Mac, two or three paces behind me, kept up an interminable invective as he fought to keep his legs from folding. ‘Why the fuck should we trust ‘em?… Could be taking us anywhere… leading to the fucking desert… leading us to die there … probably their next meal… Jesus… fucking cannibals.’ He stumbled then into Jack, who fell on to his knees, groaning with the pain of it. We stopped again. Jack put his hands into the sand in front of him, shaking his head to rid his eyes of blackness, breathing hard and trying to muster up a single scrap of strength from the void of his resources to get himself back up on to his feet.
‘Jesus, Jack… gerrup,’ Mac swayed heavily beside him. ‘Bastard… gerrup, for Christsakes… Ah, wha’ the fuck. Bloody stay there.’ He tottered to one side and then staggered on.
I thought of Joe. For an instant, I saw his crazy hair sticking up at every angle in the moonlight. I thought of all his irritation at Mac’s mean-spirited malice and his general impatience of rank unkindness. Joe would not have borne the selfishness apparent in Mac’s mindless wittering, which disregarded utterly the fears of those around him. And more than that, he would not have allowed for any one of us to be left behind.
Despite the dizziness that menaced in the darkness at the corners of my eyes, I bent, putting one hand on one quivering knee and the other on Jack’s arm, just beneath the armpit. I could not pull him but I tugged his skinny arm as fiercely as I could manage. ‘Jack,’ I croaked, ‘Jack.’ He nodded his head weakly in acknowledgement and, moaning with the effort, he hauled himself up off the ground.
The tribesman took us some distance down the beach, and then up between two apparently insurmountable sand hills before leading our descent, on stones and sliding sand, into a lower-lying basin where, evidently, they lived. Three large tents, constructed out of cloth and wood and spaced perhaps a couple of yards apart, occupied almost entirely the small, flat area at the base of several high surrounding dunes. The middle tent was circular and the other two, long and lower, flanked it either side.
There was silence from the women, children and crooked elders who stood about in small groups, some at the gaping mouths of the tents, some lining the slow and pitiful path we trod, until our leader stopped abruptly and turned to face us. The rest of the community, emerging soundlessly from various directions and from beneath the skirts of their accommodation, followed us in and then gathered round us where we stopped, murmuring and curious. The man in blue motioned to us to sit, and gratefully, with every nerve and sinew thrumming out desperate relief at the promised imminence of water, we sank onto the ground.
He called then to two or three men within the crowd, in a rapid, unintelligible tongue, and in response they slowly made their way towards a group of several camels that were tethered on the incline, a little way beyond the tents. They did not hurry. They moved with all the indifferent languor of men who permanently live beneath the glare of an unforgiving sun. They mounted and began to make their way up a massive sand hill, opposite the one we had just struggled to descend.
‘Ask him where’s the water,’ Clarie, bewildered by the unexpected wait, hissed at Fraser.
‘Probably isn’t any fucking water,’ Mac snarled across him. ‘Gone to get their fucking spears.’
Fraser pushed himself with great difficulty back up onto his knees and then spreading his arms apart, he shrugged questioningly at their spokesman. ‘L’eau?’
The reply came quick and calm, ‘Il faut aller la chercher à l’oasis. Faut l’attendre.’
Fraser clearly strained to understand. He winced with effort as he sought to clear his head and separate out the words. His knowledge of French was remote and faded, and the lucidity of his mind befuddled by physical weakness. He had no hope of keeping up. Eventually, he shook his head. ‘L’eau assis? Qu’est-ce que c’est? L’attendre – pourquoi?’
‘L’oasis? L’oasis,’ the tribesman looked at him coolly but Fraser shook his head, uncomprehending, until, taking his stick in both hands, the man drew a circle in the sand, a few lines at its edges to denote some trees and then stabbed it at its centre with the staff. ‘L’eau,’ he said, clearly satisfied.
‘Oasis,’ the skipper pointed out, finally grasping it. ‘They’ve gone to get it.’
‘Ah, for fuck’s sake!’ Big Sam cried. ‘How long they gonna be?’ Desperate at the prospect of further unforeseen delay, he toppled forward, writhing, onto the sand. To be brought to such a pitch of feverish expectation and then to be denied was enough to break a man apart.
