The Hearing Trumpet

by Leonora Carrington

  Carmella gave everybody sheepskin cloaks, top boots, woolen socks and caps. We looked like a gang of North Pole explorers that had been stranded for half a century in the arctic circle.

  “Majong will take charge of the kitchen,” said Carmella. “He is a wonderfully economical cook.”

  “What about Mrs. Gambit?” said Georgina. “She’ll be guarding the kitchen with her life.”

  “We will see, perhaps she would be pleased to have all the work taken out of her hands.”

  So we installed ourselves in the lounge. Night started to fall towards four o’clock in the afternoon, and the snow stopped.

  Little by little the clouds blew away, revealing a magnificent clear dark starlit sky. Carmella unpacked the planisphere and we all set out into the garden to examine the stars. The planisphere was a disk of cardboard with a map of the stars seen from our portion of the globe, over which revolved another disk of plastic which had the stars invisible from our portion. There was what seemed to be a complicated system of months and hours around the circumference of the cardboard which somehow corresponded to the stars. In the centre of the disk was a small hole.

  Carmella manipulated the disk with efficiency, quickly finding the date and hour.

  “The Pole Star has to be seen through the centre of the disk,” she told us. “That is how one finds the positions of the other celestial bodies, which are all in motion. The Pole Star would only seem to move if the poles of the earth actually tilted far enough to make a complete change in their magnetic position.”

  A voice in my head which did not seem to belong to me chanted:

  I never move as you whirl round and round

  I sit and I watch you with never a sound

  If you tilt far enough caps become belt

  New caps are made, old caps will melt

  Though legless your whirling will then appear lame

  I seem to move, but I don’t, What’s my name?

  The Pole Star, of course. Without the planisphere I could never have thought of it. Although I remembered being told when we first bought the planisphere that the centre had to be fixed on the Pole Star.

  Carmella was examining the disk by the light of a torch. The Pole Star had already been found, but none of the other constellations were in their right places.

  Curious pale flashes occasionally lit the sky. There was not a breath of wind, yet the trees were swaying and loads of snow rushed off the branches to the ground. Then we saw the house move against the sky. The trees shook with a force that might have been a strong wind. Yet the cold air was still. Rifts appeared in the snow, the house groaned as if in pain, and we heard objects falling.

  “An earthquake!” shouted Georgina, clutching Veronica Adams to avoid falling. “Look at the tower!”

  That portion of the building suddenly glowed red as if it was on fire. The great stone tower swayed from side to side, then the air was rent with the sound of a mighty crackling and the walls split open like a broken egg. One tongue of flame shot out from the crack like a spear, and a winged creature that might have been a bird emerged. It paused momentarily on the brim of the shattered tower and we witnessed for a second an extraordinary creature. It shone with a bright light coming from its own body, the body of a human being entirely covered with glittering feathers and armless. Six great wings sprouted from its body and quivered ready for flight. Then with a shrill long laugh it leapt into the air and flew north, till it was lost to our sight.

  Once in the life of a mountain or rock

  I fly like a bird though bird I am not.

  Sephira, but who was the Mother of such a Son?

  I saw Christabel watching me with a curious smile, and without further deliberation I said: “The Earth is the answer to the first riddle. The second is the Pole Star, and the third is Sephira, whose Mother I do not know.”

  She gave a high cackling laugh, which nobody heard but me because they were all gazing after the six-winged Sephira.

  “Follow me,” she said, “and you will know the Mother of Sephira who has now escaped to sow panic amongst the nations:

  ‘The Watchers who slept will now be awake

  And over their land I will fly once again

  Who is My Mother? What is My Name?’ ”

  We left the group staring at the sky and made for the tower. All had become still, and the sky was clouding over preparing for more snow. Tufts of smoke issued from the great crack as we approached, and I thought it must be on fire. We gained access by the door which had been split off its hinges by the force of the earthquake. A strong smell of sulphur and brimstone hung on the air.

  “Up or Down?” asked Christabel as we found ourselves inside. A winding staircase led up to the top of the tower. Part of the steps had crumbled away and through the great crack in the wall the night sky was visible now, moving with gathering clouds. At our feet yawned an opening where steps faded into darkness below. A warm wind that blew up from underground fanned our faces.

  Up or Down? Before I gave a reply I leant over and tried to stare into the darkness. I could see nothing.

  Then I turned my eyes up and saw some bright stars shining between the torn masses of cloud. It looked immeasurably far away and very cold.

  “Down,” I replied at last, because of the warm wind that blew from within the earth. Falling into a crematorium was still better than freezing to death on top of the tower.

  I would have turned back, but curiosity went deeper than fear.

  “You must go down alone,” said Christabel, and before I could reply she had gone off into the night.

  If the weather had not been so cold I might have returned even then. I was filled with terror. At that moment a chill wind blew under my cloak, and that made me start descending the stone stairs, very slowly.

  The steps were rather wide. Nevertheless I was afraid of falling as it was so dark. I could not even see my own hand. However feeling about in the obscurity I found the wall, and I leant on it as I descended.

