Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  “Well, it is a large question,” Paris said doubtfully. “And one that cannot be easily answered.”

  “You are right. Let us have some more brandy now, so that we can the better discuss it.”

  Whether it was Delblanc’s precipitation of speech or his readiness to forget his troubles at the prospect of debate, Paris did not quite know, but there was something about this eagerness that moved him now with a mingled sense of comedy and pain. Quite suddenly, with that lonely urgency that comes at times to reticent natures, he wanted to entrust something to this man, so frank and unaffected, so unforced in his transitions from thought and sensation to speech. “We can discuss it if you like,” he said, “but there is something I wanted to say before and didn’t. You spoke about the need to make a living and how it inclines us to evade the truth of things, but I have not even that excuse.”

  “But it is your livelihood, as I understand the matter. I suppose you do not offer your services free?”’

  “I did not need to take my uncle’s offer,”

  Paris said. “My uncle is the owner of the ship I am serving on. I could have gone to another part of England or to one of the colonies. I could have gone to America, where there is need for doctors.”

  “You needed to get away then?”’

  The gentle matter-of-factness of this brought a tightness to Paris’s throat that he had not anticipated. Those confiding their pain cannot know at the outset how much they will be required to relive it; but he knew that he was set on a course here, in this room from which the moonlight was receding, leaving it darker, before a man he hardly knew and a face of death. “Yes,” he said harshly, “I needed to get away, but I did not need to take a post on a slaveship, I did not need to use my profession, of which I was proud once, to certify people as fit for branding and chaining.”

  ‘I suppose you thought it didn’t much matter,”

  Delblanc said, in the same tone of gentle simplicity. “What you did with yourself, I mean.”

  At this the surgeon rose in his turn and began pacing to and fro across the room. “It never mattered what I did, as far as only myself was concerned,” he said. “It doesn’t matter now. I don’t care what becomes of me. But I had no right…

  I should not have argued in favour of the mind just now, that was only for argument’s sake—I still have that vice. It was my insistence on opinion, concealed under the appearance of a desire for truth, that ruined me and killed my wife. Yes, sir, killed her.”

  Paris nodded fiercely, as if he thought the other might attempt to contradict him. “By my arrogant folly I killed her and the child she was carrying.” He paused to drink what was left in his glass, though hardly aware of the action.

  “We lived in Norfolk,” he said, “where I practised as a surgeon-apothecary. I became interested in fossil remains and what they can tell us about the age of the earth, and also in the evidence of rises and falls of the earth’s surface through long ages of time. I began to form a collection of marine fossils, some of them found high above the level of the sea. The existence of these cannot be reconciled with the account of creation given to us in the Bible. So far, if it had been a mere question of my private studies, all would have been well. There are men of science all over Europe quietly forming their opinions on such matters. But I, sir, I had to air my discoveries and opinions. I acquired a printing press and issued pamphlets in which I championed the views of Maupertuis. Perhaps you are acquainted with his work?”’

  “Not even with his name, I am afraid,”

  Delblanc said. “I have not taken much interest in such matters.”

  ‘He is a man of genius.” Despite his distress, Paris’s tone had quickened with admiration for this hero of his youth. “His name has been obscured by misapprehension and envy, but one day his worth will be known. By his investigations into heredity he has shown how, from two individuals only, the multiplication of the most dissimilar species could grow, owing their origin to some accidental formation, an error you could say, each error creating a new species…”

  “But that would mean that we ourselves are the result of error also, that we need not have been as we are.”

  “Yes, some different accidents might have occurred. Or so Maupertuis would say. Something impossible to imagine… I was greatly struck by these ideas when first I read them; they seemed to offer an explanation of the diversity of creatures, something which had always puzzled me. And they confirmed my own conclusions about the age of the earth, because such changes would have needed great periods of time to accomplish.”

  Paris paused, swallowing at some impediment.

  “Great periods of time,” he repeated, in a voice that trembled slightly—they were dear to his memory, these early studies and speculations, his desk in the lamplight, Ruth busy somewhere not far.

  “I published these theories,” he went on after a moment. “They run counter to orthodox opinion and especially to the teachings of the Church. I was warned, not only by those who were hostile, but by friends and colleagues. Yes, I was well warned. But I paid no heed.” Paris stopped his pacing and stood still in the centre of the room, looking fixedly at Delblanc, who sat out of the candle-light, his face in shadow. “I was clad in the armour of truth,” the surgeon said. “Or so I thought. Or so I pretended to think.” He tried to smile but failed.

  “In fact, I was merely obstinate and overweening, vices which I have still. I was arrested on a complaint of the Bishop of Norwich. The judge was in the Church Interest. He found me guilty of issuing a seditious publication, imposed a fine beyond my means and consigned me to prison until it was paid. My uncle redeemed the debt when he learned of it, but while I lay in prison a mob set on by the Church Party broke into my house with a view to smashing the press and in the course of this they terrified my wife so that she miscarried. She was not a strong woman and she did not recover. I did not see her die…”

  These unguarded negatives broke the control which he had struggled to maintain by an appearance of reporting on facts. “She died without me,” he said, and his voice broke on it. He saw the artist make a sudden movement, as if to rise and come towards him. He said quickly, “You would serve me best by staying as you are. I do not know why, for the life of me, but I am set on speaking to you as I have spoke to no one else, and I need a distance between us if I am to get through to the end.”

