The words themselves are just
standing there in the desert. Describing nothing, they stand as monuments: separate,
unconnected, devoid of meaning. I do not have the strength to dig them out of
the wind-blown sand, to move them and make shapes out of them, shapes both
pleasing and sensible.
I carve the shapes, the
words, from the rocks I find as I wander the desert, leaving them where I find
them. This desert - in the valley between the two hills - is now littered with
the words I have carved, some almost buried by the wind-shifted sand. They
stand like statues or monoliths, isolated from each other by the uneven rise
and fall of the dunes at the valley sides.
Down there, on the plain,
there are other carved stone words, left where I tried to arrange them, tried
to find some meaning amongst them. I gave up on that a long time ago. The heat
made it too hard to shift the heavy stones. The words lie where I last moved
them, half-formed sentences and phrases - nothing more.
I used to want to form
patterns, pleasing patterns, find meaning among these stones. But now, once
they are carved, I leave them, feeling I have done enough.
The woman in white stands
watching from the opposite hillside. Her dark hair and long flowing white dress
fluttering like banners in the breeze. At her side, the black panther sits
patiently, the pupils of its eyes slits against the bright sunlight.
I tried, once, to go to speak
with the woman. As I climbed the hillside the panther stood and strained
against its chain. I saw the woman's hand tighten on the lead as she held up
her other hand for me to stop. I knew she meant it, and I could hear the low
purring growl of the panther as its pupils widened. I paused, then turned back.
At the bottom of the hill, I turned again and looked back. The panther was
sitting down once more, relaxed, and the woman was watching me carefully.
Twice every day another woman
- totally hairless - and naked, except for a leather collar arrives. She
carries a decanter of red wine and a glass on a silver tray to the woman in
white. She waits, motionless, next to the black panther as the woman in white
sips the wine. Only two glasses - always just two glasses. Then the hairless
woman climbs sedately back over the brow of the hill and out of sight.
*
It is nearly time for Gina to
arrive, I have no clock in my room, nothing except my bed, my desk, my chair and
my notebook; but somehow I always know when it is time for her to arrive. I get
this feeling. A feeling of... what?
Immanence, I suppose. Expectation, perhaps? I wish I knew the words.
Apparently, I used to know the words, words for everything. It used to be a
major part of my job, so they say, but I have no way of knowing, not anymore.
Gina said - I think it was
yesterday - "Why should I lie to you?"
And I said: "Lie?"
I didn't know what the word
meant. Gina explained it to me, but I am still not sure that I understand. Why
should anyone say something that is not true?
I suppose the rain will fall
again today. It has rained for the last... how many days? Three, I think, or it
could be four.... I don't know, I can't really remember. It is hard to remember
anything these days.
I walk to the window every
now and then, and look out. There is not much to see, just the grass and that
big old tree. Its leaves are turning brown, yellow, even golden now, so I
presume it must be autumn. It is hard to tell, but I suppose the tree could not
lie.
It looks cold out there. How
I know that I do not know, I may just be inferring it from the tree losing its
leaves, or maybe it is something about the light, the sunlight. It looks
bright, when it is not raining that is, but it is a thin kind of light, as
though it carries no power... no power of warmth, not like the sun in that
desert.
Occasionally, I get the
desire to go out. A desire to feel the wind, the sunlight, even the rain. I
have asked, but they refuse. They say it is not time yet. When it will be time
I have no idea, I'm not sure they do either, they are vague about that as they
are vague - dismissive even - of a lot of things I ask them for. But, in other
ways, they are very good. As long as I ask for immediate things; particular
food, the light, a change of clothing, my wish is granted immediately and with
easy smiles.
As long as what I ask for can
be given here, in this room, then they are glad, eager even, to grant my wish.
But if I refer to anything outside the room, anything concerned with the
future, or even if I do have a future, then they stop smiling. I sometimes feel
that I have offended them in some strange, obscure way. I do not want to offend
them, I am sure they are doing their best, doing what they think is right for
me. I have no way of knowing, of course, if what they are doing is right, but
they say I should trust them, they are professionals.
*
The woman in white stays with
me. She is always near, but standing a little way off. She does not speak to
me, only stands there watching me. The only response I get from her is to be
waved away whenever I get too close to her.
