(2007) The Pesthouse

by Jim Crace

  If they were lucky, Franklin's singing would wear their daughter out. She'd laugh herself to sleep. And then Margaret and Franklin could wrap around each other, fully dressed, and make the best of nature's mattresses before — too soon — the dawn, the damp and the cold put an end to sleep and any dreams of deeper mattresses and wrapping around each other, without clothes, when they were lovers and not pals.

  But this would be their last night living rough. Tomorrow, if Franklin could find some way across the river, if they could find a house in Ferrytown that had survived the fire, they would be sleeping under rafters.

  It was a comfort to be so close to Ferrytown at last, though what they might find there was frightening. If they had hoped for lights and smoke or any other evidence of habitation, they were disappointed. The only signs of life from the far bank that night were the dogs calling out to each other and the thudding of the clouds as, coming east, they bounced their prows across the mountain tops.

  It rained without regret from midnight to sunup. It was the kind of rain that farmers love, sweet tasting, temperate and long lasting, heavy enough to soak the earth 'down to its boots' but not so heavy as to wash the soil away, a good start to the spring. But for Franklin it was an unwelcome setback. Margaret had said that the raft often grounded on the crossing, so the water would be relatively shallow. So he had planned to cut himself a long stout pole with which to test the river's depth and then wade across to Ferrytown, from one shingle bank to the next. For once his height would be an advantage. And if the waters were too deep and strong at any point, he could lug one of the many pieces of dry timber that had been washed down over the winter, wedge its ends and use it as a body bridge. Once on the other bank, he'd face the trickier problem of how to rescue Margaret and Jackie from the wrong side of the water.

  As soon as the mist lifted, and he and Margaret were ready to go across toward the place of her birth, it became clear that wading would not be possible. The river had swollen overnight and spread its near bank as far as the bluffs where they were camping. What had been swampy ground, with a boardwalk of logs, was now a lake, with bays of trapped water. And what had been a river narrow enough for a skilled boy to catapult a nut across was now a wide and bubbling sinew of yellow water, so fast and strong that timber twice the length and weight of Franklin was being tumbled downstream as if it were straw.

  'It'll pass,' said Margaret.

  'How long?'

  'A day or two. Unless it rains again.' She pushed a hand out of the shelter of their canvas. 'It's raining now. A bit.'

  'I'll see how deep it is.'

  'We'll wait. We'll wait until it settles down again.'

  Franklin didn't want to wait. Any moment now and she would start to curse the idiot who'd cut down the bridge: 'If it hadn't been for him, we'd all be over on the other side by now.' Franklin was in a hurry to put that embarrassment behind him, to leave, in fact, all the errors and hardships of the previous fall and winter on the eastern shore of the river.

  'I'll take the horse,' he said. 'Horses understand rivers.' But the little mare either knew too much or had grown lazy. She allowed Franklin to splash her through the shallow fringes of the river but refused even to try the first wide rapid that they met. She reared and tugged at him to go back to the banks.

  He tried again, this time mounted on her back and determined to use his heels on her if she refused. The shingle fell away beneath her hoofs, and Franklin found himself thigh deep in water, but the mare did not have the strength to swim against the current. She followed it a little way downstream but could not purchase any footings in shallower water until Franklin dismounted and led her out of the channels, swirling at his armpits, and up to safer ground. Margaret, waiting by the tent with Jackie and watching everything through her spy pipes, waved her arms and yelled at him to come away, but everything she said was drowned out by the din of water.

  Franklin was too wet and cold to do much more that morning. He dried out by a fire and watched the river gaining ground on them, spreading even farther east, as if it too were tired of flowing through America. 'I'll go back to the bridge,' he said.

  'Ha, there is no bridge. You'll never cross it there.'

  'We've plenty of rope. Maybe I can build a new bridge.'

  'Who'll take the bridge across and secure it on the other side?' Franklin had to laugh, despite his impatience. 'No, we'd be better off climbing up to the lake,' she continued. 'It's safe enough if you keep away from the cascades. We used to swim there when we were kids. My brother used to swim across and fish. Can you swim, Pigeon?'

