THE FIND
I
The subconscious self woke first, roaring in distant wave-beats,
unintelligible, unmeaning, persistent, and growing in volume. It had
something to do with birth. And not having died. "I have not let my soul
run like water out of my mouth."
And as the roaring and beating of the waves increased in volume, tiny
little words emerged like flying-fish out of the black ocean of
consciousness. "Ye must be born again," in little silvery, twinkling
spurts like flying-fish which twinkle silver and spark into the utterly
dark sea again. They were gone and forgotten before they were realised.
They had merged deep in the sea again. And the roar of dark
consciousness was the roar of death. The kingdom of death. And the lords
of death.
"Ye must be born again." But the twinkling words had disappeared into
the lordly powerful darkness of death. And the baptism is the blackness
of death between the eyes, that never lifts, forever, neither in life
nor death. You may be born again. But when you emerge, this time you
emerge with the darkness of death between your eyes, as a lord of death.
The waves of dark consciousness surged in a huge billow, and broke. The
boy's eyes were wide open, and his voice was saying:
"Is that you, Tom!"
The sound of his voice paperily rustling these words was so surprising
to him that he instantly went dark again. He heard no answer.
But those surging dark waves pressed him again and again, and again his
eyes were open. They recognised nothing. Something was being done to him
on the outside of him. His own throat was moving. And life started again
with a sharp pain.
"What was it?"
The question sparked suddenly out of him. Someone was putting a metal
rim to his lips, there was liquid in his mouth. He put it out. He didn't
want to come back. His soul sank again like a dark stone.
And at the very bottom it took a command from the Lord of Death, and
rose slowly again.
Someone was tilting his head, and pouring a little water again. He
swallowed with a crackling noise and a crackling pain. One had to come
back. He recognised the command from his own Lord. His Lord was the Lord
of Death. And he, Jack, was dark-anointed and sent back. Returned with
the dark unction between his brows. So be it.
He saw green leaves hanging from a blue sky. It was still far off. And
the dark was still better. But the dark green leaves were also like a
triumphal banner. He tries to smile, but his face is stiff. The faintest
irony of a smile sets in its stiffness. He is forced to swallow again,
and know the pain and tearing. Ah! He suddenly realised the water was
good. He had not realised it the other times. He gulped suddenly,
everything forgotten. And his mind gave a sudden lurch towards
consciousness.
"Is that you, Tom?"
"Yes. Feel better?"
He saw the red mistiness of Tom's face near. Tom was faithful. And this
time his soul swayed, as if it too had drunk of the water of
faithfulness.
He drank the water from the metal cup, because he knew it came from
Tom's faithfulness.
Gradually Jack revived. But his burning bloodshot eyes were dilated with
fever, and he could not keep hold of his consciousness. He realised that
Tom was there, and Mary, and somebody he didn't for a long time
recognise as Lennie; and that there was a fire, and a smell of meat, and
night was again falling. Yes, he was sure night was falling. Or was it
his own consciousness going dark? He didn't know. Perhaps it was the
everlasting dark.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"Sundown," said Tom. "Why?"
But he was gone again. It was no good trying to keep a hold on one's
consciousness. The ache, the nausea, the throbbing pain, the swollen
mouth, the strange feeling of cracks in his flesh, made him let go.
Tom was there and Mary. He would leave himself to Tom's faithfulness and
Mary's tenderness, and Lennie's watchful intuition. The mystery of death
was in that bit of deathless faithfulness which was in Tom. And Mary's
tenderness, and Lennie's intuitive care, both had a touch of the mystery
and stillness of the death that surrounds us darkly all the time.
II
They got Jack home, but he was very ill. His life would seem to come
back. Then it would sink away again like a stone, and they would think
he was going. The strange oscillation. Several times, Mary watched him
almost die. Then from the very brink of death, he would come back again,
with a strange, haunted look in his blood-shot eyes.
"What is it, Jack?" she would ask him. But the eyes only looked at her.
And Lennie, standing there silently watching, said:
"He's had about enough of life, that's what it is."
Mary, blanched with fear, went to find Tom.
"Tom," she said, "he's sinking again. Lennie says it's because he
doesn't want to live."
Tom silently threw down his tool, and walked with her into the house. It
was obvious he was sinking again.
"Jack!" said Tom in a queer voice, bending over him. "Mate! Mate!" He
seemed to be calling him into camp.
Jack's expressionless, fever-dilated, blood-shot eyes opened again. The
whites were almost scarlet.
"Y' aren't desertin' us, are y'?" said Tom, in a gloomy, reproachful
tone. "Are y' desertin' us, mate?"
It was the Australian, lost but unbroken on the edge of the wilderness,
looking with grim mouth into the void, and calling to his mate not to
leave him. Man for man, they were up against the great dilemma of white
men, on the edge of the white man's world, looking into the vaster,
alien world of the undawned era, and unable to enter, unable to leave
their own.
Jack looked at Tom and smiled faintly. In some subtle way, both men knew
the mysterious responsibilities of living. Tom was almost
fatalistic-reckless. Yet it was a recklessness which knew that the only
thing to do was to go ahead, meet death that way. He could see nothing
but meeting death ahead. But since he was a man, he would go ahead to
meet it, he would not sit and wait.
Jack smiled faintly, and the courage came back to him. He began to
rally.
The next morning, he turned to Mary and said:
"I still want Monica."
Mary dropped her head and did not answer. She recognised it as one of
the signs that he was going to live. And she recognised the unbending
obstinacy in his voice.
"I shall come for you too in time," he said to her, looking at her with
his terrible scarlet eyes.
She did not answer, but her hand trembled as she went for his medicine.
There was something prophetic and terrible in his sallow face and
burning, blood-shot eyes.
"Be still," she murmured to him. "Only be still."
"I shan't ever really drop you," he said to her. "But I want Monica
first. That's my way."
He seemed curiously victorious, making these assertions.