by John Harding
FIFTY-FOUR
NEXT DAY, LATE in the afternoon, as the sun was already growing weary and thinking about heading west, Tigua’s family and friends gathered around the burial pit. As William watched the proceedings he couldn’t help noticing that alone of the little she-boy’s intimates, Lucy wasn’t there. Singing cheerfully, Tigua’s brothers lifted the logs from the body. Exposed to the air for two days, the corpse was already in an advanced state of decomposition. The stench was so bad William had to fight the urge to gag. As the brothers lifted the roll of matting, he almost cried out as an arm and a leg fell from it, and then caught himself thinking that, ironically, Tigua had now joined the ranks of the island’s amputees. The matting was unrolled and the corpse was more or less reassembled on the ground beside the pit. A fire had been lit nearby and someone tossed herbs onto it to take away the awful stink of rotting flesh. Managua, Tigua’s father and brothers and a couple of older men produced knives and began scraping flesh from the skeleton, tossing the pieces into the fire. They went about the task in a businesslike way. Nobody spoke, not even when Tigua’s father passed something to Managua. The old man examined it with a wry smile. Peering at the object William realized to his horror that it was the dead she-boy’s penis. The cause of all her problems and her death! Managua tossed it contemptuously into the fire. One of the brothers who had his back to William lifted a hammer and struck something cradled in his lap. A moment later he threw what looked like brain tissue into the flames. Still not a word had passed between these busy pathologists. All you could hear was the harsh scrape of metal upon bone. The heat, the humidity and various worms, grubs and insects that scuttled from the corpse had done most of their work for them and soon a pile of gleaming white bones was all that remained of what had once been Tigua.
One of the brothers picked up a rib bone. He stood up, flourished it and said, ‘Goodbye Tigua. This piece of you is remain with me always for remind me of you.’
The other brothers reached into the pile and each took a bone or two. One of them had a patella, another the humerus. Each said a few words of farewell and departed with his memento of his sister.
‘Come, gwanga,’ Managua called to William. ‘You is help youself. Is be custom. You is take one of Tigua bones for remember she.’
William shook his head.
‘Come, everyone is do,’ Managua urged. ‘What ’bout rib bone, or maybe you is want hip? Is be one left, I is think. No, well then you is take a little piece of she hand, come on, have just one knuckle.’
William didn’t know if it was the smell of putrefying flesh or the idea of handling the little she-boy’s body like this, but he couldn’t speak for fear of vomiting. He couldn’t help recalling that he’d read how serial killers often kept the bones of their victims as mementoes of their kills. ‘It’s – uh – OK,’ he managed to say finally. ‘No, really, Managua, I don’t need anything to remind me of Tigua. I couldn’t ever forget her.’
Managua shrugged and reached into the pile. He took out a tibia. He produced an old bit of cloth from the waist string of his pubic leaf and rubbed the bone carefully to clean it of any last vestiges of flesh. Then he used it to help lift himself from the ground and limped away, clutching it in both hands. Funny, William thought, how he had chosen the bit of Tigua that he was missing himself. He didn’t know how right he was, that this was what Managua always did at funerals, that he had the best collection of tibias on the island.
There were still many bones left and other villagers, lesser friends of the deceased, stood around like vultures waiting for the immediate family and inner circle of friends to take their pick before diving in themselves, as might happen at a wedding buffet, say.
The brothers had all gone. William looked at Tigua’s skull, centrepiece among the diminishing ossuary, and tried to equate its ghastly grin with the playful smile he had known. At that moment, from opposite directions, a hand reached to claim it and a woman’s delicate fingers brushed against a hairy masculine paw. Tigua’s mother raised her eyes and looked into Lintoa’s. He pulled back his hand as though the skull’s dome was red hot and he had been burned. The woman smiled. She took the skull in both her hands and lifted it before her. She leaned forward and brushed her lips against its fleshless jaw. Then she held it out to Lintoa. He raised a deprecating hand. She urged the skull towards him. He muttered something William couldn’t catch and her few words of reply were lost in the sound of the fire, noisy with the crackling of burning flesh. Lintoa took the skull. Ungainly, with it held in both hands as though it were a crystal bowl, he hauled his large frame to its feet. Tucking the skull under one arm, like a cartoon Elizabethan ghost, he walked slowly from the clearing.