  'I don't know. I've never had to swim.'

  'Shall we find out?'

  They found out in the afternoon, once they had taken down their tent, loaded the mare with all their possessions and the girl, and retraced the route that they had pioneered the day before, up to the bridging point. The water thundered through the narrow passage there, reaching up to snatch at anything loose. The air was heavy with spray. Again they had to break through undergrowth and snap their way through trees, before they came out onto a rocky promontory and could see a more placid expanse of water ahead of them.

  The last time they had looked down on the lake had been the day that they had come down Butter Hill from the Pesthouse and fled from Ferrytown. Not a happy day. A day bursting with death. The lake had not stored any memories; it seemed expressionless and bland. Just heavy with itself. Indifferent to visitors. No sign of movement on its surface. Not a wave and not a bird, not a single ship, not a reflected sparkle. No bouncing light. Predictable. Unlike the ocean, it was not threatening. Its smell was not as salty or as bitter. If anything, it smelled a little sulfurous, the odor of an egg, just boiled.

  The lake's eastern banks, beyond the cascades where the fresh rainwaters crashed into the valley, were swampy and thick with reeds but unavoidable. If this was what lay between them and Ferrytown, the quicker they took it on the better.

  It would have been prudent simply to have bided their time on the east side of the river until the waters dropped. But they were being tugged and pushed to cross. Margaret particularly needed to discover at once what had happened to her town and to her family compound. She needed, too, to find a place to rest. Tenting was hard work. The journey might have been eventless, but it was still exhausting. And, more than that, she understood that nothing could progress between herself and Franklin until their travels were allowed to pause. She wanted more than anything to settle on one place, a place where they were neither hungry nor afraid. The heart prefers tranquillity. Besides they could not let the dangers of the crossing paralyze them and persuade them to defer the challenge. Courage. Onward. Wade.

  Their greatest fear was losing Jackie in the water. To drown a mare would not be an impossible setback. She was, in principle, a stolen mare after all. They had not dared to love her, despite the services she'd provided without much complaint. They had not even dared to name her yet. Even to lose all of their possessions, swallowed by the lake, would not be such a tragedy. They had become used to making do on very little, and, apart from the spy pipes, now tied on a thong around Margaret's neck, everything they had ever truly valued — the goatskin coat, the pot of mint, the green and orange woven top, the cedar box of talismans — had been lost or stolen ages ago. The girl was helpless, though. She could walk boldly now. Her legs and back had straightened. She was strong and hard to frighten. But she had never crossed a lake before. Certainly, she could not swim. If anything went wrong — the mare bolted or drowned, say, or the currents split them up, or there was sudden shelving where the water became too deep and icy — the two adults might be able to struggle ashore, but what chance would Jackie stand? They protected her against the cold with as many layers of clothes as they could find and then packed her in the pannier as loosely as they dared. Franklin beat the vegetation in his path with a stick, to flush out any snakes or snappers and warn off any bears. Margaret followed with the mare. The mud around the reeds was black and deep. I
t released thick bubbles and a stench like rotten potatoes as they pushed through it. It was almost a relief to reach the open water where the vegetation stopped.

  This time the horse was not resistant. There was no roar of water and hardly any current to frighten her. She was confident, even eager. She waded in, not shying at the sudden cold.

  Margaret and Franklin were less agile in the lake. The night of rain was not sufficient to do much more than skim the bone-aching chill off the season's melt water. At least the water was not especially deep at first. But all too soon the ground beneath their feet and hoofs began to shelve away, and the water was up to their chins and had filled the horse's panniers, so that even Jackie — who had seemed excited rather than unnerved up to that point — began to shout and scream, shocked by the water and the cold. Luckily the mare could swim well, though slowly. She did not try to turn around and gain the bank that they had just abandoned. Some logic told her that her chin would lead her to other side, and so she followed it, pushing her lower lip through the lake, her nostrils closing and flaring, as she tried to find a way of taking in good lungfuls of air but not shipping too much water.

