rough, but with a vivid, arresting use of words.”

But why had Ercole told him anything?
Just for money?
Then I’ve done my part
, he had said.
Everything it
can expect of me
.

It? Who? The town? Why did the town want
its secret told? To boast? Perhaps to
warn
.

Gregeris gazed down. There below, hidden
by the lush curve of the many-gardened hill, the slum where she lived, Marthe.
And the boy. There they would be, sleeping in their fug. And the town, sailing
out, would carry them sleeping with it.

Gregeris couldn’t deny he liked the idea
of it, the notion of this penance of his carried far out to sea.

Well. He could watch, see if it was.
Half amused at himself, yet he was strangely tingling, as if he felt the electricity
in the air, which had galvanized Ercole’s filthy palm, and, come to think of
it, the boy’s, for when Gregeris had put the bank note into Kays’ fingers,
there had been a flicker of it, too, though none on Marthe.

Certainly I never felt more wide awake.

He would be sorry, no doubt, in the
morning. Perhaps he could doze on the train, although he disliked doing that.

It was better than lying in bed, anyway,
fretting at insomnia.

Avidly Gregeris leaned forward, his chin
on his hand.

The sound was terrible, how terrible it
was. What in God’s name was it? Some memory, caught in the dream—oh, yes, he
remembered now, after that train crash in the mountains, and the street below
his room full of people crying and calling and women screaming, and the rumble
of the ambulances—

Horrible. He must wake up, get away.

Gregeris opened his eyes and winced at
the blinding light of early day, the sun exploding full in the window over a
vast sea like smashed diamonds.

But the sound—it was still there—it was
all round him. There must have been some awful calamity, some disaster—Gregeris
jumped to his feet, knocking over as he did so the little table, the bottle and
glass, which fell with a crash. Had a war been declared? There had been no likelihood
of such a thing, surely.

Under Gregeris’s window, three storeys
down, (as in the comfortable hotel all about), voices rose in a wash of dread,
and a woman was crying hysterically, “
Jacob
—
Jacob
—”

Then, standing up, he saw. That was, he
no
longer
saw. For the sight he would see had vanished, while he slept, he who
had determined to watch all night, the sight which had been there below. The
view of the town.

The town was gone. All that lay beyond
the base of the hill was a great curving bay of glittering, prancing, sun-
dazzled sea. The town had sailed away. The town had not returned.

Gregeris stood there with his hands up
over his mouth, as if to keep in his own rash cry.
Marthe
—
Kays
—
The town had sailed away and they had been taken with it, for their slum below
the hill was the last section of the jigsaw-piece, and they were now far off,
who knew how far, or where, that place where those asleep slept on in the tombs
of their houses, (would they ever Wake? There was a chance of it now, one might
think), and the air was sea, and fish swam through the trees and the creatures
of the deeps, and the mermaid floated to the plinth, blue-white,
white-blue-green, contemplative and black of eye—

Someone knocked violently on the door.
Then the door burst open. No less than the manager bounded into the room,
incoherent and wild eyed -

“So sorry to disturb—ah, you’ve seen—an earthquake
they say—the police insist we must evacuate—the hill’s so near the edge—perhaps
not safe—hurry, if you will— No! No time to dress, throw on your coat—quickly!
Oh my God, my God!”

Some
big ugly building accommodated the group in which Gregeris found himself. He
thought it must be a school of some sort, once a grand house. It was cluttered
with hard chairs, cracked windows, and cupboards full of text books. No one was
allowed yet to leave. Everyone, it seemed, must given their name and address,
even visitors such as Gregeris, and then be examined by a medical practitioner.
But the examination was cursory—a light shone in the eyes, the tempo of the
heart checked—and although three times different persons wrote down his
details, still they refused to let him go. Soon, soon, they said. You must
understand, we must be sure of who has survived, and if you are all quite well.

Several were not, of course. The fusty
air of the school was thick with crying. So many of the people now crowded in
there had ‘lost’—this being the very word they used—families, friends, lovers.
Some had lost property, too. “My little shop,” one man kept wailing, blundering
here and there. “Five years I’ve had it—opened every day at eight—where is it,
I ask you?”

None of them knew where any of it was.
They had woken from serene sleep to find—
nothing
. An omission.

It was an earthquake. That area had fallen
into the sea. An earthquake and tidal wave which had disturbed no one, not even
the pigeons on the roofs.

Had any others had a ‘warning’, as
Gregeris had? He pondered. Some of them, through their confusion and grief,
looked almost shifty.

But his mind kept going away from this,
the aftermath, to the beggar, Ercole. What had become of him, Awake, and sailing
on and on? And those others, the girl called Jitka, the old couple from the
hospital, and the rich soldier, and the ones Ercole hadn’t met or hadn’t
recollected?

Was the town like one of those sea
sprites in legend, which seduced, giving magical favours and rides to its
chosen victims, playing with them in the waves, until their trust was properly
won. Then riding off deep into the sea and drowning them?

The thought came clearly.
Don’t
mislead yourself
. It isn’t that. Nothing so mundane or simple.

God knew. Gregeris never would.

It was while he was walking about among
the groups and huddles of people, trying to find an official who would finally
pass him through the police in the grounds outside, that Gregeris received the
worst shock of his life. Oh, decidedly the worst. Worse than that threat in his
youth, or that financial fright seven years ago, worse than when Marthe had
told him she was pregnant, or arrived in the birthday dinner door. Worse, much,
much worse than this morning, standing up and seeing only ocean where the
houses and the clock-tower and the square had been. For there, amid the clutter
of mourning refugees from world’s edge, stood Kays.

But was it Kays? Yes, yes. No other. A
pale, fleshless, dirty little boy, his face tracked now by tears like scars,
and crying on and on.

Some woman touched Gregeris’s arm,
making him start. “Poor mite. His mother’s gone with the rest. Do you know him?
Look, I think he knows
you
. Do go and speak to him. None, of us can
help.”

And in the numbness of his shock,
Gregeris found himself pushed mildly and inexorably on. A woman did, he
thought, always manage to push you where she decided you must go. And now he and
the boy stood face to face, looking up or down.

“How—are you here?” Gregeris heard
himself blurt. And as he said it, knew. Fat Anna’s street, where the boy had been
penned, was the other, the wrong side, of the hill. And Marthe, damn her, drunk
and selfish to the last, hadn’t thought to fetch him back. Gregeris could just
picture her, her self-justifying mumbles as she slithered into her sty of bed.
He’ll
be all right. I’m too upset tonight. I’ll go for him in the morning.