‘Why not? Yer all benefit from it.’
‘Maybe. It don’t mean we gotta admire it.’
‘Aint no maybe about it. Yer all die of the cold without what I do.’
‘Nah, Slangam say we jes hollow out a seal and wear it as is.’ He laugh like a explosion.
‘Sit down,’ say I. ‘Sit down and enjoy the view.’
I don’t expect him to. I expect he say he have to rush off and boil more blubber for our dinner, jes coming to the cliff were a break out. But he do sit down. He sit and scan the blue ocean and a visible shiver come over him. He ask what on earth is out there, who know what monsters of the deep lurk between us and Terra Incognita, who know what kind of savages live in the wastes of ice and snow, who know what them wastes is littered with, big white bears, or maybe southern volcanoes that spew seas of ice, ice that spread out far and wide as the boiling lava do and kill everything with the freeze. His grimness know no end.
‘What if this aint Hell but really Heaven?’ I ask. I like to turn the tables on Toper, he aint a man that can move his chair fast.
‘Eh?’ squint he.
‘Yair. What if us men only turn it into Hell, like making clean water filthy?’
‘Yer don’t think we orta be here?’
‘Course we orta be here. We were put here, weren’t we? Who are we to say we ortn’t to be here? It’s exactly that kind of belief I’m talking of.’
‘Yer confusing me,’ he complain.
‘All them beliefs that make us think we get to say how everything orta be. Wudn’t that be the exact way Heaven get turned into Hell? If everything were already planned so as to be perfect? Wudn’t the only thing left be to perfect our selfs?’
‘Perfect our selfs,’ he repeat in a strangle voice, because he know I aint talking of praying and obeying.
‘Still,’ muse I, ‘it aint clear how we orta do that, is it? Do God love us for being exactly what we are or for killing what we are?’
Toper cross his self. I know he have no idea what I’m trying to say but he do it jes in case.
‘Yair,’ conclude I very satisfied. ‘Far as I can see, that’s the only question.’
Toper mumble and scramble to his feet. He hurry back to his blubber pot. I sit on. I’m still sitting there when the surf thick up with creatures. A huge wave rise and curl and froth, and whee! the penguin fish is half swimming and half flying into shore. There’s so many a man wud not be able to count them, and when they come up on the black rocks yer wud expect them to shake off the salt water that’s got into their evening suits, yer watch for a shudder that start at their beaks and end at their flippers, but it seem a penguin fish aint wetted and froze by the sea, maybe it’s all that stuffing under their doublets.
After what I say to him, I expect Toper never come back to the lip of the cliff. He decide the fire and the cooking pot keep him safe from all evil, in particular the evil that come out of my mouth. But big surprise, he do come. He come like a penitent and stand wringing his sealskin cap in his wind-raw hands.
‘Sit down and look at the penguins,’ say I.
He do sit.
‘Don’t they look funny?’ I ask.
Toper drop his eyes from the horizon that terrify him with wild fancies to what’s going on right at his feet, and for a moment his muscles go slack as if taking off his feverish imaginations is jes like taking off the iron maiden.
‘They look as if they make a tasty stew,’ say he.
‘They’re jes fish meat and fat same as the seals. What’s the point in eating them?’
‘See, a cook don’t think that way. A cook fancy everything. He never know how a thing taste different till he try it.’
‘They have big eggs too,’ I tell him.
‘True? Big as a turtle fish?’
‘Even bigger.’
Toper’s eyes grow round and bright. I remain serene. Toper aint gonna climb down the rocky cliff into that spreading puddle of fish stercus and chase screaming penguins with his club. The penguins aint good on their feet but neither can Toper gain purchase on them slippy smeary rocks with the vicious gleeful sea heaving salt spray at his back and maybe sending out a giant wave to suck him to the deeps.
‘Why yer sit here watching them fish?’ he ask. ‘Aint it a bore even with yer work?’
‘It do seem like a bore when yer jes think about it. But somehow it aint a bore in the doing.’
Toper consider this and say, ‘Yair, some things is like that. I dunno why.’
