by Ann Kelley
I am in a hammock strung between tree trunks. Looking up into the green canopy of trees, I strain to remember my dream.
“Where am I?” I can’t believe I said that. I look around. I put my hands to my head and find a cloth wrapped around it. The cuts and scratches on my arms and legs have strange green stuff stuck to them and are bandaged with strips of leaves. It smells of fungus and ferns. I drift away… water on my lips.
There is a roof of woven leaves above me, and the smell of charcoal burning, and incense. A spirit house in the form of a miniature temple on bamboo stilts is bedecked with flowers and fruit. There’s a sweet smell of jasmine and another strong, pungent reek of wild animal.
I’m not dreaming. As my sight clears I see the tiger rolling on its back like a ginger tabby. The monk unfurls his long snakelike body; he reminds me of Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive Oyl, and brings me a drink of hot water, with something extra in it—lime juice and coconut milk, I think. It’s heavenly. He has a huge head, the monk, misshapen, and his face is sort of twisted, so his fleshy mouth is on one half and his blunt nose and almond eyes on the other. But his gummy smile is friendly. He wears a tiger’s claw on a piece of twine around his neck; one shoulder is bare, and his orange robe is ragged.
“Khawp khun,” I say. Thank you. I try to get out of the hammock, but I cannot stand without feeling dizzy. My left leg hurts. He holds me steady until my head clears.
“Khun phuut phasaa angrit?” Do you speak English? I have to strain my neck like a baby bird to look up at his face.
He says nothing, shaking his head, and opens his drooling mouth, pointing inside. He seems to have no tongue or teeth.
The tiger pushes itself up onto its legs and comes toward us. I freeze. The great beast comes to my side and rubs itself against my legs, nearly pushing me over, and then ambles away. The monk laughs and strokes the tiger’s head. I swear it’s purring.
My head feels awful and my brain is reeling. The monk, who must be seven feet tall, though he is so skinny his bones jut from his flesh, takes my hand and leads me to the tiger’s side. Squatting, he indicates that I should sit, too, and stroke the massive beast. The fur is hot; the panting flanks are real, not imaginary. This big cat is tame. We haven’t been attacked because she isn’t afraid of people. She hasn’t been hunted. She knows only this gentle giant. This is some sort of Eden. I stay, whispering to the tiger, for a long time. She seems curious about me, nosing my hands and snuffing at me like a big dog. She sneezes. The monk is very amused. Who is he? How did he come to be here? I am dizzy, so I get back into the hammock. I watch the monk as he lifts something that has been cooked on a rack surrounded by hot stones and buried in an oven not unlike the charcoal burner in our compound. It’s a sweet-smelling root, and it’s delicious, like sugar, carrot, and potato all in one. He passes me a sweet drink, which I think of as tiger’s milk, but of course it can’t be.
I drift into semiconsciousness, waking myself with sudden shouts. He presses more of the fruity drink to my lips. I am feverish, but aware always of the monk’s quiet presence, his long fingers on my burning forehead, the dressings on my cuts being changed. The tiger lies panting in the shade, long whiskers twitching, tongue lolling… curved yellow fangs.
My mother and father run toward me; flames engulf them.
I no longer know what is real, what is unreal. Is the tiger really licking my hand? I smell fur, like burnt toffee.
I wake to darkness, but the monk is there still, smiling his crooked smile. I have no idea how long I have been here, but at least my injuries are not terrible: no broken bones, though I hurt all over.
A huge tusked boar is charging at me, but my legs won’t move. It screams, or I do.
My full bladder wakes me. I keep saying “pee-pee, pee-pee,” and he seems to understand, smiling widely and nodding. He helps me to my feet, takes me to a perfectly decent latrine at the edge of his camp, and turns his back. I crouch and relieve myself, and then he takes me back to my swinging bed. Have I taken his bed from him? Where is he sleeping? I could sleep forever.
Explosions, flames, the stench of burning oil. A tree falling toward me. I am paralyzed. A cock crows.
My backpack is by my side. How did it get there? I thought I’d lost it forever, stuck on a branch in a crevice.
