A Treacherous Country

by K. M. Kruimink

  The men rowed as if they were shuffling papers, or dealing cards, or some other effortless occupation.

  The four rowers larboard rowed in turn, always with a man resting. Every so often, based on no change of circumstances I could observe other than the passage of time, Heron would make the call, and the rowers larboard would change. We three unlucky starboarders were compelled to row constantly, in order that there were always six men pulling. I had used to row a little upon the lake, at Home, but now, going hard in time with the other men, my body strained and my mind spiralled into the abyss of the impossible reality that I would be rowing Forever in this weird white place.

  When I was safely returned Home to England, I decided, I should never go out upon any kind of water again. The passage from Sydney-town to Hobart-town had provided its share of discomforts, particularly on the last stretch, when we sailed directly into a fearsome storm and were churned about our cabins like butter. And yet it was nothing in comparison to the torments of my long voyage from England! I do not know if that ship was a bad one, or if such a voyage was simply always terrible, but I say in full sincerity: may Curses and Calumny rain upon Poseidon! May God dry up all the Seas of the World! For they bring nothing but trouble for any man who ventures out upon them. Mine was a vile journey of several months, of being tossed from floor to wall, and laughed at by sailors, who continually assured me I would grow accustomed to it—in other words, who lied. Inhuman Monsters they were, that they could endure such a life, making such voyages again and again, one after another until they Retired or Died! I had shared a cabin with a Greek called Anastos, or similar. There had been so little space that we were compelled to dress one at a time, with the other lying in his bunk and trying not to get hit in the face by stray socks and braces.

  I had alighted at Sydney-town sick in heart and body. I was to stay with a friend of Mrs Prendergast’s, a Mr Halsey. I found that I had to make of myself a nuisance to that man, for no sooner had I presented myself at his establishment than did I fall to the floor and remain quite ill for weeks. And then for weeks more, he made of himself a nuisance to me, by insisting I keep him company, and get my strength back through gambling.

  The result of all this was that I had departed England in winter and arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in winter, despite the passing of half a year between those two seasons.

  Sometimes I feared that all I was really fit for in life was to be wrapped in soft clothing and laid out on a settee. I looked about for someone to whom I might confide this, but I did not see anybody that might do, for none looked as though they had had any acquaintance with soft clothing or settees. Jack was directly to my right hand; he and I of all the men were seated farthest forward. Before him was the jaunty young fellow Cook, who had been searching for his awl, and who then persisted in gazing first at Heron’s pocket, wherein the compass lay, and then heavenwards, though there was nothing to see, and back again, as if God might have given him a vision of the needle through the brass case and the leather coat if he longed for it sufficiently. His desire to know where we were was so great it radiated from his very coat, and the bench he sat on, and the back of his head.

  ‘Be easy within yourself, Cook,’ said Heron to him. ‘We will not become lost.’ The words were not intended for me, but I tried to take some measure of comfort from them.

  Heron’s hands faded in and out of view. They were tight on the pole, his eyes hard on the water.

  ‘What is that pole called?’ I asked Jack quietly. ‘It is an oar?’

  ‘Sweep oar,’ said Cook, with the air of an expert. The whaleboat afforded little conversational privacy.

  The old O’Riordan, my Cannibal William’s father, sat before Cook. On the forward lean, I saw lumps through the cloth of his back. He was only in shirtsleeves, while the rest of us were in our heavy coats—oilskins for the whalers, and my good fur overcoat for me, which fortunately was spared my ill luck at cards.

  Heron called, ‘Woolley!’ and that man relaxed. Jack, who had been resting, tensed and pulled.

  ‘Never see,’ grunted Pendle on the heave, throwing the observation back over his shoulder at me, ‘fucking fish in this.’

  Jack said, ‘We will see it.’

  ‘How large is a whale?’ I asked.

  ‘It’ll be sixty feet long,’ said Jack, and it came to me not in a vision but in a flowering in my gut: a picture of the Leviathan, rolling through the waves.

  Pendle laughed. ‘You expect a miracle fish.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘Ninety ton.’

  ‘The largest of its kind.’

  ‘The largest Montserrat Station has seen, at any rate. Mark my words.’

  The picture written in my gut started into a tableau: Jack hurling my American harpoons, and the harpoons going wide or short, and the largest whale of its kind known to man and the possible salvation of the station would be lost, and the fault would lie with me.

  ‘’Tis the day for the miraculous,’ said Heron.

  ‘Why?’ someone asked.

  ‘My wife told me.’

  ‘How far shall we row?’ I asked, my every word catching in my throat. The other men all seemed quite cool.

  ‘An hour’s rowing will take us six miles out,’ said Heron.

  That was not an answer to my question.

  ‘And, truly, there had been no whale before this for a month?’

  ‘Truly,’ said Heron.

  ‘You are a good luck Fox, to have brought us the whale,’ said Cook.

  ‘It heard about the fine American irons, and wished to try them,’ said Byrne.

  This was all terribly droll, I am sure, but in the meanwhile there was perhaps a foot of visibility beyond the hull where I could see a little choppy water, and there was nothing beyond for the eye to rest upon—only thick white fog. Pendle was clear, and murmuring to himself, Byrne indistinct, and silent. Heron had become a ghostly form. None seemed to be afraid.

  ‘Where is America, in relation to here?’ someone asked, and Jack began some geographical observations in response.

  I had seen the Tam lad watching us as we slid the boats onto the water. There was some quality in his face as we went into the blindness that I saw but did not apprehend. ‘Oh Jackie,’ he had called. ‘The fog is not bad. It is part of us because we made it by breathing so much white to-day.’

  ‘Tam is fond of you,’ I said to Jack. Although the labour of rowing made speaking difficult, I found I wanted the ordinary comfort of conversation.

  ‘He is fond of everybody, unless he is made to feel differently.’

  ‘He is fond of you,’ said Cook. ‘He likes your stories.’

  Jack shook his head.

  ‘Tell us one,’ said Cook.

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I decline.’

  ‘If you get the whale, tell us a story.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is a bet.’

  ‘Then I ought to tell you the story if I do not get the whale,’ said Jack. ‘For then I will have lost the bet.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Cook. ‘And if you get the whale, I will give you a holey dollar.’

  ‘I do not agree to those terms,’ said Jack.

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘I shall not need your holey dollar, if we capture the whale. For I shall have my commission.’

  ‘Every man needs a spare holey dollar. Sew it into your shirt, and leave there until you want it.’

  Then we were rowing through an icy tunnel of cloud, sharp with the creak and groan and splash of the oars, of Heron’s shouts, of hard breathing. Beyond those sounds, I could hear, faintly, some distant roaring or crashing and a rhythmic pulse, and I thought of the Chain-Gang I had seen. I imagined them in a violent coup, pulling out the eyeballs of the soldiers and the man with the whip, the blood freezing in blue jags upon his cheeks.

  ‘Shall we not become lost?’ I asked.

  ‘Heron has the compass,’ said Jack. ‘As he mentioned previously.’

  ‘But the
compass will not divulge distance. Who knows how far we shall row?’

  ‘See the light,’ said Heron shortly. I did not know he had been listening to our discourse.

  ‘What is the light?’

  ‘Only look.’

  I looked directly ahead, astern, past Heron, into the white. Indeed, as I searched with my eyes, I could discern a faint glow through the fog.

  ‘That is where the station is,’ he said.

  ‘What is the light?’

  ‘You know what it is,’ said Jack, beside me.

  ‘I do not know that I do.’

  Four gulls visited our cocoon. They rode the waves, prim with their wings tucked close. An oar dipped too close and they cried, flapped and vanished.

  Heron called, ‘Cook!’ and once again the men larboard changed: Cook, the longest rowing, rested, and the resting Woolley took up his oar.

  Pendle resumed his muttering. ‘Ninety ton,’ he said, whistled, and laughed.

  Woolley, who was apparently of a literary disposition, remarked,

  ‘And now there came both mist and snow,

  And it grew wondrous cold:

  And ice, mast-high, came floating by,

  As green as emerald.’

