The Haunted Storm

by Philip Pullman

  No, something was changing deeply inside him, and it saddened and sickened him when he thought of the directions he could end up facing. And then came another of those events, like the murder, which the world so casually seemed to throw up like a volcano in his path.

  It happened on a Thursday in Silminster. It was Elizabeth’s half-day, and they arranged to meet for lunch in the pub opposite the shop she worked in. He had not been there before, and arrived a few minutes early. He was a little surprised. When she’d told him it was a second-hand bookshop he had pictured a dusty, run-down place like a junk shop, but this was a proper antiquarian bookseller’s. The window display was bright and attractive, with old books on natural history open to show engravings and etchings of birds and flowers. It made Matthew feel gloomy and apprehensive, in case she was going to behave appropriately and make arty chatter about books; but when she came out at one o’clock he was relieved, and astonished again at his failure to imagine her properly. She was calm, intent, and beautifully fluid in all her movements: but why did this amaze him? He had always known she was; why had he forgotten it?

  He kissed her, and said, “I’ve just discovered I’ve got no memory, or no imagination. I’d forgotten entirely what you looked like.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “I’ve probably changed completely since this morning. I don’t know what I look like either. But what’s wrong?”

  He had been trying to smile, and not succeeding, and so he gave up. In fact, he realised, he was feeling bitterly depressed, and that brought another question up; had he been feeling depressed all morning without realising it? It was quite possible.

  He shrugged in answer to her question, and said nothing. They went into the pub and Matthew bought their drinks and sandwiches. When they sat down he discovered, shamefully, that he was tongue-tied, and couldn’t look her in the face; the intimacy which had grown around them seemed totally to have vanished, leaving them strangers. He felt drained of all exhilaration, drained of his will; and to break the silence he eventually said, “I wish they’d catch this murderer.”

  “Why?” she said. She sounded calm and placid.

  “Because it’s – I don’t know, because it’s untidy. Because there’s a loose end. Because I’ve got the soul of a policeman, I expect.”

  “I expect they will before long,” she said.

  “Yes, probably. Let’s go up on the moors this afternoon. I must do something or I’ll suffocate. No, I’m sorry, I mustn’t say things like that. It’s whining. I’ll go by myself, love.”

  He sipped his beer.

  “Oh, Matthew of course I’ll come with you if you want me to! It’s not as if I never complained to you.”

  “I don’t judge you, though; I can’t judge you. But I can condemn myself, and be as harsh as I can – I must. So I call it whining. I ought to find a gun and play Russian roulette; that’d wake me up. It’s weakness, that’s all. When we met, that day in the road, I was exalted, transfigured: where is it now? Where’s it gone? You see, I’m being honest. I could easily say that it was still there, that I loved you more than ever, that it was deeper and truer – oh, you know all the phrases. But quite suddenly there’s nothing there – no, don’t misunderstand me, Liz. Suddenly I’m sunk – that’s all it is – it’s quite arbitrary, this depression, it comes and goes like the weather. It means no more than rain does. I shouldn’t have come to see you today, I should have telephoned and made an excuse and stayed in the village and worked. Concentrated hard on something.”

  “We don’t have to make excuses, Matthew! You needn’t have had to say why, if you’d done that… But why did you call me Liz? You never have before.”

  “Because it’s shorter, I suppose. Don’t you like it?”

  “Yes, but no-one ever called me Liz until he did, my lover, I mean. He’s the only other one.”

  “And what was his name, anyway? That’s something you’ve never told me.”

  “I don’t know… no, I won’t tell you, because he’s dead, he doesn’t need a name. No, of course I don’t mean dead, I mean lost; buried. He doesn’t need to be named. It might bring him to life.”

  “And what would you do then? What would you do if he came back?”

  “Well, he won’t come back, will he, if we don’t resurrect him? I shouldn’t have mentioned him in the first place.”

  “No, but if he did. He appeared in the beginning without being resurrected or evoked. And he disappeared just as abruptly, from what you told me. You’ve got no control over him at all, it seems. So what would you do, if he came back?”

