Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  I am persuaded that this is a case of the “black vomit”, as the disease is called, which often afflicts our soldiers, as I have read, on their tours of foreign duty. It is possible—I think probable—that Simmonds caught the contagion that very evening we separated, I to remain with Owen, he to return to his shipmates at Tucker’s. He would have drunk heavily there and perhaps lain with a native woman somewhere out in the open, and slept thus, amidst the impure effluvia of air proceeding from that marshy ground, acted upon all day by solar heat and at night releasing its poisons.

  Paris paused for some moments, pen in hand. He was thinking of his actions from the moment he had noted the violence of Simmonds’s fever. He had gone to his cabin and quite deliberately eaten a certain quantity of bread dipped in vinegar—one should never attend the sick when the stomach is empty, the body being then at its most absorbent. He had looked at his face in the small looking-glass fixed to the locker, the deeply marked forehead, the lines that ran from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth, the pale eyes under thick brows that slanted downward with a slightly dog-like effect, at once mournful and alert. A face not unhandsome, though roughly made and too bony—the face, he knew it then, of a man who did not want to die, who was bolting these sops of bread in fear of death. He clung to the world still, for all his shame and loss and grief.

  He had stopped his nostrils, before returning to Simmonds, with lint dipped in the same vinegar; and after the man’s death he had washed out his mouth with camphorated spirits. To be of service on the ship, yes; but he knew that was secondary. What he remembered now was the bread dissolving in his mouth, all hope of life in that sour taste… Thinking of it here in the close, confessional privacy of his cabin he felt a traitor, but to whom or what he did not know.

  The number of slaves continues steadily to augment. Tucker, in accordance with his promise, has furnished a batch of twenty-two males and eight females, all captured by his people in the wars he has been fomenting inland. One of his sons was killed in the raid, which had the effect of making Tucker very oppressive and implacable when it came to the bargaining: he asked seventy bars for the adult males and pushed the equivalent in trade goods to levels that brought Thurso close to apoplexy; though one might have thought this exorbitance would compel our captain’s respect, it being after all the mark of a true trader to compensate himself for loss.

  “Fortunate for us he lost only one of his sons,” Barton remarked to me with that peering, foxy look of his, “or he would have cleared us out of printed cottons altogether.”

  The mulatto’s prices had to be met in any case, as he controls much of the trade on the river and I believe the supply of slaves can be much curtailed by his disfavour. What can happen to those who get in his way I saw some evidence of in Owen’s shed.

  The slaves are still kept on deck, except in squally weather, but there are more than seventy now and they will have to be accommodated below when we are at sea. To this end Barber is installing platforms between the decks. There can be no doubt that a carpenter on a slaveship earns his wages: Barber has had to see to the trimming and raising of the hatches, the construction of the barricade and now these divisions in the hold, which has meant fitting platforms and partitions to divide the space below the deck into separate lodging rooms for the men, the boys and the women. As there is no more than five feet of vertical space in the hold to begin with, and these platforms will halve it, it is difficult to see how the negroes will have room even to sit upright.

  Thurso, made anxious by symptoms of melancholy and lethargy among the captives, has instituted a joyless ceremony known as “dancing the slaves”, which Barton tells me is an old practice among slavers. After the morning meal, Sullivan is brought out to play reels on his fiddle while the women, who are not shackled, dance about the deck and the men jump in their irons as best they can, though it is a torture to men with swollen limbs. Thurso is too absolute in his habit of mind to grant any exemptions and so they are forced to continue till their ankles are raw and bleeding, the sailors keeping them to it with whips. There are those among the crew, the more brutish, who visibly enjoy this exercise. I have seen Libby and Tapley and Wilson grin to do it and laugh at the sad antics that they oblige the negroes to perform. They are made to sing also and sometimes they independently set up a wavering song among themselves. Jimmy, our linguister, tells me that these songs are full of sorrow, as one might expect. That their slow movements and this sad singing are at ludicrous odds with the brisk tempo of his fiddling seems not to trouble Sullivan at all.

