Fandango and Other Stories

by Bryan Karetnyk

  Dribb turned and set off in the opposite direction, accompanied by the pig farmer.

  “Now I’ll wager that I’ll get my money from Dribb only after some very harsh words. Mr. Horn, I’m at your service.”

  Astis extended his hand, turned, and clicked his tongue in surprise. He was alone.

  “Horn!” Astis called.

  But there was nobody there.

  II.

  The blossoming dwarf shrubs of the southern hills were giving off a fine mist. The sun’s molten disc stood directly over the forest. The sky looked like the vast pale-blue interior of an enormous sphere filled with a crystalline liquid. Dew glittered in the dark verdure; fanciful birdsong seemed to emanate from beneath the ground; in their warbling there was a note of languid, lazy awakening.

  Horn was traveling westward, trying to skirt a chain of ravines that filled the area between the colony and the northern part of the forest. An old Colt rifle was slung over his shoulder, swaying as he went. His clothes were crumpled—the vestige of a night spent in the forest. He trod with large, even steps, carefully observing his surroundings, examining the environs and the ground with the look of a master who has returned after a long absence.

  The young tropical morning embraced Horn with the rich breath of lush, succulent verdure. Almost happy, he mused that living here would offer the particular delight of wildness and seclusion, of repose for the troubled, which was impossible back there, where every square inch of land was coveted by thousands—nay, hundreds of thousands of eyes.

  He passed the ravines, the ridge of basalt cliffs, which resembled enormous piles of coal, the meandering copse girding the hills, and came out, heading in the direction of the lake. The places he had just seen did not gratify him enough. They lacked a concentration, that essential and harmonious union of forest and open space, mountain, and water. He was drawn to the comfort, the bounty, the hospitality of nature, to its shady and whimsical corners. Ever since the future stopped existing for him, he had come to be hard on the present.

  The heat grew more intense. The silence of the wilderness listened to the man as he walked; amid the day’s quiet charm, Horn’s thoughts slowly gave way one to another, and he, as though reading a book, followed them, full of rapt sorrow and an unshakable readiness to live in silence, within himself. Now, as never before, he perceived the full extent of his isolation from everything that he saw; sometimes, lost in thought and roused rudely to consciousness by the voice of a monkey or the murmur of a passing lyrebird, Horn would lift his head with a drear curiosity—like one finding himself on another planet—and examine the most ordinary things: a stone, a piece of wood, a pit filled with water. He was insensible to fatigue; his legs moved automatically and grew more numb with every impact of his soles against the hard soil. He reached the lake by the time the sun, having climbed to its highest point, had burned away every shadow, flooding the earth with the angry, unbearable heat of its zenith.

  Mossy, swollen tree trunks, crowned by enormous dappled canopies, created intertwining arches from which hung ferns, with their delicate, graceful lacework of fretted leaves, and garlands of vines that draped down as far as the gnarled roots resembling a gnome’s fingers that had been bunched together by some underground paroxysm. Around the trunks, hoisted up like sheaves of green rockets, drooped fans, umbrellas, elongated ovals, and needles. Farther along, toward the water, the angular stalks of bamboo interlaced, like straw viewed through a magnifying glass. Through the chinks in the leaves, full of thick, dark-green shadows and golden sunspots, little blue fragments of a lake glimmered.

  Pushing apart the reeds, Horn made his way down to the shallows. Directly in front of him, the opposing shore stretched out in a narrow, misty strip; the steel-blue surface of the lake appeared smoky, as though it were enshrouded in finest gossamer. To the left and the right, the shore grew into steep hills; Horn found himself in a miniature valley, blanketed by forest.

  As he contemplated and contrasted, Horn threw his leather bag on the sand and sat on it, surrendering to the diffuse calm. This seemed like a suitable spot, and, what was more, his eagerness to begin work decided the matter in favor of the shore. He spotted a square clearing and a makeshift structure, hidden from the lake by a wall of bamboo. With nothing but an axe and a supreme effort of will, he hoped to build a home, free from the unbearable proximity of people and the cloying eyes of strangers, which made you want to take a bath.

