Текст книги "Wall of Days"

Автор книги: Alastair Bruce

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In the still of the late afternoon I return to the cave. Andalus is standing with his back to me in the middle of the cave. It appears he has not heard me coming. He sways slightly. I do not know if he is dancing or simply unsteady on his feet. He stumbles trying to turn around. Not dancing then. He stares at me. I break the gaze. ‘Fish,’ I say, holding out my catch. Is this what I have come to? Here stands a man with whom I once debated the future of our two settlements, the future of the known world. From a debate over the rights of men, the right to a secure future, the right to life, the duty to the lives of others; from this to a monosyllabic grunt spat out across a cave on an island no one remembers.

Andalus turns away and lies down once more. I do not feed him tonight. He lies on his back and I watch him in the gloom. He snores lightly.

The task of splitting a trunk into planks is an onerous one and requires skills I have not honed. Somehow though by the end of the day I have split two trunks into usable planks and chopped another tree down.

My initial estimates of the amount of wood I will need have proved inaccurate. I will need two more trees. I am determined to build my boat better than the one that brought me here. I was lucky on the journey. Rough weather could easily have capsized the vessel. True, we do not get many storms anymore but they are not unheard of. That was what the settlement wanted. Lacking the courage, the conviction, to condemn me to death, they hoped nature would do their task for them. They should have remembered that nature has seldom done what we want. The crime for which I was banished was one born out of circumstances requiring an intervention in nature, a speeding up of its processes to avoid overwhelming it. That at least was how the Programme was billed and was the gist of my defence. Nature can support only so much life.

But I am being unfair to my people. They are not a violent, vindictive people in spite of what they went through. Pragmatic is a word that suits them, civilized and pragmatic.

It was an unusual court case. Not strictly fair. I was allowed a defence but I was condemned months before the trial began. I knew I would not walk out of there free. The numbers against the Programme had grown too rapidly. There was anger. I asked to send emissaries to our rivals to see what had happened there but this was refused. They may have suspected treachery. I wanted to ask my accusers how they could accuse me when it was their support that enabled me to carry out my duty. I wanted to point at them and say, ‘You! You are in the dock too!’ I wanted to shame them, to make them know their guilt, to tell them, taking their hands, ‘See! You too have hands drenched in blood.’ But I am not a melodramatic man and it would not have helped my cause. I understand that I was sacrificed for the sake of the greater good. Burnt at the stake while the crowds bayed around me.

But there was nothing like that. It was an altogether quieter affair.

Tora, sitting in the corner, barely glanced at me but supported me by coming to the trial every day and sitting through every minute of it.

A few others came but not many. And they were mostly respectful.

One man though had to be dragged from the court. Towards the end of the trial he started coming regularly and sitting in my eye line. I could feel him staring at me. One day in the middle of proceedings he got up and started screaming at me. He used language such that I never tolerated in the offices or from my acquaintances. Deplorable behaviour. I understand he lost several family members. During this episode Tora looked up at me. I fancy I could see tears in her eyes. But I could not see clearly. Guards were standing in front of me while their colleagues hauled the protester away kicking and screaming. I looked at Tora not at him, looked at her, trying to see more clearly, peering through a curtain of burly men.

The day has gone quickly. It has been one of my good days. I have worked hard and achieved much. It is a satisfying feeling. It is dusk when I turn to go. As I do I see Andalus. He is standing behind me about ten metres off. Just standing and looking at me. I do not know how long for. ‘What are you doing?’ I ask him. ‘How long have you been there? What do you want?’ He has startled me. I do not expect answers and I do not receive them. I walk towards him and he half turns as if letting me leave a room first. It is a gesture I remember him making years ago. He was always polite, there was no faulting him on that. This time though I cannot but feel a chill as I walk past.

I can hear him as he walks behind me back to the cave. It is a still day. In between the sucking noises made by my feet I hear his do the same. Only his are louder. When I stop his do too, momentarily behind mine. Like my shadow.

Later he takes his food without much show of eagerness or hunger.

I finish before him and lie down. I am tired and fall asleep almost immediately.

The next day is to be spent collecting food. I return to the seashore and fish for several hours. I spend the afternoon harvesting grass seeds.

