Miss Benson's Beetle

by Rachel Joyce

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “You seem to have a bad limp.”

  “No. I am fine.”

  “You know, we don’t have to bury Taylor’s gun. Maybe you’d feel safer if I kept it.”

  It was too much. The last straw. Margery had thought the hammock was the last straw, and the bat, followed by the night itself, and the crying, then possibly the Spam, as well as the diarrhea, but they had not been the last straws, they had simply been a succession of penultimate ones. It felt as if the air was thickening to the point at which she could no longer breathe. Her voice came out in a wobble. “Enid. I do not want a gun anywhere near me. A gun is a terrible thing. I don’t want to think about the gun. I don’t want to see the gun. Do you not understand? I do not want a gun in my life.”

  Enid straightened. She stared at Margery as if she was seeing beyond the insect bites and her skin, as if she was seeing right through Margery and into her heart. She said slowly. “You lost someone, Marge. You lost someone because of a gun. That’s why you can’t stand the sight of blood.”

  “Can we please drop this? Can we please not have this conversation? Can we please just keep searching?”

  Enid nodded. She chucked the dregs of her coffee onto the ground. She said quietly, “Sure, Marge. I understand. I’ll bury the gun.”

  And she did. She took it and buried it straightaway. When she came back, her hands were empty.

  “No more gun,” she said. “All right, Marge?”

  * * *

  —

  They kept going. Margery plastered her bites with witch hazel. She rubbed her legs so hard they seemed to produce their own electricity. She put on her helmet. Off they went. Day number two.

  “Maybe we’ll find it today!” sang Enid.

  Hour after hour. More cutting, more climbing. Dripping with sweat, as if Margery was permanently in a shower. Her hip seeming to scream. One of her boots chafing badly. Her head too heavy, her head too hot. Her stomach in knots, her rear end like a tap. Hands blistered. Hands cut. Trees as far as she could see, with roots like huge webbed feet, and branches thick with liana creepers. The heat was a pall.

  Meanwhile, Enid did not get bitten. Enid did not get stung. Enid didn’t even sweat that much. She was having the time of her life. She forged ahead in her baseball cap with the dog—sometimes no more than a happy fluorescent streak in the canopy of green—clambering over rocks, up and down gullies, splashing through water. “This way, Marge!” or “Quick! Quick, Marge! Over here!” She was a woman possessed. She spotted gold beetles that turned out to be no more than a play of light. And if she wasn’t spotting nonexistent beetles or saying hello to butterflies, she was leaping streams and swinging on lianas and knocking the top off a coconut to drink the milk. Margery crawled further and further behind, lifting every stone, peering under every leaf. With each step, she knew pain. But she focused on one after the other, just as she had focused on one button after another on her shirt, and by looking only at the small things that were straight ahead, she kept going.

  It was Enid’s idea that they should set up their hammocks before it began to get dark. She managed another fire, and the flames took. She found a flat piece of rock where Margery could write her journal. She even blew on the pages to dry them, though with the humidity they felt Bible thin. She insisted on giving Margery a leg up into her hammock. She even arranged the net. And then, as if that weren’t enough, she talked on and on and on about anything that came into her head, until Margery couldn’t bear any more and passed out.

  She slept. She slept the entire night. Rats might have run over her. Bats might have landed on her. Mosquitoes might have taken enough blood to fill a tankard. She had no idea. In the morning, Enid found another place to swim, then came back and made black coffee so strong it could have brought a dead horse back to life, and the only reference she made to the gun was oblique.

  “I understand you have secrets in your life, Marge. That’s okay. We all have secrets. But I don’t think you should stop looking for the beetle. You would never forgive yourself if you gave up on your vocation.”

  * * *

  —

  They went on. Day after day. Caked in red dust and sweat. Permanently wet. Bitten all over. Stung all over. Followed by pigs. Followed by lizards. Followed by rats. Stomach cramps, foot rot, diarrhea. When it rained, it fell in bucket loads. When the mist came, they couldn’t move. Enid said that in order to find the beetle, they should think like a beetle. Margery said that in order to find the beetle they should keep their eyes peeled and not talk so much.

