Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  Soon enough, night come again, night always do, and proportion flee. The owls swell, moon snakes multiply, them huge feathered wings beat and beat the dark louder than the sea’s breaking swell.

  ‘Aint yer gonna tell us of yer fear?’ Toper say to Gargantua like he aint part of the club.

  There come a long silence.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve been many places,’ Gargantua say after a while. ‘Venice, Persia …’

  ‘Persia?’ Slangam interrupt. ‘Dint know they have seals there.’

  ‘I weren’t sealing.’

  ‘What were yer doing?’

  ‘Riding from Shiraz to Isfahan.’

  Even if he come out speaking Persian, seem none of us can be more stupefacted. Before he can explain, a drenching rain drive us to the edge of the wood. We huddle in the dark under our ragged coats.

  After that we always sleep at the edge of the wood, the very outer edge, where no moon snakes can surprise us. We move our fireplace up there too. Many nights is so cold we jes huddle and talk.

  ‘What were yer doing in Venice?’ Slangam ask Fatty on the fifth, sixth or seventh night.

  ‘Seeing the frescos and canvases. That were where I begun my career.’

  ‘Career?’ Slangam echo.

  ‘Yair. But I weren’t aiming for Norfolk jail.’

  ‘Who were?’ ask Toper. ‘Norfolk jail move itself around so a man find it even when he loose his arrow in another direction.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ say I.

  Gargantua do a chuckle.

  ‘So a fresco,’ Slangam say. ‘That’s a painting on a wall, aint it?’

  ‘Or a ceiling,’ Gargantua reply.

  ‘How yer steal a ceiling?’ Toper ask.

  None of us exactly know how the weather orta be in the southern ocean, but even before we escape Norfolk it seem colder than usual. The prisoners talk of it a lot. Some say it turned cold in 1809, others argue it’s been cold since the new century come. What no one argue over is the cold itself, just the when. Sometimes it seem the sun just give up shining. Course, everyone have an idea about the why.

  The end-of-timers say it’s the end of time.

  The fie! shouters say it’s a sign from God.

  The ferals say it’s an opportunity, but don’t say for what.

  But some pirate sailors who get sent into the jail talk of a giant volcano that’s been spewing smoke and ash so high it make the sun turn black. That don’t make no sense to me. I never see a clear sky holding a black sun. In the end, most of the days is jes cold and metal dull, and we have to live in it and the why don’t matter.

  So now Slangam worry a lot about the spuds. Do they have long enough to grow before them icebergs sail up from Incognita? If they don’t grow, how we gonna get more? Gargantua say we orta have et them while we had them, least that way we wud of had them. He say when yer got nearly nothing it don’t make sense to bury the little yer do got, don’t we ever hear the story of the talents?

  Toper get in a lather and say course he heared of it, he know his Bible, he don’t want no insinuations. He say a spud aint a talent, that’s stupid, a talent is singing or dancing or making paintings. Gargantua roll his eyes and ask where he learn his Bible, everyone know talents is gold.

  See, that’s the trouble with Gargantua. He’s always saying what everyone know. Only everyone don’t know. It weren’t everyone that had a life ogling art in Venice or riding nags in Persia. Toper tell us he were brung up in a Irish pig sty till he were old enough to flee to the southern ocean, and Slangam grow up in Port Jackson. He know all kind of other things that everyone know, only this is a different everyone.

  Apart from his share of the killing and skinning, Fatty like to supervise the drying. He walk amongst them drying skins declaiming his dirty rhymes to the air like that help it do its drying work. Maybe it do. First he always do the two-backed beast, follered by his namesake’s birth:

  As soon as Gargantua was born,

  he cried not as other babes were used to do,

  but with a loud, sturdy, and manly voice

  shouted some drink! some drink! some drink!

  as if that were what he was accustomed to.

  The drying of the skins cause the next blow up. Slangam say Gargantua aint doing it right. He say yer can’t jes lay them out on the beach, recite yer stupid poems and hope for the best. He say, what happen to the underside? While it stay damp, the fiery sun roast the topside. Or if it rain, the entire effort go to waste and the skin get spoilt. He say we got to build drying frames, they allow the air to flow and also stretch the skin so it don’t wrinkle up.

  Gargantua laugh rude. ‘I’ll fetch my hammer and saw then.’

  Slangam glare.

