Inner Circle

by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

  ‘To the tree.’ Sailor answered for his brother.

  ‘There isn’t anything else on the rock.’

  ‘Perhaps they wanted to pull it out with all the roots.’ Rain was speaking of the vanished heads, and a moment later I saw pain in the corners of her mouth as she observed her own feet pressing against the wet sand.

  2

  Even my two wives found the crossing easy. The moon had paved our way: the tide was at its lowest and the rope at its straightest. We could see it ahead of us, touched up with silver and almost resting on its own reflection. The moon also showed bits of rock sticking out from the shallow waters. Joker and Sailor kept the conversation going by reminding each other how very dangerous it all was the other day, though they had swum as if it wasn’t in the least dangerous.

  Leeds boasted from time to time that he could, of course, have carried September on his back and Rain in his arms, had the water been higher, but in fact he wanted us to wade on in a sort of circle, three on this side and three on the other side of the rope.

  Before the crossing he had made quite a fuss about the knots: would they withstand the pressure? who would dive in an emergency to retrieve the sinking rope? and so on. Soon, however, I heard his belly rumble, and Leeds listened to his own music, first with curiosity, then with concern. Even his neck stooped and stayed like that, which was an unusual sight.

  I must have been the last to pass out on reaching our destination, for I later had a vague memory of Sailor quarrelling with Joker over our exact whereabouts, and of Rain kneeling in the sand, with her arms up. Whether the others had lost consciousness like me or merely slept I couldn’t make out from their gestures and snippets of monologue.

  Everybody became talkative and jumpy, even Rain, who would suddenly remember her kneeling posture only to abandon it in the next minute for a giggly chatter. I, too, found myself exchanging silly laughs with Leeds, who got stuck in one honey-coated phrase and couldn’t pull his tongue out of it.

  ‘My dear fellow, my sweet dear friend, the best brother-in-law a lawyer could ever have, how my heart beats and bleats for you, because you’re such a darling curly lamb, pure wool, pure honey. My dear fellow, my dear sweet . . .’ and the whole thing oozed again out of his mouth.

  Very likely, I repaid him in kind, with rotating compliments, but I only seemed to be working on my grins.

  ‘Real rain doesn’t what?’ September asked herself, puzzled and provocative.

  ‘Real baby doesn’t stain, is that how it goes? Dover, Dover, do remember to lie over my September. Leeds on Rain grinds with pain. Remember, remember: what’s there to remember?’

  ‘Things that keep coming back . . .’ Joker nudged his brother. ‘Remember, Sailor, how they packed us into those Underground trains, from June to September, or the other way round! Going round underground, from Leeds to London, from class to class, always on the rails, jog-jog-jog, green turns to red, or the other way round. Mobile education, in the Tube from the tubes. Remember, Sailor, those other tubes! I wish I could have one now to spend a penny. What’s a penny, Sailor! Things always coming back from down below. And you hung my cat, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t, I didn’t!’ Sailor broke into Joker’s monologue. ‘I don’t remember travelling with your cat on the Inner Circle.’

  ‘I once carried a pussy asleep in my arms.’ Rain turned towards me. Now all our monologues were crossing one another. Joker picked up his quarrel with Sailor; September tossed rhymes into the air, I congratulated myself with a laugh or two, Rain repeated her old threats that she would change into a tree.

  Then like a voice of reason unimpaired by other reasons, Leeds boomed over us all, pointing to a slight silhouette above his own turret of a neck.

  ‘Now listen! my cousins in motion, my circular fellow-travellers! Observe this tree above you. It is a genuine and unique specimen. It has roots, bark, branches, needles, cones and other natural accessories, all real, fresh, nourished by Mother Earth herself.

  This tree, whatever else we may think about it, certainly deserves to be visited on foot, by land and water, as we have done to our undeniable risk and peril. It also deserves to be eaten alive. Let’s enjoy life while it grows, and, to quote my own saying. . . .’

  Leeds stopped abruptly because he noticed what we had already noticed, a neat inscription carved at the bottom of the rock. It read: Do not trespass. Place of execution.

  There were also some strange characters in two columns on the left of the inscription.

