by Sue Gee
‘“Sir!” the candidate burst out in agitated tones. “I am very tired and battered about. You see I’ve gone through a lot. This post is one of those I’ve most longed to get. I’m old. I need rest. I need to be able to say to myself: You are going to settle down here now, you’re in port. Oh, sir! this depends only on you … I’ve had enough of all that wandering.”
‘The old man’s eyes were so beseeching that Folcombridge, who was kind and simple of heart, felt touched.
‘“Well!” he said. “I accept you. You are the lighthouse keeper.”
‘The old man’s face lit up with an unspeakable joy.
‘“Just one word: for the slightest negligence in your duty you’ll be dismissed.”
‘The old man was rowed out to the lighthouse. That night he stood on the balcony close to the mighty lantern, and stood gazing out over the sea, secure and at peace.
‘His misfortune had been that as often as he pitched his tent and lit the fire on his hearth to settle down for good, the wind tore away the tent pegs, scattered the ashes of his fire, and brought himself to ruin … it seemed as though all four elements persecuted him … He believed that some powerful and avenging hand was pursuing him everywhere, by land and water … Yet he had the patience of an Indian, and the great and quiet resisting power that springs from rectitude of soul. During his service in Hungary he received several bayonet thrusts because he refused to seize the strap shown him as his means of safety and cry: “I surrender.”
‘At last he was overpowered by one thought only: the thought of rest. It took complete possession of the old man, and absorbed all other desires and hopes … now, suddenly, in the course of twelve hours, he had obtained a post that seemed chosen out of all others in the world for him.…
‘One hour followed after another, and he was still on the balcony. He gazed; he drank his fill. The lens of the lantern flung into the darkness a mighty cone of light, beyond which the old man’s eyes were lost in a distance that was pitch black, mysterious and terrible. Yet that distance seemed to be running towards the light. Long, jagged waves rolled out from the darkness and, roaring, reached as far as the foot of the little island, and then their foaming manes were visible, glittering, rose-coloured, in the light of the lantern. The tide was fast coming in and pouring over the sandbanks. The mysterious language of the ocean was approaching from the deep, ever stronger, ever louder … A storm growled in the distance. On the dark heaving waste a few little green lamps flashed, hanging on the masts of ships …
‘Skawinski went down to his room. The storm had begun to howl. Out there men on those ships were battling with the night, with the dark, with the waves; but inside the room it was quiet and still … there was only the rhythmic tick-tack of the clock that seemed to rock the tired old man to sleep.’
Anna heard the dry sound of pages turned, her father’s steady voice filling the tent as he read on.
‘Everything with which the lighthouse keeper comes into contact is huge, without concrete or definite form. The sky is one element, water the other; and between those immensities one solitary human soul … The old man lived in the company of the tower, the lantern, the rock, the sandbanks, and solitude …
‘His tower guarded him against all evil. Indeed, he only left it at intervals, on Sunday mornings. Then he put on his long blue official coat with silver buttons, hung his crosses on his breast; and he carried his milk-white head with a certain pride when, as he came out of church, he heard the creoles say to one another: “We’ve got a proper lighthouse keeper!” But he returned to the island immediately after Mass, and was glad to return, for he still felt some lurking distrust of the mainland. On Sundays, too, he would read a Spanish newspaper that he bought in the town, or the New York Herald, borrowed from Folcombridge, searching through them for their scanty news of Europe. Poor old heart! In that watchtower and in another hemisphere, it still beat for his country …
‘Homesickness had passed into resignation. The whole world now began and ended for the old man on his little island … Moreover he was becoming a mystic … ceasing to exist as a separate personality … becoming ever more one with that which surrounded him … in the end it seemed to him that the sky, the water, his rock, the tower, and the golden sandbanks, and the swelling sails and the gulls, the incoming and outgoing tides, were all one great harmony and one mighty, mysterious soul; and he was submerged in that mystery, and felt the presence of that soul which was living and at rest. He sank into it, he was cradled by it, memory fled; and in that captivity of his own separate existence, in that half-consciousness, half-sleep, he found a peace so great that it almost resembled death.’