‘Well, if I were in the dumb cell in Norfolk jail and someone say yer can come out for a while and watch some penguins, sure I wud of said yair because the dumb cell were so boring. But I wudn’t really have a interest. It’s because yer mind have difficulty putting in all the interesting bits. It make a picture of a penguin fish that jes stand there like it’s been stuffed or maybe jes wiggle its wings a little bit and clatter its beak. But the reality aint so stunted. There aint jes one penguin fish standing on the rocks, there’s hundreds, maybe thousands, and yer feel like a god looking upon a town. And more’n that, the sky contribute some changing clouds and the weather a changing breeze, and with that come some new smells both fishy and floral, and with them smells yer own mind throw up its memories and hopes and little thinkings, and before yer know it yer had a riot of a morning.’
Toper don’t say nothing and I steal a glance at him out of the corners of my eyes. He’s staring down at the penguins in a trance. I see they already hook him with their doings. One little group is having a big stoush over the real estate, pretty much as usual think I.
‘It make me believe God don’t hate me much as I think,’ Toper say sudden.
‘Yer think God hate yer?’ ask I in surprise.
Toper nod.
‘Aint that a blasphemy?’
‘I dunno.’
‘But why yer think it?’
‘We’re all sinners.’
‘All creatures? Is the penguin a sinner?’
‘Maybe if he fornicate with another penguin’s wife,’ Toper reply and laugh loud. Then he say, ‘But penguins aint got a soul.’
‘Yer mean penguins don’t take the blame for being how God made them?’
Toper see what I’m saying and reply cold, ‘God don’t make evil men.’
‘Ha, if a man is born evil, then how do he get that way?’
Toper’s eyes drift back to the penguins and he look very wistful that he weren’t born a God-made fish without a soul. A penguin don’t take no instruction in self hating from a tonsured celibate in a long dress ugly as what a bat’s stitched up in. But if I say that aloud to Toper, for sure he push me over the cliff.
‘Even if God dint hate me when I were born, He hate me for what I done since,’ Toper say.
‘Hate yer for serving sauce without meat?’
Toper drop his eyes. ‘No, it were far worse than that.’
There aint been much truth telling about what any of us done, so I hold my breath to hear what Toper confess.
He say him and Slapsauce were put on the hulks. Unlike most of the convicts, Slapsauce do have a bit of money to pay the bribes to the overseer and everything were fine. They work long hours but weren’t it what they were accustomed to? The bribes not only get them light irons, it also buy drink and comestibles of sorts not frequently offered in His Majesty’s Accommodations. Then word come they gonna be shipped out to Sydney.
‘Have to say, it weren’t immediately distasteful to us. The talk go around that long as yer can survive the trip, it aint as bad as the hulks. Yer have to work, of course, but it’s proper work. Everything need doing in a new land. Even if they don’t feed yer proper, and they never do, there’s bush turkey and kangaroo for the taking, and the sea is so full of whalefish yer can walk on them.’
Now we both laugh, not jes at how it turn out – no one got any idea Fovo and Mincemeat await them – but how walking on a whalefish do seem much less savoury once yer meet one.
‘Course most of them others i
s weeping and wailing and tearing out their hair, they got wives and brats and papas and grannies and kittycats, all manner of attachings that make them beat their breasts. But me and Slapsauce, we jes got each other.’
We been looking out at the penguins and the sea but when he say each other a catch come in his voice, and when I look at him I see a tear upon his cheek. He wipe it away quick.
‘What were the name of yer ship?’ ask I. Every convict know there were both the good and the murderous, the former get a large portion of their passengers to the world’s underside safe and sound, the latter steal their victuals, throw the sick overboard and whip everything in sight. When they arrive in Sydney town they got more corpses than uprights.
Toper tremble. He say he were a guest of the second fleet and the ship owners had once been slavers and they put slave shackles on their three transport ships. The captain were a torturer called Donald Traill. Now he narrate, ‘Us convicts sat in the hull and the big sea wash though the sides like it jes a sieve, everything get soaked, rags, bedding, the underweight dry beef in yer bowl, but all that salt don’t do nothing for yer boils and bleeding gums, it don’t even wash off the bugs. Many a felon get sick. Then a man chained near us die after we leave Cape Town.
