The VC, The DMZ And Me 2 page

'…I understand.'

'Good. Let's do it, then.' I leant forwards to drop back into the water, but stopped myself just as I was about to drop off the ledge.

'What?' asked Christo feebly, sensing that something had happened.

I didn't answer. I was transfixed by a chilling and beautiful sight – a slender comet cruising through the blackness beneath my feet.

'What happens, Richard?'

'Nothing… There's just… uh… something down there.'

'The shark?' Christo's voice instantly rose to a frightened sob. 'Is it this shark?'

'No, no. Definitely not. Don't worry.' I watched the comet carefully. Actually, when I'd first seen it I'd thought it was the shark, which is why I'd hesitated before answering Christo. But now I was sure it wasn't. Something about the way it moved wasn't right; it wasn't gliding and it was too jerky. It was more like a person.

'It's probably me,' I said with a drunken smile.

'…You?'

'My wake…' I giggled. 'My shadow.'

'…What? I do not…'

I patted Christo's leg gently. 'It's probably a shoal of fish.'

The comet continued on its leisurely path and then, curiously, began to shorten. It took me a moment to realize it was passing into one of the passageways leading out.

'OK, Christo,' I said, putting a cautious hand on the back of my head. I'd suddenly felt as if part of my skull had fallen away and its contents were streaming out or expanding like vapour. Relieved to find hard bone and wet, matted hair, I allowed myself to slip into the water. 'I think I know which direction to take.'

Within a few strokes I understood that the passage was not the one leading back to the original cave. It twisted almost immediately to the right, whereas the other passage was virtually straight. But I was also confident, so I didn't attempt to turn back. Ten or so metres along we found a second air pocket, and ten metres further we found another. At the last air pocket we came up into fresh air. Ahead was the exit, circled by darkness. Through it I could see real stars and the real sky, just bright enough to pick out the faint black shapes of palm trees. Claws on pencil arms, running along the cliff top as it curved around to the mainland.

I laid the exhausted Christo out on the flat shelf beneath the lightning-bolt fissure, and walked forward a couple of steps, so I was looking over the coral gardens.

'Mister Duck?' I hissed softly. 'It was you, wasn't it? You're here.'

'Yeah,' Mister Duck replied, from so near by it made me jump. 'I'm here.'

INCOMING

Politics

'Damn,' I said, spotting Cassie. She was standing near the kitchen hut, talking to Ella. It meant I had no choice but to pass her. My only other options were to walk directly across the centre of the clearing or to skirt around and come from behind the longhouse. In other words, passing Bugs or passing Sal. Not really options at all.

I sighed. Getting from one side of the clearing to the other had become like an eye-contact obstacle course. It was true that the shark attack had distracted attention away from the flare-up in the longhouse, but although an unspoken truce had been agreed, the tensions behind the incident were still there. Tactically, I had to hand it to Bugs. His group – basically the carpenters and Jean's gardeners minus Cassie and Jesse—had taken over the centre of the clearing. Starting from the first afternoon after the shark attack, I'd come back from the island to find them all sitting there in a loose circle, smoking dope and chatting quietly. So as well as the commanding vantage point they had over the camp, there was a psychological aspect. It was like they represented the establishment, making the rest of us feel like dissenters.

Our dissenter role was accentuated by the fact that, unlike the Bugs group, we had no sense of unity. In effect, we were several sub-groups. There was my old fishing detail and Keaty, which I included myself in, but there was also Jed, and I included myself with him as well. Then there was Moshe's detail, who seemed uncertain of where their affiliations lay, and there were the cooks. The cooks, as a result of Ella, partly included Jesse and Cassie. But you could also partly include Jesse and Cassie with my old fishing detail, because of their friendship with Keaty.

Finally, there were Sal and Karl. Karl was a law unto himself, drifting somewhere in outer space, and Sal was trying extremely hard to appear neutral – though we all knew where her loyalties would lie if push came to shove.

If it sounds complicated, that's because it was.

