Acid Song

by Bernard Beckett

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. Blood dripped from his brow. He nodded his thanks, but did not meet her eye. She had hold of his arm, supporting him, and felt his body shaking.

  ‘We have a car out the front, if you’d like us to …’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine.’

  He turned away and hunched against the wind, scurried back to the door from which he had emerged. Already the crowd was dispersing, splitting off to regather the strands of their stories, to make sense of this. Most of them. A small core remained with their placards, apparently unmoved by the incident.

  ‘What?’ The woman who had assumed leadership suddenly shouted into Amanda’s face. Amanda realised she had been staring. At the edge of her vision, she was aware Greg had the camera back on his shoulder.

  ‘Are you going to apologise to him?’ Amanda asked, the only thing she could think of.

  ‘What for? The fuck got what he deserved.’

  Behind the pugilist someone nodded their assent.

  ‘That’s barbaric,’ Amanda told the woman, taking in now the small blue eyes quivering with righteous certainty.

  ‘So you’re defending the racist? Is that why you’re here? What are you, fucking television?’

  ‘We’re making a documentary, on Richard Bradley, to mark the anniversary.’

  Richard was, amongst these people, something of a hero. These people. Amanda’s people; although right now the fit felt tight and clammy.

  ‘You should know better.’

  ‘That was assault.’

  ‘Have you read the article?’

  Amanda nodded. She had skimmed it. IQ tests. It seemed that no matter what opinion you had on the things, it would always be controversial. And Professor Harding had an opinion. He had conducted a systematic statistical analysis on all the reputable data he could find and his conclusions were unpalatable. No matter what allowances he made for other factors – income level, social status, gender, language bias, educational experience – he claimed he found a residual effect which correlated strongly with race. Which is to say different races may have different types of brains. His conclusion, as Amanda had read it, was not so bald. Rather he suggested that the data demanded this hypothesis at least be investigated. But there are some investigations which can not be proposed. For such proposals invite beatings.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘And were you disgusted?’ the woman asked, although it was less a question than a demand.

  ‘I think,’ Amanda replied, certain only of her disgust for the woman in front of her, ‘that in the end I would defend his right to say it.’

  ‘And you would have defended Hitler’s right to free speech too, I suppose,’ the woman responded.

  It was all so ridiculous, life’s mystery reduced to slogans. ‘Hitler’s thugs formed mobs, and beat the defenceless. That’s how the terror started.’

  The woman spat a warm, solid glob of saliva straight into Amanda’s face.

  ‘You disgust me,’ were the protester’s final words. Amanda, wiping the retort from her cheek, turned away.

  RICHARD BOARDED THE lift. There was a time when it had been a matter of pride to take the stairs. He felt the world drop away beneath him. Down through the institute of molecular biology, where the Ph.D. students he supervised did their lab work. Past the maths floor, which occasionally he was forced to visit, to have the latest parsimony models explained. Nothing could so consistently make him feel young again – grey of shorts, bony of knees, brim-full of ignorance – than talking to today’s mathematicians. There had been a time when this was his domain, but he had become distracted by the demands of his career, and now he needed them.

  The lift stopped at the request of an Asian boy of indeterminate age, weighed down by textbooks. The boy looked at Richard.

  ‘Up?’ he asked.

  Richard shook his head.

  ‘Down.’

  The boy shrugged, and entered anyway. The doors closed and the lift lurched its way to solid ground.

  Richard headed through the lobby to a waiting southerly, the precursor to an unfriendly storm, the forecasters had cheerfully announced this morning. Too close to the Pole, was the problem. What they needed was to find a way to shift the damned country north by ten degrees. Until then, spring would do no springing. It would stutter, as it did every year, beaten back ten times over by a jealous winter.

  ‘Hello, Richard!’ A student he didn’t recognise, a boy (where had all the adults gone?) with big hair and a stupid, harmless smile held a door open for him. Richard snorted his thanks, which seemed to please the child. If he was in the class, he was going the wrong way. And if he wasn’t, he had no damned business using his name. Yes, now that he thought about it, that’s just who he was. One of the class. A latecomer. Every day a latecomer. Richard would learn his name, and embarrass him.

