deep shady forests, the beaches, the ocean, the sky, and then the gaze travelled back along the path of the sun until it was staring straight upwards, and flinching because of the sun’s fierce glare, and so it lowered again to my feet, which were planted on the very edge of the cliff.
What should I roof my new home with? This question answered my other: What had the original inhabitants used as roofing? Clay was the answer. Between the stones of the old foundations and the stone channels, the earth showed as clay. And when I splashed water on it, the dense heavy substance potters use formed at once in my palm. Once this city had had roofs of tiles made of this clay, and clay being more vulnerable to time than rock, these tiles had dissolved away in heavy rain or in the winds that must tear and buffetand ravage along this exposed high edge whenever it stormed. No people, where were the people? Why was this entire city abandoned and empty? Why, when it was such a perfect place for a community to make its own? It had good building material close at hand, it had houses of every kind, virtually whole and perfect save for the absent roofs, it had good pure water, and a climate which grew every sort of flowers and vegetables. Had one day the thousands of inhabitants died of an epidemic? Been scared away by threat of an earthquake? All been killed in some war?
There was no way of finding out, so I decided not to think about it. I would stay here a while. And I would not trouble to roof myself a house. The walls gave shelter enough from the sun. It was not yet the rainy season, but even if it had been, the rain would soon drain away off this height, and it was not a place to stay damp or cold.
I found a tree which had aromatic foliage, something like a blue gum, but with finer leaves. I stripped off armfuls of the leaves and carried them to the shelter of a wall. With them I made a deep warm bed I could burrow into if the night turned cold. I picked some pink sweet fruit, in appearance like peaches, that grew bending over a water channel. I drank the water—and understood that my needs as an animal were met. I need do nothing but pick fruit and gather fresh leaves when those that made my bed withered. For the rest I could sit on the cliff’s edge and watch the clouds gather over the sea, watch the moon’s growing and declining, and match my rhythms of sleep and waking to the darkening and lightening of the nights.
And I need not be solitary. For this city had an atmosphereas if it were inhabited, as I’ve said. More, as if this city was itself a person, or had a soul, or being. It seemed to know me. The walls seemed to acknowledge me as I passed. And when the moon rose for the third time since I had arrived on this coast, I was wandering among the streets and avenues of stone as if I were among friends.
Very late, when the moon was already low over the mountains, I lay down on my bed of deliciously smelling leaves, and now I did sleep for a time. It was a light, delightful sleep, from which it was no effort to wake, and I was talking to my old shipfriends, George and Charlie, James and Stephen and Miles and the rest, and into this conversation came Conchita and Nancy, who were singing their songs and laughing. When I woke, as the sun came up shining from the blue-green sea, I knew quite clearly that I had something to do. My friends were all about me, I knew that, and in some way they were of the substance of this warm earthy stone, and the air itself, but it was not enough for me just to live here and breathe its air. I sprang straight up when I woke, driven by this knowledge that I had work to do, and went to wash my face and hands in the nearest water channel. I admired my fine mariner’s beard, and my hard dark-brown salt-pickled arms and face, ate more of the peachlike fruit, and walked out among the sky-roofed houses to see what I could see … it was very strange indeed that I had not noticed this before: among the
What should I roof my new home with? This question answered my other: What had the original inhabitants used as roofing? Clay was the answer. Between the stones of the old foundations and the stone channels, the earth showed as clay. And when I splashed water on it, the dense heavy substance potters use formed at once in my palm. Once this city had had roofs of tiles made of this clay, and clay being more vulnerable to time than rock, these tiles had dissolved away in heavy rain or in the winds that must tear and buffetand ravage along this exposed high edge whenever it stormed. No people, where were the people? Why was this entire city abandoned and empty? Why, when it was such a perfect place for a community to make its own? It had good building material close at hand, it had houses of every kind, virtually whole and perfect save for the absent roofs, it had good pure water, and a climate which grew every sort of flowers and vegetables. Had one day the thousands of inhabitants died of an epidemic? Been scared away by threat of an earthquake? All been killed in some war?
There was no way of finding out, so I decided not to think about it. I would stay here a while. And I would not trouble to roof myself a house. The walls gave shelter enough from the sun. It was not yet the rainy season, but even if it had been, the rain would soon drain away off this height, and it was not a place to stay damp or cold.
I found a tree which had aromatic foliage, something like a blue gum, but with finer leaves. I stripped off armfuls of the leaves and carried them to the shelter of a wall. With them I made a deep warm bed I could burrow into if the night turned cold. I picked some pink sweet fruit, in appearance like peaches, that grew bending over a water channel. I drank the water—and understood that my needs as an animal were met. I need do nothing but pick fruit and gather fresh leaves when those that made my bed withered. For the rest I could sit on the cliff’s edge and watch the clouds gather over the sea, watch the moon’s growing and declining, and match my rhythms of sleep and waking to the darkening and lightening of the nights.
And I need not be solitary. For this city had an atmosphereas if it were inhabited, as I’ve said. More, as if this city was itself a person, or had a soul, or being. It seemed to know me. The walls seemed to acknowledge me as I passed. And when the moon rose for the third time since I had arrived on this coast, I was wandering among the streets and avenues of stone as if I were among friends.
Very late, when the moon was already low over the mountains, I lay down on my bed of deliciously smelling leaves, and now I did sleep for a time. It was a light, delightful sleep, from which it was no effort to wake, and I was talking to my old shipfriends, George and Charlie, James and Stephen and Miles and the rest, and into this conversation came Conchita and Nancy, who were singing their songs and laughing. When I woke, as the sun came up shining from the blue-green sea, I knew quite clearly that I had something to do. My friends were all about me, I knew that, and in some way they were of the substance of this warm earthy stone, and the air itself, but it was not enough for me just to live here and breathe its air. I sprang straight up when I woke, driven by this knowledge that I had work to do, and went to wash my face and hands in the nearest water channel. I admired my fine mariner’s beard, and my hard dark-brown salt-pickled arms and face, ate more of the peachlike fruit, and walked out among the sky-roofed houses to see what I could see … it was very strange indeed that I had not noticed this before: among the
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