"So what's Satan?" asked Hasso, expressing the general puzzlement. "And who's Adam?"
"Maybe Satan is 'sanity', mixed up?" I suggested. "Because the black current drives men mad. . . ."
Yosef nodded. "Possibly. And possibly the word Adam has a negative prefix, as in words like 'abort' and 'apathy'—and dam is a female parent? Thus: 'sons without a mother'."
"There are quite a few of those on this side of the river," commented Hasso, somewhat acidly.
"Were you one of those?" I asked him sharply. "Was your mother a riverwoman?"
"Uh? Oh no. Not at all. Please don't leap to so many conclusions about me, will you not? I thought we'd made it all up yesterday. Well, maybe not all. . . ."
"Okay, okay. Sorry. So where does this Satan and Adam business leave us?"
"The answer to that," said Yosef, "is: considerably more knowledgeable than ever before. Plus, we know that some women over there worship the river, as though it's a God."
"Out of despair at their lot, presumably."
"Maybe," he went on, "it is a God. In the sense of a very powerful, though rather torpid being. Or perhaps a being which has other, more interesting things to think about than us. . . ." He leaned against the guard-rail, surveying the landscape around Verrino. "Fertile place, isn't it, our habitable zone? With a desert barrier bordering all of it, and precipices to seal off one end, and the wild ocean the other end. Rather like," and he smiled, "an ant colony in a very long trough. How illuminating it might be to watch how two separate ant colonies developed, supposing they were separated by a glass wall midway . . . Granting, of course, the vast difference between ants and humans."
"What are you getting at?" I asked him.
"Just that, if there's a God—or Goddess—around, she doesn't seem particularly worried whether her worshippers are burned alive . . . But maybe if she interfered, that would break the rules of her game?" Yosef hesitated. "And of course, if there were a higher being involved, humans could hardly hope to understand it—or perhaps even to prove that it was a higher being. No more than an ant can hope to understand a man, however much time it spends crawling along him from head to foot. In which case, our particular tragedy would be to suspect that this was so—because an ant could never suspect anything of the sort in a million years."
Hasso looked impatient, and tried to interrupt.
Yosef simply raised his voice. "Yes, we would be conscious of the existence of a mystery—whenever we bothered to pay attention to it—without ever being able to solve it. Rather like the mystery of the whole universe of space and stars, itself. Why is it? How is it? We're in it, and of it; and so we've no idea. Perhaps if we could solve the mystery of the river, the mystery of existence might well come next?"
"One thing at a time, for goodness sake!" broke in Hasso. "It's the other shore we're exploring."
"And why is there another shore, so very separated from us? I do sometimes wonder whether there can be men, who act as Gods to other men—without scruple?"
"You mean those Sons of Adam? That Brotherhood?"
"No, not at all. I was wondering: is the black current entirely natural?"
I just had to laugh. None of these men had any concept of the sheer scope of the river. It might well be a creature, or at least part of one, a tendril—its spine or bloodstream or whatever—but that it could be a made thing? Oh no.
The old imp smiled at me, unoffended, and bobbed his head. "Quite!" he cried. "Quite! You're right to be amused. Far, far better that the river is an alien goddess, than the handiwork of men like Gods. Or of women like Gods."
And so we went below to the refectory, for a breakfast of boiled eggs, bread and hot spiced milk.
"Perhaps Yosef's right," said Hasso, intercepting me on my way to the head of the stairs. "I'm going out to the glassworks and grindery today. Want to come?"
"Why there?"
"The first helmet worked a treat, didn't it? So it's only sensible to have another one on hand. Just in case."
"Maybe Yosef was right about what?" I asked him.
"About women like Gods . . . Supposing that was so, mightn't some wise old guildmistress have an inkling of the truth?"
So she might. If. And supposing. But recalling my initiation on board the Ruby Piglet, I suspected not. Unless the boatmistress of the Ruby Piglet knew little and cared less. . . .
"Why ask me?" said I, lightly. "I'm hardly a guildmistress."
"Who knows? Some day, Yaleen, some day. . . ."
