By Night the Mountain Burns

by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel

  Anyway, we had to give food to the king of the sea and one of the mothers from our house had gone to a nearby shore to collect food for our larder. I said we could have walked there after school, and that made me recall going to school and the things that happened there. But instead of having us walk there after school, grandmother thought it best if the load was brought back by canoe, that it would somehow be quicker. But people had already started taking their offerings for the king to the vidjil, which was where the ceremony would begin, and our mother and the canoeman had not got back yet, even though where they’d gone to was not very far away. So grandfather started to worry. Grandmother worried too, but I remember grandfather’s worrying more. And this was because we hardly ever saw him, so when something happened involving him we were always aware of it. He was worried because, being an adult, he knew only too well that there should be no canoes in the water when the offering to the king of the sea was made, no canoes other than those involved in the ceremony itself. Nobody had ever broken with this custom, or rule, or whatever it was. And it was unusual for anyone to disregard any rule connected to popular beliefs on our Atlantic Ocean island. So my grandfather was worried and he left the house and set off for the shore, hoping to see them making their way back. But there was no sign of them from the beach where the vidjil was, so he thought he’d try a different vantage point, one where you could see further into the distance. So he headed south, increasingly concerned. It had been a long time since anyone had seen him on the beach, for he practically never came down from the upstairs where he lived. So for a lot of people it was the first time they’d seen him for a long time, and they could tell right away that he was worried. He walked all the way to the path that went up to the cemetery and went down to the little beach there, his eyes fixed on the sea, hoping the canoe might appear. If it had been low tide, he could have followed the coast all the way to the place our mother and the canoeman had gone to collect the food grandmother had left behind. On certain stretches he’d have had to come in from the shore, where the cliffs become very steep, and make a little detour into the bush, and if it had been high tide he could have done the same only with more detours. It was because of those detours that there was no coastal path that ran from the big village all the way to where the plantation was. But grandfather was down on the beach and he ran out of sand, by which I mean he got to the end of the small beach by the cemetery and he climbed up on the rocks. He went on walking, his gaze fixed south, anxious to see his daughter and the canoe. The time of the offering to the king was fast approaching and it was unheard-of for anyone to be out at sea who was not part of the ceremony. That offering was one of the most curious things on the island. I found it particularly strange, but although practically everything filled me with fear on the island, this didn’t. I did, however, have my suspicions about it for, as a child, whenever fear didn’t silence my doubts, I was very questioning. What happened when food was given to the king was the following: somebody said that the king of the sea had sent word, from wherever it was he lived, that he was hungry. That’s what was said. Was it the women who talked to the deads who were told the king was hungry? Specifically, was Sabina the one who was told? However it happened, word reached the people of influence that the king was hungry and, at the end of the afternoon, when the sun was setting and everyone was at home, it was announced that on such-and-such a day food would be given to the Saltwater King. That’s what we called the king of our sea on the Atlantic Ocean island: the Saltwater King. So whenever we heard mention of the ‘Saltwater King’, we knew people were talking about our king and not the king of some other sea. In the language of our island we have two ways of saying ‘the sea’ which are equivalent to the words for sea and saltwater in Spanish.

  The offering ceremony began with many minutes, perhaps even hours, of orations from the ministrants. They got under way as soon as everyone had brought their offering, whatever they’d decided to pay homage to the king with: a bundle of firewood, a length of cloth, a litre of brandy, a bunch of bananas, a cooking pot, a pineapple, a radio set, a lamp, a small basket of cassava, a giant yam, a bottle of anis; whatever you wanted to give, or whatever you had. Although if what you wanted to give was a white man’s product, then it had to be unopened. Who were we, on our little island, to give the king a half-used product? It was said he’d reject it, and I can’t remember but there was probably some other threat connected to showing him such disrespect. All the offerings were left in the vidjil and then the orations began. And with just a few hours to go until that sombre ceremony got underway, one of my grandmother’s daughters, that’s to say one of our mothers, for as far as we were concerned they were all mothers to us, was still out at sea, on her way back from a place that wasn’t so very far from the big village. It would be the first time such a thing had ever happened. So all the adults in my house were worried and grandfather had gone down to the shore to try and find her. Finally, a long way from the cemetery, standing out on some projecting rocks, he spotted the canoe. He gestured to them and he called out to them, telling them to pull in to the first beach they came to rather than risk rousing the fury of the king. But I’ve already talked about my grandfather’s lack of voice, so I doubt he was able to make himself heard like a man. In any case, if you were out at sea, it was practically impossible to hear what someone on land was saying to you, even if it didn’t seem like you were very far apart. The sea wind simply stole the sound of the words. The person on land might be close enough for you to see them shouting to you, but all you could do was go, ‘Huh?’ for there was no way of hearing what was being said.