If I ignore her gestures and
try to get to her, then she slips away before I can get close to her. She never
allows herself to get into a position where I could trap her. For some reason,
though, I do not wish to trap her, catch her, chase her, or any of those
things. I think that she needs the distance and that it is not yet the right
time for us.
Eventually, I know, she will
allow me to get close to her, talk to her. She will explain things to me, and I
will - at last - understand. But first, I have to move these rocks, carved into
words, into a form that will satisfy her.
Only then will I feel
justified in trying to approach her. I have a feeling that she will make some
kind of sign, some kind of signal, that I may approach her. She will tell me so
many things I need to know, new ways of arranging these rocks. I need her to tell
me how to arrange them and she needs me to arrange them for her.
She stands on that hillside,
looking down at me. She knows I have this job to do, but she does not offer any
help or assistance. Not, of course, that I would really expect such a thing from
her. I get the impression - how, I do not know - that her daily visits to the
hilltop are a kind of indulgence, a whim, on her part. She does not need to
visit my valley.
In the long run her visits
change nothing, except to encourage me in some strange, obscure way. My day
does not seem real until I look up to the hillside and see her there.
Yesterday, I looked up and
saw the gesture of greeting when she arrived. It was unmistakable, but still I
hesitated, not sure how to respond. It was the first time she had ever really
acknowledged my existence since that abortive attempt to climb the hill towards
her.
Out here, the nights get cold
and dark. The animals come out at night searching for each other. The night is
punctured by their screams and cries. I sit in the shelter of the stones, a
small fire in front of me, waiting for sleep to take me away from here and out
to a stranger life.
When I woke up, the naked
servant-woman was kneeling in front of the dead embers of my fire, watching me.
She stood and signalled for me to follow her.
"Where are we
going?" I said.
She did not reply, just
turned and walked up the slope of the hill. She glanced back a couple of times
to make sure I was following her. We walked in silence, me a few paces behind
her. She walked easily and calmly, her bare feet hardly disturbing the soft
sand. After around twenty minutes, we reached the crest of the third dune. I
looked down as I stood beside her. The palace, surrounded by a low wall and a
garden of spindly trees, stood in the valley bottom.
*
"Gina, you were in my
dreams last night again. I dreamt you were this queen, princess, or something,
living in a desert palace. Kirsty was your servant."
"Oh, the desert. I dream
about the desert all the time these days." Gina laughed and walked towards
the window. "One day when you are better we will have to go back and
search for that palace. I know it is not a story - a myth. I know it is
somewhere in that desert. Kirsty and I have done all the research. We know where
it is, we are certain this time."
"It is always the same
in my dream. I am stuck in a desert with all these stones, trying to carve
words into them, words that make some sort of sense, while you stand up on the
top of a hill looking down at me." I sat down at the table, aligning the
edge of my notebook to lie parallel with the side of the table.
"It all began simply
enough," I said. "Just a handful of words, like dust in my palm. I
felt I could breathe on them, and then watch them fly and fall into the sand at
my feet, drifting into the dunes behind me which were hiding all I could once
see. While in front of me the horizon drew ever closer on a landscape barer
than I expected it to be. I had visions of what I would find as I walked across
those sands: Towns, villages, temples, people. So many strange and exotic
sights. Off in the distance, I have seen the shape of - what might be - a
town... or something. But I have never
been able to get any further before the storms drive me back, keeping me at bay,
trapped there."
*
The servant girl led me
across the bare marble floor of the empty palace. I could hear only the gentle
slap of he bare feet and the squeak of the soles of my shoes as we walked
through the bare deserted rooms.
The woman in white was seated
in a throne in the largest of the rooms, with the black panther slouched at her
feet. She motioned for me to sit on the steps of her throne. I sat and the
servant girl poured us both a glass of wine.
"Have you ever seen the
city in the distance?" The woman in white said.
I nodded. "I think
so."
"Once we could walk
there, but not anymore. The world of the city and this, what's left of our
world, are separated now. The desert lies between them and us, and no-one is
brave - or foolish - enough to attempt to cross it. There were, in my youth,
tales and legends of paths, roads, through the desert, which could lead you to
the city. There was even a saying: 'All roads lead to the city.' But now... now
there is no escape from this desert."
"Does that mean I'm
trapped here too?"
