The Cleft (21 page)

The hunters that day in the forest were regretting having dragged the girls along with them, who were noisily complaining that this was a dangerous place, and as usual the boys were not taking enough care. The boys were in fact looking out for, in particular, the pigs. The sheds and shelters that had been here were now wrecks; a platform built in a tree by presumably one of the children had collapsed under the weight of presumably, a great cat. Where a sow had wallowed, the water was running clear again but there was an underlay of churned mud, with a blurring of muddy water over it, and then clear water. It was not from the sow's wallow that a recent tenancy could have been deduced, but droppings, which were fresh enough to have the girls looking uneasily into the undergrowth.

‘Why aren't they here?' the boys were muttering, looking about them and holding their weapons ready. The girls scorned: ‘Oh, you are so stupid. They were here before because we were here, and now they will come again as soon as they know we have come back.'

The boys muttered that at the beginning of the occupation of the glade there were no animals, or not many, and the girls said, ‘Of course they didn't come at once. They had never seen anything like us. They didn't know at the start that we are good
to eat. And anyway we don't want to be here when they come.' And they began to cry.

‘Why don't you run back to Horsa,' said the boys. ‘You always spoil everything.'

‘Why don't you just take us back to our place on the shore?'

This had not occurred to the boys. They could not remember now how easy it had been, moving back and forth from here to the shore. Their beautiful times here now seemed to them a long time ago, and their running back and forth was hazy in their minds. But they weren't going to admit this to the girls. ‘Why should we? You know the way – then just run back yourselves.'

‘But we are afraid, by ourselves. What about the animals?'

The boys were reluctant to show the girls they hardly knew where they were in relation to the women's place. Yet the girls had guessed this. How did they do this? It was uncanny, the ways the females seemed to read your mind.

And that capacity certainly hasn't been lost! says your present historian.

‘What is the matter with you?' the girls wanted to know. ‘Why is it you never seem to know where you are?'
They were remembering how a group of the boys, including two of the present group, had gone round and round in a certain loop of the tunnel, not recognising the landmarks until a girl had said, ‘Can't you see? We've been through this bit of tunnel more than once?'

And now the boys really did not seem to know where they were.

‘Can't you see The Cleft?' a girl pointed out. And indeed, the great cliff of The Cleft stood up above the trees, not so far off.

The men stared. Yes, it is The Cleft. That meant … had Horsa seen it?

The males said they were hungry, and would hunt.

‘I suppose you are going to make a fire,' said the girls. ‘What a clever idea, it will bring all the animals here to us at once.'

This was what the boys wanted, and what the girls very much did not want. Meanwhile, the girls found some fruit near the clearing, and they all ate enough of it to keep hunger away. It got dark and the girls put themselves up a tree, while the boys squatted under the trunk, their weapons ready.

One girl said they must keep an eye on the boys, because they would probably sneak off without them, if they could. And when the first light came the boys were gone.

‘Don't they care about us?' said the girls, wistfully
enough. And then they went on with a favourite topic, that the boys were so clumsy in relationships, so awkward much of the time, seemed to lack a sense, or senses.

The girls then made their way to their shore, very frightened, since they had no weapons. The paths and tracks were overgrown, and trees had fallen here and there. It was not a pleasant journey.

They reported to Maronna that the men, still led by Horsa, were not too far away, but the girls mustn't get their hopes up, because the men didn't seem to know how near home they were.

Meanwhile the three hunters made their way to Horsa, taking their time to stop for a likely cave mouth, or to climb a difficult tree, or to chase after a dangerous-looking boar.

From his anxious questioning, his reproaches, they did understand they had been away too long. Horsa had sent other youths after them, into the tunnels: wasn't that where they had said they were going? Yes, they had said that, but when they had seen those trees again,
their
trees, they had not been able to resist.

‘And the girls are angry with us too,' they said, sulky, sounding like children. Well, they are not much more. How old? Fifteen? Sixteen? Less? They were at the age when we believe it is time for our young men to think about joining the army or finding a patron.
Horsa was a good bit older than the others, but probably still in his early twenties.

‘The girls are so angry with us, they are so moody,' they grumbled.

Horsa said, grinning, that it was long past the time they should have visited the women.

‘They'll only crab and complain.'

‘And who was saying if he didn't have a girl soon he'd go mad?'

Grins all around. These bashful grins are the earliest we have records for. How much earlier than that did they appear? we have to wonder. The basis of all comedy, they are; we know, for instance, what the Greeks found funny. But so long ago, so very long?

‘I don't want you to go off again,' said Horsa. ‘You'll go off, and then the others will come back and go off. I want us all to be together and go together to the girls. If you've seen our old place in the forest, then the women are not far away.'

‘Yes, and there is The Cleft.'

Horsa found it hard to recognise this old so well-known landmark from this angle. At last he saw it, and there was a moment of doubt.

Horsa did not look forward to telling Maronna about the lost boys. And the others had had a recent tongue-lashing from the girls and were reminded how very difficult girls could be.

