The Self-Enchanted

by David Stacton

  “You’d be at the top,” he said shortly.

  She did not answer. The mules had started on again, slithering over the ice of the river, which wobbled, even though it was maybe ten feet thick. It oozed at the edges. They trod over the lichens in the hot afternoon sun. There was nothing between them and the sun up here, and she could see the perspiration running down Christopher’s face. The Tatums stopped under one of the skeletal trees. They began to make camp. Christopher told them to stop it.

  Tatum looked at him. “Look, mister, you can drive me just so far.”

  “What the devil do I care? There’s another hundred in it,” said Christopher.

  “I don’t give a damn what there is in it,” snapped Tatum.

  Christopher glared at him, and nudged his mule on, starting towards the snow-banked mountain.

  “Is he crazy?” asked Tatum.

  “You’ve got to help me,” said Sally.

  “We’re staying here.”

  Sally looked at them in despair. “He wants to climb up to Lake Mary. He’s in no condition to go alone.”

  “That’s his own lookout. We’re making camp beneath the ledge. There’ll be some protection there.”

  With a glance at his stupid, expressionless face, she headed the mule after Christopher and caught up with him.

  “Well,” he asked.

  “They’re going to make camp and wait for us.”

  “Think we can make it?”

  “It’s foolhardy to try. Why won’t you help yourself?”

  “I’m beyond help,” he said, and grinned at her. “I’ve got to get up there, so I’m going up.”

  She looked at the mountain, with its rocks jutting from the snow. She saw Christopher shiver and draw himself taut. He got down from his mule and glanced at his boots. “Are you coming?” he demanded. His voice was scornful. “If I get to the top, I’ve got it licked. I know that. I want to stand on the top just once.”

  They climbed tightly. It was not so bad at first. She dug her heels into the snow, feeling her way. Looking back, she saw him below her. He was slipping in the snow. He caught himself on a rock, and when she looked again, his hand was bleeding. They inched their way up across the snow-field, from rock to rock. The air was so thin it made her dizzy. She did not dare to think of its effects on Christopher. He was sobbing with exasperation. He set his teeth and waved her on. The sun burned her eyes. Another fifty feet and she was on the rim of the rock. She turned and helped him up, and he sprawled, gasping, beside her in the snow. Before them was another ridge of rock, and he stared at it, his face white and baffled.

  “There’s a passage through it,” she said. “It’s a cone.”

  “I’ll have to rest.”

  She bent down, warming his hands in her own. He stared at her, half triumphant, and half frightened.

  “Let’s go on now,” he said. He repeated it loudly, gasping in the air, struggled to his feet, and leaned against her. He was very heavy. She took his arm and they made their way across the snow. “Have you been here before?” he asked.

  “Years ago.”

  “If you can make it, I can.”

  She floundered ahead over the soft packed snow, and saw the declivity. He dragged on her like a dead weight, but grimly kept up. She went slowly, listening for his breathing. It was slow, faltering, but determined. She plunged into the declivity. On either side of them rose the steep rock, dripping with ice. Around a bend they were within the cone itself. It was ten thousand feet up. Her lungs felt tight.

  Before them, between the broken edges of the rock, was a shelf of stone, scattered with bleached wood. It was in effect a shelving beach. The rocks were icy hard and cut and bruised her, even through her boots. She stumbled down the shelf. The lake was contained inside the cone of the volcano. It was frozen solid. On three sides rose the naked granite, forming a natural parapet, over which she could see still farther mountains, naked and deliriously sharp against the sky.

  Everything around her was burnished by the sun. Immediately above them towered the farther cliff itself, and from it poured a small glacier, like blue glass. In the centre of the lake was a small islet.

  “Oh, God,” shouted Christopher. He turned his face upward to the flat surface of the higher cliff, and his voice echoed back hollowly from the rocks and the ice. “This is what I wanted to be.”

