by Peter Benson
The Nordvaer was not built to carry more than a few passengers. The Ilois were squashed on deck and told to sit beneath tarpaulins. The sea was rough, the food they were given was off, the ship rolled badly. Women held their children to prevent them sliding overboard. Old people wailed and turned green. Georges began to curse and shake without a drink. Odette and Leonard comforted their mother and wiped her chin with a cloth as coconuts rolled across the deck and dropped through the rails.
The Ilois were surprised to find themselves dumped in the Seychelles, but the cargo of coconuts had to be unloaded so they were ordered off, counted, vaccinated and shown through customs and immigration. No one told them what to do or where to go.
In desperation, they walked to the offices of the uncle of the last plantation manager on Diego Garcia. This man tried to find somewhere for them to say. He phoned and sent runners to local hostels, and asked officials from the Seychelles Government to help.
‘But Ilois are British subjects,’ they said. ‘They’re the responsibility of BIOT.’
A BIOT administrator was called. He suggested that the Ilois could stay in a local prison.
Odette and the others bedded down in cells. Some prisoners served them their first proper meal in days. The place stank of piss and rotten eggs.
‘What you in for?’ said a thief.
‘Me?’ said Georges.
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing. I haven’t done anything.’
The prisoner grinned. ‘No. Neither have I!’ He laughed and ladelled some rice onto his plate.
‘No. I mean it.’
‘So do I! Really! Ask anyone. I wasn’t anywhere near the house. The bloke that did it’s living on Praslin. I was nowhere near.’
‘No?’
‘But I got five years! I ask you.’ The man crouched down and whispered. ‘When I get out my first stop’s that bastard. He thinks Praslin far enough away!’ He clenched his fist. ‘See that?’
Georges nodded.
The man stood up and laughed. ‘Good for you!’
The sound of doors slamming and orders ringing down corridors interrupted them.
‘HEY!’
‘SIR!’
‘SWEEP THAT UP!’
‘SIR!’
‘AND WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED, WASH THE BROOM AND REPORT TO ME! BRING A SHOVEL!’
‘SIR!’
‘I’VE GOT ANOTHER LITTLE JOB FOR YOU! SOMETHING YOU’LL ENJOY VERY MUCH.’
‘SIR!’
‘YOU LIKE WORKING HERE, DON’T YOU?’
‘OH YES SIR.’
A door slammed. Keys jangled.
‘How about a drink?’ said Georges.
‘Sure!’ The prisoner left.
Georges waited. A drink. He bit a fingernail as he waited. The prisoner came back with a jug of water.
‘No,’ said Georges. ‘A real drink!’
The prisoner laughed again. ‘Oh sure,’ he said, and left the jug on the floor. ‘Sure!’
‘I thought you…’
‘Go to sleep.’
Odette screwed her eyes tight and refused to listen. They were locked in at nine o’clock but lights and noise from the streets kept them awake. The sound of cars and people meeting each other, talking about the usual things people talk about on warm streets in the evening. Bars were open.
Nine days later, the Ilois were taken from their cells and counted back onto The Nordvaer. Her cargo had been unloaded. The weather was hot, palm trees nodded over sweeps of blinding sand. The sun stung the roads and the air filled with the smell of melting tar as she nudged her way out of harbour and set course for Mauritius.
14
Raphael gave up waiting, slipped very quickly and ended up sitting in a doorway and begging. He slept in a ditch on the road to Beau Bassin.
All he’d ever wanted to be was what he’d been but now his nose dripped and his mind was bowled by hazed memories, swinging backwards and forwards and back again. The distant sound of waves breaking on a reef came, stayed for a second and went. Tourists saw him, folded their arms and said, ‘Well of course they do it because they want to.’ He held out a hand but no one gave him a coin. He wanted to die.
‘Why don’t they go home?’ said Mauritians. ‘They don’t like it here.’
‘No…’
‘They’ve got their own place.’
‘The Chagos.’
‘It’s beautiful there.’
Raphael had no shoes. His last pair had broken. He left them by a drain and walked barefoot.