Today—whatever day it might be—I feel a little better. I’m still shaky and weak, but the hammer in my head has stopped, and I am actually hungry. When the gentle monk accompanies me to the latrine I can walk without his help. Well, nearly.
The tiger comes and goes silently. Sometimes her cheeks and throat are bloody. She spends ages cleaning herself, just like a domestic cat: long, rasping tongue; yellow fangs. She lies on her back, her nipples pink in the honey-colored fur. The monk has a small woven-bamboo-fenced yard with three black hens and a fine cockerel, whose red comb quivers and shakes as he struts.
I am being fattened with eggs. They taste like nectar. No more fever. My leg injury still weeps with yellow pus, but the swelling is going down. The man who saved my life dresses the various cuts all over me with a mess of chewed leaves wrapped with whole leaves and tied with shredded bark.
I have no idea how long I have been here. Jas and the others must wonder what has happened to me. Oh God, what if someone has rescued them and left me here? My thoughts crash around. They have no place in this peaceful heaven.
Sunshine spatters the clearing beyond the cave mouth. The monk silently offers me spongy nut from a sprouting coconut for my breakfast.
My backpack was battered and torn in the fall, but my journal is safe.
I still have a pencil, and I have tried to record what I remember of what’s happened since I left Fire Mountain.
I am becoming restless. I need to move on, and I see that he understands this.
I wish I had something to give the monk, a thank-you present. I don’t really have anything that would be of use to him. But I have been drawing sketches of the tiger in my journal; I tear out a page, which he accepts with a large wet smile.
He leads me to a limestone cave. He sleeps here, on a small platform packed with dry grass, and on the rock wall I see a mural of giant handprints. He smiles and places his hand on the wall and I see that it’s his huge hands that are multiplied across the rock. It’s like a schoolroom wall of kids’ finger-paint prints, or a surreal design for wallpaper, each pinkie touching the one of the other hand, and the thumbs touching—a repeated pattern. But instead of a community of friends’ hands or of family hands reaching out to be close to one another, the monk has only himself. There is a sort of red paste in a gourd bowl on the floor of the cave. He mimes to me to put my hands in the bowl and then place them on the cave wall. I make my mark on his cave of hands, my small hands low down, his big signature above.
He gives me more water in a flask and fills a sack with pawpaw, limes, mangosteen, and cooked eggs, and, taking me by the hand again, leads me through the steaming forest. It’s time for me to leave. The tiger follows, swaying silently. Toucans honk noisily above, and bush turkeys creep and scrape through the leaf litter.
The path suddenly opens up to pines and banana trees and elephant grass, taller than me, taller than the monk. The tiger leaps ahead. Gibbons hoo-hoo in alarm. And here is our destination—a lake! I think this must be the crater I saw from the summit. The tiger bounds heavily to the edge, turns away from the water, and plunges in backward as if she doesn’t want to wet her whiskers. We squat, the monk and I, at the edge of the lily-covered water. Egrets lift together from the surface in a white flutter like torn paper and pass over our heads. He smiles always, at me, at the tiger, at the birds. Then he slips into the shallows and beckons me. I stand at the edge, peering into the dark water, the ripples distorting the trees’ reflection. I’m dizzy. I crouch and turn into the water backward, much as the tiger did, immersing myself slowly. The water is cool on my hot skin, like clean cotton sheets. I float on my back, calm and almost free of pain, content simply to lie, looking at the
dark towering clouds, happy.
However he came to be here, cut off from society, the monk is happy. I wonder if he carried the cub here, or if she was here before him. I’ll never know. He lives in perfect harmony with his big cat, like a saint or a spirit.
Sounds are muted in the cotton-wool-like warmth of the water. The cat swims silently. Large butterflies flap lazily down to sip from the surface. Invisible parakeets squabble in the trees. Above the water is a haze of mosquitoes; dragonflies hover and sip. The tiger rises from the water, dripping gold. I feel clean, safe, entranced. She shakes herself, scattering diamonds from her darkened fur. We follow a narrow path up and down and around the green hills, the tiger ahead, then the monk, with me at the rear.
