More magic and Marxism

Further miscellanious fragments of my Terribly Serious Story; still no names!


The day, which later on turned out to have been Memorable in History, dawned much as others did: in a flood of white light over the horizon, over the crests of the grey waves.

Much, indeed, seemed familiar on this day of change in the world: the salt-edged wind; the raucous cawing of sea-birds; the whole prospect of his native shore, the white beach, the villages, fields, and house-trees looking tiny and impermanent in the shadow of heath, forest, and mountain; all these things were painfully familiar. And the word 'memorable' is surely meaningless, applied to things that, try as we might, we can't forget?

What he remembered were the ships. His own people built ships, of course, and sailed them and were buried in them; and in doing this they hacked a a rough beauty out of oak trunks. But nothing like these ships: in his life up to that point, he had seen nothing so huge made by human hands; and so he half-thought to himself that these things must come finished into the world, in that great graceful shape, gliding along without oars under those huge spreads of canvas - so utterly white, like the foam on the bows! The illusion lasted until three ant-sized sailors dropped from the rigging and died.

Two drowned - a good many of the sailors on such magnificent vessels, he found out, could not swim - and one hit the deck and broke his neck. They'd fallen in their hurry not to be the last down as the shore-muster was called, for which they would have flogged with tarred and knotted ropes. He found this out by insistent questioning of the ship's officers: people become very frank, when they wish to end a subject so awkward that it's keeping them from dinner.

He solemnly acted on his resolve to remember things, and remembered this, in a crude and methodical pencilled hand. He could not help marvelling at his new power of creating words, even such words as these.

[Our protagonist takes leave of his old country and illiteracy.]


Impressions careened along like the horses themselves, wild and unstoppable. Sounds: the whoops of the troopers, bizarrely high, sounding like predatory birds; the rhythmic pounding of hooves, which made his ears search vainly for rhythm in the sounds of gunfire and cannon-shot. And sights!

Swords, everywhere, whirled overhead so that they could hardly be seen until the sun caught their sharpness; horses shot out from under their riders, tumbling to the ground with no slowing of forward motion; men crushed under horses, and unhorsed men rolling to their feet and carrying on with inhuman speed, barely distinguishable from those they pursued, their sabres looking suddenly far too large for them. And the fleeing men; the lances sticking out of their backs at perfect right-angles; the astonishment on the faces of those who had been shot and staggered for a moment, unable to realise quite what had happened as blood spread over their shirts; and those overtaken and hacked down, throwing up their hands in their last moments and clutching despairingly at their bloodied heads, in resignation, or pathetic self-defence, or to keep them on.

[This cavalry-charge paragraph happened by itself, in an attempt to get across the horrible messiness and unreality I've seen communicated by a few good films, and which can get lost under the temptation to chivalrise. But a story like this needs some big ghastly battles so in it goes. This stuff is all sketches anyway.]


In the end he fall on the dusty floor and slept there, in his clogs and rough woollen cap. He slept the incomparable sleep of the profoundly exhausted; and at last he was left alone by dreams. They left him there, deterred from waking him by a mixture of fear and sympathy - although some kind soul cleaned and righted his glasses.