Preservation

by Jock Serong

  ‘Charlotte, I have Mr Figge with me. I want him to see you.’

  ‘Figge? Is he truly that?’

  ‘Mr Figge, the tea merchant. And Doctor Ewing. You have to sit up.’

  He hauled at her armpits until he had raised her slightly onto the pillows, but was unable to prop her in a sitting position. Each time he tried, she fell to one side or the other. He kept his arms around her ribs, his head steadying hers, and yelled at the doorway. Ewing ran into the room alone, carrying his leather bag. When he reached the bed, he took some of Charlotte’s weight by holding an arm. Grayling continued to look towards the door.

  ‘What’s Figge doing?’

  ‘Lighting a pipe, last I saw.’

  ‘What? Figge!’

  The voice snaked in from outside, calm and pleasant. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are you doing? I thought—’

  Figge’s face appeared around the doorframe, hair swinging below his jaw. ‘You thought?’

  ‘I thought you had agreed to assist!’

  Figge looked confused for a moment. ‘But lieutenant, we haven’t discussed my terms.’ He did indeed have a pipe in his hand. He drew comfortably on it now.

  ‘I have her,’ muttered Ewing. ‘Go and talk to him.’ The doctor laid Charlotte straight again on the pillows and Grayling looked over her before crossing the room to step outside. Figge was reclining on the timber bench beside the doorway with his legs crossed. He looked up and patted the bench beside him: summoning a child who must be gently chastised.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Grayling demanded. ‘You said you would examine her!’

  ‘I know. I did. But I will need certain guarantees from you first.’

  ‘Guarantees? I don’t know how you are accustomed to dealing with people, Mr Figge, but that is not how I do things.’

  ‘Oh please, lieutenant. It’s how the whole place does things, isn’t it?’

  Grayling paced in front of the recumbent Figge, through his clouds of fragrant smoke. His first impulse was to slam the door on the man and tell Ewing to do his best; but he’d seen Ewing’s best.

  He pointed at Figge. Withdrew the hand, resumed pacing. Figge watched in quiet amusement.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘Very little, really. I want a berth on the rescue voyage that goes to Preservation.’

  Grayling could not think of a reason that this would be a bad idea. Figge might recognise landmarks. He would have knowledge of the cargo and…surely there were other advantages.

  ‘Fine.’ Even as he said it, he was at a loss to know why he was being drawn into this charade.

  ‘And—’ Figge raised a hand, and a conspirator’s smile. ‘I’d like a uniform.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A uniform. For the voyage. Some braid…epaulettes. A pretty one, lieutenant. You could arrange that, I’m sure.’

  ‘You have no commission, Figge. What on earth do you want with a uniform?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Theatre? Pomp.’

  ‘For God’s sake. All right…yes.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Figge made his way slowly off the bench and tapped the pipe out on a rock in the garden. Grayling watched him with mounting fury.

  ‘Hurry up!’

  ‘Yes, yes. There is no rush.’ Pocketing the pipe, he stood to his full height, pushed closely past Grayling so that his bulk overshadowed him, then strode into the room. When Charlotte caught sight of him she cowered into the bedclothes, breath shuddering with sobs. Even in a clean set of borrowed clothes he projected ferocity: the eyes and the wild beard drew the attention towards the awful wreck of the nose.

  Grayling reached the bedside and stroked his wife’s hair, taking strands and threading them behind her ear. His fingers touched the lump as he did so, terrifying him anew. Figge moved forward without seeking permission and reached between Grayling and his wife. The lieutenant withdrew, and suddenly Figge had his hands on her body, turning her onto her front. She had gone limp.

  ‘This ear?’

  ‘Yes.’ Grayling stepped helplessly back from the bedside. He could still smell the smoke on Figge. Ewing was standing by, peering over Figge’s shoulder. In his suit and spectacles, the bag clutched at his waist, he only made Figge look more dangerous.