This, then, was the politics involved in crossing the clearing, and we all had to deal with it to the same degree. Except me, that is, who had an extra burden to deal with in the form of Cassie. Ever since the incident when Bugs had shat himself, she'd been treating me like I was mentally unstable, talking slowly, carefully enunciating each word, using an evenly modulated tone as if she thought a sudden noise would scare me. It was really getting on my nerves. But I'd have shinned up a rocket-ship tree to have avoided passing Bugs, and Sal would make me give her a troublesome report on our guests on the neighbouring island, so Cassie it had to be. Biting my lip and looking intently at the ground, I moved out from behind the foliage and set off in her direction. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that she was deep in conversation with Ella. 'I'm going to make it,' I thought optimistically, but I was wrong.

'Richard,' she said, just as I was about to move out of her range.

I looked up with a studiously blank expression.

'How are you?'

'Fine,' I replied quickly. 'On my way to see the patient.'

She smiled. 'No, Richard, I mean, how are you?'

'Fine,' I repeated.

'I think this has been harder for you than anyone.'

'Oh well, not really.'

'Finding Christo…'

'It wasn't so bad…'

'…And now you have to work up on the island without company, without… support.'

I shrugged helplessly. It would have been quite impossible to explain that, from my point of view, the three days since Sten's death had been great. Jed's knowledge of first aid meant he was spending all his time looking after Christo, and that meant I got to spend my days alone in the DMZ.

Alone in a manner of speaking, anyway.

'But maybe being without company is a good thing, Cassie. It gives me time to think and come to terms with what's happened.' From similar encounters, I knew this was the right thing to say.

Cassie widened her eyes as if she hadn't considered this, but now that she had, yes, it was a good idea and she was impressed I'd thought of it. 'That's a positive attitude,' she said warmly. 'Well done.'

I felt that was enough for me to disappear without appearing rude, so I made my excuses and continued on my way.

I was aiming for the hospital tent. More accurately, the Swedes' tent, but seeing as Sten was dead and Karl had started living on the beach, I'd begun calling it the hospital tent. Disappointingly, no one else did. Even though I'd made a point of using the new name at every opportunity, it had stubbornly refused to catch on.

'Back early today,' said Jed, when I climbed in. 'It's still light.' He sounded very tired and was sweating like a pig. It was baking under the canvas, even with the flap pegged open.

'Got hungry, needed a fag. Nothing much going on.'

'No developments then.'

I looked at Christo.

'He's asleep. It's OK.'

'Oh… well, yeah, no developments.' I lied. There had been a very particular development, but not one I could go into. 'Just the same as always.'

'So we 're lucky again. I wonder how long it will last.'

'Mmm… I got some more grass by the way.'

'More? Richard, you…' Jed shook his head. '…We've got grass coming out of our ears. Every day you've brought some back.'

'People are smoking a lot at the moment.'

'We'd need all the hippies in Goa to smoke through your supplies, and if you take too much the guards might notice.'

I nodded. The same thought had crossed my mind, though with a different slant. I'd been hoping that my regular expeditions would get the guards on their toes. They were so pathetically easy to avoid that it made you wonder why they were there in the first place.

'So what about Christo?' I asked, changing the subject. 'Any developments with him?'

Jed rubbed his eyes. 'Yes. He's getting worse.'

'Delirious?'

'No, just in pain. If he's awake. He spends most of the time unconscious and he's running a bad fever. Without a thermometer it's hard to be sure, but it's higher than yesterday… To tell you the truth…' Jed lowered his voice, '…I'm getting seriously worried about him.'

I frowned. Christo looked OK to me. When I'd seen him in the daylight, the morning after rescuing him, I'd felt slightly let down by the undramatic nature of his injuries. Apart from a single cut on his arm – the cut I'd mistaken for a mouth – his only wound was a large bruise on his stomach from where the shark had rammed him. The injuries were so superficial that he'd walked around on the first day, trying to find Karl. He'd only collapsed on the second day, which we'd thought was a result of stress or possibly a relapse of the food poisoning.

'I mean,' Jed continued, 'the bruise should be going down, shouldn't it?'

'You're the doctor, Jed.'

'I'm not a fucking doctor. That's the point.'

I leant over to take a look. 'Well, it's blacker than it was. Not so purple. I think that means it's healing.'

'Do you know that for a fact?'

'Not for a fact, no.' I paused. 'I'm sure it'll be just the food poisoning that's keeping him low. Jesse is still getting gripes.'

'Uh-huh.'

'And so is Bugs… unfortunately!' I added with a mischievous wink that Jed either missed or ignored.' …Well, I'm going to get some food and catch up with Francoise and the others.'