Fraser looked beseechingly up at the tribesman, who regarded our consternation placidly.
‘Combien de temps?’ asked Fraser flatly, but the man just shrugged his answer.
The crowd around us began to thin and peter out. The children, losing interest in the pathetic group of skeletal foreigners who lay whimpering but otherwise motionless upon the stony sand, took up their games again, calling more confidently to one another across our carcasses. The women, too, presumably had better things to do than watch our suffering and so they wandered away, drifting back to work. Some of the men though, stood on by us, wary still and wondering.
The heat, trapped and concentrated by the high rising walls of dune around us, bubbled at ground level in the dell. We waited, bodily annihilated, quietly disintegrating into the dust. Entirely at the mercy of the sun, she sought once and for all, vindictive and omnipotent, to unburden us of our senses, of ourselves. We waited. Slowly, slowly, the weight of time settled silently around us. The humming of the heat blanketed our bodies, subdued our spirits and reduced our minds to stupor, so that waiting became a final state of being, scarcely affording realisation that there was purpose to it. Time without an end.
My eyes returned time and time again to the gaping hole, dark at the entrance to the circular tent before us. Black and hollow, it beckoned to me, promising me cool and shelter. Infinite peace. And yet every time I felt my mind begin to slide towards it, I was brought up short, my attention snagging on something just beyond the periphery of my vision. To my right, there, up on the crest of the sand hill. A snatched glimpse of a person, shaggy-haired and huge, arms folded and whistling. But when I turned my head towards him, he turned away, dark against the brightness of the sun and walked over the top, disappearing down behind the other side.
At last, our blue-robed guide, who had stationed himself within the shadows at the doorway of one of the smaller tents, roused us with a cry. Blinking and disorientated, I could not, at first, train my eyes to follow in the direction of his outstretched arm but squinting painfully upwards to scan the hills, I eventually found one, two, then three blackened, shifting shapes broadening into view. The water bearers had emerged at the top of the steepest dune, their backing the dazzling whiteness of the sun’s full force. Their silhouetted forms and those of their camels wavered on the skyline briefly before they began their snaking descent towards the settlement.
Our interpreter went to meet them and taking a bulging goatskin from the first to dismount, he came back to stand before us. He held it out to Billy who happened to be the nearest to him. Billy lurched towards it hastily, both hands outstretched but incredibly, unimaginably, the tribesman then drew it back. Putting out his other hand, palm up, he twitched his fingers expectantly up and down, ‘Faut quelque chose en échange.’
‘Wha’?’ Billy, utterly confounded for an instant, gaped and turned to Fraser for explanation. Fraser was on his feet and he tottered towards them, his face contorted in horrified disbelief. ‘Comment?’ he gasped.
Billy looked from one to the other of them and then anger, suddenly replacing his bewilderment, flushed across his features.
‘Give it here, you fucking bastard!’ he spat. ‘Give it to me.’ He made a quick, threatening gesture with one arm as if to strike at his tormentor but as he did so, two or three of the other tribesmen stepped up beside their spokesman, implying force. So Billy turned furiously on Fraser. ‘What the fuck did he say? Why won’t he give me it?’
&nb
sp; Fraser stared at the tribesman, who regarded him calmly in return.
‘Faut échanger,’ he said again, bringing the goatskin forward and then moving it back once more, putting out his other hand as he did so, to simulate the action he required.
‘We have to give them something for it,’ cried Fraser incredulously. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘I don’t believe it,’ the skipper, behind Fraser, shook his head. ‘I don’t bloody believe it. That can’t be it.’
‘It is. I’m bloody telling you. They want something in return.’
By this time, the other water bearers had made their way to join us and we could plainly hear the water sloshing in the four goatskin bags they held before us.
‘I got this,’ Mick suddenly pushed his way through, barging in between Fraser and Billy, and presented himself, eyes fixed on the goatskin, before the tribesmen. In his open palm, which he held out for them to see, he held a small, black, plastic comb.
