(2007) The Pesthouse

by Jim Crace

  They spent the night away from the road, crouching in the undergrowth under a makeshift tent of tarps and branches and taking it in turns to stand guard. They knew from the pillaged cart and the dead woman that the rustlers were still in the neighborhood. That was both reassuring and alarming. But they dared not light a fire, although the temperatures were wintery, and there was a wind. Margaret was allowed to occupy the shelter with the Boses, though not to sit too close or to share their food. She chewed on dried meat with a slab of the potman's tack and drank a little juice, which had already grown bitter from the journey.

  Andrew and Melody whispered to each other as they did their best to make their granddaughter accept her meal of cold-water porridge with mashed fish. Margaret presumed from what little she could hear that the Boses were discussing her, what their attitude should be. They must have recognized how well and fit she'd been that day. Hardly a flux-ridden invalid. And what a leader she had proved to be, taking the decisions, selecting the route, quietly valiant. Even her unbecoming killing of the dog was oddly reassuring to the Boses, she gathered. It showed she was a woman who would not turn away from problems or challenges, and that, if pressed, she might defend herself and anybody in her company. What was clear to Margaret was that the Boses had come to fear her slightly less. On the whole, they could now allow that they were better off in her company than out of it.

  The Boses would have preferred it if Margaret had walked a little slower that day and for less time and with more rest breaks, however. Bella had turned out to be a heavy, struggling bundle, who would rather be on the ground, learning how to bend her knees and crawl, than strapped to an irritated grandparent and not allowed to move. The effort of taking care of her and of themselves, after the undemanding luxury of riding in a carriage, had come as a shock. Perhaps, if they could persuade themselves to overcome their anxiety just a little more and convince Margaret to cover her mouth, then she could take her turn with the baby. Yes, it would be in their interests to talk to her, to broker a period of peace. They'd not find Acton on their own. Even if they did, they'd not know what to do. Whereas Margaret... well, Margaret was 'knotted from strong twine', the highest praise from net-makers.

  So it happened that when they set off the next morning, after a night in which the baby would not hush or sleep, and the adults could not stop shivering, the gap between Margaret and the Boses was reduced to a few steps. A workable peace had been made at sunup, with apologies spoken if not entirely felt, explanations offered, comfort and sympathy finally exchanged. Margaret was being sensible. The Boses had dried peas and a good supply of oats, as well as several bags of salt fish. They might not be the finest company, but they were preferable to traveling alone. Six eyes would make better lookouts than two poor ones. Three adults, even if two of them were frail, could defend themselves better than one. Besides, it was Margaret's duty to support her elders. She might not like the Boses much. Certainly, she could not admire them, ever. But the little girl was lovable.

  Margaret had compromised for prudent and selfish reasons. She wore the blue scarf around her face and head, as she was asked, with just her eyes on show, she made an effort to defer to her elders and to be more outwardly patient, and she was content that, in return, they let her carry Bella on her chest. The child was unexpectedly warm and consoling. Her head had hardly any more hair than Margarets. Her body smelled of stewed apples — sweet piss and bloom. The child was also less difficult in the younger woman's care because she was less bored. They played tug with an edge of cloth. Margaret sang to her, everything from nursery rhymes to laments. She invented new noises by trumpeting farts on the girl's neck or blowing in her ear, a sensation that Bella evidently loved. She gurgled her appreciation, but when she grew tired of that and even of sucking her own thumb, she accepted Margaret's little finger as a pacifier, determined to find nourishment for her small, empty stomach. The baby had not eaten properly since leaving home — and she had not fed truly properly since her mother died and her umbilical was cut. Bella Bose needed milky food. Margaret whispered promises that, somehow and within a day or two, she'd get hold of some for her.

