Nightspawn by John Banville Read Free Book Online Page B

when the things he had lost and destroyed sent their little creatures to disturb him. He tried to make a pipe from the wild reeds, but he failed. Then he turned to the sand and tried to build something, anything, but it fell asunder in his hands. So he watched the coming and going of the sea, and listened to the days go away, and smelled the winds, and felt the world grow older. And he tasted the bitter fruits of freedom. One day, who should come walking on the beach but the old man from the mountains. He named for Cain those bitter fruits, calling them loss, and dread, and something else for which the only name is wormwood. And then he went away.’
    I looked at the still figure before me. Now in the moonlight I could see a little better, but not well enough, no.
    ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Did you like that fairytale?’
    There was a short, and, it seemed to me, a thoughtful pause. The figure stirred, and slipped down like liquid shadow to the ground. The voice spoke, indifferent and drowsy.
    ‘Who have you ever killed?’
    ‘That I’m not able to tell you,’ I said, and put my head uponthe carpet of pine needles.
    Time passed.
    ‘Ah, dear god,’ said I.
    So we lay, somewhat together, sighing and shifting, listening to the voices of tree and grass, the whisper of the wind stealthily dismantling the forest floor, the murmur of things, and beyond that, the deeper sounds, the far wild silences and music of the night.
    Dark, dark.
13
    Leave this place. Too many fanged and flesh-devouring beasts are slouching through the undergrowth. I have not the courage.
14
    The day was crazed with the wind tearing the rocks and bushes, and the land tormented by a thundering purple sea. The sun was well off the horizon, touching the sky, in spite of the storm, with a brave and delicate blue, the burnt hills with gold. A fine salt spray was threaded in the air. It stung my lips and eyes as I slowly climbed the hill. My skin was suffused with a dry fire, burning yet with the sour dregs of too much alcohol, and the roots of my hair pained me when the wind shook it. I was dressed in faded denim, and the shirt was open at my throat. Sandals bound my dust-soiled feet. I needed a shave. There is nothing else. What my thoughts were is my own affair. As to the method by which I was returned from the holy island to this profane one, I had only vague and dubious recollections.
    The house was built into a recess of the hill, so that the rear side of the roof was always shaded, while the front wall blazed in the sunlight with a bluish blinding ferocity. The original had been a two-roomed structure of severe simplicity, but Julian had added to it year by year, and now it clambered up and down the hillface in a confusing jumble of planes and ledges. I stoppedby the gate, my hand on the crumbling stone pillar, and took a deep breath to clear the wool from my eyes. Around the corner of one wall, an ear, a ragged curl of hair, and a fat hand holding a cane were visible. I walked toward that corner over the quiet dust. Julian stood there, very still, peering down into the ground at his feet, like someone waiting for the punchline of a joke, for the arse of the fat man’s trousers to burst. I think he knew that I was there, watching him. I think he was waiting for me.
    ‘Good morning,’ I said, but the words did not come out of my mouth. I coughed and tried again, and produced a slightly more successful croak. Julian started melodramatically and turned, a smile already forming on his goatish jowls.
    ‘Ah, Mr White, you came. How are you? Recovered from last night, eh?’
    ‘Somewhat.’
    ‘You shouldn’t drink so much, you know,’ he said roguishly.
    We looked at each other for a moment of awkward silence (at least my side of the silence was awkward) and then our gazes slipped elsewhere. Julian cut with his cane three neatly considered lines in the dust beside his malformed foot. He said something, but the wind whirled his words away.
    ‘What?’ I