Preservation

by Jock Serong

  These craft are well capable of carrying two men, and our friends spend the next hour ferrying us one by one, chattering happily as they paddle. Never once does an accident occur: not a drop of water is suffered to land on us or our measly belongings.

  Arranged on the other side, we sit awhile, making what passes for conversation—you can get a fair bit done with gestures—until eventually, seeing that the two Walbanja men aren’t about to leave us, I gather a small pile of firewood and gesture that we might cook the walabee. The lascars have somehow damaged the flint that was keeping us alive, fucking silly bastards, and now we must undertake a pantomime for the natives, rubbing our hands and making shivering noises to indicate our need for a spark. They know full well what the problem is—a tinderbox that works when it fucking well pleases—but they wait for the entire display so they can laugh and produce the sticks.

  The younger one sits on his arse and points his knees outwards with the soles of his feet together, so the frontal viewer receives an unobscured view to his chop and bags. He places a long stick end-first in a slot on a flatter stick which he has laid on the ground, as though stepping a mast in a tiny model ship. Then he rubs the tall stick between his palms so it rotates fast in the groove, steadying the whole operation with his feet. The older one watches all this with evident satisfaction: then he cradles a handful of dry fibres just near the end of the stick. The spinning produces hot dust, which he scoops into his ball of tinder, blowing gently on it.

  This trick captivated us each time we saw it: at first nothing much occurs, then a puff of smoke appears and increases, building to a magical point when a little whoomf issues forth, and the ball of fibre bursts into flame. This time, to reduce the need for puffing, the older man stands and whirls the fibre-ball around in his extended hand so the breeze does the work. Or perhaps he merely does this for theatre: everything is a performance.

  The natives depart in their mysterious way once the fire’s going. Kennedy and Clark have been out since we landed on this side of the river; the former without notice to anyone, sly cur, and the latter surveying a route for the following day. By the time Clark returns, slouched and limping, we’ve built the fire up and allowed it to burn back down again, making a bed of good coals. We’ve got the little kangaroo on it, filling the air with the foody stink of singeing fur, its little dark eyes shrunk in like raisins dried by the cleansing heat, the puppydog nose perished and shrivelled to leather. I confess by now I want to rip the thing from the embers and gnaw on it, but I am on my best behaviour.

  And in wanders this ridiculous twat, shrinks in horror from the bubbling rat on the fire and declares that we can’t eat it.

  Fucking watch me, I reply.

  It’s Friday, he says. Sixteen April by my reckoning.

  So? says someone.

  Good Friday. No matter our straitened circumstances, I will not have us reduced to the state of these—he waves at the bush—people. With but three fingers I could lay waste to the pious look on his dial, but I’m struck dumb with disbelief. Clark starts trying to drag the roast from the fire. The spectacle’s unpopular enough with Thompson, who’s protesting feebly between fits of coughing, but the lascars can’t believe it. Whatever god or gods they worship, seems they’d not deny a feed to men slowly starving. Their ribs are starker than the ones on the charring rodent, and Clark has sorely tested the bounds of their tolerance with this display. It takes the endless forbearance of the old man, Prasad, to keep them in order. It’s a feat of no little skill. Some of them are plant-eaters, on account of their religion, but the majority are most definitely not. He speaks in some Indostani patter: they respond quietly in assent.

  At which point Kennedy turns up.

  What’s going on? he inquires, sensing the mood.

  Fuckhead here’s holding a conventicle, I tell him.

  It’s Good Friday and we will observe a short fast from the taking of meat. It won’t kill anyone, says the newly appointed bishop.

  Well I’m not wi’ the kirk, laughs Thompson, and I doubt these darkies are neither. He takes a step towards the smoking meat, now lying in the grass, and grabs it by one paw. And then things get interesting. Clark takes up the tomahawk and gets himself between the man and the meat. I’ll thank you to step back, Mr Kennedy, he says. There’s a part of me watching this charade that thinks you didn’t look so lively in defence of the girl, but he gets his way and Kennedy backs off, looking thunder at old Clarkey.