  It is clear that he loves his fiddle and he plays it here with the same spirit as I have no doubt he would at a country wedding in Ireland.

  I have spent some time in talking to Jimmy, who is very friendly and open, sensitive too, I believe— he conceals a good deal under that smile of his, which is due more to an inveterate habit of the nerves, I think, than to any real amusement. It is his ambition to be a teacher with a school for local children here on the coast, at Cape Palmas, under the protection of the English garrison there. He hopes to accompany us back to England and find an employment that would allow him to improve his knowledge of English.

  If Jimmy feels that he is betraying his enslaved fellows by thus acting as intermediary with their captors, he gives no sign of it; perhaps he does not feel that they are his fellows at all. Because they have all black faces we suppose them close in fellowship, but when have we been so towards people only because they are white-skinned like ourselves?

  I have not noticed much affection and loyalty among us towards the Dutch or the French. Jimmy does not know how old he is—I should say about thirty.

  He is of the Hausa people, he has told me, and was brought to the coast as a child when his parents were enslaved by the Ashanti.

  The captives themselves are not united: I have seen a good deal of squabbling and bad feeling among them.

  Yesterday, not long after Simmonds’s death, I saw one throw his rice in the face of another. They are of different races and tongues and reach the ship by diverse routes—this too I have learned from our linguister. Some are prisoners of war, others have been domestic slaves already and are sold now by their masters to pay off debts or provide wedding portions; yet others have been seized by local slavers such as the late Yellow Henry. But however varied the routes by which these unfortunates reach the deck of the Liverpool Merchant, once here they are brought to a uniform condition with remarkable —

  He was interrupted by Charlie, who came knocking at his door to tell him that one of the negroes was thought to be dying. “The one that won’t take his grub, sir,” Charlie said, his starveling face full of wonder.

  Up on deck, however, there was no opportunity to see the man alone. The captain had been informed and was standing in colloquy with Haines on the quarterdeck at the head of the companion ladder. As always, because of Thurso’s stillness and the unchanging pitch of his voice, his feelings were not at first apparent; but as Paris drew closer, he saw the furious look of the captain’s eyes and the rigid set of his jaws, and he felt a curious weakness, as if brought cold and reluctant to some passage of arms.

  “I’ll see he eats,” Thurso said.

  “He will sup before he dies. Lay forward there for the wrench and the funnel, Haines.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “The wrench?”’ Paris did not know what was meant. He had seen, like a premonition, a certain kind of satisfaction pass over Haines’s face.

  “I want the man brought aft, below me here.”

  Thurso turned to the surgeon. ‘allyes, sir,” he said, “you shall see this malingering fellow eat his rice at last.”

  The negro came supported between two men, his head hanging. Paris, looking down from the quarterdeck, saw the marks of the lash across his shoulders, saw the red mess of his thumbs, saw at the same moment what Haines was carrying, took it at first for a large pair of dividers, then recognized the notched prongs and the broad wing-screw. “But that is the s
peculum oris,”

  ” he said, and saw the faintly sneering look of knowledge of him, or expectation of some pretext for derision, rise to the boatswain’s face. ‘Aye, is it, Doctor?”’ he said. “We calls it a gob-wrench.”

  “But you will spoil his mouth,” Paris said, and watched the sneer deepen on the boatswain’s face.

  He had seen the instrument used to force open the mouths of patients suffering from lockjaw and he knew the damage it could inflict if clumsily applied— the broken teeth and torn gums. “You will reduce his value,” he said, in an attempt to impress Thurso with a commercial argument, a ludicrously inept one, he knew—the man was near death in any case. “Let me try him with food,” he said. “With your permission, sir, I will make an attempt with him.”

  “You are for persuasion still, I see.” Thurso paused for what seemed some private reflection.