"Yes. We need you. Even
now, we only exist as vague memories to the people of the city and beyond. We
are slowly turning into legends and myths. We need you to tell our story with
the stones. To make sure that we are not forgotten by history, lost forever in
time. Once you get the memory stones in the right sequence then you will have
saved our precious memory, our history."
"But I can't stay here,
lost in this desert. I have a wife, a home, a career." I stood and stepped
towards the throne. "I need to get back there. Now!"
The black panther growled as
the echo of my words rebounded around the room. The naked servant-girl,
pointing an ornately-carved dagger at my stomach, stepped between me and the
woman in white. The woman in white waved her hand dismissively, I wasn't sure
if the gesture was meant for me, the servant or even the panther.
"It isn't me that is
preventing you from leaving." The woman in white said. "It is your
desire to make sense of the memory stones which holds you here."
"No, it is you," I
said, stepping up to the throne and taking her hand. "I need you to come
with me or I cannot leave. I only bother with the stones while I wait for you,
when you are ready to leave, then we will go. Go together."
She nodded slowly. "All
right. We will leave. We will go together, but only when you have arranged the
memories of our city on the memory stones. I cannot leave this place with no
past, no history."
"No!" The servant
girl screamed, lunging at the woman in white with the knife. "You promised
you would stay here with me, forever! You said you loved me, not him!"
The panther leapt, but the
servant girl was too close to the queen for it to stop her. She stabbed at the
woman in white, and the wine glass shattered on the marble floor. The blood
poured from the woman's chest mixing with the wine stain. I reached out for her
and lowered her to the floor.
The panther's bloody jaws
turned from the savaged, almost severed, neck of the servant girl. It growled
and turned towards me, only stopping when its mistress held up her hand and
weakly waved it to a halt. It lay down inches away from where I sat holding the
dying woman's head in my lap. She looked up at me.
"Don't forget the
stones," she said weakly. "Do not let history forget us either."
I nodded, unable to speak. I
sat there just stroking her hair, feeling useless and helpless as I watched the mingled blood and wine pooling
together on the marble steps of the throne.
The woman in white died sometime
that afternoon, in my arms. The light faded slowly into evening and night. The
panther was invisible in the shadows, only its heavy breathing and slow purring
growl gave any indication that it was still there.
*
"I can remember it all
now." I said excitedly as doctor Phipps sat down at my table. "I'm an
archaeologist, so is Gina. We have been working hard over the last few years
trying to trace the whereabouts of a lost civilisation. There were legends all
throughout the Middle-east - in pre-Biblical times - of a civilisation deep in
the desert ruled over by a queen who always wore white and had a black panther
on a lead. We discovered that the legends were, in fact, true and we were
looking for funding for an expedition and a dig." I sat back and smiled.
"I can't wait to get back to work now my memory has returned. I think I'm
cured. Where's Gina? Has she arrived for visiting time yet?"
Dr Phipps stared at me.
"Gina is dead. You should know that, she's been dead for nearly two years
now."
"What..? When...? How
did she die? Why?" I wondered if I had really seen her the day before, but
she had seemed as real as Dr Phipps as he sat at the table flicking through my
notebook.
"We found her, and her
assistant Kirsty, dead at the dig in the desert after your frantic, incoherent
call for help over the radio. It took us two days to get there because of the
sandstorms. Gina and Kirsty had been stabbed to death, each one stabbed several
times, over and over again. It had been a frenzied attack. We found you a
couple of hours later sitting amongst these heaps of stones still with the
knife in your hand. You said something about a servant trying to kill the queen
and something about a black panther and how you wanted to escape the
desert."
"That's my dream!"
I said. "I wrote it all down. It's all there in that notebook."
"You said the stones had
writing on them, that you had arranged the stones to explain what had happened.
You said that the stones were your confession."
"What did the stones
say?"
"Nothing..., nothing at
all. There was no writing on any of them. The stones were all blank, just like
the pages in this notebook." Dr Phipps dropped the notebook onto the table
and stood up. For a moment it seemed as though he wanted to say something, but
he just smiled apologetically and turned towards the door.
After he had gone, I sat down
at the desk. I aligned the notebook with the edge of the desk. My fingers ached
from holding the pen, but I felt I had written down all I knew about the woman
in white, the palace, the servant girl and the panther.
*
It is nearly time for Gina to
arrive, I have no clock in my room, nothing except my bed, my desk, my chair
and my notebook; but somehow I always know when it is time for her to arrive.
END