Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

What should I roof my new home with? This question answered my other: what had the original inhabitants used as roofing? Clay was the answer. Between the stones of the old foundations and the stone channels, the earth showed as clay. And when I splashed water on it, the dense heavy substance potters use formed at once in my palm. Once this city had had roofs of tiles made of this clay, and, clay being more vulnerable to time than rock, these tiles had dissolved away in heavy rain or in the winds that must tear and buffet and ravage along this exposed high edge whenever it stormed. No people, where were the people? Why was this entire city abandoned and empty? Why, when it was such a perfect place for a community to make its own? It had good building material close at hand, it had houses of every kind virtually whole and perfect save for the absent roofs, it had good pure water, and a climate which grew every sort of flower and vegetable. Had one day the thousands of inhabitants died of an epidemic? Been scared away by threat of an earthquake? All been killed in some war?

There was no way of finding out, so I decided not to think about it. I would stay here a while. And I would not trouble to roof myself a house. The walls gave shelter enough from the sun. It was not yet the rainy season, but even if it had been, the rain would soon drain away off this height, and it was not a place to stay damp or cold.

I found a tree which had aromatic foliage, something like a blue-gum, but with finer leaves. I stripped off armfuls of the leaves and carried them to the shelter of a wall. With them I made a deep warm bed I could burrow into if the night turned cold. I picked some pink sweet fruit, in appearance like peaches, that grew bending over a water channel. I drank water—and understood that my needs as an animal were met. I need do nothing but pick fruit and gather fresh leaves when those that made my bed withered. For the rest I could sit on the cliff’s edge and watch the clouds gather over the sea, watch the moon’s growing and declining, and match my rhythms of sleep and waking to the darkening and lightening of the nights.

And I need not be solitary. For this city had an atmosphere as if it were inhabited, as I’ve said. More, as if this city was itself a person, or had a soul, or being. It seemed to know me. The walls seemed to acknowledge me as I passed. And when the moon rose for the third time since I had arrived on this coast, I was wandering among the streets and avenues of stone as if I were among friends.

Very late, when the moon was already low over the mountains, I lay down on my bed of deliciously smelling leaves, and now I did sleep for a time. It was a light delightful sleep, from which it was no effort to wake, and I was talking to my old shipfriends, George and Charlie, James and Stephen and Miles and the rest, and into this conversation came Conchita and Nancy, who were singing their songs and laughing. When I woke, as the sun came up shining from the blue-green sea, I knew quite clearly that I had something to do. My friends were all about me, I knew that, and in some way they were of the substance of this warm earthy stone, and the air itself, but it was not enough for me just to live here and breathe its air. I sprang straight up when I woke, driven by this knowledge that I had work to do, and went to wash my face and hands in the nearest water channel. I admired my fine mariner’s beard, and my hard, dark-brown, salt-pickled arms and face, ate more of the peach-like fruit, and walked out among the sky-roofed houses to see what I could see … it was very strange indeed that I had not noticed this before: among the buildings, in what seemed like the centre of the old city, what might very well have been the former central square, was an expanse of smooth stone which was not interrupted by flowers or by water channels. The square was perhaps seventy or a hundred yards across, and in it was an inner circle, about fifty yards across. It was a little cracked, where earth had settled under it, and some grass grew in the cracks, but it was nearly flat, and it waited there for what I had to do. I knew now what this was. I had to prepare this circle lying in its square, by clearing away all the loose dirt and pulling out the grass. And so I began this task. It took longer than it should have done because I had no tools at all. But I tore off a strong branch and used it as a broom. And when the dirt was all swept away and the grass pulled up, I brought water in my cupped hands from near channels, and splashed it down. But this took too long, and then I searched until I found a stone that had a hollow in it which might have been used as a mortar for crushing grain once, and I used that to carry water. To clear and prepare that circle in the midst of the city took me nearly a week, during which I worked all day, and even at night when the moon came up. Now I lay down to rest between the sun’s setting and the moon’s rising, and worked on under the moon, lying down again to rest between moon-fall and sunrise, if there was this interval.