  “Very well,” he said at last, “I will allow you a few minutes. I care not how he comes to it, so long as he does so and is seen to. But you are wasting your time.”

  Paris descended from the gangway to the main deck.

  The two men supporting the negro, Tapley and McGann, finding him a dead weight, had set him down against the base of the gangway ladder. The surgeon crouched in an attempt to look into the man’s face.

  ‘What shall we try him with, sir?”’

  This was an offer Paris turned sharply towards, a voice that held something for him. Glancing up he saw that it belonged to Hughes, the misanthropic climber, who had not addressed a syllable to him ever before. Hughes was regarding him with a sombre intentness, not unfriendly.

  “Boiled rice, I think, as before,” the surgeon said. “Can some be fetched?”’

  “There is a bit of hasty pudding left over in the galley,” Cavana said. “I do know that because I seen it.”

  ‘I seen it too.” This came fervently from the boy Charlie, who was always hungry.

  “They like dried pease boiled in a cloth,”

  Sullivan said. “All the black races is infatuated on that dish.”

  “God damn me,” Blair said, instantly furious, “we might ha” known you’d put yor clappers in. Are you goin’ to tell us -“

  ‘It would take too long to get it ready,”

  Paris said. “And the hasty pudding is made with oatmeal, which he will not be used to.” He looked at their faces, struck by a sense of the mystery of things. This man had been taken from his home and tortured and brought to the edge of death—too close to be brought back, he suspected. And now these other men, who had assisted in it, were eager to find some way of tempting his appetite. He was aware of Thurso, up on the quarterdeck, ostensibly withdrawn from the proceedings but able to hear every word that was uttered. Is it concern for the negro they are expressing or support for me? The question sprang to his mind and he surprised in himself a feeling of mingled exhilaration and reluctance. And I? Which do I care more for, this man’s life or proving right? He had not thought this question could come at him again; he had thought it dealt with, disposed offor ever. He looked down at the negro, as if to find an answer there. The man’s thumbs were covered with blood and he could not understand this, until he realized that the pressure of the thumbscrews had caused him to bleed through the nails … “No, we will try with rice,” he repeated in his deep, vibrant voice. “Here it is now. Thank you, Charlie,” he said to the boy who had come at a run with a dish of rice and a wooden spoon. “Where is the linguister?”’

  Jimmy came forward. “I don’ know if he unnerstan’ me,” he said. ‘Mebbe unnerstan”

  Malinka.”

  Paris drew closer to the man and crouched down beside him as he half sat, half lay against the foot of the steps. ‘Tell him I want him to eat this rice,” he said. He felt suddenly helpless and ridiculous. How could he persuade the man to eat?

  “Tell him I want him to live,” he said to Jimmy urgently and impatiently.

  Jimmy squatted and spoke close to the man’s ear.

  “Wha’ll tak a wee bet?”’ McGann said.

  “I’ll gie ye ten to one. Five shillin” to saxpence the doctor will no’ get a crumb doon his gullet.”

  ‘A penny to a shillin” he gets sommat in,” Wilson said.

  ‘Aye, in his mouth,” Libby said. “That’s easy, man, that’s not what McGann is layin” odds on. His mouth is open already. Naw, he’s got to swaller, to win the bet.”

  The negro showed no sign of hearing. His eyes looked at nothing, his head hung down at an awkward angle. “I think this man goin“‘ea”Jimmy said. ‘This man finish. I try him pidgin.” He brought his mouth close to the man’s ear again: “Dis buckra man doctor say you nyam-nyam, say you nyam an” dringi kaba, everythin’ fine-fine.”

  Paris freighted the spoon with rice, then put it back down on the plate again: he saw now that the spoon was too big. He took some of the moist and sticky rice between his thumb and first two fingers and extended this towards the man. He was aware of the silence among the people looking on—some of the women slaves had joined the circle of seamen. There was a ring round him, cutting off the air. The stench of captivity came to him, from the man before him, the spectators white and black, the massed bodies of the slaves under the awning.

