Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  ‘Why yer always poking them two?’ I ask while he sit at his picnic for one.

  ‘They annoy me.’

  ‘They annoy me too.’

  ‘Aint you the virtuous one then? Keeping it to yerself.’

  ‘What I’m saying. Why don’t you?’

  He glance about himself and get a peevish look. Then he say, ‘It’s boring here for a man like me.’

  ‘Aint it boring for me? For all of us?’

  ‘I were used to a different life to the rest of yer.’

  ‘So yer think before we come to this isle the rest of us jes club our food and eat and sleep?’

  Gargantua look up at me and start to laugh. He do a long belly wobbling laugh then ask me to help him up. Pulling at his weight feel like pulling a dead elephant out of the swamp. When we foller the other two, deeper and deeper into the thicket, he keep his arm around my shoulder like he want to show them others it’s two against two.

  Suddenly the wood come out at the lip of a cliff. It were lucky none of us fall off. It aint very far to fall, on a scale of possible falls as Gargantua now put it, but the rocks below have a murderous look to them. Also the sea is frothy and large, it gobble at the rocks like a greedy mouth.

  ‘Yer wud not last long in there,’ Slangam say. ‘Yer wud be in Incognita before yer know it.’

  ‘Yair,’ agree Toper. ‘Then you wud be et by them white whales or froze by a iceberg.’

  Gargantua don’t say nothing, he jes move his body round a bit and blow a lot of air. Seem the effort not to bait the others agitate his insides. Is he doing it for me, now I point out I seen his ways?

  Slangam put his hands on his hips and stare around him. He have a look of dismay. ‘We come all the way through the woods without seeing anything,’ he announce, though the rest of us already knowed it.

  ‘Told yer it were best to come at night,’ Gargantua reply.

  Oh why can’t he keep his big gob shut? I don’t want to come in the woods at night. I’m pretty sure now there aint no albatrosses but who want to risk life or limb on roots and sudden drops?

  Slangam run his hands through his sparse black hair, what’s left of it stick up and give him a mad look. Seem he don’t know what to do. Course we can all discuss it, but Authority that appoint itself don’t go down that road. He decide we go back a different way, maybe we have more luck. He turn and march off.

  Fatty hurry and catch up with him, fall into step, and I hear him turn conversational. ‘The South Pole weren’t always cold,’ he say.

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Slangam reply. For once he don’t say it like he think Fatty never know a fact in his entire life.

  ‘Yair. There were a man from Portugal that went there and drew a map with the snow and icebergs melted.’

  If we were about to start on a pleasant conversation, the mention of Portugal end it. Portugal’s too close to Venice and Venice too close to Persia for Slangam’s comfort.

  Slangam say, ‘I wonder how far Rakiura is?’

  Gargantua ask, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That?’ Slangam show a good mix of surprise and scorn. ‘That’s a big island all of us from Port Jackson know of. Yair, we don’t know much about them places like Persia and Portugal, but we know what’s in front of our noses.’

  ‘Is that so? And how far in front of yer nose is Rakiwhat’syername?’

  ‘Close enough to swim to.’

  ‘Really? Why aint yer swimming then?’

  ‘Yer think Fovo Strait is a Turkish bath?’

  No one say anything else. We walk on and a new settling come over us. What now appear to settle is that some men is superior in them northern oceans and some different ones is superior in these southern. It all settle without a fight, but the question that remain open is, whose knowing is worth the most?

  Next day we begin the hut. We take the branches from the part of the wood that showed itself clear of demons, which turned out to be all the way there and all the way back. Slangam went on a lone detour on the return and done some heavy clubbing jes in case. He clubbed the bushes and shrubs and the moss and the bark of trees. He tell us he chased out various shape shifters and invisible demons. Toper nod solemn, Fatty hoot, and I jes keep my eyes on the ground.

  Do I like building? I wud of said not. Not when there were other men that done it better while I sat and watched. These aint those days. So I blank my mind and do the work. I take the branches Slangam pull out of the wood and strip them as showed. A hut take a lot of branches, so I get a lot of practice blanking my mind. After the branches is stripped and sliced, Slangam take the tomahawk and chop some rough joints, saying these is going to hold the whole shebang up.

