Wall of Days

231

15

The man sits in a cave. He has his head in his hands. He is not in despair, merely thinking. His friends sit around him, waiting for him to speak. Eventually he says, ‘The end has come. Our sacrifice will save all that we know. Though you won’t be around to see it, the pain I am about to inflict will surround our settlement like a girdle, will protect our children from starvation.’

The men sitting around him bow their heads too. ‘Do not forget me. I will have to live with this forever. You have chosen me to do this.

I have accepted your will.’ The men nod. ‘We must go.’

They leave the cave in single file and walk towards the bog in the fading light. Once there, they line up, kneel down and bow their heads.

The chosen man unsheathes a blade. One by one he places a hand on each man’s forehead, kisses him on the cheek and slits his throat. Some tremble. None make a sound.

He rolls the bodies into the bog and drives stakes through them. It is custom. When all six have been done, the chosen man sits alone on a rock weeping. He is red, splattered with blood.

He sits alone on a rock on the wet plain and weeps. He is surprised 232

at his reaction. He cannot pinpoint the moment he stopped believing.

All he knows is that he no longer believes.

He walks slowly back to the village, the knife, still in his hand, faintly sticky.

It seems the gods listen. Things get better for the people. Fewer die.

He watches his wife cook meals. He watches his daughter play. He feels glad for them. But he has stopped believing. It is difficult to touch them with his hands when he can see only blood on them. Sometimes he thinks it would have been better for everyone to have died than to have this sacrifice at the core of everything they are, everything they have become. A sacrifice he has come to think of as murder.

Though he is not a believer, everyone else is. But, is it that no matter how much belief someone has it never stands the death of a loved one?

Or is it something else.

In the village people stop meeting his eyes. They shun him. Doors close as he approaches. He is shut out. He does not blame them. He feels he has murdered his friends for nothing. He does not want to live like that, surrounded by ghosts, for he knows they will never leave him.

So he does not resist when people come to his hut at night. He knows why they have come. He will take on their burden. He walks ahead of them, shivering, to the bog. When his time comes, a moment of panic.

But then as he is dying he thinks of his wife and his child. He thinks of the years to come and for the first time since the killings he smiles.

It does not matter that they don’t know the truth. He sees them in the streets, running, laughing, his daughter a young woman now and the sunlight is so bright the picture begins to fade slowly away.

233

I would have been quiet if my time had come. If the judge had decided on execution I would simply have held my arms behind me waiting to be cuffed. I would have looked the judge in the eye and not uttered a word. It befits great men to go silently to their graves.

But it was not to be.

I think again of Tora on the beach. Expressionless, standing close to Abel but not touching. I take, took, the lack of expression for pain. I think of her at the second leaving. Frightened, hauled out of her garret, pushed through deserted streets, tears running down her face, dragged through the crowds at the gate and spat on.

She would have gained some consolation from the sight of me looking at her, starting to run, before being kicked and beaten. She would have seen forgiveness. She would have seen me forgive her in that look.

Though it was far away, I know she would have seen it.

Her one word to me, her saying my name, it is no redemption but I hold it close.

From some things there is no redemption. The solitude of an un-fixable, unforgettable mistake.

I know that now.

I am back on the island. I am walking through fields of mud and grass.

It is cold and I shiver and the rain has soaked me through. Each step is a struggle. My feet sink into the mud which sucks at and grips my feet. If I stop I sink. I cannot stop nor think. I trudge on, around the island, my feet held back, and all the time I look back over my shoulder at the swaying grass and wait for the ripples in the earth. I can sense him swimming through the mud. Eyes, mouth open, the mud flowing through him, out through the slit in his throat, the slit like a gill. He 234

has had centuries to learn how to breathe under earth. He swims after me, long, slow but powerful strokes. He swims around boulders and roots, follows the curve of the land. He gains on me all the time, reaches out to grab my foot. I lift my heel just in time. He loses ground as he skips a stroke. He makes up ground, reaches out again. I lift my foot again. I try to run, to outrun him, to outpace him. He never tires.

