Titus Awakes

12

Among the Rivers

Linger now with me, my only

On the far and distant shores,

Lingering can be so lonely

When one lingers on one’s own.

‘DOG, WE ARE destined to be lonely. We are destined for the far and distant shores. You had a small choice and you made it, and now you are here. We have only one way to go. Down, and down and down towards the water, through the snow, meeting whom? Howl for me, so that we know we are together alone. I am glad that you came with me, Dog, but I owe you nothing. I want to be responsible to no one, to no thing. It’s all over, living and loving; breathing is all that is left.

As day broke Titus ran and Dog bounded, sometimes before, sometimes behind – stopping to nuzzle deep into a lair, hidden to all eyes but those of the animal world. Excited by the scent of prey, Dog rushed here and there and everywhere, returning at all times to Titus. A fitful sun emerged, only to taunt and disappear, and a blinding storm of snow covered them until they were a snowman and a snow dog, running for their lives. Titus’s cheeks were red as holly berries, dripping with ice, and he was glad of the warm clothes given to him. They heard a gentle trickle of water and, like the water, they ran, ignorant of the direction that they were taking, only that they were plunging seawards.

There were the last frugal remnants of food, stale crusts, dampened and made a little more palatable by the snow.

‘Dog, I can’t go through all this again. Last winter I was a clown of ice and it looks as though this winter will turn us both into pillars of ice. Would it be a good deed to wring your yellow-in-snow neck, Dog? Shall I end your torment before it begins?’ In answer, the dog howled with dreadful understanding. The rugs and blankets that had been so generously given were still a comfort, but food was another thing. Titus had known hunger, and was to know hunger again, but he felt he could not inflict it on another being, albeit canine. But his hands were powerless to stop the breathing, the panting, and even amid his despair he delighted in the presence of his dog.

‘Let’s sing, Dog.’

The sunlight falls upon the grass

It falls upon the tower

Upon my spectacles of brass

It falls with all its power

It falls on everything it can

For that is how it’s made;

And it would fall on me, except,

that I am in the shade.

‘Oh, Dog, we are surely in the shade. Is there such a thing as not being in the shade? But what beauty is there being in the shade?’

As Titus feverishly spoke, so did nature. A ray of lightness, of pink chill, warmed the sky and gave impetus to the running, slippery, icy foot- and padsteps.

And so the sound of water, which can be beautiful – can be petrifying, can drown, or embalm – came closer and closer to them.

Titus remembered another sound of water, and another, in his own home, when the water flooded the castle, and again, when he awoke on unknown shores and he thought his life was over. A terrible pain seared him, as he knew there was no longer home and he felt he could only abandon life, and yet his feet, sore and swollen, hedged him down and down, until he could go no further; and as a dreadful repeat of last year, he fell and lay with the yellow-in-snow dog beside him, both nearly frozen to death.

A boat picked him up. Titus was used to not understanding languages. Eyes spoke, hands spoke, bodies spoke, but lips only opened and closed, and tongues made sounds. Communication was made by the prowess of the particular individual in miming his desires, his jokes were the jokes of silent clowns and his love unspoken, save through eyes and hands.

There were three men with stubbled chins – each could have played the villain in some age-old ritual of the theatre. Everything about them was vile, villainous, and they were interchangeable, with their small mean eyes and their coarse insensitive faces. When they pulled Titus into their boat it was not through pity or love, but greed; they saw the dog and the warm rugs that covered them. Their presence evoked a dreadful fear. Titus knew that he was not being carried to safety, but to a different kind of battle, and he knew now that he would have to defend his dog against the hunger so rampant in the six eyes that were fixed on skinning his beast, and tearing it, to feast upon its flesh. He could see these dreadful vultures and he hoped that his wiles would be cunning enough to circumvent them when the time came.

Titus and his companion dog, whom he was coming to love, lay in the boat as it made its perilous way downstream. There was still no shelter and the snow, so beautiful, yet so merciless, strayed into their eyes, and little icicles hung on all the protuberances that man is heir to.

The small coracle-like boat drifted mostly, as it was swept helplessly by the torrents and the icy winds. Did those men, who had grasped them out of the edge of despair, know where they were going? Sly people do nothing without a motive and as the moments drifted and the snowflakes descended, he realised more and more that their purpose in salvaging him was his dog, and he wondered why they had not just taken the dog and left him to die. But his dog had strength and would not without a fight, bitter and vicious, have left his master.

‘Now,’ thought Titus, ‘I am bound by love and gratitude, once more, but to an animal whose only motive is unquestioning love. Do human beings ever have that exquisite selflessness?’

Titus caught a glimpse of a small reed hut – a palace in no-man’s-land. The terrible trinity were making for it and, as he glanced at the hut and then at the men, he saw that he was a captive, as the worst of the three made an obscene gesture at Titus, as of cutting his throat, and at the pale melon-coloured dog of disembowelling it and scooping out the entrails and eating them. Then the first human sound rent the air, as the frail boat shook to the disgusting laughter these gestures had engendered in their maker.

Speed was now uppermost in Titus’s mind as he laid his plans in the quickly descending dusk. If his captors had had more intelligence they would have separated him from his companion, but they clung closer and closer together – man and beast both aware of their danger.

The boat pulled slowly sideways towards the hut. Who were these men? What was left of their tattered clothing indicated that they must be deserters from some unknown military or totalitarian regime. Despite their coarse exterior and their seeming bravado, there was a sense of unease, of fear in their behaviour, which communicated itself to Titus. He knew they would be rash, harsh and inhuman, and this made his own plans craftier, his thoughts more secretive and his responses to them more obsequious. Dusk would be his advantage.

The coracle drew slowly towards the bank, and towards the hut, and towards a stake where countless travellers had moored their boats. Not for any of these travellers was the wonder at the end of a voyage where people gathered to welcome, only darkness and bitter cold greeted them.

A sudden bump and there was a stillness, except for the movement made by the splashing water, and the three embryonic human beings jumped with hideous shouts on to the frozen land by the stake. The third one slipped as he landed, and the unholiness of his expletives was such that it could be understood in any language.

Now, now, quickly, his heart beating inside him like a drumbeat to prayer, Titus also jumped, and landed upright, nearly on top of the swearing villain who, judging from the cries of pain mingled with the swearing, must have broken his leg on landing. One thing Titus knew was that the creature would certainly receive no words of comfort from his two luckier companions.

He called out loud and clear, ‘Dog!’ The man lying on the ground stretched out his freezing hands and, as strong as an animal even in his own pain, he hit Titus with the side of his hand.

‘Dog! – Dog! Kill him! Break his neck!’

The dog, which had been so gentle with the tiny child, was now ready to tear limb from limb the enemy of Titus.

The evil creature lying on the ground with all its venom hooked his arm round Titus’s leg as he jumped to the icy surface. Titus fell as helplessly as a storm-tossed tree. He knew that he was done for. His strength was failing him, he had no reserves as the weakness laid him low, and the two companions followed, as night and day, their brutal companion in aiming blows at Titus. He was theirs to kill, but they reckoned without his canine companion, who had meant nothing but a stew and a warm coat to them.

‘Dog!’ cried Titus.

Growling, Dog jumped dextrously in the twilight, and a screech of pain followed; the villain’s wrist had been bitten, his neck had been broken. In the end it becomes a matter for each being to survive and, as the darkness became more dense, so did the knowledge of defeat in the two remaining villains rend the air. Titus and his saviour drew away in stumbling steps, limbs jellified, panting and eager for life.