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➡️ The Story Of The Siren By E. M. Forster - Short Story - Full Audiobook

Originally published in 1920, The Story Of The Siren By E. M. Forster was later included in the collection The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. It tells the tale of a young man who has seen a siren living deep in the sea.

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Narrated by Jacob Paul Starr, courtesy of Librivox

Category

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Fun
Transcript
00:00THE STORY OF THE SIREN by E. M. Forster
00:08Few things have been more beautiful than my notebook on the Diaz Controversy as it fell
00:13downward through the waters of the Mediterranean.
00:16It dived, like a piece of black slate, but opened soon, disclosing leaves of pale green,
00:22which quivered into blue.
00:24Now it had vanished.
00:26Now it was a piece of magical India rubber stretching out to infinity.
00:31Now it was a book again, but bigger than the book of all knowledge.
00:35It grew more fantastic as it reached the bottom, where a puff of sand welcomed it and obscured
00:41it from view.
00:43But it reappeared, quite sane, though a little tremulous, lying decently open on its back,
00:49while unseen fingers fidgeted among its leaves.
00:53It is such a pity, said my aunt, that you will not finish your work in the hotel.
00:59Then you would be free to enjoy yourself, and this would never have happened.
01:03Nothing of it but will change into something rich and strange, warbled the chaplain, while
01:08his sister said, why, it's gone into the water.
01:11As for the boatmen, one of them laughed, while the other, without a word of warning, stood
01:17up and began to take his clothes off.
01:19Holy Moses, cried the colonel, is the fellow mad?
01:23Yes, thank him, dear, said my aunt.
01:26That is to say, tell him he is very kind, but perhaps another time.
01:31All the same, I do want my book back, I complained.
01:34It's for my fellowship dissertation.
01:37There won't be much left of it by another time.
01:40I have an idea, said some woman or other through her parasol.
01:44Let us leave this child of nature to die for the book while we go on to the other grotto.
01:49We can land him either on this rock or on the ledge inside, and he will be ready when
01:54we return.
01:56The idea seemed good, and I improved it by saying I would be left behind too to lighten
02:01the boat.
02:03So the two of us were deposited outside the little grotto, on a great sunlit rock that
02:07guarded the harmonies within.
02:10Some have called them blue, though they suggest rather the spirit of what is clean, cleanliness
02:15passed from the domestic to the sublime, the cleanliness of all the sea gathered together
02:21and radiating light.
02:24The blue grotto at Capri contains only more blue water, not bluer water.
02:30That color and that spirit is the heritage of every cave in the Mediterranean, into which
02:35the sun can shine and the sea flow.
02:38As soon as the boat left, I realized how imprudent I had been to trust myself on a sloping rock
02:43with an unknown Sicilian.
02:45With a jerk he became alive, seizing my arm and saying, Go to the end of the grotto and
02:51I will show you something beautiful.
02:54He made me jump off the rock onto the ledge over a dazzling crack of sea.
02:59He drew me away from the light till I was standing on the tiny beach of sand which emerged
03:04like powdered turquoise at the further end.
03:08There he left me with his clothes and returned swiftly to the summit of the entrance rock.
03:14For a moment he stood naked in the brilliant sun, looking down at the spot where the book
03:18lay.
03:19Then he crossed himself, raised his hands above his head, and dived.
03:25If the book was wonderful, the man is past all description.
03:29His effect was that of a silver statue, alive beneath the sea, through whom life throbbed
03:35in blue and green.
03:37Something infinitely happy, infinitely wise.
03:40But it was impossible that it should emerge from the depths, sunburnt and dripping, holding
03:46the notebook on the deist controversy between its teeth.
03:50A gratuity is generally expected by those who bathe.
03:54Whatever I offered, he was sure to want more, and I was disinclined for an argument in a
03:59place so beautiful and also so solitary.
04:02It was a relief that he should say, in conversational tones, in a place like this one might see
04:08the siren.
04:10I was delighted with him for thus falling into the key of his surroundings.
04:15We had been left together in a magic world, apart from all commonplaces that are called
04:20reality, a world of blue whose floor was the sea and whose wall and roof of rock trembled
04:26with the sea's reflections.