  In his tone was a queer note of exultation that made her shiver. He walked gingerly out over the ice. It was forty feet thick, but quivered beneath him, and close to the edge a little moisture oozed up from the slight cleft between the ice and the shore. He slid carefully across the ice towards the islet. There was a brittle white log there and he sat down on it.

  There was a wind up here. It tousled his hair. He sank down and she saw him looking about him almost with an expression of awe. Yet against that background he was a small figure, dwarfed by the granite and ice.

  “I should have come before,” he whispered. “This would make me well.”

  He looked across the lake. An edge of the glacier reared up at the end of it, and the wind had carved an ice cave there, fantastic with glittering stalactites and stalagmites.

  “This is what I needed,” he shouted. “This is power.”

  She looked around them at the mountains towering up on every side, and far off she heard the rumble of thunder, and saw the clouds flaring out from Banner and Ritter. She shuddered.

  “There’s a storm blowing up.”

  “Let it,” he laughed.

  “You don’t know what a storm up here is like.”

  “I don’t care.” He laughed boyishly, happily. “It can’t touch me. Nothing can touch me.” He was feverish and he sounded drunk. Suddenly he shuddered, looking at the storm-head. “You can’t,” he shouted up at it. “I’ll trick you. I’ll live.” The wind had already burnt his face, and he screamed at the sky. “I’ll pay you all back and I’ll live. I’m stronger than you.” He stood up, swaying to and fro in the quick wind, and suddenly he was still again. He blinked awkwardly at the sky.

  She led him back across the lake. The sunlight on the snow had turned him almost blind. She got him down the surface of the cone, half-sliding, half-pulling him. But just before they descended he began to laugh. She would never forget that laugh. It rose and cracked into a sob.

  She saw the two mules below them. When they reached bottom she helped him on to one of them, and he winced with pain. Leading his mule, she walked back across the plain. The shadows were lengthening across the meadow. At last she heard the crackle of fire and saw sparks rising.

  The tops of the mountains still glittered in the red light of sunset, but the wood was dark and restless. She pushed into it and came on the other mules and the Tatums, crouching around a small fire. It was deathly cold, and Christopher did not speak. She got him off the mule, and spreading a blanket, made him lie down. His face was puffed out and he scarcely seemed to know her. He looked up at her helplessly.

  The Tatums had a cast-iron pot over the fire. She poured herself a cup of coffee. They did not move to help her. They stared at her calculatingly, saying nothing. The wind blew cold, and she could hear the storm coming. Behind her Christopher moaned and tossed in his blanket. She went over and felt his forehead. It was burning hot.

  “Can you hear me?” she whispered. He only rolled away from her on to his stomach, his fists clenched. She went back to the Tatums. “You’ve got to help me get him back,” she said.

  “There’s a storm coming up.”

  “But he’s in agony. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”

  “In the morning,” said Old Man Tatum. He kicked some dust with the toe of his boot.

  “Now.”

  “He can’t ride on a mule.” Tatum was sullen.

  “You could make a stretcher and carry him.”

  “With this storm brewing?”

  It was true. The sky was turning black, and the stars were disappearing. Christopher writhed on the ground. She jerked her head.<
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  “Give him something and tell him to shut up,” said Tatum slowly.

  Something in her snapped. She could hear snow falling in the distance, and the glow of lightning flared across the sky. “Do as I say,” she ordered.

  The Tatums shifted uneasily.

  “Get two poles,” she said. The younger Tatum eyed his father and slowly got up. “We can stretch a blanket over them.”

  “It’ll be dangerous,” said Old Man Tatum furtively. He was like her father. She knew him well.

  “You’ll be paid,” snapped Sally. She stood there, forcing herself to keep her voice even, intensely aware of Christopher. Old Man Tatum looked away and then rose reluctantly to his feet. He went off to cut down a sapling. She glared after him until she saw him start to work, and then she let out her breath.