  The days is shorter now but the blizzards we been expecting don’t come. It’s a lot colder than Norfolk, no argument about that, but the headstone clouds roll over us and away, they don’t linger, and a bright day foller like a resurrection.

  ‘Why yer use them expressions?’ Toper growl at me. ‘They aint for the weather.’

  ‘That’s how it seem to me.’

  ‘How it seem aint how it is.’

  ‘Guess yer cud call that the longsome refrain of the fucken pious,’ Gargantua say.

  ‘Jes do the work,’ Slangam flame us.

  It’s all work with Slangam. Fact is, I don’t know how life manage to make a criminal out of him. It seem like he cud stand at the entrance to the harbour of Port Jackson and direct the shipping of all them goods and ships and convicts with jes a single hand.

  The other work go on too, with a lot less arguing now we each have our preferment. Gargantua like to heap up the dirt around the potatas. He do it like he’s pulling blankets up round a baby. Toper do all the cooking, but also all that go with it, the keeping of the fire and the washing of the pot. Slangam like to get all them poles ready for the hut. He have to go in the wood – not too far in case he meet one of them seven million demons – and chop the thin trunks of them stunted trees, bring them out and shape them a bit. We aint got nails, have to use ties and joints of some kind, it’s a real tedious time when we have one of them serious talks about how we make them. And I’m the one that fetch the firewood, the lazybones who walk and gather and sit and watch. No one miss me. Seeing I’m the only one who do it now, none of them others have the least idea how long the job take.

  On my walks I see a lot of birds I don’t know the name of. Also from far away I now see a lot of albatrosses sitting on nests big as chimney pots. No food beasts though. Slangam say everyone from Port Jackson know there aint no such beasts on the Incognita isles, but still I look in hope for a meat beast that aint been near the brine. Jes about everything’s too salty here, from the food to the company.

  Even if I were eking out the tobacca, it’s all long gone. Like Toper who look at the berries to make a gin from, I examine the blasted leafs and wonder if any can turn into a passable smoke. But I’m a lazy man and I know it. Toper drive himself mad trying to make his pleasure. I jes give mine up. I give up the smoking for the sitting.

  I don’t plan a change neither. It jes aint clear enough to me whose vices are gonna be the breaking of us. Doubtless, it wud be perfectly clear to the parson who bash the Sunday pulpit that we’re all bad men and the badness aint got no levels to it. Lazy, violent, intolerant, provoking, they all the same to him, all the opposite of dainty and clean. But dainty and clean don’t get no seal meat and no skins for the passage home, dainty and clean turn her nose up at the stink that come from the penguins, she don’t see how life really were made, jes how it’s been dressed up. And it do matter what our particular vices are and how they go up against each other, and how they go up against the pickle we’re in. It aint all of a piece. Maybe my laziness turn inside out and show itself a virtue, maybe I’m jes a whole lot less trouble when I’m sitting on my arse.

  It’s getting very cold at night. We try to keep the fire going, but generally it’s ash by the time the dawn come and we all as cold as nuns’ privates.

  ‘Don�
�t say that!’ Toper yell at me. ‘No one go near them parts of a nun, so how yer know they’re cold?’

  ‘Yair, no one except them monks.’

  ‘Lights out at nine, candles out at eleven,’ Gargantua say and fall about laughing.

  ‘Jes get the fucken fire going,’ Slangam order. It’s clear as day he were born without no humour.

  ‘It’s that volcano in Java,’ I say as we work on the fire. ‘It wud not be this cold if it dint explode. That’s what the pirates said. Only I dint get their meaning exactly.’

  ‘Java is a long way from here,’ Gargantua reply, and a shiver run through him that make his body wobble like a calf foot jelly.

  ‘Aint that far,’ Slangam say.

  ‘Leastways it’s gone up now.’

  ‘So what? Can’t a volcano go up often as it likes?’

  Gargantua don’t say nothing, but a mood do seem to come down on him. It aint one I ever seen before. It’s a tremble that dint pass but grab him and stay.

