The Book of the Heathen

by Robert Edric

  The remaining pages were filled with Frere’s fine and minute handwriting. The first page was dated the day he left us, and a quick examination showed me that two or three pages had been completed for each day he was missing. The pages of the book were wrinkled and stained, as though it had been dropped in water, retrieved and then too quickly dried.

  ‘I assume I will find nothing of any real significance in the pages that remain,’ I said.

  Amon shrugged. ‘Possibly, possibly not.’

  ‘So their purpose is merely to suggest to me the importance of what has been removed.’

  ‘And which my employer now has in safe-keeping.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why has he taken them? What does he expect from me, us, for their return?’

  ‘He expects nothing. He simply feels that they contain information of such a nature that it would be best if they were kept secure and unseen until someone more qualified to inspect and understand them were to do so.’

  I understood then what he was telling me, what true purpose those lost pages served.

  ‘Have you seen them?’

  He shook his head. ‘Only Mr Frere himself, an illiterate man who does not even understand that his own name can be written, and Hammad.’

  ‘Who wishes us all to know that he once again wields a stick over us.’

  ‘What a vivid imagination you possess, Captain Frasier. Why would he want to do that? He is your friend, your ally.’

  I was careful after that not to say anything that I didn’t want repeated verbatim to Hammad.

  ‘Would he show these missing pages to me privately?’ I asked. ‘Or if not to me, then to Cornelius?’

  It was something Amon had not considered.

  ‘He told me to bring the journal directly to you,’ he said. ‘To show it to no-one else.’

  ‘But knowing, surely, that I would share it with the others.’

  ‘It is yours to do with as you choose.’

  I turned to the last page. A cursory reading of it told me nothing. Frere had sketched a beetle and drawn a map of the confluence of three unnamed rivers. A pattern of small islands marked the confluence, and though I could not place it then, it might have been possible afterwards to locate precisely where Frere had made the drawing, where he had been – in the journal at least – before he had disappeared from sight. The day’s entry was incomplete, and so I imagined that the succeeding pages had been torn out with good reason, and that no other clue remained to me.

  ‘The pages removed no doubt explain the circumstances of the crime he is alleged to have committed,’ I said.

  Amon considered this remark and then slowly repeated my words. ‘Do you truly imagine a man might avoid the truth of a matter simply by avoiding using those words which express that truth most directly?’ he said.

  ‘Are there any instructions from Hammad?’

  ‘Merely that he wishes you to read the remaining pages and confirm that the journal does indeed belong to the unfortunate Mr Frere.’

  ‘And what if I were to say that the missing pages were all blank, that this was where Frere stopped writing?’ I knew this was unlikely.

  ‘I believe you know better,’ Amon said. ‘But if it is the story you wish to tell, then I am powerless to stop you.’ He picked up the fine leather satchel and went back to the door. ‘We can all close our eyes when it suits us,’ he said, and then left me.

  I decided to postpone reading the journal until I was alone.

  An hour later, Cornelius came to see me. I slid the book beneath a sheaf of papers as he entered. He had seen Amon departing and wanted to know why he had come. I told him the Syrian had been sent to ensure that Frere was recovering his health. Whether he believed me or not, he left me before my lie to him was exposed.

  I had seen less and less of him since the arrival of Klein, and whenever the priest entered a room, Cornelius invariably left. He told me little more about the man, or of their distant involvement, but the animosity between them remained and curdled.

  For his part, Klein behaved as though he were one of us – but one of us in possession of information or a secret the others did not possess – entitled to come and go among us where he chose, to indulge himself in our company and conversation, and to share what few small concessions or luxuries remained to us. We tolerated the man, but that was all; we were all growing to despise him.

  13

  It rained more heavily over the following days than any of us had before known. It came and ended at its usual times, but fell with such ferocity in between that the water rose in minutes to levels which had hitherto taken hours, and each afternoon the compound was turned into a lake, rising to a man’s thighs in places, which then drained and dried in the heat of the returning sun, which also seemed in those days to burn more fiercely than usual, as though the two elements were striving to maintain some vital, contested balance.

  Work was suspended in the quarry, where run-offs poured with water from the top to the bottom of the faces in vividly red spouts, filling the quarry floor. A new channel was blasted out to the river to allow this to drain away. This was supervised by Abbot, who announced the success of the operation on the day the rain finally subsided and resumed falling in its more accustomed quantities.

  Out on the river a new configuration of banks and bars was seen to have formed between us and the far shore, causing some disruption to the traffic there. Floating vegetation caught on these bars and collected there, trapping more with each of the river’s dying surges. These new islands would not last – we all understood that; nothing lasted on that river – but it was a busy time of year for the rubber traders on either side, and both Cornelius and Fletcher were convinced that, presented with the obstacles in coming towards us, the traffic would prefer the easier route to the far shore. The two men spent hours out on the bars, examining them and plumbing the channels which braided among them. Whenever possible, Abbot avoided the two men, which had the unfortunate consequence of forcing him more and more into my company.

