Titus Awakes

8

Life Can Be a Miracle

AS THE ELEMENTS became more clement, Titus’s growing strength engendered in him an awakening of all his senses. He became aware of the awe-inspiring beauty of the mountains that surrounded him, snow-laden at their tips and brilliant green as they gently swam downwards to deep fir-lined valleys. Everything around him was a miracle. The small mountain flowers, the sounds of water, birds and human voices and the mild sun overhead generated not only warmth, but also a sense of renewal in the act of living.

Titus went every day to the clearing and each day he became a little more expert at manipulating the double-handed saw. There was no verbal communication, just the rareness of being one with the men with whom he worked. His muscles became hard and his face lost its pallor.

Inside the hut the girl’s beauty grew no less haunted, but it had the recognition of love in it. She had taken it upon herself to relieve the old woman of the harder household tasks. When there was a rabbit to be skinned, she would seat herself at the bare scrubbed table and skin it. No one knew what feelings she may have had in undertaking this macabre task. Chickens and birds of many varieties she plucked, with knowledge gained from her old mentor, and she took the task of cooking upon herself.

When the weather was mild enough the food was brought outside. Home-made bread was dipped in the stews and the wooden plates wiped clean with it. Each meal was received with the graceful acknowledgements of hand-clapping, and sometimes one of the men would sing, melancholy and haunting, or a man and a woman would dance with slow, intricate steps, their bodies hardly moving, while the watchers moved their hands like sighs.

A man with a musical instrument, made by himself during the long and dark winter, jumped into the circle like a jack-in-the-box, and as he played, a round of girls and boys, and men and women, danced with primitive pleasure.

Titus realised that it was also for him to contribute. He felt untalented. He could not sing, play an instrument or even dance. With a quick jump he entered the circle, and the cream-coloured dog who had attached itself to him followed him like a shadow.

He held it upright on its hind legs, and to the bizarre music of the old musician he danced round and round and round, like a top spinning, until he was so dizzy that he lost all sense of balance and fell with little grace on to the moss, and his canine friend lay panting beside him.

The applause that greeted him echoed down the mountains, and he rose and bowed with a clown-like foolishness, and led his canine partner, and stood it on its hind legs once more, and bowed its head so deep that it almost lost its dignity.

Titus bowed again and, with the humour he had for so long forgotten to be a part of his life, waddled out of the circus, his feet forming one straight line holding the right paw of his cream-furry friend who sped like a startled willow warbler.

The days followed each other in the wonderment of spring and inevitably to a young man this wonderment of nature could not contain itself in looking alone. In Titus, also, the sap rose, and the pangs of desire led him to the girl with whom he could hold no communication. He wanted more.

In the beauty of these spring evenings he led her to a small clearing he had discovered, surrounded by blackthorn in which there were nests woven as though by a master craftsman. All around them the newborn rabbits scuffled and darted about. There, on the moss, he made love to her and those eyes that still devoured him. Was it love or the physical necessity that impelled him almost to desecrate a body? Her body was compliant, yet seemed to have known a suffering to which Titus shut his eyes.

As spring gave way to summer, her emaciated body became fuller and carried within it his child. He realised he had no wish to spend his life with this woman, but he knew that what little decency he had should wait its term.

Titus threw himself into all the work that surrounded him, the planting and the sowing, the weeding, and all the preparations made by humans to stave off the winter ahead, when they live in a world dependent on their own skill and their own labour.

He had long since returned the pallet bed to the old woman, and slept where and when he could.

The dark eyes became more painful to watch, as the months proceeded and, as he acknowledged within himself his own infidelity, he wished to hide from them, and from her, more and more. He knew that she realised her burden was hers to face alone. He would leave her, but when she didn’t know. He made love to her still, but he felt less and less urgency. He had not wished to propagate and the very fact that he had done so lessened his desire for her.

He detected a cooling of the friendship he had made with his fellow men, as the woman grew. Any tenderness he felt for her turned to an aggrieved sense that he was trapped. If he had had any feeling for her, perhaps he would have had the empathy to realise that she was trapped too, far more than he.

The surrounding mountains now made him claustrophobic and in his cowardice he worked out how he might escape when the time was appropriate.

The seasons were never so slow in passing from one to another. The spring that had brought about his newfound liberation took aeons in giving way to summer. He longed for his freedom. No longer did his companions clap his existence. He felt an outcast. It was as though everyone was waiting for him to go, and the eyes most of all.