Lily King: Euphoria

‘ “A league but barely three—” ’

‘ “When the lift grew dark and the wind blew loud—” ’

She joined me here, ‘ “And gurly grew the sea.” ’ I kept my eyes on the moon, but I heard the smile in her voice.

Americans could surprise you with the things they knew.

I’m not sure what we said after that, if it was a long time or a short time that went by before there was a snap and a thud behind us. We jumped up. Fen was on the ground in his hammock. I held the candle over him while Nell crouched down. His eyes were shut, and when she nudged him and asked him if he was all right, he said, ‘It’s always rough, this patch.’ And then, ‘Knock it with a shoe, yer git,’ and rolled over.

‘I think he’s trying to open a bottle of beer.’

We had a good laugh and left him be. I made a little bed with my extra clothes in the corner below my hammock. I didn’t think I’d actually sleep but I did, quite soundly, and they were packed up and waiting for me when I woke.

Nearly all the Wokup were on the beach to see us off. They yipped and hooted and the children flung themselves in the water.

‘A lot stronger on goodbye than hello, aren’t they?’ Fen said.

‘There never was a raid coming from the swamp,’ I said.

‘Probably not,’ Nell said.

Fen asked to drive the boat so I slowed and we wobbily swapped places. He opened up the throttle and we were off — fast.

‘Fen!’ Nell screeched, but she was half laughing. She turned around to face us and her knees brushed my shins. ‘I can’t watch. Tell me when we’re about to crash.’ Her hair, no longer plaited, blew toward me. The fever and loose hair, dark brown with threads of copper and gold, had brought an illusion of great health to her face.

If the Tam weren’t a good fit, they would go to Australia. This was my last chance to get it right. And I could tell she was skeptical. But Teket had been many times to the Tam to visit his cousin there, and even if everything he told me were only half true, I figured it should satisfy this pair of picky anthropologists. ‘I should have brought you here straightaway.’ I said, not entirely meaning to say it aloud. ‘It was selfish of me.’

She smiled, and instructed Fen not to kill us before we got there.

After several hours I saw the tributary we needed to take. Fen turned us toward it, letting in a little water on the port side. It was a narrow stream of yellowish brown. The sun disappeared and the air was cool on our faces.

‘Water’s low,’ Fen said.

‘You’re all right,’ I said, scanning for glimpses of the bottom.

The rains hadn’t come yet. The banks here rose high, walls of mud and coiling white roots. I watched carefully for the break Teket had told me about. He’d said it was soon after the turn. In a motorized boat it would come fast.

‘Here.’ I pointed right.

‘Here? Where?’

‘Right here.’ We were nearly past it.

The boat lurched, then slid into a tiny dark canal between what Teket called kopi, bushes that looked like freshwater mangroves.

‘You cannot be serious, Bankson,’ Fen said.

‘They’re fens, aren’t they?’ Nell said. ‘Fen among the fens.’

‘This is a fen? Jesus, help us,’ he said. The passage was wide enough for only one canoe. Branches scraped our arms and because we’d slowed down, insects came at us in clouds. ‘You could get bloody lost in here.’

Teket had told me there was only one path through. ‘Just follow the water.’

‘Like I’m going to do anything else. Fuck, the bugs are thick.’

We motored through this close corridor a long time, their trust in me weakening by the minute. I wanted to tell them everything I’d heard about the Tam, but best to have them arrive discouraged.

‘Sure you have enough petrol for this?’ Fen asked.

And just then the passage opened up.

The lake was enormous, at least twelve miles across, the water jet black and ringed by bright green hills. Fen pulled up on the throttle to idle and we swayed there for a moment. Across the water was a long beach, and, mirroring it in the water twenty yards offshore, a bright white sandbar. Or what I thought was a sandbar, until all at once it lifted, broke apart, and thinned into the air.

‘Osprey,’ I said. ‘White osprey.’

‘Oh my, Bankson,’ Nell said. ‘This is glorious.’

I didn’t meet Helen Benjamin until 1938 when we both attended the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences conference in Copenhagen. I went to her panel discussion on eugenics, at which she was its only opponent and the only one who made sense. The way she spoke and moved her hands reminded me of Nell. I rose as soon as the discussion was over and made for the door. But somehow she got down off the stage and overtook me in the entrance hall before I could slip away. She seemed to know all my feelings, and merely thanked me for coming to her panel and handed me a large envelope. It was the kind of thing I’d grown used to, people hoping I’d help them publish their manuscripts, but from Helen it made no sense. Her Arc of Culture had been a great success, and whatever acclaim I had garnered by then, with the Grid and my book on the Kiona, owed a significant debt to her work.

I didn’t open the packet until I was on the train back to Calais. Such a cavalier gesture, my hand reaching into that brown envelope. It was not a manuscript. It was a booklet made of white typing paper covered by bark cloth, folded in half and sewn down the middle seam. Attached with a paper clip was a note from Helen: She made one of these each time she arrived in a new place, and kept them tucked in the fabric liner of a trunk, away from prying eyes. I have kept the others, but I thought you should have this one. There were no more than forty pages, a good many blank at the end. The writings spanned three and half months, beginning with her first days on Lake Tam.

1/3

1/4 Stitched up this new book yesterday then was too intimidated by all these fresh empty pages to put down any words. I wanted to write about Bankson but felt I shouldn’t. Wrote Helen instead & managed not to mention him once. My body feels better. Pitiful that a great amount of my pain disappeared when someone paid a bit of attention to it.

This temporary house they’ve given us is called the House of Zambun. Or maybe I should spell it Xambun — more Greek sounding. From the way they say it, Xambun, low & hopeful, as if its utterance could bring something powerful closer, I am certain it’s a spirit or ancestor, though I can’t feel anything in here the way I have in other houses reserved for the dead. And if it is a spirit, why would they let us desecrate its house?

I want to write more but too many feelings are bottlenecking somewhere near my collarbone.

1/6 But what was all the fuss about him anyway? If he was ever cold or arrogant or territorial his 25 months with the Kiona must have knocked it out of him. Hard to believe the stories about the string of broken hearts he’s left back in England. Plus Fen says he’s a deviant. What I saw was a teetering, disheveled, unaccountably vulnerable bargepole of a man. A skyscraper beside me. I’m not sure I’ve seen such height & sensitivity paired before. Very tall men are so often naturally removed and distant (William, Paul G., etc.). I am wearing his dead brother’s glasses.

We were standing in the shallows yesterday waving him off and I remembered a fall day when I was about 8 or 9 and my brother & I had played with some new children in our neighborhood for the first time and we were being called to dinner and we stood in the yard with them chilled by the sudden evening but warm from running and I had a terrible fear that we’d never play like that again, that it would never be the same. I don’t remember if my premonition proved true. I just remember the stonelike weight in my chest as I went up the back steps.