The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [92]
Later I knew that I had been asleep and I opened my eyes with wonder and the sky had utterly changed again and was no longer dark but bright, golden, gold-dust golden, as if curtain after curtain had been removed behind the stars I had seen before, and now I was looking into the vast interior of the universe, as if the universe were quietly turning itself inside out. Stars behind stars and stars behind stars behind stars until there was nothing between them, nothing beyond them, but dusty dim gold of stars and no space and no light but stars. The moon was gone. The water lapped higher, nearer, touching the rock so lightly it was audible only as a kind of vibration. The sea had fallen dark, in submission to the stars. And the stars seemed to move as if one could see the rotation of the heavens as a kind of vast crepitation, only now there were no more events, no shooting stars, no falling stars, which human senses could grasp or even conceive of. All was movement, all was change, and somehow this was visible and yet unimaginable. And I was no longer I but something pinned down as an atom, an atom of an atom, a necessary captive spectator, a tiny mirror into which it was all indifferently beamed, as it motionlessly seethed and boiled, gold behind gold behind gold.
Later still I awoke and it had all gone; and for a few moments I thought that I had seen all those stars only in a dream. There was a weird shocking sudden quiet, as at the cessation of a great symphony or of some immense prolonged indescribable din. Had the stars then been audible as well as visible and had I indeed heard the music of the spheres? The early dawn light hung over the rocks and over the sea, with an awful intent gripping silence, as if it had seized these faintly visible shapes and were very slowly drawing them out of a darkness in which they wanted to remain. Even the water was now totally silent, not a tap, not a vibration. The sky was a faintly lucid grey and the sea was a lightless grey, and the rocks were a dark fuzzy greyish brown. The sense of loneliness was far more intense than it had been under the stars. Then I had felt no fear. Now I felt fear. I discovered that I was feeling very stiff and rather cold. The rock beneath me was very hard and I felt bruised and aching. I was surprised to find my rugs and cushions were wet with dew. I got up stiffly and shook them. I looked around me. Mountainous piled-up rocks hid the house. And I saw myself as a dark figure in the midst of this empty awfully silent dawn, where light was scarcely yet light, and I was afraid of myself and quickly lay down again and settled my rug and closed my eyes, lying there stiffly and not imagining that I would sleep again.
But I did sleep and I dreamed that Hartley was a ballet dancer and was circling a huge stage sur les points dressed in a black tutu and a head-dress of sparkling diamonds and black feathers. Now and then she would leap, and I would say to myself, but she stays in the air, it’s uncanny, it’s like levitation, she just stays there. And as I watched I said to myself in a complacent way, isn’t it wonderful that we’re both so young and we have all our lives before us. How can old people be happy? We’re young and we know that we’re young, whereas most young people just take it for granted. Then the stage was a forest and a prince also dressed in black came and carried Hartley away, and her head hung back over his shoulder as if her neck was broken. I stayed there still thinking, how wonderful that I’m young; I had a bad dream and thought that I was old. And I’m sure, I’m sure, that on the other side of those trees there is a lake, or perhaps it is the sea. I woke up in the sunshine, and whereas in my other wakings I had understood at once where I was, this time I was very startled, and could still see Hartley’s dead face, her head hanging limply in that terrible way; and I felt a foreboding and a horror which I had not felt in