by Elna Holst
Nothing wrong with my geographical trivia knowledge, but what had I been doing in Cambodia—because I’m not a resident, I’m pretty sure—and besides, why would I have been staying at a hotel, in that case? More specifically: what did I do in Cambodia to end up in my present condition?
I want another nicotine gum. I want to curl up into a foetal position on the bank of the stream and stay here until some rescue party or other comes looking for me. They must—surely, they must—be looking for me? Whoever they, or I, might be.
Though if I am presumed drowned…
“You’re gonnae have to fend for yerself, hen.”
I know that expression. I know the soft, broad accent—it was mine once, too, before I went off to medical school, to the big city university, and from there to a job at… It was my grandfather’s voice. But Grandda is dead.
I burst into tears.
Chapter Five
THE THIRD THING I do, after days of falling asleep on the ground, against a palm tree, anywhere, is to think about constructing a shelter for myself.
If I am, indeed, in Cambodia, or thereabouts, there will be a rainy season coming. I have no idea when—I don’t think I’ve ever known—but even if rain sounds like heaven right now, I need protection against the sun.
And there may be animals. I haven’t seen any except for those teasing, eerily human-sounding birds, but sooner or later they are bound to grow less shy of the impostor and start to accept me as one of their own: a likely prey.
Building a shelter on a desert island was not part of my medical training, however. I don’t have any tools other than my penknife, and I’m reluctant to blunt it by applying it to any heavier sawing and hacking.
For all I know, there may be other emergencies. I sincerely hope not, but all the same.
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.”
My voice is taking on a hoarse, midpoint-of-a-cold quality. Yet, I insist on talking to myself; I insist on making noise. It makes my situation feel slightly more real, slightly less of a nightmare. I can speak. I may have lost my memory, my bearings, my left hand—but I haven’t lost my voice, my reason.
“Mad people gibber away at themselves all day, you know,” I interject, as I carry another largish piece of rock from out of the thicket to the strip of beach I have chosen for my temporary abode.
I will be clearly visible from here. In case—when—as soon as anyone comes by. It’s bound to happen. It is only a matter of time. I’ve seen the flicks. You have to stay close to the beach.
I place the stone on top of the others laid out in a semi-circle on the sand. I’m proud of myself, all things considered. Lifting and carrying stuff isn’t child’s play with just the one hand.
If I get back, I’ll have a newfound sense of respect for my patients’ struggles. When I get back.
“Fuck,” I scratch at my stump, though it doesn’t help; it’s not the stump that itches. “I hope I wasn’t a surgeon.”
The past tense is appropriate, in that case.
When the curved wall is high enough for me to sit upright inside without any risk of my head ending up in my imagined ceiling, I stop for some water and coconut meat. I’ll end up with melanomas at this rate, my ruddy chest continually exposed to the sun, even though I’ve kept the tatty dress jacket buttoned up during daylight hours. I am beginning to wish I had torn up the jacket instead of my shirt for bandages. The jacket will last me longer, though.
The soles of my feet feel like two giant blisters. Whoever I am, I’ve obviously not been the barefoot, outdoorsy kind. It would make sense to try to make myself a pair of sandals before I am in need of bandages for my feet as well as my stump.
Huffing, I munch on my ubiquitous coconut. “The busy life of the castaway.”
Rising to my feet, I limp over to the edge of the jungle where I have left the branch-like palm tree leaves I’ve gathered off the ground within a three foot perimeter of the stream. I haven’t worked up the nerve to delve deeper into the wilds.
As I’ve justified to myself, I might miss my ticket back to civilization. Maybe when I have finished my shelter, put up my ‘beacon’ and ‘flag’.
“Maybe you’re just a scaredy-cat.”
I decide not to talk back at myself. Instead, I drag the palm-tree leaves down to my little hut and spread them out on top.
“Oh, look—it’s a house!” A flow of childlike glee, the breath of a memory: building tree houses in the forest of…with…
I shake my head brusquely at the pinch of despondency that threatens to obliterate my fragile equilibrium. What does it matter who I built tree houses with in my childhood? Chances are, they don’t remember me either.