  “All right. I don’t know. Everything I’ve done since, I’ve done assuming he never would. And if you challenge me like that, I can only tell the truth, can’t I? I can only say that I don’t know, that I have no idea what I’d do, or what’d happen.”

  Matthew said nothing. Idiotically, he’d been hurt by what she’d said. But what else had he expected? And he had no right to feel jealous. Maybe the oddness of their relationship was putting an unfair strain on both of them. Maybe there was nothing at all in either of them that was any stronger or greater than the rest of humanity. Such thoughts were perfidy, but they were wickedly easy to think. And there was not a thing he could do about it… Depression, was it? It was sin, and guilt.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Elizabeth – since it was she, at that moment, who was the stronger – determined to do something, and made a move.

  “Come on, Matthew,” she said gently. “Let’s get out, let’s go for a walk. I won’t say anything at all. I love you.” He swallowed the rest of his beer and followed her out of the pub. They walked slowly along in the sunshine. The streets were crowded.

  “We could go and look at the cathedral,” said Elizabeth after a while. “If you want to.”

  “I don’t mind,” he answered. “At least, perhaps I do, but I don’t know about it if I do. I’ll have to – d’you see, Liz, I’ll have to feed on this emotion or whatever it is, this depression, while it’s here. There’s no sense in ignoring it. I’ll have to take everything into account. Love, when I feel it, and triumph, and guilt, and fear: everything. Only at the moment it’s nothing I feel, except maybe disgust. I’m not even sure of that. Oh, curse it… Either it negates this sun, this warmth, you see, or else the weather negates me; but there’s no meaning in either of them, that’s the result. And the fact that I’m here strolling calmly along takes the meaning out of what I’ve just said, anyway. There’s no use, there’s no use in it. Words… they’re diseased. They’re like scales on the skin of a leper. We ought to be forbidden the use of them. We ought to plunge in a bath of acid and have them stripped away and then stumble out into the world again raw, and touch it and hear it and look at it and see it harsh and dazzling, uncompromising, without this inane conventional compulsive mouthing… I say we, but of course I mean myself. So I’ll make a start; I’ll shut up. I won’t speak for a while, Liz, I’ll acid-bath myself.”

  She nodded, and smiled. And immediately he wanted to speak again, to tell her how extraordinary the situation between them was – as if she didn’t know, he thought. He held his tongue, though, and said not a word as they went through the Market square, walking slowly hand in hand, making room for others to pass, idling, looking at the sky. An aeroplane, so high up that it was quite invisible, was making a white vapour trail across the brilliant blue, thin and clear and sharp where it left the plane and ragged and woolly further back where it thinned out, torn about by the great winds. Matthew felt a desperate, passionate longing to be – no matter how – up there in the pure, thin, cold, blue air, a part of the mighty streaming winds that swept in total silence from continent to continent and from ocean to ocean. Total silence; for there were no obstructions, no trees or houses or men, no mountains, to break the flow of it and make it howl and shriek; it was utter movement, utter power, utter silence, utter cold. He must be descended from birds, he thought, not from apes like other men. They went t
o their gross love for strength, most of them, or to their idiot fellows; and some men, solitaries, went to the earth; but he had to go to the air like a bird. And he was as unsolid as air, as changeable; and fickle, and inhuman. “I know nothing of human things,” he said under his breath, but whether in sorrow or pride he did not know. At least the air was the home of storms. And storms were a picture of the absolute, the sublime. There was bound to be a storm somewhere in the world at that moment. Maybe there was only one storm, which travelled the world like the wandering Jew or the flying Dutchman… Romantic pictures; they were unreal, dreams out of depression, and therefore contemptible. Face it: face it, face the world, it’s always worse. Face your own guilt, and what are you guilty of? Weakness. Face your own animal weakness, and kill it ruthlessly. Look at it, this depression, engage it: it makes your knees weak, so you can hardly walk; then you look ridiculous. There is a weight in your chest, it feels like a rough hand around your heart; then it would be better if you died, and no longer felt it. You feel impelled to cling to Elizabeth tightly and shut your eyes and beg her to take care of you; then you are only a child, and if you act like a child she will have to act like a mother, and there’ll be a taint of that in your relation from now on, she will always be mother in some degree, and you will always be more or less child. It’s everywhere, this depression, it’s like fear, like gas. Then stop breathing: stop being afraid. Your responsibility is absolute. If it wins, then you’ve lost.

