As Flies to Whatless Boys Read online

  Permit me to end on a personal note: Myna, my old Venezuelan grandmother, was in her last years confined to a wheelchair. This did not deter her. When the need arose she would shift her weight in her chair as best she could and lift up the appropriate buttock manually, even in mixed company. Fait accompli, and smiling like a young girl, she would tell us, ‘El culo está contento!’ (‘My pumsee is happy!’) She lived to 98.

  6

  7 Apples

  It was well past noon on the following day when the passengers crept at last from out we cabins, up onto the main deck. By that time, much to we disappointment, the islands had long disappeared beneath the horizon at the ship’s wake. True to Captain Damphier’s predictions a brisk following trade drove the vessel smooth and steady ahead. Broad rolling swells came too, providing an extra push. The Rosalind making surer headway than she had since the start of the voyage.

  After a day or two we settled weself begrudgingly back into the routines aboard ship. Yet now, as the Rosalind ploughed she way into the wide Sargasso Sea, the sun shone brighter. Temperature warmer, sky clearer, the water positively bluer. The passengers scarcely realising weself that now—as we strolled the deck or stretched out lazy in a patch of bright sun—we no longer held we dingy coats and blankets clutched round us. On occasion one of the sailors might even be seen going about he duties bareback, much to the scandal of the ladies aboard.

  One afternoon the sun was shining so relentless that in addition to the sailors, a number of the male passengers reclined bareback on deck as well. Or they’d stripped theyself down to they filthy merinos. The women and girls having accustomed theyself to remaining below—despite the baking heat—fans fluttering-way in they hands busy as butterflies. That same afternoon, on the deck allotted to the third class, a row of some sort seemed to have erupted between two of the sailors. The passengers hurrying towards the starboard rail—realising there wasn’t no kinda argument a-tall, but that one of the sailors had evidently spied a tiger-striped shark swimming alongside the ship.

  The third-class men raising up the cry, charging towards the rail, draping theyself over.

  But son, no sooner had all these men gathered at that side of the deck than several sailors perched discreet in the rigging above they heads began pouring buckets of seawater over them. Till they stood in the blazing sun soaked down to they bones.

  Some laughed out hearty at the seamen’s rouse. They took up a bar of soap and began scrubbing under they arms. Others became irate at the sailors’ trick—shark indeed! But regardless of the men’s approval or disapproval, this was the first proper shower any of them had partaken of in over a month. And even they couldn’t’ve doubted that it served them wonderful well.

  ___________________

  With the dispensation allotted only to lovers, Marguerite and me strolled arm-in-arm about the ship. Boldface so. Nobody said a word. Nobody even seemed to take notice. On tranquil nights we spread out a blanket in our favourite secluded spot on the forecastle deck. Lying on our backs and gazing up for hours at the glittering stars. With the same boldface abandon one night we fell asleep right there on the deck. Arms wrapped round each other under the blanket. And son, the following morning we awakened to a spectacle more marvelous than any we’d ever witnessed: the blood-red ball of the sun, black-rimmed, rising up enormous out of a fire-blazing sea.

  Another afternoon, with a shock—she was supposed to be up in the parlour taking tea with the other ladies—Mrs. Whitechurch entered her cabin. Knocking on the door to Marguerite’s adjacent room. With me jumping up stark naked out the bed, hiding myself behind the same door Marguerite opened cautious to address her aunt. Mrs. Whitechurch handing over a tray of tea-n’-pastries, her niece’s face crimson as the pot of strawberry jam.

  Still more perilous and inexplicable than this, on two separate mornings Mrs. Whitechurch entered the bathroom of her cabin-suite—she was supposed to be up at breakfast at that hour—going straightway about she business. Right there in front of us. Not even taking notice of her niece and me, there soaking in the soapy water of her own porcelain tub—Marguerite’s hand clasped tight over my mouth—only an arm’s reach away.

  ___________________

  Other peculiar events occurred aboard ship. One morning Amelia woke to discover an enormous wedge of Edam cheese—edged with its crescent-skin of bright red wax—tucked beneath her pillow. That slice of cheese almost as big as the pillow-self! So heavy Amelia had to strain to take it up, her fingers trembling to peel back the paper and break off the first bite.

