LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Epigraph

      Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

      Afterword

       Read On

       The Grass is Singing

       The Golden Notebook

       The Good Terrorist

       Love, Again

       The Fifth Child

      About the Author

       Also by the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Briefing for a Descent Into Hell

      Category:

      Inner-space fiction

      For there is never anywhere to go but in.

      CENTRAL INTAKE HOSPITAL

      General Remarks

      … At midnight the police found Patient wandering on the Embankment near Waterloo Bridge. They took him into the station thinking he was drunk or drugged. They describe him as Rambling, Confused and Amenable. Brought him to us at 3 a.m. by ambulance. During admittance Patient attempted several times to lie down on the desk. He seemed to think it was a boat or a raft. Police are checking ports, ships, etc. Patient was well-dressed but had not changed his clothes for some time. He did not seem very hungry or thirsty. He was wearing trousers and a sweater, but he had no papers or wallet or money or marks of identity. Police think he was robbed. He is an educated man. He was given two Libriums but did not sleep. He was talking loudly. Patient was moved into the small Observation ward as he was disturbing the other Patients.

      NIGHT NURSE 6 a.m.

      Patient has been awake all day, rambling, hallucinated, animated. Two Librium three-hourly. Police no information. Clothes sent for tracing, but unlikely to yield results: chainstore sweater and shirt and underclothes. Trousers Italian. Patient still under the impression he is on some sort of voyage. Police say possibly an amateur or a yachtsman.

      DOCTOR Y. 6 p.m.

      I need a wind. A good strong wind. The air is stagnant. The current must be pounding along at a fair rate. Yes, but I can’t feel it. Where’s my compass? That went days ago, don’t you remember? I need a wind, a good strong wind. I’ll whistle for one. I would whistle for one if I had paid the piper. A wind from the East, hard on to my back, yes. Perhaps I am still too near the shore? After so many days at sea, too near the shore? But who knows, I might have drifted back again inshore. Oh no, no, I’ll try rowing. The oars are gone, don’t you remember, they went days ago. No, you must be nearer landfall than you think. The Cape Verde Islands were to starboard—when? Last week. Last when? That was no weak, that was my wife. The sea is saltier here than close inshore. A salt, salt sea, the brine coming flecked off the horses’ jaws to mine. On my face, thick crusts of salt. I can taste it. Tears, seawater. I can taste salt from the sea. From the desert. The deserted sea. Sea horses. Dunes. The wind flicks sand from the crest of dunes, spins off the curl of waves. Sand moves and sways and masses itself into waves, but slower. Slow. The eye that would measure the pace of sand horses, as I watch the rolling gallop of sea horses would be an eye indeed. Aye Aye. I. I could catch a horse, perhaps and ride it, but for me a sea horse, no horse of sand, since my time is man-time and it is God for deserts. Some ride dolphins. Plenty have testified. I may leave my sinking raft and cling to the neck of a sea horse, all the way to Jamaica and poor Charlie’s Nancy, or, if the current swings me south at last, to the coast where the white bird is waiting.

      Round and round and round I go, the Diamond Coast, the Canary Isles, a dip across the Tropic of Cancer and up and across with a shout at the West Indies to port, where Nancy waits for her poor Charlie, and around, giving the Sargasso Sea a miss to starboard, with Florida florissant to port, and around and around, in the swing of the Gulf Stream, and around, with the Azores just outside the turn of my elbow, and down, past the coasts of Portugal where my Conchita waits for me, passing Madeira, passing the Canaries, always en passant, to the Diamond Coast again, and so around, and so around again and again, for ever and ever unless the current swings me South. But that current could never take me South, not. A current is set in itself, inexorable as a bus route. The clockwise current of the Northern seas must carry me, carry me, unless

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