Beast

by Paul Kingsnorth

  What kind of man am I? I wonder what I think about that now that I have spent a year here, watching the layers peel off, stripping myself back. You peel and peel and peel but there is always another one underneath. Does the work ever end, is there a centre, and if so what do you find down there? Some promise, some jewel, some answer? When I came, I thought that if I could spend enough years away from all of it and all of them, then the thing that was in me, the colour that had descended, the song that was singing, the thing that I could still become might emerge like a butterfly in summer, testing its dusty wings and dreaming of the sun.

  That was what I thought then. I wonder what I think now. I used to know everything when I was young. Now that I’m older, I don’t know anything at all. Now the mystery is the thing. There are sadhus in the temples and mendicants in the mountains, all of them struggling through in search of the mystery, in search of the white light in the grey. There are fires burning on distant hills, men standing on the prows of small boats roaring across the Java Sea, tiny people in giant canopy forests hacking through to unseen clearings while the monkeys hoot around them. We built a world of altars because we could never put the mystery into words. We tried to make the mystery human, we tried to lock it into shape, we made sacrifices to it, we sang its poetry and then we left the buildings empty and walked away. We don’t talk about the mystery anymore, not where I come from, but nothing has changed in the world except us.

  Come to a place like this, though, and you can still hear it sing. I can tell you that from experience. Come to a place like this, far from the estates and the ring roads and the car parks and the black fields of beet and the screen-dumb people pacing out the slow suicide of the West around the pedestrianised precincts. Come to a place like this, shut your mouth and your mind and walk on the moor, walk in the wind and the sun, and you will understand soon enough that this world is a great animal, alive and breathing, that we walk through it, we breathe with it, we are its breath, that when we stand on a mountain overcome by the sunset and all that it brings, or fall to our knees in front of an altar in the presence of something greater than ourselves, then we are sensing the animal shift and turn beneath our feet. Then it is calling us home.

  Or perhaps it is hungry.

  St Cuthbert was called to be a hermit on Lindisfarne. This was more than a thousand years ago. There were only small wooden huts there then, and the wind and the wild sea and everything that lived in the wild sea. Cuthbert went out there to the monastery, but the monastery was not far enough and he was called out further. He rowed to an empty island, where he ate onions and the eggs of seabirds and stood in the sea and prayed while sea otters played around his ankles. He lived there alone for years, but then he was called back. The King of Northumbria came to him with some churchmen, and they told him he had been elected Bishop of Lindisfarne and they asked him to come back and serve.

  There’s a Victorian painting of the king and the hermit. Cuthbert wears a dirty brown robe and has one calloused hand on a spade. The king is offering him a bishop’s crosier. Behind him, monks kneel on the sands and pray he will accept it. Behind them are the beached sailboats that brought them to the island. The air is filled with swallows. Cuthbert’s head is turned away from the king, he looks down at the ground and his left hand is held up in a gesture of refusal. But he didn’t refuse, in the end. He didn’t refuse the call. He went back.

  We head out because the emptiness negates us. We leave the cities and we go to the wild high places to be dissolved and to be small. We live and die at once, the topsoil is washed away and the rock is exposed and it is not possible to play the games anymore. Now I am exposed rock. Like Cuthbert, I have been washed clean. What do I see?

  I wonder if she misses me. I wonder if she remembers me. I wonder if she can walk yet, or speak. Has there been a first word? Perhaps she needs me. Perhaps I should go to her. Would that be the right thing? How do I know what the right thing would be? I look at it now, I have a year’s distance, I look at it now and I see myself illuminated from behind, walking away from light and into light. I was the questing hero and the treasure would be mine, and when I came back with it, when I came back changed, they would see that change even in the way I carried myself as I approached over the hill. Everything about me was different now, they would see this and a great joy would rise up in them, and when I reached them they would welcome me back, wiser and better, a better person, and they would forgive everything. They would forgive everything and everything would be better, and I would be better. That was how it would work. That is how it will work, when I see them again. Yes. I am sure of it.

