Текст книги "Wall of Days"

Автор книги: Alastair Bruce

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Over the meal at night I fix him in my gaze, which he does not return. Again he eats hungrily, quickly. It reminds me of how we all used to be. We all ate quickly out of necessity. I remember him eating like that before. I watched him over a meal. He did not look up once, only when he had finished every last scrap. He even licked his fingers, which I found distasteful.

‘Tomorrow you will come with me to the forest,’ I say. ‘You can help me bring back some wood.’ I do not think he will be of much use but I’m sure by now he can walk properly and he has to start getting his strength back if he is to earn his keep.

In the morning after I’ve returned from the beach and we’ve finished breakfast I throw him the coat I found. He grabs it. I’m certain now it belonged to him. He fingers the cloth, the brass buttons, his lips open slightly as if in surprise. He looks like a boy. ‘Put it on,’ I say. ‘It is yours, is it not? The coat of a General.’ I do not put this as a question. He shows no reaction. Instead he removes my coat, stands up and puts the other on. It fits perfectly. He adjusts the collar and straightens his back.

I watch with interest; he is like a soldier preparing for battle.

‘Come.’ I say, ‘We’re going to fetch wood,’ and set off down the hill. He follows me but leaves a distance of around ten paces. He has recovered some of his strength but still shuffles along as if each step is a great effort. I listen to his steps in the mud, the soft sucking sound they make. Every time I stop to wait for him the noise stops too. He never approaches closer than the ten paces.

In the forest, without a word I throw him the bag I use for wood, which he catches, and I unhook the axe from my belt. He walks round me in a circle, watching me all the time. He comes to stand in front of me. He’s on a little mound, the bag over his shoulder, his head held high, the coat like blood against his pale skin. As I chop down the tree and trim the branches he simply stands there, watching.

When I get out of breath I stop, bending over with my hands on my knees. I say, ‘Your turn,’ and hold out the axe. ‘You can take over for a bit. I am tired.’ I straighten up and walk towards him, holding out the axe, blade first. He drops the bag and shuffles away from me, holding up his arms slightly. His feet make furrows in the pine needles. I stop.

‘What are you doing?’ I am curt. ‘What are you doing?’ I repeat. ‘Do you think I’m going to hurt you? Do you not think I would have done something by now if I was going to?’ He says nothing. ‘I rescued you, I have fed you, clothed you, why would I kill you now?’ I have raised my voice. It sounds strange in the silence. I think I can hear an echo.

I wave the axe in exasperation and turn back to the tree. He cowers, crouched down, his hands still over his head. Maybe I expect too much too soon.

The rain falls again now. I chop the tree into logs at a slow but steady pace. I can keep my breathing under control and still make good progress. Water drips from the end of my nose. I can also feel it running down my back. Steam rises from my body. The scent of wet pine chips fills the air. Andalus sits crouched under a tree, sheltering from the rain. He seems calmer now. In fact he might be asleep. From panic to sleep in a matter of minutes. I do not understand this person.

I wish he would talk.

Andalus used to talk all the time. In fact I often wished he spoke less.

We had different negotiating styles. He was all bluster, all promises, all camaraderie. This, however, overlay stubbornness and a determination to get his way. He came across as a fool but was far from it. He was a tough opponent and I came to respect him greatly. By the end of it, the time of the signing of the accord and the last official contact between the two groups, we formed something of a friendship. True, it was based on grudging respect on both sides and not on any deep emotional bond but by the end I began to know the man behind the talk, the man who, like me, cared deeply for his people, cared deeply enough to stop the war, at any cost.

There was a moment in which he let his guard down. He sat across the table from me, his head in his hands. Our aides had left the room.

He did not move for ages. I thought he was asleep and was just about to get up from the table when he said to me, ‘What have we done, Bran?’ His voice was quivering. For a second I did not know what to say. ‘At what price?’ he went on. ‘At what price does a thing become a luxury we should not have?’

‘This is not a thing,’ I said. ‘This is not a luxury. This is peace.’

‘We’ve ended the war, Bran, we have not brought peace. There will come a time when the world will not be able to forgive itself, or us.

