‘It’s the beam in yer own eye,’ Toper intone as if a line in the Book fix everyone’s understanding of everything and everyone can get to bed. But for me the question is, why is there a beam at all, why when everyone want love do too much of it make us feel about as sick as a big bowl of sweet cream? Why do it cloy and pall and glut us?
‘Every morning I make a vow to hold my temper in,’ Slangam continue, ‘and every evening I burst out with invective and accusation.’
‘Oh well,’ say Toper, ‘aint that what all spouses do?’
‘Maybe in yer Irish pig sty. Not in the house I grow up in.’
‘How yer know what yer parents do in the privacy of their own bedroom?’ Flonker ask him.
‘I only heared silence from my parents’ bedroom,’ Slangam reply stiff.
‘Maybe yer Papa have his hand over yer Mama’s mouth.’
If Flonker continue to speak, we aint ever gonna get to the end, worse than that, damage is gonna get done.
‘My wife never complain. She sit all the time by the fire with her head bowed over her needlework. But she’s all the time in a low mood.’
‘Well, that aint surprising,’ Flonker comment.
‘It were her mood that eat out my resolve.’
‘Yikes, it jes go round and round.’
At this I can’t help but stifle a laugh. Flonker’s words do seem like the pith of it.
Slangam don’t take no notice of us, he get to his feet and stand tall and speak like he address the jury. ‘I feel I gotta separate from her low mood or it kill me. But the more airy space I put between us, the more she implore me. Finally she say to me, if I’m unlovely, it’s because yer don’t love me. But she pick the wrong time to say it – but no, whenever is there the right time for such reproach – and I fly at her and knock her to the ground.’
‘Hang on,’ say Toper slow as a wet week, ‘how do her loveliness connect to yer love? Dint she have it the wrong way? Wudn’t yer love her if she were lovely enough?’
‘No, yer village idiot,’ Flonker say. ‘She were saying the exact opposite. Not loving her make her unlovely to him. Yair, that’s the way it is for true. Loving make a witch beautiful and not loving turn a oil painting into Medusa.’
‘What’s that?’ Toper ask.
‘A cunt with snakes for hair.’
‘Snakes down there? Really?’
‘No, yer fool. On her fucken head.’
Toper’s face fall. It do seem he were very taken with the idea of pubic vipers.
Slangam roar, ‘Yer all do make it hard for a man to tell his tale and confess!’
Aint that always the way? Aint it a lot more fun to tease and catcall, to poke the poor bastard with yer bayonet? Of course we do get to hear the grisly end of Slangam’s story. His wife make cow-eyes too much. He punch her hard and she fall and crack open her head.
‘But that were a accident,’ Toper declare.
‘That’s right. Except for what were in my heart.’
‘Yair, but only God see that and no one else do.’
‘The judge think he saw it right. Yair, he say, she cracked her head but if yer wudn’t of punched her, how do she meet with the fender in the first place? It weren’t murder. I get my long sentence for assault. But really it were murder, because all the rage that were in my heart pack into my fist, the hit were a lot harder than the little slap I pretend it were, and there weren’t no tripping of her feet like I claimed.’
‘Tripping?’ prompt Toper.
‘Yair. I said I slapped her and when she try to run away she tripped on her dress. The judge dither on about the mixes of agency and accident …’
‘The what?’ Toper ask.
‘Yair, he give a long letcher about it all. How some accidents only come because of the bad thing someone do. And if a bad thing were done, that thing must be punished. But still, yer can’t hang a man for a accident.’
‘And still yer go to Norfolk for so long!’ Flonker exclaim.
‘Well, I aint like you. I dint know no corrupt men in high places.’
Lucky for us that’s the end of Slangam’s confessing. We can all go to bed. Slangam walk beside me to the hut.
He put his hand on my shoulder.
It burn me through my skins.
I heared them say better late than never, but late’s the same as never when yer already turned away.