  In the midst of these contemplations, erasing the scene of impending work, an old and, for the present moment, dull pain flared up, transporting his imagination back to the titanic cities of the north. The thousand-mile distance snapped like a rubber band; as he cradled his knees in his red, sunburnt arms, Horn saw with a dreadful clarity scenes and events whose focal point was his inflamed, tormented soul. His darkened gaze paused upon the features of faces frozen in a single expression, the matted gleam of parquet, window curtains billowing in the wind, and thousands of inanimate objects that recalled a suffering deeper than the very source of his own. A bright, bronze candelabrum with guttering candles shone before him, snatching from the darkness a little hand with a lace cuff reaching out toward the flame, and again, as several years before, there came a knock at the door—a loud and at the same time mute demand …

  Horn shook his head. For an instant he was repulsed by himself, like an amputee who pulls off a bandage in order to inspect the necrotic cross-section. The languorous silence of the shore resembled that of the hospital ward, which provokes in those of a nervous disposition the urge to scream and squirm. To distract himself, he set down to work. He felt a genuine longing in his muscles, a desire to make himself weary, to lift great weights, to chop, to hammer.

  And from the very first blow of blue-tinged British steel into the yielding stalk of bamboo, Horn found himself ablaze with a surge of energy, the frenzied exertion that thirsts to subjugate matter with a continual shower of efforts, following one after another amid the growing voluptuousness of exhaustion. Without pausing, he felled trunk after trunk, stripped off leaves, chopped, measured, dug pits, hammered in stakes; with eyes filled with the green mottle of the forest, with a soul that seemed insensible to the sounds he was making, he lost himself in the chaos of physical sensations. His chest ached from his quickened breathing, the stinging sweat made his skin itch, the palms of his hands burned and were covered in water blisters, his legs were swollen with heavy venous blood, a sharp pain in his back prevented him from straightening up, his entire body trembled, driven on by a feverish thirst to kill off all thought. It was intoxication, an orgy of exhaustion, a frenzy of haste, a delight in brute force. Hunger, suppressed by fatigue, acted like a narcotic. From time to time, tormented by thirst, Horn would throw down his axe and drink the cold, brackish water of the lake.

  When the shadows were cast and the evening clamor of the monkeys announced the approach of night, a little wild goat, which had come to the watering spot, cowered among the bulrushes and was shot by one of Horn’s bullets. A fire did the cooking. The smoking, half-burnt pieces of meat smelled of grass and bloody juices. Horn ate heartily, working his pocketknife with the same dexterity with which he had once handled a dessert spoon.

  Sated, enveloped in the growing darkness, which was permeated by a red glimmer from the dimming blue-gray coals of the fire, Horn remembered the barque. From the deck of the ship, his future existence had seemed to him a mysterious succession of days, full of uncertainty and monotony, the vegetive anticipation of death, replaced occasionally by severe bouts of ennui. It was as if he were watching himself, a tiny human speck with an enormous world imprisoned inside; a speck that colored with its own mood everything its consciousness perceived.

  The heady humidity condensed in the air, the melody of the rustling forest wove a fine lace of guarded hush, the putrid, sweet smell of the hothouse encouraged stimulation. Thoughts flitted around the unfinished structure, returning both to the ocean and to flashes of the past, which had lost its keenness ami
d a feeling of complete exhaustion. A heavy, deathly sleep was approaching; its breath touched Horn’s eyelashes, muddled his thoughts, and penetrated his limbs with an invisible weight.

  The last coal crackled and flared up for a single moment, taking on the color of incandescent iron and illuminating the nearest stalks that were curling from the heat, before fading away. And with it into the velvety blackness flew the Fire spirit, the happy, dancing spirit of the flame.

  From a hill came the alarming cry of a lynx, which abated and, growing louder again, sounded like a long, rueful threat. But Horn did not hear it, for he was sound asleep, like the dead—a true blessing from the earth and the realm of tortures.

  Five days later, set amid a flat, square clearing, neatly packed down and fenced in, a little house stood with a sloped reed roof and an unglazed window overlooking the lake. The sturdy, homemade furniture consisted of a cot, a table, and benches. In the corner towered a massive earthen stove.