People stepped off the pavement to avoid him. He smelt. His hair was dirty and his face covered in scabs. He pissed his pants and sat down again.
A dog sniffed him, yelped and jumped away. His torn trousers exposed sores on his knees and feet. A policeman shook him by the shoulder.
‘Hey!’
Raphael groaned.
‘Up! You’re blocking the way.’
‘I’m getting up.’
What Raphael saw swam. He was starving. His stomach ballooned, the light hurt his eyes, all he’d been able to shit for a fortnight was blood.
The movement of traffic confused him. The smell of a roasting chicken made him cry. He mumbled about fishing and hooks, the policeman helped him up. Passers-by shook their heads and asked each other questions. Beggars were beggars but people who came from a paradise to be beggars and not go back made them scratch their heads. ‘It’s very beautiful there.’
‘We learnt about them in school.’
Raphael disappeared into a side-street. It was damp but no one bothered him there. He lay down beside a pile of tyres. A rat crawled over his chest, sniffed his coat and gnawed a corner of it. Steam spewed out of a restaurant window and drifted in clots down the street.
Raphael took shallow breaths, licked his lips and squinted at the wall opposite him. A torn poster advertised a film. He had never been in a cinema, didn’t know what the word meant. He had seen televisions switched on in rows in a shop; he had stood and watched for a minute, but confused and with his mouth taut had walked away and sat outside a church.
Raphael closed his eyes and his mouth. His skin was dry and a graze on his cheek hadn’t healed. It wept; he didn’t scratch it.
He smelt a copra factory and the hanging scents of the jungle plantations. Children calling for someone. The noise of a sheet of canvas flapping over a veranda. Maude mending a shirt on the veranda, the lights of East Point flitting through haze.
Maude talking to Leonard. ‘Sweep the floor and take the rubbish away. Be a good boy…’ Odette taking the broom before her brother stood up, swatting him with it and running down to the beach. Maude shouting, ‘Come back with it!’ but shrugging and turning away from her children. Raphael saw himself in the Chagos Archipelago waiting for a tide to fall… the clatter of saucepans from the restaurant and another blast of steam brought him round. He opened his eyes, squinted at the wall opposite and moved.
Raphael moved only once more before he died. He moved his head to make himself more comfortable. The sun set with a slur of light and it began to rain. His body was found the next day by a Chinese cook. After a designated period of time during which no one came forward to claim him, he was buried in an unmarked grave by a priest who was late for something he’d already had to put off twice. A week later, The Nordvaer arrived in Mauritius, and Odette and the others disembarked.
15
In Mauritius, Maude’s intuitions warned her of death stalking the slums of Port Louis. They pointed to the traffic, the tall buildings, and the mountains that ring the city. They were covered in scrub, black where rocks showed through, and higher than she’d imagined height could go. They panicked her.
She felt Raphael. His smell and presence filled her body. She saw him dead, like in the open drains that ran down the streets around her shack. Dead dogs often blocked them, and other dogs would nose and bother the corpses.
Death was also on the rags people washed and spread to dry over tin sheets. With no trees and the wash of the s
ea further away than it had ever been before, and the rumble of cars and lorries all night, Maude held her hands over her ears and rocked in the dark.
Leonard and Odette sat up and watched her by the light of the moon. She lay with her arms at awkward angles. Dogs howled. Other people in shacks along the street tossed and moaned.
A cock crowed. A baby cried. An unlatched door banged against a bucket. The baby’s mother didn’t have any milk. The shock of the final move had dried her.
A pile of rags, an empty oil barrel, a roll of rusty wire standing on a stretch of waste ground. Children playing in a cess-pool.
And death was in the midday sun when the shade of a favourite tree was missing, and all Maude had was shadow cast by shacks. No chickens to feed, no garden to weed or palm leaves to cut and freshen the hedge with. She narrowed her eyes and went to find Raphael. She tuned her senses and sniffed the air.
It stank of rotten fruit, sweating people, dirty clothes and rank dogs with limps. Traffic fumes and decomposing rats. She concentrated, held her breath, whispered, ‘Raphael,’ and walked away from the slums towards the docks.
