As the warmness of spring come on, it strike me how much I were also wrong last season. I dint even notice that after all the bickering, the penguins like to find a tree branch to roost upon. I dunno what these trees and vegetations is called but they all bent over by the winds like old women carrying sacks of coal.
‘The penguins like to sleep in trees,’ say I one evening.
Gargantua, who sit nearby, say, ‘How them fish get up in a tree when they can’t fly?’
Now he mention it, I can’t think how either. The silence that fall brand me as a liar.
Gargantua belch with satisfaction and a smirk spread over his ruddy face.
I say, ‘It don’t matter how they get up there. Fact is, they do. Jes because yer have a opinion about penguins, it don’t mean the penguins take notice of it. They jes do what penguins do. Yer can be full up with opinions from yer arsehole to yer eyeballs, if they don’t match the world it jes the same as shit.’
Slangam come over for his feed and the brewing argument fall flat. While we eat it come to me how, very slow, he’s become a boss that keep us all silent. Sometimes that’s good but other times he stop dead something that really need a airing. And what do seem to need a airing is how much Fatty don’t let the facts in. All he have to do is get off his dimpled arse and wobble over to the other side and jes look.
If ever he’s there at the right time, maybe he can look at them albatrosses too and learn some things about them. Because what do we really know about a albatross? Yair, we already knowed it’s white and big and look like a angel, but aint there more to know than that – its habits and suchlike? Don’t a man want to know everything about his enemy, not jes what it look like but what its vices are?
‘If yer kill a albatross, it hang for a long time around yer neck,’ Fatty declare when we talk about it.
‘What?’ demand Slangam. ‘Yer wud have to pick it up and put it there, wudn’t yer? If it’s dead. That mean yer have a choice. Jes don’t pick the fucker up.’
Gargantua look uncertain for a blink of a eye, but at once he regain his sureness. ‘Nah, somehow it get there itself. Maybe with its last gasp. Most extraordinary thing. Mr Coleridge writ a poem about it.’
‘Who were he? A sealer?’ Toper ask.
‘He were a poet, fuckwit.’
‘So,’ Slangam say, ‘he sit on his arsehole all day and still know what a albatross do when a sailor kill it?’
‘He talk to the sailors.’
‘Down at the wharves?’
‘At weddings.’
Now we all laugh.
Fatty go bright red. ‘Yer all ignorant as swine. A poet have to make some things up.’
‘Yair,’ Slangam agree, ‘he have to make up a lot of shit about albatrosses.’
Course I laugh at Fatty’s expense, but in my heart I know a poet often try to draw a lesson out of his rhymes, not jes facts, and for that sometimes he do have to extend the truth a bit. Question is, what’s the truth about albatrosses and what aint?
A string of fine days come. They aint hot, it never do get like that here, but warm enough to put a man into a drowse if he sit in the sun above the penguins. Looks like the fighting over the real estate’s been done while the storms blowed over us. But now a big shoal of latecomers arrive. Hundreds of them. I expect a bloodbath like a man never seen before but it don’t happen. Then it come to me and stun me, these is the ladies coming home. All along I been wrong!
How do I entertain such a wrongness? I tell them others all he have to do is look and here I been looking for more’n a year and dint see. Now it seem plain as the bulbous red nose on Toper’s face, the gentlemen come first and fight for the ground, then the ladies swim home and see what their husband arrange. It do amuse me to think of their talk.
‘What yer think of the palace?’ Mr Penguin-Fish ask.
‘Don’t look like no palace to me,’ Mrs Penguin-Fish sniff.
‘Well, love, prices is high this year.’
‘Yer jes a lazy no-count.’
‘Maybe it look more like home when yer lay the eggs, lovie.’
‘Eggs? I aint laying no fucken eggs in this squalor.’
The sun shine and I laugh at my own jokes, first sign of madness someone tell me once, but aint it more mad to bore yerself to tears?
Only with a big reluctance do I break off my spectating and go about my work. I want to see every first egg, every second egg, I want to see everything, I feel greedy for the sight of it all like a boy at the circus.