It was time for William to slip away himself. There was only so much misery he could stand. And he had a bag to pack.
FIFTY-FIVE
‘I IS GO miss you, gwanga. I is not have any mans for talk ’bout books with.’ Managua undid the straps of his artificial leg, took it off and rubbed his stump, which appeared to William to be red and raw. They were sitting side by side on William’s suitcase at the landing beach, looking out to sea, waiting for one of the distant specks on the horizon to turn out not to be a seabird, but the monthly plane on which William would be leaving.
William took off his hat and mopped his brow. At another time he might have risked the old man’s wrath and mentioned that he had Purnu as his confederate in literacy now. But he wasn’t thinking of that. He was staring at Managua’s prosthetic limb. He’d noticed the tinkling of the buckles on the strap.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘It was you who hit me over the head. You used your leg.’
Managua turned and stared at him a moment. He shrugged. ‘Yes, is be me. I is use my knee. You is be plenty damn lucky. If we is ever dig you skull up I is like for see. Is must be plenty hard. My knee is kill pig.’
‘You meant to kill me?’
‘No, no, gwanga. I is not want for hurt you. I is just see you is go discover Pilua and I is panic.’
‘You knew it would bring everything into question.’
‘Exactly. I is not have time for think. I is lash out on spur of moment.’
‘After you’d unstrapped your leg.’
‘Sure. I is follow you up stairs. I is see you go in first room. Is think I is must stop you and is take off my leg and lean against wall. When you is look out on jungle my leg is just lash out before I is can prevent.’
‘Like it had a mind of its own.’
‘Is be true, gwanga. You is have own legs, you is not know. This is be some other fella’s leg. Is not always obey my brain.’
They sat for some time without speaking. There were no breakers on the ocean, but it had a roll to it, like the breast of some enormous beast that rises and falls as it breathes. Here, thought William, the ocean is alive.
‘But it would have been better if I’d been dead,’ he said. ‘It would have solved all your problems. The traditions would be safe.’
‘Mebbe. Sometimes I is think I is be like loony British king who is tell tide for stop. I is fight battle I is can never win.’
They watched the sea in silence. When Managua looked at the American he saw he was regarding him with a strange expression. He assumed it was fear. ‘You is must not blame me,’ he said. ‘I is not like for do such things. I is must protect my people. But is all be over now, I is know that. You is not have fear. I is just take leg off because stump is be sore. I is not go hurt you now.’
‘No, no, it’s not that,’ said William. ‘I’m not afraid of you. I just got a sense of the burden you’ve been carrying all these years. I can see how difficult it must have been for you. You’re not the kind of man who goes around hitting people over the head.’
‘You is talk true. I is only ever use leg like that one time before and that is for kill pig that is go die anyway. I is not like for do against man.’
William nodded.
‘For man I is use magic. But I is try everything I
is know against you, gwanga, and nothing is work. Drowning spell, green shoestring spell, hurricane spell, all is fail. You is have strong magic for protect you.’
William smiled. So, the old bastard had wanted him dead.
Managua saw his expression. ‘Is be nothing personal, gwanga. I is must do for my people. I is not wish you harm for youself. I is like you. You is be man who is mebbe see Hamlet.’
There was the distant drone of an engine from the far distance. William put his hand on Managua’s shoulder. ‘Come on, old man,’ he said, ‘get your leg on. The plane’s almost here.’
FIFTY-SIX
TWO MORE PLANES had come and gone and still Lucy was on the island. Twice more the fridge had been filled with beer – and quickly emptied, mainly by Lintoa who was drowning his sorrows, and still Lucy was here. Her project was finished and she knew she should be making arrangements to leave, but a strange lassitude had overcome her. She felt like Managua’s great hero, Hamlet, powerless to act. It was as if she was waiting for something, something more than the next plane, but she couldn’t have told you what.
