On the Java Ridge

by Jock Serong

  You cut off my foot.

  Your foot had lost its blood supply. It was gangrenous, and if I hadn’t operated you’d have developed septicaemia. Blood poisoning. Which could have killed you.

  But you cut off my fucking foot…

  They lowered him into the Zodiac now, and Isi watched Sanusi ease the boat into the shallows then jump in and start the motor. Tim lay in the well, staring upwards as he had been in the tent, disbelief still etched on his features as they cut the short distance towards the Java Ridge.

  If we’d left it, you probably would’ve died. Now that the foot’s gone, you should be fine.

  Hamid, by comparison, had never questioned why someone had taken a power drill and bored a hole in his head. It was even possible that he didn’t understand what had been done to him—he didn’t fully regain his senses until after Finley had packed the wound and stitched his scalp.

  Fraggle and Carl had spent the morning ferrying small loads of people and gear from the beach to the Java Ridge, the blue smoke of the Zodiac’s outboard settling as a haze on the lagoon. Sanusi and Radja were somewhere on board below Isi, assigning hammocks, bunks, yoga mats and piles of surfboard bags to sleep on. Parents and children were told to share. Storage wasn’t an issue: none of them had any possessions beyond the odd plastic bag.

  The crew had given handlines to some of the men and were teaching them how to pluck reef fish from beneath the boat: showing them which were good, which were poisonous. The results brought little bursts of laughter from among them, especially once the translation for something called ‘poo fish’ had been made. It was the first time Isi had heard laughter since the afternoon they saw Dana.

  The women were gathered around Isi’s herb gardens, picking at the leaves: biting, offering, laughing. They took particular delight in her upside–down tomatoes: buckets hanging under the eaves of the cabin with holes in the bottoms, out of which sprouted the tomato plants, their stems veering and twisting to find sunlight. A couple of the older men were studying the lines of the Java Ridge, running weathered hands over the planking and the seamless joinery. Isolated for months, maybe years, by language and geography, the timber spoke to them in some dialect that was secret and shared.

  Leah had fired up the stereo, a thick tropical stew of Desmond Dekker’s early reggae. The bass thudded into the slow air and the men with their hands on the timber glanced up in disapproval. Isi, too, baulked at the idea of music in the circumstances, but she let it go. It might lift the pall that hung over them.

  But it wasn’t the music that grated. Isi’s eyes followed Leah as she walked back downstairs, tall and graceful in a cotton wrap and a bikini top. She passed a group of seated men, all of whom studied her closely. Unconsciously, she had made herself the centre of a moment. One of the watchers was Irfan Shah, the old Pashtun man. He stroked his beard behind his upraised knees and said something.

  Leah stopped and spun, searching for the source of the comment.

  ‘What did he say?’ she demanded of the men.

  None of them answered: none of them knew how. Irfan Shah and his motives were hidden behind the expanse of beard. He repeated whatever it was he had said, and Radja, listening from the rail above, called down to her.

  ‘He say to cover yourself, miss.’

  Irfan Shah stared at her, confident now that his rebuke had hit home.

  Leah stood before him, his huddled shape barely reaching her knees, and stared back. Someone hissed. She had her hands on her hips. Isi was about to move forward to intervene when Leah appeared to reconsider: she lowered her hands and withdrew, her eyes never leaving Irfan Shah’s. The demeanour of the men around him shifted: the old man’s authority seemed immediately to have diminished, like static had dissolved its broadcast.

  Isi waited until the Zodiac was craned up out of the water and tethered to its rack on the stern. As was his habit, Sanusi darted from the stern along the port side to the bow, where he waited for her to start up the windlass. She took a long, last look at the island, at the scuff marks across the sand where they’d made their exit, the disturbed ground where the burial site was; and at the otherwise serene image of the atoll.

  It had taken so much from all of them in such a short time, absorbed their short and wretched piece of history as it had no doubt subsumed other mariners and their ordeals for centuries. The birds and the crabs and the insects would continue their cycles of fertility and predation. The sun would go round a thousand times more without human witness and the sea would continue to pound the reef. In time all trace of them would disappear.