This spring I roam far and wide to collect the branches, further and further than ever before, the fear of strange walking beasts that keeped me close to my brothers seem to of left me. Indeed, I wud really like to find such a beast and eat it. My mouth water jes to think of a unsalted roasted limb with a herb dressing, even if I’m pretty sure there aint no such beasts here. But a shiver still run through me when the birds cast a shadder on the ground, up boil my memory of the albatross, do she, the huge drumming angel-bird, come home to lay a giant egg?
‘What?’ Fatty scoff. ‘Course she got to come home. Yer think she’s gonna lay it in the air? How do a egg fly?’
‘I dunno why yer fear a albatross anyhow,’ Slangam say.
‘Why do anyone fear anything? Why yer fear the owls?’
Slangam poke at the fire. He know as well as I do he fear the owl for the same reason I fear the albatross. Both come trailing death. They don’t trail it like a penguin fish drag a piece of twig to build a nest, it aint like that, cut and dried, plain to see in the light of day. No, they both got a vapour roiling around them, it’s made of superstitions jes as much as it’s made of pronouncements from the Royal Society, it’s made of seamen’s tales and poets’ delirium. Who really think a screech kill or a albatross land on yer back and flap yer to death? Only a lunatick. It’s the unease that undo yer. It’s knowing death is in the vapour, but where? And aint there anything yer can do to avoid it?
Toward the end of spring – I’m keeping a tally now, notches in a log on the edge of the cliff I sit on – the days is a more nicer temperature and starting to stretch longer. It jes like the north in that way, and maybe the Royal Society wud be pleased to know that from me, maybe they give me a honest job if ever we are rescued. Or perhaps they have a interest in what I know about the Incognita penguin fish.
There’s some sad things about penguin family life. It’s only this year I notice. When everyone’s moved into their property, the lady fish lay her first egg. Then about five days later she lay another, a bigger one. After the big one come, some of them mean old ladies push the smaller egg out of the nest. I seen them do it over and over again. It astonish me and make me shamed for them. Why do they murder their own baby?
I watch as careful as I can, and I now see that if the smaller egg aint rolled away, many times it jes fail to hatch. But it get even more ugly if the smaller egg don’t fail to hatch. Then there’s a big fat happy chick and a little sad one that sometimes get starved to death.
‘Yer think we need this spare?’ Mr Penguin-Fish ask.
‘Dunno,’ reply Mrs Penguin-Fish. ‘It sure is a lot of trouble to feed two.’
‘Yer can say that again.’
‘Oh, what shall we do, what shall we do?’ Mrs cry.
Mr calm her down saying, ‘Let’s make sure the good one survive before we do anything rash.’
I think a lot about cruelty watching the penguin fish. Why do they lay a egg they aint gonna love? Why do a good God inflict that upon them? Why do He turn all them penguins into murderers? Their babies is so sweet it break my heart to see a starveling. It stagger about cheeping with patheticness, its feathers is thin and have a bedraggled look, it have a anxious pinchy little face that implore the hard world and get no response. It’s very hard to watch it die.
Sometimes, though, a very strange thing happen. The reject turn out more of a bruiser than its sibling. It don’t do the decent thing and peg out, somehow it fight for life. The thinking come to me this is
how God make the truly strong, it’s His trial by fire. That penguin fish grow up with a kind of armour on. When it dive in the gelid sea, the seals and the white bears don’t even want to eat it, it’s too crunchy. And when food is short on the rocks, it puff out its chest and all them others jes keel over and die when they see how fat it is. They jes knowed it et everything there is to eat.
The bruiser penguin make me think of us criminals. We aint suppose to flourish. We aint even expected to survive. The Captain kick us off his sealing ship and we’re suppose to lie down and turn up our toes. Course he aint coming back. He got to get them sealskins to the markets, the markets need to turn them skins into silks and trinkets for the fine ladies. The fine ladies is what everything’s run for. They need to be housed and outfitted. They need to be jewelled and coiffed. They’re so petted and doted on they usually get some peculiar thinning and wasting diseases and have to go and have a long rest somewhere even though they aint lifting anything more heavy than a syrup glass or a pudding spoon. I heared some of them even have a green disease. They’re so stilled and unmoving in their bodies they grow verdigree like a statue. It go all over them and then they drop down dead. The physicians is nearly useless to stop it.