There will never be peace now.’

I said nothing. Instead I got up, went round to him, stood behind his left shoulder. His head was in his hands. I reached out my right hand and placed it on his shoulder. He gripped my hand. I felt his shoulder heave. I think he might have been crying. I could not tell. I was certain he was in turmoil though. I squeezed his shoulder, patted him on the back and said, ‘We have done a good job, Andalus. We have fought for our people, for our interests. And now we have secured a future for them. Do not fear the future. Once we were enemies, once we were warriors. Now we are friends and statesmen. We have earned our sleep tonight.’

With that I left the room. It was a brief moment of intimacy but one that I appreciated. Several hours later we met for the celebratory dinner and he was again his jovial self, though he avoided eye contact with me.

I walk over to Andalus and prod him with my toe. He looks up sleepily.

I give him a small bundle of wood to carry. He gets up and follows a few paces behind. Like a dog.

Later I collect some of the tubers and some grasses for a second bed, keeping their seeds to eat. I leave him in the cave when I do this.

As I walk out I ask him to build up the fire. He gives no indication of having heard. I do not ask again.

In the grasslands I start to feel out of breath. My arms also ache from chopping down the tree. I sit down on a rock. Providing for two has taken it out of me and I am beginning to feel my age. Still a fit man but there is only so much one can do. One man, flesh and blood, set against the rising waters, the creep of the oceans, the clutch of the mud. If I look too far into the future it can be daunting. Nevertheless, that is what I must do. I keep track of the loss of the island so I will know exactly when the time is up so I can be awake, so I can stand facing the wall of water when it comes. So I can die proud. Now that I have to work more on collecting food and fuel I have less time to work on my map, on my calculations, my annotations. I used to know exactly when the time would be up but now I am less certain. It has only been a few days and this man is my responsibility but he is a burden. Duty was never a burden to me until now. There is nothing to say I have to take care of Andalus, nothing to stop me sending him on his way. Though since he has nowhere to go that would involve killing him. There is no one to judge here, nothing to stop me getting rid of my burden. Nothing but a sense of duty, not born out of any trivial sentiment – long ago we did away with that – but out of necessity. We were dutiful because we had to be, because that was how we survived.

Survivors obeyed.

Duty is something I will never abandon. It carries me through, connecting my past with my future.

I have never planned a return to Bran. Surviving the voyage is not the issue. I have become adept at the tricks of survival. But I have been banished and respect that. It would be disrespectful of the laws I created. Andalus however, is a puzzle. What is the leader of the Axumite settlement doing in Bran territory? Either they have begun expanding or the old order has been overthrown. Mavericks may have taken over and begun to plan a resumption of the wars in an effort to win control of Bran and its resources. Though maybe he was simply sailing between islands and was blown off course in a freak storm. The stories can be made up in a number of ways. Whatever the stories though, the rules of the Programme have been broken and it should be my duty to report this. I need to try to find out more about him, more about why he is here. But it’s impossible if he doesn’t speak.

There is a myth in my land. One of the ancient gods – we no longer believe in gods – was banished by the council of the Heavens. His crime dissent. He sailed for weeks to the ends of the earth. When he finally found land he remained there for the rest of his days, hurling thunderbolts and storms at passing ships. When he died his petrified remains became a mountain on whose peak was engraved the visage of the god, serving as a warning, a curse, that all who gaze on it will too become stone in an unfamiliar land.

Another tells the story of a legendary king with the same name as mine. Fierce and always victorious in battle, at his death his countrymen cut off his head, drove a stake through it and placed it staring out to sea. Thus they cast a protective spell over the country against invading armies.

Myths are made of memories and memories are fallible but these two were pillars of Bran. Though we had no religion and little sentimentality, these stories, still told sometimes, are indicative of who we are as a people; both our sense of duty and respect and our pride and determination never to be defeated.

They mean a bit more than that to me though. I’m aware of some parallels. They speak of rejection and of veneration, of how easily things can turn. Two faces staring out to sea. One will avenge, the other protect.

Perhaps the presence of Andalus means that I, once more, have a duty to protect. His presence might mean I need to leave the island.