  ‘, t,” he said. “I want you to eat.” He could read no expression on the broad, flat-boned face, unless the approach of death can be an expression. The eyes were fixed on the strip of plank between his long and narrow feet. The mouth hung open, a spongy ellipse, allowing the pale loll of the tongue to show within it. As Paris crouched there, holding out in his fingers the sticky ball of rice, he knew that he was alone with this man, that the two of them were quite alone. The pale sky had clutched at them, gathered them into privacy, into some area of seclusion.

  He did not know whose was the greater arrogance, his or this dying man’s.

  ‘, t it,” he said harshly. He reached forward and put the rice between the man’s lips, feeling the helpless softness of the mouth as he did so, pushing the food between the barrier of the teeth. He dipped his fingers again into the dish, moulding a new ball. The man’s mouth made no movement, his lips still hung slackly open; but as Paris again reached forward the eyes for the first time looked at him, registered his presence there, directly, immediately. Paris saw in the eyes the desire for death and recognized it as his own familiar; but in these same eyes that longed for the burden of pain to be removed there was what the surgeon had seen in his own looking-glass while the bread dissolved in his mouth —inveterate, unquenchable, the hope of life, the appeal to be saved. And Paris knew in that same moment that he had done a wicked thing to sail with this ship out of mere despair.

  “Eat it,” he said again. He saw a blaze in the man’s eyes, saw the mouth work to gather its contents. The negro raised himself a little and his face strained forward with a curiously patient effort. With a deep gasp, almost a groan, the mouth opened and sprayed out its contents. Paris felt the warm shock of the rice and spit on his face and saw the negro’s head fall back against the ladder and his eyes turn upward.

  Haines took a step forward, half raising his whip. “Let me give him a go with this,” he said.

  “I’ll teach him spittin”.”

  Paris got to his feet. ‘Stand clear of him,” he said. “Stand back from him.” There was an eagerness on Haines’s face. On an impulse he did not understand, Paris took a step towards the boatswain and thrust at him violently. The power in his arms was a revelation—perhaps most of all to the surgeon himself. Haines was a big man and well planted on his feet but he was sent staggering back.

  Paris took out a handkerchief and wiped his face slowly. “There was not much gained by flogging him, even when he was alive,” he said, loudly enough for the captain and mate on the quarterdeck to hear. He glanced across the deck at the shackled men under the awning. They avoided his eye as usual, except for one tall and strongly built man, whom he recognized now as the first slave he had examined.

  This man was loo
king at him steadily though without discernible expression; and he did not look away when their eyes met—an unusual thing.

  30.

  The dead slave was thrown overboard at once.

  He was followed two days later by a woman who, though eating her portions without protest, had been in a state of deepening lethargy for some time and was found dead on deck in the early morning with no sign about her as to the cause. Then the ship’s boy, Charlie, began to sicken with the same symptoms that Simmonds had shown. As his fever mounted, the hammering and clatter on the ship mounted with it: under the supervision of Johnson, the gunner, the men were sheathing the fore parts of the mainmast and a space of the deck forward of it with lead plate, so that the furnace could be placed amidship with more security, there being more mouths aboard now than the ship’s iron pot could boil for.

  Charlie, whose surname nobody knew, who had experienced little but blows and hunger in his fourteen years, died shivering and vomiting, not knowing whether these heavy detonations of sound were within him or without.

  Paris could fathom neither the one death nor the other.

  Charlie had not berthed in any proximity to the second mate; he had not gone on the expedition to Tucker’s and so had not been exposed to any poisonous airs from the river. Paris knew there were sexual relations among some of the men. Simmonds, after contracting the disease, might have sodomized the boy and so communicated the contagion. From questions such as these comand from his own ignorance—he sought refuge where he could find it, in memories of the past, in attention to the daily trafficking for slaves that still continued.