  By afternoon the Boses had decided that they could walk with Margaret, shoulder to shoulder, and tell her what a fine life they had had back home before the migrations began, how respected Andrew had been, and wealthy. His creels would last for years — and they were beaver-proof. His nets were the best. You could snag them on rocks, and it would be the rock that lifted and not the net that tore. Fishermen from the far bank of the river would risk the rapids just to get across and purchase a Bose net. He owned a good part of the river bank. He owned a carriage and had a dozen boats for rent as well as the canoe that Acton used for fishing. He had more land than any farmer in the neighborhood, which he rented out for one fifth of the crop. 'Now look at me,' he said, handing over Bella for the umpteenth time that day. 'A bag of oats, that's all we've got worth anything.'

  The road degraded. With every step of their journey, the Highway became more damaged and disordered, its top shell cracked and coming apart. The route was losing its clarity. A watercourse that had once flowed along a man-made culvert had broken through its false banks years before and flooded, every time it rained, onto the road, tearing out the surfacing and, with the undramatic patience of water, shifting blocks of curbstone and rubble scree. It became easier to walk along the berms and margins than to scramble through the detritus. This was no longer a route for vehicles or even for horses. If there'd been no rustlers and the Boses had made it to this place intact, they would have had to find another route or abandon their carriage and their animals.

  Margaret was glad to leave the Highway at last when what was left of it turned to the right in a great arc, heading for the south. She had found no traces of the band of rustlers since midday. No fresh horse dung, no scuffs consistent with a line of men or a string of mules, no more bodies sticky with blood. So she did not feel that she had abandoned her duties toward Franklin when she finally led the Boses away from the old straight road and through the debris fields surrounding it, with rain clouds at their backs, and onto a narrower, less exposed pathway that was more truly pointing to the east but that was also virtually unused and, therefore, likely to be safe.

  Before long they found the ideal place to spend the night, replenish their drinking bags and revive their spirits — a disused cow barn, backing onto a creek in which minnows and darters evidenced how sweet and safe its water was. Even better, the cow barn still had half a roof, so not only could they be certain of a rain-protected stay and a warmer one than the previous night, sheltered from both the wind and the sky, but also they were blessed with kindling wood, the splintered, hollowed-out remains of roof beams that were feather-light and dry and would produce hardly any tell-tale smoke.

  Soon they had a decent fire as their companion and were making the best of their pooled food. Bella refused most of her meal again. The salt fish was too strong, and the oatmeal was too weighty for her stomach. She was distressed, as well, and colorless. Her olive skin seemed metallic.

  Margaret was happy to share her blanket and the tarp with the child, though surprised that the Boses seemed to have abandoned their health precautions so thoroughly in the space of just a day. They had, indeed, said, 'Let little Bella spend the night with you. She's better off with you. You're young.' But their thorough change of heart was soon explained. They were whispering again at their end of the cow barn, and Melody was sounding oddly sweet and childish for a change. They did not seem able to settle and were constantly arranging and rearranging their bedding. Margaret, might have called out to them to keep quiet, that there was a testing day of walking ahead of them, and that she for one would welcome a good night's sleep. But when she heard the rasping notes in Andrew's throat, she knew that the Boses were making love. She'd heard the sound of it before, from her father, and from her younger sister's husband, Glendon Fields. She'd heard it from her neighbors' windows at all times of the day, the self-s
ame loss of breath and pigsty squeals, high-pitched and not quite male, the shushing sounds, attempts at secrecy, the creaking timbers of the bed, and sometimes panting from the woman, too. But she'd never seen anybody making love and so her sense of it was constructed only out of sounds, which seemed both distressed and joyful at one time. It was a mystery that, because Franklin had been taken, she felt would never be solved for her. She'd live a maid, not touched by anyone, a listener to lovers.

  Margaret hadn't thought the Boses could be lovers. Lovers as well as partners. Lovers as well as grandparents. It wasn't just their age and frailty or (when it suited them) their stiff good manners that made their passion so unlikely, it was also the current shape of their life. Their son was missing, all their wealth had been taken from them, their lives were draped with fear, anxiety and grief, their bodies were exhausted by the walk, they had not truly eaten well for a month — yet still they had the will to kiss.

