Cameron replied by laughing soundlessly.
“You got a bad name, Cammy,” daSilva said, wishing to arouse in his companion a sense of shame — “such a bad name you is a marked man. All the trips you been mekking to the Mission and you just can’t pick a pepper.” It was his turn to laugh lugubriously and derisively.
Cameron sobered a little. “Where’s there’s life there’s hope, Boy.” He tried to jeer daSilva by giving his words a ribald drawling twist. “You lucky bastard — you.” He poked daSilva in the chest. “What’s in hell’s name keeping you from settling right here for good?”
“You don’t know what?”
“Naw Boy, I don’t.”
“I ain’t marry to she,” daSilva confessed.
“Ah see,” Cameron laughed like a man who had at last dismissed his fool.
“‘Pon this Mission,” daSilva explained in a nettled voice, “you know as well as I the law say you must marry the Bucks you breed. Nobody know is me chile.”
“Is it a secret?” Cameron roared and laughed again.
“Well is an open secret,” daSilva said in his heavy foolish way. “Last year when the boat hit moonhead — remember? — was the first and last time for me — I see real hell. Like if the chile real face and the mother real face all come before me. Like if even as I deading in the waterself something pulling me back. Ah mek up me mind then to do the right thing by she….”
“You skull crack wide open, daSilva. Still,” he sighed and mocked in one breath, “every new year is a fool’s new paradise. I wish I could mek the grade meself Boy. A rich piece of land like this! And is now everybody gone and vanish.”
“Is a true thing you seeing. Just vanish.”
Schomburgh gave one of his hoarse brief chuckles. “They bound to vanish. They don’t see dead people really, do they? Nor dead people seeing them for long.”
“I ain’t dead,” Cameron cried. “I can prove it any day.” He sniffed the air in which had risen the delightful smell of cooking fish.
“Uncle thinking of his epitaph”, daSilva said with his slow heavy brand of humour,” ‘pon Sorrow hill. You must be seen you own epitaph sometimes in your dreams, Cammy? Don’t lie.” He winked at Cameron impressing upon him a conspiracy to humour the old man. Schomburgh intercepted the wink like a man who saw with the back of his head.
“I see you, daSilva,” he croaked out of intuitive omniscience. He bent over the fire and the meal he had started preparing, half-ashamed, resenting the uneasy foundations of knowledge he possessed. His uncertainty in the rescue and apprehension of being, started tears in his eyes like smoke and fearful belief all mingled together. He stood up abruptly, losing all appetite.
“Come, come, Uncle,” Cameron roared and scowled. “You must try some of this ripe nice fish. Breakfast! lads! Uncle. It’s good fish not the devil himself you catch.”
VI
Donne and the other daSilva twin returned as I put the last petrified morsel in my mouth. They were accompanied by the old woman whom the first daSilva had spoken of, and whom I too felt I knew in a mixed futuristic order of memory and event. It suddenly occurred to me that I was premature in thinking she had come of her free will. I suddenly saw — what I had known and dreaded from the very beginning — she was under arrest. Donne had made her come just short of the coarsest persuasion and apprehension he would exercise in the future, hoping to gain information from her about the whereabouts of the rest of the fearful frightened folk.
I shook my head a little, trying hard to free myself from this new obsession. Was it possible that one’s memory and apprehension of a tragic event would strike one’s spirit before the actual happening had been digested? Could a memory spring from nowhere into one’s belly and experience? I knew that if I was dreaming I could pinch myself and wake. But an undigested morsel of recollection erased all present waking sensation and evoked a future time, petrifying and painful, confused and unjust.
I shook my head violently, trying harder than ever to picture the deathless innocence and primitive expectation that had launched our inverse craft. Had we made a new problematical start — a pure and imaginary game, I told myself in despair — only to strip ourselves of all logical sequence and development and time? and to fasten vividly on our material life as if it were a passing fragment and fantasy while the curious nebulosity of ourselves stood stubborn and permanent? and as if every solid force and reason and distraction were the cruel stream that mirrored our everlastingness? I felt I was caught in a principle of never-ending anxiety and fear, and it was impossible to turn back.
I saw that Donne was ageing in the most remarkable misty way. It was something in the light under the trees I said to myself shaking my head. The day had grown sultry and darker than morning and a burst of congealed lightning hung suspended in the atmosphere, threatening to close the long drought and the dry season of the year.
Thirty or forty seasons and years had wrenched from him this violent belt of youth to shape a noose in the air. A shaft from the forest and the heaven of leaves aged him into looking the devil himself. The brownness of his skin looked excessive pallor. He stooped in unconscious subjection I knew to the treachery and oppression in the atmosphere and his eyes were sunken and impatient in rage, burning with the intensity of horror and ambition. His hands opened and closed of their own will, casting to the ground everything save the feeling of themselves and of the identity they wished to establish in the roots of their mortal and earthly sensation. He was an apparition that stooped before me and yet clothed me with the very frightful nature of the jungle exercising its spell over me. I could no longer feel myself shaken: dumb with a morsel of terror.
He started suddenly addressing the company in the lurid storm but it was as if he spoke only to himself. The whole crew were blasted and rooted in the soil of Mariella like imprisoned dead trees. I alone lived and faced him. Words came as from a frightened spiritual medium and translation. Meaning was petrified and congealed and then flashing and clear upon his rigid face and brow hanging in his own ultimatum and light.
The storm passed as quickly as it had begun. Every man came to life again. Donne was free of the hate he had shown, I thought, and a smile had been restored to him ingenuous as youth. He drew me aside leaving the old Arawak woman encircled by the crew.
“Why you’re looking haggard as hell,” he said to me in solicitude. “Put on ten years overnight, old man,” he spoke with a knowledgeable air beneath his apparent freshness and youth. “It’s the trip all the way from the coast I suppose. How do you feel? Up to another strenuous exercise and excursion? Afraid I’ve been deserted by every labouring hand I had, and I’ve got to go on the trail to find them. Think you would relish coming?”
I shook my head quickly and affirmatively.
“Do you know” — he was in a better mood than I could ever remember — “there’s something in what you’ve been telling me, old chap.” He tapped me on the chest significantly, “You do see the situation sensibly and constructively. I grant I have been cruel and harsh….” he paused reflectively.
“Yes,” I prompted him.
“I have treated the folk badly,” he admitted. “But you do know what this nightmare burden of responsibility adds up to, don’t you? How gruesome it can be? I do wish”, he spoke musingly, “someone would lift it from my shoulders. Maybe who knows” — he was joking — “you can. Your faith and intuition may be better than mine. I am beginning to lose all my imagination save that sometimes I feel I’m involved in the most frightful material slavery. I hate myself sometimes, hate myself for being the most violent taskmaster — I drive myself with no hope of redemption whatsoever and I lash the folk. If they do murder me I’ve earned it I suppose, and I don’t see sometimes how I can escape it unless a different person steps into my shoes and accepts my confounded shadow. Some weight and burden I confess frankly,” he laughed as at an image — alien to himself — he was painting. “Still I suppose”, he had grown thoughtful, “there’s a ghost of a chance …”