The Island

by Peter Benchley

  “Basco has gone home,” Nau said.

  “The crime?” Windsor sat in the sand.

  “The covenant,” Hizzoner explained.

  “Ah,” Windsor nodded. “Most serious.” He drank from his bottle.

  “I might not have known,” Nau said, and in his voice there was a touch of rue, “if he hadn’t been squabbling with that.” He gestured contemptuously at the whore, who had removed her blouse and was admiring how precisely the ankh fell between her breasts.

  “He died for that?” the catamite sniffed. “My! He was a man of meager taste.”

  “Be quiet, Nanny,” Windsor said.

  The whore had heard—if not the words, the tone and the direction. “Say again, capon,” she callenged.

  “Hear her,” said the catamite. “Hide your dreary dugs, dearie, before they’ve dug another grave.”

  “Nanny . . .” Windsor cautioned.

  “Hey, pullet,” the whore crowed, “what’s stuffing your pouch tonight? Mangoes?”

  There was laughter, especially raucous from the other whores, and the catamite blushed.

  “Look, ladies, how he reddens!” continued the whore. “He sprouts a coxcomb, but that’s as close to a rooster as he’ll ever be!”

  Another whore called, “I bet his pouch is full of eggs.”

  “Aye,” chimed a third. “He lays himself.”

  Outnumbered and outvolleyed, the catamite burst. Vaulting Windsor, he screamed, “Bitch!” and sprinted into the clearing and slapped Basco’s whore across the mouth.

  Her lip split against her teeth. She raised a hand to wipe blood from her mouth.

  The catamite kept his eyes on the raised hand, ready to defend against a punch. He didn’t see her other hand ball into a fist, her thumb extend, her long, pointed thumbnail drive, with all her weight behind it, deep into his navel and gouge at his backbone.

  He shrieked and tumbled backward, and she followed him down, stabbing with other nails on his plucked armpits.

  He lashed out with his legs. A knee hit her in the temple and knocked her off him. He rolled on top of her and gnashed at her breasts.

  The crowd laughed and cheered. The whores were partisan, but the others were neutral: They applauded each telling blow, each new draw of blood, and they roared equally unbiased approval at the loss of the whore’s nipple tip and the catamite’s earlobe.

  “Worried, Doctor?” Nau said. “Your dandelion loses his petals.”

  “He’s all sinew,” Windsor replied. “She’s no match for him.” From his jacket pocket Windsor took a box of bullets and placed it on the sand in front of Nau: a wager.

  Maynard recognized the box: He had hidden it in his bureau drawer at Chainplates.

  Nau reached into a small leather pouch he wore around his neck and removed a sapphire earring, which he set beside the box of bullets.

  Windsor noticed Maynard’s quizzical expression, and he explained, “Something has to be saved out, else there’d be no games. It all shakes down eventually.”

  The catamite and the whore were at a standstill, their hands and legs locked, teeth snapping at air.

  “A draw?” Hizzoner said.

  “No!” cried a voice from the crowd.

  “Break it, then.”

  A man staggered to the center of the clearing and aimed a kick at the catamite’s head.

  Dodging the kick, the catamite lost his grip on one of the whore’s hands. Her fingernails raked his face. He rolled free, and she sprang after him. He fended her off with a flailing punch to the chest.

  “How long have you been part of this?” Maynard asked Windsor, as they watched the sweating, bleeding bodies wrestle in the sand.

  Windsor’s eyes did not leave the fight. “Thirty years. My boat broke down, and I swam ashore here.”

  “They let you live?”

  “They never caught me. I saw them first. I was about to seek their help, but there was something, a feeling, an aura—I credit my background in anthropology for recognizing it—that told me they were not the sort to welcome visitors. So I swam away.”

  “You swam away?”

  “Floated. I killed a pig and stopped up his bum and his mouth and used him as a float. For two days I floated on him, and then the sharks got him, and for another day I swam. A conch boat picked me up.”

  “But when you got to shore, how come they didn’t send someone back here?”

  “I kept my counsel; I never opened my mouth.”

  “What?”