  ‘What?’ Fatty ask with his horrid mock innocence.

  Slangam take his tomahawk out of his belt and throw it close to Gargantua’s feet. He jump aside. A little storm of dust whirl up when he land. Then he advance on Slangam. ‘Look at these hands,’ say he. ‘Hands of a artist. Do yer think they know how to make a drying frame?’

  ‘I don’t care if they’re the hands of a fucken clock,’ Slangam bellow. ‘Yer think I can do everything? Yer have to chop some of them bushes up, the ones with the spindly branches, then yer have to strip them of leafs and everything and make them the same size. Then they gotta be joined together with plaiting.’

  A groan escape out of me.

  Slangam turn his squinty eyes upon me. ‘What the fuck are you complaining of? Yer don’t do anything except fetch a few bits of firewood.’

  ‘I do my share of the seals.’

  ‘If by share yer mean some.’

  ‘Well, what we gonna plait with then?’ I ask furiously.

  Slangam look around. He say we have to hunt for some harakeke. Don’t we know its uses from Norfolk jail?

  ‘We know its uses and we also know yer need a wahine.’

  Slangam spit. ‘We aint making no fucken sails. Jes lashes. Yer jes plait it like a girl’s hair …’

  ‘I aint ever done that,’ say I.

  ‘Yair, when yer ever plaited a girl’s hair?’ ask Gargantua. ‘Sure it weren’t one of them six foot Norfolk girlies in a rope wig and sailcloth corset? Need to shave every day or she grow a beard?’

  Now I expect Slangam to go in a rage and punch Fatty to the ground, maybe I even foller him down. But Slangam go stiff and bristly as a deck scrubbing brush and tell us of his own little girl in Sydney Cove.

  ‘A child? A real child? Fruit of yer own loins?’ Fatty ask, half unbelief, half alarm.

  ‘Yair. What do yer expect? A fucken pumpkin come out?’

  ‘Well, I dunno what went in.’

  Now Fatty bolt, leastways wobble away fast as he can, but Slangam go in a dream.

  ‘She were bright as a Sydney sun and sweet as a flower.’

  ‘She take after her mother then,’ say I.

  I dunno why I can’t help but rib him, it aint like I want to be in the same camp as Gargantua. It jes annoy me Slangam keep his better nature only for his own.

  ‘I’m sure she were sweet,’ Toper say. ‘Aint every child sweet? At least for a while. Every child have some sweetness in them.’

  Gargantua, who stand a short way off, now declare indignant, ‘Well, that don’t tally with what yer priests say. Aint yer heared of original sin?’

  Toper turn all red and incoherent. ‘That’s jes … jes …’

  ‘Stupid? Yair, I agree.’

  Another big argument get born, swell, grow old.

  Early on Toper do his work share with the help of the wineskins. He were always shaking them to see how full they were. Pretty soon they were empty. Now at every break he ramble on the subject of spirits and wines, and how we can make some more. He snatch at the summer leafs and the few flowers and little berries, all stunted types, and say we put them in the trypot to ferment. But Slangam say the pot’s needed for more important holdings, and everyone but Toper agree.

  ‘Anyway,’ S
langam say, ‘it won’t work. Yer need a yeast.’

  ‘There’s yeasts in the air,’ Toper argue. ‘Wild ones, just floating about. What, yer think them ancient Greeks went along to the yeast shop?’

  Slangam tease him. ‘Well, you go catch yerself a wild yeast then. When yer bring it to me, we can make ourselves some gin.’

  As for me, I aint a worker. Nope. Never have been. I’m a smoker and idler. Oh, and a thief. Why else do I cool my heels in Norfolk jail? Course, I been dragged into Slangam’s plans, but every time he turn his back I have a sit down. Aint nothing here to steal, which I deem a great pity, otherwise I pull my weight like any scrupulous felon.

  ‘Now about them drying frames,’ Slangam say.

  This time all of us groan.

  Angry, Slangam glare down at us from a great heighth. He’s taller than the rest of us, and thinner, yer cud grow beans up him, but now he seem to of growed more. Course, Gargantua aim to slice a few inches off him. He ask who’s going to fetch the harakeke, aint you girls all afraid of the wood?

  Slangam round on him. ‘Sound like yer jes voted yerself the man.’

  Gargantua don’t reply, jes shake his shaggy head.

  ‘It don’t grow in the wood,’ say I. ‘It need the light.’