If a drowning sailor were to wash up here, he wud say we come to a full fruiting of all our efforts. He don’t know the suffering and he wud think our life were easy. We got more’n a suit of clothing apiece, sealskin boots always at the ready and a hut that don’t leak. The spuds grow tall and plentiful, the dried meat and fish pile high, Toper have his heap of leafs and berries, we have our vodka. We got balls made of sealskin bladder, our scrimshaw carvings, our stacks of skins, our bits of furniture and plaiting. We got our drums.
Course we used to get sick in the early days, but as the years go on even sickness flee. Fatty declare we brung the sicknesses from Norfolk where nearly every man and woman have a skin scourge or a inner pestilence. He say the sicknesses die off when they done their worst and find no new victim, but Toper get angry and say the sicknesses cud jes go round and round the four of us, never stopping, the plain truth is that God no longer point the finger. He look down on us and see we got enough to deal with without the creep and stagger of disease. Fatty sneer at him, saying he been plenty of places where God don’t seem to care what yer have to deal with, even if yer starving He put a curse of pus and boils upon yer.
Slangam were the last to get sick, if I recall correct. It were during the third winter. There weren’t no doubt about it, he jes lay there and refused to get up for work. If it were me, there wud of been a suspicion of malingering and that suspicion wud probably be right, but when Slangam lie down and won’t budge yer know the facts. He sweat and groan and Fatty say we cud leave him to sweat and groan himself to death, then we cud run everything how we like. Toper say to Fatty, yer don’t know how to do half the things he know, did yer know how to skin, did yer know how to build a hut, did yer know how to make a joinment for poles, did yer know about tanning or curing, did yer know anyfuckenthing other than the price of a painting in Venice and a stupid poem about albatrosses? Fatty say since them things is already done, Slangam outlive his usefulness.
Toper grew enthusiastic about finding Slangam a physick, in addition to prayers of course – he first soak Slangam in a flood of beseechings and propitiations. After which he put on his sealing cape and go out in the icy blast to search the icy waste.
‘Fucken stupid,’ say I to Fatty when he’s gone. ‘Nothing useful grow in this weather.’
Toper plunge about in the wind and sleet and come home empty handed jes as I expect.
‘What we gonna do?’ he fret as he stir the cooking pot that contain our dinner and not the philtre.
‘Jes wait,’ say I. ‘Aint that the way it were done in Norfolk? Who come running to help us there? What do Mincemeat bring to our torn backs but salt? Jes wait.’
‘Jes wait and die,’ Toper intone.
‘Nothing new there,’ Fatty reply.
We wait and Slangam get well again.
But that were all a long time ago. After that, all that happen is we get a flem or a cough that never amount to much, or sometimes we spew up our dinner if we get lazy about pot washing or leave the carcass too long or try a plant that ortn’t to be et. Thus, very healthful in our bodies, the long years of our loneliness come on. For what also come to a full fruiting, or maybe the right word’s a full ruin, is how we treat each other. All them jostlings and arguments and bestings, it amaze me the way jes four men find all the ways of making trouble for each other a entire prison find.
I stay away from them felons the day long, dawn to dusk.
I boil some water before I leave and make a tea, and I take with me some leftovers of fish or seal meat and some cold spuds, Toper always make extra the night before for the day’s rations. No one beg
rudge me long as the firewood appear, we’re a long time past all them discussions of who done what and what food’s owed and what punishing. Like penguins that of been pecked bloody, we know the rules on our Incognita isle and we keep them, even if surly and churlish within ourselves.
Out on my roaming, such bad feeling drop away from me like a rotted coat. It’s a spell the sea and the cool rushy air and the sometimes bright sun contrive. I walk everywhere on the island and feel it to be my home, more’n all the other places I ever lived. I’m the only one that make it a home in such a way, them others is still plainting and sighing like their true lives wait for them across the ocean. Sure, a sealing boat cud suddenly come in, and sure I wud step on it with them felons, I aint the kind of man that can Crusoe alone. But I know there aint a life for me somewhere else, work and home and family, indeed the very stretched arm of the law probably collar me soon as I set foot in England. So I have to jump ship in the tropics or the Japon Sea or some other place I weren’t brung up to understand, and I wud have to make the feeling of home all over again. And aint that one of the most hardest of feelings to make?
