The Memoirs of a Survivor

smaller and smaller, was a tiny scarlet doll, with its pouting bosom, its bottom outlined from waist to knees. The little doll twisted and postured, and then vanished in a flash of red smoke, like a morality tale of the flesh and the devil.

Hugo moved forward into the space before the mirror and sniffed and smelled at it, and then at the floor where Emily had stood. The mother's face was twisted with dislike, but now it was this beast that was affecting her so. 'Go away,' she said, in a low breathless voice — that voice squeezed out of us by an extremity of dislike or fear. 'Go away you dirty filthy animal.' And Hugo retreated to me, we backed away together before the advancing woman who had her fist raised to hit me, hit Hugo. We backed away, fast, then faster, while the woman advanced, grew large, became enormous, absorbing into herself Emily's girlhood room with its simpering conventionality, the incongruous mirror and — snap! — we were back in the living — room, in the dark place where the single candle bloomed in its hollow of light, where the small fire wanned a little space of air around it. I was sitting in my usual place. Hugo was upright near the wall, looking at me. We looked at each other. He was whimpering… no, the right word is crying. He was crying, in desolation, as a human does. He turned and crept away into my bedroom.

And that was the last time I saw Emily there in what I have called the 'personal'. I mean that I did not again enter scenes that showed her development as a girl, or baby, or child. That horrible mirror-scene, with its implications of perversity, was the end. Nor, entering that other world through — and this was new, too — the flames, or the husbanded glow of the fire as I sat beside it through these long autumn nights, did I find the rooms which opened and opened out from each other: or I did not think I had. Returning from a trip into that place I could not keep a clear memory of what I had experienced, where I had been. I would know that I had been there, from the emotions that sustained, or were draining, me: I had been fed there, from some capacious murmuring source all comfort and sweetness; I had been frightened and threatened. Or perhaps in, or under, the thick light of this room seemed now to shimmer another light which came from there — I had brought it with me and it stayed for a while, making me long for what it represented.

And when it faded, how slow and dim and heavy was the air… Hugo had developed a dry cough, and as we sat together, he might suddenly jump up and go to the window, nosing at it, his sides labouring, and I would open it, realising that I, too, was in a stupor from the fug and the heaviness of the room. We would stand there side by side, breathing the air that flowed in from outside, trying to flush our lungs clean with it.

***

After some days when I had not seen Emily at all, I went to Gerald's house through streets which were disordered, as always, but seemed much cleaner. It was as if an excess of dirtiness and mess had erupted everywhere, but then winds, or at least movements of air, had taken some of it away. I saw no one during this walk.

I half expected to find that efforts had been made towards restoring the vegetable garden. No. It was wrecked and trampled, and some chickens were at work in it. A dog was creeping towards them under the bushes. This was so rare a sight that I had to stop and look. Not one dog, but a pack of dogs, and they were creeping on all sides towards the pecking chickens. I cannot tell you how uneasy this made me: there was something enormous waiting to burst in on me, some real movement and change in our situation: dogs! a pack of dogs, eleven or twelve of them, what could it possibly mean? And, watching them, my prickling skin and the cold sweat on my forehead told me I was afraid, and had good reason to be: the dogs could choose me instead of the chickens. I went as fast as I could inside the house. Which was clean and empty. Ascending through the house I was listening for life in the rooms off the landings — nothing. At the top of the house a closed door. I knocked and Emily opened it a crack — saw it was me, and let me in, shutting it fast again and bolting it. She was dressed in furs, trousers of rabbit or cat, a fur jacket, a grey fur cap pulled low over her face. She looked like a pantomime cat. But pale, and sorrowful. Where was Gerald?

She returned to a nest she had made for herself on the floor, of fur rugs and fur cushions. The room smelled like a den from the furs, but sniffing, trying it out, I realised that otherwise the air was fresh and sharp, and that I was breathing it in great gasps. Emily made a place for me in the rugs, and I sat and covered myself. It was very cold: no heating here. We sat quietly together — breathing.

She said: 'Now that the air outside has become impossible to breathe, I spend as much time as I can here.'

And I understood it was true: this was a moment when someone said something which crystallised into fact intimations only partly grasped that had been pointing towards on obvious conclusion… in this case, it was that the air we breathed had indeed become hard on our lungs, had been getting fouler and thicker for a long time. We had become used to it, were adapting: I, like everyone else, had been taking short reluctant breaths, as if rationing what we took into our lungs, our systems, could also ration the poisons — what poisons? But who could know, or say! This was 'it', again, in a new form — 'it', perhaps, in its original form?

Sitting in that room, whose floor was all covered with furs for lying and reclining, a room in which there was nothing to do but to lie, or to sit, I realised that I was — happy simply to be there, and breathe. Which I did, for a long time, while my head cleared and my spirits lightened. I looked out through clean polythene at a thick sky turbulent with clouds that held snow; I watched the light changing on the wall. From time to time Emily and I smiled at each other. It was very quiet everywhere. There came at one point a violent cackling and snarling from the garden, but we did not move. It ceased. Silence again. We sat on, without moving, just breathing.

There were machines in the room: one hanging from the ceiling, another on the floor, one nailed to a wall. These were for purifying the air, and they worked by sending out streams of electrons, negative ions-people had used them for some time; just as no one would dream of using water from the taps unless it had passed through one of the many types of water purifier. Air and water, water and air, the basics of our substance, the elements we swim in, move in, of which we are formed and reformed, continuously, perpetually recreated and renewed… for how long had we had to distrust them, evade them, treat them as possible enemies?

'You should take some machines home with you,' she said. 'There's a room full of them.'

'Gerald?'

'Yes, he went to a warehouse. There's a room of them under this one. But I'll help you carry them. How can you live in that filthy air?' and she said this in the way one does bring something out one has wanted to say, but has kept back.

She was smiling — and reproachful.

'Are you coming back…' — I hesitated to say 'home', but she said: 'Yes, I'll come home with you.'

'Hugo will be pleased,' I said, not meaning any reproach, but her eyes filled and she reddened.

'Why are you able to come now?' I asked, risking it; but she simply shook her head, meaning: I'll answer in a moment… And she did, when she had taken herself into control.

'There's no point in my staying here now.'

'Gerald has gone?'

'I don't know where he is. Not since he brought the machines.'

'He is making a new gang for himself?'

'Trying to.'

When she was on her feet, rolling up furs into big bundles to take with us, laying out others in which to wrap machines, there was a knock, and Emily went to see who it was. No, not Gerald, but a couple of children. At the sight of children, I was afraid. And I realised 'in a flash' — another one! that I, that everybody, had come to see all children as, simply, terrifying. Even before the arrival of the 'poor little kids' this had been true.

These two, dirty, bright-faced, sharp, wary, sat on the fur — floor, apart from us, and apart from each other. Each held a heavy stick, with a nail-studded knob, ready for use against us, and against each other.

'Thought I'd get a breath of fresh air,' said one, a redheaded boy, all milky skin and charming freckles. The other, a fair, angelic little girl, said, for herself: 'Yes, I wanted some fresh air.'

They sat and breathed and watched while we, keeping an eye on them, went on with the rolling and packing.

'Where are you going?' asked the girl.