The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories

by Various

  ‘I asked him what he would do after it was published; if his plan worked. “I shall do nothing,” he said. “I shan’t write another word. That will make the joke clearer as the years go by.” “But they might try and make you,” I said to him, “they don’t let people not work, you know.” “Well, maybe I’ll be too famous by then. Besides, I shall tell them I have put all my heart and all my soul into The Wedding Cake. ‘If you want to read a second book by me,’ I shall say, ‘Read the first one again.’ And then I shall sit back and try and look as distinguished as possible.”

  ‘I left the country in 1951, when Nicolai still had some way to go with his book; he had about thirty-five strands of narrative, and they all had to be tied off in neat granny knots. We never wrote to one another after I left, because it would have been difficult for him. Instead I wrote to… unimportant people. My mother, a few harmless friends. As you know, I haven’t ever been back; I haven’t heard any news for almost a quarter of a century. But in one of her last letters to me before she died, my mother told me that The Wedding Cake had been published with enormous success. She had not read the book – her eyesight was poor and she didn’t want to make it worse – but she wrote and told me about it. “And to think,” she said, “If you had stayed, my Marian, you might have been the success that Nicolai now is.’ ”

  He turned back towards me, and took another swig of wine. He seemed depressed by his story. Then he smiled.

  ‘Actually, if I’d known, I’d have got you to bring me a copy of The Wedding Cake,’ he said. ‘It might have been – what? – good for a laugh.’

  ‘I’m not sure I saw a copy.’

  ‘… ? But you told me… in the window.’

  ‘No, the book I saw in the window just had a woman’s name for a title. Emanuella, Maria, something like that; with a picture of a girl in a headscarf.’ I asked him the Romanian for wedding-cake; he told me. ‘Well, I don’t remember that one. But there must have been six or seven other titles by Petrescu and I didn’t look at them very carefully. Perhaps it was there.’

  Then we both paused, and looked at one another, and held the pause. I could imagine some of what he was thinking.

  ‘Well,’ he finally said. ‘There you have it. Another piece of evidence for your Romanian theory. Another single bloom. One great ironist – Petrescu.’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied quickly, and gave him my most agreeing smile.

  * * *

  EMMA TENNANT

  * * *

  PHILOMELA

  Before I married, when we lived in Athens, the bright emptiness of the long days was made bearable by my sister Philomela, who spoke the thoughts I hardly knew I had.

  Why permit yourself to be taken off like a slave? We can leave Athens and go and live in the mountains. We will be free. And if we die, anything better than the life that lies ahead of us.

  I knew she was right, but I couldn’t find the courage to go. The nights are cold in the mountains, and we would almost certainly perish. Tereus came and married me and we went to Thrace in a procession of such magnificence that I knew I would never come back. When my son Itylus was born, I felt as if I had been buried in a soft tomb.

  I’ll come and live with you, Philomela said. You won’t have to wait long.

  She never came. I moped, like the birds my children bring back when they go out for a walk. Tereus noticed, but he didn’t care. The palace, as it is now, was always full of young men singing, and preparations for war, and the bustle of sandalled feet going aimlessly back and forth on the worn marble. I stayed on my couch, almost pleased that my beauty was going and that I was unable to sleep at night. It was a slow death, but no one who is buried alive dies quickly.

  Then one day Tereus said he would go and find my sister. There had been no wars for two years, and the festivities were palling. He was looking older himself; perhaps only bloodshed kept him young; at any rate he wanted to travel, and he liked the idea of doing something gallant and slightly ridiculous. To his delight, everyone laughed when he said he was going to rescue my sister from her monotonous life in Athens.

  It was at the height of summer that he set off. When he had gone I went down into the gardens for the first time for years and looked in an interested way at the flowers and the strolling peacocks. My children even smiled at me when I went up to them. I pretended to myself that my health had changed, that I had been ill for a long time and was now quite naturally better, but I knew that it was really because Philomela was coming that I saw these things in a different way. Her face and her voice kept flowing through me as I paced out the rest of the day, glancing foolishly at the position of the sun in the sky. It was a long journey, and it might be weeks before Tereus brought her back.

