Briefing for a Descent Into Hell Read online

  Man like a great tree

  Resents storms.

  Arms, knees, hands,

  Too stiff for love,

  As a tree resists wind.

  But slowly wakes,

  And in the dark wood

  Wind parts the leaves

  And the black beast crashes from the cave.

  My love, when you say:

  “Here was the storm,

  Here was she,

  Here the fabulous beast,”

  Will you say too

  How first we kissed with shut lips, afraid,

  And touched our hands, afraid,

  As if a bird slept between them?

  Will you say:

  “It was the small white bird that snared me”?

  And so she sings, each time I pass, around and around, and on and on.

  DOCTOR X: Well, how are you this afternoon?

  PATIENT: Around and around and around …

  DOCTOR X: I’d like you to know that I believe you could snap out of this any time you want.

  PATIENT: Around and around and around …

  DOCTOR X: Doctor Y is not here this weekend. I’m going to give you a new drug. We’ll see how that does.

  PATIENT: In and out, out and in. In and out, out and in.

  DOCTOR X: My name is Doctor X. What is your name?

  PATIENT: Around and …

  I think he may very well have reverted to age eleven or twelve. That was the age I enjoyed sea stories. He is much worse in my opinion. The fact is, he never acknowledges my presence at all. Doctor Y claims he reacts to him.

  DOCTOR X. 24TH AUGUST.

  DOCTOR Y: What is your name today?

  PATIENT: It could be Odysseus?

  DOCTOR Y: The Atlantic was surely not his sea?

  PATIENT: But it could be now, surely, couldn’t it?

  DOCTOR Y: Well now, what’s next?

  PATIENT: Perhaps Jamaica. I’m a bit further South than usual.

  DOCTOR Y: You’ve been talking practically non-stop for days. Did you know that?

  PATIENT: You told me to talk. I don’t mind thinking instead.

  DOCTOR Y: Well, whatever you do, remember this: you aren’t on a raft on the Atlantic. You did not lose your friends into the arms of a flying saucer. You were never a sailor.

  PATIENT: Then why do I think I’m one?

  DOCTOR Y: What’s your real name?

  PATIENT: Crafty.

  DOCTOR Y: Where do you live?

  PATIENT: Here.

  DOCTOR Y: What’s your wife’s name?

  PATIENT: Have I got a wife? What is she called?

  DOCTOR Y: Tell me, why won’t you ever talk to Doctor X? He’s rather hurt about it. I would be too.

  PATIENT: I’ve told you already, I can’t see him.

  DOCTOR Y: Well, we are getting rather worried. We don’t know what to do. It’s nearly two weeks since you came in. The police don’t know who you are. There’s only one thing we are fairly certain about: and that is that you aren’t any sort of a sailor, professional or amateur. Tell me, did you read a lot of sailing stories as a boy?

  PATIENT: Man and boy.

  DOCTOR Y: What’s George’s surname? And Charlie’s surname?

  PATIENT: Funny, I can’t think of them … yes of course, we all had the same name. The name of the ship.

  DOCTOR Y: What was the name of the ship?

  PATIENT: I can’t remember. And she’s foundered or wrecked long ago. And the raft never had a name. You don’t call a raft as you call a person.

  DOCTOR Y: Why shouldn’t you name the raft? Give your raft a name now?

  PATIENT: How can I name the raft when I don’t know my own name. I’m called … what? Who calls me? What? Why? You are Doctor Why, and I am called Why—that’s it, it was the good ship Why that foundered in the Guinea Current, leaving Who on the slippery raft and …

  DOCTOR Y: Just a minute. I’ll be away for four or five days. Doctor X will be looking after you till I get back. I’ll be in to see you the moment I’m back again.

  PATIENT: In and out, out and in, in and out …

  New treatment. Librium. 3 Tofronil 3 t.a.d.

  DOCTOR X. 29TH AUGUST.