  The protesters would be out in the quad again. It was possible to avoid them, but it meant looping back through the buildings, and he was already late. Yesterday one of them had spotted him and attempted to engage him in conversation. There had been a time, even very recently, when he had seen them as a sign of the university’s ruddy health. It doesn’t matter too much, he would tell people, what it is they’re protesting about. The thing is they’re out there. They’re exploring the limits, feeling that giddy rush of a boundary passed without reprimand. But without warning the world had shifted on him, in ways they could never know. He found himself like the old man returning to the place of his childhood, unable to find the vantage point about which his memories had been constructed, recognising nothing.

  Richard had a friend who would cross the road rather than walk past a busker, she told him they made her feel physically ill, although she could never explain why. Now he understood her. He lowered his head, using the wind as an excuse to pull his collar higher. There were fewer than yesterday, perhaps only nine or ten. And a camera. Was that Amanda? He hurried on. They didn’t notice him.

  Richard looked out over the faces of his audience. One hundred and seven of them, or close enough. He was proud of that. Proud of the reputation his lectures held. A good idea, like a good disease, needs only the smallest beginning. This was the only course he lectured now, his last practical link with the world. Bio 309: Biology in a Social Context. His old brain’s foolish love affair.

  The older students (mature, the university clumsily called them) sat at the front. They listened carefully, scribbled furiously, nodded often. Beyond that the sorting was by aspiration and ethnicity: desire for success and distance from the lecturer bound together by a simple ratio. Yet it was slouching amongst the carefully careless of the last six rows that Richard liked to believe the infected most often hid themselves. Richard made an effort to raise his eyes to them, throw his best comments their way. Racist? Ageist? He had no time for such niceties. You can die at any moment. And then who will care that you made an effort with the front four rows? Will they come to the funeral? Will they remember the things you told them?

  ‘I would like to begin by telling you a story. The story of how the missionaries brought Catholicism to the atoll of Fakaofo in the Tokelau group.’

  Richard paused. To speak, to be listened to, this was power. His technique had developed slowly, crafted over the years. There was the sound of pens lifted, poised beneath their headings. A cough. A shifting in seats wriggled its way through the auditorium. No PowerPoint here. No downloadable lecture notes. This was a one-off. Many had tried to mend him of his ways, but he was an old dog now, and happy with the excuses it provided.

  ‘You should know a few things about the Tokelau group, but probably you don’t, for reasons we needn’t go into here. Tokelau consists of a collection of tiny atolls just below the equator. It’s low-lying land with an abundance of fish, warmth, coconuts, and tropical cyclones. A paradise of sorts I suppose, and a hell of sorts too, one imagines. Today the group is accessed by way of a boat trip out of Samoa which can take two full days. My story begins in eighteen f
orty-eight when boat services were less reliable. Tokelau was isolated then and is isolated today. It has an island population of some fifteen hundred, spread over the three atolls. At the time of our story at least a fourth, Olohega, was also peopled, although the population there must have been small, only a few families.

  ‘A Frenchman by the name of Jules Tirel, who was, by all accounts, a man with an eye on a future fortune, was amongst them. Promises of great wealth then, as now, motivate a certain sort, and I think we are safe in assuming Tirel was one such man. On Olohega he set up a coconut oil extraction business, which involved collecting the coconuts, pressing their flesh and storing the oil for subsequent shipment. For whatever reason the venture was a short lived one. Records are of course sparse, but we do know that the locals themselves fled the island first, so perhaps Jules was not the most pleasant of neighbours, but we are speculating. Shortly after, he and his fellow entrepreneurs decamped. Not, so far, the most riveting of stories, but bear with me.