  Margaret and Franklin held onto the horse's lead, one on each side, doing their best to avoid whatever she was doing with her legs beneath the water and trying not to add any extra weight to the animal's efforts. They found a way of lying on their sides in the water, so that their mouths and noses were not submerged, and kicking out. Pockets of air trapped in their clothes provided a little buoyancy and some protection against the cold. But their hearts and lungs became increasingly agitated. And they were panicking.

  They were so low in the water that very soon all of the banks had disappeared from view. They could not be sure if they were making progress or merely making circles. Their limbs were aching from the cold, and Jackie had gone quiet inside her pannier, her big eyes open and permanently startled.

  Thank goodness for the mare. Thank goodness Franklin hadn't butchered her, back at the fishermen's cabins. She knew the way across the lake. She could feel the tug of water to her left, where it was pulled toward the drop of the cascades, and she simply kept the tug on that side so that, inevitably, if there was any pattern to the universe, she was bound to find the other bank. Again there was a mass of mud and reeds to conquer, but they pushed through fearlessly. The water drained out of the panniers. The worst was at their backs.

  Oddly, they felt colder once they'd come out of the water than they'd felt when they were immersed in it up to their throats. Their clothes weighed heavier than wood. And they all — including the mare — were shivering uncontrollably. They needed to get down to shelter and to fire, or they would catch a fever. Jackie's skin was blue. Her lips were purple. They lifted her out of her pannier and cuddled her, though neither Margaret nor Franklin yet had much warmth to offer. The horse shook herself, sending great loops of water out of the panniers and the sodden net bag on her back.

  Once they'd found a way around the lake and reached the cascades, the path down into Ferrytown was familiar, though easier to negotiate now that there was little undergrowth (and no need to transport Margaret in a wheelbarrow). First they passed the bridge point, and then proceeded through the forest of burned antlers that they'd inspected from the eastern bank the day before.

  Soon they'd reached the dry rocky ledge where Margaret had rested on the day that Franklin went back to her home to collect her few possessions. The fruit trees there were little more than charred stumps. But somehow the wooden bench and fishing platform had survived the fire. Now they had open views across the town. It was wise, despite their aching bones and chattering teeth, to make sure that the place was safe. Margaret pulled up her spy pipes to check if there were any signs of horses or fires or strangers, or even evidence of someone that she recognized from her community. Lifting the pipes to her eyes had become a joy for her. It clarified the world. It made her young. But now the pipes seemed to cloud the world even further than her unsatisfactory eyes had done. The pipes were full of water. She shook them, but that made little difference. All that distance, she thought to herself, all that agony, and still she couldn't see any better than the day they'd fled from Ferrytown.

  Franklin studied what remained of the houses, until he was satisfied that all the movements he could see were caused by nothing more sinister than the wind, the wild dogs and the birds. There was not any smoke, no sign of horses in what had been the tetherings. He listened, too. No voices. No tools. No creaking evidence of life. 'I think it's safe,' he said, though Margaret was disappointed at the news. She'd thought it might be possible that some old neighbor had survived, that there might be miracles.

  They cut a lonely sight, the final family on earth, as they started across the flood-smoothed slopes between the river and the town. They'd reached the habitation of the dead. There must be ghosts. Their nervousness was palpable. Their steps were hesitant, especially when a pair of buzzards put up from the burned remains of the lofthouses, where the smaller boats had been stored, and dislodged a piece of black timber from the building's skeleton. Even the mare had toughened ears, twitching at imaginary flies. It was here that on that final day in Ferrytown the few late-coming emigrants had gathered, marooned between the water and the flames, and had driven away shorn-headed Margaret and Franklin in his strange coat. It was here that Franklin had been cut by sling shot. Out midstream, the last bones of the ferry raft, still protruding from the shingle where it had grounded itself, split the speeding waters, marking the flat expanse of the flooded river with chevrons of froth.