  The sea is rougher than it was. As the raft tilts up the side of a wave I see fishes curling above my head, and when the wave comes crashing over me fishes and weed slide slithering over my face, to rejoin the sea. As my raft climbs up up up to the crest the fishes look eye to eye with me out of the wall of water. There’s that air creature, they think, just before they go slop over my face and shoulders, while I think as they touch and slide, they are water creatures, they belong to wet. The wave curls and furls in its perfect whirls holding in it three deep sea fish that have come up to see the sky, a tiddler fit for ponds or jam jars, and the crispy sparkle of plankton, which is neither visible nor invisible, but a bright crunch in the imagination. If men are creatures of air, and fishes whether big or small creatures of sea, what then are the creatures of fire? Ah yes, I know, but you did not see me, you overlooked me, you snatched up my comrades and let me lie squeaking inside my fold of smelly blanket. Where are they, my friends? Administering justice, are they, from the folds of fire, looking at me eye to eye out of the silkily waving fronds of fire. Look, there’s a man, that’s an air creature, they think, breathing yellow flame as we breathe H2O. There’s something about that gasping gape, they think—George? poor Charlie?—that merits recognition. But they are beyond air now, and the inhabitants of it. They are flame throwers. They are fire storms. You think justice is a kindly commodity? No, it razes, it throws down, it cuts swathes. The waves are so steep, they crash so fast and furious I’m more under than up. They are teaching men—men are teaching men—to have fishes’ lungs, men learn to breathe water. If I take a deep breath of water will my lungs’ tissues adapt in the space of a wave’s fall and shout: Yes, yes, you up there, you, sailor, breathe deep and we’ll carry you on water as we carried you on air? After all They must have had to teach my friends George and Charles and James and the rest to take deep lungfuls of fire. You’re not telling me that when the Crystal swirl enveloped me with the others it was ordinary air we breathed then, no, it was a cool fire, sun’s breath, the solar wind, but there are lungs attached to men that lie as dormant as those of a babe in the womb, and they are waiting for the solar wind to fill them like sails. Air lungs for air, but organs made of crystal sound, of singing light, for the solar wind that will blow my love to me. Or me onwards to my love. Oh the waves rear so tall, they pitch and grow and soar, I’m more under than up, my raft is a little cork on the draughty sea and I’m sick, oh I’m so sick, pitch and toss, toss and pitch, my poor poor head and my lungs, if I stay on this thick heavy slimy barnacled raft which is shrieking and straining as the great seas crash then I’ll puke my heart out and fall fainting away into the deep sea swells. I’ll leave the raft, then.

  Oh no, no, no, I’ve shed my ship, the good ship Why, and I’ve clung like limpets to my new hard bed the raft and now how can I leave, to go spinning down into the forests of the sea like a sick bird. But if I found a rock or an islet? Silly, there are no rocks or isles or islands or ports of call in the middle of the wide Atlantic sea here at 45 degrees on the Equator. But the raft is breaking up. It breaks. There were only ordinary sea ropes to fasten the balsa poles side by side and across and through, and what ropes could I ever find that could hold this clumsy collection of cross rafters steady in this sea? It’s a storm. It’s a typhoon. The sky is thunder black and with a sick yellowish white at the cloud’s edge and the waves are blue Stephen’s black and higher than the church tower and all the world is wet and cold and my ears are singing like the ague. And there goes my raft, splitting apart under me like bits of straw in the eddy of a kitchen gutter. There it goes, and I’m afloat, reaching out for straws or even a fishbone. I’m all awash and drowning and I’m cold, oh I am so cold, I’m cold where all my own inside vital warmth should be held, there along my spine and in my belly but
there it is cold cold as the moon. Down and down, but the corky sea upsends me to the light again, and there under my hand is rock, a port in the storm, a little peaking black rock that no main mariner has struck before me, nor map ever charted, just a single black basalt rock, which is the uppermost tip of a great mountain a mile or two high, whose lower slopes are all great swaying forests through which the sea buffalo herd and graze. And here I’ll cling until the storm goes and the light comes clear again. Here at last I can stay still, the rock is still, having thrust up from the ocean floor a million years ago and quite used to staking its claim and holding fast in the Atlantic gales. Here is a long cleft in the rock, a hollow, and in here I’ll fit myself till morning. Oh now I’m a land creature again, and entitled to a sleep steady and easy. I and the rock which is a mountain’s tip are solid together and now it is the sea that moves and pours. Steady now. Still. The storm has gone and the sun is out on a flat calm solid sea with its surface gently rocking and not flying about all over the place as if the ocean wanted to dash itself to pieces. A hot singing salty sea, pouring Westwards past me to the Indies next stop, but pouring past me, fast on my rock. Fast Asleep. Fast. Asleep.

