Saltskin

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by Louise Moulin


  From a distance Jacob’s River appeared a hellhole and up close it was much worse: an exhibit of excrement. Horse faeces around the hitching posts had piled as high as a man’s thigh. On the mud-crusted street, domestic animals strolled and shat: pigs snorted; goats bleated; hens clucked; sheep left their liquorice plops to steam with human slops; a cow wandered, swinging her great bottom, and pissed steaming urine, chewing with her mouth open so saliva swung in green viscous dribbles; strange lizards moved about like demi-demons.

  After months at sea, Angelo roamed the town with the inquisitiveness of a child. The fact there were no sewers, no street lanterns, no established laws did not strike him as a negative. He saw only infinite possibilities, and this optimism blinded him to danger. For Jacob’s River was among the most debauched places on earth. It was a whaling town geared to a surge of population in season, there for the party and afterwards abandoned. Every shyster out to make a quick buck, by means fair and foul, trading in everything from alpha to omega, wicked or heavenly, real or illusory.

  False storefronts had crude painted signs erected so badly they shuddered in the wind like the dappled thighs of a jigging whore, and behind the façades hid wobbly, windowless buildings selling dried beef, tools, oil, tallow candles, pocket knives and soap. Jacob’s River was a hellhole as disgusting as a diseased testicle.

  Hundreds of tents were in the process of being pitched, large latrines dug, make-do huts erected from mud and scavenged wood. There were Portuguese alongside German alongside Irish, as though the Tower of Babel had just fallen and the dust was yet to clear.

  The Qualm’s Arms tavern stood in the centre, and beside it the Rusty Rose. Both buildings boasted exquisite stained-glass windows of gothic proportions, with intricate images of the act of coitus, both grotesque and glorious: from behind, missionary, overlaid and upside down, and some so contorted many stopped passers-by with their head tilted this way and that to work it out.

  At the rear entrance to the Rusty Rose a man could get his boots fixed or, indeed, a custom-made new pair in the latest inventive style: one shaped for the left foot and one for the right. The madam of the brothel hammered the tiny nails into the soles of footwear with the gusto of a chambermaid. Some of her work was as intricate as handpainted miniatures.

  Behind the town stood a great mountain, with steep slopes clad with forest, unexplored, unmapped. Winding through it all, a fat river tumbled in waterfalls all the way to the inlet, whose beaches and bays lay open like a virgin’s spread thighs.

  The crews set about preparing for the whales. Smaller boats were despatched from the various vessels and sent south to identify the positions of the approaching herd from the Antarctic. The wind howled around the cape.

  Captain Angus shouted instructions, his speech a rich gravy of gibberish. It was as if he had learnt to speak from people who made up their own language, salted by the sea and fattened by not only a lisp whistling through gapped teeth but also an inability to modulate his tone, or indeed open his mouth, so all the words that came out sounded to Angelo like complete nonsense until his ear became accustomed. Angus’ eyebrows, long and curled like two fuzzy caterpillars, wiggled and arched, adding expression to his words, which were spoken through a jaw as tense as an athlete’s buttocks. Angelo, having taken a liking to the captain, was never far from him, and was the first to put his hand up for tasks requiring strength and bravery.

  Angelo stood on deck of the Unicorn. Above him was the guiding star of Venus, the first to shine in the sky, the sailor’s star, seeming to twinkle just for him. The flaccid sails flapped like sheets on a line, making slapping sounds. The night was blood temperature and the sea silver lava as the ship lilted under Angelo’s feet, a wooden bucket shifting left and then right on the motion.

  Most of the other men were carousing in the tavern and whorehouse on shore. Angelo sucked in through his nose in a big sniff; the air circled inside him, stinging fresh. The sea breeze swept up his silver mane, grown shaggy, tangling it in his orange stubble and blowing it about his shoulders. He stood like a Viking on the crest of a hill, already victorious. He gave a little skip, hopped up on the railing and balanced himself with his arms wide. In the peripheral vision of his good eye he beheld — and could not believe he had not noticed before — a mermaid, lovingly handcarved with mother-of-pearl eyes and cascading chiselled hair as figurehead of the ship.