  She switched on the windlass when Sanusi raised his hand to indicate he was ready. The heavy steel links crawled up over the roller onto the winch and the anchor clunked into its cradle.

  Never again, she promised herself. Time for an office job somewhere dull. Somewhere Joel would never reach her—if he even wanted to.

  She eased the throttles forward and felt the Java Ridge beginning to cut the water. Leah appeared beside her in a shirt and smiled as though nothing had just occurred. ‘Snake?’ she smiled and offered Isi the brightly coloured packet of lollies. ‘Don’t tell the others.’

  The shadows of coral heads, the rocks and shoals of fish began to slip past on both sides of the rising bow. With a roll of the wheel she pointed the nose at the reef pass and let the forward motion settle her mind.

  Once she was clear of the atoll Isi set a course southeast for Ashmore.

  Thirteen hours. Off the side of the giant undersea ridge that marks the southern edge of Indonesia, towards the slope of Australia’s continental shelf. Into the maze of sandbanks and coral cays around Ashmore and finally to safe anchorage. Get these people off, unload the surfers with them, and she could sail home with Sanusi and Radja. Hand them their cash, tie off on the wharf and walk away. If Joel wanted to make an insurance claim he was more than welcome.

  The sea was calm all around, as eager to forget as she was. The horizon mingled into the low-hanging clouds and the island receded to a tiny smudge behind them. When the music had been playing for an hour or so Isi decided to turn it off. She imagined it would be disconcerting for the children especially—the random shuffle had cycled through some indelicate rap, and if they couldn’t follow the English she felt fairly sure the aggression would be clear to them.

  She skipped up the steps to the aft deck and rounded the corner to find Fraggle and Carl seated on the benches around the table. On the table’s surface there was a scatter of empty beers and a bottle of whisky between them. Playing cards were strewn about, the remains of an abandoned game. Crown caps, chip packets and cigarette butts on Fraggle’s side. She stabbed at the power button, killing the stereo.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Fraggle put a finger to his lips and made a shhh sound. He tried and failed to suppress his laughter, and it burst out of him childishly. His dreadlocks swung as he laughed.

  ‘Shuddup man,’ said Carl. ‘She’s meeean.’

  Isi realised she had her hands on her hips again. ‘There’s two dozen Muslims downstairs, you inconsiderate pricks. Do you really think this is a good time for a piss-up?’

  ‘Why don’t you have a beer?’ Fraggle asked hopefully. He patted the cushion beside him on the bench. She ignored the gesture.

  ‘Pull yourselves together,’ she said, and hated the sound of it.

  ‘Hey, what happened to all the “help yourselves to the beers” bullshit, Isi?’ Carl was rolling a lighter over his knuckles and she wanted to snatch it off him and throw it at his head. ‘We helped you out with your friends downstairs, and now we’re back to normal. Still your paying customers, eh.’

  ‘This charter was over the minute those people hit the reef, Carl. You’d know that if you had half an ounce of common…fuck, what? Decency? Sense?’

  Fraggle raised a conciliatory hand. ‘Isi, this whole thing’s a big stress. We were just letting off steam. Okay? We’ll clean up. All cool.’

  ‘Cool,’ she fumed. ‘Coo
l. Try telling that to the old bloke downstairs who just had a go at Leah about getting around in bathers.’

  She left them there, returned to the wheelhouse and tried to shake off her annoyance. The other boat’s skipper, Ali Hassan, was pacing the front deck below her. He reappeared either side of the large tarp from time to time, smoking and flicking his butts into the sea. She didn’t like people smoking on the front deck, but she felt wary of a confrontation with him. His whole body was springloaded with tension. He had the same small backpack slung over one shoulder that he’d had since he first appeared on the beach. He’d never put it down, never opened it as far as Isi was aware. She had a fair idea what was in the bag: passports, identity cards and cash, which led her to think that Ali Hassan must be weighing a dilemma. He could use the identity papers of one of the dead to claim asylum, then accept a paid flight home from the Australian government. The bureaucrats wouldn’t look into it with any great vigour if the easier option was to deport him.

  But he ran the risk that the other survivors would turn him in. Some of them must have relatives who’d drowned. Some of them must have grudges over the state of the boat, the whole fucking mess. He was risking jail time. But sailing the other way offered no greater solace. Who could tell what recriminations awaited him in Indonesia? The local political figures who must have been complicit. Gangsters, dealmakers, more grieving relatives.

  Isi reached for the Sampoernas, lit one and wedged herself against the cabin wall, feet on the handrail. It was her roost. From here she could watch life on the front deck without being observed.

  The bow rode high and effortless, and a cluster of small children had gathered at the rail, scanning the surface. Occasionally they’d squeal with delight and point at the air beside the fast-moving boat: flying fish were launching themselves alongside, whirring at cabin height then plunging back in again.

  Leah sat on the bow with a group of the women and girls, exchanging fragments of language and what looked like scandalised giggling. She’d found a bottle of nail polish somewhere, and handed it over to the girls so they could do each other’s toenails. Movement agreed with Leah: she’d come alive since they broke from the stasis of the island. She’d been darting to and from the galley making drinks, fixing medications, delicately applying sunscreen here and there. A rummage through the cupboards of the galley had unearthed a needle and thread and some scissors, and Leah had declared she’d make a ‘stubby holder’ out of one of Tim’s old T-shirts, to house his stump. Tim lay in a hammock under the edge of the awning with the stump elevated and the headphones on. Isi could tell the headphones were not about music but about keeping the world at bay. The codeine had his pain just about covered but not his anguish. Eyes fixed on the underside of the awning, jaw muscles knotted in his cheek. Occasionally he looked down, straight at Leah. Isi wondered what passed between them.

  Carl was on the bow with Sanusi, sorting through the pile of surfboards that had been used in the rescue and lining them up for repair. A puff of air carried the petro-fumes of the resin up to Isi. Board repairs came last on any rational list of priorities; maybe like the stump-cover, it was a gesture towards normality.

  Her anger with Carl had subsided. In its place she felt something more like pity. The language he’d used when they clashed on the beach—it was calculated to inflame, the way a child would argue. This will infuriate you. And this and this. The drinking session would have been his idea. He was young, hadn’t seen much of the world. If there’d been more left of this trip, she’d have worked away at him until she found his better nature. But as things stood, they’d be parting ways forever by sundown.

  Fraggle had reverted to his resting state, compelled to record everything. He wandered around the deck, explaining the camera to the survivors and gently prompting them to smile; arranging their hands, his heavy auburn hair spilling over the task. He’d pull faces for the children, shrink into himself, passively, for the elderly. He had a skill for it, she could see. But even in conversation with them, he remained somehow alone.

  Neil Finley had mostly slept since his marathon session in the medical tent. Isi tried to see the situation as he would: was he ashamed of his momentary loss of control? Was he even wired for shame? The taut lines of his body stretched out on a board bag in the sun, one graceful foot crossed neatly over the other. Such a strange kind of violence: Finley had maimed Tim in order to save his life. Isi had seen him once unwrapping the stump and checking it while Tim stared pointedly out the window—there was a kind of fog between them. Even if either of them had known how to penetrate it, they showed no inclination to do so. In a hospital, the awkward conversation would be skipped through: a suit talking to a bed, the horror dulled by medication. Here, they idled on the deck only metres from each other.

  The men among the Iraqis and Afghans had taken themselves down to the bunks. They’d be deep in conversation again. What was there to discuss? Someone, probably Radja, had given them cigarettes. They were powering through the damn things down there, despite her rule, plumes of clove-tinted smoke billowing out the vents.

  Hamid was lying on Isi’s bunk, behind where she stood in the wheelhouse. He was conscious now, with his head heavily bandaged. It amazed her that he’d gone from death’s edge to this calm state with the aid of nothing more than the codeine she and Joel had bought over the counter in Legian. They were optimistic then, stocking their boat for contingencies they’d considered laughably remote. Much like Tim would have been when he bought his travel insurance.