  ‘Wondrous cold it is,’ said Pendle.

  ‘But cold and emerald don’t rhyme,’ said Cook. ‘You’d have to say it cald and emerald. Or cold and emerold. It don’t work.’

  ‘Take it up with Mr Coleridge,’ said Woolley.

  ‘’Tis a bold thing for a man who can’t say his aitches to speak against the sound of a poem,’ said Byrne, for Cook was a Cockney and spoke with a very broad voice.

  ‘HIN Xanadu did Kubla Khan HA stately pleasure-dome decree where HALPH the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man,’ chanted Cook, and was immediately silenced by Byrne, who objected to further poeticism. ‘It’s a rhyme,’ Cook told me quietly. ‘And an aitch. Haitch.’

  This threat of nostalgia seemed to compel Byrne to propose a new subject for discussion. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a nice glass of porter,’ said he.

  ‘I will join you in that,’ said Pendle. ‘A pint of porter is your man. A pint of porter and a nice pork chop.’

  ‘And a go on Mary Donnell,’ said Byrne.

  ‘Been so long since you seen a woman, you wouldn’t know which end was which,’ said Woolley.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Byrne. ‘Topsy-turvy is good enough for this poor soul.’

  The men tittered and thence followed a short interval of further hilarity:

  ‘Mary Donnell is an able hand,’ said Byrne.

  ‘Aye, she has fair skill at knots.’

  ‘Aye, she can make a surpassing good cunt-splice.’

  ‘And can nimbly use my marlinspike to unknot said splice.’

  There the puns failed them, as they had eluded me, although I grasped the general notion.

  ‘And you, Jackie Montserrat?’ asked Byrne. ‘How will you make use of your commission? Mary Donnell takes all comers.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Heron.

  ‘Aye, enough,’ said O’Riordan, and remarked something further I did not make out.

  ‘What does he say?’ asked Woolley to Byrne.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Byrne.

  ‘Is’t not your Irish tongue?’

  ‘No, it ain’t.’

  ‘Do you consider yourself Irish, Byrne?’

  ‘My father was Irish, and spake Irish,’ said Byrne.

  ‘What tongue does your mother speak?’

  ‘She is dead.’

  ‘When alive, what did the dear lady speak?’

  ‘English.’

  ‘Oh aye? What did her mother speak?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Aye? Is that the native language hereabouts?’

  ‘Be quiet, now,’ said Heron. ‘Your sauciness is wearying.’

  ‘She was not from hereabouts,’ said Byrne. ‘She was from the North.’

  ‘You ought never speak ill of a man’s mother,’ muttered Cook. ‘Especially when she has already gone and Ascended.’

  ‘You should not speak of her at all,’ said Byrne.

  There was a sudden clatter of resistance against Woolley’s oar, and then Pendle’s. A second whaleboat spun out of the whiteness and bumped against the hull. Pendle lost his grip; the handle of his oar struck me in the eye. I heard my own voice, shouting, and experienced a moment-long vision of a splintering pane of glass. Yet the pain, after that initial shock, was tolerable, for the cold deadened it. Pendle grunted what may have been either an apology or a gloat.

  ‘Get yourselves together, men!’ shouted Heron. ‘Mr Fox—apologies. Bear up, now.’

  The yellow-haired American was Heron’s counterpart in the other boat, standing in the stern with the sweep oar in hands that were blue with paint or cold. He was silently shoving at the water with that instrument, appearing and disappearing in the fog as the boats jostled. The oarsmen likewise came and went. For a moment, I caught the eye of my Cannibal across the water between us. The boats skimmed and dipped and some impression of vaulting skies and seas came upon me and I became dizzyingly aware of the black depths below, and of my fellows and I caught upon a thin film between two abysses. I saw the river-woman of the green eyes serene on her little pony, telling me that the water was deep enough to drown in, and the man with the whip saying drowning was the very nature of water. I came unbalanced where I sat, but hid my swaying by cradling my eye where the oar had got me. The blood was unbearably, unbelievably bright on my fingers.

  ‘Any sign?’ called Heron, his voice swimming into my ears.