All day I put small piles of wood here and there, don’t gather them together and carry them back into the camp till dusk. That way I only see them others at the beginning and end of the day, the rest I have to myself. But one day when I’m putting more sticks on one of my little piles, I see something move out the corner of my eye. At first I think I discover a new beast and get a fright. But it turn out to be three felons squirming behind a skinny tree.
‘Come out and show yer stupid selves,’ I shout. ‘What yer think yer doing spying on me?’
But they don’t come out, they jes rush off. I can hear Fatty’s high pitch laugh above the stampede.
Why do they join together and foller me?
Soon they start spying on me more and more, it come to fill their summer days with sport. No doubt it were Flonker that convince Slangam such sport is work, and Slangam that convince Toper such work is virtue. Flonker jes laugh up his sleeve and enjoy a bit of fun that aint nothing to do with skinning or weeding. When before they hardly move from their work or rest, now I turn a corner and there them three buffoons are, jes about tripping over each other when they try to run and hide. The three of them together look like a elephant trying to hide in a berry bush. For a long time I ignore them, jes deem it the best time to take my stacked wood back to the empty camp, until one day they circle back and full of bristling thwartedness bar my way.
‘Yer can’t go there no more,’ announce Flonker, even though I’m sure from them other men’s looks they don’t talk it out beforehand.
I throw down my pile of wood at his feet.
‘Yair, we can gather the wood ourselves,’ say Toper.
‘Can yer? Yer have to go a lot more far than in the beginning.’
‘We can do it,’ say he stubborn.
‘So yer want me to starve? What were the crime? That I don’t like yers? Who wud? Do yer even like each other?’
‘We do,’ Toper insist fervent, and them others don’t even blink.
‘We don’t trust yer,’ Slangam say with his growl and dark look.
‘I don’t trust yous neither.’
‘Yer don’t join in,’ Flonker add.
‘Oh? And when did this joining start? When first I break away from all the bickering?’
‘Yer keep coming up with yer own ways,’ Slangam accuse. ‘It aint right.’
‘Why yer don’t all come up with yer own ways? Aint this the exact kind of place where we can make things new? Why do all of yer keep wearing the leg irons and wig?’
‘Eh?’ Toper ask. ‘Nobody wear both of them things at once.’
Flonker glare at me and explain, ‘He mean they aint the opposites yer suppose them to be. They attach to each other. One on either end of the hanging rope.’
‘That’s right, Flonker. The judger get brung low by the judged.’
Slangam and Toper stamp their feet and puff and blow, this aint the kind of talk for them, it go too far into the deeps.
‘Well,’ Toper finally say, ‘I aint no torturer and I don’t want yer to starve yerself on my doorstep.’ Then he say a word I aint never heared of, probably the Irish. Everyone stare at him.
He repeat the word, jes like a idiot he think mere repeating turn what we don’t know into what we do. ‘Yair, it mean starving yerself to shame someone. Yer do it on the doorstep of the man yer think wronged yer. It were once very common in Ireland.’
‘Why wud I starve myself to shame you? Aint a Christian already shamed not to feed a hungry man?’
Slangam stamp his foot and say angry, ‘This talk is jes stupid. Yer won’t starve. Yer can collect eggs and eat some of yer penguin friends.’
‘What about in the winter?’
‘Cheer up,’ say Flonker. ‘Yer probably won’t last that long.’
Toper shake his head violent. ‘No, see, I’m gonna leave food outside the camp for yer.’
‘Like for a wild dog?’
‘Because yer are a wild dog,’ Slangam put in.
‘I’ll put it by that bush over there,’ Toper say pointing.
‘And I take my share of the sealskins,’ say I. ‘For clothing and shelter.’
This cause a stir. Slangam in particular don’t like his stock to go down, even if it aint all his own stock, and even if he got enough for a whole fleet to transport, and even if he believe he die without a rescue from that fleet. Stock fill his mind and heart and every subtraction cause a big emptiness in them vital organs.
