by Lee, Tanith
The labour of the sea, Sasha’s labour—
Night came. Then a day indistinguishable from night. And another night.
The sailors were muttering curses, and since Camillo had got out among them, they were worse. A man had been washed overboard by then, and Camillo clung to the great mast, its sails long since taken in. Camillo laughed, and now and then he screamed above the gale, foolishly, dreadfully: ‘A tenger! A tenger!’ (The sea! the sea!)
They had tried to persuade him back. But he would not come. The polite epithet of Uncle did not solace him, although he had insisted on it before, in the stone house where they had kept him firmly under lock and key.
That house was far behind them now. Miles of tundra, mountains, wheat, roads burnt by dust, and later thick with mud when the rain came. Miles of water finally, smashed green glass.
Above, the sky rocked and pieces of it seemed to fall on the ship. There was no still place in the world for them. It was all like this, like the ocean, in frenzy, trying to thrust them off.
And the sailors spoke of murdering them. Last night the sailors had drawn lots, some of them, when drunk, to find three men to come down and club the unwanted passengers to death, and over the side with them, into the refuse pit of the water. Who would know?
‘They would know,’ the captain had said. ‘Would I have taken them if I hadn’t had to take them? Let them alone.’ He spoke in a dialect of the Ukraine, but then repeated his words in a kind of Gaelic, for many of the crew were Irish. ‘If one of you touches one of them, I’ll do for him. I’ll gut him. Understand me.’
Dawn broke, the third day of Sasha’s labour.
The storm had darkened the sun, and four of them, George and Kare, Dorian and Stephan, went up on deck.
They spoke to the captain. More gold passed over hands. They had paid him to broach another cask of wine. Drunk, the sailors were mostly ultimately more amenable, and all of them less handy.
The man who had been swept overboard was whispered about. There had been marks on his neck.
Stephan laughed out loud when he heard this reported. He was vigorous and strong, seeming about thirty-five, with a mane of black hair. Handsome people, even the muttering sailors did not deny it, and their women, beautiful, but that only made the sea more angry.
In their dreams, the crew were seduced and poisoned. Five days into the voyage, seven men had fallen sick, complaining of feeling the weight of bodies lying on them in sleep.
‘Do you think we would touch this scum?’ said Stephan to the captain, straight out, in the language of Russia.
The captain shrugged. ‘I don’t ask questions. But they’re near to mutiny. They’re frightened of that girl of yours—your wife, is it? Giving birth! That’s enough to tempt all the gods of the waters.’
The fourth night came. Sasha was no longer conscious.
Grusha bent over her, and Anna, rubbing carefully at the swollen belly, trying to ease the child on its way.
Frances and Stephan and Jack stood outside with Michael and Carlo, at the door of the women’s cabin. They had four pistols, and Carlo carried the great axe he had brought away with him.
Usually, birth was swift.
The sea poured down into black valleys and slung them up again to pinnacles of white foam.
Sasha screamed.
She opened herself wide, the dilated orifices of mouth and loins.
The child came forth quickly at last, slipping in a wave of blood, water and slime.
The women were astonished. They stood, they too in terror.
For Sasha had sea-birthed a mermaid.
It was streaked in crimson, but through this gleamed a marble whiteness, as if the creature had been made of ice not flesh.
Nor was it a baby. It was mature. Almost two months too early, it had the appearance of a small infant of two years, wholly proportionate, and from the fair white face, framed in soaking blood, the long white hair had formed a wet rope that, going round its throat, had choked it.
There was no umbilical cord. Its wise dead eyes, rimmed by red, were the grey of ancient silver dredged up from the sea. It looked, it looked at them, as if, even dead, it saw.
And the slender legs were just visible, held in the silken jelly of the tail.
It was Anna who rushed forward and pulled the noose of hair away from its throat, who snatched it up, held it head down, slapped it, shook it, to try to make it live.
But the neck was crushed. It had been dead some while.