When I get back to the cave the fire has died out. Andalus is lying on the bed with his back to me. He turns around only when I give him food some time later. I call him General again. I ask him about Axum.

But he does not look at me.

At first light I wake and look over and see Andalus has disappeared.

I jump up.

Outside the cave a warm breeze is blowing and the clouds are thin.

I cannot see him. I climb on top of the cave from where I can see more and scan the grasslands. But there is no sign of him. He cannot have gone far – in his shape no more than a mile or so. From the cave you cannot see the rocks where I fish and I think this is where he must be.

I head off down the cliff path.

Walking slowly to the edge I peer over. He sits with his back towards me, facing out to sea. He is not fishing, just sitting. I watch him for a minute. His head begins to turn to the side slowly. It seems to turn too far to be natural. I crouch down, hiding. I do not make any sudden moves. I do not think he can see me but his head stays turned.

Perhaps he is looking at something else, something further along the cliff, something behind me. I look around. I lie down in the grass and roll onto my back. A gull circles overhead.

Tora did not want to hear about the fighting. She knew what went on – everyone did – but she did not want to hear about life as a soldier, about things I had seen. Not about the killing and not about the buried relics of a forgotten age. I wanted to tell her but whenever I tried she turned away from me. If we were in bed she would roll away and lie on her side with her back to me. I would stop, turn to her and stroke her thigh. I did not berate her for not wanting to hear and eventually I stopped trying altogether. I suppose she needed distance from that. A gentler person I had never known and for her, I always thought, that she shared her bed with a man who had killed was distasteful. She did not resent my previous life, she did not blame me for it but I knew that she did not approve. Perhaps my attempts at stories of what past worlds might have been she associated with killing, or at least with dying.

If that was the case though, why did she allow herself to be involved with one whose job entailed what it did? It was a mystery to me. There were many things I found mysterious about her. Perhaps, though she did not approve, she could see the necessity of the Programme. No one really could approve, besides madmen, but we all knew it was necessary.

This was another part of my life we did not talk about much. In spite of that she was a strength to me, someone I could count on, someone whose feelings and reactions I could predict and trust. I suppose she felt that if someone had to do it, it was better that it was me, a man devoted to the ideals of fairness and duty.

She would have struggled to find a man who had not killed. That was what we did, what we had to do. She was part of that forgotten world she didn’t want to hear about, a throwback to a gentler age.

After a few minutes I get to my feet, return to the cave for my line and hooks and set off to join my companion. If I put a rod in his hands maybe he will take to fishing. It is not the right time of day but it is better than not fishing at all. I can sit him here every day and let him catch a few fish while I go about the rest of my work: gathering fuel, digging for tubers, harvesting seeds and furthering my survey. That could be the answer. I like fishing but if that is all he can do it will be better than nothing. It would free up more time to plan for the future.

He does not look around as I approach. I sit next to him, greet him, to which, as usual, he does not respond. I lift up his hands. I place the rod in them. He does not grip it. I stand up, taking it from him.

‘Watch,’ I say, and cast into the ocean. Again I try to make him take it.

‘This is your job. If you want to eat, you will catch the food. That is the way it shall be.’ Through this he watches me. Now though he turns his head away and stares out to sea. I raise my voice: ‘I am not your keeper.

I cannot provide for you as if you were my guest. You have to work if you want to stay here.’ I try again and this time he grips the rod, though softly. I decide to leave him with it in the hope that he will try when I am not there. I head off for the peat beds. There is no time for my swim.

By the time I get back to the cave, lugging a sackful of peat, he has returned too. There is no fish and also, I notice, no fishing rod. I walk over to him and grab his arm. My fingers sink into his flesh as if it were a cushion. Between clenched teeth I say, ‘I told you what would happen. From now on the only food you eat will be what you gather yourself.’

The rod is lying on the rocks where I left it. A small mercy. Though I can fashion another one quite easily, I am careful with the hooks. I brought a supply with me but they will eventually run out and I have not taught myself to fish with a spear. I will teach myself in a few years’

time when I am down to my last hooks. I sit on the rocks waiting for a tug on the line.