  Luke Finley sat on the point of the bow, his legs either side of the anchor chain. Something had shifted in him since they picked up the survivors, something that Isi couldn’t place at first. A movement away from his father. The striking physical proximity when they first boarded was gone now; the invisible tether of loyalty or adoration severed. Luke’s shoulders had lost their square set. Before the island, his gaze had sought out reflective surfaces where he could admire himself. Now he stared at nothing.

  So Isi had retreated into the wheelhouse and was standing at the helm, looking out at the sea and letting the panic go with each outward breath. They were all lost in their own worlds, dazed by a giant percussion. But she just had to get them to Ashmore. It wasn’t her job to return them to their senses.

  Then the handset crackled.

  She looked at it in surprise. Radja and Sanusi both had handsets but they never used them. They preferred an intimate vocabulary of gestures from around the deck, looking up at her in the wheelhouse and waving. Tapping fingers, whistling. Rarely, Sanusi might put a call in from the engine room but she knew he wasn’t down there.

  Survivors and clients on deck. Men smoking in the bunkroom. Crew busy. So why was someone calling?

  She picked it up and answered. It was Sanusi.

  ‘Isi, can you come down?’ he said, slowly and carefully.

  She misread his formal English and laughed. ‘Can’t you bloody come up here?’ But as she spoke, peering out the cabin windows towards the sunlit bow, Sanusi appeared from under the cover of the front awning. He had the handset in his extended hand and was edging away to his right, looking left. The others were alert now, looking also. After Sanusi, Ali Hassan appeared from under the cover.

  He had Roya.

  He had Roya in a headlock and he was holding a knife to her throat.

  It took him some time to get it done, to take control of the Java Ridge and its occupants.

  He stood on the deck, the sunlight gleaming on the dome of his forehead in front of his thinning black hair, screaming and pointing the knife to the north, back the way they had come. His clothes hung limp on the angry points of his thin body. The tirade needed no translation: he wanted them to turn around. With manic sweeps of the blade, he herded all the survivors off the front deck and inside, then down the steps into the bunkroom; the largest space on board. Isi could now see that he’d delayed doing this for long enough to figure out the internal dimensions of the vessel: where everything was k
ept, where the large and small spaces were.

  The bunkroom was big enough to hold all of them, and Ali Hassan was sending them there because it had only one doorway. There was a hatch at the far end that opened onto the bow, but as she edged around the deck, following Ali Hassan and Roya, Isi could see that he’d thought of that: there was a weight belt looped through the handles of the hatch so it couldn’t be opened from the inside.

  His gaze was fixed, furious with intent as he walked the passengers through the lounge and down the steps. He held Roya in a grip that betrayed to Isi just a little of his concealed self: firm enough to terrify, with his arm around her neck and the blade of the knife glinting in the bright sun, but not aiming to bruise her, their progress marked by traces of unconscious care. He lifted her over obstacles as he careened around the deck. Hauled her around so he always faced the passengers, but swept the flies from her face as they tried to settle there. Always the knife, though: the one unalterable reality.

  Finally they were all penned, unresisting, in the bunkroom. All but Roya and Isi.

  Isi watched the girl eyeing her captor. Thinking hard, it seemed: engaged with a whirl of inner possibilities but never uttering a word. Her huge dark eyes swivelled to take it all in, lashes falling when she looked down, whites flaring when she studied her periphery. Isi thought about how painful his grip must be, how terrifying to sense the gleaming metal held inches from her ear. Isi had prepped meals with that knife, taken it clean through the carapace of a mud crab, so sharp it didn’t crush the edges. How made of flesh the girl felt to her then; how made of vulnerable flesh.

  From where Isi stood, shaded by the awning over the bow, she could only watch helplessly. The expensive boards no longer mattered. The new gear, the fittings, the paint…the equipment she and Joel had borrowed for and fitted to the decks in the smoky heat and clamour of the wharf. All of that effort she knew with cold certainty was now slipping away from her. Yet she was surprised how little it troubled her, compared to the fates of these strangers. Compared to what might befall Roya. Deep in her heart, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, the child mattered more than anything.