I find I am struggling to remember Elba. Tora is the one I remember.
Her black hair, skin so translucent as to be grey. Eyes so dark sometimes you could not see the pupils. It is her I remember, her I think of. Her alive, I mean. I try not to think of the other. She is with me now more than ever.
I remember her standing at the shore looking after me. I remember her standing at the gate of the town, held by burly soldiers, as a fist hit me in the face. I can taste her fear. It sickens me.
And I remember Abel. I remember the night before I was arrested the first time. I remember my hand around his throat. His hoarse, harsh words, my stomach torn in two. I remember his words and my realisation that it was him, that it was all him. I remember him slumped in the chair as I left, staring after me but with eyes blazing, triumphant.
I struggle still to see the sense in it, to see the rightness of it.
I remember him in the hall three weeks ago. The same expression on an older face. The anger, the righteousness, the incomplete answers. I think back to Jura’s glances to the side, the closed doors, dropped eyes, shadows in the streets. Abel all the time, pulling the strings.
A man with a vision of a new world. I trained him well. A new world with no space for the old, no space for shadows.
What did it take to order the death of Tora? At which point was it decided: my return, her letter, her word to me from behind the locked door, her compassion for me, or was it simply my presence, my refusal to disappear?
I wonder how it happened. Did a crowd of men approach with blazing torches and strong wills? Did they shout out at her? And what did they do to her? The concubine of the hated. Did they punch her?
Threaten her? And when she was strung up did she cry out? I think not. I think she would have looked at the people with scorn. Brave to the end.
Perhaps she asked to go with me.
A new world, beginning like the old with a murder. The anchoring sin.
He was wrong. You can kill a ghost.
I go back to the field of stone. I stand in the middle with them all around me. They rise up again. I am in a fog of the dead. This is where they belong now. This is home.
I think of the town. It sleeps now I feel. I can hear the crickets, smell the smoke, taste the oranges. I can see Amhara running through the streets, disappearing into the shadows, Elba calling after her. I see Elba sitting, her back to me, hunched over at a table. Her friend is buried.
The curtains are drawn, the house unknown to me.
I see the bodies in their graves, their bones yellow now.
What have they told Amhara about her mother?
Elba sits at the table, day after day, crying silently.
There are too many dead.
Amhara runs through the streets, her mother under the earth, the ghost of her father watching over her. The father she never knew.
Though she sensed something I think. The way she looked at me when she took my hand.
She runs through the streets, runs headlong into the walls of the town, over and over again. She feels for cracks in the wall, ignoring the splinters. The streets she runs through and beyond the walls, the plains, the oceans: a small world soaked in blood. Dirty. But it is something.
She makes it something. It is perhaps more than we deserve. More than I deserve.
I see her again. I am with her this time. Her and her mother.
We are out on the vast plains beyond the gates of Bran. We are caught in a snowstorm. Our heads are down. I lead my wife and our daughter to a ravine out of the worst of the snow. I wrap my arms around them and my breath warms their hands. I shelter them from the cold.
There is a sudden breeze. I am on the island again, wet through.
I go back to the woods. There it is as quiet as it always was. As quiet as I remember. The chippings line the floor, still yellow and smelling of pine, as if I was here just a few moments ago. I look behind me, over my shoulder. I remember seeing Andalus, the last time I did that, sitting there on the tree stump, staring at me, staring at my back. I run my hand over the bark. It is sticky with resin.
I could sail to Axum. Seek him out. Tell my story there. But I know that will not happen. They cannot give me what I want.
It takes me a few hours to chop the wood and with it I dry out the cave. I arrange my possessions on the stone shelves. I catch a fish and haul the boat high up the shore. I don’t know what to do with it. I do not need it to catch fish and I will not be going anywhere. Yet I don’t want to dismantle it just yet. There is something about that, something that I cannot face. For now it must stay on the beach.
I wake several times during the night. In the morning I eat cold fish while I sharpen my blade. The spade has gathered some rust. Things weather quickly here.
I push the door open and a cold gust hits me. The island is cooler than I remember. I pull my coat closer and set off down the hill.
I smell the grasses, feel the wet strands brush against my skin, soaking me. My spade I sling over my shoulder. The soft rain trickles down the shaft and down my back. I shiver.
I think when I am out there, down in the sea of wet grass, I think. I realise why I have never planted crops, why I have never cultivated the grasses and roots to ensure a more plentiful supply. I did not plan on staying forever. Through my ten years in exile I was always going to go back. I just did not know it. The inevitability of guilt.
Soon I am at work slicing into the turf. The water running down my back changes from rain to sweat. I take off my coat, laying the spade in the bog. I watch as steam rises from my skin. I feel a tightness in my chest. It has not taken very long for me to lose strength and fitness. I look at my forearms. The veins bulge. I see the same skin, the same moles, the same scars that have been with me for so many years.
