by Rodney Hall
Just a desert temple with sand lodged in sculpted elaborations of the roof where intertwining limbs told sacred stories in limestone. Dust on limestone collarbones, in navels and under toenails. Unopposable infinity of sand. Finally throwing a sheet of itself, like the curving tide of the distant sea, in at the door. That last priest a half-blind witness. Dimly framed against the evening light (as seen from behind). No use his sweeping out what would only return at the full moon. And return. Perfect as ever. The labour of Sisyphus. Lunar dryness skittering in across the flagstones to pile its sterile tribute around the base of Shiva’s lingam and fill the yoni there. Oil lamps trembled singly, no longer mirrored by a glossy floor, doomed to air by the invading carpet of granules. The worshippers, a dying breed, trudged up inclines and slithered down the other side, sand giving underfoot, into that isolated hollow in oceanic dunes. Their numbers dwindling till, at last, the lamps burnt out. Flaking curds caked the neglected lingam. Then, one night no doubt, the priest himself curled up in a corner, in among the perished trappings and ceremonial clutter of forgotten days, among bull heads and cobra masks. And never woke.
Alien silence settled. Then a thousand locusts with transparent wings. Ruby pinpoint eyes, their tiny saws akimbo. Swarmed. And left.
Following the thousand years of worship came this thousand years of sand. The temple fully buried. Nothing now but a dune, with a few knobs and finials of the roof sticking up through it. Breezes caress smooth slopes. Sunshine from clear sky. No sound. The guide book explains: ‘Unlike Krishna, who departs his temple if his stone flute is ritually smashed by the priest, Shiva stays.’ So, down in the dark and silence, his lingam still intact, the God himself is there. To this day.
And here they come, the new conquerors from Peoria, Crewe and Wangaratta, you name it. Stumbling out of hire cars and coaches. Doors slam. Much distinctness. Graceless flesh exhibits. Glance around like lost avengers. Apprehensive of glaring sky. Sky near the earthline egg-blue in the sand-stung wind. Call out at the tops of their voices. Absence of harmonising—e.g. feeling. Ground already slipping underfoot, they trespass. Tour guides urge them to toil up slopes. Right to the crest of the dune and down the unseen side. Unseeing, slithering sandals hampering them among shapely stones from a former age, they tread the roof of a carved cavern without the least idea. One portly man with pig’s bristles. Breathless. Flips through travel agency brochure. Bellows back to warn companions coming up behind ‘Not a thing! Not a single bloody thing to be seen!’
L’Étoile Bleue
Leaving San Sebastián on foot, heading north and crossing the border into France, my goal was Biarritz and the nearby village of Anglet. Battling against an Atlantic gale, I might say. I hoped to reach a youth hostel known as L’Étoile Bleue, famous for its friendly atmosphere and for having the best hostel food in Europe. Anyway, I was glad to put Spain behind me. With Franco still in power it had been hard. Somewhere outside Gerona some kids stoned me to chase me out of their town. I had felt helpless and ridiculous trying to run with my big pack bouncing on my back. Right across the country I was hounded, one way or another. So, with the prospect of France to encourage me, I plodded for six and a half hours through the stinging March drizzle, kept going by the promise of a fire and a hot dinner.
Finally, just on dusk, I arrived at the outskirts of the village, cold, sodden and footsore. I consulted the Youth Hostels Association handbook, drops of rain hanging off my eyebrows, found the lane in question and, at the end of it, a two-storey house with blue gables. But even a glimpse was enough to bring my hopes crashing down. The place was shut. No smoke issued from the chimneys. The shutters were closed. The garden was filled with an undisturbed scent of wet lavender. I walked up to the house and took refuge under the porch. The only sound was the patter of rain. I played the part of knocking, quite as if cameras rolled and my tragedy was being witnessed in the cinema by a sympathetic audience. Well, because I was young. What more can I say?