Rain showered down on our way to the glassworks, settling all the dust which had been oozing out of the cracks of the world, and soaking us both; however this hardly mattered once we arrived at the sand pits with their sheds housing tank furnaces. Before long we were both dried as crisp as biscuits. While Hasso conducted the business of ordering a new diving helmet to specifications—with no particular appearance of furtiveness on his part—I wandered about the sheds, peering at the furnace pots and moulds, the drawing hearths, and the bare-chested glassblowers playing their tubes like fanfare trumpets, arriving eventually at the grindery where much more delicate work was carried on. The time passed quickly.
We returned to town by one o'clock under a clear sky, for the rain clouds had passed away upriver and the sun come out again; and slaked our thirst and filled our bellies with savoury pancakes at a wine-arbour new to me.
Later, as drowsy and replete as if we had made love, we toiled back up the spiralling stairs, pausing every fifty steps or so. I didn't know what was on Hasso's mind, but personally my heart was set on a siesta.
And as we rounded the Spire for the second time, already high above the roofs of Verrino, I saw the tiny winks of light from the far side of the river. Even as I pointed, the signal ceased.
"Something's wrong. Come on!"
We ran all the rest of the way; and I arrived with a stitch in my side.
The platform was buzzing.
Immediately Yosef saw us he hurried over, brandishing the copied message, his face grave. He thrust the sheet of paper into my hand.
"That's all there is. He broke off in mid-word."
I read:
Men hunting me. Surrounded. Worn—
Without thinking, I crumpled up the sheet as though the message would go away. Gently Yosef retrieved the paper from my fist, smoothed it out and handed it to someone else for safe keeping. To be filed in the archives, of course. Then he put his arm around my shoulder.
Three days passed, and they were days of silly hope for me: hope that another message would soon blink, boasting how well in Capsi was—as thick as thieves—with the men over there.
And on the evening of the third day, on that twice-burnt sward outside the settlement, a crowd of tiny figures gathered once more, and a cart was hauled through their midst, and something black was dragged from the back of the tumbril as though it had no more bones or volition than a sack of corn; and presently a bonfire blazed, and smoke rose greasily.
It could have been a woman; could have been. . . .
But I knew that it wasn't.
And what could they have been doing during the three previous days, those Sons of Adam, but tormenting Capsi terribly, for information?
The very next evening I signed on a brig, the Darling Dog, bound for Pecawar and home. I had no idea at all what I was going to tell Mother and Father. And I still hadn't decided this as I walked up the familiar dusty lane to our door. Contrary to expectation, in spite of all my travels this lane seemed no shorter or narrower or even dustier than it ever had before. Pecawar was just as it had always been. The world no more changes than the river changes; it flows on, and yet stays the same.
I banged the door knocker instead of just pushing on in and calling out, "I'm back." And by this choice I made myself a stranger.
Mother opened the door, and I stared at her in bewilderment, for she was a stranger too. Her body had changed shape: she was visibly pregnant.
My first fleeting thought was: so she's replaced Capsi alread
y! And my second thought: she's replaced both of us. My third sad, frightened thought was: she's forty, she'll die, it's too late to have another baby!
But there she stood, young and glowing, with the false bloom of pregnancy about her . . .
How could anybody turn back the clock like this? Way back nearly twenty years to another bout with infancy and toddlerhood and school days? But the truth about a clock is that its hour hand moves on and on inexorably—until suddenly it's back at the very same hour it was, once in the past.
"Hullo, Mother." I embraced her cautiously, though she seemed to have no such reservation about squeezing me, almost to death. (Had the Sons of Adam crushed Capsi with heavy weights? Had they used red-hot pincers, and ropes to rack his bones out of joint?)
And I had my answer to the problem of how to tell her. Was it a coward's answer—or a brave one, because it left me with all the weight to bear myself?
Now that she was pregnant I couldn't possibly tell her that Capsi had just been burnt alive over on the other shore. Not now. The shock would make her miscarry; then there would be two deaths on my conscience, double grief for them. I would tell Mother, of course; but not just yet—not till my next visit home, which I would make sure I timed well after the baby was bom. Nor could I load this weight upon Father alone.