I was not tired. I was not tired at all with the work. I was not even particularly expectant of anything. I knew only that this was what I had to do, and could only suppose that my friends must have told me so, since it was after my dream of them that I had known it.

Now the moon was in its last quarter and making a triangle, sun, earth, moon, whereas when I had reached that coast it was full, and sitting on the plateau’s edge and staring into the moon’s round face I had had my back to the sun, which was through the earth, and the sun stared with me at the moon. Then the pulls and antagonisms and tensions from the sun and moon had been in a straight line through the earth, which swelled, soil and seas, in large bulges of attraction as the earth rolled under the moon, the sun; but now the tension of sun and moon pulled in this triangle, and the tides of the ocean were low, and the great sky was full of a different light now, a fainter, bluer moonlight, and the stars blazed out. I did not know why I thought so, but I had come to believe that it was the next full moon that I was waiting for.

I moved my pile of drying leaves to the edge of the circle in the square. Now all that expanse of stone was washed and clean, patterns glowed in it, continuous geometrical patterns, that suggested flowers and gardens and their correspondence with the movements of the sky. Even in the thinning moonlight the patterns loomed up milkily, as I lay on my elbow in my pile of leaves. I lay there in the dimming moonlight, and listened to the wind in the grasses, the tinkling of the water that ran invisibly in its channels, and sometimes the hard crackle when one of the dried leaves of my bed cartwheeled and skittered across the stone floor as I watched and watched all night, in case I might be wrong, and the visiting Crystal descended now, in the moon’s wane. When I was ready to sleep, I lay on my back, with one arm out over the stone which held the day’s warmth, and I closed my eyes, and let the moon and the starlight drench my face. My sleep was ordered by the timing of the moon. I was obsessed by it, by its coming and going, or rather, by its erratic circling in wild crazy loops and ellipses around the Earth, so that sometimes it lay closer to the North, and sometimes circled lower over my head, at 15 degrees South, sometimes it looped lower still, so that with my head to the North and my feet pointing to the Antarctic, the path seemed at knee-level. In the dark of space was a blazing of white gas, and in the luminous envelope of this lamp some crumbs of substance whizzed around, but the crumbs farther out from the central blaze were liquefied or tenuous matter, gases or soups also spinning in their orbits, and some of these minute crumbs or lumps of water that spun about had other tinier crumbs or droplets swirling about them in a dance, a dance and a dazzle, and someone looking in, riding in, from space would see this great burning lamp and its orbiting companions as one, a unit; a unit even as central blaze and circling associates, but even more if this visiting Explorer had eyes and senses set by a different clock, for then this unit, Sun and associates, might seem like a central splurge ringed by paths of fire or light, for the path of a planet by a different scale of time might be one with that planet, and this Celestial Voyager with his differently tuned senses might very well see the Earth’s circling streak and its Moon as one, a double planet, a circling streak that sometimes showed double, as when the hairs in a painter’s brush straggle and part, and make two streaks of a single stroke. The Voyager, too, would see the tensions and pulls of the lumps or drops in their orbiting about the sun in a constantly changing pattern of subtle thrills, and currents and measures of movement in the rolling outwards of the solar wind, and he might even see in the little crumb of matter that was the Earth, the tuggings and pullings crosswise of the Moon and the Sun, which were at right angles, this being the Moon’s last quarter and the tides of water and earth and air being low.