‘And I done what so many of them done, I prop the dead man up and pretend he were alive. When the food come round, I get a double ration. The first day were alright. The dead man look jes like the living, something seem missing if yer do a close inspection, but the victualler don’t. The second day a bit of a smell come on him, but dint we all stink to the high heavens sitting there in our unmopped shit? The third day the stink of shit seem like flowers compared to the stench of death, but it weren’t that what make my flesh creep. It were touching his putrefying skin. When I prop him, it seem thin and ready to burst, it terrify me that the putrid pulp inside him burst out all over me. On the fourth day he start leaking. He leak everything a body hold. If yer think piss and shit is all the filth a body got inside it, yer aint sat next to a dead man.’
To me it do seem this tumble of words lack the terrible crime that occasion it. ‘He were dead, weren’t he? Do he care if he get propped and his food stole? Weren’t yer being stole from yerself, having yer victuals measured with them short weights?’
Toper start to heave his shoulders as if a mortal weeping overtake his body. ‘I aint told yer the sin God hate me for. I aint told yer yet.’
Well, think I, hurry up for fuck’s sake, else time end before the story do.
He carry on, sniffing and rubbing his red face. ‘The dead man sit on the right side of me and Slapsauce sit on the left. Slapsauce aint been well. He were a big man that always et a lot of meat.’
‘Well, he’d be a fool not to, wudn’t he, seeing he steal so much of it.’
‘That’s right. But now he have to live on next to nothing like the rest of us. He get the scurvy. I dunno why some do and some don’t, but he do. He have boils and aches and black gums and he do a lot of groaning and falling into phantagasmoria.’
‘Fanta what?’
‘It were a kind of nightmare with phantoms all around it.’
‘Oh.’
‘And sweats.’
‘It do sound horrible.’
Toper nod.
‘Dint he improve when yer give him some extra?’ ask I, and Toper break out into wild grief shrieking. He drum his chest and tear at his hair – it all stay in though I were expecting clumps – and some penguins that were attending to their privacies look up in alarm.
‘I dint give him nothing. Nope, not a morsel. I’m puny and greedy and I keeped it all to myself. I were afraid if I dint keep it all, I die of hunger and go to Hell. I were very terrified of Hell.’
‘So yer do the very thing that send yer there?’ I exclaim. Seem to me Toper aint only puny and greedy, he’s a complete idiot.
‘It weren’t till I get on this island I understand that. I pray all my life, go to church all my life, all kneeling and crossing myself and confessing the sins of lust and self pollution, but never do I understand he always helped me and I orta help him.’
‘It aint that hard to understand.’
‘Aint it?’ he flame me. ‘Yair, I learned yer have to love yer neighbour as yerself, but he weren’t that, he were my friend.’
‘Yer dint have to take it so literal!’
‘We was brung up to take the teachings literal,’ cry he, and startle a flock of snipe. ‘What other way is there? We learn it’s only the heathen and the infidel that say it all jes a story to learn from. Sure, we understand them parables has a moral to them, but still they above jes stories.’
I sigh and look away. Yer have to be really careful how yer teach the idiots or they get hold of the shit end of the stick.
After a silence that feel very tense, Toper tell me Slapsauce dint know about the decaying corpse because now he spend all his time in his phantom nightmare, and it weren’t till the deadman’s swole body commence to leak that the chill fluid rouse him a bit. Toper say Slap suddenly sat bolt upright screaming he died, he smell the liquors of decomposing but his soul aint gone to the Lord. Help me release, help me release! cry he. Toper say he try to calm him down.
‘Water, water,’ the sufferer croak when next the liquors rouse him.
‘There aint but a thimble each,’ Toper reply, neglecting to mention his own share is double.
‘I’m parched unto death,’ Slapsauce implore.
