Vinegar Soup

by Miles Gibson

  ‘We mek smol mistik an he de go kil meselef day,’ he muttered. ‘He de go kil youselef day. Dat man Boris he sik in de het.’

  Frank pulled off his shoes and made himself comfortable in the grain sacks. He lay awake for some time listening to Happy’s doubts echo around the barrel. At first light he would talk to Veronica. She would have to be there to help when they loaded Gilbert into the wagon. He settled down and tried to sleep. Tomorrow he would tell her everything. They were stealing Gilbert. They were going to escape.

  But in the morning Gilbert had gone.

  Charlotte woke the hotel with a terrible scream. It was a huge bellow of rage that cut through the grey dawn and made the zinc roof sing. Happy came out of the barrel like a man shot from a cannon. He charged around the kitchen shouting and farting until he found the door and staggered into the compound. Frank was already racing ahead of him, towards the house and Gilbert’s room.

  He found Charlotte sitting on the edge of the bed with a pillow swinging loose in her hand. Beneath a vast, patchwork dressing gown she was wearing a pink rubber girdle and a pair of embroidered carpet slippers . A fat black sausage of hair lay curled upon one shoulder. There was no sign of Gilbert.

  ‘He’s gone!’ she wailed when she saw Frank. ‘He must have wandered off somewhere in the night.’ She stared woefully at the ceiling and clasped the pillow against her breast. ‘Someone should have been looking after him. Sweet Lord. Must I do everything myself? Am I never to sleep?’

  Frank was stunned. He stared about the room and shook his head. He opened his mouth but found he couldn’t make a sound.

  ‘He don’t get far in his pyjamas,’ muttered Boris, limping into the room. He stood shivering in his underpants. His hair sprang out of his head like nails. His face was purple and creased with sleep.

  ‘Don’t just stand there!’ barked Charlotte impatiently. ‘Go and look for him.’

  ‘Where?’ growled Boris. He pushed past Happy, who was trying to imitate a chair in a corner of the room, scuffed across the carpet, sniffing the wardrobe and punching the foot of the bed.

  ‘Everywhere!’ shouted Charlotte. She puffed herself out until her corset creaked. ‘Go and look everywhere!’

  ‘What a bastard,’ seethed Boris. He turned and pushed his way back into the corridor. ‘What a bastard.’

  At once the room was crowded with gawping, chattering, half-naked people.

  ‘Has someone been attacked?’ asked a tall, elderly man with a scarified face. He fumbled with a pair of spectacles, hooked them to his ears and peered anxiously at the bed.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Charlotte. She smiled and put down the pillow.

  The old man looked disappointed and let Comfort lead him away.

  ‘I heard screaming. No mistake. Something happen here,’ said another man. He was wearing a pair of nylon bloomers. He looked at Charlotte and then scowled suspiciously at Frank. ‘You make mischief, white boy?’

  ‘Nothing has happened,’ said Charlotte, standing up and brushing him away with her arms.

  The man muttered under his breath and continued to glare at Frank but Frank didn’t see him.

  A few minutes later Boris returned. He had made some effort to get dressed and was carrying the rifle. ‘He disappeared. I looked high and low. This place and that place. He must be out in the jungle, talking to the monkeys. Good riddance. What a stupid, goddamn bastard.’

  ‘He’s sick!’ shrieked Veronica.

  Frank turned and searched the faces that filled the doorway. He saw Veronica pressed between two sleepy men. She was wrapped from head to toe in a sheet. Her face was a rainbow of dirty make-up.

  ‘We’ve got to find him,’ she sobbed. She caught Frank’s eye and burst into tears. One of the men tried to comfort her but she cracked his ribs with her elbow.

  ‘Boris, take Frank and search the perimeter,’ said Charlotte quickly. ‘Happy can give the gentlemen some breakfast and drive them back to town.’

  There was a mutter of approval from the assembled guests. Happy crept from his corner and led them away with the promise of hot bread and coffee.

  ‘I didn’t have no breakfast yet,’ complained Boris. ‘You want me to search with an empty stomach? Old Gilbert out there. Dead some place. He don’t care. He can wait until after breakfast.’