  Grandfather saw his daughter and the canoeman who was transporting her and he called out to them, and he waved his hands, but they heard nothing. And he got increasingly worried. Was the canoeman about to paddle the canoe onto the main beach in front of everyone, showing himself to be the only person on the whole island who didn’t understand there was an important ceremony taking place? What would happen to them then? On our island, if you ignore a rule or a custom, you’re not given a penalty, in fact no one will say anything about it; they don’t have to, for consequences will catch up with you by themselves: we’re talking about an island where there’s no shortage of catastrophes! Anyway, me and the other children of the household had followed grandfather and we stood on the beach near the cemetery. What could have happened for them to have been so delayed on a journey that ought to have taken less than an hour? Well, we didn’t really deal in hours, but that’s beside the point: there was nothing between the big village beach and the place with the plantation to justify such a delay; there were no big rocks to avoid, no projecting cliffs or especially turbulent stretches of water. What problem had they encountered to make them take so long? You couldn’t even argue that the man had to beach his canoe, hide his paddle safe from the sea, gather his tools, climb up a palm tree with his axe and cut down the palm dates, because they’d already been cut; everything had already been piled up ready to load into the canoe. What had happened to cause them to be the first people in the island’s history not to observe one of its most important customs? The man paddled, gestures were made, words shouted that he didn’t hear. Grandfather was in a state of total despair. He was running out of time to make himself heard, running out of opportunities to get their attention, for there was an islet off the coast near the cemetery and, depending on the state of the sea and the canoeman’s skill, he might go round the islet on the open side, the side that looked out to the horizon, or come through on the mainland side, the side closest to the shore. If the canoeman opted for the open side, grandfather wouldn’t be able to call out to them again until it was too late, until it was too late to stop them from being seen by everyone on the main beach, too late to avoid ridicule and catastrophe. So granddad felt he had to do something to make himself heard before the canoeman reached the islet, had to do something to make the canoeman paddle in to the nearest shore. They’d return the canoe to where it was supposed to go af
terwards, when everything was back to normal. The situation was further complicated by the fact that it was impossible to see the main beach from where we were standing, so grandfather didn’t know how close the ceremony was to starting. How shameful it would be for his daughter to be the first person to disobey the rule, a rule of unknown consequences, and in front of everyone, everyone and their tremendous power for gossip!

