The Memoirs of a Survivor (16 page)

‘No one is blaming them,’ said Emily softly. Her eyes were bright, and her face was pale, and she was sitting by Gerald as if standing guard, protecting him, as if she had rescued him and now would not let go.

‘No, but if no one saves them either, then that’s the same as blaming them, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’ he appealed to me.

We sat on through the long night, waiting. Of course we were expecting an attack, a visit, an embassy - something. Above us, in the great empty building there was no sound. And all that following day it snowed, and was dark and cold. We sat and waited and nothing happened.

I knew that Emily was expecting Gerald to visit the top part of the building, to find out what went on. She was meaning to dissuade him. But he did not go; and all he said was, after some days: “Well, perhaps they’ve moved somewhere else.’

‘And the animals?’ said Emily, fierce, thinking of those poor beasts up there.

He raised his head and looked at her and gave that short laugh which means someone has made an end to something in thought: a decision, but it is a decision beset with irony, or with conflict. ‘If I go up there, well, I might be pulled back in again - and that’s no good. And as for the animals, they have to take their chance like everyone else - there are other people up there still.’

And so we went on quietly, the four of us.

It all came to an end, but I can’t say when it was after Gerald joined us. We had been there, waiting for winter to end, and we knew it was a long time, but not as long as our weary senses told us: an interminable time, but still not longer than a winter. Then, one morning, a weak yellow stain lay on the wall, and there, brought to life, was the hidden pattern. My feeling that this was what we had been waiting for was so strong that I called to the others, who were still asleep: “Emily - Emily! Gerald and Emily, come quickly. Hugo, where are you?’

From her room padded that obdurate beast, Hugo, and behind him came Gerald and Emily, bundled in their furs, yawning, dishevelled, not surprised, but looking their enquiry. Hugo was not surprised, not he: he stood, all alert and vivified beside the wall, looking into it as if at last what he wanted and needed and knew would happen was here, and he was ready for it.

Emily took Gerald by the hand, and with Hugo walked through the screen of the forest into … and now it is hard to say exactly what happened. We were in that place which might present us with anything - rooms furnished this way or that and spanning the tastes and customs of millennia; walls broken, falling, growing again; a house roof like a forest floor sprouting grasses and birds’ nests; rooms smashed, littered, robbed; a bright green lawn under thunderous and glaring clouds and on the lawn a giant black egg of pockmarked iron, but polished and glassy, around which, and reflected in the black shine, stood Emily, Hugo, Gerald, her officer father, her large, laughing, gallant mother, and little Denis, the four-year-old criminal, clinging to Gerald’s hand, clutching it and looking up into his face, smiling -there they stood, looking at this iron egg until, broken by the force of their being there, it fell apart, and out of it came… a scene, perhaps, of people in a quiet room bending to lay matching pieces of patterned materials on a carpet
that had
no life in it until that moment when vitality was fed into it by these exactly answering patches: but no, I did not see that, or if I did, not clearly… that world, presenting itself in a thousand little flashes, a jumble of little scenes, facets of another picture, all impermanent, was folding up as we stepped into it, was parcelling itself up, was vanishing, dwindling and going - all of it, trees and streams, grasses and rooms and people. But the one person I had been looking for all this time was there: there she was.

No, I am not able to say clearly what she was like. She was beautiful: it is a word that will do. I only saw her for a moment, in a time like the fading of a spark on dark air - a glimpse: she turned her face just once to me, and all I can say is… nothing at all.

Beside her, then, as she turned to walk on and away and ahead while the world folded itself up around her, was Emily, and beside Emily was Hugo, and lingering after them, Gerald. Emily, yes, but quite beyond herself, transmuted, and in another key, and the yellow beast Hugo fitted her new self: a splendid animal, handsome, all kindly dignity and command, he walked beside her and her hand was on his neck. Both walked quickly behind that One who went ahead showing them the way out of this collapsed little world into another order of world altogether. Both, just for an instant, turned their faces as they passed that other threshold. They smiled … seeing those faces Gerald was drawn after them, but still he hesitated in a fearful conflict, looking back and around, while the brilliant fragments whirled around him. And then, at the very last moment, they came, his children came running, clinging to bis hands and his clothes, and they all followed quickly on after the others as the last walls dissolved.