'But the story they told me about you was not the same. That you escaped, yes, but that you flew away and walked on a wire stretched from the steeple of the church to the mast of a ship at anchor in the bay.'
She laughed. How could such a thing be possible?
'But,' I said, 'how could it be possible to fly every night from the window to an enchanted city when there are no such places?'
'Are there not such places?' she said, and I fell silent, not knowing how to answer.
LIES 8: It was not the first thing she saw, how could it have been? Nor was the night in the fog-covered field the first thing I saw. But before then we were like those who dream and pass through life as a series of shadows. And so what we have told you is true, although it is not.
Before the great snows and the fields of ice of which I have told you, my sisters and I flew through the window night after night and danced in a silver city of curious motion. The city itself danced. It had the sensation of being on board ship, of being heaved from corner to corner on top of the tossing tide.
To begin with no one in the city danced. They paid their taxes and brought up their children and ate and slept like the rest of this world. But that was when the city was also like the rest of this world and seemed to be still. Of course, some of the cleverer people knew that the world is endlessly in motion, but since they could not feel it they ignored it.
In the middle of summer, when the dying sun bled the blue sky orange, the movement began. At first it was no more than a tremor, then an upheaval, and everyone ran to put their silver in boxes and to tie up the dog.
During the night the shifting continued, and although no one was hurt the doctor of the place issued a written warning to the effect that anyone whose teeth were false should remove them in case of sudden choking. The prudent applied this to hairpieces and false limbs and soon the vaults of the town hall were filled with spare human matter.
As the weeks went by, and it became clear that the underground activity had neither ceased nor worsened, a few brave citizens tried to make the best of it and strung ropes from one point to another, as supports to allow them to go about their business. In time all of the people started to adjust to their new rolling circumstances and it was discovered that the best way to overcome the problem was to balance above it. The ropes were no longer used as supports but as walkways and roads, and everyone, even those who had piled up their limbs in the town hall, learned to be acrobats. Carrying coloured umbrellas to help them balance, they walked in soft shoes from their homes to their usual haunts.
A few generations passed, and no one remembered that the city had ever been like any other, or that the ground was a more habitual residence. Houses were built in the treetops and the birds, disgusted by this invasion of their privacy, swept even higher, cawing and chirping from the banks of clouds.
As it became natural for the citizens to spend their lives suspended, the walking turned to leaping, and leaping into dancing, so that no one bothered to go sedately where they could twist in points of light.
Then there was an accident.
A young girl coming home along a slippery and frayed line of rope missed her footing and fell into the blank space below. There was a cry of horror from everyone who saw it, but the girl did not drop and crack on the ground, she floated.
After a few simple experiments it became certain that for the people who had abandoned gravity, gravity had abandoned them. There was a general rejoicing, and from that day forth no one concerned themselves with floors or with falling, though it was still thought necessary to build a ceiling in your house in order to place the chandelier.
Now I have told you the history of the city, which is a logical one, each piece fitting into the other without strain. Sure that you must believe something so credible I will continue with the story of our nightly arrival in that city and the sad means of our discovery...
The city, being freed from the laws of gravity, began to drift upwards for some 200 miles, until it was out of the earth's atmosphere. It lay for a while above Africa and then began to circle the earth at leisure, never in one place for long, but in other respects like some off-shore island. The citizens had enormous poles made to push themselves off from stars or meteors, and in this way used their town as a raft to travel where they wanted. They did not know it, but when every person pushed with their pole the force created a counter-force, a kind of vacuum that sucked up anything in its wake. The force was very powerful, and all over the world there are stories of entire picnics that have disappeared from checked tablecloths, and small children who have never been seen again.
The citizens always took kindly to whatever their movement sucked up, and ate the food and looked after the children and sailed on.
My sisters and I have always been light. When my third sister was born she was prevented from banging her head against the ceiling only by the umbilical cord. Without that she would have come from the womb and ascended straight upwards.
My fifth sister was so light that she rode on the back of our house cat until she was twelve.
Of course, we were fattened up and given heavy clothing to wear, but our ballgowns were not heavy, and when we danced we were the envy of all the rest because our feet seemed never to touch the floor. Fortunately our dresses were long, and so no one caught sight of us, floating.
And so, when the weightless city was directly overhead, though utterly concealed, we were the first to feel the pull of its counter-force, and on the same night we found ourselves being dragged out of bed and slammed up against the window like a dozen flies.
We held council amongst ourselves about what to do, and we decided that there were only two possibilities: either we could ballast ourselves against further attack, or we could open ourselves to whatever might happen. Our vote was unanimous, and on the following night we lay in bed in our ballgowns and waited.
At about one in the morning, when my father's snores were rattling the house, our windows flew open and we were pulled through them, hanging on to each other by our plaits. In an instant we had reached the city, and after our initial surprise we joined in the dancing and the merriment until dawn.
