Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [207]
Meanwhile the flooding tide continued its advance. Soon after the moon rose there was a snorting, gasping sound from further down the beach but presently silence and peace closed in once more.
When the whispering fringe of surf was still a few feet short of the Major’s head, however, the tide reached its height and in due course began to ebb once more. By this time he was semi-conscious. Questions, impossible to seize and examine, loomed in the shadows. What was he doing buried in the sand? Had he been left to drown? And his mind wandered away, buoyant and aimless as a drifting balloon, to the trenches—to some “show” or other in some godforsaken wood without a name.
At first light people came to dig him up and he became feebly conscious once more. They dug with care, as if aware of the danger of slashing his bound wrists with the spade. They used their hands to feel out the edges of the heavy rock that lay on his calves and gently lifted it away. Then, in turn, they lifted out the Major and laid him on the sand.
By now he was completely numb. He could feel nothing. But the involuntary movement of his limbs had awoken a terrible cramp, so that it seemed as if his body was doing its best to tear itself to pieces. Each muscle in his stomach, thighs and shoulders had contracted as hard as marble, vying with its opposite number to snap his bones and ligaments. Yet at the same time his mind was quite peaceful. It was as if, after all, this body did not belong to him. As he lay there quietly on the sand, a great feeling of serenity stole over him—the sort of feeling one might have for a few moments after a serious accident when one realizes that one is no longer one’s own responsibility. Other people were taking care of him. He could hear their voices faintly from farther down the beach where they were probing the sand with the spade. Presently they began to dig another hole.
The Major was now thinking about Sarah...and about love. And then, without being aware of any transition, he was thinking about Ovid, an author he had read without pleasure at school. Strange to think that some people should actually enjoy reading Ovid as much as, say, that story of T.C. Bridges which had been serialized in the Weekly Irish Times last year. What a charming story! There was one episode which had particularly taken his fancy: the young man confessing to his girl-friend that although in appearance a gentleman he is really a burglar, and that consequently it is inevitable that she must detest him...But the girl (and what a splendid surprise this had been both to the young man of the story and to the Major)...the girl sticks by him, stoutly says she loves him and doesn’t believe him capable of stealing. (And true enough, there had been something rather rum about his theft. He had had a bump on the head or he’d been hypnotized and couldn’t actually remember doing it.) Jolly decent of the girl, in any case, to stick by him. Sarah, of course, would undoubtedly do the same in that situation. And with this agreeable thought the Major’s weary, salt-caked eyelids crawled down over his eyes and he slept, or became unconscious, it would have been difficult to say which.
When he next woke up he was again buried up to his neck in sand. The sun had risen and was blazing directly into his eyes, dancing on the surf not far away. This light blinded him, so that for some time he was aware of nothing but the pain of his retina. When he had become more accustomed to it, however, he realized that he was no longer alone. Scarcely more than a yard to the left there was another head poking out of the sand on the same level as his own. He recognized the fellow immediately: it was the young