  But there were moments of joy. Even at its worst, life will offer such moments. After day four, they slept all night in a clearing and afterward managed to boil a pan of water, and drank hot coffee, talking softly, in the first glow of light.

  “What is your favorite nail color, Marge?”

  “I don’t wear nail color, Enid.”

  “But if you did, what would it be?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not something I think about.”

  “Red?”

  “No.”

  “You’re right. Red wouldn’t suit you. You’re more a pink kind of person.”

  “Pink? I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t mean blancmange pink. I mean that kind of pink.” She pointed at the sunrise. It was the color of Enid’s travel suit.

  “Okay, Enid. Yes. I think I would like that pink.”

  “You see? I told you you’d like nail color. Just because you’ve never done something doesn’t mean you can’t start. We’ll get that pink for you one day.”

  There was the moment hundreds and thousands of blue birds exploded out of the trees, weaving through the air, like a piece of silk, and the two women watched and watched. Afterward Margery found a blue feather she gave to Enid, and Enid tucked it into her pocket and said, “Oh, Marge. Is that really for me? That’s the luckiest feather in the world. I’ll keep it my whole life.”

  And there was the night they lay side by side in their hammocks and watched a comet speed past, eating its way through the constellations, and Enid said, “That’s a sign, Marge. It’s a sign we’re going to find the beetle.”

  At the end of the week they returned to the bungalow, empty-handed, desperate for salt. It had taken all Margery’s courage to keep going. But however much she hated it, she had not given up: she had continued to limp after Enid and the dog, and while it had rarely been what she would call pleasurable, she realized she had a supply of endurance she wouldn’t otherwise have known about. As expected, the boys from the shantytown had broken into the bungalow while they were away: nothing was taken, but it had all been slightly rearranged, and in a few instances, it had even been tidied. Margery checked the box where she kept her passport and money: everything was safe. The women washed their clothes. Restocked supplies. Margery slept for fifteen hours. Enid drove to Poum and came back with salt, eggs, yams, watermelon, and French pastries. They ate so much they fell asleep in the sun on the veranda.

  Then: “Ready, Marge?”

  “Yes, Enid.”

  “Got your helmet? Got your net?”

  “Yes, Enid.”

  Another week on the mountain.

  This time they turned more serious. They didn’t just hack a path. They laid insect traps. They examined dead leaves, fallen branches, rotten logs, pig droppings. Margery showed Enid how to use the pooter, though in her enthusiasm Enid kept swallowing insects and had to stick her fingers down her throat to get them back. They cordoned off areas, searched on hands and knees. They whacked branches and caught what fell out in a tarp. When it was dark, they held up the hurricane lamp, and as insects buzzed and flapped toward its light, they caught them, too. They now had ten species of clown beetle and an extremely rare Rhantus alutaceus, the size of a black bean with pale reddish marking. Margery dispatched them, while Enid clos
ed her eyes and hummed. By the time they returned to the bungalow at the end of the second week, the boys had broken in again but taken nothing except more chewing gum. Margery soaked her specimens, ready for pinning. She made drawings and took notes. Enid washed and dried the nets, and drove to Poum to restock supplies. They went back up the mountain.

  Dawn until dusk with nothing, surviving on a Spam and coffee diet that they supplemented with as much coconut and fresh fruit as they could carry, and edible green leaves: Enid was forever trying them and found one in particular that she insisted had a taste of honey. They also found a rare clown beetle and two specimens of Uloma isoceroides, like shiny brown nuts. They identified three types of pink orchid.

  Time changed shape, inelegantly and without Margery’s permission. Days passed and sometimes they felt like weeks and sometimes hours. When had she gone into the bathing pool? Was it last week? Or the one before? Her watch hadn’t worked since they arrived at the bungalow. Nothing seemed present anymore, except the place where she found herself—and she knew, as she moved away, that that, too, would quickly become unreal. The only constants were Enid and the search for the beetle.

