by Ghalib Islam
She gave us a clue, Caroline brought her face so close to Quincy’s face, whispered so quietly even I can’t hear.
Quincy thought for a second, hawing humming as if to vibrate the dying woman’s words closer, then kissed his wife and leapt out of bed like a ten-year-old. He whistled out his dogs and whistled out his righthandmen. He rushed downstairs and gathered his infantryman’s helmet from decades past. He gathered up his rifles and his six-shooters, his redcoat with its gold epaulets. He shone his blackarmy boots until he could see his chin on them. Then he went out in search of the man who was planning a rebellion.
Secretly, the knot tightened as the one hundred fourteen Maroons rested their horses and reviewed quietly the remaining tasks. Cattle and sheep grazed on wheat and cereals and other sun crops, several small fires gave light, hidden behind a rocky enclosure. The encampment stood four miles south of the shores of the Gulf of Eden along the mountainous region, at a point that would be later known as Maroon Peak. And it was, in fact, Ellipses, Quincy’s righthandman, who noticed the smoke first and asked if he should go up there and examine it.
No, Quincy whispered, let’s make tracks.
They tethered the horses a safe distance away and treaded softly back. The encampment was high up and while there was a path, they could not risk being seen. They wanted only to hear, and craggy folds of grey mountain rock helped. They climbed into a crevasse.
Fifty metres above, on a plateau, the sentries that evening, Rudolfo and Solomon, watched the craggy moon face brighten as evening inked the sky a deeper violet. The russet soil augured no victors because there were looksees along every possible route. An hour earlier someone mentioned two separate horse pirates, fresh and dangerouslooking, but Rudolfo and Solomon who were weary from hewing firewood for the day’s meal, made less of the discovery and shared a pipe. They had forgotten their original names on the Passage, though Solomon said he could remember it partially.
It was four syllables long, he could remember, and contained the sound ngua, but the memory ended there.
Rudolfo said all his memories before arriving to the unnameable country had been erased by the black milk they had been given to drink, and the lalapping strangewaters of the journey, and frankly, he didn’t care.
Why not, Solomon handed him the pipe.
Because the past is a mist, friend, and the further you walk into the mist the more plain it is to see there is no way to go back where you came from.
They spoke on their disagreements as the soft sounds of hell emerged from the distance. Underneath the stage, fifty metres below their hidden crevasse, John Quincy and his righthandman listened as the scene unfolded. They could not see, but this only piqued their interest more.
What ho and who goes there, Solomon says at the ghost-pale apparition, which seems not to hear.
Stop where you are, Rudolfo lifts his rifle, and at this the old woman halts.
They approach her slowly and Solomon questions her in English and Quinceyenglish. What is a white woman doing so far from her home, alone and unguarded in these dangerous times.
She will not speak and her craggy face scares them because refracted by moonlight it looks a little too much like.
Torches and men wielding torches respond to all the shouting. The rule for intruders is immediate severe, but since this is an old woman and apparently deafanddumb, Amunji’s word is necessary to make the decisions.
Amun asks them to leave the prisoner with him.
So you are the one, she says.
So you can speak.
Please untie me.
And what would I gain; the simple objective is to eliminate any intruders in this congress.
You Maroons, she laughs. That is the name others elsewhere have given such expeditions, so what’s your point.
Nothing; they say you have violated the laws of the country, that you are renegades, and that you should return at once to estates and owners.
It was then Amunji noticed: her makeup had been carefully applied, so thickly that it was virtually a mask, and that her eyes shone too brightly for an old woman’s face. He leaned over to examine her brow in the flickering firelight and got a faceful of mucus. Calmly, he produced a rag from somewhere in the tent, wiped his face before wetting it in bucketwater and cleaning off another time. What witch this one, he saw again the contrast of youthful skin and shock of white hair. He knew her name also and said it now: Caroline Margarita Quincy. Ah you, bibi, he laughed, so they are sending you, he slipped into a more humorous tone. If this is the case, sky is falling and all is lost, no. So tell me, Margarita-begum, wifey of ol’ Johnny boy: are you a messenger or just a plain old spy.
Neither.
Well, you’ve got to be one, he hopped on his left foot. Or another, he hopped on his right.
I am neither.
Well, explain then, because no doubt you have words.
I am a defector, she said straight-eyed, without a blink.
My great-grandfather laughed and laughed, he couldn’t stop laughing, and then when he stopped he just started again.
Joke it up, said Caroline, but you’re laughing away your opportunity to learn about Quincy’s defences and his plan of attack.
We have our own plans, Caroline, and your involvement will only endanger them. Although, he stood up, you realize you have made the job a lot easier in some ways.
Is that right.
Absolutely, he came closer, lowered so that they were nearly eye-level. Your husband is a brutal man, as you know.
That’s why I’m here, because brutality doesn’t become me.
Amunji bit his lip to keep from laughing again. Nevertheless, he asked: Why did you disguise yourself.
Because I thought if your men recognized me they would kill me at once.
And if they saw an old woman they would have been more merciful to you.
Yes.
And that in my presence you could explain yourself.
I didn’t know who you would be, so I didn’t think that far ahead.
Hum.
Please, she sighed, you don’t understand the meaning of living under the rule of such a dictator.
A butcher, he added.
Yes.
He had waited to call him the names, a scoundrel, a pirate. Not a pirate, Amunji shook his head, there is brotherly compassion among pirates, as far as I know.
The tent folds rustled, a stranger entered, whispers passed between him and Amunji. It seems, he returned his attention to that strange girlwoman with her smooth face gloved hands and her starched white hair, it seems your husband sent spies to follow you.
Do you know this for a fact; as far as I am aware, I stole away from home on the fastest horse on coarse rocky terrain and over water to avoid pursuit. If he is nearby, if he has followed me, it was his own doing, I didn’t forewarn him.
Amunji paced, I have heard that ordinarily one sends a bloody ear or a digit of the captor’s hand to alert the party in question of the seriousness of the matter. But, bibi, since you seem genuine, he italicized, there is no need to harm. I need, however, a token of your presence, something by which to indicate to your husband you are captured and that as many of us he kills, we have the one life he values most. Because he does, or does he, I should ask, love you.
Caroline Margarita blinked. Then with a savage expression she added: That man loves nobody.
Amunji untied her hands. Please give me your wedding band, he asked.
Caroline inhaled sharply. He withdrew his machete and she did not resist, slipped it off her finger.
Thank you, he said, you’re going to be a great help.
Meanwhile—recall we left them hanging—Quincy and Ellipses heard a sound. It was a question first uttered in English and repeated in Quinceyenglish. Who could it be this sound, they gesticulated and quizzed each other with eye expressions. They waited three moments longer until torchlights passed over them and they were certain of danger.
They crept deeper into the gash in
the rocks and the feeling of grey sediment fossilized molluscs and million-year animal bones frightened Quincy so much he began to pray to god as Hedayat would on one occasion in futuretime, for life and whatelse. Then the others were coming from above and across and they were stepping quietly, but they could still hear them. And then they went away. The Maroons, one presumes, began looking elsewhere, and in this gap Quincy and Ellipses made haste.
From a distance it was plain to see their horses had been slaughtered and that already magpies and buzzards had descended though it was not their hour. Without a way out, they meandered through the forest, which was as difficult as the most difficult segment of the labyrinth of hedge and grass that wandered so far off the estate and whose construction he himself had ordered. At that moment, Quincy felt like plucking out his eyes and eating them for what godforsaken and how did we arrive, as he forgot the games he had instructed the architects play, all the false and emergency exits they had written down for him on a map.
For two days they wandered. They wandered until Quincy lost the map he had kept inside his head, neatly folded and stored inside a crate whose lock and key were now lost. When at last they turned a corner and found themselves at the northern edge of the cornfield, Quincy’s relief forbade all questions of why and how. The face of Bijou, his manservant, descending the ship’s now elegant staircase, elated him. But the sodden expression on that bright crinkling face told otherwise. The price of her release: his dry words blew the news simple and high off the paper that was produced: unchain the slaves, wake the others, the Somnambulists, abolish indenture and slavery, and declare the equality of all inhabitants of the unnameable country. Signed, Caroline Margarita Quincy. Below the signature, impressed upon the page with three drops of blood, was her plaintosee left thumbprint.
The questions abound who among the missing slaves, why did Caroline, and all the questions then. Quincy’s anguish bore these added confused dimensions but he managed. Drag out the harnesses, whistle out the dogs, whistle out the men, and there were so many of them then, but Quincy had miscalculated his body because he landed assheap on his wheat stalks, confused by the lack of motion. Ellipses, Bijou, others carried him to his room where Moriah, his most trusted houseslave, prepared a goulash of tripe and barley and nightshade, which was supposed to. It slowed his breathing and his wild dreams of vengeance.
Bovaire, he identified the doctor by name when the latter entered.
The one and only, the mustachioed and so forth doctor announced.
Bovaire, Quincy coughed, medic and healer, he laughed and coughed and hurt himself further by these efforts. One of the brightest doctors of the French army once upon a time, we should add during the pneumonic tumult. Stethoscopes were removed.
Inhale, said Bovaire. Cough for me. Urinate. Do as, he ordered as men in his profession have the right. He removed a hypodermic for a painkiller.
Whatever was the illness—and there were various possibilities bandied about and not worth repeating—no one could keep Quincy from Caroline Caroline Caroline Caroline he drew strength from the refrain while stumbling searching for his redcoat with the golden epaulets. Ass and stubborn fool, Bovaire replaced the hypodermic into his case after the shot, you’ll meet your death out there.
At that time out there a congress of Maroons was happening without anyone knowing. There were discussions in the crevasses and grey craggy rocks of who would play intermediary and negotiate with the slaveowners. That was when Amun modified a rifle that could spit no more for a box of empty bullets to fire buttons and rocks, suggested raids of Quincy’s and surrounding landowners’ estates to collect spiderthread and spiderlooms to design a tripwire system to tell them of near dangers. The Maroons amassed an inventory of blankets rope spoons pots cauldrons gourds twenty horses, and began trading with a community of neither slaves nor landowners, from whom they acquired sharper swords and heavier weapons.
They invented hymns at firelight sang questions who takes from darker races/ does he leave as good and as much from others, continued into daylight their lyrics recollecting fetid slave ship journey aboard Quincy’s SS Nothingatall, their sudden return to the estate and field-burdens, and thus they continued, with Amun singing loudest like Satan in the conference of the one-third before overthrowing God in heaven, sowing discord and speaking of freedom as if it was too many things to be only the right fruit from the right tree.
Caroline’s tent folds opened to reveal the slave that had been in congress with the others, who stood before her burning words. His words moved the lone kerosene flame lamplight tremors, and Caroline Margarita watched my great-grandfather Amun, watched the way he gestured, took a page from a book she might once have crossed, listened to his mixed metaphors stirred up a strange blood music. She noticed the words when he paused would continue humming inside her. That night, she dreamed a great walnut tree husband Quincy felled and felt every axe swing as if she were the walnut tree. She felt her feet and toes turning into its uprooted roots. She awoke amidst a blaze as the walnut tree burned a fever inside her. She sat up and drank from the gourd of water by her cot, asked for water again and again.
Are you ill, asked the guard that had been posted.
What is the next stage, she asked.
I’m sorry, but I’m unauthorized to reveal any information.
A-O-I A-O-I
Quincy’s men stormed the encampment and found mist and charcoal, embers and the remainder of fires, embers and not much else. Ellipses communicated via wireless radio—a monstrous new instrument that appeared to have conquered distance—from the back of a mule.
Quincy’s hepatic fever had lessened, but left him weakened, incontinent, babbling brook rushing riverine words headlong over words who knew what meaning. Others took his place on the hunt for the missing slaves, three-quarters infantry and several hundred strong, with eighty dogs hot on the trail.
To disclose the name of the leader: Bemis, himself an owner of five thousand indentures and slaves, and the conjurer of elation: aha, he says at his dogs’ discovery of a close trail. And yet dismay would be more proper: ambush.
A hail of stones and fire, the whizzing of combustibles. Rusty blades pounced and Bemis realized his party should not have come to this valley, where they were now encircled in turbid swampy lowlands. Their horses’ feet sunk into the clay, while gunners struggled to position their weapons, finding no solid footing.
They killed themselves, historians would later write, by friendly fire. Twenty-five Maroons also perished, but their numbers are another story. Stories of the Maroons’ victory burned throughout the nameless country. As if an alarm had been sounded, deserters from numerous estates found their way miraculously to the rebel camp, with clothes on backs, with metal plates in their mouths, and what else.
Caroline by this point had been given an administrative position; she wrote it all down, their names, their names prior to arriving to the unnameable country on the SS Nothingatall, the names of their owners before desertion, whether they could contribute culinary, medical, or literary skills among useful attributes, and whatever else needed to be written down. She exchanges her only dress for a simple coarse cloth because it’s what everyone else wears, and begins diligently to obtain the confidence of the rebels, who, aside from Amunji, who hawks over each of her decisions, see her as an administrative fulcrum necessary for the rebellion. But she is nimble, pushes deftly aside by acquiring the favours of one or another of the higherups. The pushandshove generates a strange friction between them. Rumours of lipstick and sametent night-excursions emerge, although both provide believable alternative explanations.
Then one day there is a sound. And then they all stand and point and wonder of possible sky meanings what could this cloud-dust at a single-propeller British aircraft indiscriminately showering school-age photos of Caroline posing in front of a chocolate fountain higher than a grown man and at Caroline and John Quincy younger and living together in various shades brighter than this hard earth and humble
bread on which she subsists and for which she gives her solemn mysterious thanks in silence. She realizes she is famous, simultaneously a missing person and a fugitive, a curious somebody worth something ex nihilo, quite unlike the whole minuscule British protectorate, so nascent it had not yet time to be properly born, to be named or counted among the nations of the world.
Not too long after, the British prime minister rushes frigates and dreadnoughts to its shores while war is waged all across Europe and new inventions for the people’s betterment are brandished reflective clean before being exploded smithereens. Aviation had begun only several years prior in an American desert, and due to some ingenious individuals had already started to benefit humanity. As the small plane flows above their heads some shots are fired, all miss, and the pilot does a dosedo once around the crowd before climbing over the clouds and into the horizon.
Hemmed against the Gulf of Eden, the Maroons realized they had grown reliant, in previous months of internal resistance, on surprise fires within the estates, on small groups of indentures or slaves driving off landowners with pitchforks and shovels, and the more recent developments: platoons were being found out, their impromptu stratagems predicted, their locations on the tiny patch of land identified.
Years later, a frightening tyrant identified for the time being only as the Governor would imprison himself in a large house known as the Peacock Palace, where he would discover and fall in love with the forever-embalmed Caroline Quincy, and whence he would order the construction of a large-scale map destined to theatreswallow all of the unnameable country, to transform the country into a map itself, a simulacrum, but that is a larger and later story whose particulars Hedayat has no time at present to recount.
More important, there is a funny, if you will consider: Quincy has become a bambacino since the gone of Caroline, a big baby who has transported all his favourites, including his gramophone and Eddie Cincinnati records, two life-sized soldiers pirated from Kublai Khan’s tomb, as well as an ensouled pair of mechanical birds named Q and A, gifted to him by a Swiss cuckoo clock maker. He babbled and bored with the figurines in time, installed actual men as the play figures of his imaginary warcraft, while there raged a real conflict just outside.