  ‘For our intrepid Frenchman was not content to fade from history’s stage quite so easily. He next enters the record in eighteen fifty-one, in Apia, Samoa, where he is commissioned to return to Tokelau, to the atoll of Nukuono, to help salvage a ship which has grounded there. Now, whether he ever had any intention of refloating the ship is unknown. What is certain is that Tirel took with him his coconut processing equipment. Having pronounced the ship beyond salvage, he then set about extracting three barrels of the precious liquid from the atoll’s crop and set off again for Samoa, promising to return with proper compensation once the oil’s sale had been completed. Whether or not he made the sale is again unknown. The records do however show that he did not return with the promised payment. You may draw your own conclusions.

  ‘Back in Apia, Tirel next befriended the Bishop in charge of Catholic ministries in the area, and this is where the story gets interesting. Whatever the good motives of missionaries in the area at the time, there was a certain indecency in the race for converts being conducted between the Catholic church and its Protestant adversaries. The population of Tokelau was at this time without the benefit of biblical instruction, although there was a Catholic missionary established in Uvea, another small island within reach of both Samoa and the Tokelaus. And now the cyclones become important. Tirel informed the Bishop that the atoll of Fakaofo had been hit by a severe storm, and that its people were consequently starving and in need of help. Was this the case? It is difficult from this distance to be sure how much of the tale was a convenient fabrication, but as we progress some evidence will emerge which will give comfort to the cynics amongst you.

  ‘The good Bishop, sensing the hand of God in this business, realised there was an opportunity to bring salvation to these poor souls, who as far as we know had done nothing to deserve such a fate. This opportunity was sharpened somewhat by the fact that the Uvea mission already held a small Tokelau population, who had apparently been shipwrecked there in a previous storm. The Bishop offered our canny entrepreneur a generous payment if he could rescue the people of Fakaofo from their plight and deliver them up to his mission in Uvea. A bonus was negotiated, should he be able to secure more than five hundred persons. To you and I this sounds a little like kidnapping, but in the context of the times it was apparently possible for men of the cloth to see merit in the scheme, and it is not my purpose today to judge their evangelical fervour.

  ‘Jules set off with one Father Padel, who thankfully for us kept a careful diary outlining the journey and its surrounding circumstances. The ship stopped off in Uvea and collected a cargo of coconuts to take to the storm-ravaged Tokelaus. The ship duly arrived at Fakaofo and it was explained to the people, through the sole translator Jules, that they were invited on board to be taken to a place where they would be better provided for. Now, to the priest’s great surprise, the people were not greatly tempted by the chance to leave behind their precious homeland. Given the parlous state of the storm-ravaged islanders, this may be read as something of a puzzle. Against this we should note that oddly, Father Padel has little to say in his diary regarding the physical state of the reputedly starving islanders. He does however mention that in support of the cyclone and famine hypothesis Jules was able to point out three-hundred recently dug graves. Or perhaps the cunning Tirel was showing the good Father the island’s taro pits. I am not the only one to have made this speculation.

  ‘The priestly diary records, without a hint of remorse, that one hundred men were then invited on board to collect the coconuts from the ship. It also notes, in equally neutral terms, that once the men were down in the hold, ready to go about their work, the hatches were closed above their heads and they were trapped on board. Lest this was not in itself sufficiently powerful argument in favour of a mass relocation programme, Jules Tirel then led some of the ship’s men back on to the atoll for a spree of destruction. Most importantly, in order to cower the remaining locals, and demonstrate the visitors’ great power, Tirel burned to the ground the islanders’ sacred temple, desecrating their monument to Toi Tokelau, the local God. The chiefs were tied up, and the people guarded overnight, to prevent escape.

  ‘The next day the people of Fakaofo were told that they too would have to board the ship if they wished to see their menfolk again. This was the choice brought to them by the man of God. Lose your home, or lose your families. Not a simple choice. In fact, the tyranny of the proposition, from this distance at least, is clear. But remember that it is quite probable the priest himself believed he was saving souls, and in the end, what is a little earthly discomfort compared to eternal salvation? The consequences of our cultural choices perhaps need to be more carefully thought through. The record shows that fifty islanders refused the quinella of the immediate company of their beloved and everlasting life and chose instead to give their loyalty to the land that had raised them. The rest were bundled off to Uvea, where those who did not first succumb to an outbreak of influenza on board the ship were schooled in the ways of the white man’s loving and compassionate God.