'OK. Leave a cigarette will you? And come back later. Nobody comes in to check on me apart from you and Unhygienix. I think they're avoiding having to see Christo… Pretending it hasn't happened maybe.'

'Pretty hard,' I said, chucking him the packet. 'Sten's still lying in that sleeping-bag around the back of the longhouse. It's right on the other side from where I sleep, and I can smell him through the walls.'

Jed glanced at me. There was obviously something he wanted to say so I nodded, to say, 'Go on,' but he only sighed. 'Tomorrow morning,' he said sadly. 'Sal said she's given up on trying to persuade Karl to be there, so he'll be buried by the waterfall tomorrow morning.'

Dissent

Sal had been sitting in her usual spot outside the longhouse entrance, which, if you wanted to get to the beach, was unavoidable without an exhaustingly roundabout route via the Khyber Pass. But to my relief she'd moved by the time I left the hospital tent. I assumed she'd gone to the centre of the clearing to talk to Bugs; something I could have confirmed with a simple turn of the head, but I didn't want to look in the enemy's direction so I took it on faith. My mistake. I should have confirmed. Just like with Cassie, I was sprung as I thought I was leaving the danger zone—in this case past the longhouse, about to join the path from the clearing to the beach.

'Richard,' said a stern voice.

Sal was standing chest-deep in the shrubs beside the track. She'd clearly been hiding there in order to trap me. 'You were hiding,' I blurted, surprised into speaking the truth.

'Yes, Richard, I was.' She stepped forwards, delicately parting the ferns with a pudgy hand. 'I didn't want to force you into one of your ludicrously transparent evasion exercises.'

'Evasion? I haven't been evad…'

'You have.'

'No, really.'

'Save it, Richard.'

This was the third time she'd used my name so I knew she meant business. I gave up the pretence with a feeble grin.

'Wipe that smirk off your face,' she said immediately. 'Have you got any idea what trouble you've been causing me?'

'Sorry, Sal.'

'Sorry doesn't cut it. You're a pain in the ass. How simple were your instructions?'

'Very simple, Sal.'

'Very simple. But you've forgotten them already.'

'No, I…'

'Repeat them.'

'…The instructions?'

'Yes.'

I had to make an effort to keep a schoolboy's insolence out of my voice. 'While Jed is looking after Christo, it's my responsibility to keep you up to date on…' I stammered and a cold flush pricked my neck. I'd nearly said Zeph and Sammy's names.

'On?' Sal demanded.

'…On our potential new arrivals.'

'Exactly. Now perhaps you can tell me why you're finding that one little task so difficult.'

'There was nothing to tell today. No developments, same as always…'

'Wrong.' Sal shook a finger at me. I watched the little hammocks of fat under her upper arm wobble indignantly. 'Wrong, wrong, wrong. If there's nothing to tell, I want to hear it. Otherwise I worry, and I've got a lot to worry about at the moment, so I don't need you making things worse. Get it?'

'Yes.'

'Good.' She lowered her finger and took a breath to compose herself. 'I don't mean to be tough on you, but I just can't deal with extra hassles at the moment. Morale is… well, morale is bad.'

'We'll pull through.'

'I know we will, Richard,' she said curtly. 'I have no doubt of it. But to make certain, I want you to pass on a message to all your friends.'

'…Sure.'

'Yes. I want you to tell them that for the past three days, for obvious reasons, I've been tolerating this absurd rift that has blown up in the camp.'

I made a rather foolish attempt at appearing innocent. 'Rift?'

'Rift! As in half the camp not talking to the other half! As in people threatening to stick spears in other people's necks!'

I reddened.

'Now you may or may not know that tomorrow morning we're going to be burying Sten. I want that burial to mark the end of the tension so that some good can come out of this appalling tragedy. I also want you to know that I'm giving the same message to Bugs. I don't want you lot thinking he's getting preferential treatment because he's my man. OK?'

'OK.'

Sal nodded. Then she put the base of her palm flat on her forehead, and held it there silently for several seconds.

Poor Sal, I thought. I hadn't been very understanding of the stress she was under, and I made a resolution to be a good deal more understanding in the future. I wasn't even sure why I'd been avoiding her. My problem was with Bugs. I'd unfairly allowed my dislike of him to spill over to her.

