Jim Crace - The Gift of Stones

Listen now. I’ll tell you what my father said. It was dusk outside his uncle’s house. The uncle’s cronies were all there, the cousins and some merchants, Leaf, some knappers who had left their workshop and its shadows to walk and cough up chalk into the air. Say twenty men, some wives, some boys, a dog, a hen, the first of nighttime’s bats and moths, the moon. Father’s returns to the village always gathered crowds. His stories were — like rare and distant perfumes, cloths and jewels — much prized.

‘You see I have a woman here,’ he said, indicating where my mother sat and dozed on the outskirts of the crowd. ‘A small girl, too. Shhh, let them sleep because what I have to say is meant for you, not her.’ That sent a wave of interest through the people gathered there. What they expected was some fun, some bloated indiscretions or some jokes at her expense. He raised one hand and wagged a finger. Be quiet, be still, it said.

‘This is a story made by life,’ he said. ‘It’s true in every way.’ That caused some cautious laughter and some shouts. ‘You know that when I want to make your eyes stretch wide, I stretch my stories wide to match. You know that when I want some fun, I let my stories tickle truth. You know all that. You are not fools. Well, now, here is a tale that’s meant to make you weep. There is no need for camouflage. The world out there is sad enough. So this is not a dream. This, to a hair, is fact.’ He’d never heard an audience so quiet. They sat and waited to be entertained by truth.

It was a love story of a sort. The girl was pretty with grey eyes. No man could pass her by without blushing at the courage of her gaze. When she was young she met a man who lived close by. Their parents were at war. Some ageing insult was roosting in the trees between their homes. They would not speak. They would not let the daughter see the son. And so the lovers ran away. Why not? Chance is a pear. It isn’t ripe for long. It drops. It rolls away. It rots.

Where did they run? Not far. The man knew of a heath where they could live quite well. The sea was close, with fish and crabs and laver and marshy beds of samphire, too. If she liked rabbits, he’d trap them for her. They’d eat well. And, in the spring, the wind would bring in geese. Had she never tasted goose eggs, or its flesh? Then she would. He took her to a hide which had been built upon the heath when last spring’s geese had arrived late and the people waiting there had grown cold. It was the summer and quite warm. The sea and sky were matching blues. The earth was dry and firm. The man caught fish and gathered samphire. They grilled the fish on hot red stones which crumbled in the fire. They stewed the samphire in sea water. She watched him as he stripped the flesh with his front teeth and threw the stem into the fire. She did the same. Their stems embraced. They whined and bubbled in the fire like spit in love. That night — and here my father’s neighbours held their breath — they lay together on beds of rush. They talked — then dreamed — of what it would mean to live their lives in pairs.

They had two boys. There were no problems with the births. They all grew strong on mussels roasted in hot stones, on baked guillemot, on lobsters, coalfish, kale. If there was any food to spare, or if the reeds were long enough to pull, or if the rabbit traps were generous, then the man would take them for exchange at the villages close by. He’d bring back milk and cheese and beans. And beer. One day he bartered a basketful of laver for a pup. It was the litter runt of hunting dogs. He gave it to the boys. They had a dog and food and fun. They felt as if their heath was blessed. Even the wind, it seemed, which came in steady from the sea was whistling their tune.

‘That chit who’s sleeping there,’ my father said, pointing at poor Doe, ‘was once as serene and fleshy as a seal.’ The circle turned and looked — or tried to look because the dusk was down and, for all they knew, the woman and her girl were gone. But — with my father’s help — they remembered her, the thinness of the skin and hair across her skull, the jackdaw shoulders, the insect hands. You know the storyteller’s tricks; with every detail in the list he mimed and had some fun with jackdaws, insects, skulls.

The task he’d given them was this: transform that woman’s carcass into seal. The stoneys and the merchants there were happy to oblige. They’d had an irksome day. Their heads had been in cages since sallow dawn. Their eyes had been fixed on stones and on their merchandise. Constructing seals from bones brought puckers to their noses, eyes and mouths. They saw her there, a sea-going slug upon the beach, weighed down by flesh and happiness.

Now they were ready for the whale. This was the rorqual that the sea had washed onto the red and juicy rocks. The tide backed off. The creature drowned on air. The boys — by now they were the masters of the heath — had never seen a whale before except as spray offshore. This one was twelve men long. Its belly and its chest was bright and fissured like a silver birch. Its back was ash. Quite soon these trunks were red with fruit where the seagulls had pecked holes.

Doe, her husband and the dog came down with knives. The tide, the night — and seagulls — left them little time. Already they could hear the wolves calling out their bids for meat. The crabs were massing too. Again my father had some fun with seagulls, crabs and wolves. His audience was beached and left helpless by the warp of words, the weft of mime, in father’s storytelling net.

‘The man soon showed his boys how whales were cut,’ my father said. ‘They had sharp knives. The best. Let’s not waste good blushes in the dark by saying where that village was that mined and worked these knives.’ He pointed at his severed arm. ‘Let’s simply say that these were tools well used to cutting flesh.’ He held up his hand and formed a perfect, leaf-shaped knife as thin as air. He mimed the body of the whale. He was its weight, or so it seemed. He showed exactly what it took to cut into the silver-birch bark of the belly, how meat was carved away in cubes, how skin was stripped, how candle fat was melted into scallop shells with reeds as wick. He showed how hard it was for two adults and two boys to snap the rib bones from the whale. They stood upon each rib as if it were a bouncy bough. They jumped in unison until the rib detached, and then they tumbled with it onto the shore, the dog and seagulls squabbling for the jelly and the blood.

Quite soon they had enough long bones and meat and fat and skin. In the morning they would go to the market green. They’d do good trade. Each rib was worth a horse, or a cow or a pair of goats. Four ribs could make a hut. One rib would keep a carver prosperous and busy for a year. One tiny piece of rib would make a needle of such sharpness that it would never dull. Thank fortune for the sea, the tide, the wind. It had brought the whale ashore. The whale would make them safe and rich.

It was no wonder, father said, that they were reckless on that night. ‘The boys were fast asleep. You know the world. The woman and her man embraced. They didn’t take much care.’ He let that last phrase tease a little in the night. And then, ‘The careless lovers are the ones with memories in flesh, a baby on the hip, one on the breast, one waiting to be served, one on its knees, another with its finger in the food, two others fighting on the ground, three dead and buried, and a dozen more to come. The careful lovers are the ones who … let’s not say what. There are a thousand ways. But here’s a tip from me. You know the oarweed on the shore? It’s just the thing and just the size. It’s smooth and wet and opens like a pouch. You put it on. I’ll not mime that. But, men, watch out for crabs. And women, eels.’