by P. J. Fox
The most difficult part was getting the staves together around the flat, round pieces he’d shaped for the bottom of the bucket. They kept springing back into his face, once cutting a shallow gash across his cheek. And then it came to him: dig a hole in the ground that mimicked the approximate dimensions of the bucket. He set the staves around the sides and, carefully, pounded in one of the bottom pieces. Then, after wrapping the straps from the haversack around them to secure them in place, he left the would-be bucket where it was and went to work fashioning hoops from thinner strips of the remaining wood.
Kisten’s unfamiliarity with carpentry and the difficulty of creating any prototype meant that the first bucket wasn’t complete for almost a week. During which time, he’d once again had to fast in order to procure supplies. In retrospect, he was fairly certain that doing so had almost cost him his life. Certainly, there were mornings when he woke up unable to quite see straight. Still, he prevailed, and the other buckets went much more speedily.
When he emerged, having managed to squeeze an extra bucket out of his supplies so that he staggered under the weight of four instead of three, it was with a broad smile on his face.
“You’re crazy,” said Aros.
The buckets were inspected, and pronounced ludicrous. Walid pointed out that he could almost poke his fingers through the gaps, the joints were so crude. Did Kisten not realize that a pail was meant to hold water? And this pail couldn’t even hold sand? But Kisten just smiled inscrutably. “Wait,” he said, gesturing to the massing rain clouds.
Walid shook his head. “You’re a lost cause. You can’t capture rain in a bucket if the bucket is a sieve.”
What they all failed to realize was that Kisten had left the gaps there on purpose. He was depending on the dry, brittle wood swelling and expanding but not so much that it burst the thin hoops holding the bucket together. Kisten was, he’d be the first to admit, no craftsman, but he was a sometime student of history and he’d read about how the old wooden ships were constructed. Their broad planks held together well, withstanding tremendous pressures from all sides, and all without the use of nails. Rather, the builders of the dark ages used wooden pegs. Trennels, they were called, a shortened version of tree nails. They were inserted loose, almost too loose to stay in place, and then wetted until they swelled.
After dinner, Kisten sat outside with his buckets and waited for the rain.
He found himself thinking about all kinds of strange things, these days; there was nothing to do but think. Sometimes he recited poetry to himself, sometimes he wondered where his brother was, and sometimes he cursed the stupidity of the rebel cause. Case in point: many of the prisoners sold darics in exchange for the local currency, almost always to the guards. Trade flourished at the current exchange rate, which was ten to one; it was a good value. The local currency was so inflated that a man practically needed a satchel of the stuff to buy a loaf of bread. The daric, on the other hand, remained stable even now.
They cling to our economic system, he thought grimly, because even they know it’s all that’s keeping them alive, and yet they’re still trying to throw off our repressive yoke. What sense did that make? Surely they realized that if they did succeed in ridding their planet of the foreign scourge, all those darics would go with it? A daric wasn’t worth more than toilet paper in a market that wouldn’t accept darics as currency. Which meant that, if they truly intended to win, these guards might as well start wiping their asses with them.
When he’d first met Aros, and the others, Kareem had produced a bar of soap. A remnant of a bar, really, but thrilling all the same. They’d taken turns with it, reverencing the idea of being clean more than the actual level of cleanliness they’d been able to achieve, until the sliver had wasted to nothing.
Kisten had always considered that he lived frugally. Before. But now he wondered. His idea of what constituted frugal had changed. It was with some embarrassment, now, that he thought about how even at boarding school he’d insisted on using only the best of everything. The best, and most expensive. He’d been shaving with a specific brand of handmade sandalwood soap since he’d started shaving. And then as an adult, he’d congratulated himself on the fact that he’d subsisted mostly on his pay and made limited use of his personal income. Unlike most of his peers.
