The Story of the Siren - E M Forster

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Story of the Siren by E. M. Forster. Few
things have been more beautiful than my note book on
the Das Controversy. As it fell downward through the waters
of the Mediterranean, it dived like a piece of black slate,
but opened soon, disclosing leaves of pale green, which quivered

(00:21):
into blue. Now it had vanished. Now it was a
piece of magical India rubber, stretching out to infinity. Now
it was a book again, but bigger than the book
of all knowledge. It grew more fantastic as it reached
the bottom, where a puff of sand welcomed it and
obscured it from view. But it reappeared quite sane, though

(00:43):
a little tremulous, lying decently open on its back, while
unseen fingers fidgeted among its leaves. It is such a pity,
said my aunt, that you will not finish your work
in the hotel. Then you would be free to enjoy yourself.
And this would never have happened. Nothing of it, but
will change into something rich and strange, warbled the Chaplain,

(01:05):
while his sister said, why it's gone into the water.
As for the boatman, one of them laughed, while the other,
without a word of warning, stood up and began to
take his clothes off. Holy Moses cried the colonel. Is
the fellow mad? Yes, thank him, dear, said my aunt,
that is to say, tell him he is very kind.

(01:26):
But perhaps another time. All the same, I do want
my book back, I complained. It's for my fellowship dissertation.
There won't be much left of it by another time.
I have an idea, said some woman or other through
her parasol. Let us leave this child of nature to
dive for the book while we go on to the
other grotto. We can land him either on this rock

(01:49):
or on the ledge inside, and he will be ready
when we return. The idea seemed good, and I improved
it by saying I would be left behind two to
lighten the boat. So the two of us were deposited
outside the little grotto, on a great sunlit rock that
guarded the harmonies within. Let us call them blue, though
they suggest rather the spirit of what is clean, cleanliness

(02:13):
passed from the domestic to the sublime, the cleanliness of
all the sea gathered together and radiating light. The blue
grotto at Capri contains only more blue water, not bluer water.
That color and that spirit is the heritage of every
cave in the Mediterranean into which the sun can shine

(02:34):
and the sea flow. As soon as the boat left,
I realized how imprudent I had been to trust myself
on a sloping rock with an unknown Sicilian. With a jerk,
he became alive, seizing my arm and saying, go to
the end of the grotto and I will show you
something beautiful. He made me jump off the rock on
to the ledge over a dazzling crack of sea. He

(02:57):
drew me away from the light till I was standing
on the tiny beach of sand, which emerged like powdered
turquoise at the further end. There he left me with
his clothes and returned swiftly to the summit of the
entrance rock. For a moment he stood naked in the
brilliant sun, looking down at the spot where the book lay.

(03:17):
Then he crossed himself, raised his hands above his head,
and dived. If the book was wonderful, the man is
passed all description. His effect was that of a silver
statue alive beneath the sea, through whom life throbbed in
blue and green. Something infinitely happy, infinitely wise. But it

(03:38):
was impossible that it should emerge from the depths, sunburnt
and dripping. Holding the note book on the dais controversy
between its teeth. A gratuity is generally expected by those
who bathe. Whatever I offered, he was sure to want more,
and I was disinclined for an argument. In a place
so beautiful and also so solitary, it was a relief

(04:01):
that he should say in conversational tones, in a place
like this one might see the siren. I was delighted
with him for thus falling into the key of his surroundings.
We had been left together in a magic world, apart
from all commonplaces that are called reality, a world of
blue whose floor was the sea, and whose wall and

(04:23):
roof of rock trembled with the sea's reflections. Here only
the fantastic would be tolerable. And it was in that
spirit that I echoed his words. One might easily see
the siren. He watched me curiously while he dressed. I
was parting the sticky leaves of the note book. As
I sat on the strip of sand Ah. He said,

(04:45):
at last, you may have read the little book that
was printed last year. Who would have thought that our
siren would have given Foreigner's Pleasure. I read it afterwards.
Its account is not unnaturally incomplete, in spite of there
being a wood cut of the young person and the
words of her song. She comes out of this blue water,

(05:07):
doesn't she? I suggested, and sits on the rock at
the entrance, combing her hair. I wanted to draw him out,
for I was interested in his sudden gravity, and there
was a suggestion of irony in his last remark that
puzzled me. Have you ever seen her often? And often?
I never, But you have heard her sing? He put

(05:30):
on his coat and said, impatiently, how can she sing
under the water? Who could? She sometimes tries, but nothing
comes from her but great bubbles. She should climb onto
the rock, then how can she? He cried again, quite angry.
The priests have blessed the air so she cannot breathe it,
and bless the rocks so that she cannot sit on them.

