(2007) The Pesthouse

by Jim Crace

  Almost everybody else was being marked in red — a large cross on both arms — and turned away. They went back to the body of the crowd, crestfallen, but ready to try again (once they'd scratched away all evidence of red), though next time with a different story or a different hat or more convincing tears.

  Margaret did not see the guard approaching. He was almost invisible against the mud in his dark uniform. He had hold of her wrist — checking for a blue tick, perhaps — before she noticed him and for a moment her cry of alarm made her the center of attention for the front rows of the crowd. They saw her being pulled down from her metal perch and heard his gibberish commands that she should move away and put an end to her mopery. They saw her being roughly sent back to the river bank, though she was more prodded than kicked by the guard's boot. When finally, out of reach, she threw a scoop of mud at him, the unsuccessful emigrants cheered for her. It didn't matter that her missile had fallen short by a dozen paces. They were just glad that someone other than themselves had shown a little reckless fortitude. Throwing mud was not the most persuasive application for a berth.

  At least now, during this short-lived celebrity, strangers were returning Margaret's greetings with a smile of recognition. 'Good work, sister,' they called out, especially the ones whose failure was already marked in red. And, 'Step a little closer next time.' So she was able to get replies to her questions from those rejected families who were peeling off the back of the crowd, despondent, bewildered and angry. 'They say we have to wait until the summer for the family ships,' one woman told Margaret, rubbing at her arm with spittle but seeming to make no impact on the dye. 'These sailings are for workers only. They'll take my sons at once, but won't touch me.' It was the same old story that Margaret had heard from Joanie: mother and son, wife and husband, divided. Another said that she had heard that there were already family sailings farther down the coast — 'Only a three- or four-day walk, if you can afford the services of a pathfinder to show the best route' — in a much larger port with thirty boats a month for emigrants. 'They'll take everybody there. Women. Kids. Dogs, they say. We're packing up and moving on today, if we can get our horses back.'

  Margaret listened to their plans but recognized the bleakness in their voices. They were exhausted by their disappointments. Now they had to split their families or move on to another place or stay here for the season, living on salt and wind. She turned around and walked back toward the woods and the coastal path. She wouldn't waste a moment standing in that line, just to have her hopes and patience crossed out in red. A woman with a child and nothing to her name except a set of spy pipes would never be accepted on those boats. There had to be another dream.

  No sooner had Margaret made her mind up to return at once to Jackie and Franklin than she found an even better reason to hasten away from the anchorage. There, among the abandoned carts, just a few paces off, sitting on a crate and wearing the green and orange woven top that Margaret's sister had made, was Melody Bose, looking very cross indeed.

  Margaret only just remembered to retrieve the spy pipes as she hurried up the path. She used them when she reached the spot where the two women from the fishing cottages had enhanced themselves for work. She focused the pipes on the carts and then the crowd and then the market area and then the encampments, but she could not see her stolen top or any further sign of Melody. She spotted the two women, though, standing by the horse corral, dwarfed by three mounted men in quarrelsome dress, their beards tied with ribbons. One had what looked like a severed hand dangling from his saddle as a trophy. Behind them, turning his horse impatiently and calling to his comrades to hurry up, was Captain Chief, unmissable and unmistakable — as Melody had been — in his stolen clothes, a flag to the eyes in goatskin.

  'BACK ALREADY? Quick work. No tick or cross, I see,' said Joanie, when the dogs barked Margaret's return to the cottages. 'I'll walk with you a little way. I like the company of someone new.' So the two continued up the rise into the higher dunes above the back shore, with four or five of the dogs running ahead of them. 'We understand each other now,' Joanie said. 'You've seen how it is down at the anchorage. There's no way out of here for women like us. Now you know how truthful I've been with you.'