I take the first fish I catch back with me to the cave. I also find a crab in one of the traps. I will eat well tonight.

Back in the cave I build up the fire. When it is ready I place the fish and the crab on a flat stone over the top of the fire. Andalus sits up on the bed and watches the food cooking. It is not long before I am ready to eat. I do so directly from the stone, picking up the flakes of fish with my fingers. The crab I move to one side and allow to cool. Andalus moves to the edge of the bed, looking expectantly at me. I stare back at him, chewing all the while. Eventually he drops his gaze and turns away from me. He lies on his side, facing the wall. I feel some guilt.

I say, not expecting a response, ‘Tell me what happened.’ He does not. ‘Tell me, or starve.’

With my stomach full, leaning back against the cave and feeling warm for the first time in days, I try to explain Andalus’s presence once again. I do not want a companion. Not one like this anyway. I do not like getting used to having a dependant. I think again of how he came to be here. If the Axumites have started exploring again, then the Brans need to know. No one would want a resumption of the hostilities. Perhaps Bran too has started exploring. We had no plans to do so when I left but that was then. Perhaps the world has changed. Or is about to.

And then I allow myself to think about what Andalus’s presence requires. I think about going back.

3

The thought leaves a tightness in my stomach. I am like a man with a woman he loves, uncertain of how she feels, excited but too nervous to be happy. It does not surprise me that I have decided to go back almost without realising it.

I know too Andalus is an excuse, a reason I can use to explain my return. I am under no illusions. Going back will most likely mean either execution or at the very least imprisonment followed by banishment once again. Doing my duty and turning this man over will count for very little. I do not have unreasonable expectations but perhaps there will be time enough for me to tie up some loose ends, to see Tora and Abel once again, pick up some more supplies. I can leave a copy of my ten years’ work behind with the authorities so they can study it and broaden, however slightly, the pool of knowledge. They should appreciate that. I will set to the work with renewed vigour when I return. I will have made my peace and leaving Andalus there would eliminate variables. A man is happiest when nothing is in doubt.

Ten years. It could be a lifetime, it could be all too brief. Ten years. Less time than Bran was at war, less time than I knew Tora, than I was Marshal, than the time the Programme took to run its course. More time than it took us to end the war, to reduce the killing, the waste. More time than my trial, than it took to get here, than it took to say goodbye.

How many people have died in these ten years? The judge who sent me away? My assistants? Abel? Perhaps even, and the thought chills me, Tora herself. If she is not dead, it may be cruel to go back. Perhaps one day she awakes to a knocking on her door. It is me, wild-haired and exhausted after days at sea. I have come straight off the raft. ‘Tora,’

I say, though it is barely a croak and perhaps not even a word. Her eyes, blank at first, still full of sleep, suddenly come alive with recognition.

What then? A smile? Tears? Does she throw herself at me or does she step back? Does a man appear on the stairs, a little girl down the passageway? Each and every thing is possible. Perhaps I will go back and find her flat boarded up, the neighbours behind locked doors peering round closed curtains.

He has not moved. He breathes lightly and rapidly. Asleep I presume, dreaming. I watch him, his bulk rising and falling. I count the days since he arrived. Three days short of two weeks. He appears to have lost no weight at all. Perhaps it takes longer. I think back to when I arrived but it is too long ago.

I wonder how he became like this. Did they have hierarchical rationing in Axum? Did they base one’s food allowance on social rank? We would never have allowed that in Bran. The Programme was sup posed to be carried out regardless of social position. If you were productive you were in no danger. Supposition though. I cannot get beyond his silence.

I have come across men struck dumb by the horrors of war. Some go quiet, some cannot stop talking. Each, given time, will more often than not come round. Time heals all manner of wounds.

