Beware of Dogs

by Elizabeth Flann

  As a way of improving my spirits I decided to do a complete survey of the cave. First, using the last remaining sharp pencil, I drew an outline, as close to scale as possible (5 centimetres = 1 metre), into the back page of my diary, marking in the compass points at the corners of the page. I know my pack is half a metre long, so I found a long karkalla stem (I knew they’d come in useful!), doubled it over and cut it with my knife to form a rough metre measure. Then, walking, crawling and edging around the cave, I drew in rock outcrops, shelves, holes and crevices until I was satisfied I had an almost complete cross-section map of the walls. I turned over the page and made a rough plan of the ceiling holes. If I ever get a chance to climb the cliff above, I can search for the location of the cave using this map. If I had enough water, I could pour some through the holes as a check. If. If. If . . .

  I didn’t want to damage the cave too much, but I collected my hammer and knife and chipped out a sample of the wall, a sample from one of the outcrops and a scraping of fine sand from a crevice in the cave wall. These I placed carefully into plastic kitchen bags. I took a moment to rejoice that I’d had the presence of mind to pocket an entire pack of these useful items that have made my life easier in so many ways.

  As I had thought, the cave appeared to be a standard granite rockfall, so I didn’t expect to find anything world-shattering in there, but it would be interesting to analyse it, if I ever get the chance. If.

  Who was I kidding, thinking I was ever going to get out of here? Suddenly, a kind of rage gripped me. I wanted to tear up the pointless map, throw the tools at the walls and scream in frustration. But I didn’t. I sat, hugging my pack, bottling up the sounds and the feelings until it was time to put my things away and do some exercise.

  10.00 a.m.–12.00 p.m.: Stand in entrance space.

  When I finally reached the standing space, instead of doing exercises, I found myself silently punching the rock walls and kicking the floor. In the split second when I heard myself thinking, Don’t draw blood!, an idea came to me – a way to convince Dave that I really have gone. It would take a lot of planning, and a lot of nerve, but it just might work.

  12.00–1.00 p.m.: Return to sitting position. Snack time. Write up diary.

  The remaining boobialla fruits were already shrivelling and drying. I knew they wouldn’t last another day, so I ate them all, and again found them surprisingly satisfying and to some extent thirst quenching. But the shock of yesterday has left me weak and in no doubt that my diet, while adequate to sustain life, does not provide enough energy to cope with physical or mental stress. As I stashed the pits away for later disposal in the hope they might grow future new little boobialla trees, I pondered how I could find ways of enhancing my diet that would go beyond fruits and leaves, but without much success.

  I have only been so weakened by stress a couple of times before, and then I was fully nourished, and able to sublimate some of the anxiety into bouts of excessive exercise. Now I do what exercises I can, and they make me tired. I know this is a worry, but I don’t want to think about it.

  I wonder where I’d be now if I wasn’t here. I still have about half of my holiday to go. I’d had some vague thoughts of going over to the west, to see a few friends, and perhaps do some climbing. I just somehow never got round to organising it. I’m sure if I had gone the loose network of climbers would have supplied me with partners and opportunities for rock-climbing, but nobody was booking me up in advance. Then Dave’s invitation came, and I got charmed (or more accurately, bullied) into that.

  I’d worked in the west for eighteen months without forming any important ties. Was this because of some failure on my part? Was it, as Jonathan had implied, because I was ‘foreign’? I hadn’t wanted to think about this before. The nature of the work meant that people came and went. As field project manager, I’d assemble a team, organise transport and equipment, oversee the work and then disassemble the whole thing and write up a report. Each project was different. Each project lasted two or three months from beginning to end. Of course sometimes people or places overlapped, but basically it was a whole new adventure each time. And I loved it. I’d done it well, so well they’d offered me a promotion back to the head office in Melbourne. Ironically, an office job that didn’t seem to require any of those skills.

