Jerzy Peterkiewicz - Inner Circle

Jerzy Peterkiewicz

I nner Circle

Illustrated by F. N. SOUZA

First published in Great Britain by Macmillan & Co. Limited 1966

Panther edition published 1968

Copyright Jerzy Peterkiewicz 1966

Contents

Book One

SURFACE

Our neighbour has a turret of a neck, long, sinewy and vigilant. This might be useful for picking up information, but we have to squash him against the box whenever we go round. For the circle must stay as it is, unbroken. Sometimes he clings to the hook on my belt and trails behind me for a minute, then he bumps into another cluster of people, lets the belt go, and bounces back to the box.

'We're well looked after though, aren't we?' he keeps assuring himself into my ear as it passes close to his mouth. He probably means the hygiene box: his back touches it, rubs, rebounds and leans against it; could he but turn his whole body instead of craning his neck, the indoor pleasures would be his without queueing. He can't, because the crowd tends to coagulate near a box or a firmly linked circle like ours. That's why the five of us cannot risk standing still for long. The others might push right through us. It's safer to revolve. And a small space inside the circle will remain free and empty as long as we protect it with this turning human hoop.

A moment ago our neighbour pointed his turret of a neck at our patch of ground and seemed to be measuring it up from his eye-level.

'You'll have to tilt your heads,' he said, 'when the rain

comes tilt them well back. Like this.'

He expected at least one of us to look up and see what his neck was capable of. This is how he often tries to attract attention. My first wife happens to be called Rain. Now she smiled at the sound of her name. But she knew as well as I did that the real rain was very rarely allowed to pass through the openings in the adjustable sky above the millions of heads like ours, which were at this moment bending, tilting, swaying, nodding and eyeing one another all over this jewel island set in the sea we couldn't enter, cross or watch from the air. Precious indeed was the jewel, and hard, and bare.

'If you make a hollow in the earth the size of a fist, like this, look' - came another piece of neighbourly advice - 'if you do this at night, moisture will collect inside, and then things might grow.'

Things: we all searched for things under our moving feet, anything roundish and black that could be a seed, or some bit of a twig, or just a splinter. The night before, I had wedged one in and it looked like a morsel of weed; my foot gnashed on the gravel, perhaps the thing went too deep or slid to the side. It wasn't worth telling the others.

'What's your name?' This time I craned my neck to show him that mine too, though much shorter than his, could be quick and inquisitive. 'Your name?' I almost shouted. Clinging types, especially in crowds near the hygiene boxes, were put off when you asked for their particulars. Not that we went much by names. My second wife, for instance, was September. There were thousands of Septembers whirling about in this area between the Kent coast and the dried-up marshes of London. And the month of September apparently kept returning each year, though as a rule we didn't bother about the seasons and the months that were supposed to belong to them. The man was slow in replying: perhaps he had vacated his precious post altogether. No, there he stood, holding his breath for the approach of my ear.

'We met in Leeds, don't you remember?' He wasn't put off, merely offended. 'And your own name I know, sounded something like Cliff or White?'

'No, Dover.'

'Dover? But of course! We met in Leeds, you see. You had no wives then, I distinctly remember. You said you had lost one that could have been a wife, when that big stampede started. You remember the stampede at Leeds, I bet you do.'

'Oh, that-'

I did remember it, but I wished he wouldn't, like the rest of them, use those stupid old place-names which in fact signified next to nothing. The sand, the clay, the stones we were milling and wearing out with our feet, year by year, second by second, looked from our habitual eye-angle very much the same, whether the encircled ground happened to be within the imaginary boundaries of something once called London or Leeds or Llandudno. No streets, no vehicles, no plants, nothing that barked, miaowed or bleated. My knowledge of traditional geography was no worse than his. The fool was very likely named after Leeds. The necky Mr. Leeds, fancy meeting you again in the same crowd!

Both Rain and September were staring at me, then Rain halted and the circle stopped. Automatically, we all glanced at the empty centre as if it were to be protected soon against the thudding onrush of feet.

'The cat, Dover, I once carried a pussy asleep in my arms. I should have both my arms free, don't you think, in case he chooses me again.'

But she didn't loosen the grip of her hands. What were her eyes doing? No, Rain never wept. We five, the others, all of us, did many things in the open, but crying - no. It became a freakish sight, a joke of sorts, just like Standing room only, uttered by some of the newcomers at the first surprise of being surfaced among us.

I had to say something to Rain, and quickly, about the kitten and other transient pets, about cats in general if necessary, before the Leeds man with the prowling neck could pounce on his new opportunity and announce for all of us to know that on this overthronged jewel of ours we humans had every conceivable priority over animals, and that cats were dangerously adaptable even in our congested circumstances; so much so that they would prove a special menace, had they existed still.

'Cats hide in the trees, they climb them, you know,' September spoke in a tone one occasionally had to adopt to help those who had never seen a creature other than man.

'I'll be a tree,' I heard Rain's threatening phrase, 'I'll be a standing, immovable tree, my roots and leaves spattered with the thickest drips of rain, a true, gushing, swishing, slithering rain.'

'Real rain doesn't stain,' I said. She liked my rhyme; it had helped her to accept her own name. 'Keep moving.' She recognized my command by the change of tone. 'Hand in hand, tighten your grip, look into the centre, look hard - hard into our own centre.'

This was a moment of danger. There had been and there would be many moments like this: the circle near the point of breaking, because of the two women, my coincidental wives and the two drowsy men, my coincidental brothers whom I had to keep attached to the hooks on my belt because their hands were still so feeble. And above our five revolving heads there hovered a pivoting turret of a neck, watchful for every potential weakness, for a breach, a passage of entry, so that he could penetrate my self-winding system, he a mere parasite, a floater deposited by the human tide near a box so much like any other box.

'We're well looked after though, aren't we, Dover? The air's quite good, hardly any dust these days, considering the constant wear and tear of the surface. A variety of colours, too. Pink does rather become you, Dover. Amazing how they manage those lights in the sky-roof, don't you agree? After pink comes pale blue, then music. The island will be full of noises. Soft at first, later rumbling like a distant thunder. Feeding-time. The heavens will open and drop riches into our lap.'