Wall of Days

by Alastair Bruce

I reach the forest. The ground here is slightly higher than the plains around it.

  It is no longer a forest. A ring of one hundred and twenty-five spind-ly trees. Around them a brown carpet of needles. The trees are barely twelve feet tall. If it’s done right they can be felled with just twenty swings of an axe each.

  It is a place of darkness. The trees make it so.

  When I stand in the middle of the circle of trees in every direction in which I face there is a potential hiding place behind me. If I look ahead, north, towards the cliffs, I sense something moving behind me.

  If I look south towards the peat bogs, the figure shifts to the north.

  The shapes behind my eyelids will always be with me.

  I look down to my feet again. If this sense of another is not imagined, then movement must take place underground. There would be a network of tunnels criss-crossing the forest, with concealed entrances. Or perhaps they cross the entire island. A legacy from the time of the smoke. Would I have only to dig to find a tunnel, a network, a whole warren of pathways, a settlement, even a city? Is there a world beneath me? One in which creatures scuttle about fol owing the land animal they sense above them.

  They wait for the right moment to reach through the silt, moss, earth and drag it below. Perhaps the tunnels are fil ed with water. Perhaps I walk on a porous island, an island whose shell is all that is solid.

  I take my axe, lift it high above my head and bring it down with all my force into the earth below. I feel it cut through leaves, earth, and then something more solid. I scrabble frantically with my hands but it is only a root. I have severed a root, clean through. Sap leaks out of the wound.

  I know what I have to do, what I want to do. I pick up my axe and get to work on the first tree. I begin quickly but my grip slips on the handle and the axe flies off as I swing my arm. I stand up and see something out of the corner of my eye. A glimpse of white shifting behind the trees. I call out but hear only the echo of my voice. I have stood up quickly and am breathing heavily. Dots begin to swim before my eyes and I have to sit down amidst the pine trees. I look at the spot where I imagined the figure but nothing.

  I resume. This time I am slow, methodical. I glance around me now and then. When the tree falls, I do not begin to trim the leaves and branches. Instead I begin on the next tree. And once that is gone, the next and the next. I chop through the night. I don’t know how I last. By mid-afternoon the next day, every single tree is lying on the ground. I strip the branches from one and from that take as much as I can carry.

  I run through the grass with my burden. I only notice my heaving chest when I am back in the cave.

  I wake in the night chilled to the bone. I throw more wood on the fire and lie back on the damp grass. I draw my coat closer. I close my eyes and think of Tora. The kind words, the smiles. I think of Amhara too, running, laughing, disappearing round corners in an abandoned settlement. I fall asleep remembering Tora’s warm body against mine, her head on my shoulder, her breath on my neck. This is what I see, what I feel, when I fall asleep.

  It is pouring today. I strip off my clothes and run out into the rain.

  I run down the hill, my arms stretched out to the side to keep my balance. I trip and tumble and am up again, running again. I am a child again. After a few minutes I am no longer cold. I run out onto the flats and there it becomes more difficult. My feet begin to sink and I feel like I am in slow motion and then I am flying through the air. I land face down in the mud and I can’t stop myself, my arms are useless. I am lying in the mud and I feel it breathed into my throat. I turn and retch and lie on my back. I struggle to contain my breathing. I am spread-eagled. And then I feel it happening: I am sinking.

  And with the sinking I feel the hands. They prod my flesh, feeling for something to clutch. They take hold of my fingers, my hands, drag these down below the mud and they try to grab my hair but I shake my head. They grow more frantic but their hands slip off my wet limbs and I roll over again and again.

  I am covered in mud now, although each time I turn the rain washes some of it away. I must look a true spectacle, white on top, brown underneath. A dissolving man.

  I sit up and look around me. The grasses stretch on forever. I look over to where I have just been lying. The mud moves, as if alive. It is settling back into place. This much I know. Still, I get to my feet hastily and begin to walk away.

  I walk over to the peat bogs. A short distance away I stop, crouch down. Nothing moves. I see only grass, mud, water.

  I feel faint. Black dots swim before my eyes. I close them and the world spins. Lack of food. The cold.

  When I open them he stands before me: shoulder wrenched from its socket, toothless jaw hanging open, wisps of red hair waving in the breeze.

  And then he is gone and again I see only mud, water and the grim skies above.

  I shout. I put my face close to the ground and yell with all the strength I can muster. It is not a word I yell. It is a sound, a deep guttural yell.

  The noise of a beast in its cave, taunted by men.

  15

  The man sits in a cave. He has his head in his hands. He is not in despair, merely thinking. His friends sit around him, waiting for him to speak. Eventually he says, ‘The end has come. Our sacrifice will save all that we know. Though you won’t be around to see it, the pain I am about to inflict will surround our settlement like a girdle, will protect our children from starvation.’

  The men sitting around him bow their heads too. ‘Do not forget me. I will have to live with this forever. You have chosen me to do this.

  I have accepted your will.’ The men nod. ‘We must go.’

  They leave the cave in single file and walk towards the bog in the fading light. Once there, they line up, kneel down and bow their heads.

  The chosen man unsheathes a blade. One by one he places a hand on each man’s forehead, kisses him on the cheek and slits his throat. Some tremble. None make a sound.

  He rolls the bodies into the bog and drives stakes through them. It is custom. When all six have been done, the chosen man sits alone on a rock weeping. He is red, splattered with blood.

  He sits alone on a rock on the wet plain and weeps. He is surprised at his reaction. He cannot pinpoint the moment he stopped believing.

  All he knows is that he no longer believes.

  He walks slowly back to the village, the knife, still in his hand, faintly sticky.

  It seems the gods listen. Things get better for the people. Fewer die.

  He watches his wife cook meals. He watches his daughter play. He feels glad for them. But he has stopped believing. It is difficult to touch them with his hands when he can see only blood on them. Sometimes he thinks it would have been better for everyone to have died than to have this sacrifice at the core of everything they are, everything they have become. A sacrifice he has come to think of as murder.

  Though he is not a believer, everyone else is. But, is it that no matter how much belief someone has it never stands the death of a loved one?

  Or is it something else.

  In the village people stop meeting his eyes. They shun him. Doors close as he approaches. He is shut out. He does not blame them. He feels he has murdered his friends for nothing. He does not want to live like that, surrounded by ghosts, for he knows they will never leave him.

  So he does not resist when people come to his hut at night. He knows why they have come. He will take on their burden. He walks ahead of them, shivering, to the bog. When his time comes, a moment of panic.

  But then as he is dying he thinks of his wife and his child. He thinks of the years to come and for the first time since the killings he smiles.

  It does not matter that they don’t know the truth. He sees them in the streets, running, laughing, his daughter a young woman now and the sunlight is so bright the picture begins to fade slowly away.

  I would have been quiet if my time had come. If the judge had decided on execution I would simply have held my arms behin
d me waiting to be cuffed. I would have looked the judge in the eye and not uttered a word. It befits great men to go silently to their graves.

  But it was not to be.

  I think again of Tora on the beach. Expressionless, standing close to Abel but not touching. I take, took, the lack of expression for pain. I think of her at the second leaving. Frightened, hauled out of her garret, pushed through deserted streets, tears running down her face, dragged through the crowds at the gate and spat on.

  She would have gained some consolation from the sight of me looking at her, starting to run, before being kicked and beaten. She would have seen forgiveness. She would have seen me forgive her in that look.

  Though it was far away, I know she would have seen it.

  Her one word to me, her saying my name, it is no redemption but I hold it close.

  From some things there is no redemption. The solitude of an unfixable, unforgettable mistake.

  I know that now.

  I am back on the island. I am walking through fields of mud and grass.

  It is cold and I shiver and the rain has soaked me through. Each step is a struggle. My feet sink into the mud which sucks at and grips my feet. If I stop I sink. I cannot stop nor think. I trudge on, around the island, my feet held back, and all the time I look back over my shoulder at the swaying grass and wait for the ripples in the earth. I can sense him swimming through the mud. Eyes, mouth open, the mud flowing through him, out through the slit in his throat, the slit like a gill. He has had centuries to learn how to breathe under earth. He swims after me, long, slow but powerful strokes. He swims around boulders and roots, follows the curve of the land. He gains on me all the time, reaches out to grab my foot. I lift my heel just in time. He loses ground as he skips a stroke. He makes up ground, reaches out again. I lift my foot again. I try to run, to outrun him, to outpace him. He never tires.