  When everything was assembled, the ministrants started their orations. I suppose they were some sort of blessing of the gifts for the king. They prayed, and prayed, and prayed, in that language that wasn’t our island’s language, for I didn’t understand a word of it, and when they decided there’d been enough praying, they brought several canoes down to the sea’s edge and started to load them up with the offerings. But only things that had been there when the ministrants had started their prayers; anything brought after they’d started had to be discounted. Then a few chosen men took to sea in the biggest canoe on the island, and they paddled out a certain distance from the shore, in front of the houses. What happened out there only those men knew, those men who’d been chosen for such an important mission. Sometimes there were great piles of things to give to the Saltwater King and more than one canoe had to go out, but no matter how many there were, everything was carefully monitored by the ministrants. What people said – what those who’d been chosen for the mission reported – is that you had to close your eyes when you threw the offerings out for the king. Or you stood in the canoe with your back to the sea and threw the offerings out behind you. I always thought I could never be one of the chosen ones. I’d have suddenly sprouted an eye in the back of my neck, for there’s no way I would have been able to not look to see who took the things from the water. But you were forbidden from looking and naturally there was a punishment if you failed to observe the rule: you’d be taken away by the king and never seen again. When I was a bit older, I found it hard to believe that no man was ever curious enough to sneak a look at that phenomenon. For that’s what it was: a phenomenon. I was never told anything to make me think otherwise. I’ve already told you what was tipped into the sea. And although I find it phenomenal that no one looked, I appreciate it’s each to their own as regards wanting to know about life and what surrounds you. So the real phenomenon was not that they didn’t look but that the sea king accepted everything he was offered, which was a great quantity of things. And he really did take everything, every last thing, and it all took place not very far away from the big village, so nobody could claim there was any trickery. But was there any proof that the king accepted all he was offered, any proof that he took everything for his larder? The proof was that, of the great quantity of things tipped into the water for him, not a single item made its way back to the island. Never. Not to any of the island’s shores, not even with all the strong sea currents. What’s more, and this is why I first wanted to mention the things that were offered, while you may well question whether the king really accepted a tin plate, a lump of coal, a bottle of brandy or a padlock, for they would sink to the sea bed in seconds anyway, lots of objects wouldn’t sink even in the stormiest of seas. Bundles of firewood, bunches of bananas, a length of cloth, linen to tie about the head, packets of cigarettes, more firewood, more bananas, more cloth for the king’s robes, cloth for the robes of the king’s daughters, things that everyone knew would ordinarily float forever, come what may. None of these things came back to shore. Not that day, not the next, not ever, nor did anyone come across them out fishing in the furthermost parts of the horizon, and this in times of terrible shortage. Was it not a miracle? To be honest, I never experienced the ceremony at close quarters. I experienced it from the beach, like most of the islanders, and by helping to load the canoes when it was my turn to do so, but I never stopped considering it the single biggest mystery on the island. And like I said, of all the mysterious things on the island, it was the one I was least afraid of, for I felt confident that if the king didn’t like something, he’d make his feelings known. The whole thing was incredible, from start to finish. There’s a beach on the south of the island that’s known as The Beach of Riches, because so many things wash up on it from other shores, from other countries. One thing that’s never lacking down there is tar. The tar is good for nothing at all, except staining the beach, although men sometimes use it to fill in holes in their canoes, for although the wood they are made of won’t sink, it does sometimes have other defects. But aside from that, all the tar does is arrive from who knows where and stick to people’s feet when they walk on the beach. Wooden boards also wash up on that beach, boards with words written in foreign languages, bottles and cans too, and lots of tree trunks from trees that don’t grow on the island. And men make the most of them and build canoes out of the alien woods. But they have to be strong to do so, for the wood can be tough. Anyway, I mention that beach because you’d have thought anything rejected at the gates of the king’s palace would end up there. But nothing was ever found that was thought to be an item rejected by the Saltwater King. Never. What if someone found something but said nothing? But why would they say nothing? Nobody on the island doubted the ceremony but me! And I was young, so young that I worried that if I went on living on the island then I’d inevitably one day be chosen to go and give food to the king, and I knew my curiosity would get the better of me. I’d go, I wouldn’t be able to resist looking and that’d be the end of me. I wouldn’t be telling this story now. And just so you don’t think I’m exaggerating, I was so convinced this would happen and spent so much time imagining what life would be like there, I formed a mental image of what the king’s palace looked like. It was said that if you looked, you’d be swallowed by the waters and dumped at the bottom of the steps to the king’s palace, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist looking. That’s how you entered the palace, by going up some steps. I could draw a picture of it for you now, as if it were right there in front of me.

