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by Gregory Norminton

  It was a goddamn ruin when we got there. The roof all caved in from the heat of the fire and rocks and stones all thrown in through the windows…

  (The local militia popped a number of them. It was like half the town was there.) I mean, Jesus, their own fucking building…

  (All those loved ones – their photographs chewed up by the flames. Don’t they respect their own dead?)

  The problem is these people do not want freedom. They do not understand what freedom is…

  (You ever seen so much melted wax?)

  These people hate freedom.

  (It’s not like they needed a fire to keep warm.)

  – I would not say: the crowd was all local people. Local people were in the crowd. That does not mean local people were the crowd. The crowd was infiltrated by foreign elements. Foreign elements manipulated the local people… That is the problem with foreign elements. Just when you know they are there, they are gone.

  “It is with great sadness that I learned about yesterday’s assault on the monument to the victims of H— We all know… we can all see how sick this was. I feel this sick personally, because I was there. I was rewarded the honour of opening the monument three years ago. Since then people from around the world visiting H— have paid their respects to the victims of a brutal regime. We mustn’t forget that one of the reasons we went in was to make sure this kind of thing… I’m referring to the massacre at H—… that this kind of thing never happens again. The former dictatorship was brutal. It didn’t care about the people it murdered and that’s something yesterday’s extremists want to forget. Well I personally want to see the memorial rebuilt. It is vital for the people of H— that it be rebuilt because if we don’t listen to the voice of the past how can we hope to build a good future?”

  It is not so bad.

  It looks worse than it is. The bullet passed through my leg. I will walk out of this hospital.

  Listen. Listen to me. For years they have promised us help. But the help has not come. There are no roads, no streets here, only mud.

  They only took people to see the monument to the dead and never to see the living.

  You see that man?That man in the chair by the window? He has lost his son. It was his son who was killed.

  He threw a stone.

  Violence is bad. I do not approve of violence. Maybe we should not have attacked the monument.

  But if we do nothing, they will not listen.

  Goody goody

  You don’t have to be long at this job to recognise her sort: the caring neighbour, the bleeding heart. Curtain-twitcher, more like. Brain stuffed with shredding from the Guardian. You can spot them a mile off by their bohemian drapes (I mean what’s off the shoulder, not in the window). Sort of scruffy chic, dressing down with loose change from the trust fund.

  Still, I had to hear her out.

  It was concern, she said, she didn’t want to break up the family “such as it was”, she didn’t want the kiddies taken into care “necessarily”. But you learn a lot, she said, from watching children play.

  I asked how long they’d been acquainted. Reading between the lines I surmised that she employed the woman as an occasional cleaner. What other evidence did she have to support her allegations? After all, kids do pick things up off the telly.

  “You don’t let children watch that sort of programme,” she said. “She confides in me, you see. She doesn’t have many friends.”

  I told her I’d have a word. It’s easy to criticise a single mum with three little ones to look after. When she made snide remarks about their diet I thought, excuse me, not everyone can afford organic hummus and guacamole. If food counted as abuse, our lot wouldn’t have a moment’s rest from one year to the next.

  It was Sandy who went in the end. I was busy with the Hufton case, bloody disaster that turned out to be. When I remembered to ask her about it, Sandy said it didn’t look all that bad: the kids were clothed and well fed and they didn’t seem unhappy. We filed her under low concern and got on with managing the chaos.

  But her nibs wasn’t taking this lying down. There were men coming round, she told us, at all times of the day and night. “The little boy playing mummies and daddies tried to take his sister’s knickers orf.” Well, we had to take that seriously. She didn’t help herself, mind, boasting about fixing their school uniforms and taking the whole gang to school on mornings when their mum was unconscious and slipping them “healthy food” on the sly, “not that they’ll touch the stuff.”

  I spoke to Sandy about the case. We agreed it probably was a case, though we’d need more to go on than a neighbour’s word. She looked to be enjoying her concern just that little bit too much. It’s easy to be Florence Nightingale when social services step in to do the nursing.

  “Please,” she said, “whatever you do, don’t let on that I told you. She trusts me, you see.”

