“Suppose, then, that all this were simply an apprenticeship.”
“Towards what possible end?”
“A novitiate towards a new degree of self-knowledge.”
“My poor man, you are raving.”
The roar of the minotaur sounded again. “No,” he cried suddenly, apprehensively. His torch had dimmed down to a dim circle of yellow light, incapable of piercing the farther end of the corridor. Fearmax sat on a stone and took another puff at his cigar; of the two corridors facing him one was dearly indicated. The smoke quickened as it was sucked noiselessly into it. Somewhere, vaguely, it was as if he could smell something, something like scent. And yet it was not really a smell, for when he concentrated he could smell nothing beyond the dampness and the smoke of his cigar. Somewhere beyond the shadows, perhaps “French Marie” was waiting. He got up and advanced upon the two corridors that faced him; his smoke dawdled slowly ahead of him. Yet it was from the second, the one down which the smoke had not gone, that he heard the steely vibrations of the minotaur’s voice — a dull jangling like strings out of tune, like dusts being washed backwards and forwards in a confined space.
It was not a question of conscious choice, it was rather as if all activity save this devouring and overmastering curiosity in his mind had been suspended. He turned aside from the smoke and entered the other corridor; it was now that a curious thing happened. He began to feel that it was all a dream — as if he were lost in one of those dreams which confuse our childhood. He felt fear, yes, but at one remove: as if through the clouds of a morphia injection. He was supported now by the vertical clear flame of this overmastering curiosity to know what exactly the minotaur could be. Perhaps it was only one of “French Marie’s” disguises, one of her voices or aspects?
A faint odour seemed to have grown up in the corridor he was traversing; it was somehow unpleasant and yet familiar. His feet began to scrape against objects on the hard stone floor; he picked them up and examined them in the last wavering flicker of his torch before it gave out completely. They were twigs of wood. They broke dryly between ringer and thumb. Was he then moving towards the lair of some animal which carried twigs down into the underworld to line its nest?
He halted for a second to get his breath, wondering whether he should not turn round and retrace his steps; it was however in the same direction that he found himself moving, his feet scraping against twigs and branches, his nostrils full of an odour he had already begun to recognize as that of putrefaction. What was it? He drew several deep breaths of the foul air and suddenly his memory provided him with a clue. Once as a boy he had found a heron’s nest as he was walking across the marshes. The bird was sitting upon a structure of filthy twigs, surrounded by the half-chewed and decomposing remains of its feasts — fragments of fish and gobbets of field-mice. Now it was the same odour of decomposition that he smelt, only greatly magnified. What kind of animal would have so deep a burrow, and live upon carrion? His imagination simply could not supply an answer.
He sat down upon the stone floor and rested his face in his hands, thinking furiously. Somewhere an obstinate thought seemed to divine the presence of “French Marie” behind it all; a nerve of misery and disquiet in himself which could not be quietened without the promise of her. And yet this terrifying odour of rotten flesh filled the close air of the corridor, and he trembled so violently now that it was as much as he could do to control his limbs. His fear seemed to stretch away on either side of him, filling the hollow sinuses of rock, overbrimming them. His breathing had become harsh now and stertorous. Was he about to enter the trance-condition so long denied him? Was he about to hear that window open abruptly in the air above him, and the voice which so long had tantalized him by a half-uttered word, speak?
Even as he was thinking this thought he heard, at the farther end of the corridor, a faint noise — like the dim and paralytic shuffling of some very aged person. He was reminded of the harmless shuffle of carpet slippers across the wooden floors of the museum library. Presently there came a gust of tepid air — as if the displacement of some large body farther down the tunnel had driven it towards him. He called out, and as he did so tasted the impure, fetid breath of the Thing. It moved slowly in his direction — so slowly that the anguish was unbearable. It moved towards him at the speed of ice-crystals forming upon the stalactites, of the ash growing upon his cigar, of the nails growing upon his ten fingers. As yet he could see nothing, but the vague swollen promise of the darkness ahead. His torch lay expiring on the floor beside him.
Then, at last, the immensity of darkness seemed to thicken, to ripen, to swell out towards him and he saw what appeared to him to be a pair of small bloodshot eyes moving towards him. Fearmax put his hands over his face and mentally surrendered himself to it. His lips moved but no sound came from them. He felt himself picked up at last in a soft wet mouth of enormous dimensions and carried, half-senseless, down the long damp corridors of the labyrinth.
At the Monastery
It was still high afternoon when Baird awoke and washed his face in the cold spring-water from the enamel jug. The Abbot was tending his vines. “Bravo,” he cried, “I’m glad you’re in time to bathe.” Together they walked across the woodland paths to the little spit of shale which formed the promontory’s butt. With them went the faithful Mark, carrying the towels and a basket of fruit to refresh them. The sea was an ineffable blue; as if, thought Baird, our bodies would turn Tyrian blue from dipping into it. A dolphin leaped for the sun about four cables’ length out, hitting the water with the smack of a football squarely kicked. Baird took off his clothes as one might take off the soiled and ragged clouts of this world and lay down upon the hot pebbles. “Come,” he said, “I know you Greeks never find the water warm enough till August. Make an exception.” The Abbot pleaded old age and all its infirmities, and carefully tested the temperature with his finger. “It’s terribly cold,” he said, turning pale. “I could never bathe in that.” But under the lash of Baird’s teasing he finally slipped off his robes and hob-nailed boots, and did up his back-hair into a tidy bun. Brother Mark reverently took the stove-pipe hat and sat on a point to observe. The old man entered the water uttering groans of rage. His large flabby body was like oak. Baird saw the bullet-marks in his shoulder and thigh — purple scars that looked like knots in old wood. “Here I come,” he said, and they swam slowly out into the icy blueness.
“Mark. Wash the grapes,” called the Abbot, and the little monk obeyed. “Mark’s contributions to our researches into theology and morals are wonderful,” said the old man, doing his jerky dog-paddle out to sea. “He moves from prejudice to prejudice like a logician from premises to conclusion.” Baird turned on his back and saw the little monk washing the grapes tenderly and drying them on his master’s towel.
They walked back, all three arm in arm, to the monastery garden, where Baird and the Abbot, reclining in deck-chairs, the sea at their feet, spent the rest of the afternoon in idle innocence, eating and talking bad philosophy. Brother Mark sat discreetly in earshot, drinking it all in. “Mark,” said the Abbot suddenly, “what is goodness?” He nudged Baird and invited his amusement at poor Mark’s answers by wrinkling up his nose. Brother Mark shook his evil-looking forelock in their direction and raised the hand from which an exploding depth-charge ill-fused had removed two fingers. “Goodness”, he said, “is doing right. Doing what the book says.”