The Moon held me, the moon played with me, the moon and I seemed to breathe as one, for my waking and sleeping, or rather, being wakeful and then dreaming, not the same thing, were set by the moon’s direct pressure on my eyes. And then, as it waned, by my knowledge of its presence, a dark orb with its narrowing streak of reflected sunlight, and then at last the two days of the dark of the moon, when the moon, between earth and sun, had its back to us and held its illuminated face inwards, to the sun, so that great Sun and minute Moon stared at each other direct. The sun’s light, its reflected substances, were reflected back at the sun’s broad face, and we received none, instead of being bathed in sun-stuff from two directions, immediately from sun, and reflected from moon. No, the moon had her back to us, like a friend who has gone away. In the few days when the moon was dark, when the Earth was warmed and fed and lit only by the sun, only that part of the Earth which was exposed to the sun’s rays receiving its light, I fell into a misery and a dimming of purpose. In the daytime I walked among the buildings of this city which was whole except for its absent roofs, and watched the turning of the Earth in the shortening and lengthening of shadows, and at night I sat by the edge of the great square of stone where the circle lay glowing—yes, even by starlight it showed a faint emanation of colour—and lived for the return of the moon, or rather, for its circling back to where it might again shed the sun’s light back to us.

As my head, when climbing the last part of the ascent to the plateau, had been filled with the din of falling water and the buffeting of mountain winds, so that I could not think, could only ascend without thought, so now my head was full of light and dark, filled with the moon and its white dazzle—now alas reflected out and away back at the sun, back at space—and my thoughts and movements were set by it, not by the Sun, man’s father and creator, no, by the Moon, and I could not take my thoughts from her as she dizzied around the earth in her wild patterning dance.

I was moonstruck. I was mooncrazed. To see her full face I sped off in imagination till I lay out in space as in a sea, and with my back to the Sun, I gazed in on her, the Moon, but simultaneously I was on the high plateau, looking at the moon’s back which was dark, its face being gazed upon by the sun and myself.

I began to fancy that the moon knew me, that subtle lines of sympathy ran back and forth between us. I began to think the moon’s thoughts. A man or a woman walking along a street gives no evidence of what he is thinking, yet his thoughts are playing all about him in subtle currents of substance. But an ordinary person cannot see these subtle moving thoughts. One sees an animal with clothes on, its facial muscles slack, or in grimace. Bodily eyes see bodies, see flesh. Looking at the Moon, at Sun, we see matter, earth or fire, as it were people walking in the street. We cannot see the self-consciousness of Moon, or Sun. There is nothing on Earth, or near it, that does not have its own consciousness, Stone, or Tree, or Dog, or Man. Looking into a mirror or into the glossy side of a toppling wave, or a water-smoothed shining stone like glass, we see shapes of flesh, flesh in time. But the consciousness that sees that face, that body, those hands, feet, is not inside the same scale of time. A creature looking at its image, as an ape or a leopard leaning over a pool to drink, sees its face and body, sees a dance of matter in time. But what sees this dance has memory and expectation, and memory itself is on another plane of time. So each one of us, walking or sitting or sleeping, is at least two scales of time wrapped together like the yolk and white of an egg, and when a child with his soul just making itself felt, or a grown-up who has never thought of anything before but animal thoughts, or an adolescent in love, or an old person just confronted with death, or even a philosopher or a star measurer—when any of these, or you or I ask ourselves, with all the weight of our lives behind the question, What am I? What is this Time? What is the evidence for a Time that is not mortal as a leaf in autumn? Then the answer is, That which asks the question is out of the world’s time … and so I looked at the body of the moon, now a dark globe with the sun-reflecting segment broadening nightly, I looked at this crumb of matter and knew it had thoughts, if that is the word for it, thoughts, feelings, a knowledge of its existence, just as I had, a man lying on a rock in the dark, his back on rock that still held the warmth from the sun.

Misshapen Moon,

Tyrant,

Labouring in circles,

Reflecting hot,

Reflecting cold,

Why don’t you fly off and find another planet?

Venus perhaps, or even Mars?

Lopsided Earth

Reeling and Heaving,

Wildly gyrating,

Which is the whip and which the top?