  The combatants were on their feet now. Blood streamed from bites on the whore’s breasts and from scratches that crisscrossed the catamite’s chest and back. The whore screamed and charged. The catamite yanked at her hair, deflecting the charge. A patch of scalp came away in his hand.

  “A handful of pain, Nanny!” Windsor shouted. “There’s a lad!”

  The whore ducked and charged again. Her claws tore away the leather codpiece. Two lemons fell to the sand, and the crowd erupted in catcalls and guffaws.

  The enraged catamite lashed wildly at the whore, who danced nimbly away, pointing derisively at his small shaven genitals.

  “He’s bought it now,” said Nau.

  “No, sir! Behold!”

  Keeping his distance from the whore, the catamite delicately poked his testicles up inside his groin and tucked his penis between his legs.

  Nau was amazed. “It’s gone!”

  “See Achilles hide his heel!” Windsor laughed.

  The whore tackled the catamite, rooting for his vulnerability.

  Windsor drank from his bottle and said to Maynard, “They fascinated me. Either they were some exotic religious group, in which case they had a right to their privacy, or—and I didn’t dare dream this—they were . . . well, what they are. I knew what would happen if I told the authorities. In a week, they’d have been extinct; Civilization’s solution would have been to save them by extinguishing them, and these people would have co-operated by fighting to the death. Oh, a few might have survived, the children, to be reprogrammed. They’d be actuaries now, or salesmen, free to be the same as their fellows, free to worry about auto loans and pyorrhea.”

  “How did you join them?”

  Windsor smiled. “Carefully. I approached them as I would the Tasaday or the Jivaro or any other anachronistic society. I stood well at sea and sent things ashore on the tide: rum and powder and—silly of me, but I had no way of knowing—glass beads and costume jewelry. I always sent a message along, professing friendship, explaining that I meant only well, assuring them that I alone knew they existed. When they finally permitted contact”—again Windsor smiled—“l’Ollonois told me that for a year I had driven them crazy. They never saw me, couldn’t catch me. In the end, they agreed to speak to me—in the ocean, armed boat to armed boat—only because they were fearful that I would become discouraged and expose them.”

  A surge of outrage welled in Maynard’s chest. It was a hot feeling, and welcome. “Do you know how many lives your little experiment, your fascination, has—”

  “Tush!” Windsor ignored the rebuke. “When civilization has blathered itself into oblivion, these people will still exist. Everything is reduced to the simplest, most basic, incontrovertible virtue: survival. Morality, politics, philosophy, all aim to that one end. And that’s the only end worth aiming for.”

  “Survive . . . to do what?”

  “Survive to survive. Never forget, Mencken, that beneath it all, man is an animal. Civilization is fur. These people are shaven; they are true to their nature.”

  As he said this, Windsor had looked at Maynard, but now his attention snapped back to the fight, drawn by an anguished wail from the catamite.

  The catamite lay on his back, curled up, his hands clamped to his bleeding crotch. The whore crouched over him. Her fingernails dug into the flesh surrounding his pharynx.

  The catamite looked at Windsor and raised a hand to him, pleading.

  “Doctor?” Nau said. “He’s yours.”
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br />   Windsor grimaced at the devastated wreck. “He is not pretty,” he said, and he shook his head and turned away.

  The catamite’s scream was throttled by the whore’s claws.

  Maynard felt bile rise in his throat.

  The cut-and-battered whore paraded around the clearing, triumphantly twirling the leather codpiece above her head, grinning in acknowledgment of the crowd’s applause.

  As he watched the catamite’s body being dragged away, Maynard said, “An expensive party.”

  “Two? Expensive?” said Nau. “No. Many battles cost more.”

  Maynard had not seen Beth leave the clearing, so he started when he saw her appear from the darkness and walk, with measured pace, to the center of the clearing. She had changed into a clean white linen robe and had oiled her skin and hair. She looked demure, virginal. She stood silently by the rum pot, hands clasped in front of her, eyes downcast.

  “Hold!” called Nau. “Be still.”

  The whore sat down, and the crowd noise subsided.

  “Goody Sansdents has a statement.”