  Another morning all three of my sisters awoke to find colossal slices of cheese, of three distinct varieties. On still other mornings they discovered tins of sardines and smoked salmon, boxes of water crackers & sugar biscuits. Pots of corned beef & herring & goose liver pâté.

  Early another morning Mum startled everybody with a piercing shriek. A big box of crackers and three tins of caviar beside she pillow.

  ___________________

  One of those same unending afternoons, calm & quiet & mildly breezy, Marguerite and I lay reclining on the foredeck in a patch of sun. Marguerite reading in she book by Benjamin Disraeli, a novel titled Sybil or the Two Nations. Me reading my own book with its bright-coloured plates—a present from Marguerite—my first introduction: Hummingbirds of the West Indies, by Sir Eardley Holland.

  Papee strolled over, so casual and unassuming at first I didn’t even take in my own father—

  Afternoon, Miss Whitechurch, he says, touching his hat for Marguerite.

  She was lying, at that particular moment, with her head propped against my chest. Me sitting up so startled I almost sent her reading glasses pelting over the rail—

  What is it, Father? I ask, embarrassed.

  Papee looked away—

  Only a small matter, he says, waiting a beat. Only that I’ve asked the family to join me for a short confab. Before dinner. In our cabin.

  He paused—

  I’d like you to attend as well, Willy.

  Papee paused again—

  That is, he says, barring duties to Cap’n Damphier!

  And with that Papee touched his hat once more for Marguerite, striding off across the deck.

  ___________________

  I entered my parents’ cabin at the petitioned hour, Papee sitting on a lower bunk, the rest of my family crowded round. On his lap, over Georgina’s shoulder, I made out the pasteboard box—only then did I realise we’d been at sea six weeks already.

  Papee looked up, seeing me enter—

  Most excellent! he says.

  I crouched to the bunk beside Mary.

  Now Papee pulled the piece of twine loose from round his box, lifting off the lid, placing it on the mattress beside him. And we all leant forward, peering inside. Of the twelve apples, five had withered to crinkly brown balls, with splotches of mildew the colour of oxidised copper. Papee removed these first, placing them careful on the overturned lid. The remaining seven apples looked ripe & red & rosy enough. Perfect even. Papee removed these ripe ones, shaking off the straw, passing them out one-by-one to Mum, each of the girls, then me. Giving the additional apple to Amelia.

  A single apple remained in the box, belonging to Papee.

  Straightway Amelia raised one of the shiny red apples up to her mouth—she was about to bite into it when Papee stopped her short.

  Just a moment, Amelia, he says.

  He cleared his throat—

  I’d like to propose . . .

  Papee started over—

  I’d like to ask each of you to give me your apples back.

  Amelia’s jaw dropped.

  Papee continued—

  I’d like to propose that you offer them up to a group of passengers—aboard this very vessel upon which we travel—who’re in greater want n’ need of them than we are. Considerably greater! I’m referring to the steerage passengers. Of whose existence you may not even . . .

  He broke off again—

  You see, ju
st this morning, together with Mr. Etzler and Mr. Stollmeyer, I made a visit to the stern where these steerage passengers are lodged. And there we three witnessed a scene of such depravity—the likes of which I’ve little comparison.

  Papee looked round at each of us—

  You must believe me that these unfortunate passengers are deserving of this small . . .

  Straightway I reached my apple forward. Placing it back inside the box. After a few seconds Mum reached over to do the same. Eventually Georgina, Mary—and finally Amelia, tears in her eyes—returned they apples too.

  Most excellent! Papee says.

  He replaced the five withered apples back in the box, topping it over.

  Already I’d turned to leave, ducking my head to exit the cabin door. I heard my father’s voice behind me—

  Willy, I’d like you to come along.

  ___________________

  Box tucked under his arm, Papee now led me towards the stern. Arriving a few minutes later at the barricaded section along the starboard rail, same decrepit passengers standing there, staring-way at nothing—

  Evening, Papee says, cheerful as he can manage.

  They didn’t give him no kinda response a-tall.

