She was an asset to the state. If they discovered her attempt to escape, she would be taken back immediately, and I would be carrying dynamite if a shot should strike my back. There was a safe area a mile to the south of the town, well away from view at night; from there it would be easy. There was a moon. I was confident. The guard was lying dead – I would be him returning home, my papers in order. I carried the actual papers of a real man, including the photographs of his girl. Silently we crouched by the side of the road; the broken moon gave light; there was nothing; a whisper. I could explain everything to everybody. I was complete. We lay down by the hedge until it was light. The weather was very cold. They would not know where to look.
The straight white road, the trees by the side of the road, the man mending the wall, the narrow poles with white faces turned backwards and forwards from the town; we left the road to see the slabs of rock.
On a ridge of boulders – a hut of boulders frozen over – we set about building a shelter: we made a tent by drawing together the edges of a piece of cardboard, with a slanting roof as a precaution against falling stones; we worked together to weave a tent to shelter a whole family. Drawn together, essential to each other, we slept covered by tough sheeting to keep out the cold and preserve the warmth generated by our bodies.
I returned home with food. We sat and repaired our home. I was putting on my boots when men approached us and asked us what we were doing there. They could not understand our language. We had to wait while they checked our papers. I said we were there to admire the palaces and see the fortress pulled down.
She knew she was threatened with capture. She had been given her freedom after being kept locked in for years, and in the end liberty would lead again to capture. Some troops approached – a company of fifteen, part of a regimental band – whose music we had heard before, not far away. One of them played the clarinet; the wood shone black in the sunlight. She kept apart from them; I diverted their attention from her by conversing with them. I learnt that in the plains below for some days there had been heavy rains – the floods were out – with the result that some troops had been drowned, valuable equipment had been abandoned, one of their dogs could not be found, the families of some of the men had lost their homes. Their senses were dulled, their powers reduced; they stood on the ground trying to practise the same tune. Two young drummers sat on the stone wall a few yards away, demoralized, helpless. They tapped out the same rhythm over and over again. One of them undid the heavy leather harness and placed his drum beside him on the wall. He was warned by an officer: “You could be shot.”
A yellow bar of light dissolved; we lay on the rough sand, the last light of the sun in her mouth. A footstep warned. We retired quietly into the depth of our home, to lie low. She would have run, flown. But her injured, tired body was incapable, due to her slight build, her habit of running, the painful shocks she had had. I told her it would be better, more effective, to hide. We enclosed an area on which she could lie flat on her back – an area protected on all sides by a series of stones raised to form a sort of diamond, irregular but strong, with a vein of stone running across obliquely to the outer edge. She lay back, safe, and smiled with her fine teeth. Her head lay in a small clear area where the sand was a dark colour and the stones made a straight edge, hard and sharp. With flint I entirely removed the roughness where the grains projected. We were not alone in bed. Built around us in successive layers were old patterns, fixed in design, immovable without breaking the body.
I used my hands to alter the ground, the patterns, until we reached perfection, giving complete smoothness around us both, to our eyes an indescribable beauty, magnificent, costly. The strength of each stroke was the slow and careful elaboration, the only style which had success. My hands used her like an object, carried her forwards. She judged my caresses by their weight – the lightest being the best. I felt a vibration between us – we communicated – and though we no longer completely overlapped, a space was formed, enclosed: the outer surface formed a box. I moved slightly in – tentative, intermittent, then more restrained. Suspicious, she appeared to recede. Then the two were exactly symmetrical; in our peculiar bends and convolutions we corresponded perfectly. I left her easily, attempted again without success; certain muscles hardened in that position, then attained the perfect state. With unusual patience, without injury to the delicate structure, we found the desired position. She seemed not quite happy, to be making a conscious effort, by crossing one leg over the other so that the position became unintelligible. Then everything – the sand, the rocks, the structure of the building enclosing us – everything was used, until that time, and another time, became equally perfect. If a part went dead and had to be moved, the suggestion was reversed, and the same seemed the same. She was quite silent. Her love came from joy. She invited me to come to her – expected me to come and join her. I was unable to discover any fault. I remained quiet – carefully, she saw me retreat, quietly – she remained quiet. I went towards her again, merely for my own pleasure, for the pure joy of life. It was interesting to attempt to force her to retreat into her own dwelling, and find both of us in one home.
Hearing songs, I thought they were being broadcast, but the band was being drilled – marching and counter-marching into itself. We were near the end – the outside was closing in on us. She covered her legs. We could both appreciate the music; the band was making itself a life – we were swamped by the big sound of the band. She was seen: she wanted to sit in the sunshine to hear the music and watch them exercise their dogs. She had grown young: she was not lined in any way – her skin had been carefully smoothed. We had only just room to turn round; our building, commenced at the beginning of winter, was merely a winter shelter – not right for the spring; though I could have enlarged it, perfected the smoothness of its walls, it was still not a home – merely a shelter. The whole of the labour had been performed, but the place must now be left and the labour wasted. I knew that, though she did not. We were really in the earth, simply lying on the surface of the earth. She pushed off the roof, like a lid. It was not a question of escape, but of moving.
She listened to the cries of the dogs, stretched after us, moving in leaps. Fleeing from the dogs with the speed of a greyhound, her life a struggle against attack, she knew how to reserve her strength when running. She kept ahead just enough to avoid being caught. Occasionally dodging to one side or turning suddenly, she changed her direction and followed their steps, jumped a gate, forced through a hole in a fence, leapt five feet, running at full speed. She escaped by mingling with them.
We climbed a higher – far higher – rock, more dangerous; falls of a hundred feet led down to ledges of terrifying steepness. We stood on the edge of a chasm. A gun was fired at the foot, at the legs. With bewildering sounds of thunder and splashes of blood on the rocks, they left a dog dead on the ground. Like a ship covered with hair, the teeth quite small, the eyes large, the inner surface blank. It appeared blind, the power drawn from its eyes, facing a storm of rain. I used a handkerchief to clean its eyes. We made a grave in the shelter of a bush. She scratched away the earth.
She did not feel sorry for herself; she did not care. She dug a hole and knelt in it. She waited for hours – she did not know whether she was falling asleep or dying – then an inner change occurred; she began to murmur. She underwent a peculiar transformation, dashed about in fits of wildness in the middle of the afternoon. She made a sudden rush down the hillside; about a quarter of a mile away from me she turned towards the guns – they came out to meet her before she had a chance to turn. “Best to hide! Don’t risk being killed!” she shouted to me as she ran.
Cleverly she crossed swampy ground and doubled back towards the town. She taught me the art of lying motionless on the ground to avoid being seen. She showed me how to feed on milk sucked from a feeding bottle; we stole a few garden vegetables and scraps of meat left lying on the ground.
We were challenged by a guard. I heard her inward grunt, pathetic scream. “The only way, the open fields.” I held her arm. I showed my papers, told my story. The hour was marked on the papers; two or three of them, each with a different date. The guard was in a hurry – he had no time to investigate. I considered this man. He was not satisfied. I had made a mistake: I had hesitated to declare myself. I said we were returning to the town. We walked around, uncertain of our direction.