Well, I aint green. I aint tired. I aint obedient. None of my nasty brothers is neither. We aint starving and we aint wasting, not like them ladies that eat blancmange and roasted beefs every day. We aint going to die like they want us to. All that remain to be seen is which one of us turn out the biggest bruiser.
Summer, as far as I can tell. The seals have borned their pups and the albatrosses have flied home to lay their eggs. It give me a shiver when I see them albatross Mamas in the distance, sitting on their big nests. We start to live our lives a bit more outside again. But it don’t warm up much, it aint like Norfolk. One morning I look down at my rags and think if I were a south sea native, I wud be ashamed of myself. Do any native that respect himself have holes that the wind blow through, do he have to crouch before the fire in all weathers because his cape has fallen to shreds? Slangam say we have to make sealskin coats but he don’t say how and he never say when.
‘Them sealskin coats,’ say I one day when the wind blow extra cold. ‘How we gonna make them?’
Slangam take on a look of irritation as he always do when anyone try to divert his mind from his own plans.
‘We need a awl,’ I point out.
‘Oh, do we? Well, did yer bring one?’
I shake my head.
He look glad that’s the end of the topic.
‘I’m gonna make one. Them black fellas in the deserts at Sydney Cove can make a awl, why can’t I?’
‘Maybe I got a answer to that.’
‘We got our skinning knives, I can sharpen a bone.’
‘Yer can just stick the knifepoint through the skin,’ he object.
‘It make a neater hole doing it the proper way.’
‘Well, Missie, you do what yer have to do.’
My face turn hot, no doubt it turn bright red. Why do he insult me when we have such a need of new clothings?
It aint hard to find a bone around the fire and it aint hard to sharp it, but it take me a long while to get a good point. I seen the scrimshankers on the sealing ship apply their old sailing needles to walrus husks, I seen how fine the point need to be. They scratch and poke at the husk, and the good ones make a drawing that take yer breath away and then bring it up with a wash. In my head – it aint something I talk about – I see the scrimshankers picking up my sharped bone and saying it’s the finest point they ever see, it’s the best husk tool they ever laid eyes on, and for being the best tool it bring the most supreme artistry to the object.
Course Slangam wud say that’s all vanity, we jes need something good enough for the job, and the job itself only need to be good enough, we aint in London where other men’s eyes measure yer by the sharp cut of yer suit. But do the penguin fish or the albatrosses say to themselves, well there aint no one watching, so let’s not bother with the half of it, let’s forget this wide wing gliding, let’s forget this penguin dance of love, let’s cut all the corners, make everything round and easy as a wheel.
It do feel important to me to use the proper tool. I have a notion that only when I use the awl will proper sewing come to me, only when proper sewing come will them secret refinements show their selves. I once seen a black fella’s dancing hat, it were conical and made of hair and feathers, yet smooth as the coat of a Englishman, and it were decorated with ochre and hung about with polish shell so it look fanciful as a dream. So for my own self I vision a suit of clothes fine fitting as any of the northern ocean but somehow phantastic and all hung about with southern beachcombings.
‘Fuck me, yer changed yer tune,’ exclaim Fatty. ‘Toper, Slangam, come and have a look, someone has stole our slacker! It must of been one of them Incognita demons.’
‘I aint changed at all. It jes don’t seem like work.’
‘Not work? Scraping away at bits of bone hour after hour? And even if yer make yer fine holes, what yer gonna join the skins with?’
‘Plaiting.’
‘Well, that won’t fucken work, will it? Yer have a fine hole and the fat plait won’t go through.’
‘Hair plaiting.’
‘What?
‘We got hair halfway down our backs. If we cut it off and plait it, it’ll be a very fine thread. I heared the black fellas do it.’
‘You heared wrong.’
