Beat Not the Bones

by Charlotte Jay

‘That’s not for you!’ she said. ‘It’s for them. It’s all right for them. They manage. They know all the ways out and the loopholes and evasions. But you’re a westerner! Don’t be a fool!’

  He rose slowly to his feet and turned to her, his muddy hands hanging at his sides.

  ‘A fool!’ he said. His teeth clenched and he was very white. He lashed back at her as if she had insulted him. ‘A fool! You don’t know what you’re saying. Only fools are safe! Westerner! What place has the west here! Good God, this is the tropics! We are standing virtually on the equator! Don’t you know that’s where all living things – slugs, pigs, fishes, trees, flowers, mosquitoes, humans – are the same and survive on equal terms! Do you suppose it’ll snow for us because we’ve got Nordic blood in our veins? We must give in.’

  He stopped abruptly and stamped on the earth he had been digging. She glanced around her. Hitolo and the three carriers were still waiting, and watching. They won’t stay, she thought, they’ll leave us tonight.

  Washington did not speak to her for some time. She realised he was angry at being caught and rebuked for his furtive digging. But after they had walked about half a mile the track widened into mud flats on the edge of the river and he dropped back and walked alongside her.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You’ve just come here, you haven’t been here long enough to realise these things. You can’t know them intellectually, they don’t bear examination, you’ve got to feel them. For hundred of years now the white men have been trying to live in the tropics and the only ones who have survived are those who have obeyed its commands and worshipped its gods.’

  He seemed unaware of the half hour of silence that had passed between them and spoke as if in direct continuation of their earlier conversation. ‘Isn’t it possible,’ he said, ‘that this belt that circles the world demands some other sort of equipment for living?’ He spoke almost in a whisper and kept looking into the trees on either side. ‘In every tropical country, there are native peoples who have survived and built up cultures of their own. And always, always, with the people who survive you find witchcraft, magic, sorcery and a conglomeration of methods for harnessing and counteracting the forces of evil. They recognise evil. They recognise it and survive. But we don’t survive. Not the whites, the westerners, as you call them, because they won’t acknowledge what they can’t explain as a scientific formula. They think it’s childish; they won’t climb down and admit their helplessness.’

  ‘There could be other reasons for their not surviving,’ Stella said.

  ‘What other reasons?’ His voice was again eager. His own theory seemed to fascinate him. ‘Why is it that after a year or so up here or in any other tropical country, they lose touch with their own natures? Why do their personalities rot and crumble? Why is their work futile and profitless? Why do they end up in suicide and madness, drink, sex and sickness?’

  He paused and spoke more loudly now, more passionately. ‘Because they refuse to understand that all the phenomena that they have been brought up to be enlightened about, to be sceptical about, are still here. Oh, God! What fools! They think a jungle is an English wood. They’ve never spent a night alone in the jungle as I have. They refuse to live – with their goddamned superiority – as a native has learned is the only way to live – cunningly, instinctively and acknowledging their own insignificance!’

  Stella did not reply, and he rambled on about instincts, feelings, the false trails that the intellect followed; the inner eye that the western world had lost. Every now and again he would stop and glance back over his shoulder and then the boys behind them would stop too.

  They arrived at a village in the mid-afternoon and decided to stop there for the night. They were now a day’s march from Eola.

  While the other boys were preparing food in the evening Stella tried to talk to Hitolo, but she felt that he had ceased to be frank with her. He was wary and on the defensive.

  ‘Will the boys come on tomorrow?’ she asked. But he only shook his head enigmatically and would not meet her eye. ‘If they don’t, we shall leave food here and take presents and just a little food for the people at Eola.’

  ‘We take no presents,’ he replied indifferently.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Last time, Eola people send all presents back again.’

  ‘Surely not. Mr Washington said they took a lot of presents. Pearl shells and cowries. And Mr Seaton said it too.’

  He nodded. ‘Plenty presents. Mr Washington and Mr Warwick and my brother bring them all back. The people of Eola bad people.’ He looked away. ‘Bad people,’ he said again.

  ‘What do they say about them here?’ asked Stella, pointing a hand to indicate the village.

  ‘Bad people,’ Hitolo said vaguely. He had become inarticulate, as if the jungle silence had made him feel the futility of words.

  ‘Do they ever see them?’

  He threw a quick glance around him. ‘Vada men,’ he said.

  ‘They must trade with them,’ she insisted. ‘They’re not more than fifteen or twenty miles away.’

  ‘Vada men kill plenty people.’

  They were no longer able to talk together. Whatever knowledge Hitolo had acquired of European language and customs was now muddled. The fear that was his birthright had claimed him. She wondered if he had forgotten his dead brother, or if this memory, too, was lost with all that he had started with. He no longer set himself apart from the other boys, seeing himself as an administration clerk, more white than brown. He walked away from her to the other boys busy around the fire with, she felt, an air of relief.

  The boys did not, as she had half expected, stay behind in the village. She woke early at about four o’clock and lay for a few moments looking out through her net at the grey light outside.

  ‘Are you awake?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Washington said. The relief in his tone suggested that he had been lying awake for hours.

