Briefing for a Descent Into Hell by Doris Lessing
I noticed too that when they were tired, or believed themselves to be alone, they would let themselves down on all fours and run about for a time like this. And they ran very fast and ably indeed, for this was how their bodies had been designed to move. But when an individual or a group behaved like this for too long, the others would begin to make irritable movements, and then would set up a chiding critical chattering, while the culprits looked defiant, then guilty, and sooner or later staggered back to the upright position.
When they were huddled together in their roofless rooms or on the stone of the square, at night when there was no moon, they sat like dogs or monkeys, squatting, their front limbs straight down in front of them for support, and they moved about on all fours much more in the dark. They seemed so very different in these two different conditions, their clumsy half-staggering on their hind legs, with their awkward jerky vision that gave them such a look of pomposity and self-importance, and the rapid running and scampering when on all fours, that they really seemed like two different species, and I suppose I was unconsciously thinking of them as such, for I do remember very clearly that at the first appearance of the apes, I did not at once react with alarm at a new invasion, but thought vaguely that perhaps the Rat-dogs were moving in yet a third way.
These apes were of a kind familiar to us humans. They were a variety of chimpanzee, but larger than the ones we keep to show off in zoos. They came swinging into the city through trees and along the walls, and when they saw the Rat-dogs their reaction was not one I could at once interpret. Although they stopped still and massed together, they did not seem particularly afraid, nor did they seem pleased. They conferred among themselves, on the North side of the city, till there were a couple of hundred or so massed there. Meanwhile, the Rat-dogs, turning their squinting eyes this way and that towards the newcomers, also massed together, and did not make any aggressive action as the monkeys came in further, and then scampered and swung all over the city finding out corners and rooms that were not inhabited. There was a great deal of sharp scolding and complaint as the newcomers tried to take places that were occupied, but it seemed as if both species recognised the right of the other to live in this place. More and more of the apes came trooping in. The city was crammed with animals. It seemed that the first kind, the Rat-dogs, saw the monkeys as inferior, and the monkeys agreed, or were prepared to appear to agree. They would do small services for the big staggering beasts, and tended to move out of their way. Yet to me, a man, the monkeys were altogether more likable and sympathetic, perhaps because I was familiar with them. I felt no strong antipathy, as I still did for the Rat-dogs, in spite of my growing compassion for them. And it seemed to me that the eyes of the monkeys showed sympathy for me, a comprehension, although they neither made attempts to approach me, nor molested me, ignoring me for the most part, as the others did. A monkey’s eyes, so sad, so knowledgeable, they are eyes that speak to the eyes of a human. We feel them to be human eyes. And what sort of self-flattery is that? For the eyes of most human beings are sharp, knowing, clever and vain, like the eyes of the Rat-dogs. The depth that lies in a monkey’s eyes by no means lies behind the eyes of all men. I found now that I moved around that populated, noisy, scuffling, dirtied city, avoiding the big Rat-dogs when I could, meeting with relief the monkeys who seemed so very much more human. But there were more and more of both species, the city was crammed, and the days were passing, so that only half the moon’s lit face showed on our earth, and then more of a dark back than her lit face, and it was dark, all dark, and I knew that soon, not much more than two weeks away, I must be ready for the Crystal’s descent. Yet all of the central square was always full of animals, as once long ago it must have been full of people meeting to talk or exchange or barter, and every inch of it was littered with fruit rinds, dung, stones, bits of stick or branch or blown leaves. I might never have cleaned the place.
The dark of the new moon held the city in a warm bad-smelling airlessness, and all the animals were massed together, watching the tiny sickle of light in the sky, and with sentinels posted on trees and walls everywhere. They were quieter than usual. It was not a good quiet. On the big square were mostly Rat-dogs, except for the monkeys who had chosen to groom them, or play the fool to amuse them. I went boldly into the square late one evening, as the sun went, thinking that perhaps in that sad hour when every creature seems to be thoughtful that these creatures would be ready to listen and to understand. I stood there like a fool and said to them in human speech: “My friends, we have only fourteen days. Two weeks is all we have. For they are coming, and they will land here, on this circle in the centre of the square. But they will not land on a place which is foul and littered, so please, for your sake as well as for my sake, for the sake of all the creatures that live on this poor sick earth, let us clean this place, let us sweep it with branches, and then bring water and wash away the stains of the filth that is here.” I kept my voice steady and I smiled, and I tried to show by gestures what we should do, but they moved about as I spoke, or turned their pointed noses down sideways so that one of their two planes of vision could include me, and the servantlike monkeys hopped closer and looked at me with their sad eyes, trying to understand—but of course they could not understand, how could they? Perhaps I was half-hoping that the meaning of my words would communicate itself to these so differently planned brains, because of the desperation of my need that it should.
