Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  “Get out?”’ Owen laughed on a rising note.

  “Where to? All my capital is sunk here. I cannot return a pauper, they do not welcome prodigal sons. No, I am caught here, seven degrees above the line, three thousand miles from my native seat.” He laughed again briefly and licked slowly and carefully round his mouth. “I am hoping for an upturn in trade,” he said in low tones. ‘Before the Porra Man gets me, eh, Mr Paris?”’

  It was Paris’s private view that fever and rum would find Owen first; but he was relieved to see the expression of weak jocularity that had come now to his host’s face. “I was something of a Porra Man myself, in England,” he said, not knowing quite what he meant, wanting to keep Owen in this lighter mood.

  In this he succeeded. The factor had come round full circle and was disposed to sodden laughter now.

  The notion of this rather gangling, crease-faced guest of his lurking and screeching was one he found very risible.

  And it was on this note of mirth and restored amity that the two men parted for the night, Owen unsteadily to his bedroom, where the Kru woman had lain asleep some hours already, Paris to the small guest room at the end of the house, with its bunk bed and net canopy and its own door on to the verandah.

  Here he lay for a long time sleepless, in spite of the drink, thinking of the diseased slave woman and the voracious, mud-coloured crabs creeping up from the river, and of the extraordinary ramifications of this trade in human creatures. Fumbling in his mind for some grasp of the complex chain of transactions between the capture of a negro and the purchase of a new cravat by Erasums Kemp, his cousin, or the giving of a supper party by his uncle, he thought he heard again that distant pattering sound of surf or drums. There were occasional cries of night birds. Some time during the night he thought he heard the mutter of voices and afterwards groans that might have been caused by love or nightmare. Finally he fell into a troubled sleep, only to be brought awake again, not much after dawn, by the need to void his bladder.

  He dressed and passed out on to the verandah and from there to the side of the house that was nearest to him. There was a chill in the air but no breath of wind. A thin mist lay over the compound and the shrub beyond it. There were sleeping forms under brightly coloured blankets in the lean-to where the woman had sat winding her thread.

  Paris passed behind the house, avoided approaching too near the barracoon, which was silent and partly shrouded in mist, and urinated against the far side of a low shed near the edge of the clearing. In the immediate, mildly scalding pleasure of the discharge, he noticed nothing; but as he buttoned himself and prepared to return he became aware of a smell of animal decomposition, cold, dank, quite unmistakable.

  It did not come, as he thought at first, from within the forest, but from immediately before him, from inside the shed. He hesitated briefly then advanced his face to peer through the splintered plank. In rapid review, in the seconds before recoil, he saw three naked bodies, bloodstreaked and dreadfully staring, one bigger than the others, on its back, a big-featured face he knew, despite the blood-filled sockets where the eyes had been, a mounded belly the colour of dry clay, incongrously soft and smooth-looking, with a smear of red on it like a cattle brand. Flies had found them out, even thus early—he saw the gauzy glint of wings. One outflung hand had a thumb missing. He remembered the men who had held up their hands and grinned… As though reinforced by this recognition, the smell grew denser, sickening. Paris went back as though pursued across the clearing. He thought he heard a faint rattling from the barracoon. Glancing up he saw two vultures, heads settled on necks, asleep on the ridge-pole.

  Later, at breakfast, he said nothing of his discovery to Owen, who was sick-looking and uncommunicative this morning, though he produced coffee for his guest from a carefully hoarded store, for which Paris was profoundly grateful. The Kru woman was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Well,” Paris said, as one of his oarsmen pushed barefoot against the mooring post and the canoe edged out towards midstream, “I hope your Mandingo priest will get to the bottom of things.” It was the only hope he felt able to express for Owen. As the river began to curve away he turned to look back. The factor was still there, diminutive and lonely, standing on the bankside amidst the detritus of palm leaves and dead crabs, watching him out of sight. At the last moment Owen took off his hat and waved it once. Then the canoe took the bend and he was cancelled abruptly; the forested banks resumed their sway, concealing all traces. That scrape of human lodgement, focal point of wretchedness, the house, the compound, Owen with his longing for salad and polite manners, the shackled slaves in the stinking barracoon, no smallest hint of it remained.

