Briefing for a Descent Into Hell. Doris Lessing

from the carpenter’s store. I worked feverishly, wanting to get away. It never crossed my mind to stay on her, so strong was my fear. Yet I knew that to set off by myself on a raft was more dangerous than staying. On the ship was water, food, some shelter, until it foundered or crashed on a rock. Until then, it would be my safety. But I could not stay. It was as if my having been ignored, left behind, out of all my old comrades, was in itself a kind of curse. I had been branded with my ship.

      I worked for many hours and, when daylight went, I lashed a storm lantern to a spar and worked on through the night. I made a raft about twelve by twelve of balsawood poles. To this I lashed a locker full of rations, and a barrel of water. I fitted a sail on a mast in the middle of the raft. I took three pairs of oars, and lashed two spare pairs securely to the timbers of the raft. In the centre of the raft I made a platform of planks about four feet across. And all this time I worked in a deadly terror, a cold sick fear, attacked intermittently by the fits of shaking so that I had to double up as if in cramp, and hold on to a support for fear I’d shake myself to pieces.

      By dawn my raft was done. The sky reddened in my face as I stood looking forward with the ship’s movement, so I saw that the ship had already swung about and was heading back in the grip of the Guinea Current to the Cameroons or the Congo. I had to leave it as quickly as I could, and trust that I could still row myself out of this deadly shore-going current and back into the Equatorial stream once again. I put on all the clothes I could find. I let the raft fall into the sea, where it floated like a cork. And with all the sky aflame with sunrise like the inside of a ripening peach, I swarmed down a rope and swung myself on to the raft just as it was about to bob right out of my reach. I reached the raft still dry, though already beginning to be well-damped by spray, and at once began rowing with my back to the sunrise. I rowed as if I were making towards safety and a good dry ship instead of away from one. By the time the sun stood up in a clear summer-hazy sky three or four hand’s-breadths from the horizon, our ship’s sails were a low swarm of white, like a cluster of butterflies settled on the waves, and well behind me, and I was heading West on my real right course. And when I turned my head to look again, it was hard to tell whether I was looking at the white of the sails or at foam on a distant swell. For the sea had changed, to my advantage, and was rolling and rocking, and no longer chopping and changing. And so I rowed all that day, and most of that following night. I rowed and rowed and rowed, until my arms seemed separate from myself, they worked on without my knowing I was ordering them to. Then one day—I think it was three days after I last saw the sails of my ship vanishing East, there was a sudden squally afternoon and my clothes got soaked, and I lost my spare oars. And two days after that, a heavy sea dragged my last oars from me and since then I’ve been trusting myself to the current that curves West and North. And now I have all the time in the world to reflect that I am still engaged in the same journey in the same current, round and round and round, with the West Indies my next landfall, and poor Charlie’s Nancy and her song, just as if I had stayed on the ship with my comrades. And after the women’s song, just as before, around and around, past the Sargasso Sea, and around in the Gulf Stream, and around in the swing of the sea past the coasts of Portugal and Spain, and around and around. But now I am not in a tall ship with sails like white butterflies but on a small raft and alone, around and around. And everything is the same, around and around, with only a slight but worsening change in the shape of my hope: will They, or the Disc, or Crystal Thing, on its next descent, be able to see the speck of my raft on the sea? Will they see me and find the kindness to give me a hail or a shout in reply when I ask them, How may I leave this Current, Friends, set me fair for that other coast, I pray you?

      Yes, I’ll hail them, of course, though now a new coldness in my heart tells me of a fear I didn’t have before. I had not thought once, not in all those cycles and circles and circuits, around and around, that they might simply not notice me, as a man might not notice a sleeping kitten or a blind puppy hidden under the fold of his smelly blanket. Why should they notice the speck of a raft on the wide sea? Yet there is nothing for it but to go on, oarless, rudderless, sleepless, exhausted. After all I know it would be a kindness to land on Nancy’s coast and tell her that her Charlie has met up at last with—what? Them, I suppose, though that is all I can tell her, not even how he felt as he became absorbed into the substance of that shining Thing. Will she sing her song to me on my raft, drifting past, will the women line up along the walls of their summer gardens and sing, and shall I then sing back how the time is past for love? And then on I’ll drift to George’s friend and shout to him how George has—what? And where? And then on and on and on, until I see again my Conchita waiting, dressed in the habit of a nun, where all my wandering and ailing has put her.

      Man like a great tree

      Resents storms.

      Arms, knees, hands,

      Too stiff for love,

      As a tree resists wind.

      But slowly wakes,

      And in the dark wood

      Wind parts the leaves

      And the black beast crashes from the cave.

      My love, when you say:

      ‘Here was the storm,

      Here was she,

      Here the fabulous beast,’

      Will you say too

      How first we kissed with shut lips, afraid,

      And touched our hands, afraid,

      As if a bird slept between them?

      Will you say:

      ‘It was the small white bird that snared me’?

      

      And so she sings, each time I pass, around and around, and on and on.

      

      DOCTOR X. Well, how are you this afternoon?

      PATIENT. Around and around and around …

      DOCTOR X. I’d like you to know that I believe you could snap out of this any time you want.

      PATIENT. Around and around and around …

      DOCTOR X. Doctor Y. is not here this week-end. I’m going to give you a new drug. We’ll see how that does.

      PATIENT. In and out, out and in. In and out, out and in.

      DOCTOR X. My name is Doctor X. What is your name?

      PATIENT. Around and …

      I think he may very well have reverted to age eleven or twelve. That was the age I enjoyed sea stories. He is much worse in my opinion. The fact is, he never acknowledges my presence at all.

      DOCTOR Y. claims he reacts to him.

       August 24th

      DOCTOR X.

      DOCTOR Y. What is your name today?

      PATIENT. It could be Odysseus?

      DOCTOR Y. The Atlantic was surely not his sea?

      PATIENT. But it could be now, surely, couldn’t it?

      DOCTOR Y. Well now, what’s next?

      PATIENT. Perhaps Jamaica. I’m a bit farther South than usual.

      DOCTOR Y. You’ve been talking practically non-stop for days. Did you know that?

      PATIENT. You told me to talk. I don’t mind thinking instead.

      DOCTOR Y. Well, whatever you do, remember this: you aren’t on a raft on the Atlantic. You did not lose your friends into the arms of a flying saucer. You were never a sailor.

      PATIENT. Then why do I think I’m one?

      DOCTOR Y. What’s your real name?

      PATIENT. Crafty.

      DOCTOR Y. Where do you live?

      PATIENT. Here.

      DOCTOR Y. What’s your wife’s name?

      PATIENT. Have I got a wife? What is