Fear and Folly

by Maurits Zwankhuizen

  “I understand,” I say, “but we have to help everyone. We need to keep the love, right?”

  “Right.” She nods. “Try convincing the others, though.”

  The rest of the survivors are spread throughout the greenhouse, sitting as far apart from each other as they can. Brooding. Despairing.

  “There’s no time for a meeting,” I say. “Tell them this. By morning there’ll be no one left alive outside this greenhouse. Not within walking distance of us. So it’s not like there’ll be hordes of people coming in here. But we do need to save those who can still be saved.”

  The girl raises her eyebrows and looks at the others, as if to say, “You tell them.”

  “I’m off again,” I say. I inflate more air-bags and bring a couple of extra lengths of hose, just in case. “Please let me in more quickly this time.”

  “You have my word,” she says. “I’ll wait by the door.”

  I pause and look at the wonderful collection of plants, at this satellite of life in a vast vacuum of death. I sigh, take a deep breath and push out again into the void.

  THE QUAKING OF THE KEYS

  Lying far inland, the village was a primitive reproduction of the larger settlements along the coast. It had been constructed in sketchy simplicity, skimpy and skewwith, as if drawn from the memory of a visitor to the great cities on the coast after many years or from the mockery of a coast-city inhabitant after many beers. Mud and straw had been fired into a semblance of stone. Despite the tropical heat, each hut had a thick wooden door and a window upon each side of it, set high like two proprietary eyes, asymmetrical, perhaps by design but more likely incompetence. This gave each hut its own individuality but also made them seem squinty or stupid.

  The population of this settlement had once been much greater. The village had even had a town band, instrumental in its former glory. It was the only town which had succeeded in cultivating bagpipes, a great achievement in the high humidity, but now the pipe-field was overgrown and barely a thistle whistled in its lazy lushness.

  If one fact highlighted its deterioration above all others, it was that the village did not even possess a resident idiot. The man in question had been wise enough to move to the coast many years ago. Nevertheless the village survived, eking out a living from those plants in the vicinity which proved to be edible, and the supplies of those residents who ate plants which proved not to be edible. Meanwhile along the coast, settlements, bagpipe fields and migrant idiots flourished in artificial, air-conditioned environs.

  Such was the news brought by the odd trader or traveller, the odd person odd enough to traverse the bridge of lianas which spanned the wide white river which thrashed about east of the village.

  The oldest man in the village remembered the last traveller and smiled whenever he did so. This made the others smile, too. It was a village of innocents who all fed interminably off this single novelty.

  One evening, all the men of the village were smiling, remembering the oldest man’s memory of the last traveller. Intoxicated with their innocence, it was some time before they noticed the new man in their midst, girt in iron with a spare length of the metal hanging by his side. Obviously for sartorial emergencies.

  He raised his hand in greeting and stood before them, expectant. Then his face puckered in dismay at the lack of a welcome.

  While one thoughtful soul pointed in the direction of the cesspit, the others stared wide-eyed with the innocence of babes.

  “It seems I am a lion among lambs,” the new man said gruffly.

  The oldest man in the village smiled, as if the last traveller had once said the same thing, and then he said, with the studied sincerity of one who had said such things before, “It is easier to tame a lion than a bagpipe.”

  The newcomer laughed unhappily. He had heard that bagpipes had once thrived in this district. He had also heard that old men were easier to kill than young men, and his sword sang from its sheath.

  All the other men of the village stared at the body of the oldest man. There was no smile on his face anymore, just lashings of blood, and they frowned. Who would now remind them of the last traveller?

  “Do not worship the old gods any longer,” the new murderer commanded. “The old gods can only give life. Any man or woman can give life. It takes a true god to take it. To forge an instrument from steel and prise a man’s soul from the pit beneath his ribs. You have witnessed a true miracle.”

  Miracle or not, they did not speak or move. He sniffed to silence the arrogant silence.

  “Fools,” the newcomer snapped. “What hospitality do you provide travellers who are gods in disguise?”

  But the villagers only stared and frowned.

  “Where are your women? Where are your supplies, your feasts, your libations to a new god?”

  He was only supplied with more stares and frowns, and he passed between them unchallenged, striding from one squinty hut to another. A garden of eyes bloomed softly feverish in each winking window, gazes trembling with desperation. His attention turned to the first hut. He was about to bend his shoulder to the wood when his eye fell on a large brass key hanging from its lock.

  The novelty and lunacy of its presence distracted him from his task and he surveyed the huddle of huts spread around him. The lock on each hut’s door had a similar brass key lodged within it. A surfeit of invitations.

  “Do you prize nothing?” he asked the staring, frowning men. He looked up to the windows where sanctity sat in soulful sockets watching vanity struggle vainly with itself.

  “Enough,” the god-man barked. “Avert your eyes and ears, lambs.”

  He reached for the key of the first hut but, as he did so, there was a tremor. At first it was no more than a subdued shiver, as if it heralded the manifestation of an angel. Then it strengthened, growing into an orchestrated dance of all nature. Cess and drinking water took to the air and mixed unreservedly, alchemising into gold. Granary pots clattered and clanked as explosions of sun-gilded grain arched energetically over them.

  The rumblings were strong and the newcomer, having experienced earthquakes before, knew to remain outdoors, away from shifting foundations and shaking walls. Yet the huts did not move in the slightest. Their careless construction sufficed. The windows did not look overly worried. The eyes within were large but languid.

  The only physical damage immediately apparent were cracks which began to appear in the ground. They formed before the door of each hut. Small cracks. Hardly large enough to consume a dainty frog, let alone an entire human being. One crept close to the god-man’s feet. He tilted like the mast of a foundering ship, as if he was cresting jagged rocks rather than a rolling ephemeral wave. The crack remained stubbornly small but fear is not interested in certainties, only possibilities.

  There was a final great shake and all the keys rattled randily in their locks. They dislodged, each falling, as if by divine appointment, into its own fissure. The one in front of him vanished in a cloud of dust which blew up in his face in perfect perfidy. He fumed as if it was a personal insult.

  Then, for an instant, the ground was still and with it the sun and the forest, and only the intruder’s heart continued to vibrate erratically. His left hand retrieved its sword-side stability. There was balance again in all things. Then the earthquake returned. With features drawn as tight as a miser’s money-bag, with lust filtered through fear to the even more ruthless lust for life, the intruder was impelled to depart with such haste that he threw more dust into the air than the earthquake itself had managed.

  He fled back to the bridge of lianas which spanned the raging river east of the village. It was twirling and twisted upon itself. The lianas had loosened. Far below, the river was being sprayed and spread into twice its volume by the motion of the earth.

  For all this anarchy, the traveller lurched to the side of the cliff and hauled several links of liana into his greedy hands. He began to inch his way across, every inch taking him a yard in each direction as the tumult juggled
him and the bridge into delinquent dizziness. Then the shaking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The traveller and the bridge unravelled. He hung in mid-air for a moment, then fell deep into the resumed rush of waters, entangled in burning wet dragging lianas.

  It was several hours before the men of the village, having each gone to his own hut through unlocked doors to change into more adequate trekking attire, arrived at where the bridge of lianas had once spanned the rushing river. Not only was the bridge no longer there, but the river itself had also vanished.

  Below them there lounged a long lazy canyon with an occasional pool of water starving slowly into stagnation. After staring and frowning at this sudden alteration in the fabric of their lives, they clambered down into the canyon’s moist bowels and walked downstream or, in light of their unexpected discovery, downhill.

  Eventually the villagers reached the point where the canyon flowed emptily into an arm of the sea, whereupon they turned upon their heels, deciding that the water had simply run out up top.

  Many miles inland, there was another interesting anomaly, apparent only to the disinterested gaze of eagles.

  A mountain of rusty brass keys lay as a barricade across the river course. The water had been diverted along another course, further to the north, disgorging its contents into the sea at a new outlet – unfortunately exactly where a large settlement had been sitting for the past century.

  In the sensual silence of evening, a strain of cicada-like sounds sifted through to the village from the lowlands, softened by the eloquence of distance. The men of the village turned their faces to it. They stared and frowned. Deep down, something of the past stirred within them. In at least one of their minds, a proverb slowly spun into consciousness.

  It is easier to tame a lion than a bagpipe.

  HARMONY

  The man smiled.

  The view was beautiful. He was standing at the head of a small hill-hugging track rising ridge upon ridge to culminate in a majestic snow-capped peak. He had been told by many folk of the wise man who lived in a cave within the peak. A man of much age and wisdom. Listen carefully, they warned, for he speaks little but his words are laden with such gravity that they break boulders and twist trunks.

  Their directions had been brief. Up, they said. Follow the track up for there is only one track. All is one, they advised, in homage to the wise man’s teachings. One path. One man. One question. One answer. Consisting of only one word.

  Look carefully, they informed him, for this man is the only man in this pristine place and he is one with nature. He can easily be mistaken for a moss-covered rock.

  The man started up the track. Nature flowed about him in waves, ebbing and flowing with his passing, birds bending their wings to the wind.

  The track wound through thickets thick with silence which soon opened into slopes devoid of plants. A crisp wind threw winter before the summer sun, paling his brow, rusting his cheeks.

  The man did not mind the march. He walked with purpose because he knew that, while his life had fallen into disarray, it would rise again in the wise man’s words. Or, more accurately, word.

  So he had been told. So others had done before him and had seen their lives transformed.

  Eventually, he reached the peak, where only miniature mosses blanketed the rocks. There, as described, and discernible only by the blinking of his eyes, sat the wise man.

  He approached respectfully and crouched before the figure. He waited a moment, saw the slightest nod of the ancient head, and took it as his cue to ask his question.

  “Wise man,” he said, “how can I bring meaning to my life?”

  The wise man moved his bony fingers slowly. He licked dry lips and blinked again.

  “Harmony”, he said, in a voice as mossy as the rocks lying around him.

  The seeker remained silent, expecting more despite the warnings he had received. Then he smiled.

  He realised that one word was all that was required. Boulders hadn’t shattered or crashed down from above. The old man did not say or move anymore. He became one again with the rocks and moss, and the seeker felt as if his heart had become one again as well.

  He nodded briefly in thanks and returned down the series of ridges eagerly. One word had not seen his journey wasted. If anything, it spurred him on more than an entire speech could have. Anything longer than one word would have been at the mercy of his memory.

  And so he moved back down the hill with renewed vigour, all the while repeating the wise man’s answer like a mantra.

  Almost at the bottom of the track again, feeling harmonious with all around him, he saw another man approaching. Another pilgrim to the wise man who lived in a cave within the peak.

  They passed.

  The first man’s greeting went unanswered and the second man continued up the path with a grimace on his face as he saw the series of steep ridges which lay ahead of him. Sharp birdsong hurt his ears and the bright sun his eyes. From out of the forest of thickets, he found himself on a small plateau where a cold wind whipped at his skin.

  It was some time and ample mumbling later that he reached the peak, where large rocks formed a barrier to the wind. He felt alone, without any life around him, just the wretched rocks with their sickly-green cloaks of moss.

  He almost stumbled over the wise man where he sat like just another rock but for two eyes which blinked in greeting.

  The seeker fell down exhausted on a nearby rock and did not wait for a cue for his question.

  “Wise man,” he said, as he had been instructed, “how can I bring meaning to my life?”

  The old man moved his bony fingers slowly. He licked dry lips and blinked.

  The seeker grew impatient at the old man’s lack of response, felt his pulse quickening again.

  He was about to ask the question a second time when the wise man finally spoke.

  This seeker had also been warned of the wise man’s brevity but, hungry for an answer, had forgotten all but the question to ask. He frowned for a moment and then a smile creased his face. He stood up and left without thanking the old man for his wisdom. Instead, like the first man, he moved back down the hill with renewed vigour, all the while repeating the wise man’s answer like a mantra.

  “Harm many,” he said to himself. “Harm many.”

  GRIM

  I had been retired for fifteen years when I was widowed. Strange word that, widowed. It was like a widow came to me rather than I became one. Well, a widower, that is. Bloody stupid words, both of them. Why not just say bereaved and have done with it?

  It had been sudden like, too. She had gone out for some shopping, looking for fabric and such, and took ill all of a sudden, right there in the store, holding a length of lace up to the light. So they told me anyways. I didn’t hear about it until that evening, neither of us having mobile phones. Pesky things those.

  That was, let me see, about three years ago now. We were still living in the same apartment we’d shared since forever and I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. It would have meant deciding about her things, y’know. Should I keep all her clothes, all her crocheting, those little finicky implements, bloody falling out everywhere the one time I opened up the box to have a wee look. Let a bloody sharp needle out of there, didn’t I. Damn near killed me when I stepped on the wretched thing two days later.

  Anyways…

  I do like the apartment. I’ve spent about three years now just pottering around, making endless cups of tea. I think part of the allure of drinking tea is the view we have from our kitchen. There’s the kettle and the tap, like, and then there’s a great big window looking out across a road to a nice small forested hill. I like that hill. It’s not too big, not a mountain, so as to make me all claustrophobic. It’s just big and round enough to be interesting. And the trees on this hill are magnificent. They do their slow seasonal dance, changing costumes as the months roll by.

  But where was I?

  Oh yes, that nice big window. I like to just stare
out of it while waiting for the kettle to boil. I see people now and then, crossing the hill, and cars sweeping along the road which runs below it. But it’s not a busy place what I look out onto. I know the regulars. The ones that work in the neighbourhood and stroll past of a morning and an evening. But this one time. Well. You know the feeling you get when you feel like you’re being watched. Which is weird in an apartment when you’re staring out the window, ’cause you’re the one doing the watching. But the hairs on me neck stood up and the skin on me arms pulled taut. The balcony door was well shut so it wasn’t no breeze squeezing in and giving me an early taste of winter. So I shook meself out of it but the feeling persisted.

  And, sure enough, there was someone out there, atop the small round hill. Now, me eyes aren’t what they used to be and I had me reading glasses on. Me tea glasses, as the missus used to call them, ’cause I spent longer using them to make tea than I did reading books. Alright, so I couldn’t see too well, but there was a figure there, there was, in front of the trees. Dark like. And not from shadows. It was standing out from the trees, out in what sunlight there was.

  I didn’t think too much of it at first. Just a coincidence, I told meself. I shivered and I happened to see someone loitering at the same time. Up to no good probably but that’s not me business. Not when the tea’s brewing and waiting to be drunk.

  So I sat meself back down, picked up me book but, bugger me, if I didn’t find meself going over the same sentence about fifty times without getting any further. I just couldn’t concentrate. There was only one thing that could set me mind at ease and that was to get up, put on me proper glasses – the outdoor ones for shopping and looking out for the right bus, y’know – and get a good look at this fellow in black up yon hill.

  Anyways, I put them on and went back over to the kitchen window. Well, I didn’t think me outdoor glasses worked that well but the figure seemed to have grown in size. It was still just standing there, facing in me direction as much as I could see a face on it, all black it was, head to toe. And I mean head to toe. It had like a hood or something over its face.