I say to my sweetheart, ‘It’s a big world. I have to go on a whaling ship and see it all.’
She laugh at me. ‘A whaling ship when yer hate the ocean?’
‘Maybe I learn to love it.’
‘Yer got love here.’
‘But I only got here here.’
She were far too young to say yer can’t have here everywhere.
A tear come in her eye and her lip tremble. My heart ache like I harm myself. This were a surprise to me. No one ever warn me it work like this. But now I make the first tear, I have to rip our shared skin all the way down.
‘I wanna go on one of them whaling ships that go out from America.’
‘America!’
‘Yair, they go down to the southern ocean and fetch the big whalefish out from between them icebergs.’
She turn away and the last bit of skin shear clean apart.
Course I don’t want to go awhaling. Even if I dint hate the ocean, why wud I want to chase a giant fish in a tiny boat and risk being dragged to the sea bottom when the harpoon go in? Even if we manage to tow a carcass back to the mainship, why wud I want to stand in a choking black smoke and boil down stinking blubber for days and nights on end?
I don’t want to do any of that. But I do want to go to London. Not for anything in particular, jes for what might happen. I were in the thrall of might happen. It seem to me that in the village with my sweetheart all of them might-happen things that life got saved up for me, all of them exciting or rich-making adventures jes thin out and fade away.
‘I can come to London with yer,’ say she when I tell her that’s where I start off.
‘For that we need to be married.’
She clap her hands together as if I make a proposal. It’s a very big misunderstanding.
In the days that foller, this misunderstanding grow too big to harpoon. She talk of the room she keep for me when I go to sea. She promise cleanliness and faithfulness, all manner of wifely virtues a might-happen lad aint admiring of.
I go to London without her. It were one of those midnight escapes. First thing I find is excitement have a lining that aint silver, it’s lined with loneliness. Then my plans to get money go awry. Taking money off the rich aint a easy thing to do, that’s how they’re rich in the first place. The village boy do try to obey the commandments for a while, but soon he see there aint no commandment to feed the starving and the starving decide to feed himself. Seeing he aint got a brass farthing, a bun vanish here and there from a bakery and a sardine or two learn to swim off through the air.
Of course he do get naked. Not with any rich virgin jes waiting to solve his gain and lust problems with one stolen ring, only with them farded whores that walk about with their powdered bosoms thrusting out. The skin of them girls aint cold, that’s a lie, and they aint clammy, that’s his own fever, and they aint disgusting, that’s jes the mist that cloud him after the act. No they aint cold, clammy and disgusting, skin is skin, it jes the sadness that come between him and their strange skins that turn everything sour. So the village boy learn life don’t save up all the special things in the world jes for him. He blink and blink and blink and still can’t believe it. For aint he the centre of everything that exist?
There’s a dull thud at the edge of my hole and it jerk me out of my memories. Slangam look down on me. He throw me a sack, it were the one the spuds come to the island in.
‘Don’t freeze yer brass monkeys off,’ he say.
I put it over my head and Slangam go off. Then he come back and say, ‘There aint anyone else to fetch the firewood. If Toper go, the fire go out, the chopping stop, the cooking stop. Gargantua’s too soft in his body to walk all over the island, drag back all that wood. And I already do everything else that need doing. So don’t die of the cold.’
‘I try hard,’ say I. And I do mean to try. Whoever die of the cold on purpose?
Down the hole’s like every Sunday in London. Every Sunday a fog wud come over me even if the sun shine. It were made of a guilt over Mary but all mixed up with my greed for living, a greed I weren’t capable to satisfy or rid myself of. It weren’t that the greed never find a meal neither, jes that it lust after ever bigger prey. The prey it seek were the huge beast that justify everything I leave behind.
Of course I were sure my girl wait for me. Weren’t she ever the clean and faithful type? She do her sewing by the hearth and keep warm the vision of my return. She turn away all other suitors. She run to the oak tree where our names is carved and move her hands all over the wound. The Carthuse monks wud be shamed by the promises she shout to the loury sky. She wait for me because she wait for the man that carry everything to her, like Atlas carry the world.