  The storm isn’t abating. If anything, it’s getting worse. The gap is getting bigger, it’s crashing around up there now, it’s coming apart, it’s all going to come apart and then what, then what? I’m going to have to go up there. It’s dangerous, I don’t know what might happen if this keeps up. It’s not safe in here. I’m going to have to go up there. If I don’t do something now, the whole roof is going to co

  y eyes. I was lying wet wet through on wet stone slabs. It was dark. It was night. It was warm. There was no movement anywhere not in the yard I was lying in not on the dark hills around me not in the buildings around me not in the air. No movement and no sound. The silence was deep everything was silence.

  There was pain everywhere there was so much of it that I didn’t know what to do. I lay with my eyes open. My head was bleeding there was blood on my face. I felt that things were broken. Some of my ribs were broken. My left leg was numb where I was lying on it. I thought that was broken too. I lay still and thought about moving. I was scared to move but I was scared not to. I wondered what had happened.

  Slowly I tried to bend my left arm at the elbow. It was trapped under me it was numb but it did move. I felt a great relief. I tried to move my right leg I bent it at the knee and at the ankle and it worked too. It hurt but it worked. Then I did the same with my left leg and my right arm. My left leg was hardest it was still numb and when I moved it a huge fire shot through my knee and up my thigh. I almost screamed. But it moved. I brought my right arm over my chest and placed my palm on the ground and I pushed myself up slowly with my right hand and my left elbow. As I pushed myself up I felt something in my chest give way. On the left side of my chest where I had been lying I felt something shift inside. I nearly threw up I nearly fell back down again and stayed down.

  But I stayed up. I stayed up and then I pushed myself further until I had both hands on the ground and then I shifted my right hand back around to my right side and I slowly pushed myself up until I was sitting. The pain in my chest was enormous. Things were moving inside me which should not move I was sure of it. But I stayed up I stayed conscious I stayed alive. After a few minutes of sitting and breathing and willing myself to stay strong I shifted again over onto my right thigh. The pain in my chest was still there things were still moving around in there and now my left leg as well was screaming at me there was a shooting pain all down it and my left knee would not do what I wanted it to. I shifted onto my right thigh and I started to lever myself to my knees. My left knee wouldn’t take any weight so I put all the weight on my right and now I was on all fours.

  I turned my head to the left and to the right as far as I could. I felt the muscles or tendons in each side of my neck pulling taut as I did so. I seemed to be in some kind of farmyard. Behind me was a broken-down barn and to my right a wooden five-bar gate through which I could see a track leading down a small valley and out of sight. To my left was a stand of great silent trees huge in the stillness towering over the buildings. In front of me was an old stone house with its door ajar. I breathed heavily and carefully and then using all the strength I had left I started to crawl towards the door.

  I could hardly put any weight on my left side at all though my left arm seemed to be working despite the pain. I shuffled like this I shuffled like a broken creature dragging my damaged leg behind me breathing deeply and steadily gritting my teeth movin
g slowly across the dark yard towards the door. Through the window I could see what looked like the dancing orange glow of a fire. There was no rain it was still and hot like summer though I felt it wasn’t summer. I breathed in and out in and out I got into a rhythm of steady pain and slow movement as I shuffled slowly across the hard ground.

  When I reached the door I pushed it open with my head and I crawled into the house like an injured dog. A fire was burning in an iron stove and the place was far too hot. I was thirsty I realised when I saw the fire that I was so thirsty. There was a mug of water next to a bed. I made my way over to it still crawling and I drained it. Then I levered myself up onto the bed limb by limb and I sat on the edge. I sat up as straight as I could which was not very straight because my chest would cry out if I tried to uncurl it.