  He was addressing himself like this, half thinking, half whispering, when suddenly there came to him a startlingly clear message from the heart, as it seemed, of his morality itself. It was simply this: that responsibility was absolute, but depression and madness were not; for depression and madness came from the feeble human heart and were not conditions of life; and that consequently, it was a moral duty not to give in under any circumstances, even the most anguishing; it was a clear moral imperative not to go mad.

  Reject it. Become hard and unconcerned with your own suffering. He looked up and laughed aloud. One or two passers-by looked at him curiously and went their ways. Elizabeth turned slowly to face him, and her eyes were full of a distant lost rapture: she was so deep in thought that she moved languidly and dreamily and hardly heard him. A couple of sparrows hopped on to the pavement from beneath one of the market stalls.

  “Silly bastards,” he said aloud, affectionately.

  He breathed in deeply, and yawned. Air, it was good… Damn, but that depression’s good too, it’s all good. It leaves you lightheaded and confused, but there’s nothing wrong with that for a short while. And then back to work.

  The Cathedral lay in the northern part of the city, up a slight hill from the market place and behind a district of old houses. It was not far from the railway junction, and the goods yard could be seen quite easily from the cathedral close.

  They wandered into the precincts of the cathedral, staring idly about them like tourists, and then just as idly wandered out again. Matthew was saying to her that there was really no point in going there unless they wanted to pray, because a cathedral was probably designed as a microphone to pick up prayers; but that there was no point in their praying at all, yet. And she dissented, without putting much effort into it, saying that if it was beautiful then it might as well be seen, whatever it was. Wrangling harmlessly on the topic of aesthetics, they found themselves before long near the rail way station.

  The street they were in was shabby and dirty, and led up to a narrow bridge over a canal. There were warehouses along one side of it, and a pawnbroker’s and a motor-cycle shop and a place that sold army surplus goods, and, set a little way back from the pavement behind a low wall and a thin hedge, there was a large Nissen hut with a notice board saying “Darby and Joan Club Bingo.” The sun shone warmly, and the air was cool, tasting of spring. Both of them were quite happy now, each absorbed in himself and not really conscious of the other. The people who passed by were only ghosts, but harmless and even genial ghosts, healthy and solid.

  And then there fell a curious silence over the whole street, almost a subjective silence, though the causes were objective enough: there were no cars there for the moment, the man from the motor-cycle shop had just cut the engine of a bike he was demonstrating, no-one happened to be talking.

  Matthew and Elizabeth both found themselves looking at a man who was walking along the other side of the street towards the bridge. He held their eyes like a magnet. He existed more intensely than the other people in the street, that was all. He made them look pale and shadowy, he burned like the sun; and the two of them felt their attention, fluttering and feeble, drawn to him like a moth to a naked flame.

  His appearance was quite ordinary: at least it seemed so, but when Matthew looked closely, he saw that the man was very shabbily dressed, and extremely dirty. He was aged about thirty or thirty-five. His hair was blond, and he wore it long and greased and swept-back. He was wearing a shirt that was done up at the neck without a tie, and loose brown trousers, and dirty black shoes and an open raincoat. His hands were in his pockets, and he sauntered along slowly, almost lazily, but people took care to get out of his way.

  He did not look to either side of him, but stared straight ahead. He was too far away, and in profile, but they got an idea of his expression. Matthew later on could only explain it by using the word “aura”; and just as some people have around them a cold, repellent, vampirizing atmosphere that is almost palpable, this man had the quality, which Matthew could feel from right across the street, of attracting and hypnotising anyone of weaker will. Elizabeth’s words on the beach – “absolute – still – iron” – came involuntarily to his mind, and he stared open-mouthed at the stranger. What the man’s purpose might be of course he had no idea, but that he had some invincible purpose was as plain and stark as the sun.

