On the Night in Question

by Patrick Johnston

The gibbous waning moon casts his shadowlight across the land, but a pale reflection of the radiance of his sister, who is my all and everything and makes bright and clear my days, for now are the hours of the night when she is hidden from me, but her brother, who is her twin, is my silent inconstant companion during this time, a promise that she will rise at dawn…

And the events of the day are the events of the day, and the events of the night are the events of the night, and the divide between them is a subtle twilight time when the sun is newly hid or soon to arise at the very ends of the earth, and the events of the twilight time are neither the events of the day nor the events of the night. Or perhaps they are both.

But it is within the times of the events of night that mark this suncycle as outside of the ordinary, although the ordinary is anything but that. And there were events of the wind and earth and fire. And there were events of water. And the most unusual event of this night, whilst not solely lacking all precedence, is sufficiently outside the usual flow of things as to be worthy of mention. And so, those things I know to have occurred this night, I shall enumerate in a manner that is surely elementary.

It was in the hours of darkness under the clear gibbous moon, that the old barn owl took for its prey a young mouse that scurried across the yard between the stables and the potting shed. The mouse was timid but eager and the potting shed held a trove of seeds and stems close to its crevice nest where the mortar has failed and crumbled in the stable wall. The owl is ancient in days with knowledge of things and their ways and had perched on the eaves of the stable roof and waited until the mouse was brave enough to stray from the cover of the walls to make its dash across the brick-tiled no-man’s-land. And on silent feathers glid, inch-swooping across the ground and reared, extending talons grasped and killing-squeezed and flapped and banked and turned, back to its sentinel on the stable eaves where it swallowed whole the dead or dying mouse, dropping headfirst into its gaping maw. And this I witnessed. And I witnessed too, when some hours later, its gizzard having completed its long ruminations on the meal, it hawked a small package of fur and skin and bones and cartilage, moist with digestive juices, that dropped to the base of the wall where it will slowly desiccate in the warmth of the days to follow, a mummified relic of the mouse that once lived.

And that was not the first of the deaths that occurred on this night, and nor was it the last.

But there was no mystery surrounding this death that might require explanation, nor was there any blame to be ascribed, nor justice to be pondered or meted. It was simply an occurrence of the daily kind that is the normal way of things. A mouse that was hungry for seeds was waylaid in its business by an owl that was hungry for mice. And on this occasion the owl was satisfied in its needs and the mouse was left with no more needs to be satisfied, having perhaps felt the briefest expression of fear and pain. But this is the way of things, since all the things that live also die.

And dark and deep within the earth, but before the soil gives way to clay, a small chamber, cradled within the root system of stalwart beech, lies at the heart of a labyrinthine web of tunnels and cells. And it is filled with fresh bedding and mother’s care and smells salty amniotic and earth and root and fur and musk, as a molemother delivers her four pups, that come easily into the world, blind skinned eyes and hot and pink in the darkness. And licks and cleans each of them in turn as she awaits the advent of the next, and encourages them to nurse, and the licking and the nursing stimulate the release of ancient hormones that cement the chemical bonds of love that binds them to each other. It is her first time in birthing and nursing, as it was her first time in mating but some thirty odd suncycles prior, and her first time building her nest, but the wisdom and knowing of the generations is in her as it was in her mother and hers before. And this I witnessed too.

And that was not the first of the births that occurred on this night, and nor was it the last.

But there was no more mystery surrounding this birth than the miracle that attends any other birth, and nothing that requires us to do any more than marvel that it should be so. Simply an occurrence of the daily kind that is the normal way of things, since every life has a beginning.