It was then that we encountered our first and only difficulty.
How were we to get back?
After various unprofitable discussions I remembered how Cyrano de Bergerac had attempted to launch himself at the moon by clinging on to the kind of metal that the moon attracted to herself, being magnetic. It seemed to me that the earth, weighed down as it is by gravity, would most likely attract lead to itself, and with this in mind we filled our boots with it and sat upon a sheet of it like a doleful magic carpet. We then bade the people cast us off, which they did with many tears, feeling sure that we would never be seen again.
They were wrong. The lead worked perfectly and we landed on the church roof at the back of our own house. From there it was an easy climb between the chimney stacks, down the wisteria and into bed.
Our happiness continued night after night until my father noticed our pale faces and tired eyes and set a watch on us. But we were cunning and always drugged whoever was on duty, and continued as before. Imagine our horror, then, when my father announced that anyone able to tell where it was we went at night would be rewarded by any one of us in marriage.
Not surprisingly, princes came from every land, and most of them were easy to fool, and we grew too confident.
Our end came in this way.
The people of the floating city had told us it was time for them to anchor in some other place, and asked if we would like to live with them for ever. We agreed that we would, and it was arranged that after a night of celebration we would slip home, collect a few possessions and return in time to drift through space for ever. It was the night of the youngest prince, a cunning fellow who guessed at our sleeping draught and who clung to our skirts when we flew away. He was light and invisible and hid between the lanterns and the trees, and no one saw him. When we travelled home on our s
heet of lead he was clinging to the underside like a beetle.
The following night, as we were ready to leave and all was happiness, the doors of our chamber burst open and my father came in lit by torches and surrounded by servants.
There was no escape and, to contain us, our ankles were chained and the prince came to stay with his eleven brothers.
Very often in the days that followed we looked at the sky and thought where we might be and knew where we were.
And the rest of the story you know.
I stayed with Fortunata for one month, learning more about her ways and something about my own. She told me that for years she had lived in hope of being rescued; of belonging to someone else, of dancing together. And then she had learned to dance alone, for its own sake and for hers.
'And love?' I said.
She spread her hands and gave me a short lecture on the habits of the starfish.
It was later that I took my medallion from round my neck and put it over her head. She turned it up towards her and read the inscription. 'Remember the rock from whence ye are hewn and the pit from whence ye are digged.'
She laughed. 'What about your wings?' she said. 'How can you forget those when the stumps are still deep in your shoulder-blades?'
I didn't say anything. In the Bible only the angels have wings; the rest of us have to wait to be rescued.
PAINTINGS 2: 'St Nicholas Calming the Tempest'. A small boat on a blue-black sea. The tempest rages and the four disciples huddle together in fear. Beneath the boat is a great fish, and up above, in full dress and mitre, comes St Nicholas flying through the sky. The stars hang about him.
I am getting ready to leave. Fortunata will not come with me and I cannot stay here, though part of me also belongs to the wilderness. I thought she might want to travel but she tells me truths I already know, that she need not leave this island to see the world, she has seas and cities enough in her mind. If she does, if we all do, it may be that this world and the moon and stars are also a matter of the mind, though a mind of vaster scope than ours. If someone is thinking me, then I am still free to come and go. It will not be like chess, this thoughtful universe, it will be a theatre of changing sets, where we could walk through walls if we wanted, but do not, being faithful to our own sense of the dramatic.
When I was little my mother took me to see a great wonder. It was about 1633,1 think, and never before had there been a banana in England. I saw it held high above a man's head. It was yellow and speckled brown, and as I looked at it I saw the tree and the beach and the white waves below birds with wide wings. Then I forgot it completely. But in my games with ships and plants I was trying to return to that memory, to release whatever it had begun in me.
When Tradescant asked me to go with him as an explorer I thought I might be a hero after all, and bring back something that mattered, and in the process find something I had lost. The sense of loss was hard to talk about. What could I have lost when I never had anything to begin with?
I had myself to begin with, and that is what I lost. Lost it in my mother because she is bigger and stronger than me and that's not how it's supposed to be with sons. But lost it more importantly in the gap between my ideal of myself and my pounding heart.
I want to be brave and admired and have a beautiful wife and a fine house. I want to be a hero and wave goodbye to my wife and children at the docks, and be sorry to see them go but more excited about what is to come. I want to be like other men, one of the boys, a back-slapper and a man who knows a joke or two. I want to be like my rip-roaring mother who cares nothing for how she looks, only for what she does. She has never been in love, no, and never wanted to be either. She is self-sufficient and without self-doubt. Before I left I took her down the Thames and out to sea but I don't know if it made any impression on her, or even how much she noticed. We never talked much. She is silent, the way men are supposed to be. I often caught her staring at me as though she had never seen me before; she seemed to be learning me. I think she loves me but I don't know. She wouldn't say so; perhaps she doesn't know herself. When I left, I think it was relief she felt at being able to continue her old life with the dogs and the dredgers and the whores she likes. Even while Tradescant was talking about it she got up and went for a walk. She was busy with her own mind, but I was hurt.