04:29Here only the fantastic would be tolerable, and it was in that spirit that I echoed his
04:35words, one might easily see the siren.
04:38He watched me curiously while he dressed.
04:41I was parting the sticky leaves of the notebook as I sat on the strip of sand.
04:46Ah, he said at last, you may have read the little book that was printed last year.
04:52Who would have thought that our siren would have given foreigners pleasure?
04:57I read it afterwards.
04:59This account is not unnaturally incomplete, in spite of there being a woodcut of the young
05:04person and the words of her song.
05:08She comes out of this blue water, doesn't she?
05:10I suggested, and sits on the rock at the entrance, combing her hair.
05:15I wanted to draw him out, for I was interested in his sudden gravity, and there was a suggestion
05:21of irony in his last remark that puzzled me.
05:25Have you ever seen her?
05:27Often and often.
05:28Why never?
05:30But you have heard her sing.
05:32He put on his coat and said impatiently, How can she sing under the water?
05:37Who could?
05:38She sometimes tries, but nothing comes from her but great bubbles.
05:43She should climb on to the rock, then.
05:45How can she?
05:47He cried again, quite angry.
05:49The priests have blessed the air, so she cannot breathe it, and blessed the rocks, so that
05:54she cannot sit on them.
05:56But the sea no man can bless, because it is too big, and always changing.
06:01Therefore she lives in the sea.
06:04I was silent.
06:06At this his face took a gentler expression.
06:09He looked at me as though something was on his mind, and going out to the entrance rock,
06:14gazed at the external blue.
06:16Then returning into our twilight, he said, As a rule, only good people see the siren.
06:23I made no comment.
06:25There was a pause, and he continued.
06:28That is a very strange thing, and the priests do not know how to account for it.
06:32For she, of course, is wicked.
06:34Not only those who fast and go to mass are in danger, but even those who are merely good
06:39in daily life.
06:41No one in the village had seen her for two generations.
06:44I am not surprised.
06:46We all crossed ourselves before we entered the water, but it is unnecessary.
06:50Giuseppe, we thought, was safer than most.
06:54We loved him, and many of us he loved, but that is a different thing to being good.
07:00I asked who Giuseppe was.
07:03That day I was seventeen, and my brother was twenty, and a great deal stronger than I was.
07:10And it was the year when the visitors, who have brought such prosperity and so many alterations
07:15into the village, first began to come.
07:19One English lady in particular, of very high birth, came, and had written a book about
07:24the place, and it was through her that the Improvement Syndicate was formed, which is
07:29about to connect the hotels with the station by means of a funicular railway.
07:34Don't tell me about that lady in here, I observed.
07:38That day we took her and her friends to see the Grottos.
07:42As we rode close under the cliffs, I put out my hand, as one does, and caught a little
07:48crab, and having pulled off its claws, offered it as a curiosity.
07:53The ladies groaned, but the gentleman was pleased, and held out money.
07:58Being inexperienced, I refused it, saying that his pleasure was sufficient reward.
08:03Giuseppe, who was rowing behind, was very angry with me, and reached out with his hand
08:08and hit me on the side of the mouth, so that the tooth cut my lip, and I bled.
08:14I tried to hit him back, but he was always too quick for me, and as I stretched round
08:19he kicked me under the armpit, so that for a moment I could not even row.
08:24There was a great noise among the ladies, and I heard afterwards that they were planning
08:28to take me away from my brother, and train me as a waiter.
08:32That at all events never came to pass.
08:36When we reached the Grotto, not here, but the larger one, the gentleman was very anxious
08:41that one of us should die for money, and the ladies consented, as they sometimes do.
08:47Giuseppe, who had discovered how much pleasure it gives foreigners to see us in the water,
08:52refused to die for anything but silver, and the gentleman threw in a two-lira piece.
08:58Just before my brother sprang off, he caught sight of me holding my bruise and crying,
09:03for I could not help it.
09:05He laughed, and said, this time, at all events, I shall not see the siren, and went into the
09:11blue water without crossing himself.
09:14But he saw her.
09:17He broke off, and accepted a cigarette.
