The Apple Tree: a short novel & several long stories Page 8

  She went to the brink of the crevasse, where Anna stood. Last night, beneath the moon, I should have been gripped by fear, but not now. I had been accepted. I was one of them. For one instant, in its space of time above us in the sky, the sun's ray touched the lip of the crevasse, and the blue ice shone. We knelt with one accord, our faces to the sun, and I heard the hymn of praise.

  "This," I thought, "was how men worshipped in the beginning, how they will worship in the end. Here is no creed, no saviour, and no deity. Only the sun, which gives us light and life. This is how it has always been, from the beginning of time."

  The sun's ray lifted and passed on, and then the girl, rising to her feet, threw off her stockings and her shoes and her dress also, and Anna, with a knife in her hand, cut off her hair, cropping it close above the ears. The girl stood before her, her hands upon her heart.

  "Now she is free," I thought. "She won't go back to the valley again. Her parents will mourn her, and her young man too, and they'll never discover what she has found, here on Monte Verità. In the valley there would have been feasting and celebration, and then dancing at the wedding, and afterwards the turmoil of a brief romance turning to humdrum married life, the cares of her house, the cares of children, anxiety, fret, illness, trouble, the day by day routine of growing old. Now she is spared all that. Here, nothing once felt is lost. Love and beauty don't die or fade away. Living's hard, because Nature's hard, and Nature has no mercy; but it was this she wanted in the valley, it was for this she came. She will know everything here that she never knew before and would not have discovered, below there in the world. Passion and joy and laughter, the heat of the sun, the tug of the moon, love without emotion, sleep with no waking dream. And that's why they hate it, in the valley, that's why they're afraid of Monte Verità. Because here on the summit is something they don't possess and never will, so they are angry and envious and unhappy."

  Then Anna turned, and the girl who had thrown her sex away with her past life and her village clothes followed barefoot, bare armed, cropped-haired like the others; and she was radiant, smiling, and I knew that nothing would ever matter to her again.

  They descended to the court, leaving me alone on the summit, and I felt like an outcast before the gates of heaven. My brief moment had come and gone. They belonged here, and I did not. I was a stranger from the world below.

  I put on my clothes again, restored to a sanity I did not want, and remembering Victor and my mission I too went down the steps to the court, and looking upwards I saw that Anna was waiting for me in the tower above.

  The others flattened themselves against the wall to let me pass, and I saw that Anna alone amongst them wore the long white robe and the cowl. The tower was lofty, open to the sky, and characteristically, with that same gesture I remembered when she used to sit on the low stool before the fire in the great hall, Anna sat down now, on the topmost step of the tower, one knee raised and elbow on that knee. Today was yesterday, today was six—and-twenty years ago, and we were alone once more in the manor house in Shropshire; and the peace she had brought to me then she brought me now. I wanted to kneel beside her and take her hand. Instead I went and stood beside the wall, my arms folded.

  "So you found it at last," she said. "It took a little time."

  The voice was soft and still and quite unchanged.

  "Did you bring me here?" I asked. "Did you call me when the aircraft crashed?"

  She laughed, and I had never been away from her. Time stood still on Monte Verità.

  "I wanted you to come long before that," she said, "but you shut your mind away from me. It was like clamping down a receiver. It always took two to make a telephone call. Does it still?"

  "It does," I answered, "and our more modern inventions need valves for contact. Not the mind, though."

  "Your mind has been a box for so many years," she said. "It was a pity — we could have shared so much. Victor had to tell me his thoughts in letters, which wouldn't have been necessary with you."

  It was then, I think, that the first hope came to me. I must feel my way towards it, though, with care.

  "You've read his letter," I asked, "and mine as well? You know that he's dying?"

  "Yes," she said, "he's been ill for many weeks. That's why I wanted you to be here at this time, so that you could be with him when he died. And it will be all right for him, now, when you go back to him and tell him that you've spoken to me. He'll be happy then."

  "Why not come yourself?"

  "Better this way," she said. "Then he can keep his dream."

  His dream? What did she mean? They were not, then, all-powerful here on Monte Verità? She understood the danger in which they stood.

  "Anna," I said, "I'll do what you want me to do. I'll return to Victor and be with him at the last. But time is very short. More important still is the fact that you and the others here are in great danger. Tomorrow, tonight even, the people from the valley are going to climb here to Monte Verità, and they'll break into this place and kill you. It's imperative that you get away before they come. If you have no means of saving yourselves, then you must allow me to do something to help you. We are not so far from civilisation as to make that impossible. I can get down to the valley, find a telephone, get through to the police, to the army, to some authority in charge…"

  My words trailed off, because although my plans were not clear in my own mind I wanted her to have confidence in me, to feel that she could trust me.

  "The point is," I told her, "that life is going to be impossible for you here, from now on. If I can prevent the attack this time, which is doubtful, it will happen next week, next month. Your days of security are numbered. You've lived here shut away so long that you don't understand the state of the world as it is now. Even this country here is torn in two with suspicion, and the people in the valley aren't superstitious peasants any longer; they're armed with modern weapons, and they've got murder in their hearts. You won't stand a chance, you and the rest, here on Monte Verità."