  At last they reached the first of the buildings. Nothing now stood much higher than Franklin. The brick footings of the palisades had survived and some of the older timbers had proved too tough for the flames and stood like sentinels. But all the other buildings — the men's dormitory where Franklin had found his brother's shoes, the women's dormitory where there had been three lines of beds, each with a pile of bright clothes hung over the end, the rest-house hall with its dining tables, the barns, the yards, the kitchens and the workshops of about two hundred families — were almost level with the ground. What little remained was scorched and blackened beyond recognition. Even the earth and the flagstones in the compounds were charred. The town was colorless.

  Margaret did not pay much attention to her neighbors' homes. Her mind was fixed on family. She hardly stopped to look at the whitened, picked remains of the baker and his daughter, still lying on the steps of the oven house, their bony knees twisted by their sudden deaths, their sides pulled open by animals. They had been saved from the flames and denied their cremation by being caught in the open street. She hurried on, cradling Jackie in her arms, while Franklin followed with the mare.

  Too soon she'd reached the outline of her own compound. She could have stepped across the destroyed outer fence, but habit and superstition made her keep to the old pattern and enter through the space where a wooden door had been. The last time she had entered it, her hair had been shorter than the nap on a gooseberry, and she had been too exhausted by the flux to walk. Franklin had carried her, piggyback, and then, once he had set her down, had had to find a stick and lend his arm to help her walk. Now she felt just as exhausted, but she was glad that Franklin had allowed her to meet her family alone, alone that is except for Jackie. He waited in the road outside with the horse, watching her but saying nothing. He could remember his last visit there as if it were yesterday: the barrow that he'd found, the food he'd salvaged from their larder and the list of clothes she'd given him, the smell of her possessions, his guilty looting of their chests and cupboards, the pot of mint he'd saved (and she had lost), the valuables, her comb and brush with their tangled knots of ginger hair. Will I ever see her hair this long again, he'd wondered at the time. He looked at her, and, yes, by summer's end her hair was bound to reach her shoulder. He felt his own head and face. There was stubble. A man's beard should be longer than a man's neck, he'd always been taught as a boy. Never bare your throat to
strangers. And Franklin had been glad to have started a beard when he was relatively young, a teenager. It had almost masked his sudden reddeners.

  Her courtyard seemed larger than Margaret remembered it. But then it had always been busy with equipment, animals and family. Now every corner was clear, except for piles of wood ash, and the space had been enlarged at one side by the complete removal of the screened veranda. She found the courage to walk a little closer, although she could look only through half-closed eyes.

  She saw what she had hoped for. There had been cremations for the family. Her brother's wooden cot had disappeared entirely and what remained of him was just a few scorched bones. He'd not provided any meals for animals, and so he could hope to rest in peace. 'Your uncle,' Margaret said to Jackie. And then she went into the other 'rooms', through fallen and blackened lintels, beams and rafters. 'That's your great-grandpa. And that's my ma. You would have loved my ma. That's big sister. That's Carmena's place. That's your other uncle and his dog.' She had to think before she could remember its name. 'It's Jefferson. You could have played with Jefferson. He was a ratter and a tough old dog, but he liked little girls.'

  They went across the courtyard, past the spot where their neighbor's dead white dove had tumbled to the ground, to the annex house. That had burned more completely than the other buildings in the compound. It had been the straw and wood room and so had almost volunteered to be destroyed by flames. Margaret waved her hand at it. This was more than she could bear. 'In there, was where your Auntie Tessie lived and funny Glendon Fields, and their boy, Matt. You would have had a playmate, see,' she said. But already she had turned away and was running back to Franklin and the mare.

  Her tears came silently. No sobs. No shoulders heaving with the grief. She didn't want comforting. It was best that Franklin thought she was strong. She only muttered the burial lament to herself again and remembered how her home had been before the fire, even before she had closed her family's eyes and mouths, folded their arms in readiness, and covered their faces in their blankets. Instead, she did her best to recall her single lasting memory of the voices and the smells of home when she'd been just a child of Jackie's age. She could remember sitting on the floor, playing with a red ball her mother had stitched. A dog was barking. Her father came back from the river with a fish and made her reach to touch and smell the skin.