It is a good routine, one day of heavy labour, followed by one of foraging and peat gathering and it is one I stick to for another week by which time I have almost completed the raft and gathered about half the food we will need. The raft lies slightly below the high tide mark. I have made sure to drag the planks there from the forest. It is hard work but much easier than moving a whole raft from forest to sea. When I fish I can see it out of the corner of my eye, lashed to the rocks. When the tide was up I tested its balance and examined how low it sat in the water. The sight of the raft makes my heart beat a little faster. With every day the promised return to my land comes closer. I sometimes wonder why I have not attempted a return earlier but at heart I know I could not have done so.

The raft lacks a mast. I am determined to provide one. Not only will it allow me to complete the journey more quickly but it is a matter of pride. They will see I have lived well, that banishment has increased my ingenuity, my will to live, rather than diminishing it.

I am apprehensive about the reaction I will receive, though excited too. I want to return in triumph, a return that shows them I have prospered and that I bear them no grudge. But I am not foolish. I know I will have to approach warily, perhaps lie low for a few days until I am more certain of the mood of the country. Andalus though, might destroy that plan. It is difficult to hide one such as he, difficult to conceal his white bulk in the undergrowth. If there are still scouts in operation we will be picked up in no time. Two old men, one thin, one fat. Like some act from years ago: Andalus and Bran treading the boards.

Though I feed him little, my island companion does not grow thinner.

I have not seen any more evidence of food that he might have gathered but I surmise he might be finding some somewhere. Also, he does not move much. For the weight to go he would have to exercise. It is now weeks since he washed up on shore. Weeks and he has not spoken a word, not communicated with me in any way. Sometimes he follows me around the island. I have seen him sitting on the rocks where I fish.

But most of the time he appears to remain in the cave lying on the bed, staring at nothing. While I smoke the fish or carve an oar I watch him watching nothing.

The three days before my planned departure are agony. I cannot sleep and think only of the journey.

The mast is lashed into place. It is not strong enough for very high winds but we are unlikely to encounter those. I have already stored much of the food on the raft, wrapped in plastic to protect it from the rain and tied on securely. I have made one of the tarpaulins into a sail.

It is makeshift but it will do.

Andalus seems to catch my agitation as well. During the night he gets up from the bed, opens the door and stands in the entrance to the cave, silhouetted against the night sky. He stands there for what seems like hours and then walks slowly back to bed. He does this for the final two nights. On the last evening I approach him after we have eaten. I have fed him well and prepared as much food as I could as we will be on rations now for three weeks. I take his face in my hands, squeezing so he feels pain and make him look at me. ‘You. Andalus.’ I say. ‘Yes, I know who you are. I know you.’ He continues to look straight at me.

‘Do you understand what we are doing?’ I have told him but I don’t know how much he understands. ‘We are going back to Bran. You remember Bran. You have been there years ago when you dealt with us.

We fought a war, we made a peace. You and I. Andalus and Bran. You remember.’ Silence. ‘I am taking you there so they can send you back to where you come from. You cannot stay here. It is not allowed.’ With this he pulls his face away, turns his head. I think he understands now.

I go and sit at the opposite end of the cave, my back to the wall, looking over at him sitting on the other side of the fire. ‘Are you ready to tell me what happened? It has been four weeks since you arrived. I have done you no harm. What has happened to change you so much? You used to be the most talkative man I knew. I sometimes think we stopped fighting just so you would no longer have an excuse to keep on talking.’

The joke gets no reaction.

I wait for a minute before proceeding. ‘You will have to talk in Bran. We are not a vindictive people but you have broken a condition of the treaty. You know what the punishment is. We agreed on it in fact. You and I. They are sure to spare you if you can explain yourself: a mutiny, a rebellion, a banishment. I think that is what has happened to you. Banished, like me. But if you were you did not take enough care, were not lucky enough to avoid Bran territory. If you do not talk, if you do not explain yourself you might well be executed.’ He says nothing.

He sits against the cave wall, his head slightly cocked. The fire flickers against his skin. Dies down. It grows darker in the cave.