  For some moments, however, he was obliged to remain silent, checking the tears that had threatened him at Delblanc’s impulse to kindness. The hardest part still lay before him. Below the acknowledgement of blame, below the self-reproach, at the deepest level of confession, lay the words that would express the shame of what had been done to him. It was characteristic of Paris that he should seek a way to it through argument. “You quoted Pascal just now,” he said. “

  “Three degrees of latitude reverses the whole of jurisprudence.” Delblanc, no latitude makes any difference to what men will do to other men, whether for gain or in the name of justice. Publishing seditious material is a felony in our law.

  Before I began my prison sentence, they set me twelve hours in the pillory. In our enlightened land, for publishing the view that the earth is older than six thousand years, and thus contradicting Revelation, I was chained by the legs to a post, my head and hands were stuck through a board and clamped there and I was left to the mercies of the crowd for a night on the market square of Norwich. Pilloried alongside with me there was a man who had been convicted of sodomy.

  Fortunate for me, because he diverted the wrath of the mob and so I was saved from injury at their hands. He was stoned by the whores of the town. In the morning, when they came for us, he was insensible—I do not know to this day whether he lived or died.”

  Paris’s voice was unhesitating now; the droning fluency of nightmare had descended on him. As he spoke he had the sense of a steady seepage of filth and blood, a stain that spread with his words in this quiet room, with no check to him in Delblanc’s motionless figure or the hi
deous silence of the governor, and only the distant booming of the sea for admonition. The festering restraint of months fell away from him and the agony of his humiliation returned, licensed, almost welcomed, that crouching, ludicrous, beast-like posture, the terrible exposure of the naked face and head, detached from the rest of the body, offered like a pumpkin at a fair for the crowd to shy at, the hanging head and meek hands of the sodomist, his face and hair all pulped and bloody, like a burst pumpkin, lolling there, still unable to retract his head from his tormentors, his pleading mercy made indistinct by the blood that had filled his mouth…

  He checked himself at last and a deep gasp like a sob broke from him. “Legitimate means of livelihood? The face of truth that cannot be denied?

  I wanted to look them in the face, when they came to release me in the morning. I had prepared myself.

  But I could not stand upright, I was led away crouching still, with back bent like some submissive animal. And yet I came here. I knew what it is to be shackled and derided and still I came. How can that be forgiven?”’

  Another groan came from him. Humiliation almost worse than that grey morning’s, the knowledge of his folly, to think that despair can exonerate, that the desire of death can remove the burden of conscience… “And it is not even true,” he said turning half blindly and moving to the window as if for some refuge in the night outside. “It was not true then and is not now.”

  The moon was high and clear of cloud, astoundingly radiant, eclipsing the stars. Moonlight gleamed in a sheet of silver over the marshes and flats of mud they had crossed to come here, so cluttered and tawdry by day, all unified and resplendent now as if lying under some momentary blessing. And for a moment this transforming moonlight was confused in Paris’s mind with the sunlight of earlier, the form of the woman edged with fire against the bars. “It is not even true that I want to die,” he said, and with this ultimate confession he saw the moonlit levels run together and glimmer, as if washed in some thin solution of silver, and then blur to bright webs, as the tears, held long in check, came freely now to his eyes.

  33.

  On the day following his return aboard, Paris resumed his journal, which he had neglected of late, with so many calls on his time and attention. He felt in any case disinclined for any more active occupation this afternoon: his limbs were heavy and he was experiencing a slight but persistent sense of oppression above the eyes. He would have liked to sleep, but to do so with the sense of a task unfulfilled went against the grain of his nature; self-denying generations spoke in his blood against it.

  Hunched at his small table, aware intermittently of the foul smell from the ship’s bilges, he wrote on doggedly.

  Delblanc was right when he said his purse would sufficiently recommend him. He came aboard this morning, with a small cabin trunk and a rather dressed-up, festive look. I suspect he is a man who likes changes and adventures, and perhaps especially those not much premeditated. Apparently he did not wait to see the effect of his portrait upon the governor. There is something reckless in Delblanc. I feel him to be a generous-hearted man, who might go astray in practice, though he would not behave ignobly. But he seems accountable to no one and free to follow the promptings of his nature. In this he is different from myself and perhaps it is why I feel drawn so towards him—the more now, in gratitude for his friendship and patience last evening. I am glad he is to be with us. We have had already some resumption of our discussion on the merits of heart and head; his arguments in defence of untrammelled liberty and the natural goodness of the heart are delivered with no less enthusiasm as he paces the deck of a slaveship. There is something touching in this fervour, something absurd loo—like all good theorists he is not much troubled by incongruities of circumstance. Might it be true that men would live together in peace and harmony if only the coercion of authority were lifted from them? When I look into the faces of my fellows, I find it hard to credit.

  With Delblanc there have come aboard two new crew members, recruited at the fort, Lees and Rimmer. The former seems a decent man enough, a cooper by trade, badly scarred with smallpox.

