The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

THE WALL JOSEPHINE SAXTON

It was as if the landscape was divided into two halves, split across by some change in the light, in the atmosphere, in the colors of the air and the earth. It was a great flat valley that rose so shallowly to the summits of the surrounding escarpments that the change in height was scarcely noticeable, but indeed the difference in height between the floor and the horizon was some five hundred feet. A great curving saucer. But the saucer was cracked across from east to west by a difference. The horizon on the north and the horizon on the south when looked at from west or east looked scarcely different from one another when seen in turn, but to bring the eyes forward would have shown how great indeed the difference between these two halves was, and the eyes looking thus would discern a definite line across this area of the world, coming closer, winding upward, until it was close enough to be seen as a wall.

It was a very high wall, thirty feet in height, and it was very ancient in its stone, dark blue, hard, impenetrable, but rough and worn. Crystalline almost, its surfaces sprang this way and that, revealing whole lumps of glittering faceted hardness, with smooth places where mosses and orange lichens had got hold; and at its foot many creeping plants; tough twisted vines bearing clusters of ungathered raisins, convolvulus white and pink, and ivy in many colors, thick, glossy and spidery. Here and there stones had fallen from its old structure, two and three feet thick, and in one place, almost halfway across the floor of the valley, there was a hole through the wall, only six inches across its greatest measurement, and three feet from the floor, which was moist red clay on the north side, and dry white sand on the south side. The top of the wall was sealed to all climbers by rows of dreadful spikes which curved in every direction, cruel, needle-sharp, glassy metal rapiers set into green bronze. They were impenetrable in every way, these swords, and stood endless guard between north and south.

The valley was the home of rats and snakes of many kinds, and thousands of spiders ran in the dust at the foot of the leafy creepers, and rabbits burrowed in the clay on the north side, and lizards scuttled in the sand on the south side. There were two sources of water: one a spring which flooded a puddle in the clay—the water here was cold and green and clear—and the other a limpid pool in the sand under a rock, the water therein being warm and slimy and gray. There were no trees to be seen anywhere, only the earth with the sparse grasses; no habitation save the rabbit warrens.

At either side of the hole in the wall lived a man and a woman. The man lived on the north side where it was usually cold and damp, and the woman lived on the south side where it was usually warm and dry. These two were tall and thin and beautiful, strong and lean, but something was to be seen in their way of moving that spoke of inner suffering, some twisted thing which showed on the outside, almost imperceptible, something from the heart. He was fair in color, with yellow-gray hair to his shoulders and a beard of great length which tangled in great curls, with blackberry thorns and stains of purple juice in his beard from the raisins he had eaten over the years. His feet and hands were horny with callouses from running and scrabbling for wild rabbits, but his fingernails were specklessly white, for, in his idle hours, of which there were many, he sat and cleaned them with a little stick of thorn wood and rubbed them down to a neat shape on a stone in the wall. He wore a threadbare suit of lovat green thorn-proof worsted suiting, a dark-green silk shirt which was of the finest quality, with gilt cufflinks which had only enough cuff just to stay hanging in the threads, and a tie which could not be seen for the wild beard.

The woman was dark and brown like a nut that has been polished. Her hair was dark, so dark it was not black but something beyond black, and her lashes and brows matched it in depth and thickness, and the hair fell straight and heavy to her thighs in great thick locks with not a wave or curl. Her hands and feet also were immaculately clean, but she had callouses on her knees from kneeling in the sand at the side of her pool of water, washing her hair until it shone. Her breasts were still full and young, bearing the marks of suckling an infant, but that was in another life. She was dressed in a dark blue dress of courtelle jersey with brass buttons long ago turned mouldy green. The dress fitted her figure and had a pleat in the back of the skirt, and she showed a little bit of nylon lace, sometimes when she walked, peeping out from under the dress, a very dusty white. She always carried a handbag with her. It was a large white plastic beach bag with bamboo handles, and in it were all manner of bottles containing sun oil, hand lotion, face cream and skin food—none of which she ever used— handkerchiefs, hairpins, dried-up cigarettes, old bills, papers and letters and a paper bag with a clean sanitary pad and two little safety pins wrapped up tight. There was also in the bag a brush and comb, a necklace of heavy beads, several photographs, some dried flowers and several recipes for the making of home-made wines, Irish soda bread and potted meat.