  ‘It’s in Chinese,’ said Joker.

  ‘How do you know it’s Chinese?’ Sailor said.

  ‘How do you know anything?’ Joker replied.

  And they went back to their quarrel about the Underground memories from their adolescence.

  We were somewhat disappointed that the tree was so fragile, its twigs bowing to every breeze from the sea. It didn’t look edible, no matter what Leeds meant by his rhetorical phrase. Gaping from all sides at this unique specimen of nature, we moved in our habitual manner, the first, the second, the third round and within our encircled space which usually was empty, stood a tree.

  I expected Rain at least to display some emotions. Probably, like everyone of us, she felt exhausted after that fever of talking and giggling. Now as I watched her against the light, she seemed almost the size of the tree. This comparison intrigued me, and I waited for Sailor to come up to the level of the tree, so that I could see a real oddity. For he was the tallest in our circle, despite the impression of height Leeds gave with his towering neck.

  Before I made my observation, Joker cried out in a very indignant voice: ‘You’re taller than the tree! How can a man be taller than a tree?’

  Our circle halted, Sailor standing on a flat mossy boulder and proving the point.

  With his mouth wide open, he thought most visibly of a question which would baffle that moon face opposite him. Seconds passed, then minutes. And Leeds, of course, had a brain-wave which turned out to be a mere wave, untouched by the brain.

  ‘It isn’t a tree, it’s a bush.’

  This time Joker became indignant on behalf of his brother.

  ‘A bush that has grown almost as tall as Sailor can’t be a bush. It’s a proper tree, with cones, resin, fruit and whatever that other thing was we saw long and spiky on the screen, Sailor and me.’

  ‘I can’t see any fruit.’ I knew that Rain at once regretted saying this. It would have been happier for her to believe in a real rain from the real sky that one day would splutter through these green needles and beget a fruit as big as a babe.

  ‘That’s funny,’ Sailor grinned at me from the other side of the tree, ‘you can’t hang a man from a tree if he is taller than the tree.’

  ‘Let’s try and find out,’ Leeds suggested. I laughed with September. Rain was back on her knees, her enormous eyes drawing a darker blue from the branches. She fingered a knot around the trunk which had a surprising thickness at the base. Joker observed her movements with great attention, his legs bent and jerking forward.

  ‘Very poorly knotted,’ he finally pronounced. ‘That’s why the rope slipped and they lost their heads. That is how it was, wasn’t it, Sailor?’

  But I knew that it couldn’t have been like that, because the rope was still attached to the tree and the trunk had passed a remarkable test of endurance. Surely Leeds knew that, he wasn’t a complete fool, yet he patted Joker on the neck and said:

  ‘Clever lad. Now you’ve got your loop. That’s the end.’ He gave me one of his knowing glances. ‘Don’t you agree, Dover, that in a manner of speaking we are all at the end of our tether?’

  Leeds hardly expected an answer, for he turned his back to me, walked up to September, patted her on the head, made an encouraging gesture to Rain, muttered something to Sailor, and generally behaved as if he were in charge of my circle. I couldn’t disguise my anger, but, being a cautious sort of man, I waited for the right remark and the right moment to cut him with it to the quick. But my pe
rfect timing was spoilt by Rain’s hysterical outburst:

  ‘It’s here! it’s here! It’s been lying in the earth under our feet; and we wouldn’t look. We could have hurt its beautiful skin, we could have squashed it against the rock.’

  ‘Stop this, Rain!’ I shouted at her, but she smiled in reply and held her hands cupped towards me. Something violet and yellow lay there, an oblong shape narrow at the top.

  ‘Look, Dover, the fruit of the tree, my tree, look at my beautiful fruit.’ ‘Why did it grow in the earth?’ I said. ‘Fruit should hang from the branches.’

  ‘Let’s have a bite, each one bite, there should be enough for six bites.’ And before Rain could close her hands, Leeds snatched the fruit from her and attacked it with his teeth. ‘Mium! mium! what a lovely taste. MyoId rumble tum says “mmiumm” to you all.’

  I saw Rain stagger and fall to the ground. She bruised her forehead on a stone near the hollow from which she had unearthed her fruit, and blood began to trickle over her lowered eyelids.

