his jaws apart, but no sound came for some little while, so sharply was his attention taken by the sight of a new face at the tables.
The shadows of leaves and branches lay upon the table like grey lace and moved imperceptibly to and fro. The delicate shadow of an acacia frond fluctuated as it lay like a living thing upon Muzzlehatch’s bony brow.
At last the old ticket vendor closed his jaws and then started again.
‘A seat for the sunset, coral, green and grey. Two coppers for the standing! Three coppers for the sitting! A copper in the trees. The sunset at your bloody doorstep, friends! Buy it up! Buy! Buy! Buy!’
As Muzzlehatch stared through half-closed eyes at the old man the silence came down again, warm and thick with the sweetness of death in it.
At last Muzzlehatch muttered softly, ‘What does he mean, in the name of mortality and all her brood … what does he mean?’
There was no answer. The silence settled down again, and seemed appalled at the notion that anyone could be ignorant of what the old man meant.
‘Coral, green and grey,’ continued Muzzlehatch as though mumbling to himself. ‘Are these the colours of the sky tonight? Do you
‘It’s all we have,’ said a voice, ‘that, and the dawn.’
‘You can’t trust the dawn,’ said another, with such pathos that it seemed he held a personal grudge against tinted atmosphere.
The ticket seller leaned over and peered at Muzzlehatch from closer range.
‘Free, did you say?’ he said. ‘How could it be free? With colours like the jewelled breasts of queens. Free indeed! Isn’t there nothing sacred? Buy a chair, Mr Giant, and see it comfortable – they say there may be strokes of puce as well, and curdled salmon in the upper ranges. All for a copper! Buy! Buy! Buy! Thank you, sir, thank you. For you, the
‘What happens if the wind decides to veer?’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘What happens to your green and coral, then? Do I get my coppers back? What if it rains? Eh? What if it pours?’
Someone spat at Muzzlehatch, but he took no notice beyond smiling at the man with such a curious angle of the lips that the spitter felt his spine grow cold as death.
‘Tonight there is no wind,’ said a third voice. ‘A puff or two. The green will be like glass. Maybe a slaughtered tiger will float southwards. Maybe his wounds will drip across the sky … but no …’
‘No! Not tonight! Not tonight! Green, coral, grey.’
‘I have seen sunsets black like soot, awash in the western spaces, stirred with cats’ blood. I have seen sunsets like a flock of roses: drifting they were … their pretty bums afloat. And once I saw the nipple of a queen … the sun it was … as pink as …’
SIXTY-EIGHT
Later that evening, Muzzlehatch and the small ape shook themselves free of the gaping crowd and drove the car slowly at the tail of a ragged cavalcade that, winding this way and that, finally disappeared into a birdless forest. On the other side of these woods lay stretched a grass terrace, if such a word can be used to describe the rank earthwork upon whose western side the land dropped sheer away for a thousand feet to where the tops of miniature trees, no longer than lashes, hovered in the evening mist.
When the two of them had reached the terrace with its swathing vistas spreading like sections of the globe itself away and away into a great hush of silence and distance mixed, as though to form a new element, they left their car, and took their seats on one of the cedar benches. These benches, forming a long line, from north to south, were placed within a few feet of the edge of the precipice. Indeed there were those whose legs were on the long side and whose feet, as a result, hung loosely over the edge of the terrifying drop.
The small ape must have sensed something of the danger for it stayed no more than a few moments before leaping from its seat on to Muzzlehatch’s lap, where it made faces at the sunset.
No one noticed this. And no one noticed Muzzlehatch’s strong-fingered hand as it caressed the little ape beneath its jaw. All the attention and interest these ragged people had lavished upon the stranger and his ape was now a thing of the past. Every face was tinted with an omnipresent hue. Every eye was the eye of a connoisseur. A hush as of the world ceasing to breathe came down upon the company, and Muzzlehatch tossed his head in the silence, for something had touched him; some inner thing that he could not understand. An irritant … a catch of the heat … a bubble of air in a vast aorta … for he found himself, all of a sudden, spellbound by what he saw above him. A coloured circus caught in a whirl of air had disintegrated and in its place a thousand animals of cloud streamed through the west.
At the backs of the watchers, and very close stood up the flanks of the high woods lit up by the evening sun, save where the shadows of the watchers were ranged against it. Before the watchers and below them the faraway valley had drawn across itself another veil of cloud. Above, the sunset-watchers saw the beasts: all with their streaming manes, whatever the species: great whales no less than lions with their manes; tigers no less than fawns.
The sky was animals from north to south. Beasts of the earth and air, lifting their heads to cry … to howl … to scream, but they had no voices, and their jaws remained apart, gulping the fast air.
And it was then that Muzzlehatch rose to his feet. His face was dark with a sudden pain, a pain he was only half able to understand.
He stood at his full height in the spellbound silence, his whole body trembling. For some while, his eyes were fixed upon the sky where the animals changed shape before his gaze, melting from species to species but always with the manes propelling them.
A few feet to Muzzlehatch’s side a great dusty bush of juniper clung on the verge of the precipice. One step took Muzzlehatch to this solitary object and he wrenched it free of the earth, and, raising it above his head, slung it out into the emptiness of the air where it fell and went on falling.
Now every head was turned to him. Every head from near or far away: they all turned. When they saw him there, standing trembling, they could not understand that he was looking through these animals of clouds to another time and another place: to a zoo of flesh and blood. Nor did they know that the gaunt visitor was feeling for the first time the utmost agony of their death. Beast after beast of the upper air recalled some most particular one of feather, scale or claw, some most particular one of beauty or of strength … some symbol of the unutterable