(05:53):
But the sea no man can bless, because it is
too big and always changing. Therefore she lives in the sea.
I was silent at this. His face took a gentler expression.
He looked at me as though something was on his mind,
and going out to the entrance rock gazed at the
external blue. Then returning into our twilight, he said, as

(06:17):
a rule, only good people see the siren. I made
no comment. There was a pause, and he continued, that
is a very strange thing, and the priests do not
know how to account for it, for she, of course
is wicked. Not only those who fast and go to
mass are in danger, but even those who are merely
good in daily life. No one in the village had

(06:39):
seen her for two generations. I am not surprised. We
all crossed ourselves before we entered the water, but it
is unnecessary. Giuseppe, we thought, was safer than most. We
loved him, and many of us he loved. But that
is a different thing to being good. I asked who
Giuseppe was that day? I was seventeen and my brother

(07:04):
was twenty, and a great deal stronger than I was.
And it was the year when the visitors who have
brought such prosperity and so many alterations into the village
first began to come. One English lady, in particular, a
very high birth, came and had written a book about
the place. And it was through her that the Improvement

(07:24):
Syndicate was formed, which is about to connect the hotels
with the station by means of a funicular railway. Don't
tell me about that lady in here, I observed that
day we took her and her friends to see the grottos.
As we rode close under the cliffs, I put out
my hand as one does, and caught a little crab, and,

(07:47):
having pulled off its claws, offered it as a curiosity.
The ladies groaned, but a gentleman was pleased and held
out money. Being inexperienced, I refused it, saying that his
pleasure was sufficient reward. Giuseppe, who was rowing behind, was
very angry with me, and reached out with his hand
and hit me on the side of the mouth, so

(08:08):
that the tooth cut my lip and I bled. I
tried to hit him back, but he was always too
quick for me, and as I stretched round, he kicked
me under the armpit, so that for a moment I
could not even row. There was a great noise among
the ladies, and I heard afterwards that they were planning
to take me away from my brother and train me

(08:29):
as a waiter. That, at all events never came to pass.
When we reached the grotto, not here but a larger
one The gentleman was very anxious that one of us
should die for money, and the ladies consented, as they
sometimes do. Giuseppe, who had discovered how much pleasure it
gives foreigners to see us in the water, refused to

(08:50):
die for anything but silver, and the gentleman threw in
a two lira apiece. Just before my brother sprang off,
he caught sight of me holding my ruse and crying,
for I could not help it. He laughed and said,
this time, at all events, I shall not see the siren,
and went into the blue water without crossing himself. But

(09:12):
he saw her. He broke off and accepted a cigarette.
I watched the golden entrance rock, and the quivering walls,
and the magic water, through which great bubbles constantly rose.
At last he dropped his hot ash into the ripples
and turned his head away and said he came up
without the coin. We pulled him into the boat, and

(09:35):
he was so large that he seemed to fill it,
and so wet that we could not dress him. I
have never seen the man so wet. I and the
gentleman rode back, and we covered Euseppy with sacking and
propped him up in the stern. He was drowned. Then
I murmured, supposing that to be the point. He was not.

(09:56):
He cried angrily he saw the siren. I told you.
I was silenced again. We put him to bed, though
he was not ill. The doctor came and took money,
and the priest came and took more, and smothered him
with incense and spattered him with holy water. But it
was no good. He was too big, like a piece

(10:17):
of the sea. He kissed the thumb bones of San Biagio,
and they never tried till evening. What did he look like?
I ventured, like anyone who has seen the siren, if
you have seen her often and often, how is it
you do not know? Unhappy, unhappy, unhappy because he knew everything,

(10:40):
every living thing, made him unhappy because he knew it
would die. And all he cared to do was sleep.
I bent over my note book. He did no work,
He forgot to eat, he forgot whether he had his
clothes on. All the work fell on me, and my

(11:00):
sister had to go out to service. We tried to
make him into a beggar, but he was too robust
to inspire pity. And as for an idiot, he had
not the right look in his eyes. He would stand
in the street looking at people, and the more he
looked at them, the more unhappy he became. When a

(11:20):
child was born, he would cover his face with his hands.
If anyone was married, he was terrible then, and would
frighten them as they came out of church. Who would
have believed he would marry himself? I caused that. I
was reading out of the paper how a girl at
Ragusa had gone mad through bathing at the sea. Giuseppe

(11:43):
got up and in a week he and that girl
came in together. He never told me anything, but it
seems he went straight to her house, broke into her room,
and carried her off. She was the daughter of a
rich mine owner, so you may imagine our peril came
down with a clever lawyer. But they could do no

(12:03):
more than I. They argued and threatened, but at last
they had to go back, and we lost nothing, that
is to say, no money. We took Giuseppe and Maria
to the church and had them married. Uugh that wedding.
The priest made no jokes afterwards, and coming out the
children through stones. I think I would have died to

(12:26):
make her happy, but as always one could do nothing.
Were they unhappy together, then they loved each other. But
love is not happiness. We can all get love. Love
is nothing. Love is everywhere. Since the death of Jesus Christ,
I had two people to work for now, for she