For Anna, listening, the darkening woods outside the tent had slipped away, as the mainland and the world had done for the old man in his lighthouse. There was only the light and warmth from the lamp, and the smell of paraffin, the sound of Jerzy occasionally changing position on his sleeping bag, their father’s voice, leading her into the deepest, half-forgotten places of her childhood, when she had lain in bed and been soothed by it to sleep.
He paused for a moment and she opened her eyes, saw Jerzy lying on his stomach, his head on his folded arms.
‘Is he asleep?’ she whispered.
‘No,’ muttered Jerzy. ‘Go on, Tata.’
He turned back to the book once more.
‘One day after the boat had brought water and a stock of provisions, Skawinski, coming down an hour later from the tower, saw that besides the ordinary load there was another packet. On the outer cover of the packet were United States postage stamps, and the address, “Skawinski, Esq.,” written clearly on the rough canvas. His curiosity greatly excited, the old man cut through the canvas and saw books. He took one in his hand, looked, and laid it down again. Then his hands began trembling violently. He shaded his eyes, as though he could not trust them; he thought he was dreaming; the book was Polish. What could this mean? Who had sent the book to him?
‘At the moment he had forgotten that quite at the beginning of his career in the lighthouse he had read one day in a Herald, borrowed from the Consul, of the foundation of a Polish Society in New York, and that he had immediately sent the society half of his monthly salary, for which as a matter of fact he had no use in the tower. The society had sent him the books as a token of gratitude. They had come in a natural way, but at first the old man could not grasp this idea. Polish books in Aspinwall, in his tower, in his solitude, were to his mind something extraordinary, like a breath of old days; a sort of miracle …
‘He sat for a minute with closed eyes, and he was almost certain that when he opened them the dream would vanish. No! The packet on which the afternoon rays of the sun were shining lay distinctly before him, cut open, and on it the open book … It was poetry.’
Anna closed her eyes again as Tata read aloud the lines the old man had read aloud, there on the narrow lonely shore of the lighthouse rock: they were verses by Adam Mickiewicz, who with hundreds of other Poles had lived in exile in Paris after the 1830 Rising against the Czar.
‘Lithuania, my country, thou art like health.
How much to prize thee can only be told
By him who hath lost thee. All thy beauty today
I see, and I sing, for I pine after thee …
‘Holy Virgin, who dost guard Czestochowa bright . . .
As by a miracle thou grantest me, a child, return to
health
So thou shall grant us to return by a miracle to our
land.
‘The old man uttered a loud cry, and flung himself on the ground. Forty years had passed since he had seen his country, and God knows how many since he had heard his native language; yet here that language had come to him of its own accord; it had crossed the ocean, and found the lonely recluse in the other hemisphere; that language so beloved, so dear, so beautiful! In the sobbing which shook him there was no grief, only a suddenly awakened, infinite love, beside which all else was as naught …
‘Twi
light had blotted out the letters on the white page; a twilight as short as the twinkling of an eye. The old man leant his head on the rock and closed his eyes … Long red and golden trails were still burning in the sky, and on those shafts of light he fled to his beloved land. The pine woods roared in his ears; his native rivers gurgled …
‘He saw wide fields, green unploughed strips dividing them, meadows, woods and hamlets. By now it was night. At that hour his lantern was used to shine over the darkness of the sea; but he was now in his native village … he saw it as though he had left it yesterday: the row of cottages, with faint lights in their windows, the dykes, the mill, the two ponds lying over against each other, and ringing all night with choirs of frogs. Once, in that village of his, he was on sentry duty at night. That past now suddenly rose before him in a series of visions. He is again a lancer on guard …
‘Wait a little, and you will hear the corncrake calling in the darkness and bitterns booming in the reeds. The night is calm and cool, a real Polish night. In the distance the pine forest murmurs with wind – like the waves of the sea. Soon the dawn will whiten the east; yes, the cocks are crowing already behind the edges. Each takes up the other’s voice, one after the other from cottage to cottage; suddenly the cranes, too, cry from high up in the sky.… Oh, beloved, beloved land!