  Margaret lay as still as she could. Soon the breathing at the far end of the barn was back to normal. Then the snoring started, and the rain, beating on the roof slates noisily. Little Bella began to stretch her legs and cry, invasively. She wanted to crawl and try to seize anything that caught her eye in that dim light. The supper was making her restless — so Margaret put her little finger in the girl's mouth and let her suck on it, and then she let her snuggle to her breast. The cow barn settled to the night. Soon everyone was sleeping. Another day, then, passing without incident.

  FIRST, THEY NOTICED that pockets of land around the pathway were cultivated and that within easy reach were clusters of unabandoned wooden huts, some with plumes of smoke and hostile dogs, others with washing lines, others with a tethered cow or two and goats. The smallholdings around the homes were dying back for winter, but still the practiced eye could recognize where rows of kale and corn had been and see that apples had been in such abundance that year that the ground was squelchy with windfalls. This was almost the America that they had all been born in. It was reassuring finally to discover such normality, but it was unnerving also, especially for the Boses. If everything was normal here, then who was to say that their flight from their fine, shuttered house and those lucrative riverside employments that had provided wealth and respect had not been precipitate? Had Acton been the price they'd paid for haste? Margaret tied her scarf tightly around her head and under her chin, left the adult Boses in charge of their bags and possessions, and went, with Bella sitting on her hip, to find out what she could about the way ahead and beg some baby food. She avoided the first two huts. Their guard dogs, both on long leashes, were a warning to stay away. But at the third building, a single-story cabin with a slate roof similar to the one that had kept them dry the previous evening, there was no dog in evidence. There was, though, a washing line with children's clothes on it and the bulky figure of a woman, sitting on the stoop and working on a reed basket. Most important, they had a yard of nanny goats with young. There would be milk to spare.

  Margaret was not noticed until she lifted the rope tie on the garden gate and began to walk slowly down the ash and clinker path toward the house. Then she coughed and waited. When the woman looked up, startled, it was clear that she was younger than she appeared, a girl, probably less than twenty years old. That made Margaret the elder, so instead of going forward to introduce herself, she stayed where she was, as was the custom. To do otherwise would be to insult each other's dignity. If you are alone and they are in company, you salute them; if you are sitting and they are standing, they greet you; if you are walking and they are riding, you acknowledge them, and certainly it always was the case that the young should defer to anybody older. So Margaret waited while the heavy girl put down her work, struggled to her feet, and came forward toward her visitor. She called out 'Pa!' before addressing Margaret. A man, her father, fat and tall and with a curly, close-fitting beard, came to the door, holding a stick. 'What does she want?' he said.

  'Well, I don't know.'

  'Just ask her, then.'

  'What do you want, he says.'

  So this was hardly normality. For all their goats and windfalls, their garden gates and washing lines, these were people living with fear, a fear that extended even to a single woman with a child. If this had been a village in the America that Margaret and the Boses had been born into, she could have expected a smile, a little curtsy from the girl. Her father would have reached his door not with a stick but with the immediate offer of a bench to sit on and a cup to drink from. In small communities like this, if not in places such as Ferrytown, where there were too many people for these observances to survive, passing guests could expect a dozen offers of a bed for the night. Neighbors would have competed 'for the honor' of having her dent in their mattress. Who could be more generous? Who could promise most?

  Margaret could remember being told by Grandpa that when he'd been young — and that was going back a bit! what, fifty years? — he'd gotten lost high in the hills, during a blinding storm. But he'd been taken in by a family of fur trappers and allocated their only bed. They had no meat to give him for his supper, and so the father of the family had walked across the valley in the rain to his nearest neighbor's quarters and, finding him asleep, had stolen a hen and brought it back to pluck and roast for Grandpa. When the neighbor showed up early next morning to protest about the theft, the trapper simply said, 'We had a guest. He had to eat. We thank you for your hen. I've got a herd of sheep, still out in the pasture half a day from here. You'll know which ones. My sign is three green bars. Next time you pass them, take two, take three, whatever you like. It makes no difference. We had to feed our guest.' That used to be America.