‘Hello?’
He was strong at the docks. Sailors called to her and cars hooted but she looked straight ahead, knowing he had been there. She found a doorway, clenched a fist to her forehead and could almost touch his face. It was cold but it was his – his lips moved, she moved, the presence moved to another doorway and then sat on a wharf and watched the sea lap against the harbour walls.
Cargo ships and tugs. Maude joined him. ‘Raphael?’ she said. She nodded at imagined responses. ‘I knew you’d wait. You…’ she coughed, ‘you were always good at waiting.’
Maude began to cry. Her tears ran down her face. ‘Because we came,’ she spluttered. ‘Didn’t we?’ She raised her voice. ‘Didn’t we?’ She looked around. ‘Are you going to answer me?’
The tears came from a great lake in her body, pumped through pipes lined with glass. She tasted them and spat, ‘DIDN’T WE?’ she screamed.
A policeman heard her. He approached. She said, ‘We came and now you’re like this. Why are you like this? It’s no good. You can’t help, so why bother me?’
‘Hello,’ said the policeman. He was a patient man, and recognised the woman as Ilois. ‘You shouldn’t sit on the edge.’
Maude didn’t move.
‘Hello?’
‘What do you want?’
‘You shouldn’t sit so close to the edge. You’ll fall.’ He stretched a hand out to her.
Maude gripped the metal runner that ran the length of the edge of the wharf and said, ‘We came but he couldn’t wait.’ She didn’t look at the policeman.
‘Who couldn’t wait?’
‘Him.’
‘Who was he?’
Maude put a hand to her forehead. ‘He was a stupid man,’ she said softly, and sobbed. ‘Stupid.’
‘I don’t think he was.’ He shook his head. ‘Not if you’re like this because of him.’
Maude turned around. She looked at the man. The buttons of his jacket shone. His face was pockmarked. She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled, and turned away.
The policeman helped Maude to stand up. Her bones cracked. He could feel them through her clothes. ‘When did you last eat?’ he said.
She didn’t know. She shook her head and leant against him. His body was warm. She wanted to stay there. He moved. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home.’
She couldn’t remember where she lived but he knew roughly. The Ilois were well known to the police, but no special orders had been issued. Everything was secret; everything was wrapped and sealed.
‘Stop,’ Maude said, and leant against a wall. She stroked some bricks.
‘Why?’
‘He’s strong here.’ She sniffed. ‘Very strong.’
‘Who’s strong?’
‘I can smell him. I can! Here!’ She pointed at the wall. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’
‘What?’ The policeman couldn’t see anything.
‘Raphael! He’s everywhere!’
‘Look.’ The policeman wouldn’t lose his temper, but he had other things to do. ‘You’ll feel better at home.’
‘I feel better here.’
‘No.’ He took Maude’s arm, pointed and led her on. ‘We’ll be there soon.’
Maude lived in a slum – Roche Bois – in Port Louis. Dogs barked at their approach. ‘Which one?’ said the policeman, and pointed to shacks. ‘Do you remember?’
‘No.’
‘You have friends here, though?’
‘Friends?’ Maude didn’t know. She stopped and looked around. ‘There are many people here.’
‘I know,’ said the policeman.
Leonard and Odette had been looking for their mother. They’d walked in every direction and asked everyone they knew, but no one had seen her.
‘She’s about this high.’ Odette indicated with her hand.
‘And doesn’t talk much,’ said Leonard. ‘Not like she used to. She used to.’
People shook their heads. Odette was leading her brother home when they saw a policeman. ‘We’ll ask him,’ she said.
A week later, with Maude so confused you could thread string through her teeth and play music with it and her lips, Georges went off. He found dollars left from the money Bob had paid for Raphael’s boat, took them and bought rum and cigarettes from a Chinese shop.
‘You’re thirsty?’
Georges shook his head.
‘Where did you get dollars?’
Georges shrugged, left the shop, walked out of Port Louis and took the road to Beau Bassin. A road-mender told him not to walk in the traffic and a man on a motorcycle swore at him. Clouds swept in from the sea and cooled the sun, the humidity increased and Georges left his shoes on the pavement outside a church before walking into a wrecking yard full of broken buses.