I am not as strong as I thought. I crouch to get my breath. My head spins. I hear a sudden loud snort and an angry squeal, and a huge-tusked boar breaks through the forest, onto the trail, and comes straight at me. In terror I instinctively throw myself out of the way.
A golden belly above me, like a blinding flash of sun.
The wild boar screams as the tiger’s jaws close. I’m shaking and sobbing, laughing and trembling. The monk smiles broadly and claps his hands. He bends to reach me and lifts me up, away from the tiger and her bloody victim.
I am half fainting and dizzy still. He carries me through dark forest, trees pushing in at us from all sides until we come to more open savannah, where he lets me stand. I am rested now and the trembling has stopped.
We continue our trek without the tiger, who is presumably enjoying her feast.
The monk does not hurry me, but I am aware that he wants me to go now, back to my world, leaving him to his. His long hand sits on my head. He puts a finger first to his chest, then points to me and then to his destroyed mouth, to urge me to be quiet. His message couldn’t be clearer. He removes the string with the tiger claw from around his neck and places it over my head. Then he hands me the sack of fruit and waves me on alone, pointing in the direction I must go. Smiling, he puts his hands together in a prayer and bows.
I do the same to him.
When I raise my eyes he is gone.
Above the thumping of my heart and head I hear a honking noise, like the sound of wild geese in Scotland. No, it’s the conch. Someone is blowing the conch.
It must be Hope. I follow the sound downhill.
Please blow it again, Hope.
Yes, I must be going toward the beach, even though there are no markers. I push my way through, desperate to reach the beach and my friends. I only hope that Jas and Jody are safe. Please, God…
There is something familiar hanging in a bush of red flowers: Mrs. Campbell’s guitar. I reach for it, ignoring the thorns. It’s broken, of course; holey and smashed, all but one of the strings twisted and snapped in two. Then I smell seaweed.
The forest thins and earth turns to sand. I recognize familiar rocks and trees. Feathered crowns of stooping palms hiss and dip in the strong breeze. The relief of coming at last to the beach: It’s almost like coming home.
twenty-two
I don’t believe it: They’ve made a raft. Without me, they’ve built a raft. Hope is hammering away at something, and jumps when I appear.
“Oh, hi, Bonnie—you’re back.”
I’m astonished. “Is that all you have to say?”
“Oh, sorry. What have you done to your head? Do you know your leg’s bleeding?”
“Hope, this is… It looks like a real raft. Does it float?”
“Sure it floats. I think. Built it all on my own.” Hope looks different, sounds different.
“Is Jas here?” I collapse onto the sand.
Jas runs toward me on cue. I don’t recognize her at first—she’s so skinny. I somehow thought she’d look like she did when we set out on the camping trip. But she’s lost her glow, her healthy plumpness.
“Bonnie, oh, Bonnie, are you okay? Where have you been? It’s been three days. Thank goodness you’re safe. We saw the smoke on the mountain. What’s happened to your head? And your leg? Where’s that orange bandage from? What’s that around your neck?” She’s holding my shoulders, shaking me with every question.
“How’s Jody?”
“Oh, Jody’s fine. No problem, apart from chiggers in her feet. I tried to dig them out, but there’s infection. Thought I better get her back here, though, as we arranged. Followed the stream. It was much easier going. We got back really quickly.”
“You didn’t meet up with anything on the way?”
“Like what?”
“Tiger? Wild boar?”
“No, we were fine.”
“You wouldn’t believe the adventures I’ve had. I was—”
Hope interrupts our reunion. “Excuse me, guys. Forget your travelers’ tales. What about my raft?”
“Yeah, it’s fantastic, Hope.” I sit on the edge and test its strength. It’s about fourteen feet long, made of seven logs strapped together, with five crosspieces to strengthen it. Only Hope is strong enough to have manhandled the logs to the beach.
“How did you manage to cut the wood?” I ask her.
“With difficulty and brute strength. And with the help of your Swiss Army knife. Jas lent it to me.” She sounds proud of herself. And the stutter—it’s gone. “To tell the truth, most of the trunks were already broken off by the storm.”