  ‘Don’t say that! He’s not dead!’ screamed Veronica. She collapsed into Easy’s ample arms and had to be taken back to her room.

  ‘You can eat when we’ve found Gilbert,’ said Frank.

  ‘Waste of time,’ grunted Boris, but he followed Frank to the door.

  They searched the compound wall past the kitchen block and into the jungle. The sun had risen and the warm air was spangled with flies. Boris walked behind Frank, chewing a cigarette and nursing the gun in his arms. They moved forward in silence, wading through ditches of giant cabbage, scrambling over rocks and boulders, into the darkness of the forest. They travelled in a wide circle, searching the undergrowth for signs of life.

  At last, when Frank had all but given up hope, they found a narrow track driven through a thicket of fern. The damage looked fresh, flies swarmed where the trampled stalks still seeped a sticky, yellow milk.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ murmured Frank, stepping into the tunnel. ‘Why did he take off into the jungle?’

  ‘He come out here to die,’ laughed Boris.

  ‘Shut up,’ snapped Frank.

  ‘You forget. I got the rifle,’ growled Boris. ‘I might shoot you. Leave you here. Who care about you no more? No one care about you. I break your neck. Maybe. Throw you in the river. Good riddance. Nothing but trouble.’ He prodded Frank between the shoulder blades with the barrel of the rifle.

  ‘And then what?’ said Frank.

  ‘And then nothing.’

  ‘What will you say to Charlotte? How do you think you’re going to explain it?’ Frank demanded as they trudged forward.

  ‘I think of something,’ grunted Boris.

  After a time the forest floor became a tangle of roots clutching at the soil like claws. Above them the trees were crippled giants, diseased, rotting, branches dripping with thin, green beards.

  Frank scrambled among the roots, falling and skinning his hands. Boris clambered after him. They followed the trail for an hour and came, at last, upon a clearing in the undergrowth. A shaft of sunlight pierced the high vaults and speckled the ground in a shimmering circle of light. Wasps droned in the silence. The clearing smelt sour with collapse and decay. They hesitated for a moment, drew breath, and then pushed forward through a grove of bamboo, tormented by clouds of tiny flies, until they floundered in a patch of razor grass where they stopped, astonished, unable to believe what they saw before them.

  A few yards away, crouched on a bed of banana leaves, immense, naked, luminous in the half-light, belly clasped in his outstretched arms like a mighty ball of dimpled stone, Gilbert sat and stared at the trees.

  For a long time Frank and Boris stood transfixed, staring into the magic circle. And then Boris blinked and jerked back his head. He snorted. His face turned black with fear and rage. Before Frank could stop him he was running into the clearing, screaming and firing the rifle. He held the weapon over his head and shot blindly at the tops of the trees.

  Frank ran through the smoke, fell down and held the old man’s hands. He peered into his face and whispered his name. Gilbert bared his teeth in a smile but his dark eyes stared through Frank, beyond the forest and into some far and distant place.

  ‘He dead?’ inquired Boris, peering doubtfully down at him. ‘He look dead to me.’

  ‘No. Not dead,’ said Frank quietly. A giant centipede rippled through the leaves at his feet.

  ‘Too bad,’ said Boris.

  ‘How did he get out here?’ wondered Frank. ‘Where was he going?’

  ‘Savages catch him. Maybe,’ growled Boris. ‘This place full of savages.’ He grinned and strutted up and down, waving his rifle at the surrounding darkness.
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br />   Frank wiped Gilbert’s face with his hand. The skin felt hot and soft as sponge. ‘We’ve got to try and move him,’ he said anxiously when Boris grew tired, at last, and came to rest beside him.

  ‘He’s a big bastard,’ said Boris, with something that approached admiration. ‘I swear he swelling up while I look at him. We tie something around his arms and drag him. Maybe.’

  ‘If we can only make some sort of sling to support him…’

  ‘I don’t like to touch him,’ confessed Boris. But he took Gilbert by the wrists and struggled to drag him into the shelter of a fallen tree.

  Gilbert groaned and his mouth fell open. They propped him up in the shade, straightened his legs and tried to make him comfortable, but he slowly capsized and fell forward with his head hanging over his stomach.