  Enid led the way, scrambling ahead with the insect net. Her dog kept at her heels, looking neither left nor right. Meanwhile, Margery’s feet were rotting. Her skin was so burnt it was coming off in flakes; she was using Pond’s Cold Cream just to stick it back together. The damage to her notebooks was even more serious. The covers were soggy, and the pages were approaching a state of such pulpiness she had to peel them apart. But then again, she could barely hold a pen. And the heat, the rain, the bites. The one thing there hadn’t been was a cyclone. Grimly she kept going.

  Enid talked about the future when Margery would have a job at the Natural History Museum and be a famous beetle collector. Another time, she said, “Marge? Do you really think you’ll want to kill the gold beetle? I know it’s important. I just don’t see how you’ll bring yourself to do it.”

  But by the end of the third week they had five specimens of rare weevil to add to their collection, plus two leaping beetles Margery had never seen before, and a number of tortoise beetles. This time the boys hadn’t broken into the bungalow but they were all waiting outside in a surprisingly neat line, and wanted to sell Margery a basket of live freshwater eels. She said non to the eels. The boys decided to leave them as a gift instead. Enid carried the eels to the freshwater creek but they kept coming back—it was the light of the hurricane lamp that drew them, and it was always worse after rain. They would even come up the water pipes and then get stranded in the bungalow: in the end, Enid had to set up a bucket in the front room in which to save them.

  Enid washed their clothes, did her best to dry out the hammocks, restocked supplies, and repacked. Margery pinned specimens, made drawings, took notes. They slogged back up the mountain.

  At night the shadows were so black, it was as though pieces had gone missing from the world. Early morning: mists blocked out the trees. By day, light sliced the undergrowth, like a trip wire. Enid began boiling the leaves she picked to make healthy soup.

  “Marge?” she said in her hammock once. “I slept with other men. Not my husband. Perce liked the lads. If you know what I mean. We both did. We both liked the lads. You see? Sometimes we even got jealous.”

  It was everything Margery could do not to fall out of her hammock, but she didn’t: she lay very still. She took in what Enid had told her.

  Another time Enid said quietly, again in the dark, “Men weren’t always nice to me. You know? When I was a kid? They weren’t always kind.”

  Margery felt the old heaviness again. The war was over and yet there seemed to be no end to the suffering that had to be endured—and not even in full view: behind doors, where no one could see. Yet in the morning, Enid sprang out of her hammock and did her makeup, same as always, with her compact mirror resting on a tree trunk, and brewed her incredibly strong coffee. It occurred to Margery that this was how it was, that there was always darkness, and in this darkness was unspeakable suffering, and yet there were also the daily things—there was even the search for a gold beetle—and while they could not cancel the appalling horror, they were as real.

  Margery said none of that to Enid. What Enid had told her was like something she’d slipped into Margery’s pocket. She got the feeling Enid did not want to say any more on the subject. Instead Margery asked for a second cup of coffee and complimented her on her skills as an insect collector. (“Do you really mean that?” said Enid, her mouth wriggling with pride even though she was doing her best to appear modest.) But it was by continuing to focus on small rewards that Margery got through the next few days. A comb of sunlight cutting between trees. Another bathing pool. The time her foot slipped, and she didn’t fall.

  Two days before Christmas, Enid scrambled ahead to the summit. Trees cleared. The ground was soft and red and bare, apart from the odd cactus. The twin peaks rose like two bright orange chimneys. Margery crawled to Enid’s side. No sound but the wind.

  “We did it!” Enid yelled. “We did it, Marge! Yahoo!” She tossed her cap into the air.