These two people were lovers. For most of the day, in their separate climates, they would sit by the hole in the wall exchanging conversation, peeping at glimpses of one another, able to see only half a face, or a hand, or a length of hair through the fissure, making up poetry for one another which only had meaning for themselves alone; and sometimes they would hold hands through the rock, although they were only able to do this for very short periods of time because of the awkward height of the hole, and the extreme pain caused by being half bent and by the cold sharp rock rubbing on their arms. They would exchange bits of food—blackberries and raw rabbit meat, ripe grapes, and mushrooms—and they would pass bunches of grasses or flowers from around the base of the wall to each other with passionate love messages whispered from the heart and from their deepest feelings. Although they had never seen one another, or touched one another farther than their wrists, they felt deeply for one another in the tenderest way, and were swept by full passions that could never be consummated because of the wall. At times like these—especially was it hard when the moon was full—they would sit close to the hole and weep and moan in longing for each other, longing for something the other could give were it not for the cruel wall that parted their starving bodies. Many long tortured hours they passed in this way wishing the wall would melt. But it never melted, it stayed there hard and enduring, as if it had always been there and always would be so. They had no ideas on the subject of how to relieve themselves of this terrible situation, for it had been like this so long they could hardly remember when it was, the day they had found themselves, each at a side of the wall. Their love had begun on that very day, even before the sound of their singing voices, and with the rapturous discovery of the hole and the first blissful touches of the hands, and with the dreadful realization that they could never come closer together than this. All through the years they had yearned but never thought it could ever be any different. They knew, as if with an inborn knowledge, that the wall was too deeply set to be tunneled under, too long to be walked around, if indeed it had an end anywhere, and much too hideously guarded at its crest.

One day the man began to think that he could not stand it any longer. His body and emotion had taken all they could; he was racked with desire and his head was full of pain with inner weeping. He suggested to the woman that they should part. He explained that the idea had come to him that there might be other lands where a person might live, over the horizon, away to the north and south, things they had neither of them dreamed of, other loves perhaps, other climates and better food. He felt then that anything would be better than to sit here forever just yearning for something that could never be had. At first, when the woman listened to this idea, she was shocked so deeply inside herself that she became as stone, she neither spoke nor moved for a day or a night, but lay with her head on the stone of the wall in a cold agony such as she had never before experienced. And then she began to weep, silently at first, then with little moans, then louder and from lower in her being, until she screamed in great pain, and cut her forehead on the blue rock and the blood ran into her dark hair, although she felt nothing but the pain of the emotions caused by the idea. But the man persisted. He spoke to her soothingly and gently, and he explained with a heavy heart that it would cause him an equal pain to be parted forever from her, but that it seemed the only course open to them unless they were to die here without ever having known any other thing better than craving.

After twenty-eight days the woman had absorbed this idea herself; she had turned it over, and tried to visualize the world beyond, without the man, perhaps with strangers, other women, more food, another dress, but she could feel none of it and gave up as the pictures refused to take shape. But she knew also that her man was right, that it had to be so, that they would part, and turn their backs on each other and walk off, she over the hot sand, he over the sticky red clay. She knew it would be like this, she had accepted the idea, and so she finally bent her head down to the hole and agreed with him that they should part. They decided to begin their separate journeys the very next day.

They spent the rest of the day gathering food; the woman tore off her petticoat and wrapped it around heaps of dried grapes, mushrooms and meat that the man had given her, and he took off his shirt and did the same. They spent a sleepless silent night of unspoken doubts leaning against the hole, and at dawn they clasped hands through the hole, said quiet goodbyes and turned around to walk, he with his bundle, she with a bundle and a handbag.