  This was when I started working with Kathryn. We both held senior management positions and that was when we discovered that we made a formidable team. We also gradually found out that we had an unofficial job that must have been intended all along, but which came as a surprise to both of us the first time it happened. This initial joint venture earned us the title of ‘The Troubleshooters’. A huge field enterprise had come so unstuck that the team leaders had actually quit, leaving an entire camp set-up and body of workers bereft and rudderless. Kathryn and I were sent on urgent despatch to sort out the mess.

  As a field rescue team we quickly found out how complementary our skills were. She is a genius at organising and managing people. My skills are in managing work schedules, equipment and supplies. Together, we are unmatchable.

  Oddly enough, in those early days we didn’t socialise together much, although we got along really well. When I arrived back in Melbourne, I was still married to Jonathan, and once Kathryn had established that he didn’t have any single male friends she left us peacefully alone. Not that this did us any good. By then our marriage was all but over, although I was still blissfully unaware of what was happening.

  Now I wonder if I should have gone back to the west and tried to put down some roots there. Maybe I’m a nomad at heart. I don’t like this kind of thinking. I bring my mind firmly back to the present.

  Too much sitting has made me stiffen up. I need to put my diary aside and force myself to do more exercise, knowing I won’t be going out again today. I try to move every part of my body, and now I do feel marginally better, but somehow my heart isn’t in it. Instead I turn my mind to the problem of food.

  The boobialla crop is almost at an end, and harvesting more karkalla from the rocky beach is now out of the question. If I am to survive, then tomorrow I will have to go out very early and try to squeeze out some nectar from the coast banksia flowers. I know this, but I can’t believe I will do it.

  Sunset.

  I have not gone out. The lack of fluid has made the need for a toilet expedition far less pressing than the need to remain hidden, although I have my plastic bag at the ready, along with my weapons, just in case. The time is 5.53 p.m. on Wednesday the 18th of April.

  * * *

  Surrounded once again by utter blackness, I’m so keyed up I feel I could burst.

  As I wait to pass the night confined in the darkness, my body craves the relief of a long fast walk. That was how I dealt with bad times in my before-island life. I find myself wishing I could at least weep, or tear my hair, anything to deflate the pressure, but the traditional outlets for feelings were firmly squashed out of me many years ago.

  Despite everything, the worst time of my life was probably the lonely journey into what seemed like exile when I was thirteen years old. The first misery was the ship, an ancient rusting cargo vessel where I was squeezed into a cramped dark cabin with a family of British missionaries who had managed to negotiate a free passage, plane travel to and from Madagascar being both unreliable and highly unsafe, with one of the highest airline fatality rates in Africa. While this seemed to me like a voyage of the damned, the well-meaning guardians briefed to ‘keep an eye on me’ loomed surreal and terrible above me at intervals, like Dickensian grotesques with their religious fervour and filthy black garments, interrupting the almost continual bouts of stomach-wrenching weeping that were my only comfort.

  Then, even more unreal, arrival in cold, grey England, to be greeted by relatives I had never met, who spoke a language quite unlike the English of my schoolbooks, and sent me to school among strangers. Until then, I had never been parted from my family for even one day.

  I was so angry and upset I would n
ot say goodbye to my mother, who travelled with me by camion-brousse to see me safely onto the ship. It only occurs to me now how great a loss this must have been for her. The time spent with me in ‘English lessons’ would be hard to fill. A little teaching of the younger boys, the weekly health clinic, (‘my Witch Doctor day’ she used to call it), when she ministered to minor ailments, and her Tuesday mah jong game were all she had to do. No wonder she was always willing to coach me through Treasure Island or Jane Eyre and then talk about England, its geography, its history, its lost empire.

  She was not happy, my mother. She made her way gravely through the days, and my only memories of her laughter come from the holiday in Ankarana and the one extraordinary time she and I went into the Big Town, Tana, on our own.