Perhaps no one does.
I flop to the ground and crawl into my house. I’m not going to cry. As I reach my bag, I pull another precious nicotine gum out of it—just the one this time—and pop it in my mouth while I proceed to thatch the holes in my dry stone wall with coconut husks.
Chapter Six
A FISH IS lying on the sand, at the mouth of my shelter. I shrink back, like a mouse fearing a trap, pressing my trusty handbag to my breast as a shield. The fish doesn’t move. Its beautiful pale-grey scales gleam in the sun. It’s fresh, but dead, unmistakably.
“Where—”
I bite my lip. Of all the times to speak out loud to myself. Carefully, on all three and three-quarters, I edge closer to the opening. The fish smells fishy.
My mouth waters.
I could kill for a slice of sashimi. But I don’t have to, do I? Here it is, served up to me, for all intents and purposes, on a silver platter.
I grab my knife.
“Is… Is anyone there?” My voice is scratchy, sleep drunk. Brimming with atavistic fear.
The fish says nothing. Neither does anyone else.
Suddenly overcome with a greedy, ravenous, oblivious hunger, I thrust out my hand and snatch it up.
“I’ll have you for breakfast,” I coo, my thumb stroking its slippery-soft flesh, my whole body shaking. “I don’t care where you came from.”
I am ready to sink my teeth in it right away, like a wild animal—well, any animal, really—domestication only goes so far—but I hold back, placing it on an oval of husk on the ground and securing it with my stump as I slice it open, removing the offal, the bones.
I know how to do this. I’ve done it a thousand times.
“A physician and a fish chef? Hidden depths.”
If only I had some grains of salt, a slice of lemon. For that matter, how about butter and a frying pan, while I’m at it?
I giggle hysterically. I should stick my head out and check… After I’ve eaten.
The first piece of the raw, gloopy flesh is pure heaven. The second isn’t all that bad. The third makes my nose wrinkle up a bit.
I drape the fourth piece over some coconut I’ve kept by my ‘bed’ of palm leaves. It’s edible.
“Someone’s high maintenance, I should say.”
The fish will be good for me. If only I can keep it down. As a doctor, I know this. As a person, I wish I’d had some means of cooking it.
When I’ve finished my meal with a fifth and final slice, I cut up the remainder of the fish into thin strips that can be dried on a rock outside my hut. Though this will infallibly attract animals, birds—certainly birds. I scratch my head.
“On Iceland, they bury shark meat in the ground and leave it there to rot; it’s a local delicacy.”
I snort.
“Interesting factoid, Brain, but somehow I don’t think that would be much of a delicacy in a tropical clime.”
In the end, I have to admit there’s only one sure-fire way of keeping it. I close my eyes. “Finish your plate or there won’t be any dessert.”
I open my mouth wide and stuff it with the rest of the poor, already a bit funky-smelling fish. It makes me gag. It makes me want to spit it all out again, but I won’t; I clap my hand over my gob and force myself to chew, to swallow.
My forehead prickles with sweat. The corners of my eyes sting. My lips tremble.
“You’re mean,” I blubber against the moist inside of my hand, forgetting caution, forgetting everything but that I want to get away from myself, from this. I want to wake up between crisp, Egyptian cotton sheets with a 1,200 thread count in my room at the Hotel Danielle in Sihanoukville, where my name is printed in the passport I have put in the left-hand drawer of the desk, with my return ticket, my keys—oh God!
An eye is looking in at me. Through a chink in my wall, a dark, wide-open eye observes me. I gasp. The eye blinks and is gone.
“Wait!”
I scramble to the opening of my hovel, fear and desperation battling to gain control over me. An eye—a human eye—could it be?
“Wait,” I call again, as I rise clumsily to my feet in the sand outside, right where my fish was—my bait—and I can’t tell whether I am feeling the reverberations of quick retreating footfalls through the ground, or whether my overwrought imagination is fabricating it. I can see nothing. Not the barest trace of another being, another person on the quiet beach. As I study it, the jungle greenery waves back at me, as if to say: We could hide an elephant in here and you’d be none the wiser. Go on, why don’t you come over and take a peek?