  ‘Yer all ignorant as pigs,’ Slangam scorn. ‘Every sailor from the southern ocean know there aint jes one volcano in Java. Java is all volcanoes. Volcanoes is all over Java like pimples.’

  Gargantua poke the fire viciously.

  ‘One or other of them pimples is always going up,’ Slangam carry on without pity. ‘Tambora …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tambora. Being the name of the volcano that explode. It’s the kinda thing us know-nothings from Port Jackson know.’

  ‘No, that weren’t the one what go up,’ Toper argue as he start to fry the sealfish. ‘When them pirates come in the jail, everyone were saying Tambora. But it weren’t. I were in the kitchen and Slapsauce …’

  ‘Slapsauce were in the jail?’ Gargantua interrupt. ‘That means it were a jail name, not a kitchen name.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Slangam say. ‘Can’t no man get a story out without the nitpicking?’

  ‘No,’ say I. ‘Mostly he can’t.’

  A interval of silence come.

  Then Gargantua say, ‘I hate volcanoes. That’s what I hate the most.’

  ‘How can yer hate a volcano?’ ask Slangam in astonishment.

  ‘How can yer hate moon snakes that don’t exist?’

  ‘Yer afraid of volcanoes? Is that what yer telling us?’

  Gargantua don’t answer.

  ‘Better get used to them,’ Slangam say. ‘They’re all over the southern ocean. On all them scattered islands and on the bottom of the sea.’

  Gargantua make a scoffing noise. ‘On the bottom of the sea? How don’t all the water put them out then?’

  Slangam give out a cackle. It’s the first time I hear it. It’s more grim than the set of his mouth when he do the seal clubbing. It’s the sound of the northern ocean being pulled down under govermint of the southern.

  Toper tumble some bits of sealfish onto our makeshift plates. Yair, we done a lot of plaiting now, we eat off little plaited plates and collect food in little plaited baskets. I expect Slangam to extend his rant while he eat, but seem he think his cackle say it all.

  After breakfast he do more extended worriment about the spuds. He say sure, we can keep alive on seal meat, but a man tire of jes keeping alive and want some other thing. Toper say how true. He once hear a vodka can be made from potata juice and wud he like some of that! Gargantua say no need to make a vodka, a green potata can give yer a hallucination.

  ‘What’s that?’ Toper ask.

  ‘A kind of waking dream. Suddenly, no more are yer living on a cold Incognita isle, yer gone off to the land of date palms.’

  ‘Do yer have to come back?’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Slangam put in. ‘Can’t yer take what he say with a grain of salt?’

  Now Toper get a hurt look and his lower lip tremble. ‘That were my grain,’ he say.

  Gargantua go to pull up the dirt rugs round the potata babies’ necks. Slangam go off to his sticks. Toper poke the fire and say, ‘One thing I do know, he aint gonna get any green potatas if he cover them all up with dirt. The greening come from the sunlight.’

  ‘Why don’t yer tell him then?’

  ‘What for? I want them spuds for frying and for the vodka, I aint got no interest in ruining them.’

  All them sealers that get put ashore in the southern ocean, they always have a leader. But the Captain don’t appoint a leader to us jailbirds. Like the parson, he think we jes fight it out no matter what, so why do he waste his breath?

  Were the Captain a good man? Do he think he can remain a good man when he set up a fight? If not, why don’t he jes impose his choice upon us? Maybe instead he were a wise man, one who see a wrong choice start the fight that freedom stave off.

  We’ll never know. The Captain say he and the other sealers sail off to the other Incognita isles, do their bloody job and return within the year. But the truth of this turn out another thing we all very divided on.

  ‘He’ll come back,’ Slangam say. ‘He know the side his bread got the seal fat on.’

  ‘He won’t come back,’ Toper say. ‘He don’t pray to the Virgin. He’ll get shipwrecked for sure.’

  ‘He’ll come back,’ Gargantua say. ‘A captain is a different class of men to you. Forget honour amongst thieves, yer jes flattering yer stupid selves.’

  ‘He won’t come back,’ say I. ‘If he were really interested in extra hands, he’d of seeded us through his own gangs. That way he wud get the workers without the extra trouble.’

  ‘What trouble?’ Toper ask.