  NURSE: Wake up. Wake up there’s a dear. Come on, no that’s it. Sit up, all right I’m holding you.

  PATIENT: Why? What for?

  NURSE: You must have something to eat. All right you can go back to sleep in a minute. But you certainly can sleep, can’t you?

  PATIENT: Why make me sleep if you keep waking me up?

  NURSE: You aren’t really supposed to be sleeping quite so much. You are supposed to be relaxed and quiet, but you do sleep.

  PATIENT: Who supposes? Who gave me the pills?

  NURSE: Yes but—well never mind. Drink this.

  PATIENT: That’s foul.

  NURSE: It’s soup. Good hot soup.

  PATIENT: Let me alone. You give me pills and then you keep waking me up.

  NURSE: Keep waking you? I don’t. It’s like trying to wake a rock. Are you warm?

  PATIENT: The sun’s out, the sun …

  Who has not lain hollowed in hot rock,

  Leaned to the loose and lazy sound of water,

  Sunk into sound as one who hears the boom

  Of tides pouring in a shell, or blood

  Along the inner caverns of the flesh,

  Yet clinging like sinking man to sight of sun, Clinging to distant sun or voices calling?

  NURSE: A little more, please.

  PATIENT: I’m not hungry. I’ve learned to breathe water. It’s full of plankton you know. You can feed your lungs as you feed your stomach.

  NURSE: Is that so dear? Well, don’t go too far with it, you’ll have to breathe air again.

  PATIENT: I’m breathing air now. I’m on the rock you see.

  See him then as the bird might see

  Who rocks like pinioned ship on warm rough air,

  Coming from windspaced fields to ocean swells

  That rearing fling gigantic mass on mass

  Patient and slow against the stubborn land,

  Striving to achieve what strange reversal

  Of that monstrous birth when through long ages

  Labouring, appeared a weed-stained limb,

  A head, at last the body of the land,

  Fretted and worn for ever by a mothering sea

  A jealous sea that loves her ancient pain.

  NURSE: Why don’t you go and sit for a bit in the day room? Aren’t you tired of being in bed all the time?

  PATIENT: A jealousy that loves. Her pain.

  NURSE: Have you got a pain? Where?

  PATIENT: Not me. You. Jealously loving and nursing pain.

  NURSE: I haven’t got a pain I assure you.

  PATIENT: He floats on lazy wings down miles of foam,

  And there, below, the small spreadeagled shape

  Clinging to black rock like drowning man,

  Who feels the great bird overhead and knows

  That he may keep no voices, wings or winds

  Who follows hypnotised down glassy gulfs,

  His roaring ears extinguished by the flood.

  NURSE: Take these pills dear, that’s it.

  PATIENT: Who has not sunk as drowned man sinks,

  Through sunshot layers where still the under-curve

  Of lolling wave holds light like light in glass,

  Where still a jewelled fish slides by like bird,

  And then the middle depths where all is dim

  Diffusing light like depths of forest floor.

  He falls, he falls, past apprehensive arms

  And spiny jaws and treacherous pools of death,

  Till finally he rests on ocean bed.

  Here rocks are tufted with lit fern, and fish

  Swim shimmering phosphorescent through the weed,

  And shoals of light float blinking past like eyes,

  Here all the curious logic of the night.

  Is this sweet drowned woman floating in her hair?

  The sea-lice hop on pale rock scalp like toads.

  And this a gleam of opalescent flesh?

  The great valves shut like white doors folding close.

  Stretching and quavering like the face of one

  Enhanced through chloroform, the smiling face

  Of her long half-forgotten, her once loved,

  Rises like thin moon through watery swathes,

  And passes wall-eyed as the long dead moon.

  He is armed with the indifference of deep-sea sleep

  And floats immune through searoots fed with flesh,

  Where skeletons are bunched against cave roofs

  Like swarms of bleaching spiders quivering,

  While crouching engines crusted with pale weed,

  Their shafts and pistons rocking through the green…

  NURSE: Now do come on dear. Oh dear, you are upset, aren’t you? Everybody has bad times, every one gets upset from time to time. I do myself. Think of it like that.