And in the long dark shadow cast by the copse that blocked the moonlight across the already grey-dark lawn, there was a prolonged confrontation between two male hedgehogs vying for the right to press their suit upon a receptive female who loitered in the shadows with aloof disinterest, her scent fuelling each in their passion. Circling, snuffling and grunting, their choreography etched across the short grass plain. They are proud and dangerous boars prickling with weaponry and defence. They grunt their challenges in drifting circles across the lawn. One breaks away and circumnavigates the female. He snuffles and grunts at her, then returns to posture towards the other male. He is good of age and has tramped the years and fields and hedgerows and is known well to the birds and the trees. The younger male is his grandson by way of a daughter, but this is known to neither and neither would they care. Circling, snuffling and grunting. They are a mass of thorns. The female, who is half-sister, older, unknown, and unacknowledged, to the younger male, moves further away. They circle her. Gruntsnuffling in their circle of consanguinity. Snufflegrunting they play out the dance of their ritual. They round upon each other. The communication of their dance slowly declaring its semantics through the syntax of grunts and snuffles and circles and pauses. Each of them declaring and expanding upon their axioms. Until eventually it is understood by both, which of them has won the day. And no blood is spilled as the older withdraws from the field knowing that this time is not his time. And perhaps this is the beginning of his decline from prominence. Or perhaps it is just an off day and again his star will rise, and he will become father again to more broods.

But a new scuttling ritual commences wherein the younger victor engages now with the female and the dance of circling and snuffling and grunting commences anew. And this time although the belaboured syntax appears much the same, the semantics are wholly different, and when the message is agreed upon, the agreement is that they will mate. Which they proceed do, with elaborate care since they are both bristling with weaponry. She relaxes her tail spines to allow him to mount her and slowly he obliges. Genitals pink and moist like tongues. The fire of their coupling is brief, and, following this transaction, they separate and part without further ado, waddling their solitary ways to go about their own affairs.

And neither was this the first or the last confrontation that occurred and nor was it the first or the last acts of mating that occurred. But I witnessed it as I witnessed so many other events and processes, and each event was part of a process, and each event could be broken down into smaller events, and so could be considered itself to be a process, and each larger process might be seen through slower eyes to constitute an event that was part of a larger process still. But none of these things were in anywise contrary to the ways of things.

And the water was dark and cool in its depths, and warmer at the surface from the day’s sun, and the moonlit ripples emanated out and away from their epicentre in a series of waves that spread, undulating the lily pads as they pass beneath, charting the extent of the mere’s contours as they reflect back from the banks building a complex pattern of harmony and interference across the surface. And in times varied by their many trajectories re-arrive at the point of their genesis, to the very object of their genesis, that floats face down in the water. The body of a human, naked but still warm with life, hair a floating halo, open mouth and eyes that do not see the pair of minnows that hover beneath, water in its lungs it breathes no more. And discarded clothes along the grassy slope give testimony to the path that led to the watery demise.

And this I witnessed too. And neither was this the first of the deaths that occurred this night, and neither was it the last. But it is the only one that might trouble me, if I took the trouble to be troubled. For unlike the other events witnessed and revealed it is a thing whose meanings, deep or shallow, are not to be easily discerned, for all those things, rich as they are with significance, their depth and surface are so neatly aligned as to be one and the same. Whereas…

Whereas… this being did not die so that other organisms might feed and live and grow, although feed and live they already do and will. Neither did it expire having fulfilled its role, like the mayfly or butterfly, having cast to fate its chance at legacy-lasting as progenitor, if the accident will, of generations yet to come. Nor did it succumb to the passing of years, its bones and organs wilting over seasons elapsed, eventually stumbling to its end of days. Rather, it came its natural end, for all ends are natural enough, in the prime of its maturity, perhaps at the design of desire and will of another member of the species same. And whilst acts of cannibalism abound, and thus a creature might come to devour another of its kind and so to live and grow, or that a being might come to die as a result of wounds inflicted by another of its kind in competition to feed or to mate or to hold dominion over disputed territory, it is rare thing in the nations of beasts that the death of another be the primary purpose of an event.

And yet, in this case, the case is this: a human body floats dead in the waters of the mere, water in its lungs, and poison in its belly and blood. Intentionally dead? Dead by the hand of another human? And for reasons that its surface cannot detail? The event of the death I witnessed; but its genesis and meaning I do not understand. And if I chose to take the trouble to be troubled it might warrant further reflection and introspection and recollection. Inspection, in fact. Investigation, even. So that I, or we, might come to know the wherefores and therebys of happenstance elapsed. And thus, to understand…

BIO: Patrick Johnston is an Anglo-Australian writer and former professor of psychology and neuroscience. His work appears in The Louisville Review, Blood + Honey, and Roe River Review.