And one part of me was asking, all this while: how much had Capsi and Yaleen ever really meant to her, or even to both of them? Or did Mother only really care about herself?
How strange, this second late motherhood of hers. I felt lost and alone because of it.
"I visited Capsi in Verrino," I said brightly. "I've just spent a week with him."
"Really? You must tell me all his news." Mother laughed. "Young rascal, running off like that! Almost as bad as you ... So what are we standing here at the door for, like a pair of strangers?"
Thus after a year away I entered my home, which wasn't my home any longer but the home of a child unborn who would never regard me as a sister but only as another adult member of the family, a sort of aunt or third parent mostly absent.
I left after less than a week spent brooding around Pecawar, and signed on to sail south upon the schooner Spry Goose, determined to remain with this same boat for at least a year or two, as though its crew were my real family; and determined also to become an impeccable riverwoman upon it, thus somehow to compensate for my dereliction at Verrino.
And I suppose 1 must have succeeded in my aim, all too soon, for by the end of that same year, far to the south in the steamy tropics I was invited by my guild to volunteer for the New Year's Eve journey out to the black current.
Part Two
NEW YEAR'S EVE AT TAMBIMATU
WAS I glad when the Spry Goose got to Jangali! Boatmistress Marcialla was actually going to allow her crew a few days holiday. Imagine that. A rest.
Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. By the time we were to resume our voyage again, a few score hours later, I would feel distinctly relieved to be back on board. When we arrived on that sultry late autumn afternoon, however, I wasn't to know this. A somewhat weary Yaleen was just looking forward innocently to the Junglejack Festival.
The problem with the Spry Goose wasn't that Marcialla was a martinet, a disciplinarian. Nor her boatswain Credence, either. It was simply that Marcialla was boat-proud; and the Spry Goose being a three-mast schooner, there was quite a lot of boat to be proud of. So when we picked up a load of paint at Guineamoy, and Marcialla had said casually, "Let's give the Goose a lick of paint," I didn't know what we were in for.
I soon found that painting isn't a matter of slapping on a fresh coat, then sitting back to admire it. First there's the rubbing down of the old paint, often to the wood. Next, any knots in the exposed timber have to be sealed with knotting juice, and any cracks filled with resin-gum. After that there's priming, and then there's undercoating . . . and a long, long time later you actually get to doing the painting itself—twice over.
The less said the better, I think, about all the laborious hours that I and several others spent while we sailed south with the autumn winds behind us! Three times over we plied from Guineamoy to Spanglestream and back again. Then from Spanglestream to Croakers7 Bayou four times there and back. Rubbing, knotting, priming, painting. And on each of the return trips, as we tacked against the prevailing wind, I had rope and canvas to occupy my idle hands. I think Marcialla deliberately timetabled the loading and delivery of cargoes just so as to build in optimum drying times.
Yet at least this kept my body and mind occupied. Thus it was almost "innocently" that I arrived eventually in Jangali, anticipating a little holiday.
Innocent, though, I was not. Not deep in my heart. For had I not helped my own brother to go to a horrible death on the far side of the river, where they bum women alive? Had I not watched through a telescope, while they burned him?
And I had not dared tell my mother or my father, rationalizing this failure of courage on my part as a responsible decision—since anguish at the news of Capsi’s fate might make my mother miscarry. (Though what she imagined she was up to by having another baby, was beyond my comprehension!)
All the labour of painting seemed to have laid a coat of paint over these scars in my soul. Yet it hadn't really done so. I hadn't knotted and gummed and primed those scars. When the paint dried, they would soon show through again as dark shadows. The fresh skin of paint would crack and peel.
Also, while busy painting—and reefing and luffing, belaying and shinning up rigging—I had kept my eyes fixed on the tasks in hand. Even so, the black current was always there. No amount of paint, no spread of sails, was going to hide it or erase it.