‘It’s a rope we use. Death by hanging. It is easiest. There is no blood. Vomit, urine yes but no blood. It is quick too and with our limited resources, practical. You can reuse rope. We blindfold them of course. We are not dogs.’

He looks at me now but still says nothing. I think he looks at me. I cannot see his eyes.

‘We blindfold them and tie their hands so they cannot move. We place the noose around their neck and there is a man whose job it is to kick away the stand when it is time. We do not allow people to watch.

Just the hangman and one to make sure the victim does not escape.

Then we bury the body. Just below the surface. Their faces have to be covered last. It is not a job people like doing, the burying of the dead.

‘If you do not talk I fear that may happen to you. Perhaps they will launch a mission to Axum to seek an explanation but why would they bother? It will involve much expense and to what end? The remote possibility that their borders are under threat? The presence of one man, one bloated official, is unlikely to convince them of that.’

I realise I have raised my voice. I realise too that I might be right, that Bran might not care about this one man, that they might not see the potential significance. If they do not know who he is, if they do not recognise him – and I who knew him best took a while to do so – then he and I will encounter the same fate. Then there will be nothing to stop the hatred that has had ten years to fester. Ten years for the families of those put to death to foment revenge. I realise too there is no turning back. I have gone too far.

I stare at Andalus, willing a response. I sit there for hours, looking at him looking at me. It grows so dark he melts into the cave wall, becomes black, an outline. His eyes are sockets. If I half close mine he disappears altogether, disappears into the cave, into the rock, into the dirt. He is silent.

4

I have placed all the provisions and equipment on the raft already and lashed everything securely to the boards. I sit Andalus in the middle of the raft while I push it out to open water. When the water is up to my waist I climb on board. I row us out a few more metres, then hoist the sail. The wind is strong but I do not think it will be too strong for the mast. As the sail fills with the breeze I am exhilarated. We set off at a pace that belies the makeshift nature of the raft and its weight. We soon reach the end of my swimming range. The wind is coming from behind us, sweeping over the island. For a few seconds I close my eyes.

I can feel the water surging beneath me, the wind and the spray.

I see Tora standing on the beach. She raises her head now. She is too far away for me to see her face.

There is a wake behind us, a stretch of calmer water leading back to the shore. I look back at the island and smile.

I feel something is wrong a second before it happens. The mast bends too far, a corner of the raft dips into the water and the opposite end lifts out. Andalus slips, the mast splits and falls forward. I seem not to hear it. I open my mouth to shout at Andalus but nothing escapes. He does not react. The mast falls across him and all I can see is his form draped in the sail, like a shroud, as I am flung overboard.

The water is warm, warmer than expected. I feel for a moment like going to sleep, like sinking to the bottom, to the golden sand, to be wrapped like a baby in fronds of seaweed. It is quiet here: no wind, no flapping sail, nothing.

Through the water I see Andalus in his white cloak. I see the shape of him, crouching forward in the bow, the edges breaking up, shimmering like a mirage.

Then I am on the surface coughing, spluttering. Jerking my head around the first thing I see is Andalus, having managed to shake free of the sail, standing on the raft looking over at me. The raft bobs on the waves. The mast lies broken across the bow. I swim over, grab hold of the raft and, still in the water, rest my head on the wet planks. I retch seawater, then close my eyes.

I hear him move. He holds a hand out to me. I look up at him but the sky is too bright to see clearly. I try to pull myself up but my grip on his arm slips. It is like he is not there. I wave him away.

The tide takes us in. When we reach the shore I lie down on the sand exhausted. Andalus also lies down, arms flung out above his head.

The raft floats in the shallows. I do not move for hours. When I do it is to lash the raft to the rocks, take some food from it and head up towards the cave.

When I reach the cave I remember Andalus. I do not think him capable of sailing it but it would be a disaster if he were to try and take the raft on his own. I go back down and tap him on the shoulder. He gets to his feet without looking at me.

I know the broken mast is a mere setback and due to overzealousness on my part. It does not mean it can’t be done and I am doomed to fail but it takes some time to realise this. I lie for two days in the cave, returning to the raft only to fetch provisions. I make two more marks on the wall. I make these marks very slowly.