  His hands clapped over his mouth in astonished delight and he had to bend his legs to regain his balance. Despite the danger, he climbed around the prow to get closer. He held on with a claw grip as he lowered himself over the side and inched along using the toes of his boots and his fingers. His body poised precariously above the water thirty feet down.

  She was more temptress than saint. Angelo straddled her breast and stared, entranced, at her face, as big as a carriage wheel. Her lips were parted and, made of wood, they had been polished to a high shine. They gleamed succulently, glossy and wet. He daringly put his whole head inside the opening of her mouth and withdrew it, like a lion tamer. He ran one hand over her eyes, each the size of the ship’s soup pot, each lash clearly carved and each iris a smooth ball. His heart tap-danced and a sweat sprang upon his brow. His groin responded to his thoughts as he ran his hand over her nose and cheekbones and the gentle jut of her chin.

  He manoeuvred himself so he was squatting on her hips, and clutched her nipples, as large as doorknobs. He let his gaze drift down over the swell of her belly to the provocative fish’s tail it melded into, inlaid with mother of pearl and abalone. He rode himself against the wood of her body, sliding up and down her, pressing his groin and thighs into her — fantasising that she was real as life — and his seed squirted in his trousers.

  The men stirred in their hammocks to the far-off sounds of an approaching herd of whales. The mournful siren of their lovesong echoed in the night, waking some from their dreams and reminding them of loved ones they had lost, of unfinished business, of mistakes and words they could never take back, sharp and rounded memories that soothed and tormented, lost in the ballads of regret and reverie. It was as if the whales had been sent for such a purpose. Their peeps and whistles echoed on the winds as an ancient magnetic migration tuned them to approach the islands from the south.

  The news rippled like a catchy tune and soon everyone was whistling it: The whales are coming.

  No matter what their role, the season had an impact on all. Wives sewed up the rips in oilskins, pummelled dough for endless loaves of bread, salted meat, and beat cream to butter.

  Whores poured wax over the down on their legs, armpits and pubic areas so as to be smooth for the tongues of the whale hunters and the surge in custom. They oiled their skin and put vegetable dye through their locks — or tea for brunette, vinegar for shine. They starched their petticoats virgin white, dusted their dressing tables and rearranged their rouge, creams, kohl and jewellery. They washed the bedsheets with sand in the river and swept the dust from the floors. They cut ferns and toetoe for vases, and hauled fresh water for water jugs. They sponged and douched their feminine parts clean and ready.

  The whalers prepared their tools and weapons. They gathered firewood on the beach into great triangular stacks, over which they erected iron and copper tripods like great wizard cauldrons. They tied ropes in clever and complex knots.

  Angelo caught on fast and, with the thrill of being part of something big, eagerly pitched in to help. But his attention span was scant: he’d drop his tools to begin something else. He asked annoying questions incessantly. And Davy, always with one eye on his friend, soothed tempers left ruffled in Angelo’s wake. He taught him to check their boat for leaks, and their hammer falls joined the cacophony of banging by ships’ carpenters, punctuating the air like the drums of a native village readying for sacrifice.

  Gulls cawed over the sea like vultures. The sky darkened and cleared and darkened again, as if the forces of fate did not know which way to turn. The air was humid with the atmosphere of danger, but
the sea was chillingly still.

  More ships arrived and lined the coast. Angelo and Davy hauled equipment into the smaller boats suspended from the side of each barque. They loaded harpoons of monstrous size and ropes as thick as a man’s wrist, utensils like giant crochet hooks, for scraping and flensing. The whales are coming the whales are coming the whales are coming, hummed the undercurrent.

  In the grey hours of early morning on a gloomy Monday the hunt began. Before the sun hit noon, blood stained the sea. The sky was as black as fear, periodically illuminated by arcs of lightning as it rained and thundered. The red sea soon churned with thrashing tails. Whales filled up the surface of the ocean, like giant stepping-stones as far as the eye could see, and the dozens of smaller whaleboats bobbed up and down, precarious and vulnerable. The shouts of the men in the boats mingled with the cries of wounded whales.

