Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [99]
Sixteen
I was waiting for the sun to set. I had been back at Goldhawk Road now for several days. The sunlight moved very slowly on the white wall of the Hospital, casting a long shadow from a ledge half-way up the wall. Longer and longer the shadow grew, and as the shadow moved my head turned upon the pillow. The wall was glaring white at midday, but towards evening the glare was withdrawn and a softer light glowed as if from within the concrete, showing up little irregularities in the stone. Occasionally a bird flew along between the windows and the wall, but looking always more like a false bird on a string than a real bird that would fly away somewhere else when it had passed the Hospital and go perhaps and perch upon a tree. Nothing grew upon the wall of the Hospital. Sometimes I tried to imagine that there was vegetation growing on the ledge: damp plants with long fingery leaves, that drooped from crevices and opened into spotted flowers. But in reality there was nothing there, and even in imagination the wall would resist me and remain smooth and white. In two hours the sun would have set. When the sun was set I might perhaps go to sleep. I never let myself sleep during the day. Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair. The sun will not tolerate it. If he can he will pry under your eyelids and prise them apart; and if you hang black curtains at your windows he will lay siege to your room until it is so stifling that at last you stagger with staring eyes to the window and tear back the curtains to see that most terrible of sights, the broad daylight outside a room where you have been sleeping. There are special nightmares for the daytime sleeper: little nervous dreams tossed into some brief restless moments of unconsciousness and breaking through the surface of the mind to become confused at once with the horror of some waking vision. Such are these awakenings, like an awakening in the grave, when one opens one's eyes, stretched out rigid-with clenched hands, waiting for some misery to declare itself; but for a long time it lies to suffocation upon the chest and utters no word. I was afraid to go to sleep. Whenever I began to feel drowsy I would move to some less comfortable position: which was not difficult since I was lying on Dave's camp-bed, which resumed innumerable possibilities of discomfort. It was one of those beds in which the canvas is slung in a rectangle of rigid rods supported by four W-shaped steel legs. At the junction of the legs with the rectangle there are bulging joints into which the rods supporting the canvas also fit. By shifting my body about I could make one or other of these joints bore into my ribs or back. So I would lie for a time contorted, while the haze of sleep was dispelled and replaced by an aching stupor which I knew from experience could continue indefinitely without ever darkening into unconsciousness. My pillow was propped up on a rucksack of Dave's which contained a coagulated mass of boots and old clothes which had not been taken out for years; and sometimes the pillow would fall off, and leave me propped against the rucksack and bathed in its aura of the perspiration of long ago. I needed to see the window. The sun was still moving. Mars was somewhere in the room. He would lie so silent for long periods that I would think that perhaps he had gone away, and start looking for him with my eyes; only to find him lying close to me and looking at me. Occasionally he would attempt to lie on the bed beside me, but I discouraged this. His warm fur had an aroma of sleep which made me afraid. Then he would stretch out near me on the floor and for a time I would dangle my hand upon his neck. Later on he would poke about the room in a bored way until he threw himself down in a far corner with a grunting sound. Later on again I would hear his claws click on the linoleum and he would come and thrust his long nose into my face and give me a look of anguish which came so near to transcending his nature that I would