‘Is it all right if we go and hunt?' the boys demanded,
and promised they would come back by nightfall.

I would like to imagine a solicitousness in those young voices. After all, they had left Horsa alone for some days, when they had promised not to. Had he been lonely? – perhaps they wondered.

‘Yes, go, but come back when the light goes.'

Was he lonely, left so often alone and part disabled, because of his crippled leg? May we use that word, and other words from our lexicons of feeling? We assume that because these people had shapes like ours, were so much like us, that they felt the same. Perhaps no one had taught them loneliness? Is that such a ridiculous question? Or sorrow? There is not much in the records, for instance, of love, the way we use the word, or jealousy – nothing about jealousy, yet it is so common an emotion that we may watch birds quarrelling over a mate. The whole region of speculation is difficult for me. It teases, challenges, and leaves me wondering. We know how our exemplars, the Greeks,
felt
– their plays tell us.

If those old long-ago people had written plays we would know how they felt. There is no record of them so much as making marks on bark or on stone. They told their histories into the ears of the Memories and perhaps never thought that when they said, for instance, ‘Horsa longed for his “other” land,' that people coming so many ages later would not know what they meant by ‘longing', ‘wanting', ‘dreaming'.

‘Were you sad, Horsa?'

‘Sad?'

‘Well, let's try this. When you think about that magic shore of yours, what is it you feel about it? Do you think, “There will be my kind of people at last, and they will say, ‘Horsa, there you are, why have you taken so long? We were waiting for you.'?” Is it that you feel you are excluded from some general happiness?'

‘Happiness?'

When we send these shouts into the past, they have to be questions. But there need not be answers.

If I am sitting next to a person of my own generation, and I say, ‘Do you remember?' – the words I use mesh with events in this person's memory, and the air between us is, as it were, alive and listening. Say the same words to someone of a younger generation and it is like throwing stones into the sea.

Questioning Horsa, nothing comes back.

Perhaps, if he could hear me, he might say, ‘No, you don't understand. You see, I know everything there is to know about our land, every tree, plant, bird, animal. But that other shore I saw there, gleaming like a dawn. I know nothing about that place.
I have to know
– don't you understand that?'

Perhaps that is what he would say, and yes I do understand that, and a lot more about him he would not understand. But my questions are from an old
Roman reaching the end of his life – and we have no idea, none, about what they thought, or felt.

Names can help. We know that Maire and Astre – who were as remote to Horsa as he and his kind are to us – brought the heavens into their lives by using the names of stars. Horsa was the name of a star before it acquired Egyptian names, Greek names, our Roman names.

If we knew what that star meant then, perhaps we might hear Horsa speaking at last. Or imagine we did.

Horsa waited for his young men to return, and his thoughts were heavy and hard to bear. It says so in the stories. It was because of what he would have to tell Maronna. This was one occasion when he could not run off, find another valley, a new glade in the forest. It was not that he did not regret the little boys who had vanished into the caves. But he could not help thinking that wombs were quickly filled and then babies were born and – look, a new crop of babes. And so the sooner the men got to the women, the better.

Meanwhile he looked out over the top of the trees – he was on a little hill – and he gazed at The Cleft, which looked so different from this angle, and he saw white clouds coming out of The Cleft, and heard the thud-thudding of several explosions. He knew at once what had happened. Those mad men, his brave
young men, had been unable to resist throwing a boulder or two down into the pit.

And now groups of the hunters, of those who could not keep out of the caves, came running to Horsa, and, too, the boys who had been rescued from the well in the cave. They stood around Horsa, looking at him, waiting for his anger, his recriminations, but all he said was, ‘And now it is time we went to the women.'

Slowly, at first, they all set off, but Horsa could not keep up and soon he was far behind, with the rescued boys.

‘Will Maronna be angry with us?' they asked, and he said, ‘Well, what do you think?'

The further they went, the more they could see the damage that was done by the explosions. White lay ever more thickly over the trees and then, when they reached it, the rocky shore where the women would be waiting for them. The powdered bones of so many generations were making a thick layer from where drifts of white went off into the air as the breezes blew. And then there were the women, in the distance, and the boys set up a howl, because they feared those white ghosts who were wailing and crying.

In front of Horsa had pressed the young males, but they were hanging back now, afraid of the women. They were close together, for protection. The sea breezes lifting the white powder from the
women made them look as if they were smoking. The Cleft that had dominated all that landscape was half its size, and it shed little avalanches of yet more white dust. The sea had a white crust and the waves lifted it, crinkling against the beach. The white looked solid enough to walk on. Some women trying to rid themselves of the white powder at the edge of the sea found themselves even more crusted thick and they were trying to rub the stuff off them, crying out in horror and rage. Yet a little further the sea was clear.

When Maronna saw Horsa, at first she did not recognise this limping man, and then she went for him, screaming, ‘Why did you do it? The Cleft! You've killed The Cleft. Why?' She knew the men were responsible, and that meant Horsa was responsible. Her accusations were hysterical, her ugly screams distorted her white-streaked face.