It is like I am doing it in slow motion when it happens. I have drawn the spade above my shoulders. I know precisely where I need to cut. I throw it down into the peat and water from the spade flies off into my face, into my eyes and the blade cuts through water and into something that straight away I know isn’t peat. I fling the spade from me onto dry ground and drop to my knees. I reach both hands into the water and feel around in it and close the thing in my hands and draw it out, the water pouring from it in torrents down its forehead, through its eyes and nostrils, mud slaking off its cheeks. It all comes out as easily as that. I reach into the water. My one hand finds a head, the other an arm and I pull and the torso lifts free of the water like a child drowned and the water pours from it. There is too much water in the body.
I lay it on the grass. My heart is beating wildly. The body is complete.
The spade has sliced through part of its shoulder but everything is there: limbs, hands, head. The body is brown, the colour of peat. It has hair, stained reddish-brown, again the colour of peat. Round its neck is a noose of some kind.
I stare at the man. There is only the noise of gulls. And then he moves. Or rather the eye does. An eyelid slides partly open. I jump to my feet and there’s a scream and it can only have come from me but I do not realise I make it at the time. The eyelid reveals an eyeball, yellowish white in colour with a black iris. It stares at the rain. I catch myself peering closer at the face and waving my hand in front of it.
Stupid, I think to myself. It is just the action of the rain, the trauma of being forced from the silt, the new angle of the head. The other eyelid remains closed, seemingly welded to the cheek. As I continue looking I see something else. There is a thin line across his throat reaching from one side of his neck to the other.
How did this man die? I wonder. The noose or the knife? Perhaps the noose first then the knife for good measure, or the other way round.
I look closer at his neck. It is hard to say. The noose is thin, quite flimsy, it could even be a necklace – decoration, not a murder weapon. But then the slightest thing can kill a man.
I lean in closer and sniff the body. I am only half aware of what I’m doing. It smells of peat. It smells
of earth, of water, silt, mud. It smells of the island.
I don’t know what to do with him now.
I reach out to his face and try to close the eyelid. It does not move. I don’t want to be too rough with him. I place my hand on his forehead. I take his hand in mine. It is cold to the touch and the limbs don’t move. I reach into his mouth and run my fingers along his teeth.
I feel something in there, something that is not his tongue. Thinking it is a piece of wood I prise it loose. I hold it to the light. It is the tip of a finger. I examine his hands. It is not one of his own. I imagine him in a struggle. A man’s hand reaches around his neck but is not careful enough. The body, in rage, in fear, grabs a finger in its teeth and bites.
The man reaches for his knife and draws the line across the victim’s throat, releasing his finger but not before part of it has been lost. The killer clutches his hand to his breast.
So I am not the first.
I pick up the body. I am surprised by how light it is. It is lighter than the same amount of peat would be. I wade further into the bog and let him go. He sinks slowly into the water. Legs and arms first, then his chest. Finally his head with one staring eyeball disappears.
There are bubbles for a few seconds. Then the water becomes still once more. Something touches my leg – the body settling perhaps – and I jump out of the water as quickly as I can. There is no reason to fear a body that has lain dead for thousands of years, I tell myself. Out here though, in the silence, there is reason enough.
I pick up the peat I have cut and my spade. It is not as much as I wanted but I am in no mood to continue the work. I begin the walk back to the cave. After a minute I glance back at the bog. It is still. A gull has landed near where I was working and pecks at the ground.
I find myself looking over my shoulder frequently on the walk back.
I don’t know what it is I expect to see.
Walking up the hill to the cave I look back again. It is far away now.
I shield my eyes against the rain. It is getting dark. I cannot make out the pool but I know where it is.
In the cave I stoke up the fire and sit shivering. I cough every now and then from the smoke. I lie on my bed, half awake, half asleep.
Whether awake or dreaming my mind is flooded with images of the body and of the killing. There is now a group of men, a group of ten leading the victim by a rope tied round his neck down a path towards the peat bog. There is a village on the island. They lead him down the path, make him kneel. They say words, they chant, there is a struggle.
It ends the same way.
He is led out, though in truth he leads himself out. His head held high, he is dressed in robes, proud of his fate. His subjects follow willingly, in awe at the bravery of the man, of the man-god. To them he is not being murdered but being sacrificed so as to rise again, to protect them from afar, to become one of the ancestral spirits who seep out of the marshes every night and hang a protective cloud over the town.
Some say they hear them whisper to each other. A last minute panic when being held under water, when feeling the knife on his throat. His bravery soiled at the very last. The people silent, wondering what it means. They’ve never had this before: one of their chosen refusing to go quietly, refusing to do his godly duty.
A killer. A cannibal. Dragged out of the woods where he had been hiding. Beaten. Spat upon. His face contorted in rage, in fear. His were unspeakable crimes, even for that age. A last second revenge before succumbing to the waters. Was he staked to the ground to prevent him rising again? How similar the fate of killers and gods.
His face parades before me. It grins, out of fear or mirth. One eye is closed, the other open.
Now he lies beneath the water of the island, breathing silt, his wounds sutured by the mud and by time.
I am not alone. He is the true man of the island. I am just one in a line.
There have been others. There will be more. It does not end with me.
