The Raft: A Novel

by Fred Strydom

  In the cockpit, the air was foul. I saw four red chairs, a bag and a gas mask, lying on the floor. Those few items didn’t surprise me; I remembered them all.

  No, what surprised me was the figure of a small person slumped over in the front seat, head against a shattered panel of instruments. At first I thought it was a loiterer, a sleeping wanderer who’d taken shelter in the wreck. But how could anyone get in? And what was that awful smell? I struggled to catch my breath. I leaned over and touched the stranger’s shoulder. The body lolled back, exposing her face, and I drew back in horror.

  It was a girl. A dead girl. Her face was cut and scratched and the blood had clotted and crusted. Her yellow dress was splattered in dark brown smears. Her arm had been broken and twisted in an unnatural position. It was her, Kayle. Her, and somehow, me.

  I recalled that a letter had been written, and carefully reached into her dress pocket and pulled it out. I unfolded it, recognised the handwriting, the roughly drawn map …

  I stumbled out of the pod and threw up on the ground outside. Tears ran down my face. Wait. Wait a minute, I muttered No, no, no … it’s not right. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t!

  The boy crouched down. What wasn’t right, he wanted to know, what didn’t make sense?

  I answered: It was me. It was supposed to be me.

  I couldn’t speak for a few hours. I huddled in a corner reading and re-reading the shabby letter. The words were precisely as I had remembered them: the story of a young couple who had failed to resist a family empire, the programmed pregnancy, the need to escape …

  But the girl.

  She looked nothing like me, but I knew her face. I knew her face as well as I knew my own. It was one I’d somehow once had, but what did that mean? If I wasn’t her, who was I? Who was she?

  The boy camouflaged the pod with dirt and bushes. We set up camp, made a fire and ate another small animal, then went to sleep. At first light, I helped him pack up and he laid his hand on my shoulder, Come on, Jun; let’s go back. Let’s go home.

  And so we did. We travelled back to the wooden house on the farm—to our parents, our pigs, our grey and neglected acres.

  When I entered the house, the man and woman threw their arms around me and hugged my limp, exhausted body, but I felt nothing. No love. No connection. They were my real parents—I knew that now—but it didn’t matter. Not at that point, anyway.

  I lived out the rest of my childhood with a family I never entirely accepted as my own, even though they continued to love me. I never shook the feeling that I was supposed to be the girl in the pod, that my true mother had been the one who’d strangled herself with her own robot avatar, and that my father had been the man on the throne of a monstrous city-scraper. I remembered, too, that I despised it, but that didn’t stop me from feeling as if some furtive injustice had been done to me—against my identity and my history. My mother hadn’t loved me; she’d loved the girl in the pod. And that girl’s escape had never been my own, the plan to live in the temple with Sun Zhang and his three daughters, never promised to me. I had lived her life—but only through the memories that had jumped from her to me at the point of her death. And while I did try to make a new life for myself in the years that followed—growing to genuinely love my brother, Huojin, meeting my one true love and husband—I have never been able to let go of what I remember of “my” childhood, of a young, hopeful girl named Jai-Li, and of her curious life in the sky.

  Ice-cold water

  Her story had stunned you. You could not entirely comprehend what she had confessed; it was a tale both spookily familiar and logically stupefying. There was no reason for her to have invented such a story, but how was it possible she’d adopted someone else’s entire life?

  So if you are not Jai-Li, why are you using her name?

  You asked this as you walked down the mountain alongside the mother with her son. You could have asked a dozen other questions but that was the only one that came to mind.

  She replied, Because of where I’m going and who I’ll have to be to get there. Jun may have been the name given at the point of my physical birth, but Jun is a stranger. I may have been her, but I know nothing about her. Nothing about what she wanted in this life. I am Jai-Li, or I’m nobody at all.