There were times when Lucy wondered if she might not be waiting for the return of William Hardt or perhaps the arrival of some other man. These were the moments when she longed for her pointy breasts to be blunted by the barrel chest of a strong man pressing down on them. Now her grief and anger had abated, she no longer blamed William for Tigua’s death. It had been one of those things that happen from time to time, from an unfortunate combination of circumstances. If she’d ever discussed OCD with William he could have told her such events occur no matter how much you try to ward them off by not stepping on paving cracks or by arranging objects in a room in perfect symmetry or by ritual moving of the eyelids.
Certainly now she missed the American. She missed his vulnerable smile when he slept. She even missed his strange alternate manipulation of her breasts, never mind that it had felt like he was trying to milk a cow. But although she no longer held William responsible for the loss of the little she-boy, she was appalled at what she knew his interference would do to the island. Because of him, her book would serve only as the sad memorial of a vanished culture.
Other times, when she wondered at her inability to rouse herself and leave, Lucy considered whether she could simply be waiting for death. Wasn’t that what everyone was waiting for? But if so, why here, where death would not be the end, but would merely transfer her to a superior version of the same island? What would she do there? Lotus eat for eternity?
Right now she was doing her waiting on the veranda, half sitting, half lying on a battered old cane recliner, and her waiting was almost over; her suitcase was finally packed, ready for the next day’s plane, and she was looking for the last time at the ocean as the sun went down in the west and the first fingers of dusk began to claw their way over the eastern horizon. It was an extraordinary night, one such as she could not remember since she’d been on the island. There were no crashing waves. There was no spray, only the merest lacy frill of surf. The sea soughed gently and was almost silent, as silent as it could ever be.
Lucy poured herself another glass of cold white wine. She found herself tipping the bottle very gently out of respect for the unusual quiet. She didn’t want to disturb it by making any sound at all. Even so she only heard the other noise after she set the bottle down again: what she at first thought was singing, somewhere out to sea, far, far away.
It had to be someone in a boat, because there was no other land within several hundred miles, and this in itself struck her as strange because the voice or rather, voices, for there were certainly more than one, surely belonged to women and they never went fishing and so rarely boarded a boat.
‘Waa, waa, waa,’ sang the voices. ‘Waa, waa, waa.’ Lucy felt the hairs on her neck rise in a way they hadn’t even when confronted by the dead souls in the kassa hut; there was something ghostly in this singing.
‘Waa, waa, waa.’ It was coming closer. She knocked back her wine and poured another glass, not caring now how much noise she made, hand trembling so much she spilled almost as much as she got into the glass. ‘Waa, waa, waa.’
Her immediate thought was to run, followed fast by a second that said, where to? Away from the sea, perhaps, far inland, stumbling in the dark in the jungle surely preferable to hearing these sounds.
‘Waa, waa, waa.’ This time it was so close she found herself squinting into the fast-dimming light over the edge of the waves, trying to make out who was making this noise. ‘Waa, waa waa’ it came again and this time all her terror drained from her and she felt an immense sorrow well up in her, a pity she hadn’t known she possessed beneath her sharp little breasts and jagged exterior. For surely these were not the voices of women, sirens from hell trying to lure her to disaster, but the plaintive cries of babies, calling for her help. She rose from her chair and went inside to her bedroom where she always slept with a flashlight by her bed. She switched it on and by its light made her way outside and down the veranda steps. She ran to the water’s edge. She pointed the torch out to sea in the direction the sounds seemed to be coming from, convinced she would see a shipwrecked baby, miraculously saved by a buoyant crib, floating there like the infant Moses. But her circle of light revealed nothing, only that the sea had now turned black, and when she pointed the flashlight beam further out, stretching the light into an ellipse, she found nothing other than water barely corrugated by the gentlest of breezes.