  His work done, Horn, emaciated and hunched over, staggering with exhaustion, made his way along the narrow strip of shallow water toward the foot of the hill, climbed to the summit, and looked back.

  To the north loomed a forest, like an unmoving green herd, skirting as far as the horizon a chain of chalk cliffs that were flecked with crevasses and blurs of scrawny shrubs. To the east, beyond the lake, twisted the white thread of a road leading to the town; dotted along its edge were trees that seemed minute from afar, like salad shoots. To the west, surrounding a plain pitted with ravines and hills, stretched the dark-blue expanse of the distant ocean, scintillating with white sparks.

  While to the south, away from the center of a gently sloping crater, with a bright array of houses and farms, surrounded by unkempt greenery, stretched the slanting squares of the plantations and ploughed fields of Lanphier Colony.

  III.

  A two-wheeled native cart crossed the road mere steps from where Guppy was standing. Having passed through a cloud of acrid dust, Guppy spotted a stranger walking toward him, and unintentionally stopped. He had no recollection of the man, but, at the same time, it was if he had met him before. A vague memory of the Dutch barque piqued Guppy’s natural curiosity; he removed his hat and bowed.

  “Hey …” said Guppy, squinting. “Are you on your way from town?”

  “I haven’t visited the town yet,” replied Horn, suppressing the desire to walk on, “and I’m not likely to, either.”

  “Ah, yes, I see!” said Guppy with a broad grin. “Just as I suspected. I recognize your voice. You landed a week ago, didn’t you, in that little bay?”

  “I landed in a little bay, that’s sure enough,” said Horn, weighing his words, “but I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Guppy laughed and winked at him.

  “Astis and Dribb had a bet,” he said, a little calmer now. “I went off with Dribb. Astis kept telling everyone that you’d been swallowed up by the earth. I’ll be damned, you certainly played a trick on him, didn’t you!”

  “I seem to remember something of the sort,” said Horn. “Yes, I definitely sensed your presence there in the dark.”

  “There you have it!” Guppy nodded, in a sweat from the pleasure of jawing. “Why didn’t you go with Astis?”

  “To tell the truth,” said Horn with a grin, “frankly speaking, I felt ashamed to bother such respectable people. Another man would have lied and told you that you seemed stupid, talkative, and much too curious, but as for me—well, that’s another matter. I like you, so I won’t lie.”

  He said this with an entirely placid expression on his face, and Guppy, taking this masked affront at face value, creased into a smug smile.

  “Come, come!” he objected condescendingly. “Was it really such a bother? You’re a fine fellow, upon my honor, and I do like you. My farm’s half a mile from here; how about some roast pork and a glass of beer, eh? What do you say?”

  “Very well,” said Horn, after a pause. The confident manner of the colonist amused him. He inquired: “How many inhabitants are there?”

  “A lot,” panted Guppy, throwing a hand up in the air. “Ever since the ferry route connecting us to the mainland opened up, all sorts of adventurers have come ashore, gadding about here, taking plots of land. After a year they all flee to the town, where there are women and everything that’s difficult to give up.”

  A labyrinth of green hedgerows, full of dry dust, snaked its way along the rising incline. Horn’s legs were covered in reddish sand up to his ankles; the dust tickled his nostrils. Guppy continued:

  “You meet more snakes than women in these parts. Last year they put on an actual auction for a washerwoman who had traveled over a hundred miles here. If only you’d seen how she stood there, arms akimbo, up on the counter of The Green Conch! Three men tried to filch her from one another, and in the end they came to some sort of arrangement: they found one of them in a well … while the other two live with her to this day.”

  Guppy took a breath before carrying on. According to him, no more than half the colonists had families and lived with white women; the rest made do with native women, who were seduced by the prospect of idleness and colorful rags, while their fathers lolled nearby with bottles left around by their sharp-witted bridegrooms.

  The old population, almost all of them former exiles or their children, fugitives from far-flung colonies, people who were ashamed of their previous name, servants caught red-handed—this is what had flocked in, totaling one hundred smoking chimneys around the original village, which had been founded by two former convicts. One of them had died, while the other still hauled his decrepit, disease-worn body from house to house, breakfasting here, dining there, and everywhere sniveling about the property he had gambled away over the course of a single night to some luckier miscreant.