It turn out there were more of myself in these visions than there were of her. She sit by the fire and her thinkings turn rancid. No one tell me of this, it’s only something I put together after I see how everything turn out. Do her mother drip poison in her ear? Do her mother tell her the faithless deserve every suffering? Do she tell her love aint in abundance, the wastrel that turn his back on it earn his desert? And do I now deem this drip, drip, drip a poison anyway? No. The lesson life give me, long and slow, very long and very slow, is her mother speak the truth. The faithless earn his desert. Or his island.
Still it were better for me if I never learn what happen. That way everything for me stay in a balance. I have my greed for life on one side of the scales, and my belief in pureness and faith on the other, one never topple the other. But the cackling Fates – them crones I only learn about from Flonker – they don’t care what I think, they got the whole of existence to worry about, they aint partial to might-happen lads. One day I receive the news in a letter from a friend – yer can always rely on a friend to supply what were better never knowed – Mary has went off from the village and there aint anybody that know where. It were like the Great Lisbon earthquake came upon me. Inside me there were tremors, floods and fires, and her absence depopulate London in a trice, same as the great earthquake empty out Lisbon.
It were then I make my pledge: I go everywhere for her, I trade everyone. I even have my trading prayer, yair, God, take all my friends, take my sister, take my mother, when there’s no one else left take me. And I do mean it. Everyone can burn in Hell long as I can once again set eyes on my love.
First I must find out where she go. I go back to my village. I walk down the muddy road that divide the row of thatch cottages from the few shops and feel every village eye stare at me from both sides. I feel like a condemned man. There he go, they say, the man that throw away love like it were a rag.
First I visit my own family. There’s at least one thing I can do to bring joy, long as none of them hear my trading prayer. Then in a cold, furious storm – of course in a storm, the Crones delight that I suffer every last stab of my own mistake – I knock on Mary’s mother’s door. The wretched widow open it in her black weeds and her face fall ever more deep into its wrinkles. She lead me to the hearth, the very same place where I fondly imagined my love sit and wait for me, and she bring me a cup of hot chicory root and a rump of village bread.
‘Where do she go?’ I ask as I steep my crust in the hot liquid. It seem a question that hardly need to be asked, her mother know what I come for soon as she clap eyes on me.
‘Picture this,’ she say and seem to turn into a hanging judge before my very eyes. ‘She take off her pretty dress that I embroider with my own hands, and she take off her soft house slippers, and she cut off her blonde plait and throw it on the fire, then she go barefoot, bald and half naked out of the village and into the forest.’
‘Half naked?’ I do try to picture it.
The hanging judge make slits of her eyes. ‘She wear her worsted cape over clothing that I cut and stitch from her dead father’s garments. She go through the forest to the harbour. As a boy she take a ship to Calais.’
‘Calais?’ A fright come over me. ‘Aint it a danger to a English boy?’
‘He must esca
pe a worser danger.’
‘And what were that?’
‘Shame.’
I drop my gaze to my wet boots.
‘She were innocent enough to believe love were sufficient. It shame her to learn it count for nothing.’
Since no hole appear in the floor and swaller me up, I have to hear the rest of the story. It were pretty short. Somehow Mary make it safe and unmolested to the convent of the Poor Clares. The gate bang shut behind her, the bolt is rammed home, she wipe herself out of the world.
In the night I climb out of the hole. A sleet wake me and I turn too froze to suffer my punishment. I kick some foot holes in the earth and with some grasp and struggle manage to escape. It give me a strange feeling standing free in the dark. There don’t seem much to do but I feel I swelled in size anyhow. I feel equal to, no, more bigger than them three crooks snoring in the hut. What cud they do if I surprise them in their sleep with a club? I cud smash in their skulls jes like seals and they bleed to death before they wake up.
No, that aint what I want. Only a madman wud want to be alone here. Fatty once tell me some of them old Greek philosophers love to be solitary, they sit up poles and in cold baths, all manner of places where they can be naked and alone, and they claim to be happy jes in the company of their strange pontifications, but I dunno, probably they were mad before they even start.