In the morning I lie on my reed bed, wide awake but unmoving. I think of the settlement. I think of Elba, of Amhara, my daughter. I think of the promise of a life. Is it that bad to have to publicly ignore your past, to live as another? To be reborn another: alien, empty. It could have its merits.
I catch a glimpse of a shadow beneath the door and move my head sharply. It does not re-appear and outside it is utterly silent. A gull I think, or a greyer cloud than normal. But it is my signal. I climb out of the bed shivering.
I walk aimlessly out of the cave and down the hill. I only know I do not want to go back to the peat beds, back to the man in the marsh.
A couple of hours later I find myself at the top of the cliffs looking out onto the red sea below. The tide is out and the beach stretches a long way. The cliffs have eroded badly since I was here all those weeks ago. I have lost more of my island to the sea than I should have. The rate of erosion has increased it would seem and my island is disappearing fast. I find I am not unduly bothered by the thought.
Out on the sand, on the black sand, I see the rock, large and white, lying there, unmoving. I sit down on the grass. Or, rather, I kneel down. Kneel first then slump to one side to sit. I watch the thing. I watch, I do not think. It is too much now. I see the white mass on the black sand and I sit on the grass watching it. Then I roll onto my back. It is still there when I sit up again. I close my eyes.
14
A shadow swims through the mud beneath me, shapeless. It forms a head, a pale eye, arms. It reaches out to me, mouth open. I jump up, brushing myself off.
The white rock is still there. I realise I must go to it.
The rock is wet and smells of the sea. Seaweed clings to the base.
Around it are smaller stones partly submerged in sand. Perhaps parts of the whole. If you half close your eyes, make it darker, they look like fingers. The rock is a body in the sand. I think of the myth of the man encased in rock. This rock, if you look closely enough, if you will yourself to see it, has a face etched in it, a face that cannot speak, frozen forever.
In the end it is not Andalus. The fragile imagining of him is gone.
I sit on the sand, my back against the rock. I take hold of some of the stones, let them drop through my fingers. I am surrounded by black rocks spewed out by the crumbling cliffs. And this white one, alien, out of place. A hallucination.
I think back to the dead. The nine hundred and seventeen. Washed away like the cliffs in the rain.
I walk back to the cave, back through the rain, the wet grass, the grey light. A seagull follows me overhead. The whole way I look behind me, not at the horizon but directly behind me at the ground, the mud. I see my own prints leave a slight mark on the sedge. They fill with water.
In mud my feet slip in and as I pull them out there is a sucking noise and the mud closes over them. I stand for a moment in the mud. I feel my feet sink in, mud sliding through my toes. I imagine something cold beneath them: a stone, an urn, a face. I imagine a hand reaching through the earth to try to touch me. I pull my feet out and walk on.
After a few paces the marks have gone completely. I stop again. Sink again. I run this time. I run through the mud till I reach grass and am not sinking. I bend over to catch my breath. I should not be shivering like this.
In the cave I build up the fire and sit in front of it, not caring about the smoke. I sit in front of it till the steam rises from my clothes. To a stranger it might seem as if I am melting. But there is no getting dry here. Not completely. If my front is dry, my back is wet. If I turn around the wet air gets to work again. There is no keeping the water out. I curl up on the bed of reeds and close my eyes.
I wake in the middle of the night to a banging on the door, a loud relentless knocking. I get up, still hazy from sleep and go to the door. I am frightened and expecting I know not what – a stranger? A friend? – but I do it anyway. There is no need to be afraid though. The wind has got up and the door is banging against the stone. There is no one outside. Still, I find myself sayi
ng hello to the dark. It sounds strange to talk.
The wind is new. It does not often get like this. Only once or twice in the years I have been here.
The next day it continues. I lie still on the mattress burning wood, peat, whatever I have. I cough from the smoke. I do not eat for the second day in a row.
I stand in front of the wall of days for hours. I have a stone in my hand. I do not add to the wall. I drop the stone.
That night it happens again. I hear the door banging in the wind. It sounds like someone knocking. I go to the door, open it and say hello.
When I do this the wind seems to slacken.
In the morning I take my fishing rod and walk to the shore. I position myself so I face the cliff as much as possible. Even so I have to look at the line in the water every now and then and I cannot shake the feeling I am being watched, watched by someone crouching down, barely peeking over the cliff edge, his mouth close to the grass, whispering to it perhaps, whispering to me, saying what, I don’t know. It is not a language I understand.
I catch a small fish, go back to the cave and bake it in the embers of the fire.
After two days of tending the fire almost continuously I have exhausted my supply of wood and peat. I know that I need to do something about it. I raise myself and set out, axe in hand. I leave the spade behind. I am not ready to return to the peat bogs. Not yet. But return I will. I know I will return. But for now the man must wait.
On the way there the going is difficult and I find myself running out of breath. Lack of food, I tell myself. I cannot remember it being this difficult. My feet are sucked in, even when I walk on grass it seems. I look down at them. When I press down the water rises to the surface. Bits of grass, mud, swim over the tops of my feet. Again I find myself looking behind me, waiting for the earth to rise up as if disturbed by some mole-like creature the size of a man. Each time there is nothing.
Wall of Days Page 19