  But all Margaret was getting from this small, fat family was hostility. Showing them the baby made no difference. Her offers to undertake any work that needed doing were ignored. Her smiles and her determined cheerfulness were wasted. And every time she made to take a step closer to the girl, her father lifted his stick and growled.

  It was a struggle, but in the end she got her way, though only after pulling off her scarf and threatening to sit in the middle of their path 'until the both of us, my kid and me, are full of worms'. She liked the sound of that, 'my kid and me'.

  'I feel sorry for that child, and that's the only reason,' Pa said eventually, justifying his surrender to the bullying and evidently dangerous young woman. Now that he had seen her scalp, the man was desperate to find some way to compromise and give his visitors a good excuse to leave. So finally he let her sit on the garden wall, among the woody stalks of dead vegetables, and feed Bella a little goat's milk, sweetened with honey and simmered. 'We'll not want that pot when you've done with it,' he said. 'Just throw it down. I want to hear it break.'

  The girl stood and watched, breathing heavily, too uneasy to ask any questions of her own.

  'How far is it before we reach the ocean?' Margaret asked her.

  'I've never even been.'

  'Ask your father. Has he been?'

  The answer was a shock if it was true. Perhaps he was lying, giving Margaret false hope, just to see the back of her. He'd never 'witnessed' the ocean himself, he said, calling from the safety of his front door, and he hoped his fortunes would never make him want to or need to. He touched the end of his surprisingly elegant nose for good luck. But he had been to the nearby town many times — a one-day walk — to trade the produce of their holding, and he had heard that less than three days forward on foot from there, in the direction of sunrise, there was a river that was widening and salty and that breathed in and out twice a day, spreading to its banks and then receding, as if its lungs were being pumped by some outrageous giant 'a thousand times my size — and that's not small'.

  'Is that the ocean there? Is that where we can take the ships?'

  'It's near. It must be near. When there's salt in the water, there'll be ships in water, too. Sea ships. That's what I've heard,' he added, repeating what everybody who'd never witnessed the ocean said about it, that you know it 'like an old fri
end' when you come to it, that it roars at you like a cougar, that it smells like blood, that the ocean's got only one bank, that if you drink a cup of it your piss turns blue.

  Only four more days to reach the salt? The Boses did not seem to know whether this was good news or bad, nor did Margaret. At this rate it was possible that they might make it onto one of the last boats before the sea packed in for the winter. Exactly what they'd wished for. But four days was too soon to abandon any hope of finding Acton and Franklin, of just discarding them like corn husks and getting on with life as if they'd never been born. How could they go aboard a ship and say their farewells to America without first knowing what had happened to their men, asked Margaret, as they progressed among the little fearful farms toward a skyline that seemed to promise larger habitations.

  'What other choice is there for us?' asked Andrew Bose. 'We can hardly ask the sailors to wait around to watch the sea block up with ice while we stay on shore hoping for a miracle. There never is a miracle, in my experience.'

  In Andrew's view, the country was too wide and long for them to be able to pick out a single group of horsemen. And even then, even if they ran the rustlers to ground, they'd need another miracle to free their son, if he was still alive. 'No, Melody and I have already thought it through. If Acton was still a child, then maybe things would be different. You have a responsibility to a child. But he's a man. A married man, or was. He's taller than me. He's got more years ahead of him—'

  'Let's hope that's true,' said Margaret.

  'Let's hope it's true, sure. But also let's be sensible. Acton could be anywhere. Your Franklin could be anywhere. They could be two days to the south by now. They could be on a ship already, as far as we know. You think they'd be squandering their chances for us? You think they'd hang around for us?'