Titus Awakes

6

Awakening Is Sweet Sorrow

THE DOOR WAS wide open. Whiteness had given place to the brilliant green that presages the torrent of living. Sounds of humans: a horn, unlike the haunting alarms at sea, echoed around the mountains, sweet, deep and eloquent. Through the open door poured sunlight of such intensity that Titus was impelled to shriek, as a baby new born hails its own entrance into the world.

He saw a movement across the room – everything was awakening. He heard birdsong – he heard sounds that he could not place – muscular, masculine sounds. A saw cutting through logs – a double-edged saw – voices shouting to each other with the glory of sunshine.

He wished to be at one with those voices and his determination took him stumbling, crawling, undignified to the open door.

He gazed, as one who had been blinded, at the stupendous beauty of nature. His eyes could only take in so small a part of what there was to be seen.

He might have toppled over the mountains that surrounded him, as he drank in the air, the sky, the deep green of the trees, but for arms that held him and laid him gently on a bench, roughly hewn, and placed in his hand a mug that was lifted to his lips and, as he drank, his body and his mind were suffused with gratitude.

At his feet lay the warmth that had nestled him and nursed him through the months of cold fatigue. He glanced down and a paw, gentle and huge, laid itself upon his knee. He turned his head to the right and a thrill like a shriek of lightning coursed through his body, as he saw beside him those dark eyes devouring him.

Titus knew now that speech was no longer efficacious. He put down the mug, and found a hand, ready to take his own – a gentle, frail and blue-veined hand, which clung to his as though it had been stitched by a surgeon on to his.

All thoughts had flown. Only occasionally does human beauty so transcend all that one knows.