Only, the activity loosened the placenta which had tangled its lower limbs, and as that slid away, they saw it was only a child after all.
About the ship the sea quaked one more time, and shuddered, and fell back.
It was as though a sacrifice had been fed to it. A dead thing, that it had craved.
In the lulling cabin, the women washed Sasha clean, and cleaned the white baby that was too old.
They assisted Sasha, allowing her to sit up.
‘Give her to me.’
‘Sasha, Shasha, she’s dead.’
‘She was born dead, Sasha. The journey killed her. Rest, Sasha.’
‘No, let me hold her.’
So they gave to her the beautiful snowy cadaver, and Sasha held it, wrapped in the shawl that Alice had made, a shawl like a moth’s wings. And Sasha rocked the dead child gently, teaching the wicked sea how it might be.
‘Oh, Sasha, Sasha. She’s dead.’
‘I know. Just for a little while.’
Then she asked that Stephan should come in, and he did so. He stood and looked at Sasha, and the white albino lovely child, whose starry eyes had refused to close.
Outside, up on the deck, the curses of the sailors came more clearly as the storm abated.
But Camillo was still shrieking, ‘A tenger! A tenger!’
Finally Stephan bent and kissed the dead thing, between its watching eyes.
‘I know she would have been so good to us,’ Sasha said. ‘I know she had been with us before.’
Stephan took the corpse quietly from her arms, and she allowed it.
Then he carried it away, up into the dark incoming silence of the settling ship.
When he returned, he carried only the shawl. He offered it to Alice, but she, taking it, gave it again to Sasha.
And Sasha slept, smiling, with the shawl, that had held her dead child, soft under her cheek.
Camillo screamed, ‘The sea! The sea!’
Stephan said, ‘She sleeps now in the sea.’
‘Why,’ said Unice, ‘must everything be taken from us? The first child—for so long—’
But Anna looked at Stephan. Anna, who would come to bear Stephan’s living son, some years in the future, in the English land to which they went. Anna said, ‘We must be strong. We must endure.’
Stephan said, ‘And we do, my Anna. Don’t we?’
Chapter Forty-Two
During the morning, they were taken to the big room.
There, a man talked to them, in English and French.
He was a newcomer, tall and rather fat, with spectacles that glinted distractingly. It was like one of the lessons they had already been given there, informal, quite interesting.
First of all he said general things about their backgrounds, nothing personal, although each of them bristled uneasily as he began. They had not told each other very much of their parents or guardians, or their homes, apart from Berenice, who had mentioned her unpleasant father to Faran.
The Greek boy, Christos, corrected the teacher—or whatever he was—at one point. Something about a statue. Faran was not very concerned.
Then the man in spectacles spoke about where they were going. This had happened before. None of them was alerted, until he said, This afternoon you’ll set out on the last part of your journey.’
They all reacted, whispered and murmured, if only to themselves. The Swede, Jan, who was six, said boldly, ‘Do you mean we are finally going there?’
‘Yes,’ said the man, ni
cely. ‘At last. It’s been a long wait, I know. You’ve been good. Patient.’
The Greek boy said, ‘We had no choice.’
The French Canadian, Pierre, said, ‘Tais-toi. Continuez, monsieur, s’il vous plaît.’
‘Yes, I will go on,’ said Spectacles. He glanced at Faran as if expecting him, now, to raise some objection. Faran nodded, to encourage. ‘You’ve been told it’s going to be very cold. You’ll be given special clothing for the last part of the trip. You must do exactly as you’re instructed. That’s for your own protection. Inez will speak to you later, give you full details. I know you’ll all be sensible.’
The Welsh girl hissed something, in Welsh.
The tall fat man took no notice. He knew she understood English.
‘Now,’ said the man. He made an expansive gesture. He lifted his head, the way some people did during religious moments—even Faran had seen this, on television. ‘Now, I have to say something that I know you may not grasp. I want you to be very quiet, and consider the concept, with an open mind.’