  I don’t know if it’s true or not, I say it to prevent a row. Then I say it grow in the Interior, something else I don’t know and a place I aint ever been. Lucky for me a hovering storm break and I aint appointed Explorer. We scuttle back to the camp, shrink into the edge of the wood, stare out at the deluge with round eyes.

  After a time, we grow bored. Toper ask about Gargantua’s career, how he steal them frescos. Gargantua explain he were buying objects, not stealing. The more he talk, the more we lose our tongues. He go to foreign climes with foreign gibbering and make purchases?

  ‘But aint yer all adventurers?’ Gargantua ask. ‘Out here in the southern ocean where hardly a man ever been before?’

  ‘Yair,’ Toper agree, ‘but this aint the ocean of the Prophet.’

  That’s right, think I. This island aint in the ocean of the Prophet, of any prophet, it’s a godforsaken Hell strewed with carcasses, bones and skin, and pools of blood that thick up in the night. The smell sicken a man who only ever done clean and sweet-smelling stealing.

  2

  How long we been here? Maybe six weeks. There’s a lot of arguments about it. Trouble is, we dint count from the beginning. At the beginning each of us is thinking he were free. Yer don’t count the free days, only the stretch.

  All my tobacca’s gone, so often do I creep away for a smoke and to spy on the penguins. They have thick orange beaks and they’re black and white jes like anyone expect, but they also have stiff white whiskers growing up the sides of their heads. These they can raise and lower jes like a gentleman can waggle his moustaches. When I tell this to Fatty he say no, penguins can’t do that, he know it from a book.

  Anyway, they do their dance, bowing to each other and shuffling – it’s quaint, even if it aint so mannerly far as the noise and shit go. They all done their loving now and their eggs is appearing in the nests, just scrapes in the ground lined with a few twigs and leafs.

  Also on the penguin side of the island there escape some seals that come ashore for birthing their pups. Maybe they swim around from Hell and get a surprise when they see the light – it do seem so much brighter over here. And they see it’s clean too, or rather the filth come from their own lives and not from their deaths.

  But it aint no Paradise. Penguin eggs get et by seagulls, or roll off a rock slope into the sea. The Mama and Papa penguin mistime their changeover, or get et by a sea lion coming or going. All this can’t be seen in the space of one visit though, it take a lot of idling to see the entire melodrama. And that’s what it is. There’s about as much screaming and fighting as a Punchinello show.

  Not long ago I offer to search for harakeke. I dunno if the plants I find are the same as Norfolk harakeke, but probably they can do the job of plaiting the drying frames together. I find them pretty quick, which please me a lot. I don’t want to search about more’n I have to. This aint a island like Norfolk with banana palms and a balmy breeze. It stand to reason it breed a different kind of creature.

  Aint every creature made special for its place, whale and seals and penguins padded up with runny fat that don’t freeze in the icy oceans, and kangaroos made with meaty legs for the big jumps between water on the barren plains? So I worry every new bit of fresh ground house a creature with teeth. With stings, bites, fangs, poisons and friends. I inch and creep and spy and freeze. Usually I jes startle a flock of birds and come out on another vista of the sea. Even the sea look cruel on a stormy day, grinding like a angry miner at the black rocks. There aint no spiritual uplift like I heared come from the Alps and Chasms and Cataracts on the Grand Tour.

  ‘I wud not go where you go,’ Slangam shudder when I return with my bundle.

  ‘Really? Why yer let me go then?’

  ‘Someone have to go,’ Toper side with him.

  ‘Yair, but why me?’

  No one answer because there aint no good answer for who end up doing what.

  Gargantua frown at the harakeke I brung. ‘That won’t work, it’s too stiff.’

  ‘Yer soften it, stupid,’ Slangam say.

  ‘How?’

  ‘With sea water.’

  ‘And pounding,’ Toper add. ‘Yer have to pound it.’

  So that’s another job that get added. We have to soak the stiff leafs and pound them with rocks. Even when we done both for a long time, they jes don’t look right. Still, we plait them up best as we can and tie together our stripped sticks to a resemblance of drying frames. Over the frames we build a rickety shelter – it’s summer, but the storms don’t know it.

  Slangam’s also been going on every day about our own shelter. ‘Yair, them blizzards is gonna come up soon from the Pole. Look like we have to sit tight for the winter. Have to build a hut. Have to go in the wood for bigger branches.’