  Beth raised her eyes and said, “No longer am I Goody Sansdents. I carry a Maynard child.”

  An appreciative whoop rose from the crowd.

  Nau saluted Maynard. “You have done your work.”

  Maynard’s fingers touched the raw skin of his neck. He knew now why there had been a sadness, a tenderness, to Beth’s love-making, why Nau had permitted his chain to be removed, why he was suddenly “trustworthy.”

  Hizzoner patted Maynard’s shoulder and said, “Journey’s done, lad. Take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” Routinely, he added: “Luke 12:19.”

  Windsor picked up the thread. “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Luke, 12:20.”

  “God is in heaven,” Hizzoner responded to Windsor, “and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. Ecclesiastes 5:2.”

  “When?” Maynard said dully.

  “Tomorrow,” replied Nau.

  “The Lord’s day.” Hizzoner nodded. “A good day to die, for He is resting and will attend to your welcome.”

  “How?”

  “Quickly,” Nau said. “As you choose, for this is surgery, not retribution. But for the moment”—he passed Maynard the chalice—“give thought only to revelry.”

  Maynard wet his lips but he could not drink. Fantasies of elaborate, impossible escapes flashed through his head, and though he knew, realistically, that he had no hope, he was unwilling to signal complete surrender by drinking himself into a coma that death would only deepen. Besides, for all he knew they were right: Death might be an adventure, and there was no point in starting a new adventure smashed.

  The rum pot was refilled and reheated, and drinking resumed with an active fervor which suggested that a gold star awaited the first to reach unconsciousness.

  Hizzoner opened a new bottle of brandy and took it back to his tree stump, where he slapped his companion awake and embarked on a new course of religious instruction.

  Windsor lay back and sucked on his scotch bottle and contemplated the stars.

  Beth filled a stoneware jug with rum and sat on the ground, occasionally rubbing her stomach and smiling. She refused to look at Maynard—reluctant, perhaps, to mar happy thoughts of her future with reminders that Maynard, who had given her that future, had no future of his own.

  Nau drank less hastily than the others, and every few seconds he glanced into the darkness.

  “Expecting someone?” Maynard asked.

  “Aye. The capstone of a successful day.”

  A moment later, they heard footsteps on the path and turned to see the two boys enter the clearing.

  Manuel led the way. He wore a white shirt and clean white trousers and, around his neck, a gold coin on a gold chain.

  Justin, following, was dressed like a dauphin. He wore a doublet of lavender velvet, white satin knickers, silk stockings, and silver-buckled black leather shoes. An ivory-handled dagger was stuck in his belt. The little finger of each hand bore an emerald ring. He was a perfect period piece, except for the shoulder holster slung under his left arm.

  Justin’s hair was swept back and tied, and a ribboned pigtail had been pinned onto it. His manner was self-consciously regal: He carried his head high, and, as he crossed the clearing, he looked at no one but Nau.

  “Hear me!” Nau said.

  What little chatter there was, faded, and all that remained were faint sounds of snoring and, from a clump of bushes, retching.

  “I had a son and he died,” Nau announced. He was drunker than Maynard had thought: His head seemed heavy, and every time it tipped slightly it unbalanced Nau’s stance, forcing him to compensate with a half step forward. “I would have taken this one as my second son.” He let a hand flop on Manuel’s shoulder. “But he’s got Portugee and zambo and a rightful stew of others in him, so if he is to lead it will be by conquest. This one”—he clapped his other hand on Justin’s shoulder—“I therefore take now as my son, to share the burdens and the benefits and . . .” He forgot his words. “And . . . the rest.” Nau staggered, and steadied himself on the two boys. “But I predict the day when this Manuel and this Tue-Barbe will have at it for the office. Who will win? The better, and that is as it should be, for the strong must prevail.”

  Unbidden, Hizzoner proclaimed from his place by the tree stump: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.”

  “Well said.” Nau took a gold-coin pendant, larger than the one Manuel wore, from his pouch and hung it around Justin’s neck.

  Justin smiled a complacent half smile, almost a smirk of noblesse oblige.