Faran decided Spectacles was treating them, not as children, but as young scholars, fifteen or sixteen, maybe, something like that. Faran waited, to see what the ‘concept’ would be.
‘I know that Señor Stampa has given you some talks on the subject of reincarnation. I think that you understand the principle of it. When he asked you, I believe you all agreed that it was possible, such a thing. To be born again after death.’
Faran grimaced. The fat man was somehow embarrassing. Obviously they had agreed. You did agree with teachers who bored you. It was the quickest way to shut them up. And of all the people who had come into their lives here, Señor Stampa, with his guttural lisp and crumpled white suit, had delighted them the least. He had black teeth, and smoked continually. That was what they had come to associate with his quasi-spiritual subject—smoke. It was like, the Canadian had said, compulsory prayers.
‘Now the family to which you are being taken,’ said the fat man, ‘is very important. A great family. Comparable only to the grand houses of Renaissance Europe, or pre-war Italy and France. And the gentleman who is to be in charge of you, he is one of the heads of this house.’
Faran glanced at Berenice. She was sitting very still with the toy cat in her lap, watching the speaker attentively. She always did this. As if nervously she felt she must try to help everyone.
The fat man said, ‘Cain is the name of this gentleman. And you were selected by Cain. Now I shall explain why. You may not grasp it, but you must attempt to. Mr Cain believes that you are, all of you, reincarnations of members of the great family to which he belongs. That only accident has put you outside his house. Now you are to be brought back.’
There was no reaction this time.
Faran thought that all of them knew, knew at least that this was supposed to be what had happened. For himself—well, he had recognized the lioness-woman in the photograph. But that might have occurred in some other fashion. He felt irked at Spectacles, his mundane way of citing something so preposterous that was perhaps true. But then, adults had so frequently offended.
The fat man seemed somewhat thrown out of stride by the childrens’ lack of response. What had he anticipated?
He stared at Berenice, who blushed and said; ‘Merci, monsieur.’
That was all.
Another bus conveyed them to the airfield. The first plane ride took some hours. They did not dislike it, since it made a change, being in the air, to being in some place, month after month, on the ground.
The green hills sank away.
On the plane they had hamburgers in sesame seed buns, fries and tomatoes, and then fruit salad and ice-cream.
They drank lemonade or kola or Pepsi. Then they watched some films, first Superman, which the Swedish boy and the Welsh girl had already seen, but did not seem to mind seeing over again. Then cartoons, mostly Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry, old cartoons in fact, but they laughed. Even Faran laughed. Even Berenice, sometimes.
Berenice though was rather troubled, and she looked very pale.
Faran decided he should sit with her. He changed his seat.
‘Are you scared? Come on, tell me.’
‘Yes, but it isn’t that.’ Her English had improved a vast amount through her talks to Faran, and she had acquired a lot of London slang, which he now used with impunity, having no Cimmie to stop him. ‘It’s that other thing. About being born again.’
‘Oh, that.’ Faran watched Tom Cat hit in the mouth by an iron bar. All the cat’s teeth fell out and Berenice squirmed. ‘It’s all right. Look, next scene they’ve grown back.’
Berenice said, ‘Papa said there wasn’t God. There wasn’t anything. Only this life.’ She looked at her toy cat. She said to it, ‘There was a sister—a nun came to the apartment once. She knew my mummy. When Papa came home, he threw her out. He threw her nearly downstairs, and she screamed. It was mega bad.’
‘Your father was a thing from outer space,’ said Faran. He liked this expression and thought he had coined it. It summed up Berenice’s father very well.
‘He just left me, on the boat. And then the lady came. But he left me.’
‘Forget him,’ said Faran. ‘This Cain is bound to be better.’
Berenice said, ‘But I’ll do something wrong. I’m stupid. Then he won’t like me.’