09:20I watched the golden entrance rock, and the quivering walls, and the magic water through
09:24which great bubbles constantly rose.
09:27At last he dropped his hot ash into the ripples, and turned his head away, and said, he came
09:33up without the coin.
09:35We pulled him into the boat, and he was so large that he seemed to fill it, and so wet
09:40that we could not dress him.
09:42I have never seen a man so wet.
09:45I and the gentleman rode back, and we covered Giuseppe with sacking, and propped him up
09:50in the stern.
09:52He was drowned then, I murmured, supposing that to be the point.
09:57He was not, he cried angrily.
10:00He saw the siren, I told you.
10:02I was silenced again.
10:04We put him to bed, though he was not ill.
10:08The doctor came, and took money, and the priest came, and took more, and smothered
10:12him with incense, and spattered him with holy water.
10:16But it was no good.
10:18He was too big, like a piece of the sea.
10:21He kissed the thumb-bones of San Biagio, and they never dried till evening.
10:27What did he look like, I ventured.
10:30Like anyone who has seen the siren.
10:32If you have seen her, often and often, how is it you do not know?
10:37Unhappy, unhappy, unhappy, because he knew everything.
10:43Every living thing made him unhappy, because he knew it would die.
10:48And all he cared to do was sleep.
10:51I bent over my notebook.
10:54He did no work.
10:56He forgot to eat.
10:57He forgot whether he had his clothes on.
11:01All the work fell on me, and my sister had to go out to service.
11:05We tried to make him into a beggar, but he was too robust to inspire pity.
11:11And as for an idiot, he had not the right look in his eyes.
11:15He would stand in the street looking at people, and the more he looked at them, the more unhappy
11:21he became.
11:22When a child was born, he would cover his face with his hands.
11:27If anyone was married, he was terrible then, and would frighten them as they came out of
11:32church.
11:34Who would have believed he would marry himself?
11:36I caused that.
11:38I was reading out of the paper how a girl at Ragusa had gone mad through bathing at
11:43the sea.
11:44Giuseppe got up, and in a week he and that girl came in together.
11:49He never told me anything, but it seems he went straight to her house, broke into her
11:54room, and carried her off.
11:56She was the daughter of a rich mine-owner, so you may imagine our peril.
12:02Her father came down, with a clever lawyer, but they could do no more than I.
12:07They argued and threatened, but at last they had to go back, and we lost nothing, that
12:12is to say, no money.
12:15We took Giuseppe and Maria to the church, and had them married.
12:19Ugh, that wedding!
12:21The priest made no jokes afterwards, and coming out the children through stones.
12:27I think I would have died to make her happy, but, as always, one could do nothing.
12:32Were they unhappy together then?
12:35They loved each other, but love is not happiness.
12:39We can all get love.
12:41Love is nothing.
12:42Love is everywhere, since the death of Jesus Christ.
12:45I had two people to work for now, for she was like him in everything.
12:51One never knew which of them was speaking.
12:53I had to sail our own boat, and work under the battled man you have to-day.
12:58Worst of all, people began to hate us.
13:01The children first—everything begins with them.
13:04And then the women, and last of all the men.
13:08For the cause of every misfortune was, you will not betray me.
13:14I promised good faith, and immediately he burst into the frantic blasphemy of one who
13:19had escaped from supervision, cursing the priests, the lying, filthy, cheating, immoral
13:25priests who had ruined his life, who had murdered his brother and the girl, whom he dared not
13:30murder back, because they held the key of heaven, and could not ruin him in the next
13:35life too.
13:36Thus we are tricked, was his cry, and he stood up and kicked at the azure ripples with his
13:42feet, till he had obscured them with a cloud of sand.
13:46I too was moved.
13:48The story of Giuseppe, for all its absurdity and superstition, came nearer to reality than
13:54anything I had known before.
13:56I don't know why, but it filled me with desire to help others.
14:01The greatest of all our desires, I suppose, and the most fruitless, the desire soon passed.
14:09She was about to have a child.
14:11That was the end of everything.
14:14People said to me, When will your charming nephew be born?
14:19What a cheerful, attractive child he will be, with such a father and a mother.
14:25I kept my face steady, and replied, I think he may be.