  'There are other ships and other ports. Ships for families. Farther down—'

  Joanie chuckled. 'Ha, so they claim. That's what they want you to believe. They don't want you hanging around this anchorage, causing trouble, spreading discontent. They'll say, "that's it, my darling jetsams, we'll take care of your husband and your strapping sons. Leave them here in our good hands. Now off you go, down south. Good girls. There're boats with fur-lined cabins waiting for the married women there, and all the old folks and the kids." And when you've arrived at the next port, well, it's all the same old dance. No moms and kids. No grandparents. "Try even farther south for better luck." You swallow that? Well, more fool you. You'll be chasing south until you run out of south and start coming up the other side, until there's no north left and still you won't have found a ship that'll let you board. At this rate, in a season or two, there'll be more turn-me-downs on the shores and beaches of this country than there are gulls, I promise you. There'll be no standing room. They'll all be scrapping over bits of kelp and sleeping on one leg. No, listen to me — Margaret? Margaret, isn't it? — Your husband, is he fit and strong?'

  Margaret nodded, smiled, held her hand above her head. 'He's this tall, as strong as a bear. He's big and beautiful.'

  'What kind of man is he?'

  'He's shy, I think, and not uncaring, and...' Margaret could have made a better list, but Joanie quickly interrupted her: 'Well, then, you are unfortunate,' she said. She took Margaret by the upper arm. Too fierce a grip, tighter even than the black-uniformed guard's. 'Listen to me, sweet. If you're sensible you'll go back to your shy and not uncaring man and you'll lie to him. Tell him that there are no ships, or that the berths are full, or that men have got to have their balls cut off before they're let on board. Say anything, except the truth. Because, as soon as he knows that they're looking for anyone with muscles and hardly anyone with breasts, he won't be shy of leaving you behind. Your man will take the ship and leave you here, leave you with your little girl. Trust me. And you'll encourage him, because you love the man, you want him to be free. Women are such knuckle heads.'

  'I do love him,' Margaret said, her voice unexpectedly small.

  'Will you love him when he's gone? Will you love him when there is no loving to be had?'

  Margaret did not know the answer. She only felt tight-chested, and angry. She tried to shake the woman off, but Joanie pressed her face close to Margaret's and said, 'Let him go, then. Come to us. We'll find a place for you. You're a handsome woman, in your way. Now just suppose, when you get back to him, your husband wants to take the ships. No one wishes that on you, but just suppose that he's gone and you're alone. Then come back here and we can find a place for you, a bed for you, so long as you're prepared to work with us and do your share. We'd have to dye your hair, of course. Some men are fearful of the red. We'd have to find you better clothes. You understand? Come to us. Come to us.'

  Finally the woman let her go, although the dogs stayed with Margaret for a little while before returning to their owners and their suppers and their fires. Margaret hurried on, running almost. She was soon breathless from exertion and anxiety. But she slowed her steps when she could see the cabins and the flock of frenzied gulls. She needed time to think. She speeded up again only when she could smell the meat.

  In that gap between seeing the cabins and reaching them, Margaret had made her mind up. She could not lie to Franklin, no matter how persuasive Joanie's advice had been. He was not hers to he to. He was not her husband, not her lover, not the father of the child. She had no hold on him. He had set out all those months ago with his brother, Jackson, with little else in mind, like most men of his age, except to reach the coast and sail toward a better life. The fact that for, what? three or four days they had traveled
together in the fall and then had escaped together for a couple more in the spring was hardly reason to imagine she had some call on him. No, she would explain the situation to him frankly and openly, and offer no opinion or advice. She would not mention Melody Bose, though, if she could help it. The shame, the sin, the cowardice, the selfishness of not having gone up to the woman with news of Jackie, Bella — the girl's birth name seemed hard to use... well, such an offense against nature was too great to disclose to anyone. That surely was a heavy sin, to have been so casual with the heartache of a grandmother. For an uncomfortable moment — and not for the first time — Jackie seemed to Margaret to be not so much a child who had been rescued as a child who had been stolen. Such theft, such wickedness, could not be confirmed to Franklin, not for the time being anyway.

  She would, though, have to mention to him that glimpse through the spy pipes of Captain Chief and the presence, on that day at least, of so many armed horsemen. She'd have to tell him, too, about the severed, flapping hand and how she'd felt, instinctively, that it had once belonged to one of Franklin's escaped comrades from the labor gang.