I knocked again, this time without acting the part. No answer. Yet I could swear that, if the house was empty, the last person had only just left. You know how a place can somehow feel occupied? I knocked some more, this time louder. I had rights. With my membership card ready, I checked the handbook again. There it was in print: 50 beds, open 52 weeks. Someone had to be at home. And they were obliged to attend to my needs as a member! I unslung my rucksack and gazed back along the muddy lane winding away through slanting rain to the main road. Deepening dusk had begun gathering in purple pools among the bushes.
Hitchhikers can generally find companions on the way, but the long distance walker walks alone. And now, with night about to fall, the loneliness overwhelmed me. I only just controlled a rush of despair too childish for a twenty-three-year-old. Either I would go crazy and break in, or else break down and cry. Then I heard a window squeak somewhere above my head. Backing out from the porch and into the open, I looked up. Rain needled my face. A woman was staring down at me. The intense unseeing look she gave me fixed me to the spot. For a long moment neither of us spoke. Mutely I held the booklet open, as my explanation, my request, my proof of rights, and pointed to the L’Étoile Bleue entry, ridiculously, as if she could read it at that distance, rain speckles and all.
She said nothing.
And the way I saw it later in my memory she was begging me to go. She—this woman in middle age with her marvellous eyes who was (and the description I hunted for came to me only belatedly) the most beautiful woman I had ever seen—directed my way a baffled expression. Then, without a word, she shut the window. I glimpsed her pale fingers and heard the latch click. She left me standing there. As a last resort, I tried the door handle. It gave. The way in stood open. Yet, when it came to the point, I hesitated. I thought about trespassing, lighting a fire in the stove—little chores like this were commonly expected in hostels—and making myself at home. I took a deep lungful of the cool homely smells of the place. There was nothing to be done. I had to leave, I knew that. Hating myself didn’t help.
An awful empty misery ballooned in my chest as I hoisted the rucksack on my back. The damp shirt under my leather jacket squashed against me and a trickle of water found its way down past my belt. Leaving the door ajar, I don’t know why, I stepped out into the rain again. Momentarily I looked back, but darkness had already begun swallowing the house and garden.
I took a bus to the nearby town of Bayonne where there was said to be a big hostel, though it was not in the official book. I peered at the passing night through steamy windows and reviewed the day: my departure from San Sebastián, the gale, the grime, a beach scattered with concrete blocks and barbed wire and craters (relics of war), my loneliness, arrival at L’Étoile Bleue, the upstairs window, the lady of the house with a soft loop of hair coming loose over her ears, her white fingers on the windowsill and the latch, her eyes …
At the hostel I struck up a friendship with a Dutchman by the name of Franz, a somewhat morose individual but pleasant enough. I told him about being turned away in Anglet. And he had stories of his own to tell. On and on we talked, mostly about the usual things, places we had been and places we hoped to reach, whether or not to volunteer for some community project in Africa, cars, girls and the inevitability that we would all soon die in a nuclear war. By bedtime I was in a calmer frame of mind. The next day was spent on the pillion of Franz’s 900cc NSU, zooming around the foothills of the Pyrenees. That motorbike was so much fun. Life had taken another turn. I decided to stay a second night before continuing my journey by foot, north, with Lascaux as the next goal. Franz was planning to head south, so breakfast would be our last meal together.
From the top of the staircase I could see him already at the big table with a newspaper spread open before him in a patch of sunlight. As I approached he planted one finger on a headline and swivelled the page for me to read: trapped under his finger the word Anglet caught my attention. With only a smattering of French, I worked my way through the article. A woman’s body had been dis
covered. Hanging from the ceiling. In an upstairs room. An upstairs front room. At a youth hostel known as L’Étoile Bleue. Apparently, she had balanced on a wooden stool … the hostel door was found open, so the report commented, but the house itself was in immaculate order. A fire ready laid in the grate. The lights had not yet been switched on. The footprints on the polished floor were her own. There were no suspicious circumstances. Estimated time of death: just around nightfall.
Franz stared closely at me.
