The Inheritors by William Golding

  “They pushed their hollow logs on trees that rolled along. The new one was in a log. And Liku will be in the other."

  Fa looked mournfully at his face. She pointed to a smear on the smoothed earth that had been a slug.

  “They have gone over us like a hollow log. They are like a winter."

  The feeling was back in Lok's body; but with Fa standing before him it was a heaviness that could be borne.

  “Now there are only Fa and Lok and the new one and Liku."

  For a while she looked at him in silence. She put out a hand and he took it. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound came. She gave a shake of her whole body and then started to shudder. He could see her master this shudder as if she were leaving the comfort of the cave in a morning of snow. She took her hand away.

  “Come!”

  The fire was still smouldering in a great ring of ash. The shelters were torn apart though the uprights still stood. As for the ground in the clearing it had been churned up as though a whole herd of cattle had stampeded there. Lok crept to the edge of the clearing while Fa hung back. He began to circle. In the centre of the clearing were the pictures and the gifts.

  When Fa saw these she moved inward behind Lok, and they approached them spirally, ears cocked for the return of the new people. The pictures were confused by the fire where the stag's head still watched Lok inscrutably. There was a new stag now, spring-coloured and fat, but another figure lay across it. This figure was red, with enormous spreading arms and legs and the face glared up at him for the eyes were white pebbles. The hair stood out round the head as though the figure were in the act of some frantic cruelty, and through the figure, pinning it to the stag, was a stake driven deep, its end split and furred over. The two people retreated from it in awe, for they had never seen any thing like it. Then they returned timidly to the presents.

  The whole haunch of a stag, raw but comparatively bloodless, hung from the top of the stake and an opened stone of honey-drink stood by the staring head. The scent of the honey rose out of it like the smoke and flame from a fire. Fa put out her hand and touched the meat which swung so that she snatched her hand back. Lok fetched another circle round the figure, his feet avoiding the outstretched limbs while his hand moved out slowly. In a moment they were tearing at the present, ripping apart the muscle and cramming the raw meat into their mouths. They did not stop till they were skin tight with food and a shining white bone hung from the stake by a strip of hide.

  At last Lok stood back and wiped his hands on his thighs. Still with nothing said they turned in towards each other and squatted by the pot. From far off on the slope leading to the terrace they could hear the old man.

  “A-ho! A-ho! A-ho!"

  The reek from the open mouth of the pot was thick. A fly meditated on the lip, then as Lok's breathing came closer, shuffled its wings, flew for a moment and landed again. Fa put her hand on Lok's wrist.

  “Do not touch it." But Lok's mouth was close to the pot, his nostrils wide, his breathing quick. He spoke in a loud cracked voice.

  “Honey."

  All at once he ducked, thrust his mouth into the pot and sucked. The rotten honey burnt his mouth and tongue so that he somersaulted backwards and Fa fled from the pot round the ashes of the fire. She stood look- ing fearfully at him while he spat and began to crawl back stalking the pot that waited for him, reeking. He lowered himself cautiously and sipped. He smacked his lips and sucked again. He sat back and laughed in her face.

  “Drink."

  Uncertainly she bent to the mouth of the pot and put her tongue in the stinging, sweet stuff. Lok suddenly knelt forward, talking, and pushed her away so that she was astonished and squatted, licking her lips and spit- ting. Lok burrowed into the pot and sucked three times; but at the third suck the surface of the honey slid out of reach so that he sucked air and choked explosively. He rolled on the ground, trying to get back his breath. Fa tried for the honey but could not reach it with her tongue and spoke bitterly to him. She stood silent for a moment then picked up the pot and held it to her mouth as the new people did. Lok saw her with the great stone at her face and laughed and tried to tell her how funny she was. He remembered the honey in time, leapt up and tried to take the stone from her face. But it was stuck, glued, and as he dragged it down her face came with it. Then they were pulling and shouting at each other. Lok heard his voice coming out, high and loud and savage. He let go to examine this new voice and Fa staggered away with the pot. He found that the trees were moving very gently sideways and upwards. He had a magnificent picture that would put everything right and tried to describe it to Fa who would not listen. Then he had nothing but the picture of having had a picture and this made him furiously angry. He reached out after the picture with his voice and he heard it, disconnected from inside-Lok, laughing and quacking like a duck. But there was one word that was the beginning of the picture even though the picture itself had gone out of sight. He held on to the word. He stopped laughing and spoke very solemnly to Fa who was still standing with the stone at her face.

  “Log!" he said. "Log!"