  Tereus came back one winter day. The air was clear and I could see a huddle of people galloping across the plain. My throat ached, as if I had tried to shout to them across that distance, and my hands kept flying to my neck and pulling at the gold chains I wore. Then I felt I was going to cry, and I sent for Coda to bring me a herb drink that soothes my mind. I even thought for a moment of climbing to the temple. But I restrained myself, in case Philomela should climb the wide steps when I wasn’t there to see her. And I wanted to show her the garden we had made, to take her into the house of which I felt suddenly proud.

  Tereus’ head seemed larger, I remember that. And the young men with him hung back, which they don’t usually do – no one ran past me with a quick salute on the way to the courtyard and the refreshing wine. Tereus’ head loomed over me like a round polished shield. His tongue moved thickly in his dry lips.

  Philomela is dead, he said.

  I spent a year in that room. When the sun lurked in the courtyard, beyond the hangings, which it did in the morning early when the slaves were washing the stone-fruited floors, I lifted my goblet of wine and poured it down my throat. All day long I called for more wine – and Coda and Dita brought it with lowered eyes.

  I gave birth to another child. Itylus came and sat with me sometimes, but he was learning to go out with his father more. He had a horse of his own. When I asked him about the garden we had made, he was embarrassed and changed the subject. I began to suspect that it was overgrown, or that Tereus had got rid of it altogether. Not that I really cared. The garden had been for Philomela, and she would never come now.

  When the new child was beginning to learn how to crawl about on the soft rugs in my room, I got up for the first time and went onto the wide porch that looks over the plain. It was summer, and birds were singing in the thicket of olives. My eyes were tired from crying: they had changed their shape now and slanted down in the corners instead of being round.

  I gazed out at all the empty expanses around me. Sky. Earth. Distant mountain. None of them contained anything at all.

  I leant back against a pillar and sighed. My back was weak after so long in my room. A slave came up the steps towards me. He stopped, surprised to see me there, and then prostrated himself.

  He had something for me: it seemed to be a bundle of cloth. I took it listlessly – a present no doubt from one of the noble women I no longer consented to see. The slave glanced anxiously at me once, and then ran into the house. I opened the bundle, yawning.

  A tapestry. My eyes were blurred, and I had to bring it up close to my face to see what scenes were depicted. Chariots in Thrace, I thought at first, and noble warriors under a spiky sun. Then I saw that the chief figure was Tereus himself.

  This is amusing, I said aloud. Is Tereus worth this? I looked closer.

  In the first scene, Tereus was embracing a woman passionately. Her face was obscured; I smiled. In the second, I saw it. The owner of the face was cringing at Tereus’ feet and she was pleading for mercy. Philomela. In the next scene he had advanced on her. He cut out her tongue. In the following scene Philomela, imprisoned in a castle, looked out as Tereus galloped away into the distance. That was all. I looked again. There was no doubt about it. Philomela.

  I went to my ro
om and sat holding the tapestry. Tereus’ feet sounded in the courtyard outside: I pushed the tapestry under the couch and sat there as I had for so long, doing nothing. But he didn’t come in.

  So I was able to form my plan. I sent for Coda and Dita. I told them my suspicions and I gave the last of my gold for the search. Somewhere, between here and Athens, Philomela suffered alone. Secretly, men were found and set out on their horses. It was late at night when they left, and my heart beat loudly as I listened to the hooves growing fainter on the plain.

  They found her and brought her back. Poor, dumb Philomela. And we all feasted, the smoke from the burning flesh of the animals went up into the sky for hours before we ate, the fountain was fed with wine, Tereus kept laughing and saying he must have made a mistake. He was so frightened he couldn’t even find an excuse. So we ate and drank, and the wild boars on our gold cups chased themselves endlessly round as the gold glinted in the light from the torches and the round heads of Tereus’ friends shone the same bright colour. Philomela never once looked reproach.