  But while the two of them are locking horns the roast is unattended, so I lean over and tear off a leg. It’s delicious. By the time Clark looks back I’m having difficulty gnawing on the thing because the chuckling’s got me. He summons all his little fury into a glare that only makes me laugh harder. I wave the bone at him.

  ‘Come on, reverend. Have a go. It’s delicious.’

  He raises the tomahawk again but I don’t believe his heart’s in it. Is he angry on his Lord’s behalf, or because I’ve defied him? Just in case, I stand up while I eat.

  He swings it, fuck him. Level with my eyeballs.

  I have to take the thing by its handle as it comes round. I can hold his eyes there and he lacks the steel, of course, to stare me down; a little more pressure and he has to concede the weapon. I smack him halfweight with the back of the blade and drop it at his feet.

  It takes the poor idiot long minutes to regain his composure, holding his jaw where I clocked him. Then he sends the crew off to gather roots as we have seen the natives do, leaving only me and the deathly looking Thompson there beside the fire. Scruffy ruminants they are, grumbling and cracking their way through the undergrowth. I sit myself back down by the warm glow, chewing on the walabee leg as Thompson’s glazed eyes watch me. He is pale, maybe near expiring. Please, he says. But his wants are none of my concern.

  Eventually they all return clutching their daft handfuls of greenery which they proceed to chew and spit. I’ve ripped the leg down to the bone and tossed it and Clark fixes me with a furious stare. Thompson sleeps now; the rest are out of earshot. I speak even and quiet to Clark.

  Which of them dies, then?

  He feigns horror, the hypocrite.

  You know how it is to go. It’s you and me reaches Sydney. I didn’t invite any of these.

  He looks at his mangled feet.

  Why don’t you set us underway, Clarkey? Take Thompson in his sleep. I’m talking soft, making a lullaby for Mr Pious with his bunch of spinach. No match for you in his condition. Just pinch his wee nose and clamp his mouth. Two or three twitches and your good lord’s taken him. Hmm?

  Nothing.

  You do that and I’ll do the next three.

  He’s still fascinated by his feet. I need to do the talk again.

  If any of them makes it to Sydney, I sigh, they will tell of the state of that ship. The one you bought, suicidal fucking tub of a thing. The company will never darken the doors of New South Wales again. And oh—if Hamilton gets there, first thing he says to save his own skin? ‘Clarkey made me do it.’ They know about your debts. They’ll tell the company.

  It delights me, the panic inside him.

  The deal holds: the insurance money’s yours, every penny, and you can forget me and disown me, and once those brave idiots on the rock are dead and rotting, I’ll tend to the casks. What do you say, hm?

  He finally looks up. Go to the fucking devil, Mr Figge.

  Don’t be like that, now. These all are going to die out here regardless. You and I, we’re merely hastening the process. No harm enriching ourselves at the same time.

  I swear his lip quivers. Well if they’re going to die, they’re not going to tell. There’s no need for me in the thing.

  Fine, I shrug. I’ll start it then. But I’m telling you I’m starting it, see? So you best stop me somehow if you don’t want it to start.

  He neither moves nor speaks.

  Just as I thought.

  The fire died and the bush went quiet, and the shufflers and the yippers were done with t
heir chorus.

  Then a new sound began: moaning, and the gurgling of bowels. It started with either Thompson or, more likely, Kennedy, for the one who still lay there was coughing. The other one rose and groaned a little, took himself ten yards aside and sprayed his guts on the undergrowth. He made no attendance to his arse but hitched the remnants of his strides and lay down again.

  Within minutes, the lascars were moving likewise. One by one they stood and bolted to the cover of the bush to squirt and spew their poor choice of victuals from both ends. The kangaroo sat well in my guts, and no more than contented wind had escaped me all evening. I lay with my head on a small nest of leaves I’d gathered, hands under one cheek as I’d become accustomed to do. Any man with two hands has a pillow.