  Grandfather made one last big effort, and he went very close to the cliff edge and made wild gestures and roared in a voice nobody had heard before, and somehow he made himself heard by the man who was paddling, paddling one of grandmother’s daughters back from collecting food piled up at the plantation. The canoeman saw grandfather and knew something must be seriously amiss for him to have left the upstairs where he lived. That he’d left the upstairs was enough on its own, but grandfather had also gone down to the beach, the one by the cemetery, a beach used for practically nothing. Well, nothing I care to mention. Some things are best left unsaid. Although the beach was also used for something else, something I can mention, because a bit further out, in front of the islet, the waves broke and boys who were grown-up and daring went out on chest boards or in canoes to glide on them. They paddled out to the islet, either on chest boards, which were the remains of broken canoes, or in canoes themselves, although without actually getting inside them. They paddled out to the mightiest waves and then waited for one to break and glided in on them, fast, all the way in to the beach. They did this at low tide. And because of those breaking waves, anyone there not for gliding usually went round the islet on the open side, and this was what grandfather wanted to avoid. Which was why he had to get the canoeman, who might have been his son-in-law, to hear him. And grandfather managed to make himself heard and managed to avoid the canoeman paddling around the open side, but then there were the waves to contend with. As I said, the waves broke in front of that islet and only the most skilled and experienced canoemen dared paddle through them in a canoe with a load, never mind a canoe with a woman sitting in it. Of those skilled and experienced canoemen there was one who stood out in particular, one who went further than all the rest in his daring. I remember his name, but what’s the point in me telling you his name if I haven’t even told you my grandfather’s name? So anyway, there was a situation that my grandfather wanted to avoid at all costs and that was his daughter and the canoeman interrupting the ceremony in front of everyone. And when the canoeman saw grandfather on the shore, s
o very far from the upstairs where he lived, the canoeman knew something must be seriously amiss. Grandfather made gestures for them to come in from the water right away, and the canoeman, who might have been his son-in-law, obeyed. The canoeman may well have been aware of the ceremony taking place on the island that day after all, for as I said, the announcement had been made to everyone. Either way, grandfather called him in and, because he knew what the bay was like there, knew about the waves breaking one after the other as they rolled in to shore, he was worried about what could happen to his daughter, the canoeman, the canoe and its load. And so by the time we’d reached him, grandfather had taken his trousers off and gone a little way into the water to wait for the canoe. Imagine how worried he must have been to have done that. It was the first time any of us had seen him so much as splash in the water. The first time in our lives, which although we were young was still a long time given that we lived on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by sea. Furthermore, it was very dangerous to enter the sea when a canoe was coming in on a beach where the waves were so wild. It was very dangerous because the canoe could easily smash into him, for the whole operation depended on whether the canoeman, who may have been grandfather’s son-in-law, could master a canoe in the waves. In order to glide a canoe in on those waves and keep the boat upright, the canoeman had to be very skilled with his paddle. And in this situation, gliding a canoe in on the waves was especially inadvisable, because the canoe had a full load and a woman sitting in it, and the woman would have a terrible time if the canoeman lost control and fell in the water. If that were to happen, the woman would be in serious trouble because on our island women didn’t know how to paddle canoes, nor did girls ever go out to glide in the waves on chest boards. Grandmother’s daughter, one of our mothers, was therefore in great danger. Which was why grandfather took his trousers off and waded out into the water, to try and slow down the rapid approach of the canoe as it glided in on the waves. This was also very dangerous, but anyway, into the water he went, and by the time we’d reached him, he was in up to his knees. We could have shouted for him to come back but he was worried and determined to deal with the situation. The waves became more frequent and some of them came in very high, so from time to time grandfather had to backtrack to avoid getting soaked. As he moved further out, the water grew deeper and reached to higher parts of his body, and so he had to hitch up his shirt to avoid it getting wet. I thought he might as well have taken it off, as he was practically naked without his trousers on anyway. Our hearts raced, for we knew something terrible could happen. We were only little and so we couldn’t help, at least we couldn’t help the canoe reach the sand without coming to any harm. And our grandfather, having hoisted up his shirt so as not to get it wet, revealed something plastic he had strapped to one of his sides. The right side, I think. Yes, something strapped there, which wasn’t a part of his clothing and wasn’t part of his body. It was something that seemed to be covering a hole. We saw it clearly. We were surprised to see it, for we knew hardly anything about the man. What was it?