  Then he remembered the honey and indignantly pulled the stone from her. Immediately her red face came out of the pot she started to laugh and talk. Lok held the pot as the new people had held it and the honey flowed over his chest. He writhed his body until his face was under the pot and contrived to get the trickle into his mouth. Fa was shrieking with laughter. She fell over, rolled, and lay back kicking her legs in the air. Lok and the honey fire responded to this invitation clumsily. Then they both remembered the pot and were pulling and arguing once more. Fa managed to drink a little but the honey turned sulky and would not come out. Lok snatched the pot, wrestled with it, beat it with his fist, shouted; but there was no more honey. He hurled the pot at the ground in fury and it grinned open into two pieces. Lok and Fa flung themselves at the pieces, squatted, each licking and turning a piece over to find where the honey had gone. The fall was roaring in the clearing, inside Lok's head. The trees were moving faster. He sprang to his feet and found that the ground was as perilous as a log. He struck at a tree as it came past to keep it still and then he was lying on his back with the sky spinning over him. He turned over, and got up rump first, swaying like the new one. Fa was crawling round the ashes of the fire like a moth with a burnt wing. She was talking to herself about hyenas. All at once Lok discovered the power of the new people in him. He was one of them, there was nothing he could not do. There were many branches left in the clearing and unburnt logs. Lok ran sideways to a log and commanded it to move. He shouted.

  “A-ho! A-ho! A-ho!"_ The log was sliding like the trees but not fast enough. He went on shouting but the log would not move any faster. He seized a branch and struck again and again at the log as Tanakil had struck at Liku. He had a picture of people on either side of the log, straining, mouths open. He shouted at them like the old man

  Fa was crawling past. She was moving slowly, deliberately as the log and the trees. Lok swung the stick at her rump with a great yell and the splintered end of the branch flew off and bounded among the trees. Fa screeched and staggered to her feet so that Lok struck again and missed. She swung round and they were stand- ing face to face, shouting and the trees were sliding. He saw her right breast move, her arm come up, her open palm in the air, a palm somehow of importance that any moment now would become a thing he must attend to. Then the side of his face was struck by lightning that dazzled the world and the earth stood up and hit his right side a thunderous blow. He leaned against this vertical ground while the side of his face opened and shut and flames burst out of it. Fa was lying down, receding and coming close. Then she was pulling him up or down, 1 there was solid earth under his feet again and he was hanging on to her. They were weeping and laughing at each other and the fall was roaring in the clearing while the shock head of the dead tree was climbing away into the sky, only getting larger instead of smaller. He became frightened in a detached way, he knew it would be good to get clos
e to her. He put aside the strangeness and sleepiness of his head; he peered for her, bored at her face which kept receding like the shock-headed tree. The trees were still sliding but steadily as though it had always been their nature to do so. He spoke to her through the mists.

  “I am one of the new people."

  This made him caper. Then he walked through the clearing with what he thought was the slow swaying carriage of the new people. The picture came to him that Fa must cut off his finger. He lumbered round the clear- ing, trying to find her and tell her so. He found her behind the tree near the edge of the river and she was being sick. He told her about the old woman in the water but she took no notice so he went back to the broken pot and licked the traces of decaying honey off it. The figure on the ground became the old man and Lok told him that there was now an addition to the new people. Then he felt very tired so that the ground became soft and the pictures in his head went round and round. He explained to the man that now Lok must go back to the overhang but that reminded him even with his spinning head that there was no overhang any more. He began to mourn, loudly and easily and the mourning was very pleasant. He found that when he looked at the trees they slid apart and could only be induced to come together with a great effort that he was not disposed to make. All at once there was nothing but sunlight and the voice of the woodpigeons over the drone of the fall. He lay back, his eyes open, watching the strange pattern that the doubled branches made against the sky. His eyes closed themselves and he fell down as over a cliff of sleep.

  ELEVEN

  Fa was shaking him.

  “They are going away.”

  Hands not Fa's hands were gripped round his head, producing a hot pain. He groaned and rolled away from the hands but they held on, squeezing until the pain was inside his head.

  “The new people are going away. They are taking their hollow logs up the slope to the terrace." Lok opened his eyes and yelped with pain for he seemed to be looking straight into the sun. Water ran out of his eyes and blazed fiercely between the lids. Fa shook him again. He felt for the ground with his hands and feet and lifted himself a little way from it. His stomach contracted and all at once he was sick. His stomach had a life of its own; it rose in a hard knot, would have nothing to do with this evil, honey-smelling stuff and rejected it. Fa was taking by his shoulder.

  “My stomach has been sick too." He turned over again, and squatted laboriously without opening his eyes. He could feel the sunlight burning down one side of his face.

  “They are going away. We must take back the new one.

  Lok prised open his eyes, looked out cautiously between gummed-up lids to see what had happened to the world. It was brighter. The earth arid the trees were made of nothing but colour arid swayed so that he shut his eyes again.

  “I am ill."

  For a while she said nothing. Lok discovered that the hands holding his head were inside it and they squeezed so tightly that he could feel blood pulsing through his brain. He opened his eyes, blinked, and the world settled a little. There were still the blazing colours but they were not swaying. In front of him the earth was rich brown and red, the trees were silver and green and the branches were covered with spurts of green fire. He squatted, blinking, feeling the tenderness of his face while Fa went on speaking.

  “I was sick and you would not wake up. I went to see the new people. Their hollow logs have moved up the slope. The new people are frightened. They stand and move like people who are frightened. They heave and sweat and watch the forest over their backs. But there is no danger in the forest. They are frightened of the air where there is nothing. Now we must get the new one from them."

  Lok put his hands to the earth on either side of him. The sky was bright and the world blazed with colour, but it was still the world he knew.

