Lily King - Euphoria

I went down to the beach. It was empty, the water unnaturally far away. The canoes were lined up, mine included, high up the beach. Fen’s pews. Had he begun interviewing Xambun without telling Nell? I paced for a while, then stood in one place too long and something crawled up the inside of my trouser leg and I shook it out. Scorpion. I stepped on it heavily and the crunch of its carapace and brittle bones was deeply satisfying. I moved quickly up the sand, back to the house. Their lamps were still lit. I put my hands on the ladder and heard their voices. I moved under the house to hear them more clearly.

‘I can see it, Nell. I can see it right in front of me and I can hear it in your voice and I can feel it under my skin. I’m not inventing anything.’

‘This is what you do. That’s why you’re a Northerner. You want to keep people under lock and key. One real conversation with someone else and—’

‘Oh,’ he began in falsetto, ‘you’re a Southerner and I’m a Southerner and he’s an asshole. I recognize this. That was me three years ago. And now I’m Helen on the fucking quai.’

‘You’re extrapolating all—’

‘That’s right. I am extrapolating , Nell. And brilliantly, like the trained scientist that I am. This whole thing is a way for the two of you to screw right in front of me.’

‘That is ridiculous and you know it.’

‘I will never be one of your castoffs, Nellie.’

‘Don’t’

‘I’m not—’

‘I mean it.’

‘Goddamn it, Nell.’

When I came in, Nell was straightening up our grid papers. She didn’t look at me.

‘There you are,’ Fen said.

‘I’m going to get some shut-eye,’ Nell said.

I ached for sleep as well, but wanted to keep him from lying down beside her for as long as possible. I poured us each a drink and took the sofa, which faced their bedroom. Nell brought a lamp with her, wrote something briefly on her bed, and blew out the light. Fen watched me watch her. It was too dark to see anything, but I knew her already, knew her breasts and the narrow of her back, the rise of her bum and the knot of her calf. I knew the break in her ankle and scars on her skin and her short round toes.

He told me about a letter he’d gotten from a friend in Northern Rhodesia. The friend had told him a story about his shoes being stolen and the village-wide hunt for them. It was a long story with the shoes ending up in the trunk of an elephant, and Fen told it badly.

‘That’s funny,’ I said.

‘It’s absurd,’ he said. But neither of us was laughing.

When he stood to go to bed, I told him I’d be gone in the morning. In fact, I thought I’d leave after they were asleep. She would be safer, I concluded, if I were not around to enrage him.

He sat back down. ‘No. No. You can’t go. ’

‘Why not?’

‘I need you here. We both need you here. We need to keep going with this theory.’

‘You don’t need me for that. It’s not my area, personality typing.’

‘I can’t explain it all right now.’ He lowered his voice and glanced to her bedroom, ‘But you have to stay. I’m sorry. I’ve been …’ He dipped his head into his hands and raked his fingernails through his hair loudly. ‘I’ve been awful. I’m stretched a little thin right now. Stay just one more day. A half day. Leave tomorrow afternoon. Please.’

And stupidly, selfishly, I agreed.

3/21 Brain ablaze. Feel like we are unearthing something and finding ourselves, knowing ourselves, stripping off layers of our upbringing like old paint. Can’t write about it fully yet. Don’t understand it. I only know that when F leaves and B and I talk I feel like I am saying — and hearing — the first wholly honest words of my life.

I awoke to sobbing. Nell. In pain. I got up off my mat and pushed through the netting. I found her sitting on the floor at the front of the house, a girl shaking and howling in her arms. It was the girl from the night before, the one arguing with Xambun. Nell smiled at me in my underwear, but the girl kept up her crying. I retreated to my room. The girl saved enough breath for a few words and Nell cooed something back to her. Tatem mo shilai, it sounded like. He will come back. After a long while they stood and Nell wiped the girl’s face and led her out and down the ladder. I had got on my trousers and shirt by the time she returned.

‘There’s been a good deal of drama this morning.’ She said something to Bani, whom I hadn’t seen behind the kitchen screen.

‘Tell me.’ I came through the netting and sat at the table with her. She was wearing the pale green shirt again, now streaked with the girl’s tears.

Bani brought out coffee. I thanked him and he smiled and said something to Nell.

‘He says you speak like his Kiona cousins.