Savages

by Shirley Conran

  Jonathan’s shadow fell across the pile. Patty looked away as he placed the turtle shell on the sand and carefully piled the eggs into it, above the raw meat.

  He said crossly, “Where do you suppose the meat at the supermarket counter comes from before it gets wrapped in plastic?”

  * * *

  Annie stood at the top of the cave shaft while Carey slithered down the rattan rope, the flashlight tucked in her shirt. The battery had started to run down, so they used it as little as possible.

  When Carey reached the vile-smelling bottom of the shaft, she tugged the rope twice to let Annie know she was safe, then switched on the light and limped over to the gray skeleton. They all felt that she had a right to be there, and that they were interlopers in her tomb. Patty had once suggested removing the depressing sight to the dark area behind the cave chimney, but nobody had wanted to disturb her.

  Carey crouched and played the dim beam over the skeleton’s pelvic area. Gingerly, she stretched out her hand and fumbled in the gray dust which was all that remained of what had once been a woman’s stomach.

  The flashlight faded completely, and Carey was left in the dark. Shuddering, she groped among the bones until she felt the camera. Carefully, she pulled it out and placed it in the mosquito-net bag hanging from her waist.

  What had been a simple if unpleasant task had suddenly turned into a dangerous one. Thank God, Annie knew she was down here. If she fell over a rock and broke her leg or knocked herself unconscious, Annie would know where to find her, thought Carey, as her claustrophobia overcame her and she shook with fear, unable to move.

  It was about ten minutes before Carey’s shaking subsided and she could breathe again without feeling as if someone was pressing a thick blanket against her face. She knew that she had to move fast before she had another attack.

  With both arms stretched in front of her, Carey shuffled forward, an inch at a time, toward the faint lessening-of-dark that marked the cave chimney.

  * * *

  Crouching by the campfire, Jonathan carefully rubbed the dirt from the old, dented K2 Pentax. He unclipped the bayonet fitting of the lens and blew the remaining dust from it. He examined the black cylinder, marked with rings and numbers. The large, thick lens was of the highest optical quality. Jonathan squinted through the lens at the scarlet and yellow flames of the fire.

  “Okay, let’s wash her,” he said.

  Suzy held a half coconut shell of warm water and proffered the beach towel as Jonathan carefully cleaned and dried the lens.

  In the fierce afternoon sunlight, Jonathan turned the knurled ring of the camera lens so that the inside aperture opened, allowing the full power of the sun’s rays to pass through the glass.

  Over ninety-three million miles away there is constant nuclear fusion on the surface of the sun. A minute quantity of this energy traveled across the wasteland of the universe, the full heat of the equatorial sun focused through the lens and produced a powerful white point of heat a few inches below it, on the back of Jonathan’s hand.

  He jumped, feeling an immediate sting of pain.

  “Works on me! Now let’s try the tinder.” He focused on the screwed-up bits of paper from Carey’s precious notebook, which lay beneath the little pile of twigs.

  Everybody held their breath.

  The spot on the paper smoldered, then started to smoke.

  They had fire!

  They had comfort and protection, a means of cooking and sterilization, they had a weapon.

  It seemed more of a miracle than switching on an electric light.

  20

  That afternoon, Suzy stood obstinately at the edge of the lagoon. “It was a shark! If it wasn’t, it was a whale. It was big and black and shark-shaped! I’m not going swimming again, ever!”

  “I told you before that there ain’t no sharks around here,” Jonathan said.

  “It was a shark,” Suzy said.

  “I ain’t getting at you, Suzy. I know you’re certain that your shark existed, but it didn’t—because if it had, you probably wouldn’t be here now.” He turned to Silvana and added, “By the way, next time somebody yells shark, don’t go to help her. Head for shore as fast as you can.”

  Suzy said sullenly, “It was a shark. It must have been.”