But I do. I am panting. With each step I seem to sink further and it is more of a struggle to lift my limbs. I do not know which way I go. I walk and walk and walk. I walk through the night. At night I lose my way and I find myself slipping into the bog and I panic and thrash out and swallow the muddy water. I hear myself cry out. I hear myself cry.

I drag myself out of the peat bog and I am running now, running again, and I find myself back in my cave. I sit in a corner, my back to the wall, holding my knees to my chest, watching the entrance. Here I feel safer and slowly my breathing returns to normal. I cannot stop shivering.

In the morning I go back there.

I sit on my haunches, running my fingers through the mud. I sit for hours. My legs lose their feeling. I sway, back and forth. I talk softly to myself. I wait. I think and I wait.

Towards evening I jump to my feet. I fall down straight away as I cannot feel my legs but I get up again and stumble into the water. There is a thin layer of ice on the surface. I draw breath sharply. I reach into the water. I am up to my waist. I reach down and feel around and then my foot stands on his arm and I hold my breath and plunge down into the water. There I open my eyes but can see nothing. I grab him, one arm under his back, the other under his legs and I lift him out the water. As I lift him a gasp comes from my chest. I lift him free of the earth and 235

I can hear the water pouring off him, pouring out of him, leaves and twigs and water falling from his mouth. I cannot see. I feel the mud in my eyes. I blink a few times and the world appears once more, a dull blurred vision. Is it rain or the water still in my eyes I don’t know but the vision, whatever it is, panics me and I am scared like I have never been. Me standing, body in my arms, choking on silt, freezing, and a moan coming from my chest that I cannot control. My chest heaves. I look down at the man, the ghost, the body. Eye sockets gaze back at me, the brown jaw, the wisps of hair, the twigs hanging from his mouth. I look back at the island and the greyness is everywhere, dusk, rain, grass, ice. I have never been this cold.

I carry him back to the cave. Once there I lay him on the straw. I set to work with the axe and a stone, stripping down and sharpening some of the branches. I bury the end of the sturdiest in about two foot of earth. I prop this up with other branches. As dawn approaches I heave the man onto it and tie him to it: his arms, torso, neck and feet. I turn him towards the sea. I look at his face. The eyes are closed.

He looks peaceful. There is no vengeance in him. If anyone should approach this island this is what I want them to encounter. When my people finally come to see what has happened to me, when they come to take me back, I want them to know that I was thinking of them to the end. I want them to know that I did it for them and there is no greater love than a man who is willing to sacrifice himself for his people. And I did it for one of them in particular, a woman who did not love me as I did her. But that was fine. She gave me all I ever wanted.

At the base of the branches I place the straw man, which I have kept with me all this time, the toy meant for Amhara.

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The fear is gone now. Dawn has just broken. My world is ending, grind-ing to a halt earlier than I calculated it would. It is acceptable that I made that mistake.

In time I will sink into the waters, my eyes, mouth open to the silt. I will become a new island man. I will wait for years, for centuries until my body is found in turn. Then stories will be told about me.

Perhaps they will end well. Then I will live once more. Or perhaps just a semblance, a shadow of me. A story of me.

Outside the cave the body in the branches sways in the air. A stranger, approaching along the cliff path from my fishing grounds, might even think it alive.





Acknowledgements

Thank you to Andrew McIntosh for many a chat about the manuscript and his insight and encouragement. Big thanks to my parents and brothers for early readings and support and to Dan Hopkin for his advice. Sue Armstrong helped greatly with improving the manuscript after the first draft for which I am grateful, as I am for the support of many friends and family. Thanks to all at Umuzi and The Clerkenwell Press for their enthusiasm for the novel, and also to Karina Magdalena Szczurek and André Brink who have been extremely generous. Finally, particular thanks to my wife Tabatha who has helped most of all in this and so much else.