(12:46):
was like him in everything one ever knew which of
them was speaking. I had to sell our own boat
and work under the battled man you have today. Worst
of all, people began to hate us, the children first,
everything begins with them, and then the women, and last
of all the men. For the cause of evidy misfortune

(13:08):
was you will not betray me, I promised, good faith,
and immediately he burst into the frantic blasphemy of one
who has escaped from supervision, cursing the priests, the lying, filthy, cheating,
immoral priests who had ruined his life, who had murdered
his brother, and the girl whom he dared not murder

(13:28):
back because they held the key of heaven and could
not ruin him in the next life too. Thus we
are tricked, was his cry, and he stood up and
kicked at the azure ripples with his feet till he
had obscured them with a cloud of sand. I too
was moved the story of Giuseppe, for all its absurdity

(13:49):
and superstition, came nearer to reality than anything I had
known before. I don't know why, but it filled me
with desire to help others, the greatest of all our desires,
I suppose, and the most fruitless. The desire soon passed.
She was about to have a child. That was the

(14:10):
end of everything. People said to me, when will your
charming nephew be born? What a cheerful, attractive child he
will be, with such a father and a mother. I
kept my face steady and replied, I think he may
be out of sadness shacome gladness. It is one of

(14:31):
our proverbs. And my answer frightened them very much, and
they told the priests, who were frightened too. Then the
whisper started that the child would be Antichrist. You need
not be afraid. He was never born. An old witch
began to prophesy, and no one stopped her. Giuseppe and

(14:52):
the girl, she said, had silent devils who could do
little harm. But the child would always be speaking and
laughing and perverting. And last of all, he would go
into the sea and fetch up the siren into the air,
and all the world would see her and hear her sing.
As soon as she sang, the seventh vials would be opened,

(15:15):
and the pope would die, and Monge Bellow flame and
the veil of Santa Agata would be burnt. Then the
boy and the siren would marry, and together they would
rule the world forever and ever. The whole village was
into molt and the hotel keepers became alarmed, for the

(15:36):
tour season was just beginning. They met together and decided
that Giuseppe and the girl must be sent inland until
the child was born, and they subscribed the money. The
night before they were to start, there was a full
moon and wind from the east, and all along the
coast the sea shot up over the cliffs in silver clouds.

(15:58):
It is a wonderful sight, and Maria said she must
see it once more. Do not go, I said, I
saw the priest go by and some one with him,
and the hotel keepers do not like you to be seen,
and if we displease them also we shall starve. I
want to go, she replied, The sea is stormy and

(16:19):
I may never feel it again. No, he is right,
said Giuseppe. Do not go, or let one of us
go with you. I want to go alone, she said,
and she went alone. I tied up their luggage in
a piece of cloth, and then I was so unhappy
at thinking that I should lose them that I went
and sat down by my brother and put my arm

(16:41):
round his neck, and he put his arm round me,
which he had not done for more than a year.
And we remained thus I don't remember how long. Suddenly
the door flew open, and moonlight and wind came in together,
and a child's voice said, laughing, they have pushed her
over the cliffs into the sea. I stepped to the

(17:03):
drawer where I keep my knives, and the child ran away.
Sit down again, said Giuseppe, Giuseppe of all people. If
she is dead, why should others die too? I guess
who it is, I cried, and I will kill him.
I was almost out of the door, but he tripped
me up, and, kneeling upon me, took hold of both

(17:26):
my hands and sprained my wrists, first my right one,
then my left. No one but Giuseppe would have thought
of such a thing. It hurt more than you would suppose,
and I fainted. When I woke up, he was gone,
and I have never seen him again. But Giuseppe disgusted me.

(17:49):
I told you he was wicked, he said, No one
would have expected him to see the siren. How do
you know he did see her then? Because he did
not year often and often, but once? Why do you
love him if he is wicked? He laughed for the
first time. That was his only reply. Is that the end?

(18:12):
I asked, feeling curiously ashamed. I never killed her murderer,
for by the time my wrists were well, he was
in America, and one cannot kill a priest. As for Giuseppe,
he went all over the world too, looking for some
one else who has seen the Siren, either a man
or better still, a woman, for then the child might

(18:35):
still have been born. At last he came to Liverpool
is the district probable, and there he began to cough
and spat blood until he died. I do not suppose
there is anyone living now who has seen her. There
has seldom been more than one in a generation, and

(18:56):
never in my life will there be both a man
and a woman from whom that child can be borne,
who will fetch up the siren from the sea and
destroy silence, and save the world, save the world, I cried,
Did the prophecy end like that? He leaned back against

(19:16):
the rock, breathing deeply. Through all the blue green reflections,
I saw him color. I heard him say, Silence and
loneliness cannot last forever. It may be a hundred or
a thousand years, but the sea lasts longer, and she
shall come out of it and sing. I would have

(19:39):
asked him more, But at that moment the whole cave darkened,
and there rode through its narrow entrance the returning boat.
End of the Story of the Siren.