  Figge had a hand on Charlotte’s neck; his long, spatulate fingers reaching all the way around it. The breath caught in Grayling’s throat as he stared at them. They were not the fingers of a tea merchant. Figge swept the hair away from where the swelling was, then bent to examine what he had uncovered. Grayling wanted so desperately for him to find and purge the malignancy that had latched upon his wife, and just as fervently he did not want the man’s hands on her. But they were surprisingly light: a kind of clinical ease infused his every movement.

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered to himself as he probed. ‘’Tis there.’

  He had two fingers placed either side of the abscess, pulling away from each other to stretch it, then pressing inwards to squeeze it. A little blood and pus came from the centre of the swelling. He looked around Charlotte’s jaw to ensure her mouth was still clear.

  ‘Doctor? You have a clean piece of cloth?’

  Ewing hastily placed the bag on the ground and rummaged through it, producing a length of muslin.

  ‘And a blade?’

  The doctor’s face registered alarm. ‘What are you planning to do, sir? Are you qualified in any way to do this? Lieutenant, I—’

  ‘Give him what he seeks, doctor. You’ve had your opportunity.’

  The doctor fumbled through the bag again and produced a scalpel. Figge took it in his right hand and held the wadded cloth against Charlotte’s ear with the left. He drew the scalpel across the crest of the boil and quickly pressed the cloth over it. When he lifted it, the cloth was blotted with a putrid discharge that was now oozing from the incision. He blotted again.

  ‘Give me little forceps,’ he muttered. Ewing did not move but stood stunned as he watched the dabbing and the bleeding.

  ‘Comport yourself, Doctor Ewing. I need to, very finely… those tweezers from this morning. Now, please.’ The honeyed voice, under careful control. He extended his hand towards the doctor, palm upwards. Once more the doctor delved in his bag and found the requested item. Figge mopped several more times before he removed the wad of cloth and stretched the incision open again.

  ‘Lieutenant, would you mind moving out of the light?’

  Grayling shifted slightly to his left, unwilling to be an inch further from his wife than was necessary. His shadow moved away as Figge worked into the wound with the tweezers, wiping them once or twice on the cloth. Charlotte did not once move, nor react to any of this. In a fleeting instant of white-hot terror, Grayling believed her spirit had given up and was gone from her body.

  The tweezers emerged again and this time Figge stood. He held them up as Grayling moved closer. Between their tips was a small creature the size and shape of a sesame seed. It was a dark golden colour with thick stumpy legs and an abdomen that was huge in relation to its size, dimpled like a broad bean. It disgusted Grayling.

  ‘This thing came from in…from under her skin?’

  ‘Yes,’ Figge replied, still peering at it as it wriggled in the grip of the tweezers. ‘I don’t know what they are—some little spider, most likely. A burrowing kind. They cause paralysis.’

  ‘How did you know this?’ asked Ewing.

  ‘I had one on me in the bush. It was near my arsehole—pardon. Very uncomfortable. The natives cut it out for me. It was when you said, lieutenant, that your wife had lost the power in her legs that I understood. The paralysis climbs the body.’

  Grayling watched as Figge’s hand flexed on the tweezers. The creature burst.

  ‘How much longer would—’

  ‘Days.’ The tall man moved closer to the lieutenant, fixed him with cold eyes. ‘I saved her, lieutenant.’ He raised the soiled tweezers to eye level between them, then drew them towards his mouth. For one horrifying moment Gra
yling thought he was going to lick them. But he grinned as he spoke: ‘I did this. You understand?’

  Figge bent and dropped the scalpel and the tweezers into Ewing’s bag. ‘And you, doctor—see to cleaning up that wound. She should be perfectly fine in the morning.’ He turned to Grayling. ‘I look forward to your confirmation of the terms we discussed.’

  The eyes bored into Joshua Grayling. He cursed himself for having given in to this bully. A decision formed without thought. ‘There will be no such terms,’ he snapped. ‘Now get out, I beg of you.’ He was shaking. Figge stood briefly in the doorway, wiping his hands on the thighs of the borrowed trousers. Grayling and the doctor stared back at him. Charlotte was still face down but beginning to moan under the wad of cloth that Grayling held over the wound.

