Tim Binding - Island Madness

He does not move much, except when needs must, when he crosses the room to the high narrow window at the back, under which he drops his trousers and deposits whatever he can onto the cold concrete floor. He is glad to be alone, for he has done with speech. He has nothing more to say. Time will not restore this faculty, for though time might heal a memory or set a fractured soul, time cannot shine light where no light can escape. His speech had been designed for buildings and viaducts, to describe the sweep of roads, to weigh structure in balance. He has no phrases to summon a wife or conjure up a daughter. He has used up all the words that were in his command; his vocabulary is obsolete, redundant, a faulty design. He is lost for words.

He finds it difficult to sleep at night. The damp sea air rushes in through the openings. There are scufflings and scratchings below. It is cold. Every so often he can hear the voices of soldiers in one of the gun emplacements a quarter of a mile away, a guffaw of laughter, a snatch of song. He marks the passage of time from the beam of the slit-eyed headlamps shining forth from the hourly motorbike patrols which bounce towards him along the high cliff road before disappearing down the wooded hill, only to be recaptured minutes later, out of the rear window, as they cruise up along the road that runs the length of the bay, the insect buzz of their engines fading fast. The road has its hidden travellers too, padding shadowy footfalls, or the stealthy creak of what, a handcart, a bicycle? So much dark activity.

He has not eaten for two days, but today, as he shakes out his coat, which he uses as a pillow, he discovers a large bar of chocolate within one of its deep pockets, a gift from Major Ernst, a far and distant figure who he can remember only by an overbearing shape. He tears back the wrapping and pushes it into his mouth. It is difficult to chew, for there is nothing to chew on. It is evasive like his memory, hard to dislodge: it glues to the roof of his mouth, coats his tongue and, when he attempts to swallow, large lumps stick in his gullet. Though he knows he should not, he eats the bar as quickly as he can, licking the waxed paper clean, smearing his mouth and beard. Almost immediately he feels sick. He feels his stomach lurching, feels the green bile of it rising. He feels giddy, his breathing becomes problematic, a hand is clutching at his heart.

He can smell the stink of himself and that of the room. He needs to get out, to break free. He charges down the circular steps, out of control. Halfway down he retches; he bends double; he straightens up. A great spray, sudden like a geyser, leaps forth from his mouth, splashing onto the walls and down in front of him. Then another. The volume is excessive, the noise unbearable. His hand slips on the running smear. He skids down the stairs, spraying once more, vomit on his shirt and trousers, before stumbling out into the open air, gasping, grabbing handfuls of grass to wipe himself clean. He needs to rinse his mouth out with water. Water! It is not hunger which assaults him. It is thirst.

He sets out across the scrubland, to the hill and the bay below. The dying wind tugs at his shirt. He falls a number of times, breaking a shoelace as he scrambles back up. Once on the road, he half trots down the hill, and at the bottom, jumping down from the sea wall, he starts to walk along the beach. It would be easy for him to be caught; snagged on the barbed wire, between whose Unes he walks, a foot or leg blown off by one of the landmines he unwittingly avoids; arrested by one of the motorcycle patrols; shot at by one of the convoys of artillery men. But no one appears during his twenty-minute walk of the bay. It is as he suspected. He no longer exists.

At the end of the beach he crosses up over the narrow peninsula. On the other side the Henschel engine is preparing to pull its line of empty trucks on their journey round the coast. Unnoticed he climbs aboard as the train moves off. He sits on the last truck, his feet dangling over the side, looking left and right, chugging up along the coast, past the little houses and empty lanes, past the barracks and converted greenhouses, skirting round old castles and half-completed gun emplacements, the water a dazzling deep, the rocks golden like tumbled honeycombs, past Perelle Bay and Vazon Bay, past Cobo, heading north, past all the long bays of summer where the flat roads meet the long sweep of sand, past where mothers and fathers should lie up on their elbows watching children running back and forth, shielding their eyes from the fierce bright of it, past the volleyball throwers and driftwood cricket players, past kite flyers and donkey riders and dripping ice-cream cone carriers; past shrieking horseplay and awkward bathers puiling wet costumes over embarrassed skin; past sleeping pink-eyed bellies and knotted handkerchiefs; past sandcastles and rock pools and buckets filled with salt water in which wriggling things wriggle. The gorse is beginning to flower, he sees primroses speckle distant banks. He is riding a holiday train on a holiday island.

Now the train has reached Picquerel Point and forks left, past the Church at Vale and up over the common to L’Ancresse Bay. Even before he can see them, he hears the noise of them, the sound of shovels and steam and the orders of impatient men. And there they are, a great swarming mix of them, on the beach below, pulled from every spare construction site; Poles and Hungarians, from Russia and the Spanish Civil War, travellers, troublemakers, Communists, simpletons, recipients of grudges and suspected fifth columnists, all the flotsam and jetsam of decadent Europe put to work in His cause. The train is idling now, waiting for the trucks to be filled. Directly below him a party of Todt workers are leaning on their spades. He knows what they have been doing, digging out the beach for the gravel mineer standing at the far end of the bay: sand for his cement.

The guard in charge of the group is moving down the line holding a battered bucket, from which he dispenses a ladleful of water to each man in turn. They are a motley crew. Old men mostly, nothing on their arms and nothing in their eyes, but they are practised in the art of acceptance. They do not grab at it too quickly, for then they would spill most of it, but nor are they slow, for lethargy in any form annoys the guards. Each one steadies the rim before tipping it carefully into his mouth, wiping any escaping drops over the grease of his stubble. The guard seems an amiable enough fellow, nodding to one or two of the men, sharing a roughshod joke. Van Dielen jumps down. He is standing at the head of the group but not in line with it. Hearing the noise the guard turns. He sees van Dielen at right angles to the other men, facing him. He recognizes his face but no fiirther. Van Dielen opens his mouth, touches his lips. He beckons. That’s what he wants. Though he has seen the state of his trousers and his shoes, he has no way of measuring how quickly his image has deteriorated. His hair is knotted, his skin unshaven and raw, his eyes bloodshot. There is excrement down the right leg of his trousers. To keep himself warm at night he has been using empty cement sacks with which to cover himself. In the damp air the dust from inside has hardened on his hair and his clothes. He looks strenger than the rest, but the guard knows there could many reasons for this. He may be a trustee, or have influential friends in the cookhouse. He may be able to do something entertaining—play a musical instrument, for example, or dance a jig. He might have some amusing physical attribute. They had one like that over in Alderney, a cook with a cock twenty-one centimetres long, thin and tapered like a pencil. They used to get him to toss himself off into the evening soup or pay one of the whores or one of the younger foreigns to suck him off. The cook was game for it, as long as it lasted. Poor bastards went blind after making some hooch out of iodine and potato peelings, half his hut and a couple of the girls too. Didn’t matter whether the slits could see or not, fact it made it funnier, them not being able to see who or what they were going to have to fuck next, but the cook and his mates were shot the next day and tipped over the cliff. But whatever it is that sets this man apart counts for nothing here. He has stepped out of line. The guard swings the bucket. Van Dielen gestures impatiently, mimicking the actions of the last man.