  Boats capsized and many men were sucked under. Harpoons, like demented cupid arrows, darted and crisscrossed the air between boats and their targets, aimed to pierce the blubber of their prey. Whales jumped out of the water like wild buffalo, with boats on their backs, or crashed down on top of them, smashing them to splinters.

  Angelo clung to the side of one of the six smaller boats discharged from the Unicorn, now a dot way back in the bay. He held on with white knuckles to a life-rope knotted around the middle of Davy, who stood at the prow leaning forward, making the rope taut, harpoon raised ready to strike. Their dinghy rose with the waves caused by the stirring whale tails and crashed down into the sea, only to rise up at unexpected angles, threatening to crack the boat in two. Angelo muttered incoherently, his head jerking all around him, his eyes wide and stunned. The sea was syrupy with blood.

  Then their dinghy was flung high and the water receded before it, leaving a space of fifteen feet of air, the boat suspended like a held breath. Unsupported, it hung for a few seconds, then belly-flopped on an upcoming wave, winding the sailors. Angelo felt his pelvis shunt against his ribs. Before the whalers could recover, a huge whale rose out of the water beside them, water streaming inky off its shining body, its face level with Angelo’s, and he saw the terror in its eyes. Then he was shoved from behind and he tripped and fell, and quick as fire another sailor stabbed the whale’s eye with a dagger. Angelo let go of the rope that tethered Davy, shoved his arms plaintively to the heavens and let out an almighty lament.

  Davy staggered, rocking the boat, and water flowed in on either side.

  ‘Sit down!’ Davy growled at Angelo, who bellowed all the louder, as if he were heading a charge of his own. In his confusion and outrage he panicked, then made a dash at the ropes of the harpoons. As one man tried to shoot the dart, Angelo had the other end, pulling it back into the boat. A fierce tug of war ensued, then Angelo suddenly released the rope and the sailor fell overboard into the froth.

  Angelo went mad, using whatever means he could to fight his fellow sailors: he punched one in the jaw and kicked one in the shin, the whole time roaring. The men tried to restrain him. Sailors in the other boats turned to look and lost concentration, missing their targets, or, worse, capsizing in the maelstrom.

  Then Davy had Angelo by the shoulders and slapped him in the face. He held Angelo’s cheeks firmly and spat and cursed until Angelo went limp. ‘Don’t worry, Angel boy, we’ll get you home,’ he said, and their dinghy turned from the slaughter and rowed back to shore.

  One man had drowned. Captain Angus heard the report from a score of men. He set Angelo up on the shore with giant hooks and his job was to haul the catch in, tail first, after the boats had run ashore. But the sight of the first dead whale, its mammoth size and the warmth beneath its skin were too much for Angelo. He slid down the whale, sobbing.

  Practically every man had one thing or another to say against Angelo and the captain heard it all. He knew the sinister tide of the men could only be dammed, like a flooded river, for so long. But there was no time to mediate right now, for all hands were needed.

  The sight of the mournful and oddly forgiving eyes of the whales activated Angelo’s sleeping remorse and guilt leaked like a poison. He tore at his hair, bent over double in pain and paced in tight circles, his face screwed up as if his leg were being sawed off.

  Captain Angus couldn’t fathom the man. On the one hand he was virile and masculine; on the other he was a weakling. There was something lofty about him, as though he were bred for finer things, or buggered if he knew. It could be the devil. It perplexed Angus, who rubbed the whiskers of his chin. Not for the first time he was struck by the queer grey hair of the lad, scarcely a man, and he wondered if it were the devil’s work.

  Angelo was so obsessed with his own feelings he was unaware of the black looks the men sent him. Or the talk behind his back of the sullen mood he had created. Many men wanted to have a go: men with wounds of the spirit who had a bone to pick, men ready to hurt for the unsoothed pain within. Word spread through the crew and, as of one mind, like millions of crabs out of their holes, they named Angelo enemy.

  Captain Angus moved Angelo on to another chore — stood him stirring the giant cauldrons of boiling blubber to extract the oil. The steam sealed grease to his face. Mounds of gaseous intestines piled up on the sand like tapeworms. Tens of men worked at the task of skinning the blubber from the carcasses, three men on either side and one on the whale’s back, peeling the flesh off it, using rusty scrapers. Blood painted the air and rivulets of it puddled, the redness contrasted with the yellow sand.