  But I do. I am panting. With each step I seem to sink further and it is more of a struggle to lift my limbs. I do not know which way I go. I walk and walk and walk. I walk through the night. At night I lose my way and I find myself slipping into the bog and I panic and thrash out and swallow the muddy water. I hear myself cry out. I hear myself cry.

  I drag myself out of the peat bog and I am running now, running again, and I find myself back in my cave. I sit in a corner, my back to the wall, holding my knees to my chest, watching the entrance. Here I feel safer and slowly my breathing returns to normal. I cannot stop shivering.

  In the morning I go back there.

  I sit on my haunches, running my fingers through the mud. I sit for hours. My legs lose their feeling. I sway, back and forth. I talk softly to myself. I wait. I think and I wait.

  Towards evening I jump to my feet. I fall down straight away as I cannot feel my legs but I get up again and stumble into the water. There is a thin layer of ice on the surface. I draw breath sharply. I reach into the water. I am up to my waist. I reach down and feel around and then my foot stands on his arm and I hold my breath and plunge down into the water. There I open my eyes but can see nothing. I grab him, one arm under his back, the other under his legs and I lift him out the water. As I lift him a gasp comes from my chest. I lift him free of the earth and I can hear the water pouring off him, pouring out of him, leaves and twigs and water falling from his mouth. I cannot see. I feel the mud in my eyes. I blink a few times and the world appears once more, a dull blurred vision. Is it rain or the water still in my eyes I don’t know but the vision, whatever it is, panics me and I am scared like I have never been. Me standing, body in my arms, choking on silt, freezing, and a moan coming from my chest that I cannot control. My chest heaves. I look down at the man, the ghost, the body. Eye sockets gaze back at me, the brown jaw, the wisps of hair, the twigs hanging from his mouth. I look back at the island and the greyness is everywhere, dusk, rain, grass, ice. I have never been this cold.

  I carry him back to the cave. Once there I lay him on the straw. I set to work with the axe and a stone, stripping down and sharpening some of the branches. I bury the end of the sturdiest in about two foot of earth. I prop this up with other branches. As dawn approaches I heave the man onto it and tie him to it: his arms, torso, neck and feet. I turn him towards the sea. I look at his face. The eyes are closed.

  He looks peaceful. There is no vengeance in him. If anyone should approach this island this is what I want them to encounter. When my people finally come to see what has happened to me, when they come to take me back, I want them to know that I was thinking of them to the end. I want them to know that I did it for them and there is no greater love than a man who is willing to sacrifice himself for his people. And I did it for one of them in particular, a woman who did not love me as I did her. But that was fine. She gave me all I ever wanted.

  At the base of the branches I place the straw man, which I have kept with me all this time, the toy meant for Amhara.

  The fear is gone now. Dawn has just broken. My world is ending, grinding to a halt earlier than I calculated it would. It is acceptable that I made that mistake.

  In time I will sink into the waters, my eyes, mouth open to the silt. I will become a new island man. I will wait for years, for centuries until my body is found in turn. Then stories will be told about me.

  Perhaps they will end well. Then I will live once more. Or perhaps just a semblance, a shadow of me. A story of me.

  Outside the cave the body in the branches sways in the air. A stranger, approaching along the cliff path from my fishing grounds, might even think it alive.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to Andrew McIntosh for many a chat about the manuscript and his insight and encouragement. Big thanks to my parents and brothers for early readings and support and to Dan Hopkin for his advice. Sue Armstrong helped greatly with improving the manuscript after the first draft for which I am grateful, as I am for the support of many friends and family. Thanks to all at Umuzi and The Clerkenwell Press for their enthusiasm for the novel, and also to Karina Magdalena Szczurek and André Brink who have been extremely generous. Finally, particular thanks to my wife Tabatha who has helped most of all in this and so much else.

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by The Clerkenwell Press

  an imprint of

  PROFILE BOOKS LTD

  3a Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London ec1r 0jh

  www.profilebooks.com

  First published in South Africa by

  Umuzi, an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd Copyright © Alastair Bruce, 2010, 2011

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Clays, Bungay, Suffolk

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 84668 800 3

  The paper this book is printed on is certified by the © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C. (FSC). It is ancient-forest friendly. The printer holds FSC chain of custody SGS-COC-2061

  SGS COC 2061

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