Why do I know this is what he say even before he say it? Because he know everything there is to know. He know everything in the northern ocean and everything in the southern. But I seen that dreamtime hat and there weren’t no cloth in it. There were bark and hair, and even if it were the hair of a animal, we aint got no animals here, we have to be the animals ourselves. And if God or suchlike do ponder me, I know he wud be pleased I show such resource, don’t just pray and freeze like a northern ocean idiot.
‘Not just pray and freeze?’ Toper squawk when I speak my thoughts. ‘Now yer go to Hell for certain.’
‘Why must he?’ demand Slangam. ‘When do it happen that praying relieve yer of doing?’
‘Yair,’ say I. ‘In some places I heared they jes about the same thing.’
‘What places?’ Toper ask scandalised.
Next day I begin my awl, start sharping it every night after the meal. And I ask Slangam for some skins. I expect he deny me like he deny the potatas, but he don’t. Maybe he have a think long before I ask, think he have a mutiny on his hands if he don’t give over what aint his to keep. He do select skins of a poor quality, ones that get too much weather before we build the frames and drying shelter, and I cud begin a shouting match, saying do yer want me to labour for hours upon clothing that wear out too quick? I don’t. It come to me maybe I ruin them anyhow, I aint ever had no practice at stitchings.
I want to start with a hat. I tire of the wind beating on my head but sometimes now there are days when it grow too warm in my sealing hood. To keep the sun off it need a brim, and how do I make that hard and sticking out I jes don’t know. So I decide to make a shirt. It aint going to be one that have openings and fastenings, jes one that slip over the head and come down nearly to the knees. Slangam say that’s a nightshirt but I say it pertect the cloth of yer breeches and keep yer pecker warm. He look away and I know it aint because I refer to them manly parts but because I do women’s work.
‘Aint yer heared of tailors?’ I ask.
‘Yer aint a tailor,’ Slangam reply. ‘A tailor get money for his work, don’t do it by the fire at night …’
‘Yer can fucken pay me then.’
‘And he have a training.’
‘I learn by doing.’
Slangam shake his head and poke the fire. ‘Really aint nothing to learn. Jes hollow out a seal and wear as is.’
This stupid comment drive me into a rant. ‘Yer all object to how I wanna do this proper but don’t Toper do the same with his cooking? Don’t he try a bit of
this and a bit of that, cutting off bits of leafs to give some other tang to our salty food? Don’t he try a little less of water or a bit more, and aint he all the time trying to ferment or coagulate or preserve everything, in short all the time trying to reach higher heighths than just a boiled seal and fry potata on a plate? And what drive him on, since a seal and a spud keep us upright and more or less hearty? Why do he send us off to catch a sea fish and spend a age to scale it, and dress it with a sauce of tiny berries that take all afternoon to gather, do he do it jes for the different taste? No. It please him when we eat with gusto, when we compliment him. But more’n that, it please him that if he have to cook he don’t do it with the mind of a slave. He don’t do it like he got a master over him who perscribe the means and ends and make the standard.’
‘So all this time yer were jes waiting to be a seamstress?’ Slangam ask and slap his thigh.
‘Aint yer worried about yer rags when the next Incognita winter come?’ I ask.
‘The Captain won’t leave us here for another winter. He’ll want his skins.’
‘If he can recall the little isle he dropped us at. If he aint sunk to the bottom of the ocean. If he dint mean to lose us in the first place.’
Before the argument do any more rounds I rush away to the cliff above the penguins. I sit cross legged on the ground and take up my sewing. Making them stitchings sure is laborious. I’m all fingers and thumbs and my tongue stick out so hard it get sore where it join to my mouth. I let out some big breaths and make my shoulders slump. Then I pull in my tongue, saying it aint in the way yer hold yer tongue, it’s the way yer hold yerself.
‘Hold yerself?’ Fatty hoot when I tell my piece of wisdom. ‘That’s what yer been doing while yer make that nightdress? Maybe if yer had both hands on the job it turn out more wearable.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Take it to Slangam and find out.’
I do. But if Fatty think Slangam give a shit what he wear, long as it keep him warm and don’t cause a nuisance, he got the wrong man. All Slangam care about is if it compromise me to sew, and to him it do.
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 5