On the third day I come to my senses. I fix the mast. It is a clean break and is repaired quite easily. I end up with a shorter, lighter mast, which is by no means a bad thing. I spend the fourth day foraging for tubers and grass seeds, determined to leave again on the fifth.

I leave Andalus in the cave all the while. He shows no signs of restlessness and spends most of the time sleeping. On the evening of the fourth day, examining my haul, I calculate that though I have made inroads into the provisions, which I cannot make up in one day, I still have enough for a nineteen or twenty-day voyage. It means I can leave for the second time five days after the first. I am excited once more.

The morning of the fifth day is quiet. There is a break in the rain.

It is warm. When I reach the shoreline, Andalus following just behind me, I remember that I have not allowed for the changing time of the tides. We are almost four hours early. I could try to drag the raft down to where it will float but the sand is soft and it will take me a long time and cost me strength I may need later. I will have to wait. I sit on a rock but am restless. I remember how I used to feel before a battle: a tightness in the chest, rapid heartbeat, a tendency to be distracted. It is something you learn to control. You have to otherwise you would not last long. In the moments before battle you cannot lose focus. I have lost my edge. The long days of island time have hardened my body but dulled my instincts for a fight. True, I might have lost this before. I remember the first day of the trial. Tora was waiting with me. I could not sit still, was pacing around the room, not listening to what she was saying, trying instead to think of what I would say. She got to her feet once, came over to me. I held up my hand, impatiently, to stop her. She did stop. A little taken aback perhaps. I felt regret. But I was angry too. Angry with my people. Angry with her. She was no longer with me but was trying her best to be supportive. I stood behind her and kissed her head. Her shoulders shook a little. I did not hold her. It was my day, not hers. I get to my feet and set off down the beach at a rapid pace, almost running. I feel Andalus looking at me but I do not look back. He can do nothing while the tide is out.

I resolve to walk as far around the island as I can for half the time remaining then walk back. It is, I think, a way of saying goodbye.

Since the arrival of my companion I have not had time to go on my explorations, my investigative walks. His arrival has increased the time I spend on essential tasks and decreased the time available for expanding knowledge of the island and its creatures. It is like that with people, the ones left over: too busy surviving to rebuild our knowledge. Except me. I was never too busy to try to piece together our story, to try to remember what we used to be. I feel resentful that I have been pushed into this mode by Andalus but it was with a higher purpose, that of my return, a return that will increase the store of knowledge and heal a bit more of the past.

But I make a detour first. Something I have sacrificed, besides my swims, besides my work, is my visits to the stone field. I go there now.

I have not been here but I have not stopped thinking about it, about what it means, about what it means to me. The rocks glisten. Many are half sunk in mud. I kneel down, rub the surface of one. It is smooth. I pick it up. A worm burrows into the soil where the stone lay.

Monuments are to honour the dead, to remember them. I try to picture the faces and I try to shut them out. It is no way to live. Like the bodies, the memories in shallow graves. I walk over them. My feet scuff the dirt from their faces.

I rub the mud off the stone. I take it back to the raft. It will return with me. A gesture, I know. Only a gesture.

I am saddened by what I see on my walk. Saddened for two reasons. With such a long break since my last time on this part of the island I can more easily notice the changes. Before, seeing the same piece of land once a week I would notice the water’s creep in inches if at all. It was only by comparing it to my memory of where it had been weeks previously that I would really notice a difference. Week to week there was little to see. Now though, the change is stark. A large part of the cliff face has collapsed and water has seeped into new areas of grassland. Not seeing it for so long has made the pace of change appear more rapid. Yet I do not know, without doing calculations, which of three possibilities it is: whether it is only an appearance, an illusion caused by the change in gaps between observations, whether the pace really has accelerated, or even whether I made a mistake and the island is and always has been disappearing more quickly than it seemed. Though either the second or third possibility is troubling, I resolve not to let it bother me. I am, after all, leaving the island behind. Still, I do not like the uncertainty. I am not someone who tole rates uncertainty, unanswered questions.

The other reason I am saddened is a more sentimental one. Bleak though it is, it has been home and has nurtured me, held me to its wet bosom like a mother clinging to a child caught in a flood.

