Shardik (82 page)

Kelderek picked the
little
girl up in his arms.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you, if you like. It’s only a hunting mantis - several, probably.’

Radu followed them along the bank. At close quarters the flowers of the creeper gave off a heavy fragrance and great moths, their dark-blue wings broad as the palm of a man’s hand, were coming and going in the dusky air. High up, beneath an open bloom, one of these was struggling in the grip of a mantis crouched for prey among the flowers. They could see the long, crural shape of the insect half-hidden in the leaves, its front legs clutching the moth, which it had evid
ently
seized as it hovered at the bloom. Its head turned this way and that with an eerie suggestion of intelligence as it followed the frenzied tugging of its victim, so violent that both the mantis and the surrounding creeper to which it was clinging were shaken in a rhythm light and rapid as the beating of the wings themselves. As often as the moth weakened, the mantis would pull it towards its jaws and again the struggle would break out. As
Kelderek
and Shara watched, a second moth was caught beneath a bloom some yards away, but after a few seconds tore itself clear, the mantis, as its hold was broken, being jerked forward among the leaves below its perch. Meanwhile the first moth faltered, its beautiful wings ceased at last to beat and in an instant the mantis had pulled it in and begun to devour it. The severed wings, first one and then the other, fluttered to the ground.

‘Come back out of there, damn you!’ cried Shouter, striding towards them along the bank. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

‘Don’t worry,’ answered Radu, as they returned and joined the other children already crowding round Shouter for their handfuls of food. ‘We’d hardly get far, you know.’

Darkness fell and the children, lying down for the night, were once more chained through the ears.
Kelderek
, separated from Radu as before, found himself at the inner end of a chain, on one side of him Shouter himself and on the other the child who had been savaged by Bled during the afternoon. In the dark the latter resumed his steady, monotonous sobbing, but Shouter, if he heard, presumably thought that no entertainment could be derived from trying to stop him. After a time
Kelderek
stretched out his hand to the boy, but he only shrank away and, after a few moments’ silence, began to sob more loudly. Still Shouter said nothing and Kelderek, afraid of what he might do and too much exhausted and dispirited to persevere with his clumsy attempts at comfort, let his pity and the other fragments of his thoughts dissolve into sleep while the mosquitoes, unhindered, fastened on his limbs.

The old woman of Gelt came hobbling slowly up
the
shore, her rags speckled in the half-moon’s light, her feet noiseless on the stones.
Kelderek
watched her approach, puzzled at first but then, recognizing her, acquiescent in the knowledge that she was the creature of a dream. G
ently
, she drew the chain from his car and he even seemed to feel the pain as the links passe
d one by one through the enflame
d, tender lobe. Then she remained kneeling above him, looking down and mumbling with her sunken mouth.

‘ ‘Think no one
sees,
they think no one sees,’ she whispered. ‘But God sees.’

‘What is it, grandmother?’ asked
Kelderek
. ‘What’s happened?’

She was carrying the dead child in her arms, as she had carried it years before, but now it was closely wrapped, muffled from head to foot. It was nothing but a shape under her cloak.

‘I’m looking for the governor-man from Bekla,’ she said, ‘I’m going to tell him - only it’s a long time now -‘

‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘I’m the governor-man from Bekla: and all this misery is my doing, all of it.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Ah. Bless you, sir, bless you. Look here, sir, yes, at that rate you’ll want to.’

She laid her burden on the ground. The wrappings were fastened at the head with the chain from his ear, but this she unwound, coiling it away and drawing apart the covering round the face.

The eyes were dosed, the checks lustreless and waxen; but the dead child lying on the stones was Melathys. Her lips were a
little
apart, but nothing stirred the leaf which the old woman held to them. Weeping, he looked up, and saw under her ragged hood that she was Rantzay.

‘She’s not dead, Rantzay!’
he cried. ‘Wake her, Rantzay, you must wake her!’

Rantzay made no reply, and as her lean fingers grasped and shook his shoulder he understood that she too was dead. He writhed away from her, filled with a dreadful sense of loss and desolation.

‘Wake! Come on, wake !
’

It was Shouter’s face above his own, whispering urg
ently
, foetid breath stinking, itching of insect bites, stones sharp under the spine and the faint light of day stealing into the sky beyond the
Telthearna
. Whimpering of the children in sleep and clicking of chains against the stones.

‘It’s me, you mucking idiot. Don’t make a noise. I’ve pulled the
chain out your car. I
f you don’t want to go to Tereke
nalt, then come on, for God’s sake!’

Kelderek got up. His skin felt
a
single sheet of irritant bites and th
e river swam before his eyes. Sti
ll half in his dream, he looked round for
the
dead body in
the
shallows, but it was gone. He took
a
step forward, slipped and fell on the stones. Someone else, neither Rantzay nor Shouter, was speaking.

‘What were you doing, Shoute
r, eh?’

‘Nothing,’ answered Shouter.

‘Took his chain out, have you? Where were you going?
¹
‘He wanted to shit, didn’t he? ‘Think I’m going to let him shit up against
me
?’

Genshed
made no reply, but drew his knife and began pressing the point against the ball first of one finger and then of another. After
a
few moments he opened his clothes and urinated over Shouter, the boy standing
still
as a post while he did so.