  During the downpours of that week I was able to work on my charts without being called elsewhere. I rose earlier than usual and worked longer hours, often by the light of my lamps. I was determined to keep a part of each day free so that I might visit Frere.

  The garrison yard was as badly flooded as the compound, and the quarters of Bone and his men leaked worse than our own dwellings. There were times when the path joining us was so far under water as to be lost to sight completely, forcing those few of us who passed between the two places to make lengthy detours onto higher ground.

  Trees were undermined by the scouring rain, mostly along the river, where the crumbling banks were sheared away, and one, an ancient baobab, toppled onto one of Cornelius’s warehouses, requiring him and his quartermasters to work through the deluge to cut it to pieces and drag these clear before salvaging the goods inside. It was a common enough sound to hear, these trees falling in the forest, or to hear the drawn-out crash of snapped and over-laden branches dropping from the canopy to the floor below.

  I discussed the freak circumstances of this weather with Frere, relieved that it gave us something to talk about other than his own situation, of the events already beyond our reach. I made no mention to him of what I had learned from Amon concerning the lost pages of his journal.

  ‘Measure it for me,’ he said on my third visit. ‘Measure the rain.’ He instructed me on how to set up his gauges and where best to place them. ‘Tell me everything that happens with the flooding.’

  I did as he told me, keeping notes, embers to fan into the flames of our conversations. Only afterwards did I understand that in his enthusiasm he was as complicit in the deceit of avoidance as I was in the compliance of his wishes. I told him everything I had seen and heard, and in this manner we kept ourselves apart from those other events and their darker consequences for the week of the flood.

  He compiled a new journal, which he insisted I shoul
d not read until he was gone. I no longer probed him for his own guarded understanding of what was happening to him; for the time being, the water was enough.

  On the fourth day there was some damage to one of our wharves when the river rose and swung a heavily laden boat into its supports, crushing several of these and weakening others. The boat’s moorings were lost and the vessel was driven towards the bank, slicing away more of the wooden structure as it came. The alarm raised, we gathered to watch. The men on the boat left it at the first opportunity. Some were able to leap onto the decks of other vessels, but these were quickly out of reach. As the collision with the jetty threatened to undermine it even further, some men jumped into the racing shallows and scrambled ashore. There was nothing any of us watching from further back could do to help them.

  The captain of the small vessel stood in his wheelhouse and tried frantically to turn the boat into the main flow of the water, but this proved impossible in its over-laden state. Part of the cargo was stacked on the deck and this was soon lost to the higher waves.

  As the boat came closer to the shore, Fletcher instructed some of our men to attempt to push it away from the undamaged jetties into the faster-flowing water. He shouted to the captain that the vessel was lost and for him to save himself. Several ropes were thrown to the man. It would not have been difficult for him to leap from his vessel and wade ashore, but the man refused to leave. Eventually, Fletcher had ten men working the poles and keeping the boat away from the jetties. The rain streamed over them, turning the bank to a quagmire in which they all frequently lost their footing and fell. Their cries when this happened added to the overall sense of urgency and growing alarm. The masters of the other, securely moored vessels stood on their own decks and watched. None made any attempt to help the stricken boat.

  Eventually, the floundering vessel was manhandled clear of the damaged jetty and pushed away from us. The man still on board became even more frantic in his calls for our help. Fletcher sent someone to fetch one of his rifles, and he stood on what remained of the jetty looking down at the man.

  Soon afterwards, the boat finally lodged among the submerged posts. It was violently rocked in these, but was held steady enough to be safe there until the rain stopped and the water level fell. We heard the loud cracks as its waterline planking was ruptured and saw the billowing water where it rushed in to flood the vessel and destroy what remained of its cargo. Only when this happened, and when pieces of loose planking began to break free and float away, did the captain make any attempt to get ashore. He climbed out onto the canopy which then rose level with the spars of the damaged jetty. His intention, I saw, was to climb from the boat onto one of these and then make his way along the broken posts to solid ground. The attempt seemed easily achievable and there was little concern among us at what the man was about to do. He was protected now from the main assault of the river by his own disintegrating boat, which bore the full force of its flow.

  Fletcher went as far as was safe along the unsteady timbers and indicated to the man where to climb next, but the man paid him no attention, and as he passed from one seemingly sound post to another, the second post swayed beneath him and then fell slowly away from the jetty until it lay at an angle, forcing the man to cling to it, and from where he could not reach any other part of the structure. He clung to this post as I had seen small animals cling to the floating branches rushing past us in the floods. Further ropes were thrown to him, but he caught none of these. The post itself was lassoed, but it was beyond even the strength of the ten men to pull it back into its upright position, and with every minute that passed it leaned even further, undermined more quickly by the faster water in which it now lay.

  Fletcher cursed the man for having waited so long before leaving his boat. Cornelius inspected the damage done to the jetty and said that in all likelihood it was beyond repair. Abbot disputed this, but was ignored.