We never discussed whether or not I would go; she took it for granted, almost as though she had expected it. I wanted her to ask me to stay, just as I now want Fortunata to ask me to stay.
Why do they not?
For Tradescant, being a hero comes naturally. His father was a hero before him. The journeys he makes can be tracked on any map and he knows what he's looking for. He wants to bring back rarities and he does.
Our ship, which is weighing anchor some miles from this island, is full of fruit and spices and new plants. When we get home, men and women will crowd round us and ask us what happened and every version we tell will be a little more fanciful. But it will be real, whereas if I begin to tell my story about where I've been or where I think I've been, who will believe me? In a boy it might be indulged, but I'm not a boy any more, I'm a man.
I've kept the log book for the ship. Meticulously. And I've kept a book of my own, and for every journey we have made together I've written down my own journey and drawn my own map. I can't show this to the others, but I believe it to be a faithful account of what happened, at least, of what happened to me.
Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?
Curiously, the further I have pursued my voyages the more distant they have become. For Tradescant, voyages can be completed. They occupy time comfortably. With some leeway, they are predictable. I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternative routes present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world.
The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help. We are alone in this quest, and Fortunate is right not to disguise it, though she may be wrong about love. I have met a great many pilgrims on their way towards God and I wonder why they have chosen to look for him rather than themselves. Perhaps Fm missing the point - perhaps whilst looking for someone else you might come across yourself unexpectedly, in a garden somewhere or on a mountain watching the rain. But they don't seem to care about who they are. Some of them have told me that the very point of searching for God is to forget about oneself, to lose oneself for ever. But it is not difficult to lose oneself, or is it the ego they are talking about, the hollow, screaming cadaver that has no spirit within it?
I think that cadaver is only the ideal self run mad, and if the other life, the secret life, could be found and brought home, then a person might live in peace and have no need for God. After all, He has no need for us, being complete.
I have packed my striped bag and taken my coat from the hook where Fortunata put it. She has come to see me off and we are standing together by my boat, which is still staggered with rocks in a high hollow.
Her hair is down, it reaches almost to her waist. She looks serene.
Til come back another day,' I say.
She smiles at me and says nothing, and even as I say it I know it won't be true. She will elude me, she and this island will slip sideways in time and I'll never find them again, except perhaps in a dream.
I throw my things into the boat and shove my shoulder against it and push it out into the water. Far away, a black do
t is Tradescant's ship. He won't wait much longer.
She wades into the water with me, deep enough to wet the bottom of her hair, and takes my face in both her hands and kisses me on the mouth. Then she turns away and I watch her walk back across the sand and up over the rocks. I begin to row, using her body as a marker.
I always will.
The pineapple arrived today.
Jordan carried it in his arms as though it were a yellow baby; with the wisdom of Solomon he prepared to slice it in two. He had not sharpened the knife before Mr Rose, the royal gardener, flung himself across the table and begged to be sawn into bits instead. Those at the feast contorted themselves with laughter, and the King himself, in his new wig, came down from the dais and urged Mr Rose to delay his sacrifice. It was, after all, only a fruit. At this Mr Rose poked up his head from his abandonment amongst the dishes and reminded the company that this was an historic occasion. Indeed it was. It was 1661, and from Jordan's voyage to Barbados the first pineapple had come to England.
Tradescant is dead. Cromwell is dead. Ireton and Bradshaw, the King's prosecutors, frequently found together beneath soiled sheets, are dead. Jordan missed a pretty sight, sailing too late with his yellow cargo. Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw, who had thought to lie peacefully in Westminster Abbey, that place of sanctity they had denied their rightful King, were dug out on 30 January and hung up for all to see on the gallows at Tyburn. That was a moment for a scented handkerchief. Not everyone has as strong a constitution as myself. Thousands of us flocked to watch them swinging in the wind, what was left of them, decay having made no exception for their eminence. The people were mightily pleased to see the thing and a number of stalls sprang up right beneath the bony feet, selling apples and hot biscuits. A gypsy with a crown of stars offered to tell fortunes, but when she looked at my hand she looked away. I was not discouraged; I am enough to make my own fortune in this pock-marked world.
It did render me philosophical, though, to sit at Tyburn and watch the merriment and the great wonder of passers-by, especially small children, who had never thought what it might mean to rot.
Sexing the Cherry Page 9