My throat clogged up. I could not speak. One monstrous thought blocked my mind. Had I interrupted her? Had she, perhaps, climbed down off that stool to come to the window? My eyes swam with tears. Had she—thanks to my intrusion—had she … had I … had I put her through the agony of needing to muster the courage a second time?
A toast
The stairs to the door on street level admitted a cold slab of night air. And down into the restaurant stepped a man immediately notable for his enormous size. Following came a woman of much the same age, being still in her thirties perhaps, but so stricken since birth with a stunting illness she was no taller than a seven-year-old. He shed his immense tent of an overcoat and she shrugged off her tiny cape. These he hung on the pegs provided. Then they advanced across the stone floor among crowded tables each under its long cone of light. Her face exactly on a level with his belt, she took three steps on her tiny legs to each one of his. A waitress showed them to a vaulted niche near the open fire. He did not hold the chair out for her, but with a grave smile immediately crashed down on his own. As if expecting this she hoisted herself up, little shoes dangling clear of the floor, and planted tiny elbows on the table. With hands crooked and wrists pinched by a fold of baby skin she supported her chin while gazing at the menu placed before her.
The fire burned high. Flushed with warmth they exchanged looks, as if the novelty of the place with its battleaxes and scutcheons gave them fresh eyes for each other, and talked so intimately they could not be heard at the next table. He, in his yellow woollen jumper, with his massive jaw and nose, his dense black hair and ogreish brows, rewarded what she said with the consideration of long pauses. And she, having awaited his response with the earnestness of a scholar absorbed by her research, received each word he offered as something ponderable. So, there it was again, that grave smile which now and then he excavated, lighting up his heavy features with extraordinary sweetness and grace—this time because, with some sternness, she clearly redirected his attention to the choices offered by the menu. Laughing just a little as she did so, her bosom heaving an inch above her waist. For his part, he entirely enveloped a water glass in one fist, pensive sips helping him decide. At exactly the same moment they finished with their menus, or at any rate set them aside.
Impossible to imagine how these two came to be together or what their relationship might be, that they could so completely agree on ‘the mood’ of the evening.
Now, so his piercing attentiveness suggested, this great bull of a man must persuade her of something. He raised one hand till he found what he wished to say, then seized the initiative in saying it. She put on a resolute demeanour and took her turn, showing animated interest, her sea-anemone fingers alive with activity to illustrate her reply. The frail gold chain she wore slipped from wrist to forearm. By way of answer, with his immense hands, he broke a hunk of bread and passed half to her. Completely unselfconscious, though perhaps hearing questions in the air, he did eventually hunch his shoulders and look up around the cellar. In doing so he seemed not so much to take account of anybody as, simply, to draw favourable conclusions from the aroma of roasted meat. A giant seated on an ordinary chair, his knees bumped the underside of the bare table when he leaned back while carefully unfolding his napkin like a piece of evidence to be considered. Tiny reflected flames danced in his eyes and on the silver blade of the knife he picked up and put back where it belonged.
So, then, she looked round too. But differently. As if somehow she had come right—and the go would never be gone out of her—as if she walked dreamily across a frozen waste only to find the frost bright, then black, and herself still feeling warm. She took account of individual faces and items of apparel and declared, by her frank interest, that she accepted company with equanimity, that she was at home among strangers and really unfussed by being the centre of attention. At last a waitress arrived to take their order and bring them wine. They returned to the confines of one another’s gaze.
The deep burgundy liquid between them, their wine glasses touched in silence, each shining rim a perfect ellipse, a halo of light.
The dreaming bird
Night time in a laboratory at the University of Chicago. The building is a cube of neon brilliance afloat in the dark at the edge of the city, a tiny bathysphere of an elevator connecting the floors. Right at the top, in forty cages, birds are asleep. But the scientists observing them must stay awake to analyse the data being recorded by banks of instruments. Nothing could be more responsible. The specimens of most interest are tiny zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), notable for their white-barred black tails, natives of Australia, known to prefer nesting out in the desert or among the layers of twigs and branches at the base of an eagle’s roost (daring to cohabit with such a dangerous host for the advantage of protection from lesser predators). Having developed a tolerance to water too salty for most other birds, they survive their habitat. Naturally, the laboratory caters to this saline inclination.