  We lay together in my room, and I whispered in her ear. Her eyes could always answer me. And we knew we would avenge ourselves on Tereus.

  Philomela lay in the prow of the boat. Her black hair just touched the water. I watched her all the time – for signs of happiness, or discontent, or simply to see what her eyes would say to me. Today she was smiling, and we glided at the rhythm of her breathing over water so clear that the smallest pebbles on the bottom looked as big and white as rocks.

  We were there because a war was raging inland. On the shore, brightly coloured as victory, were Tereus’ tents. From the beach little wisps of black smoke went up: the slaves were preparing the evening meal.

  Tereus comes back from the war tonight. His fingers will pull at roasted meat. His mouth will be red with juice. The singing will start in a dull roar, and torches will be lit on the sand. Dancing figures, giants inside the tents but small in the great expanse outside, will run from every angle to the edge of the sea. Because of the wine, the moon will shine brilliantly.

  The four curved paddles of our boat guided us gently back to land. I stepped out, with Philomela in my arms, and set her down on the stones. We both stood for a moment, looking at the tents and the blade of blue which carves out the clumsy shapes of the mountains; but we saw only the evening ahead. It was months since Tereus had gone to the war. We had almost forgotten his face. He had gone, probably, because the embarrassment was too great for him at home – and he hoped, while he was away, that we would forget what he had done. We thought of him as we walked up to the encampment. And without glancing at each other again, we went to lie down until the heat of the day had passed.

  The sun lay to one side of the sky and our shadows were long when we left the great tent and went inland to the olive groves. The preparations for the banquet were growing more frantic – and it was only when we were surrounded by bushes of myrtle and thyme that we were able to go on without vomiting on the ground. The smell of burning meat was so strong.

  Philomela saw Itylus first. I followed the line of her pointing finger and could just make out, in the gloom where the trees were thicker, a group of boys playing at war. Itylus had a bow and arrow, and was run-ing importantly from tree to tree calling out commands. As Tereus’ son he was obeyed: this had made him arrogant, but charming still; already he had taken on the pompous, exaggerated stride of his father.

  Now he sent a shower of arrows over our heads and the other boys ran laughing towards us to retrieve them. They all liked Philomela, and made a pretence of searching in the glade at her feet so she could stroke them and smile. And she did! While my heart beat heavily and slowly, and my legs felt as rooted and shapeless as the lines of trees that marched out to all sides of us.

  Itylus!

  I had to call him, of course – but if only it could have been Philomela! What do you want?

  Anything to have been spared the sound of his voice. As I made no sign of moving, he came reluctantly forward. He knew I had come to spoil his game. It’s nearly dark, I said. Your father is coming. We must go back to the tents.

  He shrugged, then followed. We went in single file down to the beach.

  Tereus will come down the mountain pass as the sun is setting. Taking advantage of the glory; wearing the flaming sky like a cloak he has picked up on the battlefield. Boasting as he tramps through the encampment. Flinging himself down, the exhausted warrior, and waiting for us, my tongueless sister and his wife to shower our praise on him.

  On the pretext of showing him a big sea animal that had been caught in the nets that morning, we took Itylus into the cave at the other end of the beach. It was dark there, with a rancid smell: the colour of the air was the same deep grey all the way up to the roof of the cave and the rocks were thin and sharp like the teeth of a rotting fish. The children made piles of the fragile sea anemones and we crunched them under foot as we walked, the shells the faint pink-blue of an earlobe. Philomela and I stood silently by as Itylus, with controlled excitement, examined the monster.