  ‘Very well. I shall take myself back to my quarters,’ Figge said evenly. He looked back at Charlotte, who still had not moved. The sheet was pulled down on her back, exposing a shoulder and one limp arm. Ewing held the gauze against her head.

  Figge smiled faintly as if a passing thought had occurred to him.

  ‘Don’t ever get her in the family way, lieutenant. I felt those hips, friend. A good-sized infant will kill her—I guarantee it.’

  22

  There was a morning when the sun shone so perfectly over everything, and you sent my father ahead to lead a party searching for water. He was gone the whole day, along with those men. The sea was calm, the waves lit silver from behind. Gannets dived at unseen bait. The surf pounded itself into a fine mist that hung in the air and further out, the blue of the ocean was smeared with green where the wind had begun to whip.

  You, Mr Clark, were locked in some argument with Mr Thompson and had no need for me. I walked for most of the day alone, sometimes in company with one or two of the Bengalis, each of us too tired to talk. I lost myself in my own thoughts, small things rendered clear and sharp.

  I saw a moth hidden perfectly against the bark of a tree. I heard the squeaking of our feet in the sand. When our way led into the bush I heard birds that sang in loud peeps in the gullies. Returning to the beach, I felt the ocean’s soft rushes on the shore, so different to its angry crashing on the southern coast where the ship was lost.

  We crossed three river mouths that day and the wind sighed from each as though the land was breathing. As we moved slow across the beach between the second and third, Mr Figge came alongside me. He had waited for the moment, I knew. The lascars were scattered along the warm rocks we were crossing; some behind, some in front. My father was away and you were deep in discussion with the mate.

  He was smiling at the sun, then at me. I made sure to look straight ahead.

  ‘Good morning my young friend,’ he said. Nothing in the words to fear, nothing in the manner but a man simply saying hello. From another man you might say the voice was lovely. But it stirred cold fear in me. I nodded to show I had heard him, but did not speak.

  ‘You understand me. You have English, I believe, and it is perfectly good. Do you know you talk in your sleep? In English?’ He laughed.

  I walked on, trying to show him nothing. He must have aimed to trick me. My parents had never told me I talked in my sleep. But was this world so different that I had betrayed myself without knowing it?

  ‘It is a wise strategy to separate yourself from the world of these men. They want to assume your ignorance, so you give them what they expect. Clever boy.’ He watched me closely. ‘I think this ruse of yours will fail, however. People get tired. They make mistakes. I think you will make a mistake. Do you have another plan after that? When it is revealed that you understood all along?’

  Our feet crunched into a new stretch of beach, his footfalls heavy and widely spaced, mine fainter and faster between. Again I made an empty face and prayed that it would hold, as the animal eyes searched. The smile around his mouth did not belong with the eyes: it was bright and open like a child’s. I thought then that I had never known such evil. I knew nothing.

  ‘The problem with disguises, with these false versions of yourself,’ he continued, ‘is that one day there comes an intersection: a person who knew you before, a place you’ve already been. I myself have been other people, you see. The world is big enough to accommodate them all. But one must be vigilant. If you live through this, people will know your name. They will recognise you—the boy who survived the disaster of the Sydney Cove. Can you remain the endearing mute boy in the face of all that attention, lad?’

  He laughed a little, then fell silent. The beach ended at a rock pile. A path began there—other feet had worked around this problem—then we came into an open forest where the lower part of every tree was burnt. The middle of each held the leaves, and the tops were bare.

  Still Mr Figge stayed close to me. Still he had not spoken. Two heavy branches overhead rubbed together, a sound like human pain. Then for a long time the only sounds were our crunching steps, the hissing of the wind through the hard, dry leaves and the distant roar of the ocean. The birds had stopped calling.

  I thought about the days of tricking money from the travellers at the river. My desire to be among the boys who could do it, who could flash a glinting coin, the ones with the careless confidence. And the handful of times I tried it, Mr Clark, it worked. Trip a man over by colliding with his knees, help him up and clear his pockets in the process. Or have him hand over his own money with a tearful story of a dying sister.

  You’re no different, I thought. Slow and cocksure. I will have your fucking coin.