'So,' she said eventually. 'Where were you going before I nabbed you?'

'To the beach. Looking for Francoise… and checking up on Karl.'

'Karl…' Sal muttered something indistinct and looked up at the canopy. When she looked down she seemed surprised to find me still with her. 'Go on then,' she said, ushering me away. 'What are you waiting for? Get lost.'

It was getting close to six o'clock when I reached the beach, cool enough to walk slowly on the dry sand if I'd wanted to. But I didn't. I was playing one of my games, and it required walking in the damp sand by the shore.

The aim was to leave the perfect footprint, and it was a lot harder and more preoccupying than it might sound. If the sand was the dry side of damp, the footprint crumbled; the moist side and it melted as the squeezed-out water seeped back in. Then there was the application of pressure. The toes sank too deeply with a normal step and flawed the imprint. The alternative, taking an artificial step with even pressure, created a good imprint at the cost of ethics. This was the compromise I wrestled with.

In this way I made my way along the beach, hopping, pausing, groaning, mashing up bad prints in frustration. My eyes were always pointed downwards, so I didn't realize I'd reached my friends until I was within a couple of metres of them.

'Are you going insane, Rich?' I heard Keaty say. 'If you are, tell us. It might mean you have better luck getting through to Karl.'

'I'm trying to make the perfect footprint,' I replied without raising my head. 'It's really difficult.'

Keaty laughed in a way that told me he was stoned. 'The perfect footprint, huh? Yeah, that's getting pretty close to insane. And more original than trying to draw the perfect circle.'

'Circle?'

'It's what mad people do.'

'Oh.' I stamped out my last effort and trudged over, disappointed to see that Francoise wasn't with them. 'Is that what Karl is doing?'

'Nope. He's too mad even for circles.'

'Actually,' Etienne interrupted, not about to join in with Keaty's flippant appraisal, 'Karl is not mad. He is en etat de choc.'

Keaty arched his eyebrows. 'Uh-huh. Just what I figured… Now maybe you could tell us what it means.'

'I do not know the correct English. It is why I said it in French.'

'That's helpful.'

'If you had intended to help, you would be taking Karl to Ko Pha-Ngan,' said Etienne stiffly, and stood up. 'And I am tired of arguing this with you. Excuse me, Richard. I am going back to camp. You will tell Francoise when she returns?'

'OK,' I replied uncomfortably. I'd obviously turned up in the middle of something, and I wasn't at all happy with the idea that my friends had been arguing. We had to stick together, even if Sal was going to be calling for a truce tomorrow.

Etienne began walking away. A couple of seconds later, Keaty turned to Gregorio and hissed, 'Why the fuck weren't you backing me up?'

Gregorio looked at his hands pensively. 'I do not know… I thought perhaps he was right.'

'He isn't right. How can he be right?'

'Hold on,' I said, first checking behind me to make sure that Etienne was out of earshot. 'Was Etienne being serious about Ko Pha-Ngan?'

Keaty nodded. His tiny dreadlocks were still short enough to stand bolt upright, and they seemed to accentuate his expression of incredulity. 'Dead serious. He's been saying it all day. Says he's going to bring it up with Sal.'

'But he must know we can't take him to Ko Pha-Ngan. What would we say? «Here's a friend of ours who's been attacked by a shark and had a nervous breakdown on our secret beach. Well, we'll be off then. See you…'»

'He thinks we could take him there and drop him off near Hat Rin.'

'That's nuts. Even if he didn't give everything away, how would we know he got looked after? There's a million fucked-up freaks over there. If someone saw him wasting away on the sand, they'd just ignore him.' I shook my head. 'No way. The best thing for Karl is for him to be here.'

'I've been telling that to Etienne all day. But wait, it gets worse. He wants to drop Sten off on Ko Pha-Ngan as well.'

'Sten? '

'Yep.'

'But he's dead! What would be the point of…'

'His family. Etienne thinks we have to let them know what's happened to their son. See, if we left them both on the beach then Karl would definitely be noticed and Sten's family would be contacted.'

I smiled in disbelief. 'Yeah, and meanwhile we'd definitely get discovered. We'd be finished. It's the worst idea I ever heard.'

'Tell me about it,' said Keaty. 'And while you're about it,' he added, pointing at Gregorio, 'tell him.'