There was scarcely a flicker from the haggler. He picked up the comb from Mick’s hand and looked it over carefully. Then he nodded quickly and handed Mick the goatskin. Mick snatched it up to his mouth, threw back his head and glugged, his eyes widening with the effort. Thick, brown liquid slid down at the sides of his mouth, over his beard and down into the creases at his scrawny neck.
‘Mick! Not much!’ shouted Clarie at him hoarsely. ‘Not so much at once. Your body isn’t used to it. A bit at a time!’
Mick pulled back and breathing hard, he looked from one of us to the next. ‘Sandy,’ he grinned, clicking his tongue, ‘but it’s fresh!’ His face transfigured into pure delight.
There was sudden scrabbling all around as men searched their pockets and their bodies, desperate for something which might do to trade. Belts, most too big now to be much use to us, were accepted impassively, though rings and bits of jewellery went down with slightly more enthusiasm. Even crumpled up pound notes were nodded at and tucked away. We crowded in around the water bearers, offering the very last of what we had in terms of personal property, giving up the remnants of what had tied us to a previous life without a second thought. Water. It was all.
I got pushed back a little, jostled by the fray of men who clamoured around the four tribesmen with the goatskins. Clarie, having already bartered off his wedding ring, was bleating vainly at the buzzing groups about rehydrating slowly, about it being dangerous to take too much at once. I had absolutely nothing of any value on me and so I was struggling to unloose the cord which tied at the front of my pyjama bottoms, hoping that it might do to trade and thus gain me access to the relief some of the others were already celebrating. Fraser called to me, ‘Cub, come on!’ and as I looked across to answer him, I caught a glimpse of it by chance, glinting in the palm of Mac’s upturned hand, just as the tribesman lent in to take it from him.
I stumbled at him, my arms flailing out in front of me, though I did not recognise at first that the unholy cry of agony that I could hear, high-pitched and stupefying, was coming from my own throat. I grabbed him at the shoulder, spinning him round to face me. He wobbled drunkenly at the force with which I had thrown myself towards him and he staggered back a little.
‘You filthy, thieving bastard,’ I shouted, ‘haven’t you any respect? Any fucking respect at all?’ and then I hit him with all the might I had left in me, catching him just shy of his nose on the left cheek. Given my weakness, it wasn’t much of a punch but Mac, also stripped of strength, sprawled backwards, landing on his backside in the sand.
The buzz of the bartering, which had been going on around us, suddenly ceased. The tribesmen fell silent, their transactions halting abruptly and the crowd, which had swelled again to view the bargaining, fell back a few steps as though fearing that this sudden aggression among our company might escalate and that we might well, after all, turn on them.
I must have looked wild enough to throw myself on top of him and meant to, but the severity of Fraser’s tone brought me up,
‘Cub!’ He grabbed my arm and yanked me back, holding me away from Mac, who sat on, shaking his head in disingenuous wonder and wiping the sand off the side of his arm. The skipper signalled to Clarie to help him up.
I passed my arm across my eyes, and stood swaying a little, quivering at the horror of Mac’s indifference for the dead. My dead.
‘Joe’s compass,’ I said, pointing at the tribesman who held it now before him, at arm’s length in the palm of his hand, as if fearful suddenly of its importance and the violence it had wrought.
Fraser dropped his gaze from my face a moment. He blew the air out of his cheeks, letting it go slowly through his gritted teeth and then, putting a hand up to the back of his neck, he rubbed it thoughtfully. We both stared down at his burnt and calloused feet, blackened and livid against the dusty colourlessness of the sand.
When I looked back up, he was waiting, watching me. It was not just sorrow that I read within the dark hollows of his eyes then, but also, it seemed, profound and aching shame. Shame for all that we had been forced to witness upon the boat, shame for the limitless and overriding capacity for self-servitude in humankind which had been so undeniably exposed, and shame for what he was now about to do.
He put a hand upon my arm and shook it gently. ‘He’s no use for it now, Cub.’ He stopped me with another scarcely perceptible shake as I opened my mouth to protest against the prosaic victory of grasping need. ‘Look at us.’ He cast one arm wide, encompassing the sorry crew of bearded, broken men, in tatters, who stood in twos and threes, regarding us. ‘We need the water.’