We have no choice but to partner each other,

Around and around and around and around and around …

The thoughts of the moon are very cold and hungry, I know this now. But then, enamoured and obsessed, I simply longed. I merely lay and let myself be drunk. But that cold crumb that waltzes and swings about us so wildly is a great drinker of men’s minds. By the time of the first quarter when the moon had again moved a fourth of its journey around the Earth, and there was a week to the full of the moon and the expected landing of my crystal visitor, I was lunatic indeed. I did not sleep, oh no, I could not sleep. I walked or I lay or I knelt or I sat, my neck sunk back into the muscles of my neck, gazing up and up and up, and the cells of my eyeballs were ringing with light like a fevered man’s ears.

This sound shrilled and grew, and late one night, when the half-disc was right overhead, I heard mingled with this another, an earth noise, and I knew that whatever it was was out on the plain beyond the ruins of the city, between it and the distant mountains. I walked through the ruined houses, that had seemed so intimate with me, so close, but now they had set themselves from me, they had turned away, and when I came up to a jut of wall, or the corner of a building, or a threat of shadow, my hands clenched themselves, and my eyes darted of their own accord to every place that might shelter an enemy. Yet I had not once before, since making my landfall, thought of enemies or of danger.

I walked down a broad paved street that rang out echoing answers to my footfalls, and reached the dwindling edge of the city, and saw, under the bright stars and the brightening moon, a mass of cattle grazing out on the plain. There were thousands of them, all milk-white or gently gold in this light, all large, fed, comfortable beasts, and there was no one there to herd them. They had all the vastness of the plain for their home, and they moved together, in a single impulse, a single mind, sometimes lowering their heads to graze as they went, and sometimes lowing. It was this sound that had brought me from the centre of the city to its edge. As I stood watching, there was a sudden frightened stirring on the edge of this ghostly herd, and I saw a dark shadow move forward at a run from a ruin at the city’s edge, and then crouch to the ground. Then one of the big beasts fell dead, and suddenly there was a strong sickly smell of blood on the air that I knew, though I had no proof of this, had not been made to smell of blood before.

And now I understood my fall away from what I had been when I landed, only three weeks before, into a land which had never known killing. I knew that I had arrived purged and salt-scoured and guiltless, but that between then and now I had drawn evil into my surroundings, into me, and I knew, as if it had been my own hand that had drawn that bow and loosed that arrow, that I had caused the shining milk-white beast to fall dead. And fell on my knees as the herd, alerted, thundered past and out of sight, lowing and shrieking and stopping from time to time to throw back their heads and sniff the air which was sending them messages of murder and fright. Soon I was there alone in the dim moonlight with one other person, a young boy, or perhaps a girl in men’s clothes, who had walked over to the carcass and was standing over it to pull out the arrow. And without looking to see who it was, though I knew that I could recognize this person if I did go close enough, and without caring if I was seen by him, or by her, I fell on my face on the earth and I wept. Oh, I’ll never know such sorrow again. I’ll never know such grief, oh, I cannot stand it, I don’t wish to live, I do not want to be made aware, of what I have done and what I am and what must be, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, around and around and around and around and around and around …

I must record my strong disagreement with this treatment. If it were the right one, patient should by now be showing signs of improvement. Nor do I agree that the fact he sleeps almost continuously is by itself proof that he is in need of sleep. I support the discontinuation of this treatment and discussion about alternatives.

DOCTOR Y.

DOCTOR Y. Well, and how are you today? You certainly do sleep a lot, don’t you?

PATIENT. I’ve never slept less in my life.

DOCTOR Y. You ought to be well rested by now. I’d like you to try and be more awake, if you can. Sit up, talk to the other patients, that sort of thing.

PATIENT. I have to keep it clean, I have to keep it ready.

DOCTOR Y. No, no. We have people who keep everything clean. Your job is to get better.

PATIENT. I was better. I think. But now I’m worse. It’s the moon, you see. That’s a cold hard fact.

