Jim Crace: Continent

In the foreground is the wire gate of the barracks. I can see the bustle of the women there, the placards, the photographs of missing sons and husbands, the soldiers and the militia squeezing through on foot and motorbikes to visit bars and brothels in the town, the uniforms, the ministerial and military cars, the plain-clothes men.

My sister ’Freti is at the wire gate each evening. I can recognize the exaggerated colours of her wardrobe and the way she stands with her arms crossed over her chest and her chin resting on the back of a hand. I have called to her, ‘’Freti, I’m here.’ But that was a waste. How can she hear me beyond the glass at that distance with all the din of the women at the gate, their singing, their cries, and the traffic on Government Drive? I tell myself she’s there for me, that she has spotted my thin face and thinner hair framed in this window, that she wears my name on a badge on her chest, that she is one of the women who have embraced the barracks with their jostling demands for family news. But ’Freti stands apart, hanging her face at the edge of the crowd. She’s got wall eyes. They float. They pop and bubble. And her mouth hangs loose. She grins. I have caught her, sometimes, snoozing in our yard at home, mouth and eyes shut. Then she is beautiful. But awake, slack faced and vacant, she looks and is a simpleton. She’s not the sort to join parades or picket lines. She’s at the gate because she’s set her heart upon a soldier.

WHAT KIND OF man is he, this Corporal Beyat? ‘I know you,’ he said, the night they brought me in. ‘You’ve got that witless sister.’ I knew his face, too, from that splashing circle of young and skittish conscripts who swam at the river on warm evenings, diving from the cycle bridge or bragging with handstands and cartwheels on the grass. I remember ’Freti standing in the shallows, with her shoes clasped to her chest. She watched the conscripts as they played noisily and roughly in the river. And then, this Beyat had kicked a flirting loop of water over her. It was there, knee deep, with dripping shoes, that her devotion to him began. My mother always told me, ‘Keep an eye on ’Freti. She’ll do herself some harm one day.’ And so I left my colleagues from the legal offices (we had been sitting, carping, on the bank) and beckoned to my sister to leave the water.

And, here, a picture of me, the brother, the nervous clerk, should take its place, my polished shoes six inches from the river, my voice just audible, my manner prudent, cautious, sly — the perfect citizen of a town where jeeps and empty market stalls, sweeping motorcades of politicians in black Panache saloons and a garrison of tough and narrow conscripts made the streets wayward with apprehension. And so it was gently that I called again to ’Freti to come ashore. But she would not budge. She did not want the amusement on the faces of the soldiers to be cut short by her departure. She did not want the soldier who had kicked the water to turn his square and guileless face away. She scooped up armfuls of water and soaked her face and clothes to prolong his interest in her. I tried to pull her, but she fell, to general laughter now even from the people on the bank. She was laughing. Even I was laughing; to have shown my anger would have been to make myself visible. They thought I was her boyfriend and splashed me, too, so that we walked home, she and I, dripping wet through the narrowing streets to the district where we lived in tenements as packed and poisonous as hives.

I saw him once again, in uniform and armed, standing at the market bar, talking drill and discipline with his army friends. How would you describe him? Unremarkable, I think. A small potato. A farmer or a trader’s seventh son, a country boy ennobled by conscription and his youth. ’Freti was at his shoulder, not quite excluded from their group. She tilted her face and smiled whenever they smiled amongst themselves. That was the way she had spent her life so far, at the edge of groups, cold-shouldered by the troupes of children in our street but tagging along alone unless she was needed as the butt of jokes.

When Beyat made to leave the bar he turned to ’Freti, saluted her and clicked his heels in an extravagant farewell. She held on to his arm without a word and tugged him to her, like a small child weedling for a treat. Beyat prised her fingers loose and shoved her backwards. I half rose from where I was sitting and called to her to come away. I had become expert at such interventions: my tone, my manner, my keenness not to give offence. But she held his arm again, so he picked her up and lifted her to the far end of the bar and sat her down amongst the dirty glasses in a pool of spilt beer. He placed an exaggerated kiss upon her forehead. Was this just play? The soldiers applauded. All the men there were smiling. They thought it was the best of jokes. ’Freti did too. She returned for more. This time he picked her up and sat her on my table. ‘She’s yours,’ he said. ‘Take her home … and lock her up.’ ’Freti held on to Beyat, her hands clasped behind his neck. She loved it when he carried her across the bar. She was quickened by the intimacy of his grip, by the laughing and the passion that he displayed on her account, by that one kiss. I let him lift her once again. He took her from the bar and carried her across the market to the jeep which he had parked in the taxi bay. Would she have thanked me if I had run to save her?

Beyat’s friends remained. They had been turned sullen, vulgar, by his departure. They made remarks at his and her expense. Poor old Beyat, they said, he can only make his mark with whores and simpletons. Their minds were on the jeep and on the girl. Heading where and with what in mind? They called out in the bar; rowdy, poor boys from the provinces. (Rich boys, wise boys, lived abroad or were too sickly for conscription.) Stools were toppled. Beer was spilt. That’s how young men pass their time when the only girl has gone.

I rose to leave. They blocked the door. Have a drink with us, they said. I shook my head and smiled. Our family always smiles. They brought me a glass of American beer, nevertheless, and put it on my table. ‘Thank you,’ I said, but I left it there, untouched. If they had not been soldiers, I might have spoken up for ’Freti. But silence was best. What could protestations change? ‘Well, drink it then,’ they said, and pointed at the glass. It tasted far too strong for beer. Cheap spirits had been added to make what, I believe, is called a Stupor Stew. But I drank it all, so what?

Once they had left, I excelled myself, I think. I spoke out. The rush of alcohol had made me careless. There were some phrases which I had learnt from the legal documents which I was paid to type. I called the soldiers rogues and rapists, but in language which only advocates would recognize. ‘Save this town from cullions and caitiffs,’ I said. ‘Protect us from the despots who tyrannize our sisters and make recompense with beer.’ There was no laughter now, except my own. People turned inwards. They hugged their glasses, raised their voices and pretended that they had no ears. Ours had become a town which had no ears: the rich built high walls around their homes and topped their iron gates with wire; bankers and diplomats drew the blinds on their limousines or travelled, drably, in disguise. Costers in the market place wouldn’t trade in rumours any more. ‘Be deaf, be happy’ is what they said.

IF I HAD been calm and in command I would have reminded Corporal Beyat of that day when he had taken my witless sister, as he called her, for a ride and she had returned bruised and ecstatic late at night. But I was crying from the beating they had given me, and shaking, too, from fear. ‘Why am I here?’ I asked. He shook his head. ‘For nothing much,’ he said. ‘For talking with your mouth open, like all the others here. That’s what happens nowadays if you grumble with your drinks. There’s someone paid to listen hard in every bar — and we’ve lots of room down here for all the big mouths in the town. You’ll see.’ But he was only talking tough. He knew nothing. Perhaps my name and photograph had appeared one evening on a list and a squad had been sent to seek me out. For what? Perhaps I had been mistaken for another man, one wanted by the police. Perhaps I had simply been unlucky — the wrong face in the wrong place when the word went out there were dissidents at large. A car door had swung open as I was walking from the market with a newspaper and a bag of manac beans. They were expert at abduction. I was pulled onto the back seat and the car was in motion before I had a chance to cry out for help to the old men who sat in the shade of their porches and watched the traffic pass. The beans spilled onto the floor and cushions as expert blows to the chin, hardly hurting, kept me dazed and silent as we drove out of our gaunt and pungent streets to the wide catalpa’d avenues and to my cell.