So what is it I want from my freedom? To dance and caper? Maybe if the moon were out and shining down on me I wud like that, now I jes like to sleep stretched out and dry. So I gonna have to take my sack into the woods, them woods that’s full up with Incognita screech owls and moon snakes and Asmodeus. Before me lie the true dark, the one that cause a shudder even in the daylight. It’s the type of dark that make three big crooks run screaming jes because something in there twitch. Do I have the bravery? Or am I jes all boasting like the others?
I take my sack to the edge where the trees begin. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I don’t hear no screeching, it’s all quiet as the grave. Maybe them giant owls aint night birds like in the north. Or maybe they keep silent, jes stare into the dark with their marble eyes and wait for their prey. Still, I aint ever heared of a owl that et a man and I aint afraid of no noise.
I enter the wood and the spindly trees embrace me like arms. I bend and feel about for some moss to lie on. My hand go in a hole. I snatch it out, afraid that a moon snake come with it. It don’t. Then I recall I aint afraid of no moon snakes neither. Indeed, everything I heared about snakes make me think they only walk abroad when the sun shine and warm up their blood.
The moss under my hand aint wet with the sleet. That mean the trees that been grasping at me are thick enough for shelter. I lie down on the spongy mound and draw the sack up to my chin. Do Titanoboa or Asmodeus or any other Incognita beast not yet discovered see the shine of my eyes? I close my lids quick and keep them tight shut. I shut tight my mind too or wild imaginings wud soon turn into nightmares that drive me out into the weather. Then I sleep till morning. Lucky for me I wake up early, the light’s jes coming in tinges, and I jump back in my hole ready to be the scapegoat.
My hole fill with freezing water in the night. It go over the ankles of my boots. Gargantua appear and call down the hole, ‘Here’s yer breakfast, Troll.’
‘My boots is wet. They gonna freeze up.’
‘Then we cut yer feet off for yer.’
‘Get Slangam! I can’t work without feet.’
‘Now, now,’ soothe Fatty.
‘My arse is wet! Yer gonna cut that off too?’
‘Can’t live without a arse.’
He lean down and give me my breakfast. Maybe Toper’s again having trouble matching prayering with punishing, because in the bowl there’s a whole fry fish.
Slangam come to the lip of my jail. Don’t he trust Fatty to feed me? Or do he come to join the torment?
‘What yer yelling about?’ he ask.
‘The sleet that fill up my hole with ice water.’
‘How deep?’
‘Over my boots.’
‘Yair, then he sat down in it,’ Fatty say with mirth.
‘Shut yer piehole,’ Slangam reply. Then he say to me, ‘Yer can sit with this fucken clown while I bail the water out.’
So that’s what happen. I sit beside Gargantua at the edge of my dumb cell while Slangam jump in with a big shell and scoop out the muddy liquid. Gargantua seem moody. Probably he’s annoyed I have a break in my punishment. It give me a inside laugh to think how frothing crazy he go if he learn I spend the night a free man.
Now he say, ‘Yer know, there’s some advantages to travelling the world and I don’t mean as no sealer. Recall Toper saying he met with a sage. My brother who were a fine traveller met one too. He also met some monks. Different ones to our type. Like the sage, they don’t do no praying to God and all that.’
‘Well, good luck to them.’
‘They sit around and try to efface themselves.’
‘They what?’
‘It mean rub their selves out.’
‘I already rubbed myself. I’m still here.’
Now Gargantua grow cross. ‘Yer think I’m jes telling yer this for yer amusement? I aint. Them monks efface themselves so their sufferings don’t bother them no more. My brother say they can sit down a wet hole for years and be happy.’
Now it come clear to me what Gargantua is on about and it make me furious. ‘Yair, that’s because they choose their wet hole. But I dint. You send me down it!’
Gargantua start clucking like a fat chicken. ‘I jes want justice, that’s all.’
‘A escaped convict think he got the right to dish out justice?’
Gargantua don’t get time to answer before Slangam pull himself out of the hole.