  “We must take Liku from them."

  Fa stood up and ran round the clearing. She came back and looked down at him. He got up carefully.

  “Fa says 'Do this!' " He waited obediently. Mai had gone out of his head.

  “Here is a picture. Lok goes up the path by the cliff where the people cannot see him. Fa goes round and climbs to the mountain above the people. They will follow. The men will follow. Then Lok takes the new one from the fat woman and runs."

  She took hold of him by the arms and looked imploringly into his face.

  “There will be a fire again. And I shall have children." A picture came into Lok's head.

  “I will do so," he said sturdily, "and when I see Liku I will take her also."

  There were things in Fa's face, not for the first time, that he could not understand.

  They parted at the foot of the slope where the bushes still hid them from the new people. Lok went to the right and Fa flitted away along the skirts of the forest to make a great circle round the slope. When Lok glanced back he could see her, red as a squirrel, running mostly on all fours in the cover of the trees. He began to climb, listening for voices. He Came out on the track above the water, with the fall roaring ahead of him. There was more water coming over than ever. There was a profounder thunder from the basin at the foot and the smoke was spread far over the island. The sheets of falling water shook out into milky skeins, unspun into a creamy sub- stance that was hard to distinguish from the leaping spray and mist that rose to meet it. Beyond the island he could see great trees in all their spring foliage sliding over the lip. They would vanish into the spray and then appear again beyond it, shattered and leaning in the water of the river, jerking as if a gigantic hand were plucking at them beneath. But on this side of the island no trees came over; only a ceaseless abundance of shining water and creamy milk falling into noise and white, drifting smoke.

  Then, through all the noise of the water he heard the voices of the new people. They were on the right, hidden by the rising rock where the ice woman had hung. He paused and heard them screaming at each other.

  Here, with the so familiar sights about him, with the history of his people still hanging round the rocks, his misery returned with a new strength. The honey had not killed the misery but put it to sleep for a while so that now it was refreshed. He groaned at emptiness and had a great feeling for Fa on the other side of the slope. There was Liku too somewhere among the people and his need of either or both became urgent. He set himself to climb up the crack where the ice woman had hung and the sounds of the new people were louder. Presently he was lying at the lip of the cliff, looking over a hand's breadth of earth and straggling grass and stunted bushes.

  Once more the new people were performing for him. They had done meaningless things with logs. Some were wedged in rocks with others lying across them. The scarred earth of the slope led right on to the terrace so that he understood that the other log had reached the overhang. The one the people were working at now was pointing up the slope between the wedged logs. There were strips of thick and twisted hide leading from it. There was a log wedged crosswise behind the hollow log, balanced at its mid-point against an outcrop and this nearer end was bending With the weight of a boulder that wanted to roll downhill. As Lok caught sight of it, he saw the old man pull a strip of twisted hide and the boulder was free. It pushed against the log, forcing it down the slope and the hollow log slid in the other direction towards the terrace. The boulder did all its work and went bumping away down to the forest. Tuami had jam- med a stone behind the hollow log and the people were shouting. There were no more boulders between the log and the terrace so that now the people did the boulder's work. They laid hold of the log and heaved. The old man stood by them and a dead snake hung from his right hand. He began to cryóa-ho! and the people strained till their faces crumpled. The old man raised the snake in the air and struck with it at the shuddering backs. The log moved onwards.

  After a while Lok noticed the other people. The fat woman was not pushing. She was standing well to one side between Lok and the hollow log and she was holding the new one. Now Lok could see what Fa meant by the fright of the new people, for the fat wo
man was glancing round all the time and her face was even paler than it had been in the clearing. Tanakil stood close by her so that she was partly hidden. As if his eyes had been opened Lok could see how the frantic heaving at the log was made strong by this fear. The people consented to the dead snake if it would call from their bodies, already so thin, the strength they could not command themselves. There was a hysterical speed in the efforts of Tuami and in the screaming voice of the old man. They were retreating up the slope as though cats with their evil teeth were after them, as though the river itself were flowing uphill. Yet the river stayed in its bed and the slope was bare of all but the new people.

  “They are frightened of the air." Pine-tree yelled and slipped and instantly Tuami had the rock jammed against the back of the log. The people gathered round Pine-tree, babbling, and the old man flourished his snake. Tuami was pointing up the mountainside. He ducked and a stone struck the hollow log with a thump. The babble became a shriek. Tuami, leaning with all his strength, was holding the log on a single length of hide while it ground sideways. He fastened the hide to a rock and then the men spread out in a line facing the mountain. Fa was visible, a small red figure dancing on the rock above them. Lok saw her swing her arm and another stone came humming through the line. The men were bending their sticks and letting them straighten suddenly. Lok saw twigs fly up the rock, falter before they reached Fa, turn and come back again. Another stone broke on the rock by the log and the fat woman came running to the cliff where Lok was. She stopped and turned back but Tanakil came on, right to the lip. She saw him and screeched. He was up, had grabbed her before the fat woman had time to turn again. He seized Tanakil by her thin arms and talked to her urgently.