  Vader, trying to mend the roof from a rickety ladder, had fallen and twisted his ankle and Abel, who hated going into town, offered to stay and look after him while Moe and I set off in search of embrocation and painkilling medicine. Although we said little during the zebu-cart ride, I sensed that this was a momentous occasion, a feeling confirmed when we arrived at the market-square in the lower town. Once the driver had helped us down and gone on his way my mother scooped me up in her arms and danced me around, crying ‘Free! Free! Alixi, we will take the whole day!’

  However, first we went into the section of the market that sold local medicines, where she bargained and hummed and hawed over medicines for Vader. There were all kinds of liniments and embrocations on display, but the painkilling tablets were brought out from under the counter after a great deal of whispering and haggling. I realise now they must have come through the black market. They certainly cost about six times as many francs as the liniment.

  Normally visits to Tana were conducted as quickly as possible, with no time for dawdling or dallying. This time, however, as soon as duty was done I discovered that Moe had plans. Our driver had been dismissed, to return later in the day, but now she engaged a camion-brousse, producing a secret purse, quite different from the big black housekeeping purse she had used for the market, and instructed the driver to circle the lake.

  ‘I’m going to show you the sights,’ she said to me, and for the next hour we took a scenic tour. First the lake, with jacarandas in full bloom reflected in the black water, then up the hill to the old queen’s palace, the rova. We stopped at the top to admire the view but didn’t go in. Then we circled down and down, seeing a town I had not been aware of, all red clay roofs and hanging pots and more jacarandas, much lovelier than our usual approach through the paddy fields to the markets.

  ‘Here,’ she told the driver, as we drove along the Avenue de l’Indépendance, and she had paid, climbed down, lifted me down and waved the driver off before I had time to collect my wits. I looked around and saw shops and street stalls and cafes with little tables outside. To my amazement and delight, Moe led the way to one of these, selected a table and sat down. She ordered coffee for herself, a citron pressé for me, and cakes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But sure enough, the waiter returned with a tray, from which he took our drinks and placed them in front of us, taking a cloth napkin for each of us and unfolding it on our laps. Then he lifted a silver tower with a domed handle and placed it carefully in the middle of the table, with a pair of silver tongs beside it.

  When he had left, Moe turned to me. ‘Which one would you like, Alixi?’ On the top level of the tower were tiny cakes filled with cream, on the next layer little yellow cakes baked with fruit, and on the bottom layer tiny open pies. I was struck dumb.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll start with the savouries,’ and Moe picked up the tongs and deftly served us. I don’t know how long we sat there, but we managed to finish everything – cakes, pies and another drink for each of us. And while we sat we had a conversation, like ladies at a tea party. That’s what I remember most of all.

  Moe did most of the talking. She talked of Home, of her family, of her schooldays, of things Leni and she used to do as children. But most of all, she talked of England, a place she had never seen but which seemed to hold for her an endless fascination.

  Why was my mother such an Anglophile? Did she feel that her sister, by marrying an English diplomat, peer of the realm and former well-known man-about-town, had made a better choice than hers? It had certainly put Leni into the public eye and the social pages, but would Moe really have enjoyed all that?

  Tante Leni and Uncle Raoul had no children. Perhaps Leni was as dismayed as I was when the gangplank was lowered and we faced each other for the first time. She meant to be kind, I know, but she was not tough like my mother and my unremitting sadness wore her down. Jonathan used to say, ‘People who have had a hard time always blame other people, but people who have done well congratulate themselves.’ Leni was like that, and Raoul even more so. All affability when about his diplomatic duties, at home he seethed with resentment of his older brother Rupert, who inherited the manor house while poor Raoul only got the eight-bedroom cottage. ‘I’m the only one who ever had to work for a living,’ Raoul was fond of saying, and Leni would quickly join the lament. ‘We’ve worked hard for what we have,’ she would say. ‘Nothing’s been handed to us on a plate.’