  Papee turned to me—

  Just here, he says.

  He indicated the open hatch beside they bare feet. Papee continued down the ladder, me following behind, descending into a stench that was palpable as a blast of hot air. I struggled to breathe. My eyes burnt as if in reaction to some noxious gas.

  Now I peered into the dark, blinking. But all I could make out was a sea of eyes. Staring straight back at me. Then, slow but sure—with the sombre light entering through the hatch above my head—I began to decipher the place.

  Separated on both sides into upper and lower levels, each with little more than three-feet of headroom. The plank flooring on both tiers divided up by crude railings—into what looked like animals’ pens, five-to-six-feet square—each allotted to a family. But son, even the sheep’s pen was a substantial improvement over this place. The passengers, most of them naked to the waist, clutched at they ragged clothes. Majority of them women and children, lying or crouching or kneeling on burlap-covered straw mattresses. Bursting through in places, buried under mounds of stinking bedding and piled-up clothes. Only then did I notice that all along the spaces between the straw mattresses—along the passageways and gathered in each corner—were thick, black, putrid puddles. Oozing side-to-side with the roll of the ship. Dripping down through cracks between the boards.

  I was cognizant of a low, deep, groaning sound. Faintly aware of a slow, crawling movement. Towards Papee and me. Filthy hands reaching out to grab the apples. Me standing there with my left foot still perched on the last rung of the ladder—like I haven’t decided yet whether I’m coming or going.

  All-in-a-sudden, in the dim light, I recognised the woman kneeling on the mattress just beside me. Holding in her lap a little girl hardly more than three years of age. The child’s eyes staring back blank and stony into my face.

  I stepped down and reached my hand round Papee, taking up the last remaining ripe apple. Turning and holding it out to the little girl. I recognised her red cap, fuzzy ball at the peak—with the faint shine of the apple in my hand, they’re the only two splotches of colour. Only signs of life.

  The little girl didn’t move. Eventually I got on my knees before her, setting down the apple for a moment atop the mattress. I reached for the girl’s little sticky hand. Prying her wiry fingers loose one-by-one. Fixing them one-by-one round the apple.

  ___________________

  The following afternoon the sun-blistering sky turned ebony-black in a matter of minutes. Jagged fiery forks sundered the air. Followed by sharp, heart-wrenching crashes. So loud they shook the deckboards beneath our bare feet. Now we watched a solid white wall approaching from the distance. Suddenly pelting the ship with stone-hard pellets of rain. And in rapid succession our world changed colours from blue, to black, to solid impenetrable white: tall white waves pounding the ship, thudding down atop the deck. And no longer could we distinguish white sky from white, featureless sea.

  Below it was as if the ship had been turned topside-down. Chairs, benches, tables lay toppled. Every piece of furnishing not bolted down. Buckets, suitcases, boxes, and canvas sacks. Scattered about. Tin plates & cups & eating utensils—every object not locked inside a cupboard—tumbling from the shelves to the plank floors. Rolling back-and-forth. All in constant motion, shattered glass everywhere.

  We stumbled about like drunkards. Throwing weself onto our bunks, arms wrapped round the mattress like if we were clutching to life itself. All activities aboard ceasing, beginning with meals. Since there wasn’t no way for the cook and stewards—seasick theyself—to prepare and distribute food. Even hand out cups of water. And almost any food or drink taken in came straight back up, so better to remain without. All our throats and bellies burning from the constant dry-retching.

  Three days and three nights it lasted. When only Captain Damphier and his first mate remained on deck, lashed to posts behind the helm. Even so it seemed impossible the swells didn’t sweep them overboard. Three days and nights when the captain and his first mate lived as if beneath the sea, rather than on top.

  Then—as abrupt and unprecipitated as it had departed from us—the pleasant, torrid, tropical weather returned.

  Still, it was a good few hours before the first of the battered passengers could venture up from out we cabins. Yet it wasn’t the sudden stillness that drew us above. Not the eerie quiet neither. Not even the hot sun baking the steaming boards. Not so a-tall. It was something else: a sudden uproar erupting somewhere aboard ship—riotous or celebratory or what nobody at first seemed to know. Till word began to circulate amongst us that, in truth, terra firma—land!—had been sighted off the port rail.