  I meant to do three things: to knock the brute down, rescue Rain’s fruit and see to her wound. But I did nothing. I couldn’t. From now on, Leeds was the master of the situation, or rather he seemed to rule over the chaos which his first bite had released.

  Joker had the second bite, swallowed quickly, and then with his full-moon glare hit Sailor between the eyes. I meant to rush at once to my brothers, yet my very intention paralysed me. I only saw the rope being pulled up from the water and gliding like a wet snake over the boulders and moss.

  ‘Stop it!’ I shouted but my own voice seemed to mock me. I sounded ineffectual and petulant, an eunuch protesting against violence. For there was a violence of murder and rape in the noises and movements about me, and I could do nothing else but watch them. Joker was pushing Sailor’s neck into a noose, Leeds was copulating with September, who had her teeth plunged in the purple carcass of the fruit.

  From inside the noose, quite unaware of what was happening to him, Sailor commented on Leeds’s performance for his brother’s benefit and pleasure.

  ‘That dog I saw with you on the screen, remember, Joker?—that poodle did it much better. He was faster, wasn’t he?’

  And Joker laughed with brotherly appreciation as he was about to give the rope a sudden pull. I didn’t see what exactly followed afterwards.

  September lifted her head up and whispered to me:

  ‘Come here, first husband, and kiss your second wife.’

  I obeyed. Her tongue between my lips inserted a morsel which had the vibrant scent of the waves, mixed with her saliva.

  ‘You swallowed a bite of the fruit, too, Dover. You are one of us now.

  Remember, remember, your fruit is September.’

  I jumped back and immediately vomited into the sea. Two hard bits fell into my hand as I wiped my mouth.

  The moon shone all through the night, while I watched Sailor’s head bobbing on the surface of the water. Someone had to be a listener, so I listened to my brother’s murderer.

  ‘It was supposed to be a joke. I am Joker, aren’t I?’ And he was supposed to swim well, wasn’t he, Dover? After all, you didn’t call him Sailor for nothing.’

  I couldn’t tell him that I had become a name-maker by chance. Besides, my poor mind was trying to work out some complex calculations: how many thoughts had to be twisted to form a noose for each of those thousands of heads we had seen in the water.

  3

  Leeds had three long branches for breakfast, and even persuaded Joker to nibble at a twig.

  ‘Amazing how tender these needles are! Not a prick, not a tickle in the throat.

  And they positively taste of lobster. They used to have a famous lobster restaurant in Sheffield-that’s near Leeds, you know—in the bad old days, of course. I read about this in a screen micro book. One likes odd bits of information about places close to one’s feet and—shall I say—heart? Now Joker, don’t fret yourself, don’t sulk; what’s done is done.

  Besides, one is not supposed to drown with a rope.’ Leeds paused and belched. ‘Look at September. Isn’t she happy! And so pretty after last night. What about having a spot of fun with her, cousin Joker? She wouldn’t mind getting a third husband and a tough chap at that, would you, dear r Leeds turned to September and she sent them a kiss each. ‘You see, the flesh is willing. Good girl. I pronounce you tubby hubby and mousy spousy. Go behind the bush, and have a jolly nice so and so. Ah, there’s hardly any bush left.’ He roared with laughter. ‘We had our fill, didn’t we? Mostly me, to be fair to your delicate stomachs. And Rain, sweet dear Rain, she feeds on pure spirit, diluted in nothing. The dainty darling uses some beauty sleep, though. . . .’

  ‘Don’t wake her up, Leeds,’ I said, standing over him with both my fists clenched.

  In the left I held two seeds, small, very hard, and black. I wanted Rain to have them.

  ‘Hear, hear, the big sulk himself has spoken at last.’ Leeds felt so confidently in control that he rubbed his nose along my knuckles. And I didn’t even think of punching that mug of his.

  My first wife was sleeping with her face to the sky but I didn’t wish to disturb her.

