Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  He heard the door close softly behind Sullivan. He fell into a doze, though without relaxing his hold on the button. After an interval that might have been hours or minutes he opened his eyes to see his cousin looking down at him. “I wanted to explain,” he said, as if there had been no lapse of time. “When I raised my hand against Thurso it was not with the idea of leading a revolt against him.”

  The words came between short breaths, noisy and irregular. He fell silent again now and closed his eyes. Why had he done it? He had a sudden memory of the rain-washed deck, the calm of that morning, the vast, indifferent sky. “It was against my profession,” he said. But he knew that wasn’t the reason.

  “We shall arrive at Still Augustine this evening,”

  Erasmus said. “There is a doctor there, belonging to the garrison. We shall have you put to rights.”

  “I fear there may be nothing a doctor can do.

  I have seen this before, after an amputation or some violent accident… There is only one path from the leg to the lungs. I am afraid I have suffered some occlusion of the blood.”

  “You cannot die,” Erasmus said violently.

  “Not in this hole-and-corner fashion, not after I have come halfway round the world to smoke you out. It makes nonsense of everything.”

  “You wanted something more spectacular, I know,”

  Paris said with an effort. He was silent after this for a long time, then he asked for a candle to be lit, as he could not see well. The flame moved but the light from it did not spread. Someone was bathing his face again. In a sudden wash of colder, clearer light, he saw the picture on the easel, the Governor’s face fixed in its rigid sneer.

  “That fort was full of hammering,” he said. “There was no order in it.” The metal of the bars and the flesh of her limbs all one substance in the sunshine. His labouring breath came to his ears as from a distance beyond him. Nor on the ship, he thought. How else but in a state of chaos could such things be done? That was it, he had wanted to find order again, he had shouted up to the sky for order…

  And now you will tell me that your hope was realized?

  These words were strangely disembodied, like his breathing; it was difficult to be sure who had said them; but he knew it was for him to answer. In his eagerness to do so he started forward from the bolster that supported him against the bulkhead. He extended his right hand and something fell from it on to the blanket.

  “Yes,” he said, glaring across the room. “As much as any hope can be.” He did not know, as he fell back, whether this was the truth of the matter or whether he was blundering yet again and it was merely the voice of his old intransigence, his incorrigible need to have the last word. But doubt is the ally of hope, not its enemy, and together they made all the blessing he had.

  Erasmus, not having heard any question, had failed to understand his cousin’s words. Half mechanically he had clasped the hand extended to him and he was still holding it some minutes later when Paris caught his breath and struggled forward again and died. After a little while he released the hand and crossed it with the other one over the chest and closed the eyelids over the pale eyes.

  He stood looking down at the dead man’s face.

  All marks of pain had gone from it. Paris wore a look of patient obstinacy as if, eyes closed, he were memorizing his arguments. On the blanket before him, where he had dropped it, lay a smallish brass button. After hesitating a moment Erasmus leaned forward and picked this up. Then he left the cabin and made his way above.

  He stood for a while at the forward rail of the quarterdeck. It was a clear morning, rather cold, but sunny. The bayonets of the soldiers on guard glinted in the sunshine. He looked down at the slaves huddled amidships. One or two glanced at him but most kept their eyes sullenly or listlessly turned away. From somewhere in their midst a baby was crying fitfully. He noted the differences in skin colouring among them and thought with some disgust of the promiscuous relations that must have prevailed in the settlement. They had lived like animals there…

  Negro and mulatto, men, women, children—they had little more distinction in his mind than cattle might have done. They were in prime condition, however, and would fetch best prices at Charles Town. A good number of infants among them—they would have to be sold with the mothers. This was not usual and he was not sure how far it would affect the price. Like so much else, it depended on the temperament of the buyer. Some would regard it as an investment, others grudge the outlay on feeding… It occurred to him now that there might be bastards of his cousin’s among these children. With this thought the image of the dead man’s face came back into his mind. What had Paris said at the end? It had not made much sense—he had been talking to himself. Something about hope.

  Erasmus glanced to either side of him at the unruffled expanses of the sea. The sky was cloudless. To eastward there still lingered the faint stains of sunrise. He knew land could not be far distant on the port side, but there was no sign of it; sea and sky met in a clear line. On a beach as vast as this sea to the memory of childhood, Paris had lifted him, swung him clear of the ground. It had not been to cheat him of victory—he knew that now, perhaps he had always known it—but to save him from defeat. It had been an act of kindness, perhaps even love. Only superior strength had enabled his cousin to do it. No one since then had been strong enough. And now there was no one at all. Paris was dead and could save him from defeat no longer. Ever since the morning that Captain Philips had come with his story of the beached ship, the thought that Paris might still be in the world had given his life meaning and purpose. Sarah had done that once. What was there now? He had thought his defeat lay in not delivering Paris to the hangman; but he knew now that the more terrible thing was not to have kept his cousin alive…

  In the stress of this knowledge he clenched his fists, as his habit was. As he did so he felt the edge of the button press painfully against his fingers—he had been holding it all this while. He opened his hand and looked at it closely. An odd thing for a dying man to hold on to. Erasmus might have thrown it into the sea, but it occurred to him that it was a kind of gift, though accidental. After a moment he put it carefully away in the pocket of his coat.

