The Ghost Road

by Pat Barker

  ‘Do you suppose it’s ever going to stop?’ Hocart said, turning over restlessly in the gloom of the tent.

  It had been raining ever since they’d found Ngea’s axe, not restrained English rain but a downpour, a gurgling splatter that flooded into the tent no matter how hard they tried to keep it out. Possibly it was stupid to stay inside at all, though difficult not to when even a five-yard dash into the bush to pee meant you came back with hair plastered to your skull and a transparent shirt sticking to your chest.

  They lay and watched it through the open flap, a solid wall of water through which the not too distant trees could be glimpsed only dimly, a wavering blue mass beaten hither and thither by a wind that blew in sudden spiteful squalls. Hocart, in his frustration, had been kicking the roof of the tent where it sloped steeply down over his bed, and his muddy footprints now added to the general squalor and smell. Hot wet bodies, hair washed daily but only in sea water, salt drying to a white scurf on the surface of the skin. The only escape was into the sea, where total immersion relieved the misery of wet.

  On the fourth day the rain eased slightly. Rivers stepped out into the clearing and saw Njiru coming along the path towards him, for once without his retinue.

  Rivers had been wondering whether to mention the axe, and had decided not to, but as soon as he looked at Njiru he knew it was essential to bring it out into the open.

  ‘Blong you?’ he said, holding it out.

  ‘Blong Ngea,’ Njiru said, and smiled.

  But he took it, putting it into the string basket he carried slung over one shoulder. Rivers heard the chink of one blade on another as it hit Njiru’s axe. It was important to be totally steadfast at this moment, Rivers thought. He and Hocart were probably the only white men in the archipelago, apart from the missionaries – some of the missionaries – who didn’t carry guns. They didn’t carry knives either, though on an island covered in dense bush a machete would have been useful. Nothing that could possibly be mistaken for a weapon. And they went barefoot, as the natives did. Harmlessness was their defence, not guaranteed to succeed by any means, but guns would have made the job impossible.

  Njiru had come, he said, because one of the oldest skull houses on the island was being rebuilt, and he had to go to say the prayer of purification over the priest. Would Rivers like to go with him? Of course, there was no question.

  They set off, Njiru remarking at one point that it always rained when a skull house was being rebuilt because ‘tomate he like bathe all time ’long fresh water’. Soon the narrow path and the steamy heat made conversation impossible. Rivers watched the movement of muscles under the oiled skin, wondering, not for the first time, how much pain Njiru suffered. He was a mystery in many respects and likely to remain so. He was not married, for example, this among a people to whom the concept of celibacy was wholly foreign. Was that because his deformity caused the girls or their parents to regard him as a poor catch? But then in island terms he was both wealthy and powerful. Did he himself feel a disinclination for the married state? And what had the impact been on a small crippled boy of knowing he was the grandson of Homu, the greatest of the head-hunting chiefs? It was worse, Rivers thought, smiling to himself, than being the great-nephew of the man who shot the man who shot Lord Nelson.

  None of these questions could be pursued. It was not lack of words merely, but a lack of shared concepts. The islanders seemed hardly to have discovered the idea of personality, in the western sense, much less to have contracted the habit of introspection. Njiru was one of the most powerful men on the island, perhaps the most powerful. To Rivers and Hocart it seemed abundantly apparent that he owed his position to quite exceptional intelligence, vigour and resolution, but such qualities were never mentioned by the islanders when they attempted to explain his position. His power was attributed entirely to the number of spirits he controlled. He ‘knew’ Mateana. And above all, he ‘knew’ Ave. Njiru knows Ave. One of the first things he’d been told, though he hadn’t understood the significance of the statement then, and perhaps did not fully understand it even now.

  In view of that chink of blade on blade, what accounted for this sudden change of attitude? He was reasonably certain it was Njiru who’d put Ngea’s axe in the tent. He hadn’t even pretended surprise when Rivers offered it to him. And yet here he was, being apparently helpful and co-operative, actually inviting him to be present at an important ritual occasion. But then he was like this, one moment clamming up completely, even ordering other people to withhold information, and yet at other times easily the best informant on the island. Standing over them sometimes to make sure they got every detail of a ritual, every word of a prayer exactly right.