I see the rocks lying on the beach from some distance. They are like carcasses of a sea animal I saw once many years ago. Fifteen of them. I look round and can see more still embedded in the cliff walls.

It is as if the island is starting to give up its treasure. A sparse treasure indeed. They look like humans too, prostrate on the strand.

I run my fingers over the one that is paler than the others. It is slightly warm, warmer than expected. The ridges in it like skin. There is something wrong with this scene, the bodies on the beach. I cannot put my finger on it. I leave it unsettled.

When I return, the tide is lapping at the raft and it is time to leave.

I help Andalus on board, push the raft out further, climb on myself, hoist the sail and we are away again. This time there is no strong breeze and the sail is barely full. There are no surprises. We float away from the island like a couple of pleasure seekers, a pair of friends on an adventure for a day. I look back once. I see the beach, the cliffs in the north, my cave. The island is already grey, darker than the sky.

From out here, it is a vast canvas of grey and in the centre, growing ever smaller, my life for the past decade, sinking into the sea, like a pebble dropped into a pool.

We drift for days like this. We eat, sleep, fish, drink. Sometimes I row. It is like life on the island before Andalus, having my routines back. The raft floats atop the shining sea. There is nothing else. No other vessel, no birds, no dolphins, no sound. I see the clouds reflected on the sea. Wrapping my coat around my head I hear my breathing, the water lapping against the wood, the occasional flap of the sail.

Andalus sometimes snores. We sit at opposite ends of the raft. I am always hungry but not overly so. I am always thirsty too but again I can cope. I know how to ration myself. Andalus does not show dissent over the rationing. He does not show dissent at all. He lies with his hand in the water, the other across his brow. A feminine pose, the pose of a fop, a man of leisure. I wrap my coat around my head to block it out. The water, the raft, the man sitting opposite me, a silver fish, my wrinkled hands. I think of the going away and of the homecoming. My breathing grows louder in the dark.

She stands on the shoreline. One arm is at her side, the other to her forehead. She shades her eyes with her hand. The palm faces outwards, towards the sea. She watches me sail away. She is the only one who watches. I look at her too: the woman who loved but not enough.

I see her again there. Now she is older. Perhaps she is grey. She scans the sea with her hand held to her face. I wonder what is behind her, behind her on the plains, across the mountains, through the barren fields to the white walls of the settlement of Bran and the story of my future.

Days into the trip the sea becomes like glass. I think back to the ruined city, the statue at the bottom of the ocean. I wonder if I sail above it again. I look over the edge. I think of how it would be to drop silently down through the clear water, breathing water, swimming like a fish and then to stand on the streets of a long-forgotten settlement with buildings around me reaching up into the gloom. What would I find there? Around the corners of narrow streets, deep within abandoned buildings, would I find our story, our beginning? Deep in the murk shapes appear. We drift across them. Again I can see ruins floating beneath us. I look out for the statue, leaning over as far as I can. In the distance, too far to see properly, a shadow appears near the surface. I wonder if that is him. Still sleeping beneath the ocean. It flickers and is gone. We drift onwards.

Three days later we pick up some speed. I am hungry still. I too trail my fingers in the water. I try not to look at Andalus. Once he stood up.

I screamed at him. I have not shouted like that for years. He cowered and I apologised. ‘It’s for your own good,’ I told him. ‘Just sit down.

We’ll be there in a few days.’

This was a guess. I have my compass to tell me the way to go but I do not know how far we have come. The only markers I have are ruined buildings at the bottom of the ocean. We could arrive tomorrow, we could arrive in a week. I think the pace is quicker overall than last time but the currents seem to be against us. Perhaps on the outward journey I caught one of them which bore me all the way to the island and now we are sailing against it, struggling against it. We point one way but the ocean moves the other beneath us, the island just over the horizon, waiting to suck me back in. Perhaps we have not moved at all.

But today I know this cannot be. Today I wake to sunshine. Before I even open my eyes I can feel it. I stand up and drink it in. I take off my shirt. I spread out my arms and lift up my face. I stand like this for what seems like hours. Standing on top of all this water, for the first time in ten years, I am dry. The boards of the raft begin to steam.

Andalus lies unmoving.

Three days after the sun breaks through I see land.