  I tried as best I could to stand so that my shadow would always cover her face. If she had a dream then, she probably saw herself lying in the shade of a real tree. What would she say on discovering that it was now merely a skeleton of growth, with a handful of dark green needles scattered around its trunk and over the knot. The rope still lay there, growing from the knot like an uncoiled sea monster. I decided not to remind Rain of Sailor’s death, or disappearance, if that was a better word for it; after all, she might have missed the sight, and today no gruesome head would disturb her. Nothing floated near the rock, nothing farther away.

  Sailor had vanished, noose, neck, body and tallness. A complete removal. Such removals: how were they done, and who did them! Perhaps death and burial took place in no place that we knew; perhaps they truly happened beyond our comprehension.

  Rain astonished me, and I was sure she also astonished September and Leeds, when finally she rose from under the skeleton of the tree. Her huge eyes threw images at us and lights that must have visited her during the night, and although I felt them reflected in my face as well as in my brain, I had no meaning to give them. September smiled at Rain, not absent-mindedly and not out of superiority, but almost with the courteous apologies due to love from beauty. I waited for the next move from Leeds.

  Soon enough he opened his mouth, showed a green needle stuck between his teeth, and as he was about to say something casually offensive, his lips smacked, then smacked again, and he could only make a clumsy bow in the direction of the tree. If that was meant to be an ironic mime, it hadn’t worked at all.

  At first Rain was walking in slow circles and examining the wispy bits which remained of the twigs. She said nothing. Then she knelt and covered up the hollow where she had found the one and only fruit. I remembered the two small seeds and tightened my grip. She rose again, looked at the four of us in turn, looked at the white clouds lowered over the coastal zone, and very gently took my left hand. It opened at her touch, the seeds dropped into her palm, but neither Joker who was perched on a high stool-like stone near Leeds peering over September, noticed anything. They all, like myself, hung on Rain’s lips which wouldn’t utter a sound. Only her blue eyes talked and sang.

  After a few hours, or maybe longer, I experienced the same curious sense of satiation as when I had awoken after being fed during my sleep. Yet I was on my feet, busy all the time after my own fashion, thinking of our eventual return which had to come-sooner or later. And then what! Back to the congested whirlpool of crowds, back to the land of the hygiene boxes! and my circle, my own small enclosure, what was to become of it!

  Again Rain touched my hand, and again I opened it, but there was nothing inside.

  ‘You are my husband, Dover,’ she said, and I never heard so much clarity in her voice. It seemed to make each word transparent.
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  ‘Yes, I am,’ I said and for a moment was afraid that I might hear a crude laugh behind my back. But Leeds kept quiet.

  ‘I am your wife, Rain,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  Then it occurred to me that there must have been a purpose in her omission. She didn’t call herself my first wife. I understood the meanings she showed under her translucent words. I wasn’t, however, ready to answer directly with meanings. Gestures intervened, as usual, a finger placed on a finger, a shoulder raised, a prolonged nod.

  Nodding came easy, it was a flexible sort of intervention which didn’t intervene too pointedly. I found myself nodding right and left, but the reason for it lay in my reluctance to look straight into Rain’s speech.

  I was therefore glad whenever she approached September, as she did surprisingly often that day and the day after. 1 overheard them on one occasion. They were alone.

  Both Leeds and Joker had gone down to the edge of the water, to relieve themselves no doubt, and to search for crabs and snails. Leeds had new ideas about eating.

  ‘We won’t cross the Safety Zone,’ Rain was saying, ‘we must stay in it as long as is necessary for you.’

  ‘I am afraid of the Safety Zone.’

  ‘Fear will be smaller when you yourself grow bigger with the child, September.

  You mustn’t let them take it away from you through one of their boxes. Your child will live on the surface.’

  ‘But, Rain, Rain, it may become a cheating pain of birth, another wriggling on the ground, another gnashing of teeth for September.’

  ‘No, September, no. The rock allows you to be pregnant, because the rock herself gave birth to a child tree.’

  ‘I ate of the fruit, this will help. Why didn’t you, Rain, feed your belly?’ There was a long silence. I waited, hidden behind the stone in the shape of a stool.

  ‘We tried to kill the tree,’ Rain said from the new depth of her sounds, ‘but this child cannot be murdered or taken away on a rope.’

  ‘And they . . .’ September whispered, ‘did they watch us through their coloured domes?’