Sabina Murray - The Caprices

Because it was raining again, a steady patter that occasionally swelled to a deafening drum. His boots sank down to the ankles in mud. More than once he stopped, unwilling to move, until Burns halted and got him back in motion.

The earth shifted once more. Francino looked to Burns. He had not noticed it, nor would Francino tell him, that the great alligator that was Guinea was slowly waking. Her head swung low from right to left and a great claw made the first step forward. Her body moved slowly in a heavy S-shaped tread. Soon, Francino thought, soon he would be dead.

“I thought I could survive this,” Francino said. He whispered to himself, half expecting a response, despite the fact he was praying.

“I thought I would live to guide men,” he said.

“I am not even half a man,” he said.

“I have lost God. I will never find my way home,” he said.

He saw a familiar purple cloud hovering above.

Francino knew that he was at the edge of life. Burns pushed through vines and undergrowth, trampling everything, occasionally raising his thick head to smell the air. Francino trailed him desperately, tracked him up the muddy slopes, followed his retreating figure through the walls of mist and vine partitions. While scrambling under the branches of a tree that was growing almost horizontally, Francino caught his neck. He realized that his medallion was hooked and the chain was choking him. Francino yelled for Burns to stop, but Burns did not hear because the rain was falling in torrents. Rivulets in an impromptu waterway coursed past Francino’s knees, forking around saplings, knitting back together into a broad, fist-width river. A measured snap of twigs and the crush of greenery advanced slowly as if a snake were approaching him along a low branch. Francino pulled gently at the chain, but it did not come loose. He then gave one solid tug. The chain snapped and for one brief instant he saw the glint of metal — a spark — then all was lost in the deluge.

Francino scuttled up and blindly forged his way in the direction he’d last seen Burns. He called and listened, but all he could hear was the endless rush of water. At the edge of his vision there seemed to be a brightening, a translucence to the vegetation. Francino slipped again, his knee hitting a rock. A sharper pain beside the dull thud of bruising let him know he’d cut himself clear to the bone. He raised his body up from the mud, holding on to a low branch, and limped the last twenty feet.

The vegetation abruptly stopped. Here, there was nothing but air.

Again the rain broke and a blinding sun struck Francino, instantly warming his skin through his heavy, wet clothing. There was a strong wind and Burns, standing a mere ten feet away, was beckoning to him. Francino walked to him only vaguely aware of the pain in his leg. Burns scuttled onto a large boulder that was set into the side of the mountain. Francino climbed after him, helped by Burns’s sturdy hands. They had reached the edge of the world.

The earth fell at a steep incline, leaving Francino reeling in the thin mountain air. They had walked out of the jungle not by escaping on the south or west perimeter, but rather had somehow climbed through its ceiling and now stood above it. The air was clean and cool. On all sides, brilliant green slopes fell sharply downward and wisps of clouds caught on the peaks across the valley; farther down, Francino sighted a flat, metallic shimmer that had to be the ocean.

“Well, look at that,” said Burns. “Where the fuck are we?”

Francino dropped to a squat. “What does it look like?”

But Francino’s words caught in his throat. A sound was floating up from the sea. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but the music wasn’t pretty enough to be imagined. He put his hands to his temples and listened. “What is that?”

“That,” said Burns, “if I am not mistaken, is ‘Scotland the Brave.’”

Francino smiled and listened. It was pipes, bagpipes, and their profound belching and bellyaching echoed and bounced along the valley from the depths of the mud to the steep peaks. Here at the edge of creation the earth sang. Francino sat down. The rock pushed beneath him and he smiled, listening to the gentle groan of the great alligator as she settled back to sleep.

BOB SPENT most of his life working in Thailand. He was a quiet man who didn’t bother with conversation, which didn’t bother his coworkers, since Bob didn’t seem the type that would make good company. For one thing, he was at least twenty years older than most of the guys who went to the East to work on government-funded projects. For another, he had lost all ties to Australia — including football, cricket, and politics — and didn’t return for the expected visits, instead choosing to sign up for one long-term project after another. At first, his colleagues made up stories about him: he had killed his wife; Bob Cairns was not his real name; he was part aborigine, which explained his voluntary solitude. Eventually, the stories died because Bob refused even the smallest donations of corroboration or denial, and the interest in him died with them. Bob kept to himself, and that was all there was to it.

The only thing that Ned knew for sure about Bob was that he was dead. He wasn’t even sure what day it happened, as the event had announced itself through a foul odor — the odor of an active and living decomposition — that was winding its way through the laundry chutes and fire escapes of the hotel. Ned was standing in the hallway wrapped in a towel. He had just given his date — the best that Thailand had to offer — a big tip, and was feeling altruistic, a false feeling that often gripped him in a hangover, when he saw the hotel manager, Gary (which the manager pronounced Gahlee), disappearing around a corner.

“Gary,” Ned called. The man stopped in his tracks. He turned around, bobbing his head up and down in greeting, and slowly scuttled back up the hallway. “What’s that awful smell?” Ned asked.

“I do not know,” said Gary. “You must help me.” The manager extended his fine, small hands in front of him. “It is coming from the room of your friend.”

“Whose room is it?”

“The other Australian. The old man.” Gary bobbed his head up and down. “I am worried. . He hasn’t been to breakfast the last two days. He isn’t a late riser like you, Mr. Ned.”

Bob Cairns, the sheep and goat expert, had arrived a few days before. Ned had been working on the management end of the project, a lot of noodle lunches with local politicians, and hadn’t even had a chance to sit down with him; he’d seen Bob in the lobby — thin gray hair that stood up like a wheat field. Ned pulled on a pair of jeans, then walked barefooted and barechested down the hallway. Gary turned the key slowly in the lock. A cockroach crawled out from beneath the door, waving anxious antennae. The smell was atrocious. Ned stepped back from the doorway. He leaned on the wall gazing at the yellowed wallpaper as the floral pattern danced out of the dusty background. He didn’t need to look. He had broken into a sweat. Gary looked up at him, imploringly.

“Poor old bugger,” said Ned. “I guess his ticker went.”

Bob’s journey ended in Pataya on an inauspicious Australia Day bathed in brilliant sunshine. Ned and his friend Gavin had rented a boat — the Angel II —some fishing poles, and a wiry Thai named Korn, who was Gary’s brother-in-law. The beer was protected in a bucket of ice with a wet towel thrown over it; Ned and Gavin had already put a serious dent in the supply and were feeling merry, even though the topic of conversation was Bob.

“Not a bloody thing. No next of kin. All they had was some defunct address in Western Australia. So I had him cremated. It was the least I could do,” said Ned.