14:30Out of sadness shall come gladness.
14:33It is one of our proverbs.
14:35And my answer frightened them very much, and they told the priests, who were frightened
14:40too.
14:41Then the whispers started that the child would be antichrist.
14:45You need not be afraid.
14:47He was never born.
14:49An old witch began to prophesy, and no one stopped her.
14:53Giuseppe and the girl, she said, had silent devils, who could do little harm.
15:00But the child would always be speaking, and laughing, and perverting.
15:04And last of all he would go into the sea, and fetch up the siren into the air, and all
15:09the world would see her, and hear her sing.
15:13As soon as she sang, the seventh vials would be opened, and the Pope would die, and Mangebello
15:20flame, and the veil of Santa Agatha would be burnt.
15:25Then the boy and the siren would marry, and together they would rule the world, for ever
15:31and ever.
15:33The whole village was into moat, and the hotel-keepers became alarmed, for the tourist season was
15:39just beginning.
15:40They met together, and decided that Giuseppe and the girl must be sent inland, until the
15:46child was born, and they subscribed the money.
15:50The night before they were to start there was a full moon, and wind from the east.
15:55And all along the coast the sea shot up over the cliffs in silver clouds.
16:00It is a wonderful sight, and Maria said she must see it once more.
16:05Do not go, I said.
16:07I saw the priests go by, and someone with him, and the hotel-keepers do not like you
16:12to be seen, and if we displease them, also we shall starve.
16:18I want to go, she replied.
16:20The sea is stormy, and I may never feel it again.
16:23No, he is right, said Giuseppe.
16:26Do not go, or let one of us go with you.
16:30I want to go alone, she said, and she went alone.
16:34I tied up their luggage in a piece of cloth, and then I was so unhappy at thinking that
16:39I should lose them, that I went and sat down by my brother, and put my arm round his neck,
16:45and he put his arm round me, which he had not done for more than a year.
16:50And we remained thus, I don't remember how long.
16:55Suddenly the door flew open, and moonlight and wind came in together, and a child's voice
17:00said laughing, they have pushed her over the cliffs into the sea.
17:05I stepped to the drawer where I keep my knives, and the child ran away.
17:10Sit down again, said Giuseppe, Giuseppe of all people.
17:14If she is dead, why should others die too?
17:18I guess who it is, I cried, and I will kill him.
17:23I was almost out of the door, but he tripped me up, and kneeling upon me, took hold of
17:28both my hands, and sprained my wrists, first my right one, then my left.
17:35No one but Giuseppe would have thought of such a thing.
17:38It hurt more than you would suppose, and I fainted.
17:42When I woke up, he was gone, and I have never seen him again.
17:48But Giuseppe disgusted me.
17:51I told you he was wicked, he said.
17:54No one would have expected him to see the siren.
17:58How do you know he did see her then?
18:01Because he did not see her often and often but once.
18:06Why do you love him if he is wicked?
18:08He laughed for the first time.
18:10That was his only reply.
18:13Is that the end?
18:15I asked, feeling curiously ashamed.
18:18I never killed her murderer, for by the time my wrists were well, he was in America, and
18:25cannot kill a priest.
18:26As for Giuseppe, he went all over the world too, looking for someone else who has seen
18:32the siren, either a man, or better still, a woman, for then the child might still have
18:38been born.
18:39At last he came to Liverpool.
18:42Is the district probable?
18:45And there he began to cough, and spat blood until he died.
18:50I do not suppose there is anyone living now who has seen her.
18:54There has seldom been more than one in a generation, and never in my life will there be both a
19:00man and a woman from whom that child can be born, who will fetch up the siren from the
19:06sea and destroy silence and save the world.
19:12Save the world, I cried.
19:14Did the prophecy end like that?
19:17He leant back against the rock, breathing deeply.
19:21Through all the blue-green reflections I saw him colour.
19:25I heard him say, Silence and loneliness cannot last forever.
19:30It may be a hundred or a thousand years, but the sea lasts longer, and she shall come out
19:37of it and sing.
19:41I would have asked him more, but at that moment the whole cave darkened, and there rose a
19:47cloud through its narrow entrance, the returning boat.