  She did not answer. She sat there on the step, listening, a remote and silent figure in her white robe and cowl.

  "Anna," I said, "Victor's dying. He may be already dead. When you leave here he can't help you, but I can. I've loved you always. No need to tell you that, you must have guessed it. You destroyed two men, you know, when you came to live on Monte Verità six-and-twenty years ago. But that doesn't matter any more. I've found you again. And there are still places far away, inaccessible to civilisation, where we could live, you and I — and the others with you here, if they wished to come with us. I have money enough to arrange all that; you won't have to worry about anything."

  I saw myself discussing practicalities with consuls, embassies, going into the question of passports, papers, clothing. I saw too, in my mind's eye, the map of the world. I ranged in thought from a ridge of mountains in South America to the Himalayas, from the Himalayas to Africa. Or the northern wastes of Canada were still vast and unexplored, and stretches of Greenland. And there were islands, innumerable, countless islands, where no man ever trod, visited only by sea-birds, washed by the lonely sea. Mountain or island, scrubby wilderness or desert, impenetrable forest or Arctic waste, I did not care which she chose; but I had been without sight of her for so long, and now all I wanted was to be with her always.

  This was now possible, because Victor, who would have claimed her, was going to die. I was blunt. I was truthful. I told her this as well. And then I waited, to hear what she would say.

  She laughed, that warm, much loved and well-remembered laugh, and I wanted to go to her and put my arms round her, because the laugh held so much life in it, and so much joy and promise.

  "Well?" I said.

  Then she got up from the step and came and stood beside me, very still.

  "There was once a man," she said, "who went to the booking office at Waterloo and said to the clerk eagerly, hopefully, 'I want a ticket to Paradise. A single ticket. No return.' And when the clerk told
him there was no such place the man picked up the ink-well and threw it in the clerk's face. The police were summoned, and took the man away and put him in prison. Isn't that what you're asking of me now, a ticket to Paradise? This is the mountain of truth, which is very different."

  I felt hurt, irritated even. She hadn't taken a word of my plans seriously and was making fun of me.

  "What do you propose, then?" I asked. "To wait here, behind these walls, for the people to come and break them down?"

  "Don't worry about us," she said. "We know what we shall do."

  She spoke with indifference, as if the matter was of no importance, and in agony I saw the future, that I had begun to plan for us both, slip away from me.

  "Then you do possess some secret?" I asked, almost in accusation. "You can work some miracle, and save yourself and the others too? What about me? Can't you take me with you?"

  "You wouldn't want to come," she said. She put her hand on my arm. "It takes time, you know, to build a Monte Verità. It isn't just doing without clothes and worshipping the sun."

  "I realise that," I told her. "I'm prepared to begin all over again, to learn new values, to start from the beginning. I know that nothing I've done in the world is any use. Talent, hard work, success, all those things are meaningless. But if I could be with you…"

  "How? With me?" she said.

  And I did not know what to answer, because it would be too sudden and too direct, but I knew in my heart that what I wanted was everything that could be between a woman and a man; not at first, of course, but later, when we had found our other mountain, or our wilderness, or wherever it was we might go to hide ourselves from the world. There was no need to rehearse all that now. The point was that I was prepared to follow her anywhere, if she would let me.

  "I love you, and have always loved you. Isn't that enough?" I asked.

  "No," she said, "not on Monte Verità."

  And she threw back her cowl and I saw her face.

  I gazed at her in horror… I could not move, I could not speak. It was as though all feeling had been frozen. My heart was cold… One side of her face was eaten quite away, ravaged, terrible. The disease had come upon her brow, her cheek, her throat, blotching, searing the skin. The eyes that I had loved were blackened, sunk deep into the sockets.

  "You see," she said, "it isn't Paradise."

  I think I turned away. I don't remember. I know I leant against the rock of the tower and stared down into the depths below, and saw nothing but the great bank of cloud that hid the world.

  "It happened to others," Anna said, "but they died. If I survived longer, it was because I was hardier than they. Leprosy can come to anyone, even to the supposed immortals of Monte Verità. It hasn't really mattered, you know. I regret nothing. Long ago I remember telling you that those who go to the mountains must give everything. That's all there is to it. I no longer suffer, so there's no need to suffer for me."

  I said nothing. I felt the tears run down my face. I didn't bother to wipe them away.

  "There are no illusions and no dreams on Monte Verità," she said. "They belong to the world, and you belong there too. If I've destroyed the fantasy you made of me, forgive me. You've lost the Anna you knew once, and found another one instead. Which you will remember longer rather depends upon yourself. Now go back to your world of men and women and build yourself a Monte Verità."

  Somewhere there was scrub and grass and stunted trees; somewhere there was earth and stones and the sound of running water. Deep in the valley there were homes, where men lived with their women, reared their children. They had firelight, curling smoke and lighted windows. Somewhere there were roads, there were railways, there were cities. So many cities, so many streets. And all with crowded buildings, lighted windows. They were there, beneath the cloud, beneath Monte Verità.