“What did you use to bind the logs together?”
“Balsam wood bark. It’s brilliant. You strip it off, see….”
“But how did you know what a balsam tree looks like?”
“I dunno, I just knew. I build model planes.”
“How come you didn’t tell us you could build things?”
“You never asked. I’m only the babysitter.”
“Where did you get that orange bandanna, Bonnie? And what’s wrapped around your arms?” Jody asks as she and Carly join us, having been drawn by the conch. “You’re all cut and bruised. Your leg’s bleeding. What’s that around your neck? Where’ve you been?”
“It’s a tiger claw, Jody. I… I found it… with the cloth. I fell and banged my head. I… and a wild boar charged me, but I escaped….”
“Oh yeah? Pull the other one,” says Jas.
The juniors are bored by our talk and wander back to sandcastle-building.
“Never mind that now. Come to the camp and I’ll bathe your leg. It looks sore,” Jas says.
“Oh, Jas, it’s so good to be back. I was lost.”
“You’re safe now.”
“No boat?”
“No boat.”
I find that my cheeks are wet. So much for my Quality fire.
“We need to protect ourselves from big boars, Jas.”
“Like May and Arlene, you mean?” Jas says. I don’t laugh.
“Did I mention I saw a golden Buddha? And… and there’s a lake in the middle of the island—a big lake.”
“A lake? Volcanic crater?”
“Oh, I forgot these.” I hand over the sack of fruit and cooked eggs to Jas, who acts as if I have given her a triple strawberry ice-cream sundae with chocolate sauce and sprinkled almonds.
“But what…? How did you…?”
“Jas, don’t ask. Please, don’t ask. I can’t tell you.”
“Okay, okay. But…”
“No, I’m not telling you anything more. I fell, that’s all. And I did survive a wild-boar charge. That’s it—that’s all you’re going to get.”
twenty-three
KOH TABU, MAY, OR MAYBE JUNE 1974
I have no idea what day it is, or how long we’ve been here. Jas says 18 days, Hope says 20.
Fantastic scabs are forming all the way up my left leg and on both elbows. I have a great scar on my temple, apparently—shaped like a diamond. Bruises of all shades of blue, green, and yellow decorate my body and limbs like camouflage paint on a plane.
No one’s seen any planes or boats near the island lately, and there have been only rare sightings of the Glossies and Loopy Layla.
We
work—Hope, Jas, Carly, Jody, and I—to build a more secure enclosure of sharpened bamboo canes against the threat of rampaging wild boars. We trek together into the forest to collect the canes, making a lot of noise, banging tin cans together, armed with spears, shouting and singing, hoping the nasty creatures will run away from us, not at us. The gibbons complain loudly, screaming at us from high branches.
Hope is stronger than the rest of us. She’s lost weight, but she’s more muscular.
She’s wearing the broken glasses, the blind eye covered with the boatman’s black eye patch. Her head is covered by Carly’s red bandanna, piratelike. Jody calls her Cap’n Hope. Hope lives up to the nickname, calling us “Me hearties.” She chops the long thick bamboo canes off at the base with the cork-handled curved knife, and the rest of us carry the bundles of canes between us from the forest back to the beach.
“Black Cave is the best camp,” says Jas. “We can get a good view of anything that’s coming toward us.”
“Yeah, we can see a long way,” says Hope. “But it’s too small a space.”
I’m not used to Hope stating her case.
“We can’t build a fence around the cave. Where could we stick the poles? There’s only rock,” I point out. So in the end I win the argument and we decide to use the natural shelter of the banyan tree—much to the disgust of Jody and Carly, who consider it their own special private camp, and of the superstitious Jas, who is convinced that it is bad luck to sleep under it.
“Oh, come on, Jas,” I say. “We are hardly likely to have more bad luck than we have had already.”
“But in the Jataka tales, in the story of Satyavan and Savitri, Satyavan lost his life beneath the branches of a banyan. All sorts of spirits and ghosts live in the branches of the banyan. Kinnaras: half-human, half-animal. That’s why Thais don’t like to sleep under them.”