  ‘No sign,’ someone called back, and with a final shove from the American, the boat drifted away and was gone.

  It was quieter than before. Through air like syrup I straightened myself and took up my oar once more, but I saw the other men’s hands were slack.

  ‘Well, now, we cannot allow those fellows to nab our fish!’ Heron exhorted us, his voice ringing into the silence with a vim that was all surface.

  ‘I would allow it, for the prize of not towing it back to shore,’ Byrne said quietly.

  ‘Oh come, what spirit is that?’ Heron asked.

  ‘The spirit of a weary man, sir.’

  ‘A weary man, Byrne? Or a wicked child? You had best be the former, or I’ll put you over my knee and belt you. By God.’

  The men sniggered.

  ‘Ready! Heave!’ cried Heron, blushing at his own foolishness, over the laughter. I felt such fellowship for him, one Fool to another!

  ‘Come, sir, let us go back,’ someone called. ‘We will find naught to-day.’

  A few men said aye.

  ‘We have our task,’ said Jack, and heaved on his oar. The boat pivoted a little.

  ‘Aye, come,’ said Heron. ‘All hands.’

  Silence settled over us once more, until Cook asked, ‘Did you ride in, Mr Fox? Didn’t see your horse.’

  ‘She was taken from me by a man called Beasley,’ I said. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Why should I know a horse thief?’ he asked quickly. ‘How long are you here for?’

  ‘I do not know. I suppose I shall return to Hobart-town to-morrow.’

  ‘Afoot?’

  ‘Yes, afoot, unless you have a horse you might give me.’

  Cook gave every indication he was searching his mind to think if he had a spare horse tucked away somewhere. ‘No, no, I do not,’ he said, with what seemed genuine regret. ‘I am sorry I cannot oblige.’

  ‘Will you be silent!’ said Heron.

  There was a bump from below and the boat spun a little again.

  ‘Steady now,’ said Heron.

  A sleek black back rose and slipped away, and beside me, Jack’s oar was shipped and he scrambled forward, and now there were six men rowing, and two standing, one at either end of the craft.

  And so the sea yielded the miracle-whale.

  ‘Hard about! Hard about now!’ Heron cried in a tight voice.

&n
bsp; I was able to crane back and see Jack. He clipped an harpoon—one of mine, indeed!—from its notch and braced his right thigh in a gap evidently made for that very purpose, the manila line hanging from the harpoon over his shoulder. He permitted the boat to support him, with his weight upon his right leg, and his body riding the swell.

  The whale drifted. The huge unknowable of the idle movements. Heron shouted for us to heave and we did. I was compelled to turn away from Jack and bend over my oar as the future sprang into two, and then each of those two sprang into two, and on, until what would occur was a great tangled mess of possibility.

  ‘There it is!’ I heard Jack shout behind me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the black side sliding beneath the water. It seemed I had seen a flash of eye, but I probably had imagined it. Heaviness settled on me. I had a hand in this, directly, this whale-killing. How could it be right to kill something so enormous and so foreign? Father had championed a practical education for his younger sons, and I had learnt to butcher lambs, sheep, cows, chickens, geese. I had felt that Divinity of Power when a hot and struggling body goes limp in one’s hands. And I had hunted for rabbits, and ducks, and grouse, and foxes. I had shot a draught horse with a broken leg, once, with a kind and loving bullet through the skull. But surely if God had seen fit to make a Creature a hundred times my size, and put it in the sea to live, where I could not go without dying, it was not meant for me to hunt it? Had they hunted whales in the Bible? What had become of Jonah’s whale? It struck me again that I ought to have made more of an effort at religion, quite in the way I often wish I had paid more attention to arithmetic. Religion might have served me then, in that moment. I did hear another man praying aloud, for God to guide us, or some such.

  The numbness had fallen away from me, and my head throbbed. The air had gone from thick to thin, though still white with fog. There was no coastline and no station, out there in the fog, for everything in the world had collapsed. The spectre of Maryanne Maginn fizzed and died like a candle-flame between wet fingertips. I could not see the light over the station.