  ‘I don’t see no blood,’ said Boris, frowning. He looked at his hands and wiped them roughly on the front of his shirt. ‘You think something broken?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Frank. ‘But we’ve got to get him back to the hotel as fast as we can carry him.’

  Boris collected some young bamboo and, while he stripped it, showed Frank how to make a kind of rope from pigtails of grass. They lashed the canes together with the rope and fashioned a crude harness for Gilbert’s shoulders. It took a long time. When the harness was finished Boris slung the reins around his own shoulders and managed to drag Gilbert a few paces across the clearing.

  ‘It work!’ he shouted to Frank. He picked up the rifle and strapped it securely against his chest. He was trembling, sweating, already exhausted by the heat. ‘You take his legs and we get him back to Charlotte.’

  Frank took the weight of the old man’s feet in his arms. Gilbert opened his eyes and smiled at the sun in the top of the trees. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ Frank whispered. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ He was talking to himself, trying to summon up his courage for the long journey home.

  They carried him from the clearing and into the twilight of the deep forest. Boris bludgeoned his way through the undergrowth, cursing the thorns that tore at his arms and legs, while Frank walked behind and kept control of Gilbert’s feet.

  But Gilbert was heavy and the ground seemed to sink beneath them. After a few yards they were staggering, drenched with sweat, their progress reduced to a painful shuffle. More than once they lost sight of the track and found themselves plunging through hidden ditches of stagnant, rust-coloured water. Flies crawled into their hair and eyes. The grass ropes blistered their skin.

  ‘Crazy bastard!’ screeched Boris in a sudden burst of anger. ‘I leave him here. I leave you both. Good riddance. No one care.’

  Frank had no voice left to answer him. His mouth was dry and his throat began to burn with thirst. He wondered if they had the strength to reach safety. How long had they been out here? He didn’t recognise this part of the track. He searched for familiar landmarks. Everything seemed different, twisted, as if he were looking at the jungle reflected darkly in a maze of distorting mirrors. Moss banks grew around them. Giant ferns sprang from the path like spouts of green water and broke, foaming, high above their heads.

  ‘Crazy bastard. No one need you,’ panted Boris. ‘No one care about you no more.’

  Frank stumbled and fell between Gilbert’s knees. What happens if Boris breaks loose? What happens if he tries to leave them? Don’t trust him. Catch him while he’s still in harness. Knock him down and take the rifle. Encourage him. Reason with him. Press the gun against his head.

  The light began to fail. The night was seeping from the forest floor, pulling at their limbs, submerging them, staining the air like soot. As the darkness spread the forest became a bedlam of noise. Above them, the treetops echoed with the screams of birds and the babbling, insane, laughter of apes. Far away, to their left, a panther roared, while all around them a vast orchestra of insects created a cacophony of wooden rattles, brass whistles, electric bells and sewing machines.

  ‘He kill everyone before he finished,’ gasped Boris.

  There seemed no end to the nightmare. They waded through bushes knitted by spiders and groped through tunnels of living barbed wire. They dragged themselves forward, into the darkness, while Gilbert hung in the harness, silent, staring, his bloated body swinging between them like the corpse of a huge, white pig.

  23

  It was dark when they reached the hotel. Happy ran to meet them, hooting and shouting to raise the alarm. He held out a lantern as they hauled Gilbert home. Frank saw Charlotte appear on the veranda. She stood, stiff and silent, her eyes in shadow, her mouth a red wound in the pale, enamel face.

  ‘What happened to him?’ she growled as they laid him to rest at her feet. ‘Why isn’t he wearing his pyjamas?’

  Boris threw himself into a chair. He groaned and rubbed at his face. ‘No pyjamas. Boris find him like that. Save the old bastard. Waste of time,’ he added, prodding Gilbert with his rifle butt. ‘He good for nothing now.’

  ‘Did you hurt him?’ said Charlotte, fixing him with her cockroach eyes.

  ‘I save him,’ protested Boris. He squirmed in the chair and scowled at Gilbert. He had found the old fool and brought him back again. He had risked his life and missed his breakfast. What more did she want?