Was it really a living creature six hundred leagues long and more? A powerful, sensitive yet generally comatose being which for its own purposes allowed women to ply the river, but not men? Was it some kind of alien goddess? Or was it, as old Yosef had implied, something artificially created to separate us from the "Sons of Adam" on the west bank, that mysterious brotherhood of men who turned their backs superstitiously and savagely upon the river; about whom almost all we knew was the little that Capsi had been able to heliograph back before they caught him?
I had drunk of the current, and it knew me; but it I did not know.
Maybe it was impossible ever to know what the black current really was. In which case how much more sensible it was to ignore it, and get on painting a boat, and enjoy the journey as much as possible.
And really—hard labour and scars of the heart apart—there were so many new sights for me to soak in. Even when seen twice and thrice over they still remained quite exciting, by and large.
South of Gangee, that scruffy town which I'd visited on my first voyage aboard the Sally Argent, was Gate of the South.
The tropics put in their first hesitant appearance there—with the townsfolk doing their best to encourage the show. Butterblooms cascaded from balconies, and biscus trees were kept well watered by a network of tiny cobbled streams, although the red trumpet flowers were smaller than those I was to see further south.
Just as my own home town of Pecawar made a virtue of being on the verge of the desert, so did Gate of the South rejoice in its own position—more so than some towns of the deep south which were tropical through and through. At Gate of the South it was still possible to "garden" the vegetation. There was even a ceremonial stone arch which spanned the road from north to south, with a signpost by it listing all the distances to furthest Tambimatu 280 leagues away. What practical use this was I couldn't say, except perhaps as a disincentive to the local men to set out on foot! My new friend Jambi, with whom I went ashore for a few hours, was a six-year veteran of these southern reaches, and she pointed out in high amusement that no road actually ran all the way from Gate of the South to Tambimatu. The swamps around Croakers' Bayou were obstacle number one. Further south than that, the jungle increasingly had its own way with roads.
Jambi was dark-skinned and jolly, with long black hair which s
he generally wore in a bun so as not to get tangled, thus hoisting her up the main mast inadvertently. She hailed from Spanglestream, and the only time I mentioned the black current to her she merely glanced and wrinkled her nose, and that was the whole of her interest in it. This made me suppose that she was rather a good choice as a friend. She wouldn't remind me of anything painful. Jambi had a shore-husband and a baby boy at Spanglestream, though she didn't seem to bother about them unduly, except to the extent that she stayed in southern waters.
After leaving Gate of the South, we called at Guineamoy—source of that wretched load of paint. At Guineamoy you could also have gardened the tropics. But the people didn't bother, perhaps because Gate of the South had stolen their thunder. Guineamoy preferred to wear an ugly face and hide everything in grime. The people seemed to make a virtue of this, as though foul air and the stink of chemicals were their way of dealing with the burgeoning extravagance of nature. Smoke and steam belched out of lots of little workshops. There were kilns and smelters and smithies. There were warehouses and rubbish dumps; and outside of the town, half a league inland, was an artificial lake of filth. Inland, yes. Whatever stenches they pumped into the air, obviously they had no desire to risk polluting the river itself. If they had, I suppose the river guild might have banned their cargoes. What the black current itself would have done about such pollution, if anything, I had no idea. Just then, I didn't wish to wonder.
I suppose grime is comparative. If Guineamoy seemed a filthy place to me, maybe to its inhabitants it seemed a paragon of virtue and energy, and everywhere else excessively rustic. Maybe I was unduly sensitive to it, like a green leaf vulnerable to blight—because I was already a little blighted in my soul.
After Guineamoy came Spanglestream, which was renowned for its tasty fish and its dozens of lug-sailed fishing smacks decorated with painted eyes on hulls and sails. It was equally famous for the phosphorescent streamers which snaked across the river at night in bright silver, transforming the river into one of stars. These streamers only occurred for a couple of leagues to the north and south of the town, and looked like bubbly exhalations of breath from the midstream current. I suppose they must have been made up of myriads of tiny organisms which fed on minerals or whatever was abundant in the water there—providing in their turn a non-stop meal for the shoals of larger fish.
Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 Page 5