  The inconsistency probably reflected Njiru’s doubts about the reality of his own power. Others were persuaded by it, but he was capable of standing back and asking himself the hard questions. Why, if he controlled the spirits, why, if the rituals did everything he claimed for them, were the white men still here? Not Rivers and Hocart, whom he liked and respected, but the others: the government that forbade the taking of heads though the people lived for it, the traders who cheated them, the plantation bosses who exploited them, and, most of all, the missionaries who destroyed their faith. If you can’t prevent such things happening, what is the actual value of your knowledge?

  And so he swayed to and fro: sometimes guarding his knowledge jealously, sometimes sharing it freely, sometimes spitting it out with a bitter, angry pride, sometimes almost with gratitude to Rivers, whose obvious interest in what he was being told seemed to confirm its value. And then again he would sheer off, ashamed of ever needing that confirmation.

  A stormy relationship, then, on Njiru’s side, and yet the mutual respect went deep. He wouldn’t kill me, Rivers thought. Then he thought, Actually, in certain circumstances, that’s exactly what he’d do.

  By the time they reached the turning off the coastal path, the sun was at its highest point. Sweat tickled the tip of Rivers’s nose, producing a constant frenzy of irritation. His groin was a swamp. At first the darkness under the trees was welcome, after the dreadful white glare, but then a cloud of stinging insects fastened on the sweat.

  Abruptly, they came out into a clearing, sharp blades of sunlight slanting down between the trees, and ahead of them, rising steeply up the slope, six or seven skull houses, their gratings ornamented with strings of dangling shells. The feeling of being watched that skulls always gave you. Dazzled by the sudden light, he followed Njiru up the slope, towards a knot of shadows, and then one of the shadows moved, resolving itself into the shape of Nareti, the blind mortuary priest who squatted there, all pointed knees and elbows, snails’ trails of pus running from the corners of his eyes.

  The furthest of the skull houses was being repaired, and its occupants had been taken out and arranged on the ground so that, at first sight, the clearing seemed to be cobbled with skulls. He hung back, not sure how close he was permitted to approach, and at that moment a sudden fierce gust of wind shook the trees and all the strings of votary shells rattled and clicked together.

  Njiru beckoned Rivers to join him and, without further preliminary, began the prayer of purification, rubbing leaves down Nareti’s legs from buttock to ankle.

  ‘I purify at the great stream of Mondo. It flows down, it flows up, it washes away the poisonous water of the chiefly dead. The thatch is poisonous, the rafters are poisonous, the creepers are poisonous, the ground is poisonous …’

  Among the skulls laid out on the ground were several that had belonged to children. Children loved and wept over? Or children brought back from Ysabel and Choiseul and sacrificed?

  ‘Let me purify this priest. Let him come down and pass under. Let him come down and step over. Let him not waste away, let him not get the rash, let him not get the itch. Let him be bonito in the sea, porpoise in the sea, eel in the fresh water, crayfish in the fresh water, vape in the fresh water. I purify, I purify, I purify with all the chiefs.’

  Njiru’s
voice, which had risen in pitch, dropped on the final words.

  Always in Melanesia, the abrupt transition from ritual to everyday life. Njiru was soon chatting and laughing with Nareti, then he summoned Rivers to follow him. A short path led to Nareti’s hut and there, squatting in the dust, having the remains of lunch licked off his face by a dog, was the small boy whom Lembu had brought from Ysabel. Healthy, well-fed. Unbruised, Rivers saw, looking closely, not happy, but then that was hardly to be hoped for. He watched him for a few minutes. At least the dog was a friend.