  You insufferable little twit, Maynard thought, and he had consciously to restrain himself from leaping to his feet and, as his last mortal act, punching his child in the mouth.

  “And so the time has come,” Nau said, taking Justin by the hand, “to become a man.” He led the boy among the slumbering bodies, stopping here to examine a countenance, there to squeeze a thigh. “Here,” he said finally, and with his toe he prodded a whore awake. “Up, lady. You’ve got work to do.”

  The whore stirred and coughed.

  “Take this lad and teach him the use of his weapon.”

  Snorting and spitting and grumbling, the whore struggled to her feet. “I’d be more lively with a night’s sleep.”

  “I say be lively now.”

  The whore took Justin’s hand. “Come, boy.”

  “When next I see him, he’d best be no more a boy.” Nau turned to Manuel. “Go with them. That sow is like to sleep before her duty’s done.”

  As Manuel passed in front of Maynard, he glanced Maynard’s way, and in the glance Maynard read Manuel’s intention that Justin should never reach the age of leadership.

  One by one, they fell asleep. First Beth, who passed out while draining the last drops from her stoneware jug. Then Windsor, whose bottle slipped from his hand and gurgled empty on his chest. Hizzoner launched a statement about the Kingdom of Heaven, which sank in snores. Finally Nau, who crawled for the shelter of his hut but succumbed with his legs sticking out through the doorway.

  Maynard sat and listened for sounds of wakefulness, but there were none.

  He was alone and free. He could leave the clearing and go to the cove and take a boat and sail away. No. There would be a guard on the boats. He could make a float, then, and float away. Something was wrong; it was too easy. Perhaps they wanted him to try to float away, perhaps they thought—in some perverse solicitude—it would be a kindness to let him float away and drown. After all, they had said he could choose his own death. No. They couldn’t take the chance that he might survive. It was possible. Windsor had.

  It was something else. Maybe they knew he wouldn’t leave without Justin. But what was to stop him from taking Justin? Not the whore. Manuel? Maybe, but Manuel could be taken unawares and quickly silenced. Did they think he wouldn’t kill Manuel? Were they counting on him
being restrained by his “worldly” code of ethics? He hoped that was the case. It would be a pleasure to show them how well they had corrupted him.

  He would get Justin and go to the cove. If he could kill the guard and take a boat, he would; if not, they would go to a far end of the island and make a raft—or something, anything—and cast themselves adrift. Maynard wished he could tell time from the stars, for he would have liked to know how much time he would have before daylight, before discovery and pursuit.

  He crawled to the edge of the clearing, where Jack the Bat’s trousers hung from a bush. There was a knife in a sheath threaded onto the belt, and Maynard took it.

  When he was well away from the clearing, walking silently—careful to avoid snapping dry branches—in the assumed direction of the prostitutes’ lodges, Maynard stopped and cut a length of vine to use as a garotte, if Manuel could not be otherwise subdued, or as bonds to tie Manuel or the guard stationed by the pinnaces.

  He rounded a bend in the path and saw the prostitutes’ lodges. He stopped and held his breath, searching the darkness for Manuel. The clearing was empty, the lodges dark and silent.

  He sprinted across the sand to the nearest lodge and stood outside, listening. It was empty, as were the second and the third. As he crept along the wall of the fourth lodge, he heard heavy breathing and Justin’s voice, angry: “Well? Now what?”

  In response, a snore.

  The click-click of a bullet being chambered into an automatic pistol, then Justin’s voice, menacing: “Wake up, damn your eyes! I’ll blow your head off!”

  Maynard was shocked by the icy resolve in Justin’s voice, but he didn’t have the luxury of contemplative reaction: He couldn’t let a bullet explode in the still night. He swept the curtain away from the door and threw himself into the hut, reaching for Justin’s hand.

  As he fell and knocked the pistol away, his eyes photographed the dim vision of his son’s bare bottom nestled between the fleshy thighs of the snoring, stuporous whore.

  “What?” Justin cried. “Who . . . ?”

  Maynard put a finger across his lips. “Ssshhh! It’s me.”

  Justin did not try to keep his voice low. “What are you doing?’’