  “Here we are,” said Guppy, reaching out his stiff farmer’s palm toward a tall, tower-like building. “This is my house,” he added. A shadow of obtuse self-importance fell across his face. “It’s a fine, solid home. Fit for a governor.”

  A tall hedgerow stretched from two corners of the building, enclosing an area that was invisible from the outside. Thrusting his hands into his pockets and looking up, Guppy passed through the gate.

  Horn looked around, struck by the peculiar grandeur of the pig trough that reigned there. The scorching heat of the yard produced an unbearable stench as myriad gleaming flies hovered in the air; a greenish muck stuck to the soles of the feet, the squeals, the hurried grunting, the pungent smell of swine—all this smacked of filthy live meat, packed into the space of a single acre. The fat yellow masses moved around in all directions, trembling under their own bulk. The yard teemed with them; enormous boars with black coats; ungainly, tottering yearlings; grubby pink piglets; swollen, pregnant sows exhausted by the milk held in their monstrously hanging teats—thousands of rodent-like tails, snouts, glinting teeth, polyphonous, rasping squeals, the rustle of bodies rubbing together—all this provoked a yearning for soap and cold water. Guppy said:

  “And here are my piggies! How do you like them?”

  “Not bad,” replied Horn.

  “Every month I sell around two dozen,” said Guppy, coming alive, his nostrils flaring with pleasure. “They’re really the most peaceable beasts. They give me hardly any trouble at all. Only sometimes they do savage their young—so look sharp. I love my work. You look and think: here is lazy, fat gold; if you just clean it up a little, your pocket will burst from all the money they bring in. I do relish that thought.”

  “Fine pigs,” said Horn.

  Guppy wiped his forehead and peered at Horn. This man was irritating him; he wore a look that seemed to say he had seen the pigs and Guppy many times over.

  “I was about to be on my way,” Horn said suddenly, “but thinking about it, I wouldn’t mind a drink. If you have some wine, that would be just the thing, but no matter if not.”

  “I have some sahha, the native beer.” Guppy motioned toward the house. “They make it from sago. Y
ou haven’t tried it? You must. It will make your head spin, just like Esther.”

  The cramped, almost bare room that Horn entered was softened by the dazzling brilliance of the sky, which flooded in through the window; the square blue aperture was crowded with jagged leaves and the feathery tops of the grove. Guppy picked up a stick and whacked it loudly against the table.

  A seminaked creature, with hair resembling a bishop’s miter, appeared from a side door. It was a woman. Her shoulders were covered with a cotton kerchief. Her dark face with thick, as if swollen, lips motionlessly observed the men.

  “Bring us some beer,” Guppy ordered brusquely, taking a seat at the table.

  Horn sat down next to him. The woman with the dark body brought a pitcher and tankards and remained in the room. Her quick almond eyes skimmed over Horn’s hands, his apparel, and his head. She could be no more than eighteen; a shiny tin band that passed through her ear severely spoilt the rough beauty of her flat face.

  “What are you waiting for?” said Guppy. “Go.”

  The girl’s upper lip rose ever so slightly, flashing a strip of teeth. She left, drowsily shuffling her feet.

  “She lives with me,” Guppy explained, draining his tankard. “The idiot. They’re all idiots, worse than negroes.”

  “I thought you didn’t have a … woman,” said Horn.

  “I don’t,” said Guppy. “I’m not married and I won’t take a lover.”

  “But there was a woman just here.” Horn fixed his gaze on Guppy. “Perhaps I’m mistaken …”

  Guppy roared with laughter.

  “When I say ‘women,’ I mean only whites,” he proudly rejoined, composing himself and adopting a somewhat disdainful tone. “As for that … well, I’m no old man … if you catch my meaning?”

  “Indeed,” said Horn.

  He sat there vacantly, without a thought in his head; his surroundings seemed as sharp and acidic as the taste of sahha. Guppy struggled to stop himself belching, comically distending his cheeks and staring goggle-eyed.