  He was to assist Nareti, Njiru said. When he grew up he would be a mortuary priest in his turn. An odd fate, to spend one’s life tending the skulls of a foreign people, but at least he would have a life, and perhaps not a bad one, for the mortuary priests became wealthy and enjoyed considerable respect. This taking of captives had been the custom even in the days of head-hunting, Njiru explained. He was in one of his communicative phases. Some of the ‘heads’ taken on a raid were always brought back alive, and kept for occasions when they might be quickly needed. A sort of living larder of heads. Such captives were never ill-treated – the idea of deliberate cruelty was foreign to the people – and indeed they often attained positions of wealth and honour, though always knowing that, at any moment, their heads might be required.

  On their way back across the clearing Njiru stopped, selected the central skull from the middle row, and held it out to Rivers.

  ‘Homu.’

  Rivers took the skull, aware of the immense honour that was being done to him, and searching for something to say and the words to say it in. He ran his fingers round the occiput and traced the cranial sutures. He remembered a time at Bart’s, holding a human brain in his hands for the first time, being amazed at the weight of it. This blown eggshell had contained the only product of the forces of evolution capable of understanding its own origins. But then for Njiru too the skull was sacred not in or of itself, but because it had contained the spirit, the tomate.

  He looked at Njiru and realized it wasn’t necessary to say anything. He handed the skull back, with a slight inclination of his head, and for a moment their linked hands grasped it, each holding the object of highest value in the world.

  The bullet caused gross damage to the left eye as it passed backwards in the direction of the temporal lobe. Left pupil fixed, cornea insensitive, eyelid droops, no movement of the globe except downwards. Eye blind because of rupture of the choroid and atrophy of the optic nerve. Yes. A tendency to clonus at the right ankle joint … All right.

  Switching off the lighted screen and replacing the notes in the file, Rivers glanced at the cover and noticed that Hallet was in the 2nd Manchesters. He wondered if he knew Billy Prior, or whether, if he did, he would remember.

  Seventeen

  19 October 1918

  Marched all day through utter devastation. Dead horses, unburied men, stench of corruption. Sometimes you look at all this, craters, stinking mud, stagnant water, trees like gigantic burnt matches, and you think the land can’t possibly recover. It’s poisoned. Poison’s dripped into it from rotting men, dead horses, gas. It will, of course. Fifty years from now a farmer’ll be ploughing these fields and turn up skulls.

  A huge crow flew over us, flapping and croaking mournfully. One for sorrow. The men didn’t rest till they’d succeeded in spotting another.

  Joy awaits us, then.

  The unburied dead, though not cheerful companions for a march, had one good result. A boot for Wilson. Getting it wasn’t pleasant, but once the debris left by the previous owner (of the previous owner) had been cleaned out it did well enough. He looks happier.

  Men very cheerful for the most part, a long singing column winding tirelessly along (but we’ve a long way to go yet!). I found myself thinking about Longstaffe. Not dead three weeks, and yet he rarely crosses my mind. In Tite Street, three doors down from Beattie’s shop, there was an old couple who’d been married over fifty years and everybody thought when one of them went the other would be devastated. But when the husband died the old lady didn’t seem all that upset, and hardly talked about him once the funeral was over. In spite of all the young male vigour around here – and my God it’s bloody over-whelming at times – we’re all in the same position as that old woman. Too close to death ourselves to make a fuss. We economize on grief.

  Later

  Men bivouac in the open, but the officers are in dug-outs, the remains of an elaborate German system. The dug-outs are boarded off, but behind the planks are tunnels which reach back very deep. You can put your eye to a gap in the boards and look into darkness and after a while the eyeball begins to ache from the cold air. The extraordinary thing is everybody’s slightly nervous about these tunnels, far more than about the guns that rumble and flicker and light up the sky as I write. And it’s not a rational fear. It’s something to do with the children whom the Pied Piper led into the mountain, who never came out again, or Rip Van Winkle who came out and found that years and years had passed and nobody knew him. It’s interesting, well, at least it interests me, that we’re still afraid in this irrational way when at the same time we’re surrounded by the worst the twentieth century can do: shells, revolvers, rifles, guns, gas. I think it’s because it strikes a particular chord. Children do go into the mountain and not come back. We’ve all been home on leave and found home so foreign that we couldn’t fit in. What about after the war? But perhaps it’s better not to think about that. Tempting fate. Anyway, here comes dinner. I’m hungry.