Toper lie his friend back down and wipe his forehead with a poultice but don’t offer any extra food or water. Then, Toper say, the most evil thinking rise up in him, and once he think it he can’t keep it down, it were like keeping down evil bats whooshing from a shit caked cave, the more he try to swat them the more they sweep and dive and try to suck his blood. That thinking were if Slapsauce die, he, Toper, cud buy his life jes by sitting between two oozing corpses. With three rations of food and water he wud of been as far from Hell as anyone on that foul ship ever get.
‘But lucky for my soul,’ Toper say dark, ‘Slapsauce don’t die before the ship berth in Sydney town. Plenty of others do and they were tipped overboard, along with a few others that were jes poorly. But nearly everyone that arrive were crippled by the irons or the rations or the wasting sickness, and they need a winch to unload half of them and the other half crawl up the beach on their hands and knees. Some of them die in the crawl, too tired even to drop down on the sand. Course I were fairly fit and I stride up the beach, and what do I see but the crew setting up a stall to sell the leftover rations. It shock me into a rage. They steal it out of our mouths to sell it and turn a profit! But almost as quick a great shame come over me that I too had extra and dint give it, I withhold it to profit myself – not in coin, that’s true, but coin aint the only mammon.’
‘Mammon!’ I exclaim. It do seem rich to call a few extra mouthfuls of rancid water and a thin string of salt beef mammon, but weren’t the bead mumblers ever too hard and too soft on their precious selves? Too hard in thinking they go to Hell jes for pulling their stupid selfs, and too soft thinking if they mumble their beads right and pass some heavy coin they still go to Heaven after blue murder.
‘Slapsauce died right there on the sand,’ Toper say. ‘He died right in front of me who were fit as a fiddle on stole food.’
Toper start working himself up again so I direct his eyeballs to the penguin fish, start telling him this and that what I noticed about them. It aint that I don’t care nothing for Toper’s grief, it’s jes that such spilling grief soak into the ground and come to nort if it don’t change him, and all I seen of Toper show me he still take no blame. He never stand his ground against them other two felons. Yair, he were very careful to feed me down the hole and he dint let me shit myself, but don’t repentance require a bit more’n that?
Another summer come. Every morning off I go, glinting sea all round, breakers big as whales, seaweed long as snakes, wind like a hundred banshees, everything moving and roiling and teasing. I weren’t a
walker before I come here, now I walk for hours. Long as I come back with firewood them others don’t seem to care no more. Each man apply himself to what he think most important. He don’t bother arguing the case neither. Aint he argued it over and over? Now he jes do. And is happier for it. He jes do and do.
‘That’s the way in Japon,’ declare Toper one lunchtime.
‘What’s the way?’ Fatty ask.
‘Jes doing.’
‘How it orta be,’ say Slangam.
‘Sometimes the doing is jes a lot of sitting.’
‘Not how it orta be.’ Slangam who were pleased about how the Japonese work now start to huff and puff about their sloth.
‘Nothing yer say ever make any fucken sense,’ Fatty grumble. ‘I tell yer what happen if old Nippon catch yer, yer ears get nailed to a tree and yer balls get cut off.’
‘That depend,’ Toper comment.
‘Depend on what?’
‘On what they think yer there for.’
‘So what happen if yer there for a shipwreck?’
Toper say, ‘I were there to get plants.’
This come as a big surprise.
‘Yair. I join a ship to get plants from old Ching Chong and Mr Nippon. Some folks pay a lot for a plant from a foreign land. Especially them lands that’s full of dragons and samurai.’
‘Eh? What’s that last thing?’ Slangam ask.
‘Samurai? He’s a Nippon swordsman. He fool yer by wearing a dressing gown, but when he start his postures and flicking his sword around, yer better make sure yer guts is out of the way.’
I smile. Yair, maybe the whole tale is a big sack of fish shit but what else we got to do at this exact moment?
‘I opened my eyes and I were on a pallet on the floor,’ Toper carry on. ‘A thin Japon sage sat beside me cross legged. He were doing that special kind of Japonese thinking. It go on for hours.’
‘What thinking?’ ask Slangam. ‘What were they thinking about?’
‘Mostly about how not to think.’
‘That don’t make no sense.’
‘Yer should do some thinking too,’ Gargantua take the opportunity to opine. ‘It wud improve yer.’
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 15