DOCTOR Y. Ah. Ah, well. You’re going back to sleep, are you?

PATIENT. I’m not asleep, I keep telling you.

DOCTOR Y. Well, good night!

PATIENT. You’re stupid! Nurse, make him go away. I don’t want him here. He’s stupid. He doesn’t understand anything.

On the contrary. Patient is obviously improving. He shows much less sign of disturbance. His colour and general appearance much better. I have had considerable experience with this drug. It is by no means the first time a patient has responded with somnolence. It can take as long as three weeks for total effect to register. It is now one week since commencement of treatment. It is essential to continue.

DOCTOR X.

I did not wait to see the beast cut up. I ran back to the edge of the landing-ground and tried to bury my fears in sleep. I didn’t know what I was afraid of, but the fact I was afraid at all marked such a difference between now and then that I knew it was a new condition for me. I could feel my difference. Now, I was afraid of the moon’s rising and its rapid growth towards full. I wanted to hide somewhere, or in some way, but to hide in a perpetual daylight until that night of the Full Moon when—I was certain of this—the Crystal would descend to my swept and garnished landing-ground. But daylight was not a time to take cover in, to use for concealment. I piled branches over my head and lay face down with eyes blotted out and made myself sleep, when I had no need of it, but my sleep was not the sleep of an ordinary man. It was a living in a different place or country. I knew all the time that I was living out another life, but on land, very far from the life of a seaman, and it was a life so heavy and dismal and alien to me that to go to sleep was like entering a prison cell, but nevertheless, my new terror of the night and its treacherous glamorous sucking light was enough to make me prefer that land-lubber’s living to the Moon Light. Yet I woke, and although I had not wanted to, and had decided to stay where I was, watching the skies for the Descent, yet I could not prevent myself getting to my feet, and walking through the now mocking and alien city. This time I went Northwards, and beyond the city I saw great trees, and somewhere under the trees a gleam of red fire. I walked openly, without disguising myself or trying to be quiet, through the patched moon-and-shadow of the forest glades, till I stood, on a slight rise, looking down into a hollow that was circled by trees, yews, hollies and elms. There I saw them. They were about fifty yards away, and the intervening space was all sharp black shadows and gleams of brilliant moonlight, and the leaping running shadows of the fire played all around the scene, so that I could not see very clearly. It was a group of people, three adults and some half-grown ones, and as I leaned forward to stare and settle my eyes against the confusion of lights and shade, I saw that they were roasting hunks of meat on the fire, and singing and shrieking and laughing as they did so, and a terrible nauseating curiosity came over me—but that curiosity which is like digging one’s fingers into a stinging wound. I knew quite well who they were, or rather, I knew what faces I would see, though there was a gulf in my memory, blotting out the exact knowledge of where these people fitted into my long-past life. They turned, as the sound of my footsteps alerted them, and their three faces, women’s faces, all the same, or rather, all variations of the same face, laughed and exulted, and blood was smeared around their stretched mouths, and ran trickling off their chins. Three women, all intimately connected with me, alike, sisters perhaps, bound to me by experience I could not remember at all. And there were three boys, yes, the boys were there too, and a baby lying to one side of the fire, apparently forgotten in the orgy, for it was crying and struggling in tight wrappings, its face scarlet, and I rushed forward to pull the child out of the way of those hostile tramping feet, and I opened my mouth to shout reproaches, but Felicity pushed a piece of meat that had been singed a little, but was still raw and bloody, into my mouth—and I fell on the meat with the rest, pulling gobbets of it off a bloody hunk that was propped over the fire with sticks that sagged as they took fire, letting the lump of meat lower itself to the flames, so that all the forest stank of burning flesh. But I swallowed pieces whole, and at the same time laughed and sang with them, the three women:

‘Under my hand,

flesh of flowers

Under my hand

warm landscape

Give me back my world,

In you the earth breathes under my hand …