  A great eye lay in a network of tentacles. The confused limbs, sprawled now on the stale sand at the back of the cave, had evidently put up a fight – here and there they had been hacked by men’s hands and were crushed like a reed that someone has tried to break off and then abandoned. Perhaps because of the eye, which seemed, wherever we stood, to be watching us, we were afraid to go too near. Only Itylus, to show his courage and manhood, picked up a piece of driftwood and advanced on it cautiously. It was dead since morning; but the glare of the black pupil in the pool of white suggested hidden power and energy. In our minds, we saw it rise and attack. The limbs, although twisted and battered, had a febrile strength. We felt them crush our ribs and wind themselves round our necks.

  We lifted a boulder and came up on Itylus from behind. He fell without a sound. Philomela’s eyes spoke terror. I was the only one to cry out.

  The sound I made was flung back by the walls of the cave in anger and contempt. It took a long time to die, lingering in a whimper in the wet stone.

  The eye still watched us as we lifted the body of Itylus and crept to the mouth of the cave with it. I looked out first. The sun was setting, the sky was red. I could see nothing of the black mountains, but a contingent of men, torches lit in preparation for the sudden descent of night, were moving like fiery beetles from the beach to the foothills. Tereus must be on his way down, then.

  How quick and how slow our dragging on the great pot from its hiding place in the entrance of the cave, our pyre of dry wood, the heating of the water. But when we looked out at the sea, we saw his floating hair. And the sand in the red glow from the sinking sun was the colour of his poor boiling flesh. How slow!

  Years and years will pass, and these minutes will still be longer than them all. Every hour will be made up out of them. And we will be standing by the staring eye in the back of the cave and Tereus will be coming down the hill and we will be standing at the mouth of the cave and looking out at the sea to shift the time. How quickly the years will pass!

  When the meat was ready we drained the water away until there was only a little at the bottom of the pot. We had tried to find fresh water – there was an old well just above the beach – but seawater had seeped in. Tiny limpets and shreds of sour weed clung to the flesh. We threw in herbs and animal fat. Philomela made a dough with her agile fingers, which she used for speaking now, holding them up and flashing combinations of numbers when she had to make it clear what she wanted. I watched her hands as she laid the fine crust over the pot. We built up the fire, and waited.

  It was a fine banquet. I sat at Tereus’ side, my eyes down, my face flushed with pride for him. Philomela, as always on these occasions, was a ghost, a shadow that fell only occasionally across his face if he should look round and see her. I was his wife; and I celebrated his victories with him.

  The men shouted and sang. When the moon rose, some of them ran drunkenly to the entrance to the tent,
and gazed up at it as if it had appeared for the first time. Like Tereus, I laughed indulgently at them. Like Tereus, I applauded when the captive slave girls danced, their bodies greased and jewels shining between their eyes. With Tereus I rose and walked to the great table where the wine and food was laid out. On the glistening fig leaves, grapes and pomegranates stood in mounds. Great sides of roasted ox were garlanded with fast-wilting flowers.

  The pie was brought in. Tereus sat down like a child and ate. When he had eaten a few mouthfuls, he nodded his approval. He offered some to his favourites, and they swaggered forward, holding out their hands. Then he turned to me.

  Eat! – he said. You have done well.

  I shook my head. Black, dizzy sickness. Inside me an ill-tempered sea rolled violently. I had to look up. Eyes looked back at me with a mixture of curiosity and dislike. Where is Philomela?

  But her eyes had gone. And I half fell, as all the eyes there in that room merged together and one eye, lidless, staring shone out at me. Tereus, the juice from the pie dribbling down his chin, pulled me back on the seat beside him with astonishment. He thrust a tender morsel in my face. Eat! he said laughing. What’s the matter with you?

  Philomela came forward from the back of the tent. Because she was dumb the men were afraid of her, and they fell back easily enough to let her through. I felt Tereus wince.

  Take that woman away! he muttered. But his voice lacked conviction: like the others, he was afraid of her. She had become, in the camp, like the priestess of an oracle without a voice. She was the unconscious avenger of every sin. If only Tereus knew the barbarity she had suffered, the others guessed at it.