  “We’ll go out there and check,” Jonathan said. “You’ll see if you nearly drowned because of an imaginary fear. You probably saw something, but it wasn’t a shark.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  Jonathan said, “When you was a kid, you used to be afraid of ghosts in the dark, right? It was an imaginary danger, but it still terrified you. However, you weren’t afraid of crossing the road, because you didn’t know enough to be scared; you had to learn that crossing the road was a dangerous situation, then you had to learn how to deal with it. Now you all have to learn the same thing on this island.”

  “I’m learning fast,” Suzy snapped, as she watched Silvana and Patty wade into the water. Jonathan was still too weak to swim more than a few strokes, so he stood on the beach and watched them. Both women wore snorkel masks, fins and knife belts. Patty, who carried the underwater spear, was naked, but Silvana still wore her ragged black lace underwear.

  “It was around here,” Silvana told Patty as they nervously treaded water in the middle of the lagoon.

  They swam down into a strange aquamarine world, where silver-and-black-striped fish, parrot-green and kingfisher-blue fish swam calmly around them, seemingly unaware of the two women, unless one of them almost touched a fish, whereupon it immediately swerved and shot away, as did the rest.

  Patty silently stabbed her finger ahead. Both women surfaced.

  “There’s certainly something down there,” Silvana said. “And it does look like a gigantic, rotting shark. Let’s go down again.”

  This time, they recognized the barnacle-encrusted wreck of an airplane. After forty years on the sea floor, the metal had crumbled away and the Beaufighter now had the organic appearance of an old sea monster—a gargantuan marine dragonfly with one wing missing, overladen by the debris of the deep.

  As the women surfaced, spluttering, Patty said, “Maybe it crashed in the war. Do you think it was one of ours or a Jap?”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it? Do you think there’s anything down there that we could use? Anything that hasn’t rotted or rusted? A first-aid kit, with glass bottles of antiseptic, maybe? They didn’t have plastic then, did they?”

  “Let’s go look.”

  Repeatedly the two women dived, moving silently with the fish around the ghostly, crumbling machine and peering through the jagged edges of the holes torn in what remained of a famous fighter, once known as “Whispering Death.”

  When they surfaced, Patty spluttered, “Absolutely nothing there.”

  “We ought to take something back as proof for Suzy, or she’ll never be convinced. I’m going down once more.” Silvana’s black fins splashed the surface of the lagoon as she dived.

  After a few moments Patty followed her, streaking down into the glittering depths, powered by the soft movements of her fins.

  Below her, Patty saw Silvana. She seemed to be struggling with something in the wreck. Her head was out of sight, thrust into a hole in the fuselage, while her legs were kicking furiously against the rusting metal and her arms beat wildly at the aircraft—as if inside the skeleton aircraft a living thing clutched her in its grip.

  Patty’s heart jumped as she thought, Sea snakes! There might be a huge Moray eel down there, making its home inside that wreck. We should have thought of it. Patty whipped out her knife.

  As she touched Silvana’s foot it lashed out against her and Patty nearly dropped her knife.

  Silvana was clearly trapped, but why were her arms moving so strangely, both jerking behind her back? Could some sea creature be gripping her by the hair?

  Suddenly Patty saw that what had trapped Silvana was the back of her own bra, which had caught on one of the jagged, prot
ruding twists of black metal around the gaping hole into which Silvana had tried to swim.

  Quickly, Patty leaned forward and with her knife cut through the back of the bra. Then she ran out of air and shot upward, her only thought to reach the surface before her lungs burst.

  Behind her, Silvana’s head broke the water.

  When both women had recovered their breath, Silvana said, “I dropped my knife in that hole and went after it. That’s how I got caught.”

  Patty grinned. “At last you’re topless, like the rest of us.”

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19

  Silvana’s near-death had altered the attitude of the group, in that they now realized that they might actually die there—casually. The next morning, Jonathan—now recovered—started to teach the women all he knew as fast as he could. As they practiced self-defense and jungle craft, nobody complained because they all realized that each woman was being taught to survive—on her own.