I sniff, crossing my arms in front of me.
“I’m not interested in elephants.”
Anyway, it makes no sense. If there is someone—and my mind still balks at the idea, my eyes swim; but okay, if there is someone—wouldn’t they have come out to help me before now? What kind of vicious creature would just watch me, a cripple, a castaway, an utter destitute in rags and tatters, trying to fend for myself—to survive!—in alien surroundings? Marooned—trapped—no, I refuse to…
Something in the sand catches my eye. By my jungle-side wall, where the Eye had been—there, a mark, an indentation in the closely-packed ground.
A footprint.
I fall to my knees, my hand shooting out as if I don’t know whether to caress the print, worship it, or rub it out. For comparison’s sake, I put my own foot beside it. It’s not my own. The foot that stood here was wider—not bigger, in particular—but more square.
A glacial, icy certainty settles over me, as I hug my knees, bite into my own skin. The owner of that foot is after me. The owner of that foot is hunting me, playing with me—like a cat toys with its catch.
“I’m going to die,” I mutter into my own flesh. I exhale jaggedly. I am so very tired. So very tired, and disgusted, and weak.
Chapter Seven
DR DAMNED-IF-I’ll-Mope-Around-Any-More checks that she has everything she will need—or rather, all I can carry—in my handbag. There’s my penknife, my nicotine gums (I need those), as much coconut as I could stuff into it, my whisky-turned-water bottles, and the key card from the Hotel Danielle. I probably won’t be needing that. But I can’t bring myself to leave it behind.
I curl my toes around the scratchy coconut husks I have strapped to my feet with the torn-out lining of my skirt. As far as sandals go, they’re beyond unsophisticated, but—miraculously—they stay put. They may not last me more than a few days; but it’s something—anything is better than putting my blistery soles in direct contact with the rocks and earth and undergrowth. I’m going into the jungle. I’m going to put an end to this game of hide-and-seek, once and for all.
Smirking at myself, I gingerly tread away from my beachside residence. I must look a fright. I must look a right Raggedy Ann. I taste the name, turn it around in my mind before discarding it; it’s becoming a habit. I am no Ann.
I glance up to check the sun’s position in the sky—that evil scourge of the Earth. I wonder, incidentally, if there was ever a time when, like most Western Europeans, I was a sun-worshipper? Noon is not too far away already; ripping up the polyester lining to make the straps for my sandals was a slog. The fabric kept slipping away from me—away from my stump—until I found a way to lean on my left elbow, putting all my weight into keeping it in place.
I gave Stumpy more than one dirty look in the process.
All the while, my ears were pricked, my breathing bated, my pulse quick and alive to the possibility that, at any moment, the Eye might return. But no, as far as I’ve been able to tell, there’s been no one.
Before venturing off, I walk over to the strange edifice I have erected to catch the eye of any passing vessels. It’s built out of sticks and stones, in the main, precariously held together by the aid of Hairy Gumball. I hope the birds won’t attack it. I hope it will remain standing for more than a day. At the top, I’ve tied my bra to a stick, emulating a flag—it’s the only sign of civilised life I could think of parting with. It should spark curiosity, at least.
“Well then, would you stop procrastinating?”
My torso is chafing against the coarse inside of my dress jacket. Holding myself as tall and proud as I can manage—that’s the idea, at any rate—I turn towards the palm-tree grove, which I have memorised as the entry point to the stream, and charge ahead.
IT ISN’T A ‘fairly small’ island. In truth, I am starting to wonder if it is an island at all—but the way the beach curved, the sea on all sides, stretching out without interruption—without hope. And yet, I’ve been walking for days—or so it feels like; I’ve tried to keep track of the passing of light and dark, using the stump of the yellow pencil I found to make marks on the inside of my bag. There are three marks. Although I’m not quite sure whether one of them wasn’t in fact a longish nap.
I’m running out of coconut.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
I cling to my penknife, even if I don’t know what I would do with it. Could I really stab…?
