The Unicorn

by Iris Murdoch

  He came again to a standstill, he had been putting off the moment of stopping. The sky was now almost completely dark, though he could still see a short distance about him. Stars had been visible for a little while. He had put off stopping because he knew that as soon as he stopped he would begin to feel frightened. He now did feel frightened. Of course, not very frightened, it was ridiculous: there was nothing to be frightened of. The worst that could happen to him was a summer night in the open air, and he was certainly not frightened of that All the same, it was an eerie sort of spot to be lost in.

  He wished now that he had not left the tree. The tree was at least a sort of shelter, a sort of house, a sort of place with some kind of significance. Now all around him there was nothingness and nowhere. He wondered whether to walk on. But surely he had to walk on. To stand still all night in this appalling quietness would be unthinkable. Walking was at least activity and made, to surround him, a comfortable little bit of human noise. Besides, he couldn’t really be far from the road now. He wondered for the first time whether it was worth shouting. But what was the use of shouting up here in this desolation? Nothing human lived up here. Still, it was worth trying just in case; but what did one shout? He meditated a while and then, with an effort, managed to call out ‘Hullo!’

  It was weird. The sound seemed to die on him at once as if a thick blanket, hanging some ten feet away on every side, had stifled it. It was no good shouting, the surroundings were too hostile, the cries would be choked in his throat. He began to walk on hastily. The sky was now a dark night blue and full of stars, and although he could not really see the ground before him there was a semblance of diffused light and he felt able to go on. He wished passionately that he had some cigarettes with him, but he had left them behind in the Humber. He made out from the luminous dial of his watch that it was after midnight As he walked he could not prevent himself from looking round and keeping his hands ready in front of him as if he expected suddenly to touch something or to see something. But what he now expected to see was not the headlights of a car. His heart was beating rather uncomfortably hard.

  He became suddenly aware of something very peculiar behind him. He had caught sight of this thing from the corner of his eye just a moment before and had thought it was a trick of his vision. Now it came again, and as he turned with a gasp of alarm he saw it. There was a strange bright light, a brilliant green light, which seemed to have been switched on on the ground. It glowed there with an intense hard brilliance in the middle of the blackish scene, suggesting a vivid, incomprehensible, menacing presence. It was as if something were coming up from below, something very full of life indeed. Effingham backed away from it.

  As he moved he saw two things. There was, round about him in a great arc, almost encircling him, a fainter line of green light; and there was, at his very feet, the same light again, even more brilliant, lighting, up the ground and tumbling on his shoes like small creatures of luminous green. Effingham’s moment of unreason had not lasted long, but it had shaken him right down into his bowels. Of course he realized that this was not a supernatural phenomenon, but the well-attested though rarely seen ‘fairy fire’, which had chemical causes and constituents and which could be analysed in laboratories. All the same he hated and feared it, and tried desperately and without success to shake it off his shoes. It clung to him, coming into being as he trod, and covering his feet and his footsteps with a weird glow. He hated and feared too the message it gave him as he looked at his luminous trail. He had been walking in a circle. Heaven knew where the right direction lay now. Perhaps after all he had better stand still.

  Effingham had no special tendency to fear the supernatural, at least he had not thought that he had. He knew perfectly well that there were no such things as fairies or spirits or malevolent non-human agencies. Yet people in this part of the world believed in them. And as he stood now listening, feeling, looking in a futile way into the thick silent air he felt not a faint belief but almost a certainty of the presence of evil round about him. He was, in this place, an intruder; and he felt the menace round about him of presences to whom human things were abhorrent. He reflected on evil as he had known it. Surely it was a great force, a great dark positive force; it could inhabit human beings, it could inhabit where it pleased. He began to wish that he had a crucifix.

  It was again impossible to stand still, he was by now too much afraid. He would like to have called out now, but he feared to receive some appalling answer. Who knew what a cry would summon. He moved on; and after some way was only half relieved when the fairy fire vanished from him as mysteriously as it had come, leaving him in almost total darkness. The going was more difficult now. The ground seemed damper under foot and once or twice he slithered on muddy lumps of grass. He wondered if he were approaching the stream. Then another thought struck him. The fairy fire was a phenomenon of the bog.

  The notion that he might be wandering into the depths of the bog had vaguely occurred to him once or twice and he had hastily put it away. It was so unlikely. The bog, the real bog, was a good way inland in this region, and between the bog and the Scarren was a long stretch of scrubby moor on which he had assumed he was still walking. After all he had not gone far, and some of his walking had been circular. He looked at his watch. It was nearly two o’clock. He could not possibly be in the bog. The ground was still absolutely firm under foot.