  But it seemed even to my thirteen-year-old self that it had. For all Leni’s stories of an idyllic rural childhood playing in the fields and streams, I remembered my mother’s stories of coming home from school to make cheese in the family’s dairy, of missing school to mind baby Leni, sick with measles. ‘Leni was always the favourite,’ she would say, without any trace of envy. Leni was her favourite too. ‘Leni was the beautiful one, the clever one.’ I know little about their family, but I do know that my mother, a self-taught photographer who had built up her own niche business, paid for beautiful clever Leni to go to pharmacy school, and made the dress Leni wore to the party where she met Raoul. These were stories my mother sometimes told, although Leni seemed to have forgotten them completely.

  One thing you could say about my mother. She made her bed and she lay in it, uncomplaining, for the full term of her life. Whereas I, displaced and terrified, lay in the canopied bed in my aunt’s house, crying my heart out, until the school term started and all my tears dried up.

  I remember almost nothing about Lambton School, at which I was a weekly boarder for four years. The only lessons I learned there were never to show weakness, never to show fear, never to turn your back, and never, ever to shed a tear, even in the dark. Especially in the dark.

  I couldn’t believe that my kindly mother would have sent me to this place, so like a Dickensian prison with its absence of heating, constant threat of punishment by both staff and pupils, and the unrelenting, unforgivable stigma of being an outsider in a place where even being an insider was a sentence to a life of torture.

  I suppose Moe, like me, failed to recognise the understory of cruelty and sadness in our English books. When we read The Secret Garden what we remembered was the magical garden, allowing us to forget all about the terrible past histories of the children who reclaimed it. These books, now I’m looking back on them, were primarily about stoicism, punishment and independence, only the last of which really has anything to commend it.

  I didn’t cry after my parents’ deaths. I took to roaming around the streets and foreshore, and developed an addiction to fat and grease. I’d pause in my ramblings to lunch on potato cakes or dim sims, and then at nine or ten o’clock I’d grab a pizza or a souvlaki. On weekends, while Jonathan was poring over his law books, I’d take the train to more distant places, to the zoo where I’d sit for hours watching the penguins swim pointlessly around in circles, or prowl the walkway beside Merri Creek, glaring at the graffiti and the snake warning signs and the passers-by, who would detour up onto the grass to avoid me. I was in a permanent daze, barely sleeping, burning up the fast-food kilojoules in manic exercise, unable to study, the words dancing before my eyes like snowflakes.

  Jonathan was never very good at dealing with misery, ‘I get enough of that at work,’ h
e’d say, and my fellow students, at a loss at how to deal with such naked sorrow, chose to ignore my state. Ironically, it was this state that must have cemented Dave’s interest. Perhaps not so ironic. Damsel in distress, Kathryn would tell me. Men love it.

  I already knew Dave, of course, but his attention had seemed quite brotherly until that one afternoon in my life I broke my own rules and confided my feelings to a virtual stranger.

  My mistake.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Famadihana ceremony

  An unusual ceremony in Madagascar is the famadihana, meaning ‘turning of the bones’, carried out by the Merina and Betsileo people. This takes place between four and seven years after the first burial when the remains of the selected relative are removed from the tomb or crypt, rewrapped in a specially woven burial shroud, called a lamba mena, with their name rewritten on the new cloth so they will not be forgotten. During this time the corpse is lovingly handled and informed of all the latest village gossip and brought up to date with family events. Famadihana is regarded as a time of joy with festivities including drinking, music and dancing, which will often include holding the body aloft and dancing with it as the relatives circle the tomb before replacing the newly enwrapped corpse.

  Alix Verhoeven, ‘Life in Madagascar’, Tempora mutantor, Geology Department student magazine

  FIELD DIARY – Thursday 19 April

  * * *

  Today is the Duffy brothers’ regular boat trip day.

  I had not allowed myself to get up too many hopes, but at the back of my mind was the possibility that Dave would give up, not having found me after his pretence of leaving, and go with the Dodgy brothers to the mainland. I reacted to the shock of seeing Dave on Tuesday by falling to pieces. Today I must gather the pieces back together. I decided to make my preparations for observing the boat after checking for nectar and making a toilet stop. Even without the alarm, I awoke just before light, and knew I must steel myself to go out.