THALIA by Bergotte (ebook reader .txt) 📕

breath. She decided she would take a shower.

She was moving down the hallway to her bedroom when she heard the front doorbell ringing. No! It couldn’t be! Could it? Had her stalker simply taken the next taxi in line and followed her home. It seemed like it. No-one else would ring. No-one else came calling. David lived as a recluse and had his own key. She waited, paralysed with fear, for what seemed to her to be hours, but was only a few minutes, before she decided that the caller had gone on his or her way. She stood in her bedroom, leaving the door ajar, while she took off all her clothes in readiness for her shower.

At that moment she heard a key turn in the lock of the back door. She was moving across the room to seize her bathrobe from the back of her bedroom door when she heard David’s voice.
“Hello Thalia, where are you?” he said looking into her room and catching sight of her naked body in the mirror on her bedroom wall. She slipped on the robe, tied the cord around her waist and rushed into the hallway, where she threw herself into his arms, weeping. She was so overwrought with emotion, she could not speak. Her heart beat fast against his chest as she pulled him tightly to her.

It was in these few moments that David realised that what he had thought of as the young woman living in his house was in fact, a child. She was, it was true, very mature in her outlook, in her judgements and attitudes, but the sight of her naked body had almost made him shout out aloud, “she’s only a child!” He recovered himself as he felt her wet tears on his shoulder and her heart pounding quickly in her small frame. “Whatever is the matter?” he asked her quietly.

“I heard the front doorbell and thought someone was going to force his way in and attack me.”
“Why did you think that? I was me ringing the bell. I saw the light was on and assumed you were home. Then, I thought you had left the light on and gone out for some reason. So, I took the car round the back, to the garage.”
“You have a car?” gasped Thalia, knowing that the pair of them had walked everywhere since she had met David.
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s only a little mini and I only insure and tax it for six months of the year, when the weather is not so good. The rest of the time I walk. It keeps me fit and active and I meet up with more people than if I drove all the time. But today I drove over to Bristol to see my parents. They live up on the downs, at Clifton, so, it is easier to drive there. But answer me, why do you think someone wants to attack you?”

Thalia, who had calmed down a little, by now, released her grip on him and told him the tale of her visit to Millie and her journey home. She admitted that it was probably her imagination running wild, but she could not be absolutely sure of this.
“After all,” she asked him, “why would anyone want to do me harm?”
“Why indeed?” responded David.
“I’m going to take a shower and then I’m going straight to bed.”
“I’ll see you in the morning then.”
“Yes, thank you. Goodnight,” said Thalia.

The following morning saw the couple in the Abbey Courtyard once more. Andrew and Giorgia were in attendance along with Peter. A large crowd had gathered to listen. Among them, Thalia glimpsed the face of Millie, who waved and smiled at her. She had brought some friends from the nurses’ home. Thalia repeated what she had said on previous occasions and then put forward some arguments concerning the concept of truth.

“There will be little or no concern for the truth of what is said publicly. Instead, the emphasis will be on the way that it is said – presentation over content. Truth will become relative to people, places and things. The world of universals will collapse. The idea that a statement is either true or false will be laughed at and those that make such claims will become objects of ridicule. The time is coming when serious debate will cease and the conversation of mankind will consist in the exchange of catch-phrases and slogans.”

PART TWO (Thalia’s Dream)

CHAPTER VIII

In the afternoon Andrew came to visit David and Thalia at the flat.
“I liked what you were saying about truth,” said Andrew hugging a cup of hot tea, “but where did you learn about universals?”
“I read about it in the library. There are a lot of books on Plato and Aristotle there, and commentaries to go with them. It was in one of those that I read about universals. I remember it quite distinctly.”
“The subjective account of truth as proposed by modern existentialist writers is quite easily defeated,” said Andrew.
“Is it?” asked David. “How?”
“Well, a subjective account of truth argues that ‘truth is what is true to me’. But that statement, ‘truth is what is true to me’ is open to the question, ‘Is that true?’ Now, when our existentialist says, ‘it is true that truth is what is true to me,’ he is making a self-contradictory claim because the claim, ‘it is true that…’ is a claim to objective truth, whilst the claim that, ‘truth is what is true to me,’ is a claim to subjective truth,” announced Andrew.
“I don’t understand that,” murmured Thalia.
“I’m not sure I do either,” said David, with a laugh.
“Well,” continued Andrew, “philosophical, linguistic arguments are difficult to grasp. It needs a great deal of thinking about. But I see a tendency in our own culture for people to demand instant understanding, rather than being prepared to think through a subject properly and analyse it thoroughly.”
“Yes I suppose so,” said Thalia, curling up on the sofa and yawning. She closed her eyes and in the space of a few moments was sound asleep.
“Such is the effect you have on her, Andrew,” said David, grinning at his friend. “Let’s go and sit in the kitchen and leave her in peace.”