‘Remember Kevenant, do you?’ murmured
Genshed
.

‘Kevenant?’ said Shouter, his voice cracking
with
incipient hysteria. ‘What’s Kevenant got to do with it? Who’s talking about Kevenant ?’

‘Remember what he looked like, do you, when we were finished with him?’

Shouter made no answer, but as
Genshed
took the lobe of his ear between one finger and thumb he was seized with an uncontrollable trembling.

‘Sec, you’re just a silly
little
bo
y, Shoute
r, aren’t you?’ said
Genshed
, twisting slowly, so that Shouter sank to his knees on the stones. ‘Just a silly little boy, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ whispered
Shouter
.

The point of the knife brushed along his closed eyelid and he tried to draw back his head, but was stopped by the twisting of his ear. ‘See all right,
Shouter
, can you?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Sure you can see all right?’ ‘Yes! Yes!’

‘Sec what I mean, can you?’ ‘Yes!’

‘Only I get everywhere, don’t I, Shouter? If you were over there, I’d be there too, woul
dn’t I?’ ‘
Yes.’

‘Do your work all right,
Shouter
, can you?’ ‘Yes, I can! Yes, I can!’

‘Funny, I thought perhaps you couldn’t. Like Kevenant.
’

‘No, I can! I can!
I treat ‘em worse than Bled doe
s. They’re all afraid of me!’

‘Keep still, Shouter. I’m going to do you a favour. I’m just going to clean under your nails with the point of my knife. Only I wouldn
‘t
want my hand to slip.’

The sweat ran down Shouter’s face, over his upper lip, over his lower lip bitten between his teeth, over his slobbered chin. When at last Genshed r
eleased him and walked away, sheath
ing the knife at his belt, he pitched forward into the shallows, but was up again in a moment. In silence he washed himself, threaded the chain back through
Kelderek
‘s ear, fastened it to his belt and lay down.

Half an hour later Genshed himself distributed the last of the food; crumbs and fragments shaken from the bottom of the pack.

‘The next lot’s in Linsho, understand?’ said Shouter to Radu. ‘You see to it that they all understand that. Either we get to mucking Linsho today or we start eating each other.’

Kelderek
was combing Shara’s hair between his fingers and searching her head for lice. Although he had eaten what he had been given, he now felt so faint and tortured with hunger that he could no longer collect his wits. The figure of
Melathys
lying dead seemed to hover continually in the tail of his eye, and as often as it appeared he turned his head quickly, fumbling and clutching with his hands, until Shara grew impatient and wandered away up the shore.

‘Someone stole her coloured stones after we were unchained this morning,’ said Radu.

Kelderek
did not answer, having suddenly made the important discovery of the futility of wasting energy in speech. Speech, he now realized, involved so much unprofitable effort - thinking of words, moving lips to utter them, listening to a reply and grasping what it meant - that it was an altogether foolish thing on which to squander one’s strength. To stand upright, to walk, to disentangle the chain, to remember to
avoid catching Bled’s eye - these
were
the
things for which energy needed to be stored.

They were moving again, to be sure, for that was his chain clicking on the stones. But this walking was not the same. How was it different? In what way had
they
all changed? In his mind’s eye he seemed to look down on them from above as they wound their way along the shore. Hither and thither they went, like ants over a stone, but much slower; like torpid beetles in autumn, on their clambering journeys up and down the long miles of grass-stems. And now indeed he perceived plainly, though without concern, what had befallen. They had become part of the insect world, where all was simple; and from henceforth would simply be lived, untroubled by

conscious volition. They needed no speech, no feelings,
no
hearing,
no
awareness one of another. For days at a time they would
even
require no food. They would not know whether they were ugly or beautiful, happy or unhappy, good or bad, for
th
ese
terms had no meaning. Appetite and s
atiety, scuttl
ing energy and motionless torpor, ferocity and helplessness - these were their poles. Their short lives would soon end, prey to winter, prey to larger creatures, prey to one another; but
this
too was a matter of no regard.

Still
f
asci
na
ted and preoccupied by this new insight, he found himself climbing over some obstacle that had almost tripped him. Something fairly heavy and smooth, though yielding. Something with sticks in it - a bundle of rags with sticks in it, no, his chain had caught, bend down, now it was free, yes, of course, the obstacle was a human body - that was the head, there - now he had climbed over it, it was gone and
the
stones had returned as before.
He
closed his eyes against the glitter of the river and set himself doggedly to the task of keeping upright and taking steps; one step, another step, another.

Suddenly a cry s
ounded from behind him. ‘ Stop! Stop!
’

Like a bubble out of dark ooze, his mind rose slowly into the former world of hearing, of seeing, of comprehension. He turned, to perceive Radu, with Shara beside him, kneeling over a body on the stones. Several of the boys, startled as he had been by the cry, had stopped and were moving uncertainly towards them. From somewhere in front Shouter was yelling, ‘What the muck’s happened?’

He limped back. Radu was supporting the boy’s head on one arm and splashing water over his face. It was the boy whom Bled had savaged the day before. His eyes were closed and
Kelderek
could not make out whether he was breathing or not.