An electronic sensor blips for each bird, recording activity in its brain, a delicate needle trembling across the screen at the head of the telltale inscription. And right now something new takes place.
Excitement grips the scientists: one bird yields unusual results. Even while the sleeping creature lies still and silent its brain betrays specific neuron activity. The sensor already tells the story. An exact match emerges: the pattern has been recorded before. The senior woman researcher whose charge the bird is recognises this as the neuron sequence of a young zebra finch learning the song to signal the great and rare event of approaching rain: a distinctive sequence of whistles. But here and now, safe in its cage, this bird utters no actual sound—he rehearses the song in memory.
She composes her hands in her lap to prevent them trembling while fellow scientists of the Chicago University team gather round to stare, awestruck, as the needle travels its course, unravelling evidence of an instinct being transmogrified into dream.
Daniel Margoliash, chief researcher, associate professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, planning a press conference for the morning to explain this marvel (no doubt to journalists significantly less impassioned than himself), sketches out a few notes.
It would appear that the zebra finch, having stored the neuronal firing pattern of song production during the day, can read it out at night.
Evidence suggests the bird replays the pattern during sleep.
The specimen in question was hatched here in our laboratory, remote from—even ‘dislocated from’—its native habitat.
This native habitat is in the desert.
In order for their young to survive the extremely dry conditions these birds have evolved an adjustable breeding season to coincide with the transient phenomenon of rain.
So, the pattern of song also connects to mating and the subsequent protection of newly-hatched chicks.
The rarest item in the zebra finch’s vocabulary is this seldom-needed song.
The needle continues to inscribe proof of a phenomenon beyond explanation—truly a mystery: asleep in the air-conditioned lab at Chicago University, the tiny feathered creature prepares itself in readiness for rain, unaware of humans gathered round and holding their breath, it dreams the song of survival, rehearsing a memory not its own, a song it has never heard and will never use.
William Donnegan
Consider the evidence of William Donnegan’s second journey north. He aimed to confirm the thunderous marvel of Niagara Falls for himself. He was, without surrep
titiousness or caution, an enterprising man, a man of curiosity and intelligence. He could afford to play the tourist, this tradesman with a nose for leather, having grown rich from the boots and shoes he made—still with hard fingers and horny nails left over from when he did the work himself. That there may have been another motive for visiting Niagara, quite apart from marvelling at God’s handiwork, did not diminish his grave, austere, detached awe when face to face with the irresistible natural order. As for William Donnegan’s hopes, well the most precious of these he had vested in his wife, a white woman, the day he married her when they were both young.
You might say theirs was a simple story, a story of black and white, a pattern of light and shadow, a photographic story, almost. Because, on that second trip north, Mr Donnegan took his beloved wife along and they travelled in style. For all this, the presence of the falls being so stupendous, he longed to make some adequate comment, to share his rapture. Body trembling with the cannonading boom of an entire river dropping off the edge’ he was eighty-four, if the calendar is to be believed—an idea came to him that, at last, he had the means to communicate how his love felt, how her presence shook and overwhelmed him. But he couldn’t hear himself speak. So, he took her hand and hoped that this simple gesture might raise that which he had often declared into the hymn of love he felt. In this there was nothing demanding about him in the form of a required reply. And her way of showing her contentment was to pay him no attention, having room in her mind for nothing other than the waterfall. But when next, unsmiling, she shook her head in wonder, he understood and thought that she was like a child who, hearing a bird and at the same time seeing it (as his friend Robert Fitzclarence memorably put it), cannot separate the two: taking in the sight and sound as one and the same experience. He kept this, like his quiet joy, to himself while he watched her watching that vast catastrophe of water tumultuously cascading into its own turbulence with a roar that seemed to pass beyond the realm of hearing into the pulse of a pure and universal frequency.