Thalia turned over in her sleep. In fact, she turned over many times during the next hour or so, because she was experiencing a vivid, rather frightening dream. She was travelling, by plane with the other members of the string quartet, from Australia to London, having given concerts in Melbourne and Canberra. The plane had left Sydney airport for Heathrow, but as she gazed out of the window, Thalia noticed large columns of smoke rising from the Australian bush. She knew that bushfires are a natural phenomenon, particularly in Australia but did not expect to see such large areas of land affected. It seemed like the whole country was going up in smoke. She began to see large areas of housing ablaze, with no fire-fighters present to douse the flames.

What she did not know was that the pilot had lost all radio contact with ground control. He and his co-pilot could see the devastation more clearly through the cockpit windows. When the plane left the Northern Territory and headed into the Indian Ocean, Thalia saw that the sea seemed to be boiling. She imagined the sea bed being punctured by earthquakes, sending enormous water spouts into the air and thought she saw two ships foundering in the water and slowly sinking.

When they started to cross land again Thalia saw the devastation that the boiling sea had caused. She saw what she imagined to be vast tidal waves, rushing from sea to land, along tidal rivers, bringing death and destruction to all in their way. In her mind’s eye she saw thousands upon thousands of human bodies and the bodies of animals piled on the Asiatic coastline. Similarly, she saw people trapped under tons of masonry that were once the skyscraper buildings along the major thoroughfares of cities.

Out in the countryside once more, she saw volcanoes from mountain ranges erupting violently, blowing out vast columns of molten lava, ash and steam. She imagined the tons of rocks and debris falling into lakes and rivers, distorting them, causing them to burst their banks and engulf thousands of homes. She looked out of the window once more and saw that most of the land beneath the plane was flooded.

The pilot told the cabin crew that he was going to try and get home to Heathrow, in a bid to make an emergency landing without any assistance from people on the ground. Thalia was now convinced that all human beings on planet earth had now perished. This was surely, the end of the world, taking place before her eyes, or her mind’s eye.

The captain later told his crew that he would make an announcement to the passengers. He told them of the danger they were in. He admitted to them that, on the evidence he had witnessed already, there seemed little likelihood of their being any airport or any runway to make a landing, but he would do his best to make a crash landing at Heathrow. He did not tell them that he could not make contact with the control tower, though he realised of course, that many of them, as experienced travellers, would work that out for themselves.

As the plane crossed the English Channel and flew towards London, Thalia looked down to see much of the coastline, including the White Cliffs at Dover had fallen into the raging sea. The low lying Kent countryside was inundated with water, the city of Canterbury, completely destroyed. Even the cathedral was no longer visible.

As the aeroplane started its descent Thalia saw the wreckage of miles of twisted railway tracks, with countless items of rolling stock along the embankments, the trains having been derailed in the extraordinary conditions. She saw roads full of long lines of stationary cars. She imagined thousands of people trying to drive their way out of the danger being brought to an abrupt standstill, as the roads became choked with traffic. Hundreds of lorries lay jack-knifed along the roads, as far as the eye could see.

There was no airport to be seen at Heathrow. The buildings had been completely destroyed. Not a single runway was in evidence. Theirs would be a crash landing, not an emergency one. Thalia turned to David and began to weep.
“We will just have to take our chance,” he said, resignedly.

The plane hit the ground with an enormous judder, tipping over on one wing, which crumpled on impact. There were shouts of terror from other passengers, but Thalia could not speak. She was too terrified. The fuselage broke in two, while a fire started at the rear of the plane, the flames whipped into a frenzy by a powerful wind coursing over the wild ground. No fire-fighters, fire tenders or ambulances appeared on the scene.

Thalia looked about her. No-one moved. Everybody else on the plane was motionless. Thalia realised that they were all dead. She stared at the lifeless bodies of David, Andrew and Giorgia. She was sitting next to an emergency door, which she managed to force open, but it was a long way down to the ground. She had to jump to the ground to relative safety. In a few moments she