  Careless confidence. I looked straight into those eyes I feared and hated, and I smirked. I spent every coin I’d ever liberated in the markets; I summoned every ounce of the swagger I saw in the biggest of the riverbank thieves and I poured it all into that sneer. And it took him, for a heartbeat or two. He looked confused at the show of defiance. Then he threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Very good, lad. Very good. You’ve removed any trace of doubt that you understand me; but really, marvellous effort.’ He walked in silence for a few minutes, staying close by, until his laughter had faded away. Then he began to speak again, more thoughtfully.

  ‘Do you think,’ he asked, as much to the birds as to me, ‘you have already passed over the place where you will die? After all, nearly everyone will die in a place they have already been. They cannot know if it is the highway, or the river or their own bed. But one such place will be the last they ever see, and although they see it every day, they do not know its sad significance. But look at us—walking almost certainly to our deaths, and it will without doubt be on a stretch of ground we have never seen. Transported from this world to another, through a portal we are yet to experience.

  ‘And that death, it seems likely, will be at the hands of an agent we do not anticipate. Maybe one of the natives. Or a wild animal—do you think we know of all the beasts here by now? I think not. But maybe it will be one of us, that last person we see. Like the familiar sideboard in the corner of the invalid’s chamber…ah! It is you!’ He pointed at some of the men walking nearby. ‘Or you, or you.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it, that this lot believe they will go to one God. Have a, hmm, a meeting man to man. About the sins. You’—he pointed a teacher’s finger my way—‘you believe you will answer to many gods. But these people out there, your Kurnai, they’ve made a god of their landscape. You understand? None of it isn’t God.’

  He seemed to dwell on this for a time, deep in thought but never letting me away. Then he said:

  ‘The fascinating thing is the way the world repeats itself. I have been wrecked before, boy. Fifteen years ago. Pondoland coast, on the Cape. Terrible thing. She was an Indiaman, the Grosvenor, and the tragedy almost exactly prefigured ours. A hundred and fifty on her, and laden with wealth. How does such a thing happen? Happen twice? I was fourteen—that would be your age, near enough?’ He looked at me intently but I did not react, and he continued talking. ‘We were cast upon the rocks and the survivors regrouped on the shore. It was decid
ed we must walk. Fierce tribesmen in the bush. Bush is an African word, did you know that? Of course not’—he winked—‘you can’t understand me, let alone the Africans.

  ‘Six weeks we marched, and only eighteen of us made it to Cape Town. How do you suppose all those people died, my friend? Exposure? Attacks by the savages? Well, perhaps. That was certainly what the authorities were told.’ He snapped off a branch so we could pass under it. ‘One survives and is reborn. What an interesting discussion this would be, wouldn’t it? If only you understood me…’

  The afternoon’s gold light came down now, in sparks and haze through the trunks: the land caught in a sigh.

  ‘You remember the badger sow I caught the other day?’ he went on. ‘They’re not like our badgers, these ones; it had a second cunt.’ He stared at me intently, seeking a reaction. ‘Aye! Two cunts—who would’ve thought? And the strangest thing: after I dispatched it with the rock, I carried it along…bloody heavy it was…and as the carcass cooled an infant stuck its head out of the other cunt. Just appeared there! It seems they carry their young that way, tucked up in there.’

  He placed a hand lightly on my chest now, stopping me. He began to mutter in his excitement. ‘Now this is today’s lesson. The parent might provide that refuge, inside itself. Cosy in there, aye, but the parent died. All parents die. And the body cools and the unknowing child emerges, wondering why the world went cold.’

  His eyes, his teeth. He was leaning close, staring unfocused. For all the world I knew I must not react.

  ‘I ate the parent; well, you know that. But I, ah…’ He licked his lips and smiled. ‘I spent some time on the child.’

  Then the walking again; for the walking never ended. The dying sun made evening shadows in our footprints and still he wore me close. We came up off the beach: more open rocks, some with small round pebbles trapped in them. Us in the grip of the land. I ached inside and I wanted only an answer from the rocks. Had the natives found a way to trap those pebbles? Could it be that they talked to the rocks, and if that were so—could they keep a terrible man from his designs?