Jim Crace: Continent

BEYAT came again, as I stood on the bunk watching the women at the gate. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘What did you tell the captain? He wants to know if there are soldiers who have any contact with the sister of a prisoner. You’re going to get a beating if you’ve played the big mouth once again.’ I shook my head. ‘Know who’s to blame?’ he said. ‘Your witless sister. You know what’ll happen, don’t you? I’ll get posted to some upcountry dump, thanks to you and her.’ I nodded at the window and said, ‘You see, she’s waiting for you all the time. Sooner or later the captain was bound to know.’ He stepped up to stand beside me and look out. ‘Press your head against the wall,’ I told him, ‘and shut one eye.’ ‘She’s there again,’ he said. He pushed me up against the wall and jabbed at my stomach with each word: ‘And what suggestions has the witless brother got for clearing up this mess?’ ‘Why don’t you let me have a word with her?’ I said.

‘You have a word with her?’ Beyat thought that funny. ‘How will you have a word with her? You’re in here, and she’s out there.’ ‘I’ll write,’ I said. He tore a sheet from his report book and handed me a pencil: ‘It’d better work!’ I wrote five lines and pushed the square of paper into Beyat’s uniform pocket. He took it out and read it. I had written, ‘Dear ’Freti, I’m in the barracks, in a cell. Corporal Beyat is one of my warders and he will see that I come to no harm. But if he is spotted with you, my sister, then who knows what his officers might think? You place him and me in danger — so, I beg you, if you love us, stay away. Please show this letter to my mother and our friends. Your devoted brother.’ ‘That might cool her off,’ I said, ‘though she can’t read. You’ll have to read it to her.’

Later that day, I watched from the window as for the first time Beyat acknowledged ’Freti at the gate and they walked off side by side.

WITHIN an hour he had returned. The captain brought him to the cell. ‘What’s this?’ he said, holding up the page from Beyat’s report book. ‘A letter for your postman?’ He crumpled up the note and tossed it to Beyat. ‘What kind of barracks are we running here?’ I looked at Beyat for the answer. Had he gone straight with my note to the captain? Or had they followed him, scooped him from my sister’s side, in their expert fashion, as he took the note from his pocket, read my words to her and pressed it in her hand? And my sister, did she stand, slack-mouthed, wide-eyed and silent, as the car with Beyat sped out of sight? Or did she struggle with them in the street, screaming out to leave her love alone? What would she do now that he was gone? Beyat’s face said nothing, except that he was fearful and that there were bruises on his cheek and chin. I kept silent, too. I stood with my mouth open and waited. ‘Know who you look like? Your witless sister,’ he said. He stepped forward and popped the crumpled note into my open mouth. ‘That’s his mouth,’ said the captain. ‘What did I say? I said, take it back and ram it down his throat. That was an order. That wasn’t pleasantries.’ Beyat turned again to me. ‘Swallow,’ he said. I didn’t swallow. I spat it out.

The captain picked up the paper. ‘Hold him down,’ he said. Beyat pulled my arms behind my back and pushed me to my knees. The captain reached forward and gripped my throat. ‘No one knows you’re here,’ he said. ‘No one knows you’re here but us.’ My mouth was open and my head tipped back. He dropped the paper in. It rested on my teeth and tongue. He took a pencil from his uniform and poked the paper down until it was wedged at the back of my throat, bunching my tongue against my bottom teeth. Again he poked with the pencil, reaching deep with his fingers, sour with nicotine, into my mouth. They brought water from the latrine and tipped it down my throat until my note to ’Freti was beyond reach and the breath from my lungs was blocked and buffeted by the damp paper. ‘The prisoner committed suicide,’ the captain said. I waved my arms for more water, for more air, but they had gone and closed the cell door behind them. That was to be the last we saw of Beyat. Where did he end up? In a cell, like us, as the shower-block radicals were to claim? Or was he proved right? Was he sent, perhaps, to some dry and joyless outpost, as he had feared, his pay docked, his stripes removed? Was he that lucky?

I will not pretend that I gave any thought to ’Freti or to Beyat as I beat my hands upon the cell door and drowned on paper. My mind was empty. Panic is deaf and blind. I began to cough and did not stop. The paper lifted with every spasm of my throat but fell again as I sucked in air. I tried to push a finger into my pharynx and pull the paper free but the coughing and my tongue prevented me. What could be done, against gravity, against nature, to expel the blockage through my mouth? My breathing took on a pumping rhythm as if I were blowing stomachfuls of air into an air cushion or a child’s balloon. First there was spittle on the cell door and then spots of pink and bubbly blood. I turned and stared, red-faced, pop-eyed, into the centre of the cell. There was nothing but the bunk and the window and the rasping in my throat. I was surprised how light the bunk was when I pulled it from the wall and how easily I could lift it to my shoulders and throw it at the door. The effort seemed to ease my breathing. I lifted it again to arm’s length above my head and — the one, the first, dramatic gesture of my life — let it fall against the glass of the window.

I must presume that, when the glass fell outwards from my cell and dropped like broken ice into the barracks yard, someone at the wire gate was staring down the channel between the pinkstone building and the back of the regimental offices seeking out the window in my block where, perhaps, a husband or a brother or a son was missing home. When I stood on the upturned bed and looked out on the sky, the trees, the town in the distance, I could see a woman pointing through the gate in my direction. A soldier going out into the town had stopped, too, and was turning. I pushed my head and shoulders out and screamed at all the people. The air, the voice, the paper, the pressure of the window frame upon my chest, the consternation of my lungs, conspired to produce a sound of such velocity and volume that the letter to my sister shot out into the air high above the yard, heavy with saliva, pink with blood, and bounced far beyond the puddles of shattered glass. Now all the placards and the banners of the women were in the air and I could hear them calling to me and see them pressing hard against the wire gate. ‘’Freti,’ I screamed. ‘ ’Freti, ‘Freti.’ But, in the melee of women and the columns of militia running and the first blows struck, I could not detect my sister’s vivid clothes.

Then I spotted her, a woman no longer standing back from all the mayhem I had caused (her arms crossed, her chin down, her mouth agape, waiting for a soldier). She was clamouring now amongst the women and calling out a name. Whose name I cannot say. There was too much passion, and too much noise, and I am far too distant from the gate.

HOW HAD they reacted, these people, when the young teacher came to the valley, earnest and eager? Old Loti brought him down to the village on horseback on his second day and took him round to shake grave hands at the mayor’s house and informal ones at the village store. People smiled at him smiling and waited until they got to know his particular ways before they showed any warmth to the newcomer, the ‘volunteer’ from Canada. His pupils due back at school within a week, kept away but watched. The men who had met foreigners before, while working in the mines or in the markets and warehouses of the city, stayed close but silent. Those that shook his hand saw that his horse did not like him and that he sat awkwardly on it and pulled too closely on the reins. The horse was reserving judgement, looking for something to trust, and so would they. Horses knew a lot. Did not the white horse escape the flood which drowned the shepherdess?