  Then he turned – he stopped swiftly and glanced across at them, but his eyes did not seem to focus: he looked straight through them. Matthew saw his face clearly for a second. His brow was fixed in a frown. His nose was firm, high-arched, almost hooked. His lips were thick but com pressed, and his chin stubborn. Two deep lines led from his nose to the corners of his mouth. Just for a moment, Matthew had the urge to shout something out: to warn him of something, to challenge him, he did not know which; but to measure himself against him, certainly; to fight him, not out of enmity but out of respect and recognition. It would simply be the appropriate greeting.

  After a moment he turned back and walked on, taking no more notice of them. He reached the bridge, crossed it, and disappeared. Two or three cars passed, the man from the motor cycle shop kicked the bike into action again, and the life of the street came back to normal.

  Elizabeth’s hand was gripping Matthew’s tightly; her nails were digging painfully into his palm, and he shook it loose and stared at her. She was gazing after him helplessly, gnawing her under lip.

  “Liz! Liz! What the hell are you doing? What is it?”

  She turned, and a little laugh escaped her, and she eyed Matthew with something like arrogance.

  “Can’t you guess? You’re a fool if you can’t; no, of course, you can guess. That’s him, of course, my lover, resurrected. You couldn’t help but know. Everything pointed to it, all day long it’s been pointing to it; didn’t you guess then, either? Oh God, Matthew, now it is all shattered –” her voice shook, and she uttered a strange obscure sound from her throat, between a laugh and a sob. Matthew was dumbfounded.

  “Where’s he gone? Is that where he lives?” he demanded after a second, pointing down across the bridge.

  She nodded, and then she shook her head violently – “No – I don’t know – of course not. He’s obviously not living here any more. He must have come back for a day.”

  “Tell me his address. And tell me his name now, too, there’s no point in holding it back.”

  “No. I’ve forgotten it –”

  “Don’t be bloody silly. As if I couldn’t find out – your father would tell me
– and I can probably guess it, if I tried. I can do things, too. I’ve got power over things – come here.”

  He seized her arm and pulled her roughly a few yards back to where the Bingo Club stood. She protested, looking back towards the bridge, but he insisted and dragged her back, half-stumbling. He came to a halt and putting his hand on her shoulder forced her to look at the hedge, and then coldly and deliberately shook it: that is to say, without touching it physically, and without knowing how to affect it by the power of his will alone, he nevertheless consciously allowed some hidden part of his mind to reach out and grasp the central stem of that part of the hedge and shake it furiously. For a matter of a few seconds, his dominion over it was complete, and the thin and tattered hedge rustled and shivered as if a wild beast were caught in it. And then his mind slipped suddenly, and he lost it. A couple of passers-by had stopped and were staring at them; he ignored them and turned back to Elizabeth. She was looking helplessly now at the hedge, now at him, and glancing back every few seconds towards the bridge.

  “I’ve got power over it, d’you see? I am as strong as he is, if it’s strength you covet – is it strength? is it purpose? what is it you covet in him?” He was speaking fast, in a low voice, gripping her tightly by the shoulder and shaking her slightly. He felt close to panic. “Tell me, Elizabeth: what does it mean to you that you’ve seen him again? Is he greater than I am? Is that it?”

  He suddenly checked his flow of questions. They were all meaningless. All he was doing by asking them, he realised, was to try and change what had just taken place. It was a physical event, and an emotional event, and he was trying to make it susceptible to words and hence intellectual; and naturally, he was failing. What was worse, he was being petty about it.

  She shook her head, trying to concentrate on what Matthew had said. But she couldn’t get the other out of her mind – how could she? The sight of him, just the sight of him alone across a street, had been so compelling that she could do nothing to erase it. She looked at Matthew, just in time to see his expression change completely and become introspective, thoughtful, and even – surely not! – even amused.