  Or was it? He tried the earth round about him, patting it with his hand and his foot. It was a little quaky and mushy. There didn’t seem to be any stones any more. He missed those stones. They were at least things solid like himself. He rose and sniffed the air. There was a damp sourish smell of peat. Well, even if he were on the edge of the bog there was nothing to be afraid of. It would fairly soon be light and he would get a sense of direction again. Only he had really better stop walking. He would just find some nearby spot that was a little less damp and sit down in it and wait for the day. He walked on another ten yards.

  Effingham stopped. The ground had become very mushy and was coming up over his shoes. He pulled his feet out with a sucking sound and took two steps. At each step his feet sank into the gluey stuff and had to be pulled out of the hole they had made with a little effort. He decided he had better get back to where he was a minute ago, and he turned about; but after five steps it was no better. The ground seemed suddenly quaking and diluted with water. His trousers, soaked and muddy now to the knee from the splash of his footsteps, clung to his legs. The night seemed darker, colder, and in the intervals of his movement aggressively silent. He paused; and found himself sinking in.

  Effingham had of course heard the local stories about men lost in the bog. He had been told of morasses there which would engulf a man, of slimy wells and pits and sudden muddy descents into the limestone caves below. For the first time he began to conceive himself in danger. He wondered what to do. If only he had stayed by the tree, if only he had stayed by the stones. But he must not let his imagination frighten him absurdly. The ground was certainly muddy, but had he never walked on mud or wet sand before? Whether he walked or stood nothing would happen which was worse than wet feet. All the same the gluey stuff was gripping him rather unpleasantly hard. In a sudden panic he wrenched one foot right out. It was not easy.

  Walking had now become something else. Effingham, standing on one foot, panted with effort. The other foot had, in the struggle, sunk farther in. To get it out he would need a new foothold. What was he trying to do anyway? In a panic, and because he could balance no longer, he plunged forward, dragging the other leg out, and was able to take two or three staggering jumps before he found himself stuck again with the bog well over his ankles. His running heartbeats almost stopped his breath. What was the point of these antics? Had he not better stay perfectly still? Nothing could happen to him if he stayed still. At that moment something seemed to give way under his left foot, as if it had entered some watery chamber, some air bubble of the bog. He lurched, tried to take another step, and fell violen
tly on his side. The ground gave and gurgled all round him.

  He stayed still now perforce. He stayed still for several minutes with his eyes dosed trying to control his mind before he was able to determine the position of his limbs. He was sitting upright with his right leg curled under him, the sticky mud gripping his knee. The other leg was stretched before him, inclining downward into a hole in which he could hear a licking lapping sound of water disturbed. He was perhaps on the brink of one of those bottomless slimy wells of the bog. He held his hands in front of his breast like two animals that he wanted to keep safe. He lifted his head slowly and saw the few stars of the night.

  He began to tell himself things. It was not so very long till day; and when it was daylight they would send a search party. They would surely know that he must have gone into the bog. Or would they? They might think he had come back to the road and got a lift to Blackport or to the railway station. He might have gone anywhere. They simply might not think of the bog. Or if they did, would they be able to find him? And if they found him could they reach him? He recalled a story of a man perishing horribly within call of his helpless rescuers. In any case, when daylight came, would he still be there?

  Effingham shifted slightly. There was no doubt that he was very very slowly sinking. The thick toffee-like mud was creeping up the length of his thigh and he could feel the cold gluey stuff gripping the lower part of his back He had known for some time that it was now quite impossible for him to get up; and he feared to move in case he should simply slither down into the liquid hole which now seemed positively to be sucking at his left leg.

  Effingham had never confronted death. The confrontation brought with it a new quietness and a new terror. The dark bog seemed empty now, utterly empty, as if, because of the great mystery which was about to be enacted, the little wicked gods had withdrawn. Even the stars were veiled now and Effingham was at the centre of a black globe. He felt the touch of some degraded gibbering panic. He could still feel himself slowly sinking. He could not envisage what was to come. He did not want to perish whimpering. As if obeying some imperative, a larger imperative than he had ever acknowledged before, he collected himself and concentrated his attention; yet what he was concentrating on was blackness too, a very dark central blackness. He began to feel dazed and light-headed.

  Max had always known about death, had always sat there like a judge in his chair facing toward death, like a judge or like a victim. Why had Effingham never realized that this was the only fact that mattered, perhaps the only fact there was? If one realized this one could have lived all one’s life in the light. Yet why in the light, and why did it seem now that the dark ball at which he was staring was full of light? Something had been withdrawn, had slipped away from him in the moment of his attention and that something was simply himself. Perhaps he was dead already, the darkening image of the self forever removed. Yet what was left, for something was surely left, something existed still? It came to him with the simplicity of a simple sum. What was left was everything else, all that was not himself, that object which he had never before seen and upon which he now gazed with the passion of a lover. And indeed he could always have known this for the fact of death stretches the length of life. Since he was mortal he was nothing and since he was nothing all that was not himself was filled to the brim with being and it was from this that the light streamed. This then was love, to look and look until one exists no more, this was the love which was the same as death. He looked, and knew with a clarity which was one with the increasing light, that with the death of the self the world becomes quite automatically the object of a perfect love. He clung on to the words ‘quite automatically’ and murmured them to himself as a charm