  She was right. It had not taken until February, as Margery had once feared: they had cut a winding path right from the bungalow to the very top. For days and days they had been struggling uphill looking into the slope, until the view that had only been behind them had expanded to encompass them on every side. From up here, they could see everything—the whole world seemed to lie at their feet, more colossal and remote than she had even imagined. The endless canopy of trees. The flashes of red poinciana. The tiny rooftops of Poum. Soft trails of mist. The mountain range poking up for miles and miles, as far as she could see and beyond, disappearing into the blue horizon like an infinitely bumpy spine. The ocean as bright as liquid turquoise. The pale fringe that would be coral. The many islands. Faraway, a cargo ship coming in to dock.

  But nowhere was there any sign of a white orchid or the golden beetle of New Caledonia.

  Nearly four weeks at sea, and finally he could see the island. From a distance, it had shone pink and gold, but now that he was close, it was just black rock and scrubland, here and there a white beach, a fringe of palm trees, a hut. It wouldn’t surprise him if the whole thing vanished, and nothing met his gaze but the loneliness of the Pacific.

  A crowd thronged the wharf at Nouméa as the cargo ship drew alongside. Everywhere there was too much noise, too much color, too much smell. Mundic cowered with his haversack, trying to keep it all away. The stink of salt and fish and sweat, the sun burning riotously bright, the ocean behind him and the mountains ahead.

  He thought he would find Miss Benson on the quay. He really believed she would be sitting there under an umbrella, waiting. He walked up and down and he looked in all the little French bars and a milkshake shop but there was no sign of her. He couldn’t make sense of it. And suddenly it was like the day he got home from the war and found out his mum had died, but no one had written to tell him, or the times the guards had made them stand in the full blare of the sun just because someone had stolen a bit of food. And he didn’t know how to keep on his feet. He didn’t know where to put the things he felt inside.

  He got drunk and he saw a chap laughing at him, and he felt the flame. The next thing he knew he was being dragged off the bloke by the police.

  They took his passport and put him into a cell. There was a pail in the corner full of someone else’s piss, and the walls were crawling with cockroaches. “My passport!” he yelled. “Give me back my passport!” But it wasn’t like the POW camp. There were no sticks. No clubs. In the morning the guards gave him coffee and pastries. Even a clean bucket. He shouted because he had the runs, and another time he thought there were snakes, but they let him keep his notebook. And when his pencil broke, they gave him a ballpoint pen.

  He couldn’t think of anything except Miss Benson, making her way north on her own. It made
him mad. He didn’t even know the name of the town where she was going. All he had to guide him was the stupid cross on her map. He shoved his fist into the wall and it sprang out like a ball. “I am a free man! I am a free man!” he shouted. “Give me back my passport!”

  The next day the guards fetched him out of his cell and took him to an interview room. A man in a linen suit was sitting there, pale as a goose and mopping his face. Mundic said, “You can ask as many questions as you like. I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  And the fat guy said, “I am the British consul and I will thank you not to swear at me, Mr. Mundic.”

  Apparently there had been a break-in at a local school almost a month ago. “Naphthalene was taken and also chemistry equipment. The next day, a jeep was stolen. You are, I am afraid, the leading suspect.”

  Mundic laughed. “Me? I’ve only just got here.”

  The British consul said it was no laughing matter. “A British traveler’s check was found close to the school. The police believe it is a clue. And there aren’t a lot of British out here. It’s a very embarrassing business.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me, sir. I’ve come on a job.”

  “Really? What kind of job?” The British consul stared so long and hard that Mundic squirmed in his chair. “Where exactly were you posted?”

  “The Far East.”

  “I thought as much. Terrible business.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were lucky. At least you’re alive.”

  “Yes, sir.” After that, Mundic couldn’t even look the British consul in the eye. He just squeezed the hand that he’d punched into the wall, until the pain was shooting all over his arm, but it still didn’t hurt. It was like the pain was there and it wasn’t.

  “You’re right, of course. I don’t see how they can keep you here if you weren’t even on the island a month ago. I have your passport. Where are you staying?”