  20 October

  Another mammoth march. Lousy rotten stinking job too, rounding up the stragglers. Forget leadership. This is where leadership ends and bullying starts. I heard myself hassling and chivvying like one of those bloody instructors at Étaples. Except at least I’m doing what I’m bullying other people into doing.

  I turned on one man, mouth open to give him a really good blast, and then I saw his face. He was asthmatic. That tight, pale, drawn worried look. If you’re asthmatic yourself you can’t miss it. He might as well have been carrying a placard. I fell in beside him and tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t talk and march at once, or creep rather – he certainly wasn’t marching. That’s the thing about asthma: it creates the instant brotherhood shared humanity routinely fails to create. I got him into the horse ambulance, well propped up, gripped his wrist and said goodbye. I doubt if he saw me go. When you’re as bad as that nothing matters except the next breath.

  The curious thing is as soon as I saw his face, my own chest tightened, just because I’d been reminded of the possibility, I suppose. So far, touch wood, there’s been no trouble. But I’m a bit wheezy tonight.

  Singing very ragged by mid-afternoon, a lot of men marching in silence, it had become a test of endurance. But then suddenly, or so it seemed – we’d been marching half asleep – we found ourselves with green fields on either side, farmhouses with roofs on, trees with branches, and civilians. We’d marched right through the battlefields into what used to be securely German-held territory. Women. Children. Dogs. Cats. I think we were all amazed that the world had such creatures in it. A lot of wolf whistling at the girls, and nobody inclined to be fussy. ‘Girl’ soon stretched from fourteen to fifty.

  I’m writing this at a kitchen table in a cottage. Outside is a farmyard with ordinary farmyard noises. Honking geese are a miracle. Though we move on again soon. They’re questioning civilians in the next room, Owen’s French coming in handy. And at this table, until a few weeks ago, a German officer sat and wrote letters home.

  22 October

  Still here, but not for much longer. We move on again later today. Not even the pouring rain that puckers the surface of the pond – with its official ducks and unofficial moorhens – can remove the feeling of serenity I have. Chest a lot easier, in spite of the damp.

  24 October

  More marching. I have visions of us marching into Berlin at this rate. Nearest village was shelled last night. Five civilians killed. When did we st
op thinking of civilians as human? Quite a long time ago, I think. Anyhow, nobody’s devastated by the news. And yet the people round here are friendly, we get on well with them. Only there’s a slight wariness, I suppose. They hated the invasion, nobody doubts that, but the Germans were here a long time. An accommodation of some sort was reached. And the German troops in this area anyway seem to have been very disciplined. No atrocities. The respectable young ladies of the village are very respectable young ladies indeed, despite having spent four years in the clutches of the brutal and lascivious Hun. And the shell-holes that lie in the orchards, fields and roads round here – great gaping wounds – were made by our guns. The bombardment was very heavy at times. Some of the children run away from us. And yet we’re greeted everywhere with open arms.

  Still can’t get used to ordinary noises, especially women’s and children’s voices. It must feel like this coming out of prison.

  25 October

  Owen is to be court-martialled. Mainly because he speaks French better than anybody else and all the local girls make a bee-line for him, not just thanking him either, but actually kissing him. I caught his eye while all this was going on, and thought I detected an answering gleam. Of irony or whatever. Anyway the Great Unkissed are thoroughly fed up with him and have convened a subalterns’ court martial. Shot at dawn, I shouldn’t wonder.

  Wyatt, meanwhile, is visiting a farmhouse on the outskirts of the village where lives an accommodating widow and her equally accommodating but rather more nubile daughters. At this very moment, probably, he’s dipping his wick where many a German wick has dipped before it. (A frisson wasted on Wyatt, believe me.)