I will need a few weeks to prepare for the journey. I must smoke as much fish as possible, harvest grains and tubers. Though we could catch fish on the way, ten years ago there were vast swathes of ocean that were lifeless (I am lucky on my island) and we could be sailing for days without catching anything. I will need to make a bigger raft. There are two of us now, after all. I can build a new mast and some oars. I can spend time rowing, which should cut the journey time down. But I must bank on three weeks still. I have a compass but it is still possible to go off course for a day or two. Also, though we will be rowing and will have a better sail, the raft will be heavier and will sit lower in the water. We will need fifty litres of water. It rains all the time but I do not want to be collecting rainwater in an unstable boat. Fifteen good-sized fish, a handful of grains and a tuber a day: that will be plenty and will allow me to be unconcerned about provisions on the way. I will have other thoughts to occupy me.

I boil water and add crushed seeds and grains to make gruel, which I eat with the remaining crab claw. Again I do not offer any to Andalus.

I leave him in the cave when I go down to the beach for my morning swim.

While I swim I continue to think about the trip. The grains and tubers I can harvest a little at a time. They keep well. The fish that I smoke lasts three weeks before becoming inedible. Little is truly inedible but rotten fish is something I would rather avoid. If I take two weeks to prepare, the first fish will last a week into the voyage by which time it will long since have been eaten. A fish caught two days before I leave will last until almost the end of the voyage.

When I tell Andalus of my plans it may motivate him to work and to speak. Whether this would be out of fear or excitement I do not know.

The two peoples are prohibited from entering the other’s territory but if he has a reasonable excuse, after years of peace, it is doubtful whether he would be imprisoned. Perhaps even the prohibition has been repealed during this time. But if things have got worse, if the end of the Programme has caused tensions to rise again and supplies to dwindle, Andalus’s presence here could very well be a pretext for a resumption of hostilities. And if he refuses to speak, he will be imprisoned for certain. I imagine him standing there silent in the face of the wrath of the settlement. It will not do. I will make him aware of this. I decide to refuse him food for a while longer. That too may loosen his tongue.

I return to the cave. Andalus stares at me, watching while I pick up my axe. I can feel his eyes on me but when I look at his face I see no hostility. The only emotion I have seen is fear. For the rest he is blank.

A man with no voice and a man with no face.

I decide to tell him now of my plan to return. I sit close to him. I tilt my head to one side at first. I am still not going to tell him I know him.

‘We are going away,’ I begin. ‘We are going to go on a trip in a raft I will build. I hope you will help.’ His eyes meet mine. I stare into his pupils.

‘We are going to a place called Bran. I used to be known there. I used to be known well. Bran will decide our fate. I hope it is to be a good one.’ He drops his eyes from mine. I take his chin in my hand and lift it up. ‘Will you help?’ I ask. His mouth drops open. I think he is going to talk. He doesn’t. Instead he gets to his feet and shuffles away from me, out the cave entrance. Where he was sitting I notice something, a piece of fish. Has he been secretly catching food while I’ve been out in the forest or at the peat beds? I feel anger. I shout after him, ‘You will not plunder my island. You will not steal from me.’ I get up and go over to the entrance. He is a long way down the hill and cannot hear me. He has moved surprisingly quickly.

I am not angry for long. My anger never lasts. I am too pleased to be going back to worry about Andalus overly much. But I will stick to my plan to try to make him talk. And I won’t let him get away. He is essential to me now.

If I am to receive no help from Andalus I will need to make the most of my days. I will get up slightly earlier and forego the swim. I will alternate days of raft building with days of food collection and peat gathering. With fewer tasks in a day I can devote more time to each and accomplish more. It will be hard though and I will have little time for my survey.

It is dark today. As I set out for the forest, the clouds are so thick they shut out most of the light. It could be dusk. Though it is still dry near the cave, across the grasslands I see the rain fall in swathes, blown by the wind. Though it rarely rains heavily, today it will. It is not a good start to my labours.

I am right. The forest is wet underfoot. The rain seems to muffle any noise made by the breeze.

The first thing to do is to build the raft. I will need at least two trees for the base. The mast and oars can be made out of a third. By mid-afternoon I have felled three trees and stripped them of most of their branches. Once these are dry they will make a large bonfire. Or they will mean I can sit in a warm and completely dry cave for a few nights.

But, unless I have miscalculated, they will not be sufficiently dry by the time I leave. They would give off too much smoke. I leave the trunks where they lie. Splitting them into planks can wait for the day after tomorrow.