  EPILOGUE

  This evening no different from others. He knows where he is by the quality of the light, the shape of the pale sheet of mirror behind the bar. Waterside bar, early evening sunlight falling through the open door— there are no windows. The light is broken, disturbed by movements of bodies. The interior of the bar is dark, he can see nothing there—he always sits facing the light. Between himself and the door shapes loom and melt. He knows that he is a licensed clown for the sailors, dockers, whores, who use this place.

  He knows that he is alone.

  The drink he pays for himself, as long as he can, from the day’s yield of dimes, hoarding the coins together on the counter. When he runs out of money he might start to sing, snatch of some old slave song, in a high, cracked voice. Frail eyelids over ruined eyes, head trembling a little, yearning towards the light. The Paradise Nigger is dying, but he never looks any different; no more damage can show on his face.

  He talks to anyone that he senses to be close; or to no one. Sometimes one of the customers will set him off, winking round at the others: “Come on, old Sawdust, what’s the news from paradise?”’

  “Cause you ain’t seen it you don’t believe.

  Doubtin” Thomas had to see the Lord wounds. But this nigger seen it. An’ they makes bellerin’ sounds an’ blow up water an’ got birds live inside they mouth, eat the pickin’s of they teeth, that’s “nough food fo” them birds, don’ need nuthin more. No sir! Dragon flies you heerd tell of.

  Please inform this nigger if you ain’t never heerd tell of dragon flies. Well, these dragon birds’

  He pauses for a moment, then says with sudden scorn, “I hear you laughin’. Yeah, you pissin’ youselves.”

  ‘allyou keep civil or I got to show you the door,” the barkeeper says.
>
  The mulatto lowers his head, an old reflex of submission. “Heart’s delight,” he says, somewhere between a groan and a sigh. Some accidental gleam falls on the whitish sheaths of his eyes. He talks on, but to himself now, about the birds in the dragon’s mouth, and with rum they grow increasingly marvellous. Other birds too, white herons rising on slow wings, black snake-birds, and a sea of grass brimming and winking with flood-water.

  “Red-colour fish in them pool,” he says, “an” leather-shell turtle. I kin see it now.

  It never snowed nor frosted neether. I kin see the clouds, kinda like mist but then blue back of it.

  We come off a ship. That place nobody boss man. All the people live together friendly, say good-mornin’, good-evenin’, white or black don’ make no diff rence…”

  Someone puts a drink in his hand and he drinks and goes on talking, muttering, after they have stopped listening, when no one could have heard anyway because of the noise in the place, voices or music of a fiddle, he chokes himself up with a sudden crazy spasm of laughter, soft choking laughter that seizes his throat. ‘My poppa tell me dat, one time.

  He show me in a book. Long time ago now.”

  Sparse tears run from his eyes. His mind fills with hyperbole, visions fed with hunger and rum, glowing moons, gilded palmettos, clouds pierced with splinters of sunshine. And faces, black and white, belonging to the time of the dragons. “I alius thought I goin’ to git back but I never did. You ain’t never goin’ now, nigger. Ah, Jesus.”

  Sometimes, with the rum, he would get dogged about something, quarrelsome even. Or he would get tearful and wild. One way or another he would be thrown out sooner or later. This evening it is stray words of a woman heard earlier that get inflamed in his mind.

  ‘Why you say that? I warn’t born on no plantation. I ain’t a Guinea nigger neether.

  ‘Cause I yaller, don” mean my fadder a slave-driver neether. My father a doctor. I born in a paradise place. You hear me? You hear me there?”’

  He is put out into the alley; not very roughly, but he falls, allows himself to fall, to break the hold on his arm. So he sprawls there in the dark, the harmonica dangling round his neck, while his rage fades and his mind grows blank as his eyes. Some time later, on this particular evening, he limps and fumbles his way to the kitchen of the Cupola, where Big Suzanne presides.

  Indigo evening of summer, he sees stars floating and dilating in it. Big red pansies bloom and die on Suzanne’s vast hips as she moves below the lamp. Standing unsteady in the doorway, he confides in her massive and contemptuous kindness.

  ‘I give them a piece of my mind.”

  “Sure,” she says. “Same as every night.

  You been rollin” around again, ain’t you? They’s some meat gravy if you wants it.”

  ‘We come on a ship,” he says. “Not here.”

  ‘Don’t I know it? Here, take some of this here biscuit, mop it up with.”

  “Heart’s delight,” he sighs, standing in the doorway with his plate.

  Her sweating face smiles over at him. “That a fine name for a ship.”

  The End

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Partnership

  The Greeks have a Word for It

  The Hide

  Mooncranker’s Gift

  The Big Day

  Pascali’s Island

  The Rage of the Vulture

  Stone Virgin

  Sugar and Rum

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  BOOK ONE

  PART ONE

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  PART TWO

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  PART THREE

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  PART FOUR

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  PART FIVE

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  PART SIX

  32.

  33.

  PART SEVEN

  34.

  35.

  36.

  BOOK TWO

  PART EIGHT

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  PART NINE

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  EPILOGUE

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR