by Jan Michael
CHAPTER FOUR
The sun shone full on the clearing. It picked out specks of dust on the dark green leaves of a mango tree, which swayed as a weight pressed down on its branches. Leaves rustled with movement. Joshua’s father approached, dragging behind him large palm leaves that left tracks in the earth. His shadow was only just ahead of his toes at this midday hour. ‘Where are you?’ he called.
‘Here,’ Joshua shouted from his perch high above. ‘Picking mangoes.’
His father let go of the palm leaves. ‘Pass them to me,’ he said, ‘then come down. I want you to go to the Gola Hotel. Tell Oliver I can take another pig tomorrow if he’s got one for me. Can you do that?’
‘All right,’ Joshua said confidently.
‘I’d go, only I want to get on with the roof.’ The palm leaves were for the thatch. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you can manage on your own. Comb your hair first.’
Joshua didn’t bother with his hair, and his father didn’t check. He set off down the road that ran along the sea, past the sugar cane and the rubbish tip. He held his nose against the stench. About a mile further along he came to his convent school, a new concrete building, empty now that it was the holidays, apart from the few orphans who lived there with the nuns. The Gola hotel was nearby, beyond the jetty, overlooking the harbour. It was small – two storeys high – its wood painted pale green and white. He thought it was beautiful.
He stood outside the hotel, suddenly unsure of himself. He’d never been here on his own before. A man in a smart cream suit saw him gaping. ‘What do you want, boy?’
Joshua jumped. ‘Oliver, the cook,’ he said politely. ‘My father sent me.’
‘Go round the back.’ The man jerked his thumb. ‘That’s where the kitchen is.’
Joshua wandered on round, gazing up at the wide verandah on the first floor. Everyone said there were rooms up there for guests, but he’d never met anyone who had stayed there. He wondered what it would be like to sleep in one of the hotel bedrooms, so high up you could look down on the sea.
‘Mind where you’re going!’ He’d bumped into Oliver who was sitting on the kitchen steps, rolling a cigarette.
‘Sorry.’
Oliver licked the paper, put the cigarette in his mouth, lit it and inhaled greedily.
Joshua waited.
‘Were you looking for me?’ Oliver asked at last.
Joshua nodded. ‘Dad says, have you got a pig for him?’
‘When for?’
‘Tomorrow.’
Oliver leaned forward and straightened Joshua’s shirt, which had slipped sideways. It was too big for him. It had belonged to his father. He shook his head. ‘That’s too soon. I can manage the day after. Okay?’
Joshua shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Would you like some pastries?’
Oliver’s pastries were famous. ‘Ooh, yes.’
Oliver stuck the cigarette back in his mouth and got up. Joshua followed him into the kitchen and watched him take pastries from a large tray and put them in a paper bag. ‘Here you go, one for you, one for your father. Don’t tell anyone.’
Joshua took the other path home, past the hospital. A hospital porter was coming towards him, his arm around a man, half carrying him towards the hospital building.
Joshua almost dropped the brown paper bag.
‘Out of the way, you!’ The porter barked at him.
Joshua took no notice. He was staring at the man. He was wearing a straw hat shaped like a cone and there was a blanket tossed over his shoulders. The blanket had a black crocodile woven into it.
The man stared back at him. He was so close that Joshua could have touched him. Mountain man.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ the porter said crossly. ‘Out of the way. Can’t you see the man’s in pain?’
A line of sweat trickled down the mountain man’s forehead. Joshua watched as another drop detached itself from beneath the straw hat and glided its way downwards. There was panic and fear in the red-rimmed eyes.
‘Why don’t you take off the blanket?’ Joshua wanted to suggest, but he didn’t know the words in the man’s language and they stuck in his throat.
The porter elbowed him aside impatiently and led the man past. He stumbled. He looked, Joshua thought, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Joshua reached out a hand to help. He touched grease on the man’s skin and recoiled. It was smeared on thickly and smelled rancid, like the pork fat his father gave away when it had been standing too long. In one hand the mountain man clutched a string bag that had lumps of blue-grey stone showing through.
The man and the porter finally reached the hospital steps – ten deep steps, white and polished. Another porter hurried down from the building to help.
The mountain man put one foot on the bottom step and paused, swaying and trembling. He looked back over his shoulder and caught Joshua’s eyes and held them with his own. He kept his head trained on Joshua as he was helped slowly up the steps, one by one.
Joshua could not tear his gaze away. He began to lift a hand to wave goodbye but found that he couldn’t. He was trapped in the man’s pleading eyes. It wasn’t until the mountain man was swallowed up by the dark hospital entrance that Joshua felt able to move. Then he ran. He ran round the corner of the hospital, down the dusty path at its side, across the flat stretch of grass where coconut palms grew in stately rows, back to the road and on to the edge of the clearing. He stopped outside Robert’s house, panting.
‘Hey! Joshua!’
He turned and saw Robert under the jamalac tree, helping two of his younger brothers to build a miniature house with broken-up branches and leaves.
‘Watch out,’ one of the small boys warned crossly as Joshua sat down beside Robert. ‘It isn’t very strong yet.’
‘What’s up?’ Robert asked over the small boy’s head.
‘There’s a mountain man,’ Joshua began and stopped. He wasn’t sure exactly how to explain a feeling with facts. ‘They’ve brought him in to the hospital. I saw him. He … looked at me.’
Robert was puzzled. ‘So?’
‘His eyes … I thought he was asking for help.’
‘Help? But he’s a mountain man. You just said so. You can’t help mountain men,’ Robert said scornfully.
Joshua nodded, then shook his head. ‘Maybe this one can get better.’
‘Don’t be silly. They never do. Mum says government medicine’s wasted on them. The only way they come out of hospital is lying down, in a coffin.’
‘Yes, but I thought –,’ Joshua shifted on the hot ground. ‘I mean, let’s go back and see if we can do anything.’ Suddenly the words were rushing out. ‘Maybe mountain people die because they’re lonely here and it’s strange. And this one had a crocodile on his blanket, like the man in the market. It might be the same man, you see. Maybe we’re the only people who know him.’
Robert considered. Then he nodded. ‘Okay.’ He turned to his younger brothers. ‘See you later.’ He got to his feet.
Five-year-old Solomon let out a wail. ‘What about our house?’
Robert cuffed him gently. ‘You finish it and you can show me when I get back. Build a wall of stones around it so the chickens don’t peck it over.’
Solomon beamed. He liked building walls. He was already starting to gather stones as they left.
The whitewashed hospital gleamed in front of them.
They drew closer, looking up at the tall windows. Unlike Joshua’s house and most of the house in the village, these windows had glass in them, and you could push down the top halves to let the air in. There were ten windows on each side, but they were too high for Joshua and Robert to see in. They prowled around the building, heads craned upwards, gatching glimpses of the black mountains that brooded threateningly behind the hospital, making it look small and vulnerable. A curtain fluttered in the breeze, but no mountain man came to the window.
‘I really thought he was trying to tell me something,’ Joshua said. �
�But how can he if he doesn’t know I’m here?’
‘Let’s go and tell him then,’ Robert suggested.
They stared at each other.
‘Do you think they’ll let us in?’ Joshua asked.
‘Come on. We’ll find out.’
They went round to the front of the building, Robert leading the way. They started up the steps. Joshua stopped and rubbed one foot against the other till he was sure the dust had fallen off. Then he ran to catch up with Robert and together they went into the entrance hall. It was empty and cool. A staircase ahead of them went up to a gallery. The fan set high in the ceiling ruffled their shirts. Joshua stamped his foot and whirled in the wind below it, arms spread wide.
A nun bustled through a door and paused when she saw them. ‘What are you two scamps doing here?’ she scolded. ‘Are you sick?’
Joshua stopped in mid-whirl and grinned at her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve come to see the mountain man.’
‘Have you indeed?’
‘We want to visit him,’ Joshua said stubbornly. ‘He wants us to.’
She opened a drawer in the desk near the door and took out a file. ‘Are you family?’
They shook their heads. ‘He’s very ill,’ she told them gently. ‘Only family can visit him, it’s the rules.’ She opened the file and began to study it.
‘Off you go then,’ she said firmly, seeing them still standing there.
‘Is he dying?’ Joshua asked.
She stared at him. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ she said. This time she sounded cross.
‘Yes. But is he? Dying?’ Joshua stood his ground.
‘Of course not. Now out, both of you. Scram!’
Joshua looked at Robert and they turned.
‘Do you think she was telling the truth?’ he asked Robert as they went slowly down the steps.
Robert shrugged. ‘Not really. Do you?’
‘I do,’ Joshua said, but even as he spoke, he wondered.
CHAPTER FIVE
Longboats were coming through the breakers. The boatmen jumped into the surf to steady them while other fishermen waded in from the beach to help pull them in. Joshua and Robert watched with the villagers, Joshua still clutching Oliver’s bag of pastries. The fishermen jammed rollers under the boats, wrapped ropes around their shoulders and hauled them high up the beach to where a small crowd waited.
Joshua turned away, and, with a wave to Robert, he headed home.
His father was still thatching the shop roof, laying palm leaves across wooden beams and tying them, making sure they overlapped so that rainwater would run off and not come seeping through.
‘Oliver gave me some pastries. Look.’ Joshua held up the paper bag, crumpled and soggy from being carried around all afternoon.
His father was concentrating on tying one long leaf to another and didn’t look down at Joshua till he’d finished.
‘Marvellous. Put them in the food tin and we’ll have them with supper. What about the pig? Can he let us have one?’
‘Yes, but not tomorrow. The day after. Usual arrangement, he says.’
His father nodded. ‘Fine. That gives us another day to work on the shop. Perhaps that’s better. Now, I want you to make me a new fly swat, all right? The old one’s falling apart.’
Joshua went into the house and stowed the pastries in the tin, pushing the lid down hard to make sure it was sealed. When he came back outside he picked up one of the palm leaves from the ground. He cut a length of stalk and stripped off some side leaves. Then he sat on the new stone bench they had built outside the shop and began plaiting. He worked on the fly swat until the sounds of thatching stopped and he heard his father whistling as he began to cook their evening meal in the yard behind.
After supper he scoured the pan with sand. He rinsed the pan and the dirty plates under the standing tap at the door before bringing his father hot tea. He watched his father take out a small knife and begin to mark a piece of wood with it. The paraffin lamp behind him threw his shadow on the yard. Joshua waited for his father to start to whittle. Once he began carving he seemed to retreat into a world of his own. Joshua slipped away. He knew this was the moment to go.
When he got to the hospital he hesitated, then began to climb the steps. Another nun might be on duty and might let him through, he reckoned.
The entrance hall was empty. He pushed open the door and almost collided with the nun he had met yesterday. She recognised him.
‘You again? What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see if the mountain man wears his hat in bed,’ he made up quickly.
‘Did you now? Well, out.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you already, only family can visit. Who are you anyway?’
‘Joshua,’ he answered, rubbing one foot against the other.
‘Joshua,’ she mused. ‘Where do you live?’
‘Back there.’ He jerked his head.
‘Now I know where I’ve seen you. Your father’s the butcher, isn’t he?’
He nodded.
‘I see.’ She stared at him. ‘That’s a bit different,’ she said.
He looked up hopefully.
‘I can see why you –’ she broke off. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘If I say which windows belong to his ward, you could keep guard on the outside, couldn’t you?’
He hadn’t a clue what she meant, but he nodded. Any information was better than none.
‘His ward is at the back of the hospital. There are six windows and his bed is beside the second window from the far left corner. Now go –’
He was already scampering away, eager to locate the window, running down the steps and round to the back.
He found the window and looked up for any sign of movement from inside the glass.
None came.
He waited. He counted to a hundred. Still nothing. He wasn’t even sure what he expected, but somehow he had the feeling that the mountain man would know he was there. He counted to two hundred, and then, very patiently, to five hundred. With a sigh he turned to go.
Something caught his eye. Something that gleamed in the moonlight near the oleander bushes. He bent and picked it up; it felt smooth and hard.
He carried his find round to the side of the hospital and stood in the electric light that shone through a window so that he could examine it more closely. It was a snake, carved out of blueish-grey stone. The carving was small and perfect, except for the snake’s head, which was missing a tiny chip above one eye. As he gazed at the carving, he remembered the stone in the mountain man’s string bag.
He clasped the snake tightly with both hands. It was a sign, he thought jubilantly. He was right. The mountain man was trying to communicate.
He returned to the back of the building. Still no one there; no face at the window. He put his fingers to his lips and blew a piercing whistle, the way his father had taught him.
There was no response. Perhaps the man felt too ill to whistle back, he thought.
He raised his right hand high in the air so that the snake could look upwards. Just in case the mountain man was looking. So that he wouldn’t be lonely.
He ran home. At the entrance to the new shop he paused, listening, then went in, feeling for the small stack of paper bags his father had been given by Oliver for special customers. His fingers touched them almost at once. He drew out the top one and took it outside. He slipped in the snake and went round the back. His father was still whittling away.
Joshua didn’t want to show him the mountain man’s snake. He didn’t even want to show it to Robert. It was his secret, thrown out while he was there on his own. He went quietly indoors, lifted up the cloth that was draped between his mattress and the floor and laid the snake in the box under the bed where it would be safe and unseen; his father only swept under the beds after the rains. Then he went back outside. He squatted close to his father, picked up a stick and began drawing fantasy creatures in the dust.
&nb
sp; That night he turned over on to his stomach and felt beneath the bed. He edged the snake from its bag carefully so that the crackling would not wake his father. He closed his fingers around it and lifted it up to the moonlight. The snake’s head reared up from among the thick coils. Joshua ran his finger from the head down along the body and in among the coils; he went round and round until he reached the tip of the tail. The smoothness of the stone against his skin seemed somehow alive. He set the snake down beside his head on the pillow and tried to outstare it, fighting the sleepy drooping of his eyelids. He was sinking now; his back and his legs felt weightless. When his eyelids flickered open for the last time, the snake’s head seemed to have grown till it was as big as his own. He slept.
CHAPTER SIX
Old Mama Siska sat at her open door as she had been sitting every day, still as a statue, watching the shop opposite take shape. It was almost ready. In the last couple of days the butcher and his son had moved tables and a meat safe inside. Now her neighbour’s son, Robert, was helping. They brought the counter in from the house behind. The boys came out and fixed wire gauze over the window, then they hung a curtain of green fishnet over the doorway to keep out the flies. Now she could see nothing. With great force she spat her wad of tobacco on to the ground, got up and went inside.
In the shop, Joshua and Robert polished the counter till it gleamed, swept the concrete floor and helped Joshua’s father fix meat hooks to the ceiling beams.
Twice Joshua almost told Robert about the carving. Twice he shut his mouth again and said nothing.
The next day the pig arrived from Oliver and was killed. Half was set aside for the hotel. His father wrapped up big pieces in banana leaves and then in newspaper and put them in a round, shallow basket.
Joshua put the basket on his head.
‘Don’t dawdle today, will you. Come straight back,’ his father ordered.
Joshua set off at a steady trot for the hotel. He tipped the meat into the box Oliver held out to him and put the basket back on his head. If he was quick, he could go back via the hospital.