  The first thing he taught them was how to move properly in the jungle. They all knew how easy it was to get lost because, as soon as you stepped into it, wherever you looked the jungle was a mass of endless, seemingly identical forest. If you didn’t have a compass you didn’t go into the jungle because you couldn’t see the sun above the towering treetops which met sixty feet overhead and only filtered down a greenish, permanent twilight. The women learned the special technique for moving through the jungle, slipping sideways, weaving their way through the trees—turning their shoulders, shifting their hips, bending their bodies, concentrating on slipping through. Trying to crash through the jungle face forward only led to noise, bruises, scratches and frustration.

  Jonathan also taught them how to keep track of where they were going. When the track came to a fork, they always took the path which looked the more traveled. When two paths crossed, they broke a twig to mark the track they had just left, so that they would be able to find their way back.

  Suzy protested, “But you told us not to go out of this area, Jonathan. You told us not to go beyond William Penn.”

  “When we land on Irian Jaya we may have to track through jungle,” Jonathan pointed out.

  The next day they visited the abandoned village where they had found wild bananas. Taro roots and bananas were particularly popular foods, because the carbohydrate satisfied hunger in a way that leafy greens and shoots could not. They found an avocado tree, but the fruit was not yet ripe, a guava and one lone, twisted, wild lime tree. Gazing at it, Suzy said, “If we make a bamboo still, we can brew our own vodka.”

  Food had become of the greatest importance to their lives, because they were deprived of any other pleasures. But the searching for roots and fruit, the hunting and the fishing seemed endless. They were all surprised by the time it took to gather food for six people, day after day after day.

  Although Jonathan enjoyed well-cooked food, he quietly suppressed any hint of domesticity, which could curb the natural aggression that the women might need in order to escape. When he saw Silvana arranging yellow orchids in a bamboo pot, he immediately threw them away. Before Silvana had time to argue, he told her to clean out the rat cage.

  Every new potential edible was fed to Sinatra in the evening, and no matter how delicious it looked, they never tasted the food until the following morning.

  * * *

  Four days before Christmas Suzy staggered into camp clutching a brownish globe about the size of her head; it was covered with greenish spikes. She said, “This thing was lying under a tree between the bamboo grove and William Penn.”

  “My word,” said Jonathan, “Sinatra will go crazy. You’ve found a durian. It’s a bit early, we don’t usually get them around here until after Christmas.”

  “What’s a durian, and how do you open it?”

  “Great delicacy in this part of the world. It’s called the honeymoon fruit, and offered at bridal banquets.” He looked strangely at Suzy. “When you smell it, you’ll understand why.” He plunged his knife into the earth to clean it, then cut a slice from the durian. Beneath the greenish spiked shell lay a creamy-colored, soft fruit.

  Suzy sniffed a familiar perfume. She grinned. “Why, it smells like … private parts.”

  “Exactly,” said Jonathan. “The native women say, don’t pick a bridegroom who don’t like the smell of durian.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  “Delicious, a wonderful thick cream custard, the best thing you’ve eaten in your life. We’ll go hunting tonight; I’ll try to get something special to eat with the durian.”

  Carey and Patty had already been hunting with Jonathan in the forest, but apart from rats, they had not been very successful. They never managed to down a bird with their slingshots, except for one tough and tasteless parrot which was very hard to pluck. They followed wild pig tracks and occasionally glimpsed a dingo, but they never got near enough to one to take aim. And the bra elastic in their slingshots had started to sag.

  As soon as darkness had fallen, Jonathan and Carey went frog hunting. They located the frogs by their croaks, shone the flashlight on them, then clubbed the hypnotized frogs to death with heavy sticks.

  Back at the camp, Carey triumphantly upended the bagful of dead frogs in a heap by the campfire.

  Annie immediately turned away, retching.

  Carey was indignant. “You’d eat them in a French restaurant. Why not here? Come over and help us skin them or you won’t get anything to eat.”

  * * *

  What Suzy called the ultimate yuk experience happened the following morning when Patty was looking for a new latrine area.