  Most importantly, what could she say about their chances of ever going offshore together, other than the callous truth? Yes, there were several large ocean-going boats at the anchorage taking emigrants, and fit young men like Franklin were welcome on them. He could trade free passage in exchange for work at journey's end. She herself — unmarried, young, a virgin still, and not entirely without appeal, she hoped — could travel, too, probably — 'Though you'll think me vain for saying so.' Free passage in exchange for making herself available as a bride and housewife to some stranger speaking gibberish (and kicking her).

  But there was Jackie to consider. And Jackie was her main concern now. A woman with a child of that age would not be welcome on the ship. That was certain. She'd seen it with her own eyes. Mothers had to stay on shore.

  These were their choices, then. No choices, actually. She rehearsed exactly what she'd say: 'We'll have to bid farewell to you, Franklin. I know you owe it to yourself and to your brother to take this chance of escaping from America, of getting out to sea.' She understood entirely, she would say. She could not blame him for being a strong tall man. She wished him well in his travels and endeavors. But she would stay behind with Jackie. That was her duty, and that was her desire. 'But you...' No, she would not dare to call him Pigeon. 'But you should cross that ocean with an easy heart, because there's some good news to go along with the bad. I've already found a home for myself and Jackie. I've found some sisters just along the coast. They'll not take men, but I can live and work with them. They promised it.' She would not explain what that work might be. She could hardly admit it to herself, although she was so inexperienced in that regard that the prospect of being intimate with strangers and paid for it was only a little less alien and unimaginable — and probably more likely — than that she would ever be intimate with a man — the man — she loved.

  Now, in those final approaches to the cabins, Margaret considered Franklin's possible responses: that he would not feel easy abandoning her and Jackie, that they should travel south just in case there really were some family ships ready to take them all, that maybe they should wait until later in the season of migration, by which time passage requirements might have loosened. She would say, 'It isn't safe for you to stay. You're already a hunted man. If you care for me and Jackie at all, you'll go. Disguise yourself and go. Our lives will be safer once you've gone.' She might then step forward, throw her arms around him, lift her face toward his. 'Do what you know you must,' she'd say, and close her eyes.

  In her toughest and most rational recesses, she expected and she feared that he would simply blush and protest unconvincingly before announcing a bit too readily that, yes, her advice was sensible. He would have to take the ship. And Margaret, to tell the truth, was already angry with him, for his good fortune and for his selfishness.

  IN FACT, when at dusk she eventually pushed back the door of the cabin, she was too startled by Franklin's bloodstained hands and sleeves to wonder at the kitchen smells, the newly set fire, the lantern light, let alone speak her well-rehearsed arguments and lines. Maybe it would be sensible to observe the best traditions by waiting for the water to boil on the grate before voicing her difficult news or speaking ill of anyone at the anchorage.

  It was as if she had returned as an adult to some untroubled place from her childhood. All was well. Jackie was sitting up happily on their makeshift bed playing with some brightly painted fishing floats. She raised her hands to Margaret when she recognized her and cried out the sweetest greeting. And Franklin seemed too excited by his domestic achievements of the day and too pleased to see her for Margaret to destroy his boyish pleasure yet with her heavy news and her No Choices. So she let him show her how he'd fashioned a fire stick from the snapped end of a fishing rod and a bow string and had coaxed a flame in a handful of dried grass, how he'd slaughtered and butchered the larger of the horses, how he would use the smokeshop to produce jerky that evening, as soon as it was safe to make that amount of smoke, how he'd settled Jackie and her stomach with horse meat grilled and made into a broth, how he'd made lamp fuel from fish oil and animal fat, how he'd prepared a feast of meat for Margaret to welcome her back from her journey. He even kissed her on her hand and pulled her to the fireside. 'You see?' He was so happy with himself.

  Once they had eaten and Jackie had been rocked to sleep, Margaret told him everything by lantern light, watching his face for any sign, for any hint, that this would be their final night. But oddly he seemed almost relieved to hear her news. 'We'll have to stay,' he said. 'If they won't have us, we have to stay.'