  They had to strap Christopher to the stretcher with a belt. Old Man Tatum kicked out the fire, puffing nervously at a cigarette. At last they got under way, threading carefully through the thickening darkness. Christopher moaned and twisted under the lashings. A branch brushed across her face. She walked beside the stretcher, trying to do what she could, which was nothing. He raved about Antoinette. She tried not to listen. Then he began to cry out for her. She took his hand, which was wet with sweat. His face was bloated out of recognition by the wind-burn.

  Somehow they reached the top of the dam. The crypt of the lake below swarmed with snow. It was impossible to see the trail. The thick, heavy, enraged snow blew in great gusts, so they could scarcely keep upright. Young Tatum shifted his hands on the stretcher, and it wobbled precariously, almost turning over. Christopher seemed to be pleading with someone. Over and over again, furiously, he repeated the same unintelligible words. She tried to protect his face from the snow, but without success.

  The shacks at the lower lake were boarded up and they couldn’t get in. There was nothing to do but go on. There were some lamps on one of the mules. Feverishly, in the driving wind that tore at her, she managed to light two of them, but they were not much help. They were only red spots in the fury of the storm.

  The switchback trail was the most dangerous. The wind made them totter on the brinks of it, and they had to inch their way down. Once they almost went over: she caught at young Tatum just in time. She could see nothing but the merciless snow, hissing in the fury of the wind. The full power of the thunder suddenly broke directly overhead, shaking the rocks. She realized at last that they were crossing the wooden bridge.

  If she could get him these last few hundred yards she would be safe. He stirred. She leaned over, trying to wipe his face. Her fingers were frozen. She could scarcely move them and she could scarcely stand.

  At last, far ahead through the storm, she saw a faint elusive glow of yellow light. She forced herself on. She forced them all on. Christopher was strangely quiet now. She could only pray that he was not dead. Then, as the mules stumbled, she saw a vague solid shape through the snow, a few yards ahead, and went on. It was the Tatum cabin.

  XXV

  It was the next night, and the doctor had come.

  She stood at the windows of the hall, looking towards the mountains. The storm had cleared that morning, but now the mountain passes were blocked with snow, and would be inaccessible for the rest of the winter. Soon, in a week, in a few weeks, the valley itself would be blocked. The storm-clouds seemed balanced on a point of decision, whether to sweep down on the helpless valley, or to store their rage for a few more days.

  The doctor would not yet allow her into Christopher’s room. She had only glimpsed him lying frighteningly unconscious on his bed. The house was still. Its shadows were filled with waiting.

  Now it was dark again. She had come to dread the night. It was in the small hours of the night that Christopher was at his worst. It was then that death could gather him up most easily.

  All around her crowded the darkness of the house. The hall was a solarium, and the plants behind her rustled and swayed. The heating system had dried them out, and the tropic vines installed by the decorator hung like withered strings. She slid back the bolt on the sliding doors and stepped out on to the terrace. She hoped the sharp wind would clear her head. Above her, with nothing to protect her from them now, were the vast and vacillating stars, spread out in an inhuman system yet staring down like animal eyes, in a phosphorescent atmosphere of poisoned light.

  She stood at the terrace rail, shivering, her thoughts motionless. Far off, far below in the valley, she could hear a dog barking. The crispness of the air froze in her nostrils. She had that helpless feeling of repeating something she had already done. Then she went back to face the doctor.

  The doctor looked at her sharply. “How long has this been going on?”

  “I don’t know. I finally got him to a doctor when we were in Hong Kong. He refused to have anything done.”

  The doctor grunted. “He’ll have to be moved. He has to be in a hospital, where he can get proper treatment.”

  “He’s dying, isn’t he?” She stared at him quietly. “How long?”

  The doctor was embarrassed. “One can’t say. A few weeks, a few months. All that can be done really is to ease the pain.”

  She realized that she had been staring at the doctor for some time. Everything seemed to be suspended in slow air, and she did not quite know where she was.

  “I think I’d better give you a sedative,” said the doctor.

  “No.” She tried to find some mooring. “Does he know?”

  Again the doctor was embarrassed.’ ‘I haven’t told him.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “If you wish. He’s opiated.”

  “How soon will he have to be moved?” she asked.

  “As soon as possible. I’ll fly back to-night, and make arrangements. And then come back with a nurse. We can have him in hospital the next day.”

  Sally looked at him and then beyond him. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  Christopher stood in the doorway, half-hanging against the jamb. His face was bloated, and he stared at them through drugged eyes. For an instant everything stopped. He tried to speak, and then, in agonizingly slow motion, she saw him begin to crumple and fall. Both she and the doctor ran towards him. They picked him up and got him into the bedroom and on to the bed. His face was terrified. She straightened up from folding back the bedclothes and looked at the doctor. He led her out of the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind him, and she leaned against the wall. She covered her face with her hands, facing an awful blackness that swept all her senses away.

  “Mrs. Barocco!”

  She shook off his hand. “I can’t bear to see him like this,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “If you go on like this, you’ll break. You’ve got to get some rest.”

  She shook her head.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he urged.

  “I can watch. He needs me.”

  “He may be violent. Even dangerous.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The doctor walked up and down. “I’ll go at once,” he said. “I’d better give you some instructions.”

  Her life grasped at the particular. When he had gone she felt helpless terror. She went into the kitchen and told Mrs. Oland to make coffee. When it was ready, she drank three or four cups black and then forced herself to walk back through the desolate house to Christopher’s room.

  She sat by his bed for she did not know how long, watching him. He lay motionless, breathing faintly, his face a blank, but in the darkness it seemed to her that he knew she was there. Then, towards dawn, his face began to relax and his breathing changed. She bent forward, but there was nothing but that faint change, which seemed to pervade the whole room. She knew that something had happened, but she did not know what. His body straightened out and he seemed to be at ease. Unable to keep her eyes open any longer, she fell asleep in her chair.

  *

  She sat up, blinking, and saw that Christopher was propped up in bed, half in shadow, and th
at he was watching her. The swelling had gone down, so that his eyes were round and full and very dark. It was late afternoon. She glanced swiftly about the room. The change in him was startling. He seemed thinner and smaller. He seemed to be watching her from an immense distance, and she knew that he must have been watching her for some time.

  “Hello,” he said. There was an odd note of emotion in his voice, but not an emotion she could identify. He shifted his position in the bed and shut his eyes. “Get the boy,” he said. “I want to get up.”

  She went into the kitchen and told Mrs. Oland to send in the boy. Christopher waved her away. She waited in the hall. At last the door was opened, and Christopher stood there, leaning on the boy. She helped him out through the doorway into the hall, and then out on to the terrace. The boy placed chairs on the terrace, in the afternoon sun, and then went away, Christopher moved warily and sat down in one of the chairs. The other was empty beside him.

  “It’s a clear day,” he said.

  “It cleared up yesterday.”

  He did not seem to listen. He sat, his arms hanging limp, as though waiting for something, and gazed up at the pass they had climbed only two days before. The trail was invisible now under the snow. In the distance she could hear the wind shivering through the trees.

  “How did you get me down?” he asked at last.

  “The Tatums carried you.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You were feverish.”

  “I know that,” he said, “but what did I say?”

  “You were raving about Antoinette.”

  He seemed to shiver. “Come and sit beside me,” he asked, after a moment.

  She shook her head to clear it and did as he asked. The mountains seemed to press down on her. For a long time he said nothing. He stirred uncomfortably. “I heard you and the doctor,” he told her at last. He sighed. “I’ve always been afraid of death. When I was a child I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid to die in my sleep, and I watched my mother die. She didn’t want to. You see, she wasn’t sure what was waiting for her.” He sighed wearily. “How long?”