Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“No,” I said.

“There is a futility that is deathly. The weight of it kills you and there is nothing to be done. It was that with Marius.”

“With Marius?” I said.

“I have told you,” she said. “I went out onto the sand.”

“The sand?” I said.

“We lived there, did you know?”

“Yes,” I said.

“My hand waved in the wind. I was not good at it. What else shall I tell you?”

“Tell me why you hit him.”

“Because I was afraid.”

We sat side by side like monuments, our hands folded, our eyes in front of us with the blindness of marble. “Why?” I said.

“Why is one afraid? I do not know. Do you? It is a place that is much older than its people. Perhaps that is what makes one afraid. Have you been there?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We lived under the sun. A large house, by the sea, where the wind blew. We saw no white people, only fishermen and servants. Marius sat on the rocks and did not do anything. We loved the place. I did. I have never loved any other place.”

“Love?” I said.

“I will tell you,” she said. “I have never told it to anyone before. Marius talks about love. We talked about love when we were married. I was rich, and a European, and Marius was not. I hated Europe, I always have done, and I married Marius. When the war came we stayed there. I would not have minded. Europe could have destroyed itself. When we talked about love it sounded something new.”

“And it was not?”

“Marius sat out beneath a palm tree. It is wrong to talk about it. It is easier to talk than to believe. When you talk there are only shadows and they deceive you. Have you found this?”

“No,” I said.

“The men built Marius a shelter from the wind, and he had a table in front of him on which he wrote. When the war came he folded the paper into a dart and sent it floating through the trees like a bird. I remember how I watched it. He sent the war floating away from us. It was like the dove that went out of the ark, and we were alone.”

“And you were not?”

“We never talked about the war, nor about Europe. We thought that there were other things to talk of. Marius tore up the paper that was left beneath the palm tree, and he dropped it into the water where the fishes came to nibble at it like bread. When we had no more to say we said nothing. That is what happens. Why are you frightened, do you know?”

“No,” I said.

“Marius went out each day onto the rocks, and I watched him. He was quiet as a rock himself, and he let the sea come up to him and wash him. There was nothing to do. Then he stayed out at night even, sleeping on the beach where the crabs ran, and I came out to join him, and the house was empty, behind us, with the servants running it, quite silently, as they do, and us on the rock in front of the palm trees.”

“And Marius?” I said.

“Then he went away from me, searching for something. I did not know what was happening. When you have put your trust in shadows there is nothing that is real. Have you found this? He went with the fishermen in their boats as they sailed after the flying fish, he went with them into the hills and stayed in their villages. They treated him as their god, their personal god, but he did not do anything. That is what happens when nothing is real. The nothingness destroys you. The weight of it grows. The estate was mine, a huge rotting estate with sugar-canes and fruit trees, but it was he who became part of it, who decayed with it, who felt it. He sat with them in front of their huts and ate their food and watched them. He sat for hours with his hands among the grasses and there was a silence about him like death. He never did anything. I did not see much of him then. In the evening it grew cold and I went back to the empty house where no fires were laid and I sat there. There was a futility that was timeless, that was worse than death. I felt sometimes that it would strangle me. I remember the sounds that came down from the hills.”

“The sounds?” I said.

“I remember them. There was a day when the wind stopped. Marius came down and sat with his back to me, on the verandah, in the darkness. It was an evening of unusual heat. I waited for him. There was a futility that was deathly. Love, I remembered. Then he went away from the house towards the sea and I followed him. He sat on a rock and dropped stones into the water and he watched them become silver and seem to burn beneath the surface. ‘That is the phosphorous,’ I said. I sat down beside him. ‘What are you going to do?’ I said. He put his arm into the water so that it shone like something molten. ‘Who am I?’ he said. I thought he was mad, then. I am sure I thought him mad. This is what happened.”

“What happened?” I said.

“If he did not know how could I persuade him? There was a despair that crushed me. The moonlight was behind him and his eyes went black. ‘I am nothing,’ he said, and he lifted his hand out of the water so that it dripped like a baptism.”

“What happened?” I said.

“I tried to know what he was feeling. Why are you frightened, do you know? It is the emptiness that kills you. His shape in the darkness was like wings, like animals, and it was not he, had he not said so? I am not, he had said. And that is what I knew, that he wasn’t, in the darkness.”

“And you hit him. . ”

“There is a fear which is of damnation. When a person is a person no longer there is death in his place. As he sat on the rocks crouched heavy like a devil it was as if he were a mirror and I was he and there was nothing between us except what was going outwards into what was not bearable. All that he had said and had not said was hollow like a skull. What it meant was nothingness. It was not then that I hit him. He dived into the sea and swam away from the moonlight.”

“And you went out onto the sand. . ”

“When he came into the room I did not expect that there it would follow me. He came in with the thing that was not him and the death and the corruption and when I cried he shouted to drown me but it was not him that I wanted to kill. I ran for the door and he slammed it in front of me and it was then that I hit him. Whatever it was that was taking me into eternity and would have taken me if I had not run it was not that that I could kill but rather myself before it could take me. When love is nothingness and words are empty and what you have trusted is a lie there is nothing else to be done. I went out onto the sand where the sea was crying.”

“And you shot yourself. . ”

“Living as we had done what else could I do? With one of us mad and nothing but the two of us I only wanted to end it. There was nothing but the two of us in the whole of the world. With emptiness there is terror and you cannot escape it. Outside it was raining. Everything was a shadow and the shadow was a lie. That is what you must remember when you talk about love. By the sea there was a wind and I was not good at it.”

“The wind had stopped,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “The wind had stopped. The rain was soft and heavy with tears.”

“And is this true?” I said.

“True?” she said. “I have told you that what is true cannot be told. This is a story of love and Marius.”

As we sat the sounds from outside from very far away had grown and the slow disintegration of the tomb had scattered the dust trickling and sliding inwards and downwards piling gradually in particles around our feet expelling the web that had held us for centuries, the airless stillness falling to nothing as the earth came crumbling mounting up on us our eyes our hands our tongues crushed in on us so that now when there was light there was also no shape and the achievement of the pick looked down upon a desert. “What is there now?” I said.