The dark came up in a rush from the ocean and the forest, enveloping the plateau and the teeming city, and I went away to the edge of the escarpment and sat there, watching the stars and listening to the multifarious but subdued din from the animals behind me, who were also watching the skies, where the moon’s back was a dark circle with a hairline of light at one side.
Perhaps it was their fear of the dark; perhaps that fear stopped a normal exuberance of movement and of voice and left them banked with unexpended energy; or perhaps it was simply that the city had grown too full for their civility to continue—however it was, that night the fighting started. I knew it first by the smell—the smell of blood, which by now I did know so very well. And there were sudden scuffles much louder than usual, and cries and shrieks. These last sounded like the blood-crazed women around their fire in the forest, and in the morning, after a long dark stuffy night, I walked into the city and saw corpses lying on the central square and also here and there among the houses. Most of these dead were the monkeys, though there were one or two of Rat-dogs. And now the two races had separated off, except that a few of the monkeys had chosen to stay as servants or jesters with the big beasts who tolerated them. The city was roughly divided, and now the sentinels on the trees and the walltops watched each other, were turned inwards instead of outwards.
The morning slowly passed in this new hot suspicious tension. There was no new outbreak of fighting, and when the sun stood overhead, it seemed as if a truce had been declared in the barkings and squeakings and chatterings I had heard but not understood. Each army sent out representatives and the corpses were dragged away. These were not buried, but pulled through the city and then its suburbs, and thrown into the great hole where the river plunged down into the earth. I cried out to them No, No, No, not to foul the clean river and then the sea, but remembered how men had poisoned all the oceans and rivers so that beasts and fish were dying there, and so, feeling sick and hopeless, I went away, thinking that what corpses succeeded in making their way from out the dark riverine channels through the earth, and out to the waterfalls and cataracts, and from there to the wide level river, and at last to the sea—these corpses would at least be cleaner offal than the lethal filth men feed to the sea currents.
Towards night, and the light’s draining away in sadness in a red-stained sky, the fighting broke out again, and they fought all night, and I sat on my cliff’s edge and tried not to hear it or to follow the carnage too closely in my imagination. There were thirteen days to go to the moon’s full, and I knew I had no hope of cleaning the city
Next morning the dead lay in heaps, and the whole city smelled of blood. And now these animals, whose food was fruit and water, were gathered around piles of corpses and were tearing off lumps of hairy flesh and eating it. As I came in close to look, I felt afraid for the first time of these beasts, apes and Rat-dogs. I was now, as they were to each other, potential meat. They ignored me, though I was standing not twenty yards away, until I saw three of them become conscious of my being there, and they turned their pointed muzzles to me, with their sharp teeth white and smeared red, and I saw the blood dripping down as I had off the faces of my women. I went back to the edge of the sea and fell into a despair. I gave up hope then. I knew that the fighting would go on. It would get worse. They would now kill for food. I knew that I was in danger and I did not care. In such moods there are many arguments you can find to support the wisdom of despair. The advocates humanity has found to argue on the side of despair have always been more powerful than those other small voices. I lay myself down on the escarpment’s edge and looked down into the deep forests which had taken so many centuries to grow, where my beautiful yellow beasts must be and where birds as brightly coloured as sunset or dawn skies followed the curve of lives as brief as mine. And then I slept. I wanted to sleep away time so that the end would come more quickly.