  'They will take you. You've dreamed of it.'

  'They won't take me unless they let me keep whatever company I want. I won't leave you and Jackie. What kind of person do you think I am? We'll stay. That's it. We'll stay right here. I like it here. I'll be a fisherman. I'll plow some fields. We've still got one horse left.'

  'You know we can't stay here. It's dangerous. You can't hide all the time and one day you'll be recognized. The tall man with the funny laugh.' She looked at him and grinned, despite the warnings she was offering. 'And then you won't have any choice about keeping whatever company you want. You'll be back in the labor gang again. Or else they'll make you dig a hole in the ground for yourself.'

  'Or feed me to the gulls.'

  What she said was true, of course. 'We can't stay here,' she summarized. 'We can't go onward. And we can't go back.'

  'Now that's what my ma used to call a box without a lid,' Franklin said. 'There's no way in, there's no way out.' And then, after a long, silence, 'Why not?'

  'Why not what?'

  'We can't stay here. We can't go forward, you say. But why can't we go back? You'll think me crazy, though, if I even mention it. I think I'm crazy myself He straightened up, took a deep breath and then reached over and took Margaret's hand. 'I can't explain what's happening inside my head. It's full of bees. I can't think straight.'

  'Go on, Pigeon. Try to say.' She wrapped her fingers in his.

  'My mother's calling me,' he said. 'That's what I've thought about. Laying that fire. Keeping this little cabin in good heart. Waiting to hear you pulling back the door so we could eat. Everything I've done for you today, I used to do for her. But I'll not abandon you and Jackie like I turned my back on Ma. I'll never forget her staying in the house so she wouldn't have to wave us goodbye so long as I draw breath. I shouldn't have left her there. I shouldn't have. I should've had more strength. It's right, what you say. I have dreamed of getting on the sailboat and making a new life for myself. But ever since Jackson died or disappeared, I've had two taller dreams. I've dreamed of finding him again. I've dreamed of walking back onto our land, poor though it is, and taking care of Ma. Those are my biggest dreams. They're bigger dreams than getting on a ship, I'll tell you that.'

  That night — well fed and warm for once, a little bilious, smoky-eyed
, but somehow calm — they thought through Franklin's madcap dream more carefully. Good sense demanded that they move away, out of the orbit of the rustlers, far from Captain Chief (and far from Melody Bose). Franklin's life might depend on it (and so might Jackie's). Good sense demanded that they at least should check out other anchorages farther down the coast. They'd traveled such a distance already. What difference could a few more days make? Good sense demanded that they keep away from those badlands that they'd already escaped from, the lawless highways and the debris fields, the junkies and the plains of scrap, the deadly lanes of Ferrytown, the treacherous mountain paths unsuited to anything but goats, the acid earth of Franklin's family farm, the taints and perils of America. But there was no excitement in good sense, and no romance. Sometimes it was wiser to be unwise. 'Only the crazy make it to the coast'; and only the crazy make it back again. That was the wisdom of the road: you had to be crazy enough to take the risks, because the risks were unavoidable. So they came to talking hungrily of heading west once more, of being less than sensible, of turning their backs against the sunrise and the ocean, of being homeward bound.

  But during the night, when Margaret, woken by a wet-legged Jackie, was cleaning up and drying the girl by candlelight, she felt less sure. All she could imagine was Franklin lost again, punished for his loyalty to her. Franklin being led away by Captain Chief. Franklin being set upon by bandits. Franklin being taken as a slave. Whatever happened, she decided, they would not make the same mistake as on the journey eastward, by following the Highway. They'd stay on the back ways, living off the countryside, not begging from the few remaining homesteaders unless they had no other choice. Perhaps it would be best to travel at night. That would be possible if the skies were clear, especially as they still had one horse to help with Jackie and their few possessions. At least by night her tall man would be almost invisible and not vulnerable to any gang master who wanted some free labor. Yes, that would be their biggest problem, making Franklin almost invisible. She dreamed of it. She dreamed of Franklin being what he couldn't be, short and unexceptional.