  The river was the only reality here. The river was the link of trade. Slaves came down from the upper reaches, perhaps hundreds of miles. The river bore them down to its bellowing mouth, the terrible ordeal of the surf, the open sky, the waiting ships. Wherever on this coast that there were rivers it would be the same. The rivers of Africa admitted the slavers to her vitals…

  The long, light canoe was making good speed. The oarsmen set up a rhythmic cry as they thrust on the poles, perhaps in warning of their approach, as the channel was winding and the craft in midstream. But the men who were rowing him were so like those he had seen in the barracoon, in colour and in general cast of feature —he was beginning to notice such things now comt this wild cry of theirs seemed irresistibly to Paris like a cry of mourning for those in chains, who were too lost to mourn for themselves.

  28.

  When Paris got down as far as Tucker’s he found the yawl ready to leave, with only Thurso waited for. The slaves lay bound amidships, crowded promiscuously together. Sitting apart was a slightly built, smiling African in cotton singlet and drawers. This was the newly hired linguister, Simmonds told him—a protege of Tucker’s. Simmonds did not look well, he noticed: the mate’s eyes were heavy-lidded and he held his head as if movement gave him pain there.

  Thurso came down to the landing stage with the dignified and gravely smiling Tucker by his side. After they had exchanged civilities and assurances of further trade, the yawl was cast off.

  The wind was up and there was a heavy sea over the river mouth, obliging them to make a wide tack westward so as to get more easily over the bar.

  Back on board they found the carpenter, with four men to assist him, busy constructing a barricade of stakes across the fore part of the quarterdeck, lashing the upright stanchions to long horizontals of inch-thick board that extended from side to side, with gates above the companion ladders. The starboard side was already complete; Johnson and Libby had run the swivel cannon out of its port so as to turn the muzzle through the fence, down on to the slave deck below.

  The captain had scarcely set foot on deck when Haines came to him with a complaint against one of the negroes. Bullies need not be cowards and in fact Haines wasn’t one; but hireling bullies need the countenance of their chiefs and the boatswain had been more than usually officious since his disgrace, in an attempt to recover lost ground.

  “Morgan reported it to me, sir,” Paris heard him say. “I checked it myself this morning and found it to be true.”

  Thurso, with the boatswain at his side, took some steps away and Paris did not catch the rest of what was said. Haines had strange eyes, he thought. There was a constant glitter in them that seemed nothing to do with his mood or feelings… The surgeon felt tired, after the broken sleep of the night before, and at the same time curiously heartsick, as if at some loss or shock whose nature he could not precisely determine.

  “Fetch the man aft,” he heard Thurso say with a sudden, hoarse ferocity. “And bring the linguister.”

  Standing against the rail, Paris watched one of the slaves unshackled from his fellow by Cavana and Sullivan and led towards them. He was a tall man, loose-limbed and rather shambling in gait, though Paris thought this might be due to weakness. His face was broad and heavy-boned, the eyes deep-set below the ridges of the brows. He was emaciated; the lines
of ribcage and breastbone were clearly visible below the skin. The inflamed K of his brandmark lay high on the left side of his chest, above the heart.

  “It seems it has been going on for some days past, sir,” Haines said, “but that fool Morgan did not see fit to say nothing, nor Wilson and Blair, that has had the job of serving them their beans and yams.”

  “Has Morgan anything ready now?”’

  “He is cooking the slaves” rice, sir.”

  ‘Tell him to fetch some.” Thurso turned to the negro, who stood with head downcast. “Now, you dog,” he said. “You have been setting a bad example, have you? I’ll teach you tricks.” He glared round irately. “Where the devil is the linguister?”’

  “Standing by, Captain, sir.” He had been at Thurso’s side all the while, but he was so short in stature that the captain had overlooked him.

  “Jimmy is here,” he said. His smile was amazing, occupying the whole of his face, all but closing his eyes, exposing a row of pale gums.

  “This Wolof man,” he said. “Bad temper people.

  I don” spik Wolof. Try him Bambara linga.”

  ‘Tell him,” Thurso said, “that he is going to be given some rice and if he doesn’t eat it I’ll set him down below in the dark with the screws on him.”

  “Skeroos8’Jimmy’s smile diminished at this difficulty.

  ‘Thumbscrews, you fool.” Thurso’s temper was deteriorating. He made a gesture of turning a key against his thumb.

  “Unnerstan” perfect.”

  Jimmy spoke for some moments in a language of soft, rising inflections. The slave continued to hang his head, making no reply nor showing any sign that he was aware of being addressed.

  The rice was brought from the galley by a flustered Morgan, plump and aproned and sweating copiously as usual. It was thrust under the nose of the slave, who turned his head mutely from it. Thurso’s precarious hold on his temper was not proof against this defiance. He struck the man heavily on the side of his lowered head, sending him to the deck, where he lay motionless but with his eyes open still.

  Thurso stood for some moments looking down at him. Then, in his hoarse and grating voice, which showed small variety of tone whatever his feelings, he said, ‘Take him below, Haines, put the screws on him—both thumbs. Leave him in the dark on his own. We will try him again later and see if he has come to better sense.”

  Without waiting to see the man hauled to his feet, Paris turned away abruptly. He had taken some steps towards the ladder-way, when Thurso’s voice recalled him. He turned and stood facing the captain at some paces’ distance.

  “Mr Paris,” Thurso said, “it is customary for the members of a ship’s company, including the officers, to take their cue from the captain. You do not withdraw yourself without a word. You will remain here until you get leave to go, sir.”

  Paris felt the blood rush to his face at this public rebuke. He was aware of the people looking on, the negro still sprawled on the deck, the grouped slaves behind him in the waist. All seemed to be waiting, to be expecting something from him. He paused to control his breathing. When he spoke it was in a voice deeper than usual: “Sir, I know I am subject to your orders, as are all on board.

  But I am a doctor, and I take my profession seriously. I suppose I am here for all on the ship. I cannot easily see that crushing his thumbs is the best way to make him eat. It might be possible to try persuasion.”

  “Persuasion?”’ The word came, hoarse and lingering, charged with contempt. Barton, at some paces off, uttered a suppressed sniggering and grins spread among the crew.

  Thurso’s tactical sense was formidable and he exploited it now. “Persuasion?”’ he said again, and made a stiff gesture of incredulity.

  It was to occur later to Paris that by using this word he had saved himself from some more violent expression of the captain’s antipathy. Thurso’s temper was at a dangerous pitch and the law supported his authority.

  But there was no need now to assert this further. In the eyes of the men looking on, all conditioned to violence, the surgeon had shown weakness—not of character, but in his grasp of reality. Condescension served Thurso better now. He knew it, and the knowledge went some way to restoring his temper.

  “We have thirty-six slaves already aboard, Mr Paris. When we leave this coast we shall have a cargo, God willing, of more than two hundred, and a crew possibly of twenty-five. And you talk of persuasion. I thought you had more sense.”

  Paris found nothing to say in response to this. He did not mind losing ground with the crew, if indeed he had done so; he had no wish to be a spokesman for them or any kind of leader; never again to take up a voice for others had been one of the first vows he had made in the ruins of his life.

  He remained there while the recalcitrant slave was taken below. Thurso repeated his orders for the thumbscrews, adding a caution of “not too sharp” to the boatswain. This done, he surprised the surgeon with a request to accompany him to his cabin.

  “Have a seat, sir,” he said. “You will take a glass of port?”’

  “Thank you.” Paris watched the captain take out decanter and glasses from the locker above his table.

  A certain feeling of wariness came to him. Thurso was predictable only in his determination to secure good profits. Otherwise, in the motions of his spirit, he unsettled expectation in the way that persons did who could not be accounted wholly sane…

  “Your health, sir.” Thurso looked with concealed dislike at the man before him, taking in— yet again—the details of the surgeon’s appearance, the awkward frame, the ravaged look of the face, the pale eyes that did not retreat before his own. It seemed an inventory he had been condemned through eternity to go on making. He wondered how he had transgressed against his demon to be visited with this plaguey fellow on his last voyage, wondered why it should matter, with himself and Barton so soon to do their private trade. The gold dust they would get for the muskets and his share of the profits on the voyage, together with what he had already, would see him through comfortably. But he was accustomed to think of his career as a monument to fidelity and good profits and satisfaction to his owners—and this was his present owner’s nephew, and also a half-baked fellow who might carry tales back, garble things, cast reflections on a man’s reputation.

  But a deeper reason underlay these, one that even now he was unwilling to acknowledge fully to himself. There was a quality in the surgeon he recognized as dangerous. Thurso understood the nature of power as he did that of the sea, by instinct and experience. He had felt the force of the surgeon’s intervention just now.

  Paris had obliged him to play to the gallery, something he did rarely…

  “I will overlook your words and manners just now,” he said, ‘on the ground that you are ignorant of the usages of the sea. This ship and all aboard her are in my hands. No one quits the captain’s presence without a form of asking permission, whether he be the doctor or the cabin boy. I will request you to remember that in future. And no one makes remarks in any way reflecting on the captain’s judgement. I will request you to remember that too.

  Now as to this slave who refuses food, he does it out of a perverse desire to frustrate us and make himself awkward. There is a wicked, contrary spirit in these people, Mr Paris. I know ‘em well. If they would make the best of their condition, a slaveship could be a happy ship. But our lot is made harder by their sly and sullen ways. And mark you this, such a thing will spread to the others, if they see it spoils our game to any degree. They are watching us all the time without seeming to. One man starts refusing food and before you know where you are they will all be doing it.

  Most of ‘em find their appetites again soon enough after a whipping, but there will be those that take longer and if they weaken themselves now they are more than likely to die on the passage to the West Indies. And remember comfor every slave that dies on board ship we lose the price we might have raised at Kingston market which presently stands at fifty pounds cash for a prime
male slave.”

  Here in this narrow space the captain’s voice had declined to a hoarse mutter, little more than a whisper.

  He sat back now to drink some of his port, then set the glass down carefully, looking closely at the surgeon from the square cage of his brows.

  “Fifty pounds, Mr Paris. That is money. A man can live a year in England on fifty pounds and not go short of much. And it is a dead loss if they die of sickness or any natural cause. The insurers will not pay except they die in the course of an uprising or insurrection, and even then ‘tis scarce half the value. No, sir, we must strive to preserve them. A man who can’t see that is a fool, and there’s an end of it.”

  It had been a long speech for Thurso and his face had flushed darker with the vehemence of it; perhaps too, Paris thought, with resentment at being thus driven to explanations. Why he felt so driven was not clear to the surgeon at present, though he saw clearly enough that Thurso had reduced the world to a dominant principle and wrenched his moral frame to accommodate it. By some odd quirk of spirit he found himself fancying that Thurso’s occasional stiff gestures were a physical sign of this wrenching process.

  Meanwhile he was at some loss as to how to reply.

  Silence would be safer, more politic; he was aware that the captain had made a bid for his understanding, perhaps even for his sympathy. But Paris found himself unable to remain silent. In abjuring argument, he had forgotten how bitter it can be to leave an adversary in possession of the field. Even while he thus hesitated he saw the captain’s eyes narrow and the hand on the table slowly clench.

  “I can speak my mind to you, I suppose,” he said at last, with that air of earnest pertinacity that Thurso had found odious from their first acquaintance, ‘since you have done so with me, and in any case there are none to hear us. I saw that man’s face, sir. I particularly observed his looks. He is not refusing food in order to spite us or inconvenience us, but because he is set on dying.”