  Something gave way under his right leg and it seemed without his will to be straightening out below him. He leaned side-ways, thrusting out his hands involuntarily to try to pull himself upward. There was nothing firm, and his hands plunged desperately about in the mud. He became still, lifting his muddied hands to his face. He was now fixed in the bog almost to the waist and sinking faster. The final panic came. He uttered several low cries and then a loud terrified shrieking wail, the voice of total despair at last.

  He had not meant it as a cry for help. He had for some time thought himself beyond help. He listened to it roll away and seem to echo and then he uttered another, like a desperate animal. There was again an echo.

  Suddenly Effingham’s mind returned to him. It was as if he had indeed, during that time, been depersonalized, abandoned by his self. It returned now with an exact awareness of his situation, an awareness of the sky lightening with hints of morning, it returned with a frenetic desire to live. Had that been an answering cry?

  Effingham now called out in a quite different voice. ‘Hello there, hello! Help! Help!’ The answering cry, a long way off, came again. It was certainly a human voice. Effingham continued to call. The light increased, still within darkness, but he was able now to apprehend his own form, to see his arms dimly, to be aware of space about him. He went on calling and the other person went on answering though without seeming to move. Then after a short silence the voice called out, suddenly much nearer. ‘Mr Cooper!’ It was the voice of Denis Nolan.

  ‘Denis!’ cried Effingham. It was the happiest sound he had ever uttered in his life. ‘Denis, Denis, Denis!’ The tears started into his eyes. His old unregenerate being was with him again. He would live.

  ‘Are you stuck, sir?’

  Effingham could still see nothing clearly. The darkness had become a light brownish-blueish haze. ‘Yes, dreadfully. I’m almost in it up to my waist. I can’t move any more. For heaven’s sake be careful what you do or you’ll fall in too. There’s a sort of pit here. Perhaps you’d better wait till there’s more light and fetch some people with a ladder. If you can find your way back to me. I think I’m good for some time yet’

  Silence followed and then Effingham could see the figure of Denis approaching him. It was a marvel to see at last something upright, to see a man. Denis seemed to be walking lightly over the surface of the bog, his feet scarcely touching the ground. A small dark shape was following him which materialized a moment later as a donkey. Denis and the donkey stopped about thirty yards away. The light increased.

  ‘What in God’s name are you standing on, Denis?’

  There are paths in the bog, old brushwood paths. Only one has to know them. This is as near as I can get to you on the path.’

  Effingham groaned. ‘You’ll never reach me. There’s a morass all round. You’d better get helpers. Only for God’s sake be quick.’

  ‘I’ll reach you. It’s not too bad for a little way just here. I’m going to lay down brushwood on top of the bog. It won’t take long. Keep quite still and don’t struggle at all.’

  Denis unloaded a bulky bundle from the back of the donkey. Swiftly and deftly be began to cast the lengths of brushwood on to the dark surface of the bog. He pressed it in a little and laid more on top. The dawn light now showed the flat un-featured land all around. The path lengthened toward Effingham.

  Denis worked quickly padding to and fro. Effingham saw that the plimsoll-clad feet were scarcely muddied. He began cautiously to move his legs in the mud, preparatory to taking control of his body again, and with a gasp slipped a little farther. The bog clasped his waist. He was indeed not ‘good for some time yet’.

  ‘Keep still, I told you.’ Denis was now almost near enough to touch him. ‘Listen, when I reach you we’ll do it quickly. I’m going to take you under the arms and pull gently and you will swim with your legs as if you were in the water. Here I am now. Now move quietly and as I tell you. I’ve got you, there, I’ll kneel and you hold on to my shoulders. Now swim with your legs and come upward, upward.’

  It seemed afterwards to Effingham as if Denis’s very words had given him a new power. He was not able to ‘swim’ with his legs, which seemed paralysed, but he agitated them a little and urged his body upward in unison with Denis’s steady pull.

>   ‘Now stop. Now again. Stop. Again. Now I can pull you on to the brushwood. Yes, use your hands a little. Don’t try to get up, just lie. Rest now. And in a minute you’ll crawl along to the firmer place. Rest. Now crawl. Give me one hand. Just slither along. I’ll keep pulling you.’

  Panting with exhaustion, Effingham managed to propel his sodden muddy body along the surface of the brushwood, which was already beginning to descend quietly into the bog. At last under his groping hand he felt a firmer surface and in a moment was sitting on the path. The sky was a cloudy blue and the sun was rising. ‘Denis, what can I say. Thank you.’