  I felt myself all over with my hands. My head was bleeding there was a long damp cut across my scalp above my left ear but the blood seemed to be slowing. I was wearing a shirt and jumper. I lifted them up to examine my torso. It was so tender that I could barely touch it. All down the left-hand side of my body were great bruises yellow and black. Across my chest running from just above my right nipple down almost to my belly button were five long scratches. The pain was intense but there was no real blood. Slowly I unbuckled my trousers and slid them down my legs. I feared what I would see but I had to look. My left leg was bruised and black and the knee bent at the wrong angle. As I sat I could feel it stiffening. There were scratches all over my legs but again there were no deep wounds.

  What had happened? Whatever it was I had been lucky I supposed. I didn’t seem to be dying. I didn’t know what I could or should do with my battered body but sleep was all I wanted now. There was a dirty red sleeping bag on the bed and I crawled into it lay on my back closed my eyes and went into the darkness. I wonder how long I slept for. I don’t know. I think it might have been several days. It was impossible to keep track after a while and in any case I was not trying to. I woke and went back woke and went back the tide was pulsing in and out in and out and in sleep the pain gave me dreams. I saw white stags and white wolves and black trees. I saw an island in a lake I saw the moon over a moor I saw fleets of ships in the sky. I saw a woman staring at me. I knew her though I had never seen her before.

  It might have been a few days before I came round properly. It was never clear. I remember the dream that carried me back. There was a great tree standing on a hill there was a light around the tree and it had deep roots. It had great tall branches reaching to the sky twining around each other and its roots went down into the centre of the world where something lived and moved around them. There was a man standing under the tree there was something bright covering his head and he was moving towards me. There were birds around him all around him were strange birds.

  I opened my eyes. It was light. Daylight. It was light and it was warm. The fire was out the ashes were cold but the room was hot. I lay there and I concentrated on what I could feel. I adjusted to my body and tried to re-inhabit it.

  I was lying on my back in the sleeping bag. I must have been twisting and rolling in my sleep because the bottom of the sleeping bag was wound tightly around my feet and my lower legs. I lay on my back in the heat and I went through every part of my body systematically and examined its state. I started with my feet. I wiggled my toes and twisted my ankles around. They seemed to work as they should. I moved up to my calves I flexed their muscles and they both worked too though the left leg gave me shooting pains. Then the knees. I could bend my right knee, but the left seemed rigid and it felt wrong. There was a flaming arc of pain when I moved it and it would barely bend.

  When I turned my attention to my thighs it was the same. I could tighten the muscles in my right thigh but my left thigh sent shooting pains right up into my abdomen when I moved it. Then my hips. I twisted them and they moved on both sides. On the left side I could feel the agony of this movement but the fact that I could feel something felt like a triumph despite the pain. I was alive. I had not died in my sleep I could still move I was not paralysed. I flexed my stomach muscles and the pain in my left side was still intense. All through my abdomen was a dull throbbing ache.

  I could bend my neck left and right though I still felt the pulling in the muscles when I did so. I twisted my head to both sides and it moved too. I rolled my shoulders I bent my elbows I curled and uncurled my fingers. It all worked. I opened and closed my eyes. My head ached a throbbing ache and constant. I was so thirsty and now I was hungry as well. It must have been hours maybe days since I’d eaten anything. I needed drink and I needed food and that meant I needed to move from the bed.

  I looked around me. I was on a bed up against a wall on one side of what must have been a front room in an old farmhouse. The walls were of grey stone with some peeling paint and the floor was stone too great slabs of it. In the centre of the room was a wooden table and a battered old chair. Up against another wall not far from the front door was the stove and beyond that to one side of a window that looked out into the yard was an old wooden cupboard.