‘Miss Lucy! Miss Lucy!’ Lucy almost dropped the flashlight because she thought that the shipwrecked baby was calling her by name. But this could not be so since the voice came not from out to sea, but from further along the shore. She turned the torch in that direction and picked out the figure of a woman trotting towards her. It was Lamua.
‘Lamua!’ Lucy ran towards her and flung her arms around her. ‘Am I glad to see you! We’ve got to rouse the men, get some boats out. There’s a baby, possibly more than one, out to sea somewhere. It – they – must have been shipwrecked and somehow sur—’
She stopped because Lamua had put a finger upon her lips. ‘Ssh, Miss Lucy,’ whispered Lamua, and Lucy noticed she was smiling and her eyes were luminous, ‘you is must not frighten they.’
‘Frighten who? Who’s “they”?’
‘Come.’ Lamua took her hand and pulled her towards the house. Lucy took a look back at the ocean, over which a half-moon was now rising, coming up over the horizon like a huge white rock, but even with this extra illumination there was still nothing to see. Dumbly, she followed the native woman.
Lamua led her up the steps and into the house. ‘I is come for help you. Purnu is tell me is you time too.’ Lucy saw now that the other woman was trembling as she herself had trembled earlier, though obviously from excitement, not from fear. ‘We is must lie down.’
‘Why? What is it? Who’s singing?’
Lamua ignored her and began fiddling with the buttons of Lucy’s shirt. ‘You is must undress,’ she insisted. Lucy found herself obeying as if in a dream. She removed the shirt and then her skirt. Lamua put her fingers in the waistband of her own grass skirt and it dropped to the floor. She waved her hands at Lucy’s underwear. ‘Come, come, you is must be naked.’
‘What is it? Tell me.’ Nevertheless she obeyed. The sound of the waa waa waaing was all but deafening now. It seemed to fill the house as if shipwrecked babies were all around.
‘You is please lie down.’ Lamua indicated the bed and Lucy lay upon it. She herself lay down on the floor.
‘What are you doing down there?’ said Lucy, even though she still didn’t know what was going on. ‘There’s room for you up here.’
Lamua shrugged, rose and positioned herself on the other side of the bed, William’s side, Lucy found herself thinking.
‘Lamua, what’s happening? Please tell me,’ Lucy hissed, afraid to talk and disturb the almost musical waa waa waa. It was all she could do. Her body seemed powerless to resist the native woman’s instructions.
Lucy sat upright, tugged out of her torpor. ‘Floating babies. You mean . . .’
‘Yes, they is choose we. We is go have babies.’
Lucy pulled herself from the bed and bent to pick up her underwear. Suddenly her nakedness felt very vulnerable. She wanted to cover herself. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘not me.’
Lamua rolled across the bed, reached out a hand and tore the knickers from Lucy’s hand. She tossed them away across the room. ‘You is have no choice,’ she said. ‘Is not be for you for decide. If you is can hear they spirit babies, is mean only one thing. One of they babies is choose you.’
Lucy knew of course about the spirit babies. She had written about how people grew tired of Tuma and its endless round of sex and pleasure and how after they had grown old and become young again many times they often wanted to once more try ordinary life, with all its challenges, its difficulties and its heartbreaks. She knew too that there had been two planes since William Hardt left, that she had twice filled her fridge with beer while her period just had not happened at all. If she’d been like William she might have tried to ward off the inevitable and resorted to elaborate blinking or teeth grinding or straightening things in the room, but she wasn’t at all like him and so she did none of these. Besides, her limbs felt strangely heavy and her eyes would just not stay open, let alone manage any energetic blinking. She lay down beside Lamua once more, aped the native woman’s position, arms by her sides, legs apart, closed her eyes, listened to the plaintive lullaby, waa, waa waa, and was soon asleep. She was still sleeping when the plane came next day; the islanders knew not to wake her and she slumbered on long after it had flown away.
ONE YEAR
LATER
FIFTY-SEVEN