  ‘It was another ten years before a group of converted Tokelauans from Uvea returned to their homeland, where they were greeted with understandable suspicion. Nevertheless, the draw of family ties was enough to convince the locals to allow the establishment of the first Catholic missionary on Fakaofo, and so began a long process of forgetting. Long, but I should note, tremendously successful. Prior to the unearthing of Father Padel’s diary, there was no reference in church records to the events surrounding the mass evacuation of the island. Rather the South American slave traders, who later visited the islands in search of labour for kidnap, entered the history books as the people responsible for this mass depopulation. It even became part of the legend that it was a group fleeing these pirates who washed up on Uvea’s shores, delivered to the mission by the hand of God perhaps. For the record, Jules Tirel next turns up on the Cook Islands, again trying to establish his oil empire. For his efforts he was shot dead. Perhaps those locals had not yet discovered the benefits of a loving and forgiving god.’

  Richard looked out over his audience, who listened in a silence he chose to interpret as respectful. It was one of his favourite stories, little known and therefore an excellent way of hinting at the uncommon depth of his knowledge. In truth, if called upon he doubted he could produce another tale from the region in any such detail. Intellectually, he was a browser. But the faces in front of him, who knew him by reputation alone, would never guess how close his braided river was to drying up. Even his colleagues were content making the assumptions that best served their prejudices. The audience waited for more.

  ‘So why do I tell you this story? Because as you know, in this course, I am interested specifically in the places where biology collides with other disciplines, with chemistry, psychology, neurology, sociology, and today, history. There is an urge which every academic faces when confronting a piece of data, be it a measurement, a statistic, or in this case, a story. And the urge is to ask why? Why did this thing
we have the privilege of observing occur? It is, in the end, the intellectual raison d’être of any researcher. We value this sort of knowledge because we seek understanding, and we seek the ability to predict, to learn from our mistakes. So, when we hear this story from the Pacific, we can barely stop ourselves asking, “But why did this happen? What drove the people involved to do the things they did?” This I hope is the urge that brings you to an institution like this one. This is the mystery we wish to get to the bottom of. You, just by listening to my story, have already developed your attitudes towards the relevant players. You have already started on this business of summary, and judgement, and apportioning blame.’

  Richard wandered as he spoke. There was a pattern to the energy of his lectures: physical, acoustic, psychological. His speaking voice was low, he felt it rumble in his chest and vibrate through his feet to the cheap, charged carpet below. On a good day his mouth ran dry and spittle formed at its corners. Richard stopped abruptly and shook his head.

  ‘Beware the Why. The Why is a siren song. The inevitability of history is a retrospective conceit. That the missionaries were not above trickery and force to establish their outposts is a recorded fact. That its greater cause should lie within the poorly drawn current of other recorded facts is both deeply misleading and profoundly uninteresting. Okay, this next bit is important. You at the back, slouching boy with the big hair, pick up your pen and write this down.’

  Laughter animated their faces. The boy reddened.

  ‘And if you object to being picked on in this way, next class come on time.’

  More laughter.

  ‘When we seek to explain an event, we must first choose an appropriate level of analysis. At the most fundamental level, we might wish to explain the happenings on Fakaofo by physics alone. Why not? By reducing every player, every coconut, every drop of water and salt in the ocean to its constituent parts, and by attempting to model the forces acting on each and every subatomic particle involved in our story, we might be able, in the manner of a Laplacian demon, to show that what happened on the atoll was the only thing that could have happened. But we don’t. We dismiss the approach out of hand. Why? Because the model we would have to build is too complex for us. Not only is the approach emotionally unsatisfying, but in predictive terms it is entirely useless. It is for this same reason we do not call upon an advanced knowledge of quantum mechanics when preparing a meal.