‘Hush! The watchful sentry hears footsteps approaching. They must be coming to relieve the guard.
‘Suddenly a voice rang out over Skawiński’s head.
‘“Hi, old chap! Get up. What’s the matter with you?”
‘The old man opened his eyes, and gazed bewildered at the man standing before him. Remnants of the visions of his dreams struggled in his brain with reality. Finally, the visions grew faint and vanished. Johns, the harbour watchman, was standing in front of him.
‘“What’s all this?” Johns asked. “Are you ill?”
‘“No.”
‘“You didn’t light the lantern. You are going to be dismissed from the service. A boat from San Geromo has been wrecked on a sand-reef. Luckily no one was drowned. If they had been, you’d have been tried for it. Get into the boat with me. You’ll hear the rest in the Consulate.”
‘The old man turned pale. Indeed, he had not lit the lantern that night.
‘A few days later, Skawiński might have been seen on the deck of a vessel going from Aspinwall to New York. The poor old man had lost his post. New ways of a wanderer’s existence had opened again before him. Again the wind had blown the leaf away to cast it forth by land and sea, to make sport of it at its will. During those few days the old man had grown very shrunken and bent; only his eyes shone. But in his breast he carried into the new roads of his life his book, which from time to time his hand grasped as though fearful lest that, too, should be taken from him.’
There was a silence, then the soft sound of the book being closed and put down. They lay without speaking; when Anna opened her eyes she could see the dark shapes of moths and insects bumping blindly against the canvas outside, struggling to reach the warm yellow glow of the lamp. She thought of the great cone of light from the lighthouse lantern flung out over the black night sea, of the old man, exiled, losing himself and his soul in the dissolution of sky and water, until the strange parcel of Polish books arrived, and he remembered who he was.
‘Tata?’ said Jerzy.
‘Mmm?’
‘He forgot to light the lamp …’
‘Yes.’ Their father stretched, ran his fingers over his balding head. He was looking rather drawn. ‘A very sad and beautiful story. And now I think it’s time we went to sleep. We’ll move on tomorrow.’ He pulled on his jacket. ‘I’m going outside for a minute, Jerzy. Coming?’
Anna listened to their footsteps as they went to relieve themselves; she undressed rapidly, and pulled her jumper over her nightdress. Then she huddled inside her sleeping bag.
Jerzy put his head through the flaps and came in. ‘There’s a wonderful sky.’
She sat up, and shifted in her bag to the opening. ‘Oh, yes!’ An explosion of pale stars was splashed across the blue-black above the trees: she gazed at them, and felt herself shrink, like the lighthouse keeper, in the vastness of the world.
‘Where’s Tata?’
‘He’s gone for a walk – I think he wants to be by himself for a bit.’
‘Oh.’ She withdrew quickly into the tent again, and wriggled into the sleeping bag, up to her neck. Jerzy pulled on pyjamas and jumper, slid inside his, and they lay for a few minutes in silence.
‘Anna? What did you think of the story?’
‘It made me want to cry.’
‘I don’t understand it … does he really mean Poles care too much about the past? That we neglect the present?’
‘But of course he cared – he’d lost everything.’
‘I know.’
Anna lay gazing up at the moths outside, still buffeting themselves against the canvas, searching vainly for a way to reach the light. Tata had been out for quite a while. Their tent, which had felt so warm and safe, seemed suddenly a very small and defenceless place, pitched in the emptiness of the woods, beneath the night sky, and the uneasy feeling which had gnawed at her all summer stirred in her stomach like a dark snake uncurling from sleep. Did you think I had gone away? I am always here. She shivered.
‘Jerzy?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Is Tata all right?’
‘I think so.’
She turned over, and heard the faraway hoot of an owl. It spoke of hollowness, of being alone and afraid. What was Tata thinking about, out there? There was another noise, a sudden tearing cry, and they both sat up; Anna grabbed Jerzy’s arm.
‘What was that?’
Twigs broke outside the tent. ‘A fox,’ said Tata, appearing through the entrance. He winked at them. ‘My poor city dwellers, how well you would do if you had to live like this always.’
