EYES

His eyes pierce mine in the darkness. Long-forgotten images come reeling into my mind. Of that time, myself a little more than a child. When I first went out hunting with Elder Brother, stalking to kill the deer and wild boar so plentiful then in the forests round my home.

Watch out for their eyes, Younger Brother. Their eyes glow like jewels in the dark. Watch well for their eyes.

Now I see your eyes. As you see mine. But who is the hunter? Who is the hunted? Crouched here on my side of the dunes, I try to stifle the sound of my very breathing, in case you hear. While my mind races in remembrance of the excruciating excitement of that other hunt, long ago. That first time I held a gun in my hand and felt its hardness: solid steel against my shoulder. Before that night was over I had brought down my first deer. Beginner's luck, Younger Brother! But I could see Elder Brother was proud and happy with that rare pure happiness of a true marksman when he discovers another of his ilk.

Not even a ripple of wind, now, disturbs the dunes. Even as I squat here petrified in the shadows, every nerve of mine taut but I reflect, where did you, my unseen antagonist, learn to shoot? It could not have been at targets like the deer and the elk and the wild boar so abundant in the forests round my home. Here the land lies open, exposed, flat; no wild animals wander.

And yet, whether hunters or hunted, we are both hiding - you and I - here behind these dunes of sand that any strong wind can raise and filter into dust; blow away to re-form into the hillocks near or far.

Keenly as I observe you, I see your eyes do not stay still. Or perhaps I would have fired my gun into them ere now? Do you move to position yourself better, as I am doing, cramped here behind the dunes? Do you pause to think that here might be all we shall ever know of infinity: endless sand stretching out into endless sea and above us the unreachable canopy of sky? Perhaps you preen yourself, because the limitless, palm-packed plain is your home - as those thickly forested hills concealing their tiny, tender green hamlets is mine. Perhaps you feel confident that you are the hunter here and I the hunted; so sure of it that you are taking your time to destroy me? For why do you hold your fire? I know I will never see your face, except at that moment after death, maybe, and you may never see mine.
Do you wonder then, vaguely as I do, how it all came to this: this almost unearthly confrontation: eyes to eyes, here in this darkening plain? Where only the sand dunes rise and stunted palm trees cast their grotesque shadows and my eyes, which see only your eyes, yet take in the boundless scope of land and sea and sky all around and above us?
Younger Brother, Elder Brother said, that first time he took me out hunting, you will never get your quarry unless you remain perfectly still. Be still, he chided me, as I tossed and moved and tried to ease my aching limbs, or else you will frighten the deer. The animal will flee. But you, my unseen antagonist, you will not dare to flee. You will wait - as I do patient, still unmoving; alert to capture that supreme moment when I might become reckless, rash, remiss. Over there, only a few yards away from us, beyond these dunes where you and I lie tense, uneasy, seeing only each other's eyes glittering like electric jets in the darkness, the flames rise fitfully now and flicker, where, moments ago, guns tattooed out their fire and rockets flashed through the air, where your comrades and mine killed each other. We do not need to look to know that the carnage reddened the haunted earth, filled the night with acrid smoke, with the reek of broken, burning, human flesh. If we but cock our ears to listen we can still hear the anguished moans of the wounded and the maimed. We can see that those living torches flung aloft into the sullen, opaque sky have dropped dark, glowing embers on the white-heated, stone-hard earth; now whimpering their way to their ghastly death. And you and I here, we have all their scores to settle, have we not? All those screams of fear and terror and pain to stifle. All that blood debt to pay. Are you thinking of these things too, and weighted with the burden that has fallen on you, as it has on me, here in the starlit dark of this night that will last forever? Does it bear you down as it does heavily as it does me as I remember my comrades dying in agony: sacrificed unmercifully to the blind dark yonder? How have we come to be here, you and I, stalking each other with our glittering orbs; unmoving as we hide here behind these sheltering dunes in an airless plain? When you are on your own Younger Brother, Elder Brother enjoined me, if somehow it happens you are separated from us in the forest, out hunting, then be even more vigilant, if possible. Elder Brother's words return to ring an alarm-bell in my ears. Be wary and watchful if you still want your deer, younger brother and you alone, separated from the others. Remember there are beasts, wilder by far than antlered deer and rutting boar in the forest waiting for you, unheeding to destroy. Elder Brother, I am whispering now, in despair, even the forest we both knew so well, where I sometimes wandered away, alone; that forest thick and tangled as it was; full of unimagined pitfalls, where the blood of the slain buck and antler and the golden deer stank in our nostrils; that deep, dark forest was not so hideous as this wide-open, sandy plain. Here behind these tenuous dunes which the sea-wind strong now, threatens to shift and scatter, my breath begins to stink, I am not ashamed to confess, with that sour smell of fear. My eyes are misted now with dread and grief. And I have lost sight of him: my antagonist! Where is he? Where is my quarry? Have I really lost him? Has he fled in terror? Or is he even now as I hardly dare to breathe, close beside me? Is it his breath that stinks in my nostrils -and not mine? Is it his breath like a foetid breeze, tingling like fire, upon my neck? The shadow looming over the dunes now, blotting out the silhouettes of stunted thorn and palm-tree, is it his? Are those his eyes: two great rubies aglow; staring into mine: so close I can put out my fingers and gouge them savagely from that pale blur that well may be his face? We are no longer the hunters: separate, individual, inviolate. What are we? We are one! Eyes merged in eyes. Our glances locked forever. The shadows part. A few stars look down shedding their brittle light upon our faces, featureless. On our forms that shift and change as time itself stands still. There is no sign of recognition needed between you and me. We have known each other like the deer and boar I killed from time's beginning. All eternity has led us: you and me, to this moment. Your life and mine pin-pointed in our bright orbs gazing unblinkingly at each other; wrestling the light from out the very stars and setting our blood aflame. Strange: my tongue no longer cleaves to my palate gone dry with terror! I taste no fear in my mouth! My jaws move freely! My teeth are no longer clenched! There is sap rising in my blood! The dying moans of our comrades now come from a great, an impregnable distance. Your breath mingles with mine. Our eyes clash together like brazen cymbals. For a single moment we are, incredibly, enthralled! Indivisible. Entire. Slowly, imperceptibly we raise our right shoulders: a single motion, a liquid rhythm. You must be cool and clear -headed at the vital moment, Younger Brother. Controlled. What it needed is a deliberate calm, or all that stalking, all that watching and waiting is in vain. You cannot afford to be hasty, Younger Brother, or you will lose your deer. Be bold, be swift, knife-smooth: quiescent, as that jungle pool we passed by, that absorbs the moonlight without creating a single ripple on its surface. And, Younger Brother, as you pull your trigger, you must be sure. Then you cannot, you will not, miss. In the near-distance the sea crashes on the shore. The glowing embers of once-living flesh sink into shapeless cadavers out there on the starlit sand. I look into two eyes that shine like two great stars in a raging firmament. I no longer have a single, conscious thought. I pull the trigger. For a timeless second the night is tom apart. A shot rings out. Two shots together? Two? The sky crumbles. Where are the stars that danced so brightly overhead? There are no stars.