  The mist had withdrawn and the thick forest had thinned and at last the beach of the semi-circular cove came into view. The water was silvery grey, calm but chopping gently in a light breeze. The fronds of palm trees hung lifelessly over the dunes. The jagged faces of the cliff enclosed the beach, a pair of cupped hands around a butterfly whose wings could not be touched for fear it would never again be able to fly.

  Angerona was the first to step onto the beach; Theunis and Gideon carefully manoeuvred the boat off the miry slope and onto the slanting belt of sand. You laid the oars down beside the boat and arched your back, rolling your shoulders to ease the burn in your muscles. There was no sun in the sky. The mist that had covered you on the mountain shifted low and thick above the water like a fleet of ghost ships hiding the horizon.

  You’re going to the temple, aren’t you? you asked. That’s what this is all about.

  She lowered her head, tightening the blanket around her sleeping baby, and then said, A promise was made to a little girl in need of help. It was a promise of sanctuary. That little girl is dead, but I am still here. Fulfilling that promise is now my duty. I’ve carried the burden of Jai-Li’s past for long enough; it’s only fair my own son be allowed to carry her hope.

  Gideon clenched his hands over the rough edge of the boat. Neither he nor Theunis had said anything at all. Had they heard what she had said? Perhaps her voice hadn’t carried across the still air. Perhaps it hadn’t made much sense without the first part of the story. Then again, they may have been smart and ignored it all. You shouldn’t have been so willing to accept the information, Kayle. Would her story be used against you? Surely Gideon wouldn’t have concerned himself with such a possibility. No, you were overthinking it. They had been ahead of you the entire way and probably heard nothing at all.

  We shuffled the boat to the edge of the water, ripping a deep gash through the wet sand.

  This is it, you said as Jai-Li clambered into the damp boat. Are you sure you want to do this? You could wait.

  Angerona had begun packing extra blankets and bags of food into the boat. Jai-Li wrapped one of the thick blankets around herself, tying it around the front of her chest so that the baby was securely attached to her torso.

  No, she said. No more waiting. We’ll be fine. We’ll leave the water when we can, but we can do this. We must. Will you pass me that oar?

  You reached down, grabbed it, and gave it to her. She took it from you, smiling as she lifted it up and into the boat. That’s heavy, she said, unable to disguise her obvious nervousness. You couldn’t even try to hide your concern. You were worried about her and felt you had every right to be: the place she was talking about was thousands of kilometres away. She’d have to retrace her tracks, all the way back to the pod in the mountains, which, she was only guessing, would take her to the temple. But what if she was caught, or hurt along the way? What if the Silver Whisper was gone, or damaged beyond repair? Where would she go? If something happened to her, who would look after her child?

  Gideon hauled on the front of her boat with both his hands, Theunis and you pushed from the back, and the boat finally splashed into the water, free from the support of the earth. It swayed gently as you moved away from it and Jai-Li adjusted the mismatched oars to suit her position. She thanked each of you individually, offering prayers of good fortune, and each of you offered the same in return.

  Jai-Li, you added, as she dipped her oars into the water, in the beginning you said you felt your story would guide me in some way. I’m sorry, but I still don’t see how. What did you mean?

  Jai-Li tucked away a strand of hair. She turned to look into the thick mist—the mist into which she would soon make her way—and said, turning back: You
know, it’s a funny thing. That young girl was once told she would fall pregnant on the day she turned twenty. It had been programmed into her blood. Although it was unplanned, my own child was conceived on the day I turned twenty. She took a moment to consider her own words, concluding, That would seem to some like quite the coincidence.

  And then she set off. She pushed away from the shore and rowed out into the ocean. The three of you stood and watched her disappear into the whiteness. The only sounds were water dribbling and oars creaking as she pulled them up and slid them back in. Her spectral figure lightened until there was merely the faintest shade of her, an almost imagined ashen hue, and then she and her child were gone—off the beach, away from the commune. Free.

  When you got back to the commune they were waiting for you. Everybody knew what had happened. How they knew, none of you could say, but it didn’t matter. They had left that blank white room in that white house at the top of the hill. They were standing on the beach and their many faces watched as you came down from the mountain. It was the most you had ever seen of them. Their faces were older than you had imagined, pale, rubbery, almost corpse-like, their lips thin and white.