  I pondered deeply as the shitters came and went, and before long I came to realise that the old man was the answer. I saw what was clear about him: that the Bengalis loved him, that he was their quiet and unshifting lodestar, that rarest of men who knows what to do and how to act. Twelve lascars, him at their head. Christ, he was their Christ. And so I must be his Caiaphas. But I was a man like any other: I couldn’t very well eliminate twelve of them simultaneously, nor even by gradual increments.

  Then it came to me: that perhaps their very devotion was the key to it.

  Oh babbling Babel and Barabbas, the bony Messiah with his knuckly old head and its wispy hair. He was down to the thin trousers that had once been white but were now stained with the earth and his body’s oozings, nothing to cover his concave chest anymore. Let’s be reasonable: his days were numbered. And so I decided it.

  The next day, we were again in the forest country, heavy and dark even in the middle of the day. The air was warm and still, mist blurring the middle distance. It shouldn’t have been so easy to cut him away from the herd but there was little involved. I am taking Prasad to search for the natives, I announced, and Clark merely shrugged. The old man was surprised—it was not something we had done in our wanderings thus far. I came in close to him, took his hand where others could not see it, and placed it over the hilt of the knife, lodged in my belt. Then I whispered soft: Refuse me and I will drive this blade through your son’s heart.

  Love. A most dependable lever over a good man.

  He pulled back, fear and alarm in his brown eyes. From across the camp, the boy was craning to see what was afoot. He looked torn, as one would expect: love of his father, fealty to Clark, which really was love of his father as well. He made a small move in the old man’s direction and was called back by Clark: His Indolent Excellency required his midday victuals. The boy looked from me to his father, who made some tiny expression of resignation. He went to the boy, placed a hand on his shoulder and lowered his head. For a long moment his nose almost touched his fingers and the bone of the boy’s shoulder. When he turned away, the boy stayed.

  We walked through the giant trees, following a contour in the undergrowth that may have been a track, or perhaps just a string of coincidence. Upwards it wound and we followed it, both of us struggling on wounded feet. After an hour or more the path led to an open space that gave a view down: over the folding swells of the forested hills, out to the coast and the ocean beyond. The sky was vast and placid over the sea. Far below, a curl of smoke revealed the location of our fellows, the boy no doubt tending to that fire as he wrestled with the pot and the now-permissible remains of the kangaroo. The boy would be in turmoil; he sensed something.

  I looked to the old man and found he was looking directly back at me. His eyes spoke of a clear understanding. Even as they darted to either side of me, seeking any available means of escape, they indicated his comprehension of what was happening.

  I took Kennedy’s knife from my belt.

  You will care for the boy? he asked simply.

  You have my word.

  What now?

  We need to walk further.

  He pointed behind himself, deeper into the bush. Eyed the knife. That way?

  His head never turned but once, when he reacted to the shouting of the yellerwhite birds that hung upside down by their claws, biffing one another. He eyed them with what might have been fear.

  Never mind them. They’s herbivores, I said. ’Twon’t be them as takes you.

  There were faint shuffles and whispers in the undergrowth; the passage of unseen creatures.

  Interesting though. Where are the predators on this land? Must be some. Wolves, maybe? Bears? I made a paw in the air but he didn’t laugh.

  I corrected him occasionally, to set him back on the path I wanted as the land tilted down, shadowed now, the darkness not far away. A chill had descended. Presently the trees gave way to an opening and I could hear water. We were passing along the side of a gigantic tree that had fallen across a creek, the rills of it now licking our feet. I cannot say for sure what place I was seeking, but this seemed about right. I thought to ask him if he was right with the Lord; but likely his gods were more complex than that.

  At the point where the giant trunk crossed the creek bed, I took him by the shoulder—no force was required—and had him kneel in the damp hollow where the trunk met the ground. Rocks and small rushes and wet moss lined that final place. Such was his fear now that he was nearly all eyes. His breaths were short and urgent, an aspect of these moments I’d not been able to savour the last time, in Fort William, because I’d taken Figge—the previous Figge—by surprise.