  ‘First, the trouble he expect in controlling us. If he split us up, the leaders can turn us into lambs. Second, he cud jes pick us up with the others, he don’t have the trouble of the extra trip.’

  ‘That aint the way it work,’ Slangam object. ‘The Captain make his money from dropping sealers off here and there, then picking them up with their cargo. He aint the owner of seal gangs. Why do he mind picking us up if we have skins?’

  ‘That’s the point. He don’t think we have skins. Except if we skin each other.’

  During the meals, we have this argument over and over, it change in the detail but not the substance. And Slangam and Gargantua is always trying to stop Toper and me talking about how our lives turn out when the Captain don’t come. It’s a dismal thought. Nothing good happen to us ever again. We jes work, eat and sleep. Everything we do is jes to keep alive, and we keep alive jes to die off one by one. Which one of us turn out to be the last poor bastard alive, trying to club a barking seal on his crippled old pegs?

  Sometimes, though, when a cold wind blow from the land of ice and we’re all at each other’s throats, it seem to me such a situation aint much different from the life I used to live and wud go back to if the ship ever come. Just keeping alive and waiting to die, that’s what it boil down to, don’t it, if yer take off all the false hope, the hope of all them excitements and pleasures that hover and vanish like ghost ships.

  If the winter blizzards come too soon, we aint gonna get no spuds. That don’t jes mean none for this year, that mean none for the rest of our time on the island. That might be forever. And it’s another competition about who know the most. Gargantua say down here it aint like Port Jackson that don’t have a winter.

  ‘Everywhere’s got a winter,’ Toper say.

  ‘Yer been everywhere, have yer?’ Gargantua come back at him. ‘The tropics don’t have a winter. They have a monsoon. And what about Norfolk? That dint have a proper winter.’

  ‘Why the two of yer argue every point?’ I ask exasperated.

  ‘Yair,’ Slangam say. ‘Why can’t yer jes let a man say something and keep yer gobs shut? Don’t time decide the truth of everything?’

  It’s strange to have Slangam agree with me. It make the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

  ‘Port Jackson do have a winter of sorts,’ Toper break the sullen silence with. ‘Sure it aint that cold, but the day goes short. Them spuds know how long a day is.’

  Before another argument
start about how a buried spud know the longness of a day, Slangam go off to work on the hut and Gargantua pull his fat self away from the fire to sing lullabies to his plants.

  Yair, them potata plants pushed their little leafy selves out of the ground and it sure came as a surprise to us. We aint hortaculturists. Now they grow and grow, and each morning we stand in a circle and admire their excellent efforts. Yer don’t say it in front of Toper, yer wud have him ranting and raving for hours, but it do seem like these are our morning prayers. Yer can see why a ignorant savage wud pray to the Earth. He pray that the Earth don’t run out of what grow the plant, also the magick that turn Earth stuff into plant stuff don’t jes vanish in the night. Course he know about the rain, how it’s needed to soften the earth so the little plant can break through, and maybe about the sun if ever he try to grow his tubers in the gloom, but he don’t know about God and how He put the mix together. Actually, I myself aint too sure how He put the mix together.

  Every morning after we done our admiring, we have a talk about how many little spuds is tugging on the end of them protruding leafs. The number grow and grow in proportion to our hopes and greeds. And none of us know how long we have to let them grow for, how we know when them little balls turn into big fellas.

  Toper declare that as a Irish man he know more about potatas than every one of us, but apart from what he already said about greening he don’t have a lot to offer. One day he say jes wait till them leafs die off, then the spuds will be big as a blowed up seal bladder, which is big as they ever get. Fatty say no, if the leafs die off the tubers rot in the ground, he aint waiting to dig up a wormy mush, putrid soup, mere dog vomit …

  Slangam lean over and grasp a plant by the hair and yank it out of the ground. It come out dangling a pile of spuds all sizes little to big, not one of them a mush. Spit come in my mouth jes to think of a potata fry up. Toper hurry off to the fire and build it up, then he get the pot and grease it with a slick of seal fat. Fatty and I get some sea water and put the spuds in a pile ready to wash off the thin flaky skins that look like they come off easy as harlot drawers.