He found himself thinking about Karan, too, and what was happening back home. The political situation on Brontes was grim. It was, perhaps, time he got more involved in government. He’d rather not, of course; he’d been perfectly content living the life of a naval officer and ignoring his more…ah, princely obligations altogether. But that was selfish, wasn’t it?
He was a prince when it suited him, and not when it didn’t. Which, if he ever got out of here, had to change.
Not that he’d become a teetotalling cleric like Aros. In fact, he had firm plans to never deny himself another goddamned thing. He heard something and turned his head, to see the cleric in question sitting beside him. He wasn’t sure when Aros had arrived. For a long time, neither man spoke. The wind was changing, and the air felt wetter. It would rain, soon.
“What are you thinking?” asked Aros, eventually.
“That, although I never would have accused myself of doing so before, I took my pleasures for granted. I feel that, in my current condition, I’m in a far better position to appreciate them.”
Aros chuckled mirthlessly.
“Why, what are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering if my family knows I’m alive. If Sonam does.”
“If she jumps ship for another man this quickly, she wasn’t your soul mate.”
“Do you even believe in soul mates?”
“I don’t know,” Kisten said honestly.
“Eventually you’ll have to get married, right? Do your duty, produce an heir and a spare and all that?”
“I suppose. I haven’t thought about it.”
“You haven’t thought about it?” The other man’s tone was disbelieving. “Who’re you going to spend the rest of your life with?”
“In my…circle, a lot of people lead separate lives.”
“Your parents?”
“No. My parents are disgustingly in love.”
“And you don’t want that.” Aros digested this.
Kisten shrugged. The truth was, he’d never considered it as a real possibility. He didn’t relate well to women, and he wasn’t sure that they liked him much—at least, not beyond what superficial charms he might claim to possess. But he doubted very much that anyone would ever love him. Not truly. He wasn’t lovable. He was everything Aros said he was: spoiled, arrogant, and burdened with a terrible temper. He’d developed an inflated sense of his own self-worth from growing up surrounded by sycophants. Who, apart from Aros, had ever told him the truth?
Keshav had, of course, but Keshav was possessed of all the same flaws. His was no different perspective, to shed light where it was most needed. He sighed. Sometimes, when he was on shore leave, he’d wandered the various bazaars in whatever port of call he’d landed in. He’d admire the more beautiful items—he’d always loved beautiful things, since he was a child—and wish that he had someone to buy them for. Although he’d hardly admitted this to himself, of course. But it would be nice to have someone to spoil, and some use for his wealth and resources other than amusing himself.
It began to rain.
TWENTY-THREE
Kisten sold the buckets, with water in them, for ten darics each.
He, in turn, used the money to buy onions and peppers. And, of course, more bucket-making materials. One infusion of nutriments would hardly be enough. But, although the nearest crisis had been averted, others soon arose to take its place. Chief among them was the problem of water—from too little to too much.
“That bucket idea turned out to not be so bad,” said Aros, munching on a piece of sickly-looking pepper.
“I told you,” said Kisten, with some asperity, “I’m an engineer.”
“Why?”
asked Aros.
“What do you mean? Why’d I become an engineer?”
Aros nodded.
Kisten shrugged. “When I was little, I used to take things apart to see how they worked. I never could figure out how to put them back together again.”
“He is human!”
Kisten smiled his odd half smile. He hadn’t seen much of himself in a mirror, so he didn’t yet know that he’d developed this particular characteristic over these grim months. “I left a trail of coils and springs behind me wherever I went, like a snail. I was very unpopular with the…other members of our household. Sometimes, my brother helped. He was a bit craftier than I was, and better at hiding the evidence.”
Ali joined them and, sitting down cross-legged, began to examine his feet. They were covered in blisters, and they stank. Kisten had seen trench foot before, in books if not in real life. If the skin wasn’t given a chance to dry out, necrosis would set in. And then gangrene. Past that point, amputation was the only cure.
Antibiotics might help, at least in the early stages of the disease, but there were none to be had in Hell. For any price.