In the cave I put some tubers in the fire. I am exhausted and do not go out again that day. I realise it might take me a little longer to adjust to a new, more vigorous routine. I spend the last hour of daylight making annotations. I write down the number of trees I have taken, the number remaining, the ages of the ones I have cut down. All the trees I have taken seem roughly the same age. As far as I can work out they’re within a decade of each other at around fifty years old. I have three theories for this. The island experienced a few years of warmer weather when the saplings took root and now the lack of sun has stunted their growth.

They are of a variety that only reaches sexual maturity at a great age, which would be why there are no saplings. They were sown by a previous castaway, a man armed only with seeds from some abandoned part of the world, seeds which gave birth to a barren progeny.

I have not given much thought to this – that the island was inhabited before me. Yet why not? It might rain constantly but enough light gets through for vegetation other than the trees to grow. There is peat. It is surrounded by ocean, which must once have been more bountiful than now. All in all it is not a bad place to live. I could have chosen a worse place to be a castaway. Perhaps there were people here first. The common age of the trees is a possible clue. There could be signs of previous humans all around, things that are there but that I cannot see.

I could be living in the middle of a ruined city surrounded by ghostly chatter. We see what we want to see after all. But I am not convinced.

I feel that I am the first one here, the first one to make his mark in this watery prison.

I do feel as if I am not alone though. The figures amidst the trees, heads peering over cliff tops, bodies merging into the black cliff walls.

A consequence of being alone I tell myself. And of the life I have lived.

The longer I have not been with others the more I imagine others, the more I feel I am being watched. Of course I am not alone now.

Andalus, or Andalus’s shadow, is with me. It is possible he follows me in such a way that I do not see him but I doubt it. He would not be able to hide from me, a man who has been living on this small island for a decade. He is too large to be stealthy and even if he weren’t the island is mostly flat with little tall vegetation. Unless he was creeping through the mud on his belly I would be able to see him easily.

I do not feed him in the morning. Still he says nothing. I cannot, in good conscience, starve the man. Besides, I would not be able to return without him. My plan now is to feed him once a day at irregular times.

I reason that if I can create uncertainty about whether he will or will not be fed he may be moved to question my actions. On a grander scale, this was why there was a war. Our uncertainty over whether there were enough resources for all led us to fight for our share. It led us to fight Andalus’s people and it led to the Programme, which was, after all, a way to ensure there were never wars over food, land and water ever again, a way to ensure we knew what the future held. The Programme was put in place to prevent itself ever being necessary again, a contradiction my people lived with for many years.

I will not kill him but I will provoke him. It will be for his own good for he is unlikely to get much sympathy in the settlement if he cannot explain himself. That I treat him like an animal is not lost on me. Until he communicates with me that is the way I must be with him, for he can deserve no better.

I want him to talk to me before I reveal I know who he is. It is a good tactic to keep something hidden until the last moment. I have hinted that I know him of course. I wonder if it is this that is making him silent. If he were here on his own would he be talking? Speaking to everything: the plants, the birds, the rocks? It is me that puts the hand across his mouth stopping words. He could be the one playing the game. He recognises me and is searching for my weakness, gathering his strength for an attack, an attempt to take over this island.

It is unlikely I know. He seems completely in the dark about himself, about me. Again I think about what might have caused this. Driven away by a people turned against him he is no longer able to express himself, is no longer a man.

I will come clean with him before we leave. End the games.

I am stiff from yesterday’s work. I feel it as I sit facing out to sea for seven hours. Bites are infrequent. I clutch my coat around me. My head nods. I am warm. All I can hear is the sea, the noise of the waves.

I barely move other than once or twice to check the cliffs behind me.

I let my head slip forward till my chin lies on my chest. I feel my eyes closing. Then I jerk up suddenly, forcing air into my lungs. I feel as if I have stopped breathing. It is a few moments of panic. My line has stayed still in the oily water as if I hadn’t moved. There is no room for error out here. A heart attack, a stroke and I will be left here on my own. Perhaps unable to move, waiting till the tide comes in and floats my body away. Andalus would be no help.