Gregorio lay on his back to avoid our accusing stares. 'I only think we should think about what Etienne says. If Karl is not talking to any people here, maybe he will not talk to any people on Ko Pha-Ngan.'

'No,' said Keaty. 'He'll talk, eventually. And when he does, I'd rather he did it to us. Not some fucking Thai cop or Swedish shrink.'

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Whoosh, Boom, Zzz

After all the discussion about Karl, I decided I ought to go and see him myself. Or that's what I told Keaty and Gregorio. Really I was just interested in catching up with Francoise, whom I'd barely seen over the past few days. The main reasons were our different work details and the hectic circumstances, though I hadn't been very active in seeking her out. Following the misunderstood kiss, I'd been slightly wary of giving Etienne any reasons to be suspicious.

I found Francoise by Karl's hole, about four hundred metres further on from Keaty and Gregorio. Karl had dug the hole when he'd decamped to the beach. It wasn't much of a hole – thigh-high if he stood up, chest-deep if he sat down. More impressive was the shelter which Etienne and Keaty had rigged up. Because Karl refused to budge from his hole all through the day, they'd been worried about him getting sunstroke. They'd found three long palm branches and tied them against each other like a tepee. The gaps in the fronds wouldn't have stopped rain but they kept him in the shade.

I was expecting Francoise to be in a bad mood (as everyone else seemed to be) so I was happily surprised when she ran over and gave me a hug.

'Richard!' she said. 'Thank you! I have not thanked you yet! So, thank you!'

I paused.' …What for?'

'For helping me when I was sick. Really, you were so kind. I wanted to tell you before, but there was never a good chance. Always so much to do. We have to catch all the extra fish now, and then I stay with Karl, and often you are not back until late.'

'Francoise, don't give it another thought. It was nothing. Anyway, you did the same for me once.'

'Yes, with your fever.' She smiled, then looked at me straight in the eyes and suddenly the smile turned into a sly chuckle. 'You kissed me!'

My eyes flicked away. 'I thought you were sleeping…'

'I was. Etienne told me the next day.'

'Oh,' I said, mentally unleashing a stream of curses at Etienne's big mouth. 'Well… I hope you don't mind… It was sort of complicated…'

'Of course I do not mind! You know, when you were ill I also

kissed you.'

'…I was never completely sure if I dreamed that or not.'

'You did not dream it. And remember the next morning! You were so worried!'

I nodded, remembering my awkwardness and Francoise's Exocet-style questions extremely clearly.

'So tell me,' she said. 'Why do you say it was complicated?'

'Well… complicated is probably the wrong, uh… It wasn't like the kiss was… the kiss wasn't…' I stopped myself and started again. '…I'm not sure what Etienne told you, but he took the kiss the wrong way. I was kissing you because you were so sick, and there was so much other sickness around that once I'd started… it was kind of hard to stop.'

'How was Etienne taking it?'

'Whoosh,' I thought. 'Boom.'

'…Well, I guess he thought it was… you know…'

'A sexy kiss.'

'Mmm.'

Francoise laughed again. Then she leant over and planted a little kiss on my cheek. 'Was that a sexy kiss?'

'No,' I replied; only a small fib. 'Of course not.'

'So there is no problem. Not complicated.'

'I'm glad you understand.'

'Always,' she said. 'I always understand.'

For a moment we held each other's gaze, just long enough for it to acquire a mild resonance. It reminded me of other moments from months back, loaded exchanges on Ko Samui, our midnight conversation about the parallel worlds in the Milky Way. Then the moment was over, broken by Francoise as she turned to look at Karl.

'He does not push down the shelter any more,' she said a few seconds later.

'…Yeah. I saw it was up. Maybe it's a good sign. An improvement or something.'

She sighed. 'No. It means nothing. We discovered he only pushed the shelter down because of the leaves… He could not see the caves. He likes to watch them. When we left a space for him to watch through, he left the shelter alone.'

'Ah…'

'But maybe he is improving… He eats the food I give him now.'

'That's something I guess. Not much though.'

Francoise nodded. 'Yes… Poor Karl… Not much.'

Sal cornered me a final time that day. I'd stayed with Francoise until long after the sun went down, and Sal got me just as I was about to enter the longhouse on my way to bed.

'Did you pass on my message?' she asked.