  "Don't be anxious or afraid," said Anna, "and as for the valley people, they can't harm us. One thing only…" She paused, and although I did not look at her I think she smiled. "Let Victor keep his dream," she said.

  Then she took my hand, and we went down the steps of the tower together, and through the court and to the walls of the rock-face. They stood there watching us, those others, with their bare arms and legs, their close-cropped hair, and I saw too the little village girl, the proselyte, who had renounced the world and was now one of them. I saw her turn and look at Anna, and I saw the expression in her eyes; there was no horror there, no fear and no revulsion. One and all they looked at Anna with triumph, with exultation, with all knowledge and all understanding. And I knew that what she felt and what she endured they felt also, and shared with her, and accepted. She was not alone.

  They turned their eyes to me, and their expression changed; instead of love and knowledge I read compassion.

  Anna did not say good-bye. She put her hand an instant on my shoulder. Then the wall opened, and she was gone from me. The sun was no longer overhead. It had started its journey in the western sky. The great white banks of cloud rolled upward from the world below. I turned my back on Monte Verità.

  It was evening when I came to the village. The moon had not yet risen. Presently, within two hours or less, it would top the eastern ridge of the further mountains and give light to the whole sky. They were waiting, the people from the valley. There must have been three hundred or more, waiting there in groups beside the huts. All of them were armed, some with rifles, with grenades, others, more primitive, with picks and axes. They had kindled fires, on the village track between the huts, and had brought provisions too. They stood or sat before the fires eating and drinking, smoking and talking. Some of them had dogs, held tightly on a leash.

  The owner of the first hut stood by the door with his son. They too were armed. The boy had a pick and a knife thrust in his belt. The man watched me with his sullen, stupid face.

  "Your friend is dead," he said. "He has been dead these many hours."

  I pushed past him and went into the living-room of the hut. Candles had been lit. One at the head of the bed, one at the foot. I bent over Victor and took his hand. The man had lied to me. Victor was breathing still. When he felt me touch his hand, he opened his eyes.

  "Did you see her?" he asked.

  "Yes," I answered.

  "Something told me you would," he said. "Lying here, I felt that it would happen. She's my wife, and I've loved her all these years, but you only have been allowed to see her. Too late, isn't it, to be jealous now?"

  The candlelight was dim. He could not see the shadows by the door, nor hear the movement and the whispering without.

  "Did you give her my letter?" he said.

  "She has it," I answered. "She told you not to worry, not to be anxious. She is all right. Everything is well with her."

  Victor smiled. He let go my hand.

  "So it's true," he said, "all the dreams I had of Monte Verità. She is happy and contented and she will never grow old, never lose her beauty. Tell me, her hair, her eyes, her smile — were they still the same?"

  "Just the same," I said. "Anna will always be the most beautiful woman you or I have ever known."

  He did not answer. And as I waited there, beside him, I heard the sudden blowing of a horn, echoed by a second and a third. I heard the restless movement of the men outside in the village, as they shouldered their weapons, kicked out the fires and gathered together for the climb. I heard the dogs barking and the men laughing, ready now, excited. When they had gone I went and stood alone in the deserted village, and I watched the full moon rising from the dark valley.

  The Birds

  ON DECEMBER THE third the wind changed overnight and it was winter. Until then the autumn had been mellow, soft. The leaves had lingered on the trees, golden red, and the hedge-rows were still green. The earth was rich where the plough had turned it.

  Nat Hocken, because of a war-time disability, had a pension and did not work full-time at the farm. He worked three days a week, and they gave him the lighter jobs: hedging, thatching, repai
rs to the farm buildings.

  Although he was married, with children, his was a solitary disposition; he liked best to work alone. It pleased him when he was given a bank to build up, or a gate to mend at the far end of the peninsula, where the sea surrounded the farm land on either side. Then, at midday, he would pause and eat the pasty that his wife had baked for him, and sitting on the cliff's edge would watch the birds. Autumn was best for this, better than spring. In spring the birds flew inland, purposeful, intent; they knew where they were bound, the rhythm and ritual of their life brooked no delay. In autumn those that had not migrated overseas but remained to pass the winter were caught up in the same driving urge, but because migration was denied them followed a pattern of their own. Great flocks of them came to the peninsula, restless, uneasy, spending themselves in motion; now wheeling, circling in the sky, now settling to feed on the rich new-turned soil, but even when they fed it was as though they did so without hunger, without desire. Restlessness drove them to the skies again.

  Black and white, jackdaw and gull, mingled in strange partnership, seeking some sort of liberation, never satisfied, never still. Flocks of starlings, rustling like silk, flew to fresh pasture, driven by the same necessity of movement, and the smaller birds, the finches and the larks, scattered from tree to hedge as if compelled.

  Nat watched them, and he watched the sea-birds too. Down in the bay they waited for the tide. They had more patience. Oyster-catchers, redshank, sanderling and curlew watched by the water's edge; as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea-birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.