They laughed. ‘Phew,’ said Jerzy, and they lay watching him undress, bumping comfortingly against the sides. The cry came again, but from further away.
‘It’s horrible – it sounds like something from hell,’ said Jerzy.
‘Well it isn’t,’ said Tata, and blew out the lamp. ‘Goodnight, you two.’
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
Anna lay in the darkness, listening. The fox did not cry out again, but the owl called several times, lonely, unanswered.
She sat on the river bank, sketching. It was mid-afternoon, hazy and warm; birds sang in the birch trees behind her. Her eyes flicked up and down, up and down, from sketchpad to glinting water; on the far side of the river a pair of moorhens swam jerkily in and out of the reeds. There was a faint splash as a fish broke the surface, then silence. Watching the ripples, Anna was conscious again of the feeling she couldn’t put properly into words, or explain, even to Tata. She was isolated, perhaps even unreal – as if she were dreaming her own life. Sometimes she wasn’t properly inside herself at all, but a cold observer – like now: a girl of thirteen in old cotton shorts and shirt, her hair in plaits, sitting by the river and trying to draw the sunlight on the water. If that was her, who was watching? Perhaps someone else was dreaming her life, and when they woke up, that would be the end.
Tata and Jerzy had gone for a walk to the village, to stock up again. This morning had been lazy, getting up well after nine, swimming, taking photographs of each other, splashing about and laughing. Last night’s unease, about Tata, about herself, had been forgotten: she was carefree and untroubled. Why, now, should she begin again to question, to ask things which seemed unanswerable: who was she? Why was she who she was?
She got up and began to walk restlessly along the bank. The leaves on the birch trees rustled. Then she heard footsteps coming quickly through the woods, twigs snapping underfoot, but no voices, and turned back to see Jerzy, carrying the rucksack, with a strange sort of look about him, a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Tata was beside him, tapping a newspaper against his leg as h
e walked, doing it automatically, as if he had some kind of tic. He, too, looked different. He looked grey.
Anna felt her legs go suddenly weak as she ran towards them, calling: ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Even as she asked, she knew what it was, heard Jerzy asking a week ago: ‘Is there going to be a war?’ and Tata’s slow reply: ‘It is possible.’
The railway station at Wilno was in chaos, the platforms crowded with people clutching suitcases and hastily tied bundles of clothes – holiday makers, like them, frantic to get home to Warsaw and find out what was happening. There was no timetable, and the station master and porters had no idea when the next train to Warsaw, or anywhere else, might be running. Jerzy and Anna were exhausted: by paddling non-stop, they had made the three-day journey to Wilno in just under two; they’d come into a marina just outside the city, and then had to spend precious hours dismantling the heavy, cumbersome kajak, packing it all up, lugging that and the tent, and their luggage, all the way here. They’d eaten the last of their food this morning – Tata had thought they might be able to buy something in Wilno, but all the shops were closed and on the station there was not even a barrow.
Everyone was waiting for a Warsaw train; Jerzy stood next to a trembling peasant woman whose son and his family lived there now. Tata spoke to a group of soldiers in uniform, carrying heavy kitbags. One of them had a cousin living right across the country in western Poland, near the German frontier. He had managed to telephone. ‘You know what he told me?’ he said bitterly. ‘The bastards came through on motorbikes. They just flung up the barrier and came through, as easy as opening a gate.’
It was almost two hours, and late in the afternoon, before a train arrived, clouds of steam billowing into a reddening sky. At once, there was a rush for the doors, and Anna almost choked in the crush as a man behind her shoved forward, his suitcase pressing into her ribs. ‘Come on! Come on!’ Then Tata bent down from the step and hauled her up beside him, and Jerzy managed to scramble up and into the corridor. There was no chance of a seat: pressed against the window, Anna was jammed between Tata and a heavy-faced man smelling sourly of sweat. The train began to move, and further down the corridor a baby started howling. Anna shut her eyes. Please God make this not be happening, she thought bleakly, and willed them all back by the placid river, with nothing to be afraid of.