There was no one about. He wandered around piled tyres and stripped chassis. He didn’t know what to do. Mauritius was a mystery to him. On Diego Garcia he’d been told what to do and hoped that one day Maude would come round to his way of thinking. She’d always been special, but to look at her now – he thought. To look at her now. He didn’t want to. She hadn’t noticed him for months. ‘Raphael’s about,’ she’d say. ‘Coming Raphael.’ He kicked a tin can, lit a cigarette and sat on a tyre.
The cloud thickened. The sun disappeared completely. It started to rain. Sudden massive drops bucketed from the sky and turned the dust to mud. They put his cigarette out. It sagged before disintegrating and dropping into the mud. He took a mouthful of rum and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
He sat through the storm with his mouth open, letting it fill with water and dribble down his front. He got lost in it and didn’t move. A big man; once he’d been able to stare coconuts out of trees and charm birds. Now he rolled his eyes and didn’t want the rain to stop. It reminded him and took him back like Ilois were constantly being taken back. Memories were all they had to look forward to – a familiar bed and a string of washed huts along a road through the jungle. The burst of ocean over coralline beaches or the smell of a pan of boiling lobsters.
Two donkeys eating lettuce.
Five dead ducks hanging from a veranda pole.
Two dogs with a couple of boys and a football.
A cat chasing beetles through the jungle. Eleven chickens bursting out of cover, running down the beach, backing off when they met the water, running back up the beach to the cover, not asking themselves why they had burst out of it in the first place.
A shift of rats belting down the lane and his mother pouring calou. A mug. He wanted a drink.
When the storm passed, he sat in a pool of water for an hour before standing up and walking towards Beau Bassin. He begged his way there, managed enough money for a bottle of beer before heading south, towards Curepipe. He stayed there for six months, working the bus station, before moving on to Mahebourg.
‘You should go with her,’ said Odet
te, talking to Leonard about their mother.
‘She won’t let me.’
‘Won’t let you?’
‘She says she wants to walk on her own.’
‘Then follow her without her noticing.’ Odette was worried. ‘Every time she goes out she gets lost. Someone’s got to watch her.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Leonard! What are you talking about? I’ve got enough to do!’ She spread her arms at the shack. ‘You do nothing!’
‘I beg!’
‘We all beg! But what do you do for her? Cook food? Fetch water? Keep the roof down?’
‘You always do those things anyway…’
Odette laughed. To hear her reminded Leonard of a crow. Maude, dozing in a corner, woke up.
‘He’s about,’ she whispered, opened her eyes wide and sneezed. She wasn’t talking about Georges. He had been gone a long time. No one had had the energy to find out what had happened. It was enough to keep the roof down. Ilois disappeared every day and never came back. Ilois were illiterate in a country full of readers and writers. Port Louis was a big city. Maude sneezed again.
She had a cold. She’d never had a cold before. Snot was caked around her nostrils and over her top lip. She picked some away and ate it. ‘He is,’ she said, and stood up.
‘You going out?’ said Odette.
Maude stopped, surprised by the voice. She turned around and looked at her daughter as if she didn’t recognise her. ‘Out?’ she said. ‘Of course.’
Odette prodded her brother. ‘Leonard’ll come with you,’ she said.
‘Leonard?’
‘Yes.’
‘Leonard…’ She narrowed her eyes and looked at the boy. He was skinny and narrow-headed. He didn’t smile, his eyes were dull and his skin was tight. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll go on my own,’ and she left the shack.
‘Follow her!’ Odette was ordering. She was tired of policemen bringing her home. She held herself straight. Her eyes would refuse to dull. She pointed down the street and said, ‘Go on! Hurry!’
Leonard went.
He followed his mother at a distance. He dodged into side streets and doorways. She kept stopping and looking over her shoulder. He didn’t know enough about his mother to know that her second sight was stronger than it had ever been. She could feel his eyes in her back. She let him think she was unaware for ten more minutes before diving into a shop, waiting for him to catch up and jumping out.