I looked around at the silent faces watching me. Most of them, scarcely more than bone and sinew, would possibly have sold their souls for water, given half the chance.
I could not blame them for it. Tormented as entirely as ever Tantalus had been, we had journeyed through the scalding fires of hell surrounded on all sides by water; water which, shimmering, beckoning, taunting, relinquished no relief. And I could not think of any personal possession I would not eagerly have parted with at that moment without a second’s hesitation. But Joe’s compass? Scored by guilt and grief, I alone knew how much it would have cost him to have had to give it up. And yet I knew he would have done so. I was not in any position to vouch for my compunction and some – Billy in particular and even the skipper – looked annoyed by it.
I nodded and turned away but the man beneath whose robes the compass had now vanished called out to me. I did not, at first, understand whom he was addressing until he stepped towards me, putting out a staying hand and touching me lightly on the arm. Neither did I know what it was that he was saying, but when I turned to look at him, he held the goatskin out, nodding at me encouragingly. His brow was furrowed but his eyes were light with sympathy.
And so I took it and I drank.
CHAPTER 11
ENLÈVEMENT
‘Why ain’t you eatin’?’ Big Sam’s greasy lips, glistening with moisture and patchy red with stinging salt, stopped, for a moment, their feverish endeavours to suck the salted fish completely dry, before continuing to devour the rest of its flesh with smacking relish. He wiped his arm across his mouth, a piece of fish grasped in either hand, and looked at me incredulously.
We had had to trade for food. The men who had provided it, though not apparently ungenerous, clearly had a sense of cultural order that could not be cast aside. The extreme severity of the conditions in which they lived would not concede exception for the hardship we had suffered. They knew what hardship was, for they lived by it, and ours appeared perhaps no worse than they, at some time or another, had had to endure.
Washed-up hurry bags and their random contents had yielded us a little more in terms of bargaining material, but as each new goatskin was produced and as, under Clarie’s fastidious instruction, we had to drink only small quantities at a time, we were quickly running out. The actual bags had been accepted, knives, a couple of saturated – and therefore useless – torches, and the skipper, in desperation, had resorted to ha
nding over his false teeth.
In return, that evening, they gave us salted fish. We cooked it over a fire set with driftwood, which some of us, strengthened marginally by the water, its restorative promise and the enticement of a return of the capacity to eat, had limped about the beach to collect. Some of the smaller children ran to help us, wheeling about the sands, shouting, full of energy and light-hearted laughter. Thinking it a game.
The sight of the fish, sizzling softly, charring, and its smoky redolence, was maddening: too tantalising. My eyes stung as I crouched low over the fire and my mouth strained and twitched involuntarily in fervid anticipation. Eventually, sliding the fish down off my blackened stick with juggling, burning fingers, it broke apart between them, thick slivers of dense, glossy flesh, running with juice and salty succulence. I shoved it between my lips, which numbed immediately in an ecstasy of tingling pain, and then revelled in the glorious reawakening of every shrivelled, dried-up nerve within my mouth, as each one, responding to the fish’s sharp asperity, exploded into re-existence. The pleasure, so eagerly and long-awaited, so exquisite, far outstripped the pain.
But, despite my desire, I found that after two mouthfuls, I could barely swallow. The familiar, crouching nausea that had settled so heavily in my stomach but which had become so inseparable from my overall debilitation, suddenly unfurled its protest, roaring up into my throat, bubbling at the back of my mouth and threatening forcibly to reject any further attempt to push food across its threshold. Horrified, I clamped my lips together tightly, and tearing my eyes away from the glistening flesh between my fingers, I glanced around at the intense concentration illuminated on the faces of my companions around the fire. The reluctance of my stomach to countenance the food set me apart. The sound of smacking, drawing mouths and sucking lips was punctuated only by the spit and hiss of the flames. There was no talk, no consciousness afforded beyond what each man held within his hands and on the single-minded objective of assuaging appetite, all eyes, all thought, were bent.
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