They each walked for several hours, with such a weight of dread and despair in their hearts as they had never known; their feet dragged, their backs bent, tears ran gently down their faces, and they each tried to recall the feel of the other’s hand through the wall, but already the impression was fading, and it was very difficult to feel anything. So, grieving, they walked slowly toward the perimeter of the north and south sides of the valley, and there in the distance they could each hear strange sounds, smell strange smells, and feel strange changes in the atmosphere. They were four miles apart by now and it was not yet noon, and the way had been uphill for both of them.

At exactly the same moment in time, the man in the north and the woman in the south met strangers of the opposite sex, and these two asked them the same questions. They inquired who they were, where they lived, and where they were going. Sadly they both told the same tale, and the woman who now faced the man in the north asked him to touch her long fair hair and made kissing mouths at him. He was immediately impassioned by this brazenness and, full of unspent vigor from the many dry years, he held her in his arms and began to make love to her, clumsily and fiercely, his own dark woman already forgotten. At the other side of the valley, she was just then succumbing to the advances of a tall dark man, a person more handsome than she could ever have visualized, raven and brown like herself, strong and passionate, and she was so filled with admiration and physical hunger that she succumbed easily to his embrace. And then the two couples parted, after long kisses and greedy sighing. As they stood up to brush their clothes in the afternoon light they chanced to look back across the valley, and in the distance saw each other, infinite specks, but each speck duplicated, and because each had just then been unfaithful with a stranger, they each knew that the other had too, that the double speck in the distance could mean only one thing.

They were immediately filled with remorse at what they had done, and longed for each other again as much as before, and because they could now see each other, even though it was so far away, they wished very much to be close together again. Having tasted full physical contact with others they now knew that no bliss in the world could match what they would feel for one another, could it be achieved. They had the instant idea that they would run to each other across the sinking plain and somehow overcome the obstacle of the wall which, from this distance, looked very small indeed. So they set off running without even saying goodbye to their lovers-that-were-not-lovers, running and breathing heavily from the unaccustomed effort.

When they were only one mile apart they could see one another quite clearly in the sharp white air which lit this part of the valley with an illusion of clarity which seemed to telescope everything distant much nearer. They paused, then, and, staring in wonder, each at the other, a pure brave kind of love lighted them up within, and it was as if they could see the pool that was the hidden soul. They began to run again, and, as the ground leveled off, the sight of them was almost lost behind the top of the wall; but this made them run the last few hundred yards even harder. At last they came up to the wall, and ran up and down at its base in joyous haste, seeking the hole. Soon they stood opposite, and the woman shouted to the man that she was going to climb the wall, and the man shouted to the woman that he was going to scale the wall, but they were so out of breath with running that their words were all muddled up and lost, and together they dropped the bundles and the bag at the base of the wall, and began to climb. It was easy to find toe and handholds in the old vines and creepers and in the crystalline hardness of the rock, and in minutes they were near the top where the cruel spikes stood waiting. Together they made one last desperate push upwards and saw themselves close together at the narrow top of the wall; as the spikes pushed into their bodies and as the blood ran down they stared in horror, not at the pain of Death but at what was really in the heart and soul of the other. In terror they clung to one another, closer and closer, hoping that it was not true, as they embraced breast to breast across the spikes, their cheeks pressed close with blood and tears; it was then that they noticed all the other lovers impaled on the spikes.

Some were long-dead skeletons, dry and dusty, grinning skull to skull; some were mummified by the keen wind, eyes sunk in perpetual bewilderment; and some were rotten and new, astonishingly, quite new.

They turned again to see themselves, wondering dumbly at what they had seen stretching out infinitely along the wall, all the clasping lovers long gone, no kiss nor handhold there with either bliss or agony.

And very quietly they kissed as they clung and died there, impaled across the cold spiky barrier, feeling and thought growing more feeble every second.

In the north and in the south a fair haired woman and a dark haired man set off slowly to walk towards the wall, love stirring in the innermost recesses of their being.

Josephine Saxton describes herself briefly as—

Age thirty, occupation, woman. Married to artist: Colin Saxton, three children. “The Wall” as yet only published work, but have written two novels and several stories, secret poetry writer, also cookbook.

Not science-fiction writer, knowing little science, but of that lower class who make it up.

Aims: full-time professional writer.