  For a time the steps led straight downwards. Then we came to a sharp bend where the wall was rounded and smooth, as if many hands had rubbed it, just as my own. As I turned the bend with caution the darkness was expelled by a flickering glow like firelight. When I had gone down another twenty steps or so the ground evened out into a long gallery which looked over into a great round chamber hewn out of the rock. Carved pillars supported an arched roof which was faintly lit by the fire in the centre of the chamber. The fire seemed to burn with no fuel, it leapt directly out of a cavity in the rock floor.

  At the farthest end of the gallery a final flight of steps led down into the large round chamber. As I reached the bottom of the steps I could smell sulphur and brimstone. The cavern was as warm as a kitchen.

  Beside the flames sat a woman stirring a great iron cauldron. She seemed familiar to me, although I could not see her face. Something in the clothes and the bent head made me feel I had often seen her before.

  As I drew near the fire the woman stopped stirring the pot and rose to greet me. When we faced each other I felt my heart give a convulsive leap and stop. The woman who stood before me was myself.

  True, she was less bent than I and so her form seemed somewhat taller. She may have been a hundred years older or younger, she had no age. Her features were identical to my own but her expression was much gayer and more intelligent. Her eyes were neither dim nor bloodshot, and she carried herself with ease.

  “You took a long time to get here. I was afraid you might never come,” she said. I could only mumble and nod, feeling my age upon me like a load of stones.

  “What is this place?” I finally asked, shaking all over, feeling my knees would bend and crumble under my weight.

  “This is Hell,” she said with a smile. “But Hell is merely a form of terminology. Really this is the Womb of the World whence all things come.”
She stopped and looked at me inquiringly. I could see that she expected me to ask questions, but my mind was as numb as a hunk of frozen mutton. A question sprang to my mind, and although it seemed absurd I put it into words: “Who would I have met if I had gone to the top of the tower?”

  She laughed, and I heard my own laugh, though it never could have rung so merrily.

  “Who knows? Perhaps a lot of angels playing harps, or Santa Claus maybe.”

  Questions started to form, without my permission they jumped into my mind, each seemed sillier than the other. “Which of us is really me?” I asked aloud.

  “That is something that you must decide first,” she said. “When you have decided I will tell you what to do.”

  “Then would you like me to decide which of us is I?” she asked, and I thought that she looked so much more intelligent than I did that I replied, croaking: “Yes, Madam, will you please decide, my head is not as clear as usual this evening.”

  She looked me up and down from head to foot and then from foot to head, rather critically I thought, and said finally, as if to herself, “Old as Moses, ugly as Seth, tough as a boot and no more sense than a skittle. However meat is scarce so jump in.”

  “What?” I said, hoping that I had misunderstood. She nodded gravely and pointed into the soup with the long wooden spoon. “Jump into the broth, meat is scarce this season.”

  I watched in horrified silence as she peeled a carrot and two onions which she tossed into the foaming pot. I never had any pretensions to a glorious death, but ending up as a meat broth had never entered my calculations. There was something paralyzingly sinister in the offhand manner that she peeled the vegetables which were going to make my juice tastier.

  Then, whetting the knife on the stone floor and smiling in a friendly manner, she approached me. “Not afraid surely?” she said. “Why, it won’t take a moment, and after all it is your own decision. Nobody made you come down here did they?”

  I tried to nod and move away at the same time, but my knees were trembling so much that instead of going towards the staircase I shuffled crabwise nearer and nearer the pot. When I was well within range she suddenly jabbed the pointed knife into my backside and with a scream of pain I leapt right into the boiling soup and stiffened in a moment of intense agony with my companions in distress, one carrot and two onions.

  A mighty rumbling followed by crashes and there I was standing outside the pot stirring the soup in which I could see my own meat, feet up, boiling away as merrily as any joint of beef. I added a pinch of salt and some peppercorns then ladled out a measure into my granite dish. The soup was not as good as a bouillabaisse but it was a good ordinary stew, very adequate for the cold weather.

  From a speculative point of view I wondered which of us I was. Knowing that I had a piece of polished obsidian somewhere in the cavern I looked around, intending to use it as a mirror. Yes, there it was, hanging in its usual corner near the bat’s nest. I looked into the mirror. First I saw the face of the Abbess of Santa Barbara de Tartarus grinning at me sardonically. She faded and then I saw the huge eyes and feelers of the Queen Bee who winked and transformed herself into my own face, which looked slightly less ravaged, owing probably to the dark surface of the obsidian.

  Holding the mirror at arm’s length I seemed to see a three-faced female whose eyes winked alternatively. One of the faces was black, one red, one white, and they belonged to the Abbess, the Queen Bee and myself. This of course might have been an optical illusion.

  I felt very well and refreshed after the hot broth, and somehow deeply relieved, just as I felt long ago after I had the last of my teeth out. I hitched my sheepskin cloak around me and went up the stone steps whistling Annie Laurie, which I thought I had forgotten years ago.