  As the four of you entered the commune, the communers stopped doing whatever they were doing and turned their faces in your direction. They said nothing. They simply stared and edged away from you, surprise and fear in their wide eyes. It was as if the four of you were now lepers. You could only guess that a whisper had spread among them. A whisper of your rebellion. You wondered who had told them. Had someone seen you? Had the body interrogated them all in an attempt to find you? Regardless, it was the first time you’d seen the communers act in any form of unison. In spite of their coldness, they were behaving as if your return was the moment they had been waiting for all along, the point of The Renascence, the moment of communalism that had been promised to them.

  The Body watched it all with small beady eyes, set deep within dark sockets. They wasted no time, of course. Without a word, several communers surrounded you and took you up to the house on the hill. The Body separated your small group and brought you into the room one by one.

  When it was your turn, two communers sat you in the large, padded seat and strapped you down. They had never used straps before. The bright light beamed over you brighter and stronger than ever, and sweat ran into your eyes, burning them. They attached their sensors to the sides of your head and your chest, and the wires ran out in all directions. The grey machine was fired up like an ancient boiler.

  The silhouettes of their heads floated behind their long table at the end of the room and you did not know which was worse, knowing what they looked like or imagining it. The heads said nothing. They watched silently as you perspired and shifted, trying to get comfortable, though there was no real comfort to be had.

  You knew you were in for a long and exhausting interrogation because they weren’t going to get what they wanted. They couldn’t get her back and they wouldn’t be able to ferret any information out of you. All they would get, possibly, was why you had helped her, and how. And then, inevitably, you’d be given your sentence.

  They bombarded you with questions. They used every psychological tactic in their arsenal. They told you Gideon and Theunis had already confessed, but that was blatantly untrue. They might have mentioned something about the second half of her story, if they’d even heard it, but not even you could wrap your head around the full version. So what else? That she’d rowed away in a boat? Of course she had. It was the only way off the beach.

  When the questions did not work, they made you sit for an hour in silence and all the while the grey machine rumbled and leeched what it could from your mind. You asked for water but they wouldn’t give you any. They said you’d get what you wanted when they got what they wanted. They expressed their disappointment in you. You had been so promising, they added, a member of the commune they’d once considered a role model for the newer members. You were tempted to smile at their efforts, exploiting the gap of meaninglessness they had created in the first place, telling you they saw you as a leader in a place that allowed no leaders. A role model in a place that actively eschewed the concepts of both roles and models.

  At last, you were given your sentence: an as yet undetermined length of time on the raft. They said you wouldn’t be allowed back into the commune until they were satisfied with the information you gave them and when there was a significant change in your attitude. You had to admit your insolence, realign yourself with The Renascence, and prove you’d be no threat to the commune.

  You kept your mouth shut. You nodded.

  And then the interrogation was over.

  You slept in your tent under constant watch. In the morning, two communers entered your tent and gave you breakfast—a bowl of fruit and sourdough bread. You finished it all, knowing the next meal could be a while away. After you had eaten, they tied your wrists. The one communer was a man you hadn’t seen before; the other was Daniel. He wouldn’t look you in the eyes while he tied you up, but you understood.

  Once they had tightened the ropes around your wrists, they led you down to the beach. A crowd had formed, just like the one that had encircled the whale before it had been burned. There was the same look on their faces, too. Curiosity. Fascination. Fear. Always fear on top of everything else. They muttered under their breath, but you couldn’t make out what they were saying. You saw Gideon to your far left, also being led down from his tent, while on your right, Theunis and Angerona were already at the water. As far as you could recall, Angerona was the youngest ever to be put on the raft. No mercy. No exceptions. As communers, you were no longer individualised even by age.