  We looked into things and it did, in fact, prove necessary to intervene. The woman was going off the rails, couldn’t cope at all.

  Sandy swears she said nothing. Nor did I. It must have been obvious, though, given their acquaintance, and the whistleblower got a punch in the mouth for her troubles. Declined to press charges. All the same, I couldn’t feel one hundred per cent sorry for her, with her thick lip. The bloody patronage of the woman! That’s all the trouble with this country: we’re still hobbled by class.

  The carpenter’s tale

  My brothers thought me a fool to marry her. What did I want, at my age, with a disgraced girl and her swollen belly? Winks and lewd nudges presumed to answer that question.

  “She has her hooks in you,” said my sister, who thinks less of her sex than most men I know. “Batting her lashes at any man old and ugly enough to take pity on her.”

  But the girl did not behave like a fallen woman. She absorbed the scornful looks of her neighbours and caressed her belly as though it contained a precious gift. She used to visit me at my work. She enjoyed the heat of cedar when it glows from the saw and the smell of sandalwood, whose fragrant pairings she gathered like petals from the sand. Whenever I asked about the child she fended off my questions, and in time I was able to set aside the words that hurt us.

  Though many years her senior (slowing, now, and in need of my assistants), there were times, at the start of our married life, when it seemed the other way round. I could not keep from grumbling as we made our way to the census, but she never complained, though the child was huge in her and beginning to descend.

  When the baby came, it was agony to see them so poorly lodged. Many times I had to leave them in search of food and water – looking, always in vain, for a better place to stay. From the beginning there was something remarkable about mother and child. I have never been able to penetrate the mystery of it. Returning, I would find strangers in the doorway, brushing straw from their sandals and blinking in the sunlight. They smiled at me and bowed, but when I asked I was told that it was a courtesy commonly offered to newborns and their parents.

  “You are blessed,” some of the visitors said. This I knew, and the secret between mother and child lengthened and deepened, like a shadow, until I became so accustomed to it that I barely sensed it. For I have been happier than I would have dared hope. And it has not been difficult to love, as far as his strange manner will allow, the lean, thoughtful and forever questioning boy. He is devout like his mother: plain observance of the Law never seems enough for him. Only his temper worries me – how angry he can become at carelessness or cruelty. Such hot rage could get a boy into trouble. Still, to be young is to be absolute. He has plenty of time to learn to submit to the world as it is.

  He is approaching manhood now. Some mutter that he is falling into bad company: sinners, Zealots say, drunkards, collaborators, even prostitutes. But I do not think he will succumb. After all, the boy was born into disgrace. He knows, so young, what I have taken a lifetime to understand.

  The panic room in Eden

  Gifts

  To Mr Thos. White.
In Bideford in Devonshir in England.

  Thus:

  Dear Brother, I hope you are in helth along with your familie may God be with you here the sumer is almos over the fiting also we hop on acount of the furst snoes beeng not far of and all returnt to corters whence i send you thes Lins to give you nus of ouer Batels gainst the injuns alas Mr Furst is kilt rid over by a hors Gorge is shot through the leg ouer regmont is struck by the Feaver but God allmity heard my prars and brot me clear it is terible this damp heet and the long wates then sodden Minuets of kiling now for the perteklers the injuns siding with the french surrunded ouer Fort on acount of the queins men refusing to pay for ther frendship i was on gard at the salley port and saw the Savages they had no hop of taking ouer Fort beeng few in number wat straunge creturs they did look Gorge was afeart at the site of them and ther songs he did ax God for delivrans but i trusted ouer sords and Cannon the shawknee delawar and Mingoe are vary ferce they took 6 forts west of the mountans and kilt many hundrets of settlers men wimin and children i thot of my Mary knee high last time i saw her with thos luvly ringlets her fingers in her mowth waving farwel by the watter medow and my Dear Wife weping to see me depart whiles we looked to the wooned so many i hope never to see such agen and how are my boys Jams must be 8 and Samul has he ridden the hors yet he was alays afeart of it I pray they never march in frunt of rogmonts of french tho it be his Magisty commands it but to return to the seege some of ouer solders were hot for batel but ofescers thot otherwise the seege did last thorough the sumer whils we a wated releef Col Henry Boucket came and saw off the enemy not withot 50 ded I haf heard say yet the Varmin were routed we gav three housays when the scotch and Royal Americans enterd no man can gues the Joy of it Captain Ekoyer gav each man a quart of rum and when i had drunk of it and watched the moon shin on the river i did think of all I have seen these years and the injuries suffert William Figors with his head shot of a girl not Marys age crusht by cannon bols what past between us Brother is no great matter i know she loved you beter i have ben dif and blind but God has herd my prars and placed forgivenes in my hart and it is my dayly hope that I may life to come home and see you and my own Wife who is good for all that and giue her my Deuty as also to you from your most loveing Brother

