which had struggled vainly to escape from close-shuttered windows, and the thickness of the walls was a hollow sham through which every rainstorm sent slow cascades of water that ended up in pools on the bedroom and kitchen floors.
Now the hut was entitled to be called a house. It still had primitive characteristics that gave it a primitive charm. I was working hard on a way to divert the charm of the spring which periodically erupted through the kitchen wall.
There was not a single mod con in the place. But it was clean and well furnished (well, it was furnished) in spite of the absence of carpeting. Goodness knew what hordes of insects carpeting would have provided shelter for; the bare concrete was an entomological museum.
Outside there was now a lawn on the terrace. The garden had been coming on fine until a night of exceptional frost (the worst in living memory) killed off most of the alien plants. I had one of the loveliest views in the world and it was my home.
During the past year I had acquired many skills that I never had before and never thought to have.
I could make my own bread and marmalade and tomato sauce, and I could even turn out a
maquereau espagnol
; I could identify dozens of weeds and wild plants that were edible and I had learned the various ways of cooking them; I could hoe and pick cotton, dryfigs, press wine with my feet, pick and preserve olives; I did my own laundry and though I had not yet darned a hole in my sock, that very week I had sewn a patch over a hole in my trousers; I could mix cement, build a rockery, and make a table and sideboard and a bookcase.
It had not always been easy, and trial had often resulted in error. But in spite of the most elementary mistakes, it had never been as difficult as I thought it would be. It never was. The rewards had always outmatched the disappointments and frustrations, so that at the end of that year I knew myself to be a wiser and better-equipped man in every respect than when I started it.
What about those other things I had been seeking? Well, I am not going to lay my soul bare for public inspection. I can say that I did not find freedom, nor independence, nor detachment, and I am not sure for those who seek them this is not an infinite search. They must simply go on searching. But I found other things that I was not exactly looking for.
In that environment I lived in intimate contact with nature. To me there was no doubt at all that the closer you were to nature the closer you were to God. It was both a communion and a conflict.
I spent a good deal of that first year in communion and conflict and emerged believing that I knew God better than ever before. It was, I supposed, a question of Truth. The search for Truth is mankindâs Holy Grail. It is the inspiration of all research and enquiry. Christianity and most of the great religions reconcile themselves to the impossibility of this quest by declaring God is Truth. That He is the beginning and is the end.
God is the Creator. That is one truth. But the moreprofound truth lies at the end, and where is the probe that can go into time-to-come?
Religion provides an answer which it asks its adherents to accept blindly.
But there was no need for me to go to church. Here, I worshipped God in every wondrous dawn and sunset, in every miracle of burgeoning flower and fruit.
But I also saw Him daily in the indiscriminate profusion and impersonality of His ways and in the terrifying ruthlessness of the balance, with which His natural order was maintained. That was God in action.
Chapter 17
I Was Due to Be Haunted
It was the time of year at which I was due to be haunted. They all told me that around there. It had been at the end of one January several years before that a dispute over a land boundary had led to a meeting on the square of brown, clear soil below my house where the pass over the mountain cascaded on to the road to Ageranos.
There had been three men there. A father and son together
Now the hut was entitled to be called a house. It still had primitive characteristics that gave it a primitive charm. I was working hard on a way to divert the charm of the spring which periodically erupted through the kitchen wall.
There was not a single mod con in the place. But it was clean and well furnished (well, it was furnished) in spite of the absence of carpeting. Goodness knew what hordes of insects carpeting would have provided shelter for; the bare concrete was an entomological museum.
Outside there was now a lawn on the terrace. The garden had been coming on fine until a night of exceptional frost (the worst in living memory) killed off most of the alien plants. I had one of the loveliest views in the world and it was my home.
During the past year I had acquired many skills that I never had before and never thought to have.
I could make my own bread and marmalade and tomato sauce, and I could even turn out a
maquereau espagnol
; I could identify dozens of weeds and wild plants that were edible and I had learned the various ways of cooking them; I could hoe and pick cotton, dryfigs, press wine with my feet, pick and preserve olives; I did my own laundry and though I had not yet darned a hole in my sock, that very week I had sewn a patch over a hole in my trousers; I could mix cement, build a rockery, and make a table and sideboard and a bookcase.
It had not always been easy, and trial had often resulted in error. But in spite of the most elementary mistakes, it had never been as difficult as I thought it would be. It never was. The rewards had always outmatched the disappointments and frustrations, so that at the end of that year I knew myself to be a wiser and better-equipped man in every respect than when I started it.
What about those other things I had been seeking? Well, I am not going to lay my soul bare for public inspection. I can say that I did not find freedom, nor independence, nor detachment, and I am not sure for those who seek them this is not an infinite search. They must simply go on searching. But I found other things that I was not exactly looking for.
In that environment I lived in intimate contact with nature. To me there was no doubt at all that the closer you were to nature the closer you were to God. It was both a communion and a conflict.
I spent a good deal of that first year in communion and conflict and emerged believing that I knew God better than ever before. It was, I supposed, a question of Truth. The search for Truth is mankindâs Holy Grail. It is the inspiration of all research and enquiry. Christianity and most of the great religions reconcile themselves to the impossibility of this quest by declaring God is Truth. That He is the beginning and is the end.
God is the Creator. That is one truth. But the moreprofound truth lies at the end, and where is the probe that can go into time-to-come?
Religion provides an answer which it asks its adherents to accept blindly.
But there was no need for me to go to church. Here, I worshipped God in every wondrous dawn and sunset, in every miracle of burgeoning flower and fruit.
But I also saw Him daily in the indiscriminate profusion and impersonality of His ways and in the terrifying ruthlessness of the balance, with which His natural order was maintained. That was God in action.
Chapter 17
I Was Due to Be Haunted
It was the time of year at which I was due to be haunted. They all told me that around there. It had been at the end of one January several years before that a dispute over a land boundary had led to a meeting on the square of brown, clear soil below my house where the pass over the mountain cascaded on to the road to Ageranos.
There had been three men there. A father and son together
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