  PATIENT: Not everyone has known these depths

  The black uncalculated wells of sea,

  Where any gleam of day dies far above,

  And stagnant water slow and thick and foul …

  NURSE: It’s no good spitting your pills out.

  PATIENT: Foul, fouled, fouling, all fouled up …

  NURSE: One big swallow, that will do it, that’s done it.

  PATIENT: You wake me and you sleep me. You wake me and then you push me under. I’ll wake up now. I want to wake.

  NURSE: Sit up then.

  PATIENT: But what is this stuff, what are these pills, how can I wake when you … who is that man who pushes me under, who makes me sink as drowned man sinks and …

  NURSE: Doctor X thinks this treatment will do you good.

  PATIENT: Where’s the other, the fighting man?

  NURSE: If you mean Doctor Y, he’ll be back soon.

  PATIENT: I must come up from the sea’s floor. I must brave the surface of the sea, storms or no, because They will never find me down there. Bad enough to expect Them to come into our heavy air, all smoky and fouled as it is, but to expect them down at the bottom of the sea with all the drowned ships, no that’s not reasonable. No I must come up and give them a chance to see me there, hollowed in hot rock.

  NURSE: Yes, well, all right. But don’t thrash about like that … for goodness’ sake.

  PATIENT: Goodness is another thing. I must wake up. I must. I must keep watch. Or I’ll never get out and away.

  NURSE: Well I don’t know really. Perhaps that treatment isn’t right for you? But you’d better lie down then. That’s right. Turn over. Curl up. There. Hush. Hushhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

  PATIENT: Hushabye baby

  lulled by the storm

  if you don’t harm her

  she’ll do you no harm

  I’ve been robbed of sense. I’ve been made without resource. I have become inflexible in a flux. When I was on the Good Ship Lollipop, I was held there by
wind and sea. When I was on the raft, there was nobody there but me. On this rock I’m fast. Held. I can’t do more than hold on. And wait. Or plunge like a diver to the ocean floor where it is as dark as a fish’s gut and there’s nowhere to go but up. But I do have an alternative, yes. I can beg a lift can’t I? cling on to the coattails of a bird or a fish. If dogs are the friends of man, what are a sailor’s friends? Porpoises. They love us. Like to like they say, though when has a porpoise killed a man, and we have killed so many and for curiosity, not even for food’s or killing’s sake. A porpoise will take me to my love. A sleek-backed singing shiny black porpoise with loving eyes and a long whistler’s beak. Hold on there porpoise, poor porpoise in your poisoned sea, filled with stinking effluent from the bowels of man, and waste from the murderous mind of man, don’t die yet, hold on, hold me, and take me out of this frozen grinding Northern circuit down and across into the tender Southern-running current and the longed-for shores. There now. Undersea if you have to, I can breathe wet if I must, but above sea if you can, in case I may hail a passing friend who has taken the shape of a shaft of fire or a dapple of light. There, porpoise, am I true weight? A kind creature? Kith and Kind? Just take me South, lead me to the warmer current, oh now it is rough, we toss and heave as it was in the Great Storm, when my raft fell apart like straw, but I know now this is a good cross patch, it is creative, oh what a frightful stress, what a strain, and now out, yes out, we’re well out, and still swimming West, but South West, but anti-clock Wise, whereas before it was West with the clock and no destination but the West Indies and Florida and past the Sargasso Sea and the Gulf Stream and the West Wind Drift and the Canaries Current and around and around and around and around but now, oh porpoise, on this delicate soap bubble our earth, spinning all blue and green and iridescent, where Northwards air and water swirl in time’s direction left to right, great spirals of breath and light and water, now oh porpoise, singing friend, we are on the other track, and I’ll hold on, I’ll clasp and clutch to the last breath of your patience, being patient, till you land me on that beach at last, for oh porpoise, you must be sure and take me there, you must land me fairly at last, you must not let me cycle South too far, dragging in the Brazil current of my mind, no, but let me gently step off your slippery back on to the silver sand of the Brazilian coast where, lifting your eyes, rise the blue and green heights of the Brazilian Highlands. There, there, is my true destination and my love, so, purpose, be sure to hold your course.