  The idea occurred to him, as it was always going to, that a chance might still be open. I saw his eyes move before his body reacted: he dashed left of me but I was on him. I clubbed him twice with the knife’s hilt: the first one buckled him senseless and the second laid him out on the mat of soft humus.

  I sat athwart him and thought about what could be done. His left hand had ended up between my feet, and I picked it up and took the knife to it, thinking of taking it off. I had watched the old boy and I knew him to be left-handed: this hand therefore responsible for both the highest and the lowest functions in his life. Were I to discommode him thus, it might be interesting: stuck out here he would eventually have to eat the hand. Such sweet paradox, struggling with one hand to eat the other. Here, in the whispering gully under the giant trees I might have struck upon a metaphor for life’s futility.

  But then I chided myself for making art of business. I took the old man by the chin and placed the knife to open him from ear to ear when a better idea came to me with remarkable clarity.

  I had to lift him myself—his strength had deserted him. What had caught my attention was the jagged stumps of two branches, one of which had poked me painfully as I lowered him into his position. Some tempest, some flood or roaring of the unsound earth had rammed this great tree into the riverbank and in doing so had torn away its limbs. The broken-off boughs, each as thick as the human thigh, formed a set of steps. I threw the old man upon my shoulder and climbed them; then, standing atop the broad ancient timber, I laid him down once more. The chorus of the forest fell silent: the chippering, the rawks, the rhythmic thuds of the departing kangaroos—all subsided as I laid my offering on the altar.

  Such peace he radiated there! Prepared for one thing, bless him, but not the other.

  I knelt astride his chest, looking over his feet. I rolled his left foot over so that its arch and its inner curve looked up at me; felt along his ankle till I had the bone in my fingers. Then I took the knife and forced it down into the dip between that bone and the big tendon. The tip went through and stuck in the wood beneath. I wiggled it free of the wood but left the blade in him, turned the tip slightly and whipped it outwards to sever the tendon. There was a snapping sound from within the leg, the release of a taut rope. Then the blood started to run freely from the slice I had created, a dark spreading pool on the ancient timber, sticky in the dim light.

  He screamed of course, bellowed fit to wake his ancestors, and that was the aim of the exercise. There was weeping in among the screaming, and I couldn’t say to what it referred, but I could make out just
enough to wonder if the clenching of his eyes spoke of more than agony. Perhaps, belatedly, he understood my plan: for now he was not just sacrifice but bait.

  I reported late to the camp, having first washed in the creek. Clark was still up, standing watch while the others slept, his face restless and fearful.

  Seeing I was alone, he inquired as to the fate of my companion. I told him that we had been set upon, and that the natives had carried away the old man. He was brave, I said loudly, so my words could be heard by his countrymen. It was very hard to say what their intentions were but the last I saw of him he was alive. We were over the first hill, down in a gully.

  You’re wet, Clark observed, and I responded that there had been a struggle, and in fleeing from the evildoers I had fallen in a creek. That seemed enough to lay the scent.

  Meanwhile, the lascars were waking up one by one, and someone woke the boy, who was sleeping next to Clark. I saw his face struck by the shock, and then the great wave of grief. He stood resolute, small man, while the tears rolled down his cheeks. The other Indians gathered around him, consoled him with embraces and a stream of their gibberish. I must credit their fidelity, these people, how they cleave to one another in such times.

  The boy burst forth from among them—he was having none of my story—and raced at me, flailing at my chest with his fists. I swatted him off, catching his eye with the back of my hand: the lascars snarled and leapt to his aid but there was little intent in it.

  I dried myself as best I could and lay down to sleep, covered with enough leaves and branches to hold some of the warmth against my body. I rolled onto my side so that the knife was under my hip: uncomfortable, but better than having it stuck into me during the night. The others, the lascars at least, would have slept little. Their leader was gone, and they had decisions to make. A watch was posted against the remorseless savages I had described.