  Gilbert lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. He was still wearing his bamboo harness. His stomach rumbled and roared like thunder.

  Veronica ran from the house, glanced down at Gilbert and shrank, frightened, into Frank’s arms. ‘Don’t leave him on the ground,’ she pleaded. ‘Somebody bring him a blanket. Lift him into a chair.’

  Frank bent down and pillowed Gilbert’s head in his hands. Gilbert blinked at him. His belly roared. He belched and blew bubbles.

  ‘Help him!’ Charlotte bellowed at Boris.

  Boris left his chair with a curse and helped pull Gilbert to his feet. It was like moving a vast mattress of bulging skin. He sagged in their arms, sank, spread and threatened to engulf them. After a long struggle they managed to lever him up and balance him against the wall. Comfort and Easy came out to look at him, tittered and wandered away.

  ‘What happened?’ said Charlotte, peering into the old man’s face. ‘Did they hurt you?’

  Gilbert leaned against the wall, his arms loose and his big belly full of thunder. He didn’t see Charlotte. He was staring forlornly into the forest.

  ‘He don’t say a word,’ said Boris. He shrugged. ‘All the way home he don’t say nothing.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’ said Charlotte. ‘Do you want something to drink?’

  Happy arrived with a blanket. Charlotte tried to throw it around Gilbert’s shoulders but Gilbert shrugged her away. For a moment he seemed to return to life. He tottered forward and looked imploringly at Frank.

  ‘Too late,’ he whispered. ‘Too late.’

  He wagged his great head and shook the cobwebs that clung to his ears. His eyes glittered. The tears were rolling down his cheeks. As they watched he turned and walked away from them. He staggered to the end of the veranda, toppled forward and fell to the ground. His stomach gave one final trumpet of terrible despair.

  For a long time no one moved. They stared at him as if they were waiting for something to happen, as if they expected him to perform some miraculous recovery, float from the floor and sail majestically into the air. But nothing happened. Gilbert was dead.

  ‘He’s gone,’ declared Charlotte. She was the first to step from the trance. She went to Gilbert and stroked his face. Her hand rested on his skull for a moment, as if she had felt a slight flicker of life, but then she sighed and took her hand away.

  ‘No,’ whispered Frank. He stared at the body in horror. He couldn’t believe that Gilbert had abandoned them. He wasn’t dead. It was impossible. Everything depended on him. They were still living inside his dream.

  Charlotte stood up and wiped her hands on her skirts. ‘We’ll bury him tonight,’ she said briskly, nodding at Boris. She picked up the blanket and began to cover the
corpse.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ screamed Veronica. She flew at Charlotte and snatched the blanket away. Her face was white with astonishment. She was trembling from head to toe, her teeth chattered and the bangles were clacking against her ankles. She fell down beside Gilbert and tried to cradle his head in her arms but he was too heavy and she collapsed, sobbing, against the veranda wall.

  ‘He won’t last in this heat,’ Charlotte said impatiently. ‘We can’t leave him there – it’s bad for business.’

  ‘I want to take him home,’ sobbed Veronica, nursing one of his outstretched paws. ‘Give him to me. I’ll take him home.’ She raised his hand to her face, kissing the palm and wiping her tears with his fingers.

  ‘I’m not digging no grave tonight,’ Boris growled at Charlotte. ‘I finished with it. Waste of time. Boris going to get himself drunk!’ He jumped up suddenly and overturned his chair.

  ‘I don’t want you to touch him,’ hissed Frank. ‘I’ll do it. Happy will help me. We’ll put him next to Sam. That’s what he wanted.’

  ‘I don’t care what he want. I don’t care if you turn him into sticks of kebab. I need a drink,’ shouted Boris.

  ‘You can drown your sorrows after you’ve helped carry him into the compound,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Sorrow?’ barked Boris. ‘I don’t have no sorrow.’

  ‘I’ll give you plenty if you don’t help,’ Charlotte promised him.

  So Boris helped Frank lift Gilbert up by the shoulder harness and carry him from the veranda. Happy and Charlotte managed the feet and Veronica held the lantern. They took him through the hotel and out towards the plot that Boris had used for Sam’s grave.