Island of the Doomed

The Longing of Evening

The Longing of Evening No, obviously, there was no evening on the island. After the brief, green twilight, night fell like a weary snake gliding down over its rock and everything became pitch black. Well, the stars could sometimes serve to guide anyone who really had to go for a walk, as they sent small, thin, fragile shafts of light falling almost like puffs of breath through space; unsure of themselves and seemingly unwilling to arrive at their destination, they emphasized the stubborn and bitter stringency of the darkness in its role as night, hopeless night, eternal night. For a while, you could get your bearings from sounds if you wished. Most iguanas had retired for the night, of course, and soon they could no longer be heard rasping their way through the rocks with their hard skins, but there must be some special strain of iguana here that felt most at home in the dark; no one knew what they looked like asnone of them had ever come near the fire or even come down from their rocks. Nevertheless,as long as it was dark, from time to time you could hear loud and clear the hard slapping of tails, quick shuffles over stones and a strange jabbering sound like that made by birds, something you never 154 heard by day; but the slappingwas harder, the shuffling quicker, as if they were bigger, more ruthless and less indolent animals that had now come to life; or could it be that the uncertainties of night encouraged the ears of the castaways to magnify all noises, make everything more scary, stir up eddies of hidden desires and apparently dead fears in which the ego could rotate like an abandoned snail shell? 'Oh, my God, I'm so scared,' said the English girl, 'you must understand how scared I am of night.Jimmie, surely you can understand that it shouldn't be like this, why couldn't everything be quite different? You must realize how scared I am of everything that happens here, and what hashappened, and what issoon going to happen. I'd thought I could help you, you must know yourself how unhappy you looked when we first met. I'd really have liked to - no I wouldn't, because I was shy, and frightened as well, really frightened. I knew straight away who you were, and I couldn't very well have known how dangerous it was to know and let other people know, I mean, I thought the whole time all the others knew as well and Ijust assumed it was all an innocent masquerade that could end at any minute. Obviously I got frightened and sorry and worried when I saw how you looked when I gave away your secret. It was just that I wanted to talk to you, but you must surely realize that when I knew who you were and had sort of known you such a long time, it would have been so awfully difficult to talk to you if I couldn't talk to you and laugh with you in your real identity rather than the one they had down on the passengerlist. 'You think I'm silly, sitting here telling you all this when it's dark and we're as shipwrecked as it's possible to be and scared of the dark and hunger and iguanasand 155 all the rest of it. I can see you think I'm extremely silly and I can understand I'll never get you to pull down the canvas from over your head as long as I'm sitting here. You're probably thinking she does go on and on, this young idiot who's been chasing me all the voyage and still can't leave me in peace even now when everything 's gone wrong, I can hear you're saying that by your silence and the way you're not moving a muscle, but here I am still sitting here prattling. Oh yes, you're going to hear all sorts of things this evening, even if you are lying under your canvas with your fingers in your ears and think you can shut me out. You'll see that you can't in the long run and then you'll fold back the canvas and start talking to me about all the things that have been happening to the two...