  Yet those passengers who had the energy to hurry over to that side of the deck only found theyself staring-way at a flat sea. At a bright and empty horizon. No land visible a-tall. And it wasn’t till the true explanation began to spread round the ship—one mouth to the next—that we came at last to understand the reason for all the uproar. What it was all about. But son, even this explanation seemed to us, at that moment, as hard to imagine as the prospect of sighting land itself.

  It had to do with the steerage passengers.

  Apparently, those passengers had awoken that same morning—only an hour or two after the storm subsided—to find in each of they family-pens a white silk pillowcase. A dozen of them. Maybe more. Wherever-the-arse these pillowcases had come from, nobody knew. Nobody had the remotest idea. But even more peculiar than the appearance of all these silk pillowcases theyself, was the fact that in each of them—like a Christmas package—the steerage passengers discovered a salt-cured Catalonian ham.

  ___________________

  Another balmy, star-filled night, Marguerite and I fell asleep again in our secluded corner of the forecastle deck. Arms wrapped round each other under the blanket. With me waking first the following morning, just as the sun had begun rising up out of the fire-blazing sea. I was about to turn and wake Marguerite when—at the other end of the horizon, the Rosalind’s slow-dipping bow pointing straight at it—something else arrested my attention. Like a black splotch, stuck to the surface of my own eye.

  I sat up, throwing the blanket off, climbing onto my feet. My two hands grasping tight to the wood railing, staring out over the choppy sea. There, several miles off the bow—unmistakable—an island. Its three green-black peaks rising up out of the azure water.

  But son, what startled me more than this sight was the ship’s eerie silence. The fact that no cry of the sighting had been sounded a-tall. Yet clearly the captain—or his first mate, or whoever else had they hands on the helm at that moment—had seen the island too. Because the ship was pointed straight-as-an-arrow at it.

  Maybe he’d decided to give the passengers a few more minutes’ sleep before sounding out he cry?
maybe he’d chosen to study the spectacle in private a while longer—this island so calm & serene & so unspeakably itself—before announcing it aloud? The same contemplative turn-of-mind with which I stood there now. Studying it. Staring cross the water at the triple-peaked splotch of darkest green.

  I stood another minute. Then I turned my eyes to Marguerite, still asleep at my feet. She lay on her back, her face turned to the side, a few moist strands of hazel-coloured hair draping cross her cheek. Stirring soft in the breeze. The blanket had slipped away from her shoulder. It had pulled the neck of her frock down too, morning sunlight pooling up in the shallow depression along her exposed clavicle.

  I paused a moment. Then I got down on my hands and knees, pressing my lips to it. To the edge of that tiny pool. Like I could drink it up. Like that little pool of light could quench my thirst. Marguerite smiling, stirring from out of she dreams beside me.

  5th Message

  21/9/10

  dear mr robot:

  i so HAPPY 4 you in trut mr robot cause listen hear what happen how yesterday tuesday afternoon was miss samlalsingh 1/2 day off, & i here in de archives all alone wid not a person in de place 2 check out none of dem old newspapers nor oldbooks nor noting else a-tall, wid me only sitting here so BORED-out-my-bones dat I was just wishing maybe u might arrive uself to do some more of u research pon dis man ETZLER 4 dis book u say u writing, & i say well let me take a lil looksee meself in dat journal you name de MORNIN STAR, & see if maybe i could find anyting would be of interest & useful or maybe a reference 2 u mother surname TUCKER someplace dat you might not have see it yet, but i have a very PECULIAR habit mr robot, sometimes i likes to skip to de END of a story & read it ASSBACKWARDS towards de front, so i go to de very last number of dat STAR and commence 2 reading de story backwards like i say but wasnt noting 2 much of interest dat i could tell & soon enough i was falling asleep again feeling bored wid dat journal 2, & i start to skip backwards some more reading faster till maybe 2 or 3 numbers in from de back, & den in #32 all-in-a-sudden just like dat my finger fall pon someting in trut!!!