  On the jungle path ahead of her, Patty spotted what she at first thought was a circular pile of yellowish-brown and black leaves. Suddenly realizing what it was, she hurled a stone at it. The snake uncoiled in a leisurely manner.

  Patty had pulled a pebble from the pouch that hung from her belt. As soon as she could see its head, she aimed at the snake with her slingshot. The snake went limp.

  Hypnotized with loathing, Patty didn’t dare approach the snake. Instead, she ran back to Jonathan, dropping pebbles in her path as she fled through the forest, as in the Hansel and Gretel fairytale.

  Jonathan grabbed his machete and the two of them hurried back, following the pebbles to the snake, which Patty had half-expected to disappear.

  Jonathan threw a couple of stones which hit the snake, but it didn’t move.

  Cautiously he moved forward and gave a quick swipe with his machete. The snake head sprang, severed, into the air.

  Jonathan said, “You was lucky to get it in one shot. Python. Not very big.”

  “Not very big! It’s about eight feet long!”

  “A python can be thirty feet long.” Jonathan dangled the dead snake over one shoulder and carried it back to the camp.

  When she saw the limp, glistening snake, Silvana’s face froze. “I hope you don’t expect me to cook that!”

  “I’ll show you how.” Jonathan was delighted. “Snake steaks for supper tonight! Tastes sort of like pork. Delicious!”

  He showed the reluctant Silvana how to skin the snake.

  “Looks like you got a new belt, Patty.”

  Patty looked pleased. “Three belts, maybe four.”

  “Why not just one, with matching shoes and purse?” Silvana suggested grimly.

  * * *

  As Christmas approached, although nobody mentioned it, they all thought sorrowfully about home. Instead of dwelling on the horrific fate of their husbands, their thoughts were constantly with their families in Pittsburgh. Patty hoped that her mother wouldn’t take Stephen to Silver City for the holidays; he’d hate being surrounded by well-intentioned geriatrics whooping it up in paper hats. She hoped her mother would fly up to Pittsburgh and she and Stephen would have a quiet time at home.

  Suzy was frankly relieved that she wouldn’t have to stay on her best behavior among the ancient, blue-blooded relatives that her mother-in-law always gathered around her for Christmas.

&nbs
p; Carey hoped that Ingrid wasn’t having trouble with her throat. Sweating in the jungle, it was hard to remember that by now Pittsburgh was covered in snow. Ingrid had suffered from infected tonsils for almost three months last year. The first specialist had been against an operation, and so had the second, so they had decided to wait.

  When Annie thought of Christmas, she became very quiet and her mouth turned down. Fred would, of course, organize everything. The good thing about having an athletic family was that there was always something going on to stop you from thinking. But the problem with the boys was that they never really talked to each other. Their only conversation was monosyllabic exchanges on the order of what-time’s-the-game-start?

  As Silvana cooked, she recalled the elaborate preparations that started weeks before Christmas in her home, and the self-importance that Nella assumed as she prepared for the festivities. While tears fell into the chowder she was preparing, Silvana told herself firmly how lucky she was that Lorenza had married before this happened, and to such a nice, suitable boy.

  Silvana was the only woman who didn’t now look gaunt. The skin of the other women was slack over visible sinews. Silvana had lost weight everywhere except her breasts, the nipples of which showed clearly through her shredded black jumpsuit. Her silhouette hadn’t looked so good since the time she’d spent a whole month at the Golden Door.

  All the women now had infected, pus-filled sores on their arms and legs. They all had nits or fleas. They were all weaker than they’d been when they built the rafts; they couldn’t lift heavy weights, they moved more slowly and there was no spring in their steps.

  Suzy’s hair was now a black crew cut. Annie wore her hair in braids, like an eight-year-old. Her pale green shirt had long ago been used for straining water, so she wore only a pair of tattered dark green slacks and much-repaired sneakers. Patty’s short platinum hair stuck up around her head like a punk halo. She wore a once-white, tattered fishing shirt with one sleeve missing and a cotton loincloth, made from the missing sleeve. Her sandals had inner-tube soles, held on with just a strip of canvas.