I slapped my forehead. 'Shit, Sal, it totally slipped my mind. I'm really sorry. I got distracted because people were talking about Karl and then…'

Sal shook her head dismissively. 'OK, OK. I know what happened because I had a chat with Etienne this evening. It seems there'll be a lot of ground to cover at the funeral tomorrow morning and… Please don't tell me you've forgotten about the funeral.'

'Sal!' I said, probably overdoing the outrage. 'Of course not!'

'Well, it's hard to tell with you… Anyway, following the talk with Etienne, I've had a slight change of plan. I've decided to be a bit blunter with the camp than I'd originally planned to be… Desperate times and desperate measures, or something like it…'

She hesitated. 'Funerals have a way of drawing people together, don't you think, Richard?'

'They can,' I said doubtfully.

'They can, yes… So the point is, don't lose any sleep over not passing on the message.'

I nodded. 'I won't.'

'Good. I'll see you tomorrow then.'

'Sure. Tomorrow.'

Moshe was the last to bed, so he blew out the last candle. The John-Boy game, obviously, was out of the question, but it crossed my mind to try it. I was interested to know what would happen. Probably we'd have laboured through it, only calling out the names of our friends until some poor sap was stuck and had to pass it over to the Bugs side. Probably via the Yugo girls, I imagined, or maybe Sal.

I moved on to thinking about Francoise, a train of thought that, once started, could occupy me almost indefinitely. Indefinitely turned out to be at least an hour. That was how long I'd been lying awake before I realized that everyone else in the longhouse was lying awake too. It was a revelation I found annoying. As there was no light in the longhouse for one's eyes to become accustomed to, normally one felt snugly cocooned by the insulating wall of blackness. Paradoxically, it was the snores and sounds of others sleeping that reinforced this cocoon, the sleepers distanced by their unconsciousness.

Once alerted by the lack of heavy breathing, the cocoon illusion was ruined. Ruined, and worst of all, replaced by a nagging puzzle. I was awake because I had Francoise to mull over, but why was everyone else awake? It took me another half-hour to deduce that it had to be because they were fretting about Sten's funeral.

Five minutes later, the puzzle solved, I fell fast asleep.

Ashes to Dust

Despite the stench of rotten Sten (a sudden hot blast erupted when his feet slipped out of his sleeping-bag) the funeral had some dignity. We all circled the grave that Jean had dug the day before, close enough to the waterfall to make a pleasant spot, far enough to stop our drinking water from being spoiled. Then Sal said a few words, talking of Sten's unfailing commitment to the camp and the extent to which we'd all miss him. Unhygienix, as head cook, said a few more. He talked about how Sten always caught big fish, which weren't necessarily tastier than the smaller ones from the lagoon, but went further in terms of keeping people's stomachs full. He also pointed out that although Sten hadn't played the most active social role in the camp, he was always ready to join in if a Sunday football game was organized and had never been known to foul. This last point drew a couple of murmurs of agreement from the crowd.

No one was visibly upset until we started filling in the grave. Then several of the girls started crying. Ella particularly – like all the cooks, she'd had more contact with him than the rest of us. Anyway, I could understand the tears because there was something poignant about watching the sleeping-bag shroud become slowly covered in earth. It brought home how absolute Sten's absence from the world had become.

Finally, Bugs planted a wooden headstone. To his credit, he'd made a real effort with the carving, putting little flourishes around Sten's name. If I had to niggle, I'd mention that the headstone was missing Sten's second name and date of birth. The trouble was, Christo wasn't able to answer questions about Sten and Karl wasn't willing, so there was nothing that anyone could do about it. But perhaps it was more appropriate that way. Second names felt connected to the World, maybe because they were a link to family and home, so they were never used or asked. It's a funny thought that if today – for some inexplicable reason—I wanted to track down any of the people I once knew on the beach, I'd have no better clue to work from than a nationality and a fading memory of their faces.

Throughout the proceedings, I was wondering at which point Sal would address us about the tensions in the camp. I'd assumed it would be when she spoke over the graveside, and I think she'd assumed the same thing, but the smell had probably changed her mind. It was distracting. Although we'd all listened attentively to her and Unhygienix, I think there was a quiet sense of relief when the earth sealed the head-hole of Sten's sleeping-bag.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 395