  ‘It aint safe in there,’ Toper shiver. ‘Who know what spirits is in there?’

  ‘Thought yer liked the spirits,’ Gargantua tease.

  ‘Demons and the like,’ Toper explain, and spit on the sand.

  ‘Yair, that’s another job.’ Slangam nod his head. ‘We have to clear out them demons.’

  Gargantua laugh big. His belly wobble like a blancmange. ‘Moon snakes and demons?’ he ask.

  ‘Yair,’ Toper quiver. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  Slangam order demon clearing for the next morning. But in the night he and Toper are restless and keep us all awake.

  I say, ‘Gargantua, tomorrow Slangam’s gonna chase out them giant owls and Toper’s gonna kill the moon snakes. Yer dint ever tell us what yer afraid of. What yer going to …?’

  ‘Then we orta be in the wood in the dark,’ Gargantua interrupt. ‘How we gonna find them owls and snakes otherwise?’

  ‘They aint the only problem,’ Toper say. ‘Far as demons go, someone once tell me there’s seven million, four hundred and five thousand, nine hundred and twenty-six of them.’

  ‘Who count them?’ ask Gargantua.

  There come one of them silences that happen before a spit and snarl.

  ‘Maybe yer afraid of Asmodeus?’ Gargantua suggest.

  ‘Who’s he?’ Toper ask.

  ‘What, yer don’t know the king of demons? He look like a sabre-tooth, a python, a satyr, a angel, a man. Every beast ever known all in one.’

  ‘A angel aint a beast,’ Toper object.

  ‘It is when he give his wings to Asmodeus.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Slangam order. ‘Yer all gonna be too tired for the work in the morning.’

  The demon clearing day turn out very cold. It’s the coldest day we had so far on the island. The sky is so thick with cloud it look like a headstone. I start to wish we were doing our usual work of clubbing seals.

  ‘I’ll fetch out Asmodeus,’ Gargantua
declare after he et his breakfast.

  I get annoyed at him. It’s this kind of ribbing that infuriate the others for sure.

  ‘Asmodeus aint in the wood,’ object Toper.

  ‘How yer know that?’

  ‘There aint no kind of beast that’s part angel.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Stop yer fucken arguing,’ Slangam burst out. ‘How do anybody know what’s in there? Whoever’s been here and writ a book about it?’

  Maybe now’s the time for me to say something that pacify. But I can’t think of nothing. Either I sound dumb to Fatty or I seem contrary to them other two.

  ‘Let’s jes go and see, why don’t we?’ I say, and start to walk. I aint a leader of men, but all them others foller.

  It’s a strange kind of wood for sure. It aint composed of tall trees that stand apart and allow traffic through, it’s low and the trees is more like bushes that all bunch together. And what strange bushes they are too – God make a whole new kind jes for the Incognita isles. I walk slow and soon Slangam go out in front with his seal club already half in the air. Close at his heel is Toper, and then Gargantua some way back, he look like he’s taking a stroll in the park. Indeed, he’s so busy communicating to the rest of us that he don’t expect no demons he trip over a large root.

  Gargantua sit on the ground and rub his head while Toper start poking about in the undergrowth for the nests of moon snakes.

  ‘I don’t know what kind of burrow a giant owl even got,’ Slangam fret.

  ‘That’s the trouble with men like you,’ Gargantua say. ‘Yer move on to where the thing live without even knowing if the thing exist. Soon yer arguing is it a nest, is it a burrow, up in them trees or on the forest floor, and the argument make yer clean forget there weren’t no such fucken thing in the first place.’

  Slangam and Toper push on deeper into the wood and Fatty continue to sit on the ground. He start exploring the moss with his sausage fingers. Now he gone from a park walk to having a picnic, it aint hard to picture a cloth spread out under his fat arse and a hamper close at hand.

  It come to me how Gargantua don’t show no interest in keeping a situation pleasant. It’s a strange thing, for he do seem like he were born with some charm. The way he recite his dirty rhymes give me more laughs than any other kind of act I seen in years. It aint jes the words, it’s also the way he hold his bulgy body and the way he seem to be poking fun at his own self. It make Toper and Slangam, always spoiling for a fist fight, look crude. But it’s also like he’s carrying a big stick he keep jabbing at them bears – he don’t show a jot of interest in keeping the violence down.