  What would happen when I tried to cross the room? I remembered the collapse inside my chest that I had felt out in the yard. How was it now and what would it do when I got out of the bed? If I couldn’t move now if I rolled out of bed and the pain was anything like it had been when I had fallen if my chest kept shifting inside me I didn’t know what I would do. Something bad had happened to me some accident but I had survived it. I had survived these days in bed I had drunk and my body had slept. I felt better but I was still broken. I felt like I was floating above everything like I was floating above the ground like a spirit like mist over fields in the morning. Sometimes I had felt like I was floating above the pain. But now I had to move.

  I rolled over onto my left side. I felt something shift inside me but I kept going. I swung my legs slowly down onto the floor still in the sleeping bag. I pushed myself up slowly with my arms. The pain in my head became worse I could feel the throbbing now I could hear it. Something was hammering on the inside of my skull. Pain shot down the left side of my chest and down my left leg. I pushed myself slowly up with my hands and I slid the sleeping bag down under my legs and onto the floor.

  It was time to try and stand up. Things had been slipping around inside me again as I sat up but they seemed to have settled now that I was sitting still. The shifting had not been as big nor as painful nor as fearful as it had been out in the yard. Perhaps I would come through. I swung my legs around gently to the head of the bed and I sat on the pillow so that I could balance myself against the wall as I stood. And then gently and slowly I tried to stand.

  My left leg would not support me. The knee bent at the wrong angle again it bent outwards and my foot shook if I put any weight on it. But my right leg worked. I pulled myself up against the wall slowly standing on my right leg and putting as little pressure on my left as possible. The pain in the left side of my chest grew in intensity. But now I was leaning against the wall. I was standing.

  I turned around so that my back was to the wall and I leaned on it. I had one hand supporting me on the head of the bed and the other still on the wall. I took breaths. Breathing hurt but I began to breathe deeper to see what my chest would do. I couldn’t manage really deep breaths. If I tried there would be a great shrieking pain in the left side of my chest. But I could breathe. The pain in my head was worse now and the pains in my chest and my left knee and all down my left leg were real and terrible. But I found I could bear them.

  Gently and nervously I moved my right hand away from the bed and over to the left side of my chest and I began to press. Everything was bruised. The five long scratches down my chest were beginning to scab over. They were deeper than they had looked. I worked my way systematically from the bottom of my ribcage upwards pressing gently on everything. About halfway up there was a sharp give in two of my ribs. I nearly fell over when I touched them. They must have broken. They felt wrong but I supposed they couldn’t have punctured anyth
ing important or I wouldn’t have survived. I could still breathe and I had not bled to death in the night. How did ribs work? I didn’t know anything about medicine. Did they just heal? I knew that bones would heal themselves in time. Maybe if I didn’t touch them they would recover.

  I looked down at my knee. That looked worse. It had swollen into a great yellow and black ball and it felt like it was burning from within. It was splayed outwards at an angle it should not have been able to bend at and I couldn’t put any weight on it. How would I walk? Was it broken?

  I didn’t know anything outside the miracle of my life. It mattered only that I was here. Here I was. Here I was alive and standing and breathing. Now I needed to eat and I needed to drink and I probably needed to do something about my knee as well. That was going to mean walking. That was going to mean walking from the bed over to the table and the chair and the cupboard in which I felt there would be food. By the cupboard on the floor was what looked like a jerry can of water. I could see that the can was about half full. The true power of my thirst hit me as I looked at it. I could not remember ever being this thirsty.

  I pushed myself away from the wall as if I were pushing a boat out into a lake. I swayed for a moment and stumbled I went down hard onto my left leg and a great sheet of pain shot up through the left side of my body. I screamed and flailed my arms in the air to keep my balance and I rocked back onto my right side but I stayed upright. I steadied myself and then I began to walk. I had to put some weight on my left leg as I moved and every time I did I would screw up my face involuntarily and try to keep from crying out though there was no-one to hear me. I could have screamed to hell and no-one would have heard me but I would not let myself. I kept walking stumbling towards the wall. It seemed to take much longer than it must have taken but I got there. I collapsed in the chair and rested the weight of my upper body on the table.