  This is the day, she thought. ‘We should leave as soon as possible. Will you wake the boys?’

  He said nothing but got up and left the hut. It was understood between them now that she should make the decisions. A moment later he returned. Stella was up and folding her bed.

  ‘Are they coming?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was no telling what this meant to him.

  They had breakfast and left as it was growing light. The day before they had walked through open country but now they were in forest once more. The path was narrow and only visible for a few yards ahead. The light was not daylight but a thin dark.

  Washington tried to make the boys lead. ‘They might sneak off behind,’ he explained. But they refused, so he and Stella went first, walking abreast and continually knocking against each other on the narrow path. She felt that he sought this constant collision of hand, shoulder and knee as an antidote to his loneliness. More than once she noticed his fingers feel towards hers in the unconscious act of clasping her hand. But this statement of bewilderment and fear was never completed; consciousness intervened just in time and his hand was drawn back.

  The boys walked close behind. They did not speak now and moved so silently there was no way of telling they were there. Every now and again Washington stopped and glanced over his shoulder, then the boys would stop too. His constant checking agitated them and they picked up his anxiety as a horse senses fear in its rider’s hands.

  They spoke only once, when a chuckling cry broke out of the jungle ahead. The party stopped as one; even Stella froze to a halt. ‘It’s only a bird,’ she murmured.

  Washington, stiff as a terrified dog beside her, said without moving, ‘I’ve never heard a bird like that.’ His eyeballs turned a violent half circle while his head remained stiff. He dared not turn to either side and expose himself from the other.

  The cry sounded again, a little further off, and sounded less eerie and more birdlike. The boys shuffled and muttered; they moved on.

  But the cry must have decided them. When Washing
ton turned round again, not more than five minutes later, they had gone.

  ‘They’ve gone!’

  Stella turned sharply. The path was empty. It led back about twenty yards and then disappeared round a smooth-barked tree. She started to run. ‘Hitolo! Hitolo!’

  She could hear Washington running close behind her. Another fifty yards past the tree they came on the stores dumped down on the path. She stopped. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘They would be running too.’

  She looked down at the stores. They looked to have been thrown down in panic. ‘Hitolo!’ – she cupped her hands to her mouth and called – ‘Hitolo!’ But her voice was soaked up in the heavy trees.

  Washington had stopped beside her. She felt him standing there, sensed his stillness but did not look at him. Now she was afraid.

  ‘Hitolo!’ She called again. There was some relief in calling. It postponed the fear, though she knew there was no hope of an answer.

  To Washington her voice was an outrage, a flouting of the law of jungle silence. For a moment he did not move or speak, then he broke out hoarsely, ‘Don’t! Don’t!’

  Only then could she look at him. By speaking he had proclaimed the remnant of some sort of humanity. She turned, and they looked into each other’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 18

  They stood staring at each other. Stella’s face was composed, but her eyes were filled with intelligence of what this moment might mean to her. It had not been sprung on her. It had been, all the time, a looming possibility, and she had not shut her mind to it, but had passed from village to village, point of safety to point of safety, knowing that each rejected fortress brought it nearer. It must be accepted if Eola was ever to be reached.

  Washington was less clearly aware of their arrival than she. There was a dazed, vacant expression in his bloodshot eyes. The sudden terrible fact of finding themselves alone was all that he could grasp. They have gone, they have gone, they have gone, a voice whispered. Then the voice stopped and he became aware of the silence.

  Stella had heard it too, for her eyes had moved away from his face and were fixed on the path ahead, searching for whatever it was that could make such silence. It was not merely an absence of sound – a hush in which no leaf stirred and birds were quiet – but a stillness that precedes violent action, as of a storm about to break or a beast about to strike. The jungle crouched with breath indrawn. For a moment they actually forgot each other and knew what it was to be alone.

  Then Stella turned her head and looked at him again. His angry, helpless eyes stared into hers. He was trapped, it was no good, it was too late. The boys had left too late. He could never destroy the one creature that stood between him and the jungle and bring about by his own act the most appalling horror of all – to be alone on Eola land.

  She understood and said quietly, ‘Shall we go on?’

  Her words steadied him a little. Suddenly everything was easier and less terrifying. She was not to die. He could not for the moment look ahead and face up to the consequences of her living. He felt only an immense relief. It was unthinkable – he had never even got around to thinking about it. He could never have killed her, not even if the boys had left the day before, before they reached Eola land. She was a white woman. He was not capable of destroying her. He had fooled himself all along into thinking that this simple, easy way out was possible. Something else must be done.

  His thoughts were quick. They were the last vigorous gusts of life and drenched his spirit in radiance and optimism. ‘We can’t go on without the boys,’ he said definitely.

  ‘Why not?’ She had already moved down the path, and paused to look back at him. He read resolution behind the contours of her youthful face, and his elation died.

  ‘We might need help. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘You have a gun,’ she said, pointing to the pistol in his holster.

  ‘You don’t use guns with boys,’ he said sharply. It made him feel better to put her in her place. ‘Having a bunch of them puts you in a position in which it isn’t necessary to think of defence.’

  ‘They didn’t come before,’ she said mildly. Her eyes were gentle but pitiless. He saw that she read exactly the reasons behind his excuses.