  Directly ahead of you, a wooden raft bobbed at the water’s edge, waiting for you like a hungry living thing—a large, flat crocodile. Rough leather straps hung from the corners, lapping at the water like four grey tongues.

  This was your raft. Your exile.

  There were another two communers on either side of the raft, up to their knees in the cold morning sea, fixing four orange buoys to the corners so that the raft would be both anchored and prevented from capsising. The one communer was a muscular man with a hard, stubbly face, the other a teenage boy with long, matted hair and pale, thin arms. They turned to look at you as you approached, and then stepped away as your feet touched the water.

  The iciness struck you to the bone. The ocean would not, it seemed, forgive you either. Daniel undid your bounds and you rubbed your freed wrists. Another tall communer approached you with a compact tablet of various herbs. You were made to swallow it. Then they brought a pouch of crushed leaves and a glass of water. They added the leaves to the water, stirred them in, and made you drink it. You gulped it down in one go, doing what you could to spare yourself the bitterness. This was the hallucinogen—you knew that—the catalyst for the alignment.

  On the beach, your mind was all you had. Your composure and control. What would you see and hear out there on the sea? Who would come crashing into your thoughts? What would leak out? And once it was all done, once the hallucinogen wore off and your raft was pulled back in, what would be left of you?

  You stepped up to the raft and climbed on. The wood was damp, cold and slimy. You stretched out on your back and the water swelled through the slats and licked your spine. You looked up at the sky. Get used to it, you told yourself; the sky would be all that you saw for the next few hours, or days, or however long it took for you to be brought back in for your second interrogation.

  The communers leaned over. Their faces hung in the sky as they looked back down at you. They pulled your arms and legs outwards and strapped you down. Someone fastened another strap across your neck to prevent you from lifting your head. The strap was soft and clammy, like the fingers of a dead man, throttling you. All you could move were your fingers and toes. All you could control were the blinks of your eyes and movements of your mouth. You were utterly immobilised, as if your spine had been broken and you’d fallen into paralysis.<
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  The sun shone warm and bright over your body, a gentle introduction that would prove to be a long and cruel relationship. The wind also said hello, rolling over your face and chest. The water lapped and nipped with sharp cold teeth. Two communers fastened a long rope to the front of the raft; the other end had been connected to the pier a short distance away from you.

  And then they pushed you out.

  The raft drifted further and further from the shore, burst through the first few waves, and jerked to a stop as the length of rope tightened. Your breathing was loud and ragged, misfiring in your lungs. Your heart pummelled the wall of your chest.

  All you could think about at that moment was Jai-Li and her child, out on the sea in a flimsy vessel of their own. You felt you had done the right thing by helping her, but had she even left the misty cove? Perhaps she’d toppled over and drowned, crashed into the rocks. Anything could have happened. How far had she made it? Had she made it anywhere at all?

  After all, convictions and good intentions mean nothing. The ocean makes no promises. The sun makes no deals. The wind never listens to your pleas, your screams, or your prayers. And the world does not care if you belong in it. There is no forgiveness in nature. Only a gauntlet. A hurricane. An explosion of particles and a fluke of order. Right and wrong will never be as hard as stone or as wet as water.

  Not for Jai-Li, and not for you, Kayle. Not here. Forget it all. Forget your sense of belonging. Life has given you nothing but one, unpractised shot at it—nothing more and nothing less. So do what you must. Hold on to your mind and your body for as long as you can, let go of your silly hopes, your futile fears, and your inapt questions.

  You have nothing.

  Now you have nothing but your raft.

  The burned man

  I am walking alongside my mother in the street in Tulbagh. I’m nine years old. We’ve just come back from the supermarket and she’s carrying a small bag of groceries. I’m hauling a larger bag with two hands and trying my best to keep up. It’s just a normal Saturday. The sun is bright and the sky is a pure and cloudless blue. Cars pass by, pedestrians go about their Saturday morning business—getting their hair cut in barbershops, window-shopping for clothing they can’t afford, compulsively checking the time as they stand in their queues at the bank.