There were four long hills leading up to the centre of the township, whereupon the Ancient Fathers had seen fit to erect an architectural folly, a giant tower that leant in all directions at once: some of the inhabitants, when they actually deigned to look up at it from their daily strife for life, saw it more like an inverted pyramid. But, mainly, it was just there, a landmark that nobody any longer bothered to notice.
So, when new arrivals used to come in across the surrounding scrublands on a packhorse, he (and, on rare occasions, she) would be stunned by the apparently unstable megalith rising and widening from an already high point of the township, up to which the huddled, makeshift beast-sheds, that served as shelter for humans as well as their beasts, would crawl, without any worthwhile gaps for movement between.
There had been no new arrivals for some years. The desert winds, caught up in some cyclic global panic on the ice runs up North, had worsened for several seasons, making the township further from the thoroughfares of civilisation.
Then, out of the blue, during a particularly long pandemic of freak mildness, came one — side saddle — across the wastes. Dressed as a woman should be, she was seen to lift her hand to her brow to shade the dust-hoked sun from her eyes, as if surveying, with in-uilt sexants and balances, the height of the folly. She must be an architectural student from the nearest University at far off Eleison, working out a doctorate on the wonders of the world, they thought, as they raised their eyes from dredging the accumulations of dust from their earthen floors.
They did have pride for the tower that dominated, but did not encroach upon, their daily runs. However, as soon as a stranger was espied on the otherwise unnoticed horizon, they became conscious, not only of their own shortcomings (the lack of respect for their bodies and with the outer bodies, as it were, they chose to put about them), but also of the last vestige of the Ancient Fathers, bequeathed by the existence of that one particular item of folly…
***
The inn was crowded, which was unusual for that time of day. The landlord had spent most of the morning clambering over the roof, cleaning out the gutters and patching up the holes which seemed to break open every night, whatever the weather. He brushed off the dust as he bustled into the bar area, cursing the day he was born. When he saw the amount of people crowding round the pumps, mouths open, he cursed even louder, for there was nothing more irritating than customers.
“Hey, what do you think you lot are doing?”
“We’ve come to partake of your lousy beer, mine host,” jeered one lad with lights in his eyes.
The rest nodded diffidently in assent.
“Well, you can all pack off till nearer closing time. I’ve too much to do to deal with the likes of you, today. Up on the roof, just now, I saw one coming..who looks a sight more respectable, and a lady at that! She won’t want to mix with any old company and she’s bound to step off here, this being the inn.”
“Come down off it, you think she’ll stick her nose in this dump?” continued the young lad.
Suddenly, all heads turned as the door opened, and in strode the stranger that many in the township had seen coming since earlier on, when the young, dust-free sun had etched her silhouette upon the most distant horizon that they could manage to see with their retractable eyes.
Their vision was now out on stalks, as they explored every nook and cranny of her garb. They didn’t know it was rude to stare; she stared back.
The landlord was the first to move, striding over to her, holding out his hand — she did not take it.
“Welcome, madam, I hope your stay here will be fruitful and don’t mind these gawping gents, they’re just going....”
And he motioned them out the back way. Turning again to the stranger, he went on, “Can I offer you a mouthwash, a waft of roasting carcass, a clean ladle of...”
“No, no, I’m only here to seek directions to the folly.”
Her voice hinted at breeding, slightly masculine in its overtones, but underlaid with a lilting dialect that betokened feminine upbringing.
The voice was, however, furthest from the landlord’s attention, when he realised that the stranger was blind. The eyes were shards of grey pottery; but her fingers were long, slender, more feeling and manipulative than any he had ever seen; they were playing a braille compass-box as if it were a musical instrument.
Her steed snickered outside. The landlord, at a loss for words, asked whether she would like to bring it in for a watering, before venturing up one of the long hills to the Ancient Father’s monument, as she preferred to call it.
She shook her head.
“I’ve spent most of my life getting here, dear sir,through all manner of weathers, and this...” She pointed to the revolving wheel-spikes of the compass-box. “...my trusty box of tricks, has got me here. But now, all I can find with my feet are splintered wood, disused fences, corrugated iron sheets, cries of child and beasts as one, and no way through them to that I most want to see. So pray, don’t dilly, just give me the once over for the top!”
She used the word ‘see’ as if it held all the mystery of the universe.
***
Darktime was later that day because the sun had steered clear of the worst of the duststorms. It was still a relatively uncorrupted fiery eye as it set behind the distant northern hills.
The folly, to those in the southern reaches of the township, hid the last golden rays and stood out like a vast triangle which, for long, had bean emblem of their faith in religion. Many kneeled in penitence, not with faces upraised, for few could look up at it with equanimity: it would remind them too much that the past has no longer duration than the future. It just shadowed their temples, granting an unremarkable peace, and as the sun finally left their world for the next in line, the darkness became everything, no longer just the trinity shape on the hill…
As night took the shanties fully in its embrace, one could only hear the odd howls of beast and babe, and even those intermittent reminders of day took their noises into dream.
But one still sat awake. She had reached the foot of the vast inverted pyramid, where mathematics (or some arcane version of that sciance which only the Ancient Fathers had known) balanced the apex upon the central proud fulcrum of the township, allowing incredible balancing feats and inner strengths to take the line of least resistance ... which was the perfection represented by the unwieldy up-widening chaos of the superstone perched on comparatively next to nothing.
She recalled the landlord’s amusing chatter as he himself led her to this place of quiet. He was somewhere near, snoring louder than the beast that had carried her.
ENDING (A)
She smiled. With her box of tricks fast-churning within her hand, she reached out to touch the vibrant surface of the tapering base, in the hope that it would fulfil her as much as it would drain her. Perhaps she could lay off her blindness upon it, somehow, as many had told her of its curative properties.
She stumbled. At the very and of her tortuous quest, she fell over the outstretched leg of the landlord and careered into the monument. She could not see it, but she knew it as if instinctively: the massive block teetered, righted itself momentarily, and then hurtled from its plinth down the screaming slopes, in all directions at once putting out of misery all in its paths finally, coming to rest, in several halves, and brooded henge-like for the rest of eternity.
The landlord had been in one of its paths, so his dreams were cut short. She shrugged and hugged herself to sleep.
ENDING (B)
She smiled. She would be neither blind nor a woman. She walked up the sloping side on the inverted pyramid, defying all the gravities known to man, her box of tricks whirling and clicking in her hand.
“Blimey!” said the landlord, on awakening to a dawn that was clearer than any he could remember. “ What am I doing here? It’s cold, soon to get hot — no doubt. Must have dreamed myself up here”’
He wandered down the long hill, dodging in and out of those yawning from the ‘beast sheds’. He was in a hurry, for otherwise he would be late for opening time, with many customers wanting a drink before breakfast.
Halfway down the hill, he looked back, without really knowing why. He had gazed a thousand times up to the monument, without properly ‘seeing’ it, but today it filled him with a glory.
The folly was his God, the only way to face out the Absurd; no need to keep staring at it, for it wouldn’t go away. It was rude to stare in any event.
He got back to his inn and he welcomed his customers with a very special ‘happy hour’.
This ending seemed far better to him. He smiled.
(published 'Works' 1989)