  ‘That was different. We upset them before. We must go carefully. Besides, David was experienced with them. We aren’t – not with primitive ones, that is. And besides … the stores …’

  ‘We should get there by three,’ she said. ‘We can take a few tins and our nets and spend the night there. There’ll be plenty of food. They’ll give us yams.’

  ‘Spend the night there!’ It was all he could do to repress a shudder. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

  ‘We can’t go back now,’ she said. ‘It would be unthinkable.’ She walked back and faced him. ‘What is it about these people?’

  It was the first time that anyone had asked him such a question. Not even Sylvia had dared. Now he saw they were to speak plainly. They had admitted between them that he was to have killed her and could not. There can be no closer relationship than between hunter and prey, and now she could ask him anything.

  ‘They aren’t like other people,’ he muttered, looking away.

  Stella did not answer him. She was bending down among the stores. ‘We’ll pick these up on the way back,’ she said. ‘Maybe the people from the village will come out for them. We can’t actually be on Eola land yet. You carry your net, I’ll carry mine. We’ll take the water bottles and a few tins.’ She was unpacking and re-packing one of the small haversacks.

  He stood, helplessly watching her. Her large eyes, once so wild and fanatic, were clear and determined. Yet he felt that she hardly knew what she was doing, and obeyed, like himself – bending down and helping her – some irresistible compulsion. They moved the remainder of the stores into the undergrowth on the edge of the path and slashed the trees to mark the spot. Then Stella hoisted her haversack on to her back and started off down the path. She did not look behind to see if he followed. He stood for a moment dazedly watching her. The sun was up by now, but the light in the jungle was still dim, and the outline of her body grew hazy as she drew away from him.

  Still he stood; his mind would not direct him. The silence drew nearer. A ring of watchers hidden in the trees had taken a step forward. A living band had drawn tighter. With a stifled gasp that was almost a scream, he raced after her.

  ‘Wait!’

  She paused and looked around. ‘You’ve forgotten your haversack,’ she said.

  He looked at her helplessly and then back along the path to where the haversack lay. He felt he could not bear to leave her. To place even this small distance between them filled him with terror. He felt that if he turned his back on her and once lost sight of her she would be gone forever, swallowed in the jungle. He would be alone. She sensed his agony and said quietly, ‘I’ll wait while you get it.’

  Only her command made the act possible, and he turned and walked obediently back to the haversack. She did not move on but waited for him to return.

  They went on. The path bent away from the river and turned a little inland. It was hot now, and the air was thick and sticky. But they did not feel as hot and tired as they had during the noon hours of the previous days. They had forgotten their bodies and movement was mechanical to both of them.

  Every now and again questions would rise to the surface of his mind. What am I going to do? What am I going to say? What explanation shall I give? But they would sink back once more like swamp creatures sucked down into mud. Most of the time he was hardly conscious of the past or the future. His body was not his own; his will had gone. He followed because Stella led and he could not live without her. He was not afraid, because he was beyond feeling. The jungle slid past like the backcloth of a revolving stage, each stretch of trees and undergrowth repeating what had passed before. Only now and again there would fall, like a shadow on his heels, the consciousness of that crouching, waiting, avenging silence that he only kept at bay
by being with Stella.

  Then Stella stopped. He did not know how long they had been walking. It might have been moments or hours. They were in a wide, open glade, entirely roofed in by trees. It appeared to have been at one time cleared right back to the trunks of the trees, but now the undergrowth was reaching forward on all sides and only a patch in the centre was bare. All around them were straight-trunked fig trees with long up-sweeping branches that gave the effect of cathedral aisles. Down from the tops of the trees hung the tendrils of creepers, each bearing on its extreme end a single bright round fruit like an orange, so that the whole jungle was festooned with Christmas hangings. The undergrowth was thinner, and shining out among the roots of the trees in sinister purity were tall, white lilies.

  ‘What a beautiful place.’

  But Washington stared wildly around him. He felt like a sleepwalker who wakes in the mouth of a tomb.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

  ‘I know this place!’

  ‘One would remember it.’

  ‘We’re only about six miles from the village!’

  ‘That would be right. It’s one o’clock. We should be there by three, though the paths are very overgrown; they look as if they haven’t been used for ages.’

  He did not hear her. He could not believe that their dazed marching had carried them so far. A shadow at night by his bed, a coconut face on the door – these were nothing. Even jungle silence was nothing. They were six miles from Eola. This turf had been pressed daily by Eola feet, the leaves touched by Eola hands, the orange fruit, the dazzling lilies were specific for Eola medicine. The trees and shrubs were bound over to Eola allegiance, the air thick with Eola curses and fanned by the spirits of Eola dead.

  ‘I’ve been thinking how strange it is that we haven’t met anyone,’ Stella said.

  He looked at her wildly. ‘Met anyone?’

  ‘I said before that the paths look unused.’

  ‘They hunt on the other side of the village. They don’t like this side.’

  ‘The forest seems so utterly empty.’ She stood listening. Then her eyes returned to his face. ‘Why are you so frightened of this place?’ she said softly.