  Edward White

  do not beleve we slept under seege the Savages are covetous and as we had three Men with the small pocks it was an easy matter to make them gifts of blankets and hankerchefs dipt in the pock woonds and in this manner did we inoculate them and God deliver us from their inhuman Nation

  The monumental achievement of Jose Rodrigues do Cabo

  Plate 1. The only known portrait of José Rodrigues do Cabo, in 1772, shortly after his graduation from the University of Coimbra. Already a passionate naturalist, he insisted on posing with the marmoset which his uncle had brought back from his plantation.

  Plate 2. Queen Maria I of Portugal. Her concern about the exhaustion of gold deposits in Mato Grosso was reason enough to commission what would turn out to be a nine-year expedition.

  Plate 3. A sketch of the boat used on the expedition down the Rio Negro. The Indians laboured and slept in the prow, the explorers sheltered under the roof of palm leaves or falcas. Here, do Cabo paints while the expedition commander, Agostinho Ferreira, is cleaning his rifle.

  Plate 4. Do Cabo’s portrait of a Maua Indian. In a private letter to Captain Ferreira, Queen Maria made plain her indifference to the fate of uncooperative Indians who got in the way of the expedition.

  Plate 5. A juvenile caiman: “a fierce and greedy beast, from whose carapace our shells rebound without effect.” This was one of the few paintings to be left in the Real Museu by Napoleon’s agents.

  Plate 6. The white-lipped peccary, Tayassu albirostris. “Although they make most excellent eating,” wrote do Cabo in his diary, “the Indians never kill more than will support them through the rainy season.” Peccaries can also be dangerous to humans. It was one of these which, in 1789, charged do Cabo and injured him in the right leg. He was compelled to use a walking stick for the rest of his life.

  Plate 7. “The Piranha,” wrote Ferreira in his last letter home, “has sharp teeth and a relentless appetite. I have seen them strip the flesh from living creatures and find no satiety until the bones were clean. Everything in this place is greedy and eating seems the only law, so that I long for the quiet of civilisation.” Captain Ferreira was not as forthcoming as he might have been: Do Cabo, for his part, never forgot the horrible death of the two Guaranì children.

  Plate 8. It was on a slave ship like this one, plying the route between Brazil and Benin, that do Cabo, the only survivor of his expedition, began the perilous, nine-month journey back to Lisbon.

  Plate 9. Matamata turtle, Chelus fimbratus. The shell survived in the care of the University of Coimbra, from whose meagre supply of specimens the dying do Cabo attempted to restore a collection which he believed lost for ever.

  Plate 10. The naturalist Philippe Marie Saint-Hubert in 1808, shortly after returning from Portugal with do Cabo’s paintings as loot. Saint-Hubert was subsequently elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences and awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. He is most famous today for having been that rarest of creatures: a French vegetarian.

  Pileup

  Nobody was responsible: it was up to everybody else to make an effort. Jim did the vacuuming. Eleanor was always cleaning other people’s hairs from the shower. Neena protested that she already had the care of the vegetable garden: a garden which, Nick pointed out, only Neena was interested in, the rest of the house being quite content with a patch of weeds.

  “Well I’m not doing your bloody dishes,” Neena said. “As a vegetarian I can’t be expected to touch animal fats.”