‘We shud of agreed on the punishments before anything happen,’ I shout at them. ‘How were a man to know taking a few slices of green potata turn out a major crime?’
‘How cud we know yer were gonna steal the spuds?’ Slangam ask astounded. ‘Punishments gotta get made as we go along. Now get back down there and maybe we shorten yer sentence for good behaviour.’
‘Do we?’ Fatty look surprised.
‘I got better things to do than bail out fucken mud holes,’ Slangam growl.
This is a common attitude among turnkeys. It were the same at Norfolk jail. At all times they had to weigh the work of special punishment against the work of daily living. Soon as extra punishment get too much of a burden, they let yer go back to the ordinary cells or the fields quick smart. Unless they were of the wicked type. The wicked type try to invent a punishment that aint so much work. Such types were ever the inventors of all the gruesome contraptions that fill up the history of tortures.
Before I get back in my hole, Fatty hiss at me, ‘Remember them monks! Forget yerself and yer objections and yer’ll be happy as a sandboy.’
‘I were a sandboy once and I weren’t happy.’
‘Yer jes need to practise.’
‘I got a idea,’ say I. ‘Why don’t yer jump in the hole and teach me?’
2
It’s true I were a unhappy sandboy, I weren’t jes objecting to what Fatty say. It were the job I have in London after I visit with Mary’s mother. I take the job so I can save and go to the convent. Yer can steal many things but yer can’t steal a sea journey unless yer become a stowaway. That weren’t a thing that ever enter my head until I meet the crooks I’m now joined to. Course I cud of stole a silver teapot and paid for my trip by selling it, but a great fear come upon me that I get catched and locked up in jail, never more to see my love before an absurd vow marry her to Christ.
So I join with them sandboys and spend my days bringing sand to the taverns and spreading it on the floor after raking away the dirty stuff I spread the day before. The sandboys were a rowdy bunch, always drunk as fiddlers’ bitches, they spend as fast as they earn, and soon I find they earn plenty. As for me I don’t do no drinking, I put my coins in a tin and count the days
till I can book my passage. But it weren’t a pleasant job. It were cold as fuck on the beach, and the digging and hauling turn out very heavy work. Also there were that large disgusting part, the raking out of the filthy sand that them drinkers do everything in. It were studded with oyster shells and chicken bones and equal parts piss and vomit. The only way I cud keep doing it were to promise myself that after I rescue my girl I never have to work again.
Time pass in the hole while I remember my sandboy days. Lunch turn up. Toper bring it, proud of what he cook. I’m jes glad I have a break from Gargantua and his lectures about how to cope with a hole. It seem to me he don’t ever find one he can squeeze into so who’s he to give advice? After I et, Toper help me out for my toilet break but he aint got time to talk much. He say he have to collect the firewood as well as cook and clean, he say he’s sure trying to convince them other stubborn bastards I need freeing to do my job.
It’s a long afternoon in the hole. The cold and boredness turn me glum, and soon as the glumness come on, out come the face of Mary. She have a white sad face, the same one I seen on her when at last I find her in Paris. Of course I dint speak the French and have to employ a man to make enquiries at the convents. The Monsure I employ keep on coming back to me and saying no. No, she aint at them last five places I enquired at, no. Do French nuns lie? I ask him. At which he do appear very shocked and declare they do not. He keep on searching and asking, and in the end the Monsure find my Mary at Saltpeter.
Saltpeter were a hospital for sick ladies, but also it were jes like a village, any person cud come in for a visit and a look-see. When first I go through its gates, it were a thorough bewilderment to me. Everywhere there were people and goings on jes like I come into a market place, a market place that have more’n its usual share of paupers and lunaticks. And inside the buildings the mad doctors were having shows. In these shows the mad doctors exhibit the lunatick on a little stage and talk about her sickness, if it please the lunatick to do so she boggle her eyes and contort her limbs. It really were quite a spectacle. And it were at such a show I find Mary. No, she weren’t on the stage, but doubtless she done her time in such a performance, back in the days when she were more likely to rip open her bodice and loll her tongue.
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 12