Throughout the afternoon and evening he returned to the grotto at intervals, moving circumspectly through the outer chambers, always aware of the robed figure waiting for him in the doorway to its innermost sanctum.

The next morning Dr Phillips called to change his dressing.

‘Excellent, excellent,’ he commented, holding his torch in one hand as he retaped Maitland’s eyelids to his cheeks. ‘Another week and you’ll be out of this for good. At least you know what it’s like for the blind.’

‘One can envy them,’ Maitland said.

‘Really?’

‘They see with an inner eye, you know. In a sense everything there is more real.’

‘That’s a point of view.’ Dr Phillips replaced the bandages. He drew the curtains. ‘What have you seen with yours?’

Maitland made no reply. Dr Phillips had examined him in the darkened study, but the thin torch beam and the few needles of light around the curtains had filled his brain like arc lights. He waited for the glare to subside, realizing that his inner world, the grotto, the house of mirrors and the enchantress, had been burned out of his mind by the sunlight.

‘They’re hypnagogic images,’ Dr Phillips remarked, fastening his bag.

‘You’ve been living in an unusual zone, sitting around doing nothing but with your optic nerves alert, a no-man’s land between sleep and consciousness. I’d expect all sorts of strange things.’

After he had gone Maitland said to the unseen walls, his lips whispering below the bandages: ‘Doctor, give me back my eyes.’

It took him two full days to recover from this brief interval of external sight. Laboriously, rock by rock, he re-explored the hidden coastline, willing himself through the enveloping sea-mists, searching for the lost estuary.

At last the luminous beaches appeared again.

‘I think I’d better sleep alone tonight,’ he told Judith. ‘I’ll use mother’s room.’

‘Of course, Richard. What’s the matter?’

‘I suppose I’m restless. I’m not getting much exercise and there are only three days to go. I don’t want to disturb you.’

He found his own way into his mother’s bedroom, glimpsed only occasionally during the years since his marriage. The high bed, the deep rustle of silks and the echoes of forgotten scents carried him back to his earliest childhood. He lay awake all night, listening to the sounds of the river reflected off the cut-glass ornaments over the fireplace.

At dawn, when the gulls flew up from the estuary, he visited the blue grottoes again, and the tall house in the cliff. Knowing its tenant now, the green-robed watcher on the staircase, he decided to wait for the morning light. Her beckoning eyes, the pale lantern of her smile, floated before him.

However, after breakfast Dr Phillips returned.

‘Right,’ he told Maitland briskly, leading him in from the lawn. ‘Let’s have those bandages off.’

‘For the last time, Doctor?’ Judith asked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Certainly. We don’t want this to go on for ever, do we?’ He steered Maitland into the study. ‘Sit down here, Richard. You draw the curtains, Judith.’

Maitland stood up, feeling for the desk. ‘But you said it would take three more days, Doctor.’

‘I dare say. But I didn’t want you to get over-excited. What’s the matter? You’re hovering about there like an old woman. Don’t you want to see again?’

‘See?’ Maitland repeated numbly. ‘Of course.’ He subsided limply into a chair as Dr Phillips’ hands unfastened the bandages. A profound sense of loss had come over him. ‘Doctor, could I put it off for—’

‘Nonsense. You can see perfectly. Don’t worry, I’m not going to fling back the curtains. It’ll be a full day before you can see freely. I’ll give you a set of filters to wear. Anyway, these dressings let through more light than you imagine.’

At eleven o’clock the next morning, his eyes shielded only by a pair of sunglasses, Maitland walked out on to the lawn. Judith stood on the terrace, and watched him make his way around the wheelchair. When he reached the willows she called: ‘All right, darling? Can you see me?’

Without replying, Maitland looked back at the house. He removed the sunglasses and threw them aside on to the grass. He gazed through the trees at the estuary, at the blue surface of the water stretching to the opposite bank. Hundreds of the gulls stood by the water, their heads turned in profile to reveal the full curve of their beaks. He looked over his shoulder at the high-gabled house, recognizing the one he had seen in his dream. Everything about it, like the bright river which slid past him, seemed dead.

Suddenly the gulls rose into the air, their cries drowning the sounds of Judith’s voice as she called again from the terrace. In a dense spiral, gathering itself off the ground like an immense scythe, the gulls wheeled into the air over his head and swirled over the house.

Quickly Maitland pushed back the branches of the willows and walked down on to the bank.

A moment later, Judith heard his shout above the cries of the gulls. The sound came half i pain and half in triumph, and she ran down to the trees uncertain whether he had injured himself or disovered something pleasing.

Then she saw him standing on the bank, his head raised to the sunlight, the bright carmine on his cheeks and hands, an eager, unrepentant Oedipus.

The Volcano Dances

They lived in a house on the mountain Tiaxihuati half a mile below the summit. The house was built on a lava flow like the hide of an elephant. In the afternoon and evening the man, Charles Vandervell, sat by the window in the lounge, watching the fire displays that came from the crater. The noise rolled down the mountainside like a series of avalanches. At intervals a falling cinder hissed as it extinguished itself in the water tank on the roof. The woman slept most of the time in the bedroom overlooking the valley or, when she wished to be close to Vandervell, on the settee in the lounge.

In the afternoon she woke briefly when the ‘devil-sticks’ man performed his dance by the road a quarter of a mile from the house. This mendicant had come to the mountain for the benefit of the people in the village below the summit, but his dance had failed to subdue the volcano and prevent the villagers from leaving. As they passed him pushing their carts he would rattle his spears and dance, but they walked on without looking up. When he became discouraged and seemed likely to leave Vandervell sent the house-boy out to him with an American dollar. From then on the stick-dancer came every day.

‘Is he still here?’ the woman asked. She walked into the lounge, folding her robe around her waist. ‘What’s he supposed to be doing?’

‘He’s fighting a duel with the spirit of the volcano,’ Vandervell said. ‘He’s putting a lot of thought and energy into it, but he hasn’t a chance.’

‘I thought you were on his side,’ the woman said. ‘Aren’t you paying him a retainer?’

‘That’s only to formalize the relationship. To show him that I understand what’s going on. Strictly speaking, I’m on the volcano’s side.’

A shower of cinders rose a hundred feet above the crater, illuminating the jumping stick-man.

‘Are you sure it’s safe here?’

Vandervell waved her away. ‘Of course. Go back to bed and rest. This thin air is bad for the complexion.’

‘I feel all right. I heard the ground move.’

‘It’s been moving for weeks.’ He watched the stick-man conclude his performance with a series of hops, as if leapfrogging over a partner. ‘On his diet that’s not bad.’

‘You should take him back to Mexico City and put him in one of the cabarets. He’d make more than a dollar.’

‘He wouldn’t be interested. He’s a serious artist, this Nijinsky of the mountainside. Can’t you see that?’