Kisten’s own feet had chilblains, from the cold, but at least they were dry.
“Give me your shoes,” he told Ali, “I can fix them.”
“I’m not giving you my shoes.”
“Fine.” Kisten shrugged. “Lose your feet. See if I care.”
There was a man on the other side of the enclosure who’d amputated his own feet and died five days later. They’d all heard the screams. Ali unlaced his shoes and passed them over.
Kisten retreated into what had become his tent and scraped, on a brick, the shank of his worn-out awl until it was once again reasonably sharp. He’d saved the scraps from his bucket-making activities, and had amassed quite a pile of gummy knots. One of these he fitted for a longer handle. A slightly rusted two inch nut that he’d scavenged from the swamp—and kept, even though he’d had no use for it at the time, one never knew—was pressed into service as a hammer by attaching it to a length of wood.
He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening whittling a last. When Ali demanded his shoes back, Kisten pointed out that his feet were better off directly in the mud because at least then air would be circulating. Ali gave up, and let Kisten work. After awhile, he started watching.
Kisten would ultimately share his story with very few people. And when he did, he’d give them a sort of highlight reel and undoubtedly make prison life sound almost amusing. But even if he’d been so inclined, there was no point in describing the days, weeks of tedium that stretched between notable events. The unending parade of horror that grew almost tedious. And no way to describe it, really. So many days were exactly the same, and one couldn’t describe eight hours of staring into space and doing nothing.
So he broke it up thematically: how they conquered scurvy, how he started fixing the other prisoners’ shoes. In the case of the shoes, he fashioned trennels of his own and used them to peg the leather uppers back to the soles. Boiling a few of the saved knots, he extracted pitch and sealed the breaches. He checked Ali’s feet regularly, which made Ali complain that he was acting like a nursemaid. He fixed the boots of one of the guards and in exchange received sweet potatoes. He divided part between his friends and sold the rest.
But all the time, it was getting colder.
Those who didn’t have blankets, or shelters, literally piled on top of each other for warmth.
“Death,” said Aros one morning, gazing out across the frozen camp, “is a merciful release.”
The huddled lumps glistened with a frost that the cold sun wouldn’t melt. Kisten was fairly certain that he was losing one of his toes. The swamp, as he’d predicted, was covered with a thin sheet of ice. The weather wasn’t quite cold enough yet for it to turn solid, which was fortunate. When it did, they’d all die. Water, now that the footprints no longer filled so readily with water, was in high demand and Kisten had no trouble selling his buckets. He’d even sold a few to the guards, but the meager handfuls of vegetables he’d gotten in return were far from enough to sustain life.
Kisten turned, scanning the wall. The guards were in little better shape than the prisoners. That they hadn’t succumbed to starvation was due almost entirely to the fact that they could forage. Once in a while, a lucky guard even shot a buck.
Then, as there was nothing else to do, he decided to take a walk.
Aros stayed behind. He had, of late, become listless and ill-tempered and Kisten judged it best to leave him to his troubles. Aros, he noted unkindly, had done nothing to supplement their income. Which was unfair, really; Aros had helped Kisten a great deal in fetching, carrying, holding, and otherwise helping Kisten achieve his ends. Without Aros, he knew—in his better moments, at least—that he should hardly have been able to finish any of it.
Years later, he’d give testimony at the war crimes tribunal convened to investigate Palawan Prison and others like it, as well as the horrors visited on civilians during that same time. In it, he’d discuss many of the sights he saw on that particular walk and on walks like it.
He’d been outraged, after he’d come home, to hear the lies being spread by the Rebel Coalition: that their prisoners had had more than enough to eat and been treated very fairly, and that it was the rebel prisoners who’d suffered abuse. The only “injustice” visited on Alliance prisoners was the fact of their imprisonment, since they felt themselves to be the natural masters of the universe. Once again painting the Alliance as the evil empire, they made themselves out to be victims.