‘Yer can club some seals yerself and do yer own skinning and drying,’ say he.
‘I already done that for years. A quarter of them skins is mine.’
‘A quarter?’ he scorn me. ‘Yer think yer done a quarter when yer spend most of yer time fetching sticks?’
‘I think the sticks make the fire and the fire make the food and without food yer don’t get no fucken skins at all.’
This seem a winning argument to me but it don’t win me nothing. They put their criminal heads together and decide that if Toper insist on giving me food, and he do, for as he explain with his breathy ferventness he fear the burning of his soul, then I have to get my own skins for shelter and clothing otherwise I’m jes a parasite upon their generosity.
‘Parasite? I never heared of that word, Flonker.’
‘It mean feeding at the table of another. Yer have to earn yer own table.’
Them other two blink and gape, blink and gape, they so in awe of Flonker and his Persian education.
It now come souse into my mind that with their arguing they hope to snare me. They think the arguing draw me in and bind me, not with love for my fellow creatures, for that do require loving gestures, even a lowdown felon know that, but with the hooks of venom. The hooks of venom shud plague my skin and cause an itch, an itch that only endless quarrelling can scratch.
I jes turn and walk off.
Already I found a cave, well it’s more a hollow really, I been using it during the day to rest at and eat my food in, now it look to be my home. Trouble is, it face the wrong way for some of them big storms and it need a flap of some sort. That’s why I want the skins that’s mine.
I sit in the sun outside my hollow, it’s so hot I fall into a drowse. Course it aint hot like Norfolk once were, but we been here so many years hotness take on a new level. There aint no hot, not really, not until it’s put against cold, and cold here go all the way to iceberg.
I drowse and think, I aint gonna be snared by their hate, rushing back in a froth to spit and rage, or crawling on my belly to put my case. Through my life I already done enough of that. Fighting put me in a rage and pleading make me anxious. Best jes to stop both and be free. But that don’t mean I aint gonna get them skins. I’m gonna sit tight and wait for the right time to claim what’s mine.
A fine night come, a fine night with a spread of glittering stars. I make my way to the camp. When I hear the snores coming out o
f the hut, I step inside. I choose this night because when I were collecting wood I seen them having a vodka party and they sleep like the dead after such a frolic. Same as always, they sleep on when I creep around them. Fatty lie on his back and snore with his mouth wide open, Toper curl up like a child and snuffle like one of them little pigs that’s keeped for their silky hair, and Slangam lie on his side straight as a pole and make noises out his nose that sound like objections, he object to the way God make him sleep through the night instead of working.
Their helplessness in sleep make me think how easy it wud be to snatch a firebrand from the glowing fire and burn down the hut, jes burn them up in their sleep. They wud not know what happen to them, they jes wake up to find their selfs standing at the gates of Heaven with singed wings. If they were even to go there. And do I go to Hell myself jes for thinking to do it? Toper say yair, but where’s the virtue of resisting temptations if there never were any?
I tiptoe through the flap into the store house. There they are, all the fruit of our years of labour, stacked high against the walls. I aint particular, I aint trying to fetch a high price in some fancy fickle marketplace, I jes grab a armful for my needs. I don’t believe the others notice that some gone missing. Even Slangam lose count over the years. I remember in the early days he were always counting how many skins we have towards our passage home, and recounting when he lose count, but one year – who know now which one it were? – even the recount need recounting, and from then on he jes pretend to know. He have an eyeball way of sizing up the piles, but them piles flatten down over time and trick him. Now he have to do the eyeballing and subtract the time it take to flatten, it all jes too much, even for a man with a lust for big stackings.
Yair, one armful is virtuous, one armful jes satisfy my level of need and no more. I make new boots when these ones wear out, I make a new cape if this one grow thin, and I have some flaps for my hollow. Aint no need for stackings for the passage home, the home we’re going to don’t take no earthly payment.
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 19