Light by CS Lewis – Part 2
Watch on KineScope.
When Anne took him out for his walk next day he was on his guard. He kept on saying, ‘It’s lovely. All lovely. Just let me drink it in, and that satisfied her. And he knew enough now to know that none of the things he saw could possibly be light. They were, as Anne volubly explained to him, only fields or cows or grass or the sun or trees or a quarry. Nothing could be attempted until he was able to go for walks on his own.
About six weeks went by before he first did so. During that time he had Passed through every fluctuation of hope and despair but the steady trend of his feelings was towards an increasing, and presently a tormenting, desire.
He no longer concealed from himself the fact that the visible world was a disappointment. He realised that he had never really wanted it except for the sake of light and that unless somewhere amongst them he could find that pure stream and bathe his eyes in it and drink it in, all the clouds and colours and animals and what Anne called the ‘views’ were of no account.
On the morning when he first went out alone there was a mist, but he had met mists before and this did not trouble him. He walked out over the railway bridge and up the steep hill and then along the field-path that skirted the lip of the quarry. Anne had taken him there a few days before to show him ‘the view’.
She had said, What a lovely light there is on the hills over there! That clue he was now following, though with very faint hope. He was almost certain by now that she knew no more about light than he did. He was beginning to suspect that most of the un-blind were in the same position. What one heard among them was probably mere parrot-like repetition of a rumour—a rumour concerning something which the very few, the great poets and prophets, had really seen and known. Somewhere it must exist. Perhaps not in England— perhaps only rare deposits of it existed, far away to the East in deserts or high mountains. In that case, he would never see it. But if he did-ah yes, if-he would dive into its very heart, give all himself away to it, drink, drink, drink it till he died drinking:
The mist thinned rapidly. Trees brightened out of it, birds began singing.
He found he was hot. His shadow lay before him, each moment blacker and more distinct. That violent yellow thing, the sun, which one could never see properly, stared at him on his left hand. He pulled the brim of his hat lower over his eyes, blinking. ‘If only I could see any light!’ he muttered.
At that moment he caught sight of a young man who was standing with his legs wide apart on the edge of the cliff, singing and making jabs with some slender instrument at a complicated two-legged object about the same height as himself. If Robin had had more experience he would have recognised this as a canvas on an easel. As it was, his eyes and those of the wild looking stranger met so unexpectedly that Robin blurted out, ‘What are you doing?, before he had time to be self-conscious.
‘Doing?’ said the stranger with a certain light-hearted savagery. ‘Doing? I’m trying to catch light, if you want to know. Damn it.’
‘Good God! So am I’, said Robin.
‘Oh-you know too, do you?’, said the man. Then, almost vindictively,’They’re all fools. How many come out to paint on a day like this? How many will see it even if you show it’em? And yet this is the only sort of day when you can see light—solid light—-light you could drink in a cup or swim in! Look at it’ He pointed into the quarry. The fog was at death grips with the sun but not a stone on the quarry floor was yet visible. The bath of vapour shone like white metal and unfolded itself in ever widening spirals towards them.
‘Do you see that?’, shouted the violent stranger. ‘There’s light for you if you like it.’
A second later the expression on the painter’s face changed. ‘Here!’ he cried, ‘Are you mad?’
The grab he made at Robin was too late. Already, the painter was alone on the path. From a new-made and rapidly vanishing rift in the fog beneath him there came up no cry but only a sound so sharp and definite that you would hardly expect it to have been made by the fall of anything so soft as a human body: that, and the momentary rattling of a dislodged stone.