It seems ridiculous—I need a friend, any friend, any living thing with the least remnant of empathy. But what if I’m mindlessly bumbling into the Lair of the Beast?
“You should go back,” I tell myself at regular intervals; yet I press on. Wet and sticky pieces of greenery—which I can’t even begin to name—attach themselves to me, winding around my limbs, slapping against my exposed skin.
“Fuck,” I repeat softly, like an incantation. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Despite it all, I continue, because around the next bend of the creek, behind the next tall and bulbous and utterly alien-to-me tree, there must be something, anything. But there’s nothing.
In the end, Chien finds me.
Chapter Eight
IT’S THE UGLIEST dog I can ever remember having seen, and it has me pinned to the ground.
I’m muzzy with sleep, with fatigue and, incongruously, furious. A thread of drool hangs from the animal’s sinister-looking maws; it has an odd number of teeth, a single cusp on the upper molars.
Its growl is verging on playful.
“Get off me, you big bully!”
With a bark, the dog goes for my throat. I wet myself. I whimper. I feel my penknife still in my hand, and I bring it up to—
There’s a loud whoop, and then the dog is gone. I try to sit up, but I shouldn’t have; a large, rough hand replaces the dog’s grip around my neck; a pair of eyeballs with lots of white showing around the dusky-brown irises comes up close to my own.
I go limp. I drop the knife. I splay out my arms around me in what I pray is a universal sign of surrender.
The person—the Eye—is so near me, we are sharing the same air between us. Cautiously, I slow my exhalations. I lick my lips. I want to say please (don’t kill me), but it comes out as: “Ngh.”
The body on top of mine doesn’t budge. It’s heavy in its inertia, weighing me into the turf, a hard, muscular thigh pressing against my piss-stained groin. I flush, and inwardly shake my head at myself. I’m being held to the ground by an unknown attacker. I’ve narrowly escaped death by drowning, death by necrosis, death by starvation, dehydration—and I’m worried that my possible killer—possible assaulter—possible saviour will notice that my knickers are wet?
“Ngh,” I offer again, and this
time the hand over my throat eases up a little. The Eyes narrow. The hot breath against my lips moves to the side, skimming my cheek, and the stranger lifts off of me—and in spite of the humid tropical surrounds I feel…bereft, somehow, cold, and guttingly lonely. Unshed tears prick my eyes. My nose itches. My arms come up to hug myself.
A square pair of feet stands at my side. I look up, dazed, and take in the form of a woman, nude, heavily-built but shapely, with the small, firm breasts of a teenager, yet a face that seems to have been worn smooth by Time.
The Eyes roam my prostrate form, her face betraying no emotion, no reaction apart from a species of disinterested curiosity.
I scratch my stump.
“Quoi?” The Eyes widen. She reaches around, and I realise she is wearing a leather satchel, slung across her back, the shade of which matches her own skin tone so closely it could easily have been part of her.
“Pourquoi?”
She is gesticulating towards my handless arm, pulling open her satchel and pulling out—
I scream my bloody head off. But to no avail, the Madwoman of the Island continues to hold my hand—my putrid, half-wasted, severed hand—out to me, shaking it at me, as she kneels and swoops for my stump.
I turn my head to the side and empty the scant contents of my stomach on to the ground. From somewhere to my left, the dog howls. As the woman pushes my rotten hand against my stump, I feel the soft, mucous-like flesh slide and slip across my skin, and I choke and retch at the odour of it, the sensation of it, as I fight the whirring in my head, in my ears, the white noise threatening at the outskirts of my field of vision. I will not lose consciousness, so help me God, or Devil, or both.
“Stop!” I wail. “Please, stop!”
The woman carries on her unhinged pursuit of trying to fit the hand back to where it belongs. Her forehead creases. Her inscrutable eyes float over me again, and she repeats her questioning “Pourquoi?”
Something clicks inside my addled brain. A-level French, a lifetime ago, several lifetimes ago—but I can do this; this is a language I know, just about, have known, I can speak: “Elle est cassée. Cassée.”