‘You’re not stupid. I like you.’ Faran wondered if it had been well advised, to say that, but it was too late now. And she looked happy. She said to the cat, ‘Tu est fou!’ and made the cat waggle its head.
Jerry sploshed into some butter.
The sky was very bright with sun, nearly sharp, when they came off the second bus, on to the second airfield.
Faran did not know the time, but he thought somehow the sun should not still be shining. The skin of the sky looked too thin, and perhaps could not keep the light inside for darkness.
It was here, in a long low building, that they were dressed in new, different, warm clothes, bulky and lined with wool, in bright cheerful greens and oranges. It was already cold, and a wind blew over the plain, twisting the dry grasses. There were bony hills in the distance.
They were given hot chocolate.
They stood looking out at the small red plane.
‘What is it?’ the Greek boy asked.
One of their companions told him it was a DC 6 four-engined fixed-wheel aircraft.
The companions were not going on the plane with them, only the pilot. The pilot would tell them what they must do, and they must obey him. The journey would be some hours. They would need to refuel only once.
‘There’s the pilot,’ said Jan, pointing.
A man of average height and build, dark-faced, muffled against the wind.
He walked along beside the barbed-wire fence, and cast a glance at something whitish, some little statue or other standing there, perhaps to the Virgin Mary, like the votive images on the track they had gone by, coming down.
Miguel Chodil walked.
As he did so, the tiny medallion of the Madonna, which he had hung about his neck, moved against his chest.
They had told him only yesterday it would be this plane, and this cargo—not fruit or meat or books, but live children, six of them. He had not cared for it. Children were like monkeys. Unwatched, what might they not do, like the explorers’ dogs that time, fighting in the midst of the cockpit—but it was no use to protest. He had agreed long ago.
He could see them inside a wide window of the building, watching. Five pale faces and one black. They looked quiet enough. Probably anxious.
Chodil reached the plane. He put one hand on its cold side. It felt lifeless to him. He knew this type of aircraft, had flown it, did not relate to it. It was not feminine.
He had not asked himself anything about the live cargo, beyond whether or not they would be submissive.
Chodil got up into the plane.
He sat, thinking of the woman he had had in the city. It was always a different wom
an. And afterwards, he had taken the medallion from the box where he kept relics of his mother’s life, and hung it on himself.
Out on the runway, two of the guards, with Kalashnikovs, idling.
Then the children emerged from the building in a well-coordinated stream, guided by two adults. The children did not run or shout. Yes, they were docile. The black one was very handsome, like a carving in ebony. And that little fair girl with a toy. Something about her.
He turned his mind from them.
They must do as he said, but that had been impressed upon them, of course. And they would have been given something to make them sleepy. He had been assured of that.
Chodil touched the controls. For a moment he had, as never before, a sense of the alienness of this plane, and of the place whereto he went, and of himself, even, extraordinarily, a being with a head and torso, legs and arms, hands and feet, and an image of the Virgin Mother hanging inside his clothes on his naked breast—
But this passed.
‘I’ve been asleep ages,’ Berenice said. ‘But look, it’s still light. Look—look—what are those?’
Faran craned across her to the small window.
They were out over the pack-ice now, the sea like dark blue ink, ice sheets like white floating papers.
‘It’s snow,’ Faran said.
‘Will there be penguins?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And polar bears?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Not here.’
‘Oh.’ She was disappointed.
Some of the others were waking up, the Swedish boy and the Canadian. The Greek snored, as he had not done in natural sleep.
Faran knew they had been drugged. He did not tell Berenice. Like Cimmie’s tablets which she had sometimes swallowed after a row with Wellington.
A picture came into Faran’s mind, a shelf of coast, mountains behind like black-and-white whales. Had they shown him a picture? Perhaps Mr Thorpe had done so. He could not recall.
‘Do you think we’ll be there soon?’ Berenice asked, in a little voice.
‘Yes. Don’t be scared.’
‘No.’