  Night crept up. Torches stuffed with oil-drenched rags were lit and shoved in the sand. Men scuttled about like heathen phantoms, shadowy figures. The beach was strewn with skeletons, spookily grotesque in the dark, and the stench of rotting flesh made Angelo retch. It was endless — more corpses hung to be stripped, and all the while the awful reproach of it: an unspoken shading of the spirit. Angelo, for all his fast-fistedness with men, was simply not a killer. He felt alone, for it seemed to him he was the only one who cared. The men around him were high on it, excited by the secret lust of battlefields.

  Angelo resolved to quit. He sought out Davy and found him having a shit in the sand dunes. Davy whirled around and stumbled to cover himself. He kicked sand over his turd and took a dented tin flask out of his vest pocket. He held it out and squinted at his friend.

  ‘Here, drink this and keep your head down.’ The flask contained some rum laced with a calming powder. ‘Don’t leave the beach without me. Got it? We go everywhere together. Mates?’ Davy tried to extract agreement, but Angelo’s head was swinging wildly.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to the captain.’

  ‘He’s on the ship. Just wait here, eh? We’ll go and have a drink and talk about it.’

  Angelo sculled the rum and took off towards the Unicorn.

  Captain Angus had been thinking on his grey-headed sailor. He reviewed the sight of Angelo wretched over the whales and he noted the lad’s peculiar lack of remorse regarding the drowned sailor. Maybe Angelo did not know what had happened, he considered. From the porthole of his cabin, littered comfortably with nautical maps, he watched Angelo, through the hellish flicker of the fire torches, striding up the beach, his body bent forward, his arms stropping at his sides. Angelo dragged a dinghy — not the Unicorn’s — into the waves and rowed towards the ship.

  Angus sighed and lit a kerosene lamp. He poured two measures of wine into a pot and set it on the stove. Then he opened a cupboard and took out an ounce of caviar he had been saving for a special occasion, some cheese and bread. He lit the fire in the stove and left the grate open. The pot boiled; he poured the mulled wine into two pewter mugs, sat down in his rocker chair and splayed his legs as he stuffed tobacco into his pipe. When he heard the clank of the chain ladder, of Angelo hauling himself up and the sound of his strident steps on the planks of the deck, he found himself anticipating a conversation with this man named Angelo, for he knew he was making his way to him. When Angelo flung open the door of the captain’s cabin and knocked belatedly and a touch d
efiantly on the door, Angus felt jolly pleased to see him. He motioned for Angelo to take a seat.

  Angelo took in the cabin, with a book-lined shelf that would be the pride of any scholar. The volumes were leather-bound.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Angus. ‘How many wells does it take to make a river, Angelo?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Just one if it’s big enough, boy. Just one.’ Angus tapped his forehead sagely. He indicated the mug of mulled wine, pushed the caviar towards Angelo and handed him a teaspoon.

  Angelo started to blabber and waffle, waving the spoon like a conductor. Angus listened to his ramblings, which were as distorted as a puzzle — not much of it made any sense. He caught fragments: bloody water, all dead, and once, Mama. It was clear the lad wasn’t coping.

  Angus savoured the salty pulp of fish eggs on his tongue. He sipped his wine, swirling it in his mouth and letting its spirit soften him to a gentle stupor. And he let Angelo rave. After all, whaling was a rough business and Angelo would not be the first to respond badly. He had a duty, as captain, like a man of the cloth, to listen. But he wasn’t really listening or else he would have heard.

  It was a moment before Angus realised Angelo had stopped. The captain refocused his vision and noted Angelo sagged in his seat, the whites of his eyes blazed as if scrubbed, and his pupils wide and black. The ship rocked like a cradle.

  ‘Aye,’ said Angus, not knowing the gist, ‘and where does that leave you?’

  ‘I have to abandon the Unicorn,’ said Angelo. The calming draught Davy had given him was finally taking effect, making him serene and languid.

  ‘And what?’ asked Angus.

  ‘And find her.’

  Angus perked up, shifted his position, let out a discreet fart. ‘Ah, the devil love. And where is the bonnie lass?’

 

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