  So the contest in squalor began. Jim’s fry-ups adhered to Neena’s vegetarian stews; Nick’s ready meals rubbed against Eleanor’s low-fat concoctions. For a few days they had at least the self-interest to wash the pots and cooking utensils. But the mutual affront of the pileup in the sink – a pileup that soon spread across the other surfaces of the kitchen – became such that even this consensus failed. When someone left the oven dish fouled, others retaliated by leaving the frying pan filmed with grease and the cooking pots ringed with tomato soup. Getting up at different times for different lectures, the housemates raced each other for the use of the remaining cereal bowls. Eleanor’s toaster, formerly a common asset, was requisitioned by its owner.

  The smell began to find them in their beds. It was sickly sweet, with currents of egg and oyster and mulch of coffee bean. Meeting in the stairs, the housemates could no longer look one another in the eye, as though the smell were some intimate betrayal of their bodies.

  At last the crisis brought them together and a course of action was agreed. They locked the door to the kitchen. They would live on takeaways and sandwiches from the deli. At night they listened as matter shifted downstairs. Things stirred, they creaked and settled. Nobody dared investigate for fear of what might crawl out: bloated slugs, or strangely evolving rodents. The boys coped better with the suspense than the girls. Neena found herself a boyfriend and spent her nights in college. When Eleanor developed a rash of acne, she called in a professional cleaner.

  The cleaner was a fat, sardonic West-Indian. Eleanor and the others imagined themselves hiding behind her ample figure as she unlocked the kitchen door. The smell that greeted them was of corpses. The cleaner took one look and fled.

  No doubt she reported them to the council. The housemates hid from the gloved, toxic-suited experts as the kitchen – its contents and furnishings – tumbled into the skip. The cost of the cleanup was ruinous: a great slice of their loans consumed. Penniless, on rumbling stomachs, they looked with new eyes at the patch of weeds.

  The acid reef

  Day 4

  Ready to shoot snakebite scene when the clouds let rip. Rain like a sudden volley and AD gustily shouting “Incoming”. Crew manages to protect the gear but U furious, the veins fat in hi
s neck, throwing invective at the sky. Taking the weather personally, like a tropical Lear. Doubtless his intention.

  Day 6

  In break from work, go snorkelling with Alice. Buffeted by strong wind, pulled by the tide and rewarded with nasty gash in left thigh which looks even worse stained with iodine. Alice gloomy on account of the bleaching: evidence of a warming, acidifying sea. Dead, brittle fans like desiccated lungs, other corals overrun with algae. Return to find U screaming at the cooks. Have to intervene. The crew is one thing, attacking our hosts another. An indulgence we cannot afford.

  Day 7

  Swiss documentary team arrives. Sit under parasol, swatting flies and talking about the film, the Mesoamerican reef, the difficulties of location shooting. Advise the director, a slip of a girl crushed by the heat, to take a panning shot from the well – best place to capture the line where jungle and beach meet, the Caribbean beyond. U, who has dreaded washing in the estuary for fear of crocodiles, obliges the documentary crew with footage of him wading, patting the water like a child at play.

  Day 11

  U impossible today. Picks fight with D who looked at him the wrong way. Have to mediate between them while simultaneously answering J’s questions about the set. Am bent over plans when sudden silence from U. He is seated beneath a seagrape with an Indian child, a girl of six or seven, who has brought her parrot chick for him to admire. U enchanted by the bald, lice-infested bird, his expression beatific, the girl happy and smiling. Realise the documentary crew is recording the scene for posterity.

  Day 14

  Wake up with full bladder. The rain has hatched countless mosquitoes which lock on to me like heat-seeking missiles the moment I step out for a piss. A day of troubles follows: trees felled by the storm, wrecking continuity; sand flies harvesting bits of my crew to feed to their young; communal dysentery due to discontent of the cooks (M swears we ate rancid turtle last night; Alice, due for a close-up, pukes everything up for the ghost crabs to pick over). Yet I could cope with these were it not for the worsening behaviour of U.