When I woke it was late afternoon and while the sunlight still lay sparkling over the distant ocean, beneath me, over the forest, it was almost night. The fighting still went on. I could hear animals chasing each other not more than a few yards away in the buildings that reached almost to the escarpment. I did not want to turn my head to look, for out of the corner of my eye I could see a dying rat-beast rolling and squeaking and kicking up puffs of dust in its death struggle. I looked forward and out again over the forest where Jaguar, Parrot and Lizard blazed and burned, older than man, and then I saw lying on the air in front of me a great white bird who, instead of sailing right past my eyes on its current of air, at the last moment turned and landed beside me on the cliff’s edge, its great wings balancing it to a safe perch. It was not a species of bird I knew. It was about four feet tall as it sat, white plumaged, and it had a straight streak of a yellow beak that gave it a severe appearance. I thought enviously of how in a moment it would let itself slide off on a warm wave of evening air, as a swimmer slides off a warm rock into a swirling sea. As I thought this it turned and looked steadily at me with very round golden eyes. I went to it and it squatted low, like a hen settling in a smother of outstretched sheltering wings over its eggs, and I slid on to its back, and no sooner than I was safely there than it glided off into the air, and we were dropping down lightly over the rocky sliding hill, and the waterfalls and then over the deep forest now silent with the approach of night. The bird’s back, its wing span was ten or twelve feet. I sat up, with a fistful of feathers to keep me steady, but a wind that came sweeping up from the sea nearly sent me toppling off and down over and over to the treetops, so I lay face down, with my arms on either side of the bird just above where the wings joined. The slopes of white feathers were sun-warmed still, and slippery, and smelled clean and wholesome like a hen’s egg when it is fresh. The light shone off the white feathers immediately below my eyes like sun off a snowfield, and I turned away my face and laid it to one side, and looked down past the bird’s neck and shoulders and we swooped out over the sea and sped along the waves’ crests that still, even though all the land between shore and the plateau’s edge was plunged in dark, sparked off light from the setting sun. It was a red sun in a ruddy sky, to match the carnage that went on in the city beneath it—which I could just see, white walls and columns in miniature, miles away, high through darkening air. And on we went over the waves and I breathed in great gulps of cold salty air that swept my lungs free of dirt and blood. And on we went until the shore and continent beyond had dwindled to a narrow edge of dark against a sky that was piled high and thick with glowing clouds, and then as my bird dipped one wing to swerve around and back I cried No, not yet, go on, and the bird sped on, while the air whistled past my cold-burning ears and I could taste the salt spray on my lips and beard. And on and on we went, and then I turned over carefully on my back, with my arms bent back and clutching at the finer feathers in the warm caverns under the bird’s beating or balancing wings, and I looked up into a star-sprinkled sky where the moon was with her back to the earth, and showing a slice of its edge one finger wider than yesterday’s to remind me of my sorrow and my failure. And now in front of us was the coast of Portugal and there was Conchita on her headland looking out to sea. Behind her the red blotch of new suburbs spread out like measles, and below the sea pranced and tossed. She was singing or half-chanting, or even speaking—for it was halting, worrying, blocked song—which showed poor Conchita was as little fitted for her nunhood as she had been happy in my arms,
“Come on, shout!” the brass sun said,
The peacock sea screamed blue, the turkey houses red,
Sun and sea, they challenged “Come!”
The earth sang out, but I was dumb.
Slow, slow, my feet down thick sand dunes,
Curled shells recalling old sea tunes
Cut my slow feet until they bled.
“Who cannot dance must bleed,” they said.
Not ape, nor God, to swing from tree to tree,
Or bid the sea be still from fear of me,
Divided, dwarfed, a botched thing in between,
I watched the sky burn on, the grass glow deeper green.
To sing! To sing! To squeeze the flaring afternoon
Like warm fruit in my hand! Then fling it out in tune!
To take the waves, the freedom of their beat,
And dance that out on sea-taught feet.
But blood and nerves are crucified too long
That I should find a sweet release in song.
Not I to sing as free as birds
Whose throat forms only human words.
Renounce the sea, the crooning sands,
My ease, bought not by loosed feet, hands,
Or love which breaks the mind in pain
To make the flesh shine whole again.
These are mine still, but only in the long
Cold reaches where the mind coils strong
To re-create in patience what the slow
Limbs, bound, knew simply as a song, but long ago.
I called to her, Conchita, Conchita, but she did not hear me, she was looking out over her sea, and now my bird had swept around and was heading back and soon we were over the sea’s edge where I had landed, and then over the forests, and then we were on the cliff’s edge again. The alighting of this great white bird frightened a number of monkeys that had been hiding where some bushes grew thickly. They went chattering off, and I sat myself in my usual place, and the bird sat with me a little in silence, and then sailed off again on its white wings into the dark of that night.
And so that night passed, with the screams and the sound of the fighting going on behind me, but now I felt less oppressed by it, for I kept my mind on the long cool flight I had had on the great bird’s sunwarmed back, and on my old love Conchita stammering her separate failure on her separate coast.
I did not go into the city’s centre again for three days, but sat on the cliff hoping to see the bird, but he did not come, and at last I ventured in, and the fighting still went on, and so many had been killed that they could not either eat or dispose of the corpses, which lay in heaps everywhere. All the animals were exhausted from the long fighting. Their fighting had become more frightful and desperate and mechanical. They were very crazy now, and their eyes were reddened, and their fur and hide roughened and dirty. The Rat-dogs no longer attempted to stand upright, they ran about on all fours, killing the monkeys by random snapping bites with their sharp fangs. Again they took ver