  He is a former seaman, though I understand he has been two years employed by the company here. The other man, Rimmer, has one of the most debauched and vicious faces I have seen, swollen with drink and rough living and with an ugly expression of the eyes, like a dog that would bite if it dared. He either ran from, or was abandoned by, another slaver that came earlier, and has since been living as he can here on the coast. Shortly after coming aboard he must have behaved with some insolence, or perhaps merely indifference, towards Barton, who struck him a blow with his open hand which could be heard all over the ship. I saw this incident myself. It was only a slapping blow, but Rimmer was knocked sideways. He knew better than to attempt a retaliation, but there was murder on his face. I did not see much change on Barton’s. “You do what I tell you,” I heard him say, “andyou do it prompt, or you’ll never reach Jamaica.” Of course Barton knows that he must take such a man in hand from the outset.

  He is in command for these days; Thurso is gone ashore on some business of his own.

  That look of the eyes is not so common among us. I saw it sometimes in prison. It belongs to men who will always be ready to do more hurt than they need. Tapley has something of it, but he is less bold than this new man; he needs the shelter and bidding of another, and his prefect, Libby, has not this wickedness in his face, but seems merely brutal and unfeeling.

  It seems that I am become an expert on faces. Men like Hughes and Cavana have a savage eye, so intent in regard as to seem almost innocent, with that sort of fierce innocence which has known no chastening or softening. I saw that expression again on the faces of the Gold Coast negroes who stared at us through their bars. I do not know if the woman belonged with that group. Thurso had already looked them over and purchased them before I was stirring next morning, having apparently agreed on a price with the governor the night before. She is tall, like them, but lighter skinned, tawny rather than black, and her hair not so wiry. I am cursed with too much doubt, or compunction—I do not know what to call it. Perhaps it was only a figment of that mood of hope that came to me as I walked behind Saunders through those passages. But it was as if she waited there, in the sunlight…

  Cavana came aboard mid-morning with a monkey on a rope, a bright-eyed little creature with tufted ears and a tail longer than itself, and very prettily coloured—a black crown on him and a small white face, and arms and feet pale orange colour. Cavana is very taken with it, though he does not like to appear so, at least not to me, I think out of some sort of shyness. Blair speaks to me freely since we treated Galley’s back together and he told me they had gone ashore soon after sunrise with Haines to get firewood and shoot pigeons, of which there are large flocks at present in the trees just a little back from the shore. While there they had met a party from the American grain ship in the road with us, who were on the same business. One of these had the monkey and seeing Cavana much taken with it had offered to sell it to him. Cavana had no money but he had a silver chain round his neck, his only possession. On the kind of impulse which seems common with these men when they want something that is before their eyes, he pulled this off and offered it in exchange. To my less impulsive nature this seemed extravagant, but I could tell that Blair would have done the same thing. The creature sat quite comfortably on Cavana’s shoulder, turning its muzzle to look at our faces and raising the skin on its scalp in a very comical way, as if it were constantly being surprised by the tenor of our conversation.

  Thurso will not be back for some days yet. There is some mystery about his absence, as there is about our lingering here at all. Why trade for negroes through the fort, if prices are higher? Thurso is not a man to pay more than he needs, and it cannot be that he wishes to keep good relations for the future, as Barton once let fall to me that this is the captain’s last voyage. I believe he has come down to this stretch of coast with some private purpose, and that Barton is pri
vy to it…

  Paris laid down his pen. He was feeling distinctly unwell. The heaviness in his limbs had intensified and his temples throbbed painfully with any slightest movement of his eyes. He made himself a strong infusion of powdered cinchona bark and took to his bed, where within an hour he was experiencing the first assaults of a violent fever.

  There followed a period for Paris undistinguished by passage of hours, marked only by alternations of sweating and shivering. In the lulls he continued to dose himself within infusions of cinchona and battled to repair his copious sweats with lemon water.

  Sullivan, who had taken over from Charlie the duty of seeing to the surgeon’s wants—Thurso would not have given permission to a fore-the-mast man to do it —came that evening at the change of watch, found his charge muttering and tossing and conversing with shadows and ran to get rainwater from the butt so as to make cold compresses for the surgeon’s face and chest. This had been done to Sullivan by a woman somewhere in his scattered past and it had been a memory of love to him. It was all he knew of treating fevers, but he was assiduous in it, and was a devoted attendant to Paris all through his illness, sponging his brow, running to the galley with dried yarrow leaves from Paris’s stock so that Morgan could make him tea.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Paris woke feeling weak but clear-headed. His restored senses brought sounds more typical of delirium, a hullabaloo above him of stamping feet, jangling chains, the jaunty persistence of the fiddle: the slaves were at their morning dance. He ate the breakfast provided by Sullivan: ship’s biscuit, in which the occasional weevil was still to be found, and some rock-hard cheddar. He enjoyed both items hugely. He felt sure now that he had been suffering from the same type of fever which had earlier attacked Johnson and True, a kind of swamp fever, he believed, transmitted by the miasmic airs of the coast. If it were the same he could expect further bouts—Johnson had suffered some return of it already, though True so far not.