She was looking like a cuscus again, her face so alert and those wide grey eyes slightly unfocused. ‘Can we sit and drink that tea?’
When we did she said, ‘Freud said that primitives are like Western children. I don’t believe that for a second, but most anthropologists don’t blink an eye at it, so we’ll let it stand for the sake of my argument, which is: Every child seeks meaning. When I was four I remember asking my quite pregnant mother: What’s the point of all this? Of all what? she asked. Of all this life. I remember how she looked at me and I felt like I’d said something very bad. She came and sat beside me at the table and told me I’d just asked a very big question, and that I wouldn’t be able to answer it until I was an old, old woman. But she was wrong. Because she had that baby, and when she brought her home I knew I’d found the point. Her name was Katie but everyone called her Nell’s Baby. She was my baby. I did everything for her: fed her, changed her, dressed her, put her to sleep. And then when she was nine months old, she got sick. I was sent to my aunt’s in New Jersey and when I came back she was gone. They didn’t even let me say goodbye. I couldn’t even touch her or hold her. She was gone like a rug or a chair. I feel like I got most of life’s lessons before I turned six. For me, other people are the point, but other people can disappear. I guess I don’t have to tell you that.’
‘The Kiona give everyone a sacred name, a secret spirit name to use in the world beyond this one. I gave John and Martin new names and I find it helps a bit. Brings them closer somehow.’ My heart was suddenly beating hard. ‘Was Katie your only sibling?’
‘No. My mother had a boy two years later. Michael. But I couldn’t go near him. I said mean things about him. I think that’s why they finally sent me to school. To get me out of poor Michael’s hair.’
‘And what do you make of him now?’
‘Not much. He’s quite angry with me at the moment, because I haven’t changed my name to Fen’s, and that has been reported in the papers in several cities.’
I’d heard that, too, somewhere.
‘Were you close to your brothers?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but I didn’t know it until they died.’ I felt my throat tighten a bit, but I pushed the words through. ‘When John died I was twelve and I thought, if only it had been Martin. I thought I could have handled Martin better because he was so much more familiar and irritating to me. John was like a beloved uncle who came home and took me frog hunting and bought me jelly buttons. Martin taunted and mimicked me. And then six years after John, Martin did die and I felt like—’ And then my throat closed entirely and I couldn’t force it open. She stared at me and nodded into the silence between us, as if I were still talking and making perfect sense.
6
There is no privacy through a mosquito net. Next morning, as Fen and I sat at my table with a map of the river we’d sketched out together, Nell rolled onto her back and slowly sat up. She laid her cheek on a knee and didn’t move again for a long time.
‘I think she’s worse today,’ I said. A malarial fever came on hard with a headache that felt like someone was taking an axe to the base of your skull.
‘Nellie. Up and at ‘em,’ he said without turning. ‘We’ve got tribes to meet today.’ He said to me, quietly, ‘The trick is to outrun it. Stop moving and you’re buggered.’
‘In my experience it doesn’t always give you that option.’ When my fever came on, my body felt filled with lead, and I was lucky if I could reach a chamber pot. I fetched the medicine box.
‘I’m going to the loo,’ he said to her through the netting. ‘Please don’t slow us down.’
If she responded I couldn’t hear it. Her cheek remained pressed to her knee. Fen disappeared down the pole.
She was not in any state of undress—she wore the same shirt and pants from the night before—yet I felt reluctant to greet her. I wanted to give her the illusion of privacy. I busied myself with turning some yams in the ash fire and doing the washing up at the back of the house, though there were only two plates and two cups and they needed little more than a wipe-down.
‘Did you sleep at all?’
I swung round. She was seated at the table.
‘A bit,’ I said.
‘Liar.’
Her cheeks were flushed in wide circles like a doll’s, but her lips were colorless, her eyes glazed yellow. I tapped out four aspirin into my hand. ‘Too many?’
She leaned in from across the table, peering closely at the pills. ‘Perfect.’
‘You need specs.’
‘I stepped on them a few months ago.’
‘Bankson! A fellow’s here,’ Fen called from below. ‘I can’t make out what he wants.’
‘I’ll be right down.’ I brought Nell water for her pills and went to the smaller trunk in my office. I swept my hand back and forth across its gritty bottom until I felt the small case in a corner. I hadn’t opened it since my mother gave it to me before I sailed.