That was the way things were until the child got sick. The sickness could have been caused by any number of things: a hard life, the sun, mosquitoes, the fact that the child’s mother had no one in the world but a sister. What’s more, the child was white and I don’t think white people are born to lead such hard lives. And so the child’s mother sought medicine. She knew she could not stay in the south village with a sick child. But she had to wait. And when she held the rope and heard Alewa! she added her strength to the strength of the others, and anyone who looked at her would have seen thick beads of sweat pouring down her face. She had the child on her back. Alewa! — the canoe advanced a little, and anyone who looked at her would have seen her face covered with perspiration. She added her strength to the strength of the other men and women from the village, in order to get that canoe where it needed to be. It was a long journey. As she carried a double load, she tired quicker than the others, but she couldn’t give up. She had to be where the rest of the village was. She knew that the sort of help she needed came about because of these collective exercises. And so she went on pulling when it was her turn to pull on the rope. Hours later, when the canoe had reached its final destination and there were only a few hours left before sunset, she put her child in her godfather’s arms, sat down in the middle of the canoe, on the dry banana leaves, and took her child back in her lap. She was ready to cross a stretch of water so turbulent there was a folk song about it, in order to get medicine for her sick child. The water in the bay went calm for a moment and they pushed off into the sea. The woman’s godfather climbed up onto a mound and watched them leave the bay, and from there he shook his head in pity. He knew what had happened. He knew her secret. Her secret was that when she’d gone to see him to ask his help, the child was already dead. He’d seen it from a foot poking out of the cloth in which the child was tied to her back. He could tell from the child’s little face, and he could tell from the woman’s face and from her words. And he could tell because he was old. And because of this he knew that it made no difference whether the child was attended to sooner rather than later, for what they wanted to avoid happening had already happened. But he kept quiet, just as the woman kept quiet. He knew the woman had nobody and that she’d need to be strong to get to where she had to go: the big village. If everyone knew of her misfortune, she probably wouldn’t have found the strength to get there of her own free will, she’d have had to be carried there. And he knew there was only one cemetery on the island, the one in the big village, so he acted in such a way as to keep her secret safe. And he told her what he told her, said what he felt he ought to say. The rest of what happened is something I’ll never know how to explain. The woman pulled the half-built canoe with the dead child on her back, and anyone who saw her face thought she was sweating from the pulling, for they didn’t know her story. What they took for beads of sweat were mostly tears, tears that poured from her eyes, tears of hurt, tears for her terrible misfortune. She cried, but she refused to give up. She didn’t like to ignore customs, nor did she think it necessary to do so now. And she held it all in until, out of necessity, she placed her dead child in her godfather’s hands, so that he might share her secret: the child was dead. And she didn’t cry until the canoeman asked her whether she shouldn’t suckle the child, for a long time had passed since she’d last done so. She took out her breast and put the child to suckle, to satisfy the canoeman, who still didn’t know he was transporting a dead child. She suckled the dead child, though it could no longer suck. It had been dead for some time. And she did this to make the man paddling think the child was alive, so that he wouldn’t worry. But he was worried, for due to something he was unaware of, they were advancing much more slowly than they ought to. Only the woman knew the reason. She knew what was obstructing them, what made him feel as though his hands were tied, which is how it felt, for the fact of the matter was there was a dead person aboard the canoe. And it was no ordinary thing to transport a dead person, even if, as on that occasion, the dead person was an infant. Everybody knew deads weighed more than alives. Some people think what weighs is the sadness, the pain, the immense darkness of their closed eyes. In death, you have to cross a strange, dark wall. You stop being. You’re destined for the blackness, and you let yourself be taken there. You sleep more deeply than a normal person. And all of this weighs. Other people say no one knows what weighs or why death weighs. It just does. Any man transporting a dead should therefore be forewarned, even if, as in this case, the dead person is a small child. Such journeys are special and the canoeman should be mentally prepared, even though he won’t do anything special himself. But on this occasion, the canoeman was not informed. He went on paddling and asking himself why there was such a great weight all the way to the big village, specifically to the big village’s beach. The bay at the big village was rarely plagued by turbulent or troublesome waves. Indeed, rarely were the waves that broke on its tranquil shores worthy of comment. The canoeman paddled in to the shore and guided the front part of the canoe onto the sand. Does anyone know what time it was? First of all, I ought to say that it’s unlikely anyone on the whole island had a watch. That said, the hours of the clock did sound in the church belfry, although nobody paid them much attention. What time could it have been? The cocks were crowing, the sun had long since set. Darkness reigned over the island, for it was not a moonlight night. The canoeman got out of the canoe and pulled it onto the sand, and as the waves were gentle, the woman could get out easily enough. But she’d have to pass her sick child to someone again, and the canoeman offered her his arms. She’d been sitting down for a long time and so had a little trouble standing up and stretching her legs. And she was carrying a child. So the man came to her aid; he took the child in his arms for a brief moment, while the woman got out of the canoe. Then he returned the child to her and they bid each other farewell, as if they’d been in each other’s company for only a few moments. The woman turned her back. It was night and, although she moved away into the darkness, she could still be seen. The man watched her walk away, he looked briefly out to sea and when he looked back again he couldn’t see her. He thought it strange she could no longer be seen walking up the beach. Had she disappeared in a puff of smoke? There was no way she could have reached the first houses of the big village yet. She’d vanished into thin air! The canoeman gave a start, and he moved forward to investigate the mystery. It was impossible! he thought. But after a few steps he saw what had happened. He was alone on the beach, for the men typically leave the vidjil along with the last of the day’s light, except on moonlight nights, when men go out at sunset to fish under the full moon. A few men then stay at the vidjil to help bring the canoes in and because they know they won’t go home empty-handed. A fisherman’s cheer tends to be the cheer of the men at the vidjil too. So the canoeman was all alone on the beach and, because he planned to wait a few hours before heading back to the south village, he’d made sure to leave the canoe in the middle part of the beach. This he did by taking hold of the back end and dragging it round, spinning the front end as if on a pivot. After the first pull, the back of the canoe pointed up the beach to the nearest houses, the front end out to sea. He then picked up the front end and repeated the process, and so on, until the canoe was a safe distance from the waves. A safe distance meant calculating the height of high tide; no fisherman on our island could ignore whether it was high or low tide. What the man planned to do was go home to his house in the big village and sleep for a few hours before heading back to the beach, launching the canoe into the water and fishing all the way back to the dark and shiny rocks of the south village, which he’d reach by the time the sun was at its highest point over the island.