  The closest we could get to the man clinging to the pole was twenty feet, the water between us more earth than liquid. I imagined the only course of action remaining to us was to leave the stranded man where he was until the rain stopped and the river slowed and fell. But I knew even as I considered this that the rain would continue falling for a further three hours, and that another six hours might pass before the surge was gone from the river, by which time it would be night, and even at that short distance the man would be lost to our sight. It was inconceivable to me that he might remain clinging to the pole until morning.

  All these considerations were then cleared from my mind as Cornelius came to me, and said, ‘The boat.’

  I looked to where the stricken boat, still stuck among the poles and spars of the jetty, continued to break up. It was less firmly lodged than before, lightened by the loss of its cargo, and it rose higher in the water and was starting to swing free of its underwater restraints. Fletcher called for the men with the ropes to secure it, but they were as unsuccessful as before in their efforts.

  I considered it unlikely that the man clinging to the pole was aware of what was now happening. Had he been upriver of the vessel, then this would not have mattered – the boat would have drifted free, broken up and been dragged away from him. But he clung to his pole downriver of where this was happening, and it was clear to everyone standing away from him that when the vessel finally rose free of its restraining poles, then it would swing directly onto him, at worst crush him where he was, and at best dislodge him and his perch and carry them both downriver amid the disintegrating wreckage.

  I asked Fletcher what he thought might now happen, but it was the question of a man wanting only to confirm and share his own fears, and he did not answer me.

  Finally, the boat rose free, spun until it was side-on to the clinging man and was then rammed into him, crushing him against the pole, and striking him such a blow that he had no time to understand what was happening to him and no time to do anything to avoid the collision. He screamed, but it was a short, truncated scream, and he instantly lost his grip on the pole and was lost between it and the boat in the dark, foaming water. The pole stood firm for several seconds, but then it too gave way with the weight of the boat against it, and once this obstacle was overcome the boat was free to drift out onto the river and away from us.

  I heard Cornelius say, ‘Thank God for that,’ and for the words to be repeated by others around him.

  I looked back to where the man had disappeared. It was impossible that he would have avoided serious injury in the collision of the boat with the post: at best his arms, legs or ribs would have been crushed, at worst his spine or skull broken and his agony ended. It was difficult to see exactly where he had been because the pole was no longer visible, but we searched as best we could through the rain for any sign of him. We saw nothing – not even his snagged body on another of the poles – and soon afterwards, the day’s drama over, we all withdrew to our offices or rooms.

  Later that evening, as I told Frere about what had happened, and as the rain finally slackened and fell on the roof above us with less and less clamour, he asked me why I referred to the events of the afternoon as a tragedy.

  ‘Because a man lost his life when he might have saved it,’ I said.

  He shook his head at this definition. ‘No, a man lost his life because he chose not to save himself and because he made a judgement concerning the value of his life against that put upon it by others – that put upon it in relation to the value of his boat and the goods he carried. That is no tragedy.’

  I did not understand the distinction he was making, but I was still too overwhelmed by the events of the day and the brutal death I had witnessed to continue the argument. I would have told him he was dealing with events merely as abstractions devoid of human understanding or feelings, that he would have felt differently had he too stood helplessly by as the man was crushed. But to what end? He might have conceded these points to some small degree to appease me, but he would not have believed me.

  * * *

  Wor
d reached us via the Belgians that a delegation was being sent to us to enquire into what had happened regarding Frere, and that the findings of this enquiry would determine what action was subsequently to be taken against the man.

  The document Abbot read out to us was four pages long, and scarcely a single sentence of it strayed from this official camouflage. It was signed by six men, each, apparently, with some part in the ‘affair’. None of us recognized a single name other than that of our own Company Secretary. The titles of the others confused us.

  We were assured that Frere would be provided with every ‘civil comfort’ relating to his situation, yet warned that he should be offered no more liberty than was absolutely necessary. We were his gaolers, little more – guardians of his health and his sanity.

  Our own testimonies would be sought, however peripheral, however indirectly they related to the events at hand, to those fifty-one days, the true focus of the enquiry.

  That all this information had been addressed to and delivered to Abbot caused us further concern. He told us he was instructed to read it aloud to us, that we were all to attend this announcement, and that the document was afterwards to be kept safe by him and him alone. We all suspected him of a greater part in the proceedings than he admitted.

  To the best of my knowledge, he had not so far visited Frere in his cell, and nor had Frere made any attempt to communicate with him. There was pride in his voice as he read out this news of the delegation, something which had thus far remained only an unwelcome rumour, the possibility of which had receded with each passing day.

  Cornelius asked Abbot to explain to us who the unknown signatories were, and Abbot went through the pretence of knowing. He spoke of new governmental bodies and the powers and institutions of new protectorates; he added to this tangle of meaninglessness by quoting new rules and regulations to us. He said that deals had been struck elsewhere between the Company and others, between the Company and the concession-granting, tax-imposing Belgians, and between those men and the men of emerging native governments, who might or might not become their partners in the future.