When Kisten had been asked to appear, he’d said yes. He had no desire to reveal the extent of his own suffering, but nor would he stand aside in a cowardly bid for self-protection. His own vanity just didn’t seem that important, anymore.
He was a prince; he was a born orator. They’d listen to him, where they would not listen to others.
And they had.
The world had listened.
Captain Taschen, he’d said, Commandant of Palawan Prison, has already been so generous as to share with us today his vision of life in that place we former prisoners affectionately called Hell. He’s given us quite a rosy vision, too, I think, of men living in harmony amongst abundant fresh vegetables and sparkling rivers of clear running water. Now, as I spent the greater portion of a year with Captain Taschen, I propose to share notes. My aim, here, is not to be malicious; the Great Healer has closed up many wounds of mind as well as of body, and grass grows now over the graves of imperialist and rebel alike. But as Captain Taschen has thrown the ball, I feel it only right that I should pick it up.
He’d paused, and looked evenly at the tribunal. They’d looked evenly back. And so began three days of testimony.
He’d described how the smoke from the bonfires was so noxious that it coated the men with a creosote-like grime. He’d described the mush, fat, and rotten, maggoty bacon that had served as their “abundant fresh vegetables,” and about the lengths they’d gone to secure actual vegetables. He estimated that, during his tenure, scurvy affected one man in three.
Nearly half, too, had no shelter or even shade—and by shade, he wasn’t referring to the accepted definition of a well-constructed barracks or even a government issue tent. A great many had fashioned shelters out of coarse blankets, as Kisten had done. Others had torn up their underclothes, shirts, and even pants and sewn them together to form makeshift tents. Others had burrowed into the ground, covering themselves over with a mixture of pine boughs and dirt. Indeed, he’d pointed out, burrowing into the dirt proved the only means of survival in the winter—for those lucky enough to have begun digging before the ground froze, that was.
He’d described picking white, wriggling maggots out of his bacon and then eating the bacon. And, later, eating the maggots as well. What Captain Taschen had referred to as fresh beef had been flyblown before it even arrived at the gates. So you can imagine, Kisten said dryly, the scent it produced. Still, they’d eaten it; the
y’d had no choice. And they’d eaten cornmeal, ground cob and all.
They’d have done reasonably well, he’d reflected, had they been swine.
As it was, he challenged Captain Taschen’s assertion that he and the others had been in perfect health and that this was just a ploy by the Alliance to discredit democracy and those who fought for it.
Kisten, in return, had invited him to perform an experiment. Perhaps he, given his faith in his own health regimen, would like to practice it for a week. When your belly and backbone are touching, Kisten had said, in a quote that appeared in papers all over the empire and thus became famous, you, too, Captain Taschen, will find that you appreciate something to eat. Or you may discover, as you’ve claimed, that a man truly can go without food in perfect health—which would be a good thing, as the price of an egg at Palawan was equivalent to the price of this gold signet ring.
He’d described the men who’d died, and how. Kareem and Asif and others, too. Men who, too weak to stand upright without assistance, had leaned momentarily against the pickets of the dead line for support. Men who’d asked the guards to shoot them and thus save them from the misery of dying by inches. Scurvy and chronic diarrhea were the main complaints, both of which could have been cured for the price of less than ten bits per man.
On one of his walks, he’d passed two men sharing a blanket, singing and trying to feel as well as possible. They’d been shot, because they were annoying the guard. Both men had been married, with small children waiting for them at home. He’d also come across a number of cases of well-advanced scurvy, and ached with the thought that he could do nothing.
These men’s legs, from foot to knee, were swollen to the point where the skin had begun to split open like that of an overripe watermelon. The smell was appalling as their still living flesh rotted before their very eyes. They were, literally, half alive and half dead. But they never died completely until the scurvy reached their vitals. Sometimes, maggots would hatch in their stomachs while they protested feebly.