  Ages seemed to have passed since somebody first hobbled down the steps, and now I was climbing to the upperworld as spry as a mountain goat. The darkness was no longer a hideous death trap where any moment I might be precipitated to my death.

  Strangely I could see through the dark like a cat. I was part of the night like any other shadow.

  Outside the snow was falling abundantly once more and had already sprinkled white over the wrecked Institute. The house had crumbled to the ground, leaving only two jagged walls standing above the decomposed pile. The building must have fallen after the second earthquake, which closely succeeded the first. I contemplated the ruins peacefully.

  My companions had built a large fire on the snow-covered lawn and they were dancing around it to the sound of Christabel’s tom-tom. It seemed a practical way to keep warm.

  The Gambits must have been buried somewhere under the wreckage, but nothing moved, and the heaps of stone and mortar were being gently covered with snow.

  I felt elated and mysterious and joined my companions in the dance around the fire. It was impossible now to tell the hour, as day had merged into night without the sun having risen at all.

  “Did you enjoy the soup?” called Christabel as she thumped her drum, and the others laughed and repeated “Did you enjoy the soup?”

  Then I understood that they all knew what had happened in the cavern chamber under the tower. We were quite warm and stopped dancing to regain our breath.

  “How do you know I drank the broth?” I asked them, and they all laughed.

  “You were the last to go down into the cavern,” said Christabel. “All of us have been down into the underworld. Who did you meet?”

  These were ritual questions and I understood that I must tell the truth.

  “I met myself.”

  “Who else?” asked Christabel, as my companions clapped their hands rhythmically.

  “The Abbess of Santa Barbara de Tartarus and the Queen Bee,” I replied. Then with sudden curiosity I asked, “Who did you meet?”

  And they all spoke together, “Ourselves, the Queen Bee and the Abbess of Santa Barbara de Tartarus!”

  Then I also joined in the shrill laughter, and we set to dancing again to the sound of the tom-tom.

  •

  Nobody knew how much time went past before the sun rose again, but rise it did, pale white light near the horizon shining on a world transformed by the snow and ice.

  As a result of the earthquake white ruins dominated the landscape. Not a whole house stood within sight, and many trees had been uprooted. Majong, Carmella’s chauffeur, had survived the earthquake. He had taken refuge in the violet limousine, which had merely suffered a crushed engine. Nervous cats emerged from different corners, but all twelve were whole and unharmed. We dedicated the hours of sunlight to hunt amongst the ruins of the house for whatever foodstuff we could find.

  We transported it all down to the cavern chamber, which was warm with the fire that burned from the rocks. Christabel explained that this was natural gas and burned eternally. The hot spring which bubbled in the garden above had its source in the rocks under the tower.

  There was no sign of any soup, but a disused iron cauldron stood near the fire. A sextagonal polished sheet of obsidian hung on the wall, and we all knew that it served as a mirror.

  Days and nights were distributed unevenly. The sun never reached its zenith but sank at about midday. The earth seemed to be limping around its orbit seeking balance in the new order.

  Soon enough we were nicely settled in the cavern chamber, accompanied by all the cats and Majong, who had taken to talking entirely in Chinese. There was a certain amount of food, although many of the packing cases had been impossible to extract from under the wreckage of the building. Some sacks of lentils and wheat, mushroom spore and some badly squashed marshmallows were more or less the extent of our provision.

  The violet limousine was beyond repair and would not have been much good in several metres of snow. We often went out from the cavern but we saw no human beings, though there were plenty of birds and animals in the region. Deer, pumas and even monkeys had come f
rom the mountains and wandered about in the region looking for food. We did not consider hunting them. The New Ice Age should not be initiated with the slaughter of our fellow beings.

  Majong transported earth down to the cavern, which he dug up near the warm spring, where the snow was soft and not frozen like everywhere else. We made a large garden of mushrooms, which flourished in all the warmth and dampness. This formed the main portion of our diet, and we carefully reserved a section for spore so that the crops would not decrease. Now and again we planted wheat, and were able to eat this when it germinated, but without sunshine it was impossible to propagate. One day we saw some goats grazing around the hot spring where a few twigs and grass still grew above the snow. This happy event provided the cats and ourselves with fresh milk. We pulled branches off the trees to provide provender for the goats, and they joined us later in the cavern, emerging now and again to look for food.

  Each time the sun rose we went to the ruins looking for food, and these excursions were occasionally rewarded with crushed sardines or some handfuls of rice.

  One dawn, we no longer used the word day, I was occupied digging under some frozen lumps that looked like a piece of furniture when I saw a sight so unusual that it frightened a flock of ravens off the portion of wall on the east side.

  Walking along the faint track which once had been a road came the postman. He wore an ordinary postman’s uniform and carried a satchel for letters. The most remarkable object about him was the guitar slung over his shoulder. “Good day,” he said, “I have some correspondence for this address,” and he handed me a postcard of Marble Arch and some Life Guards.

  This remarkable document read:

  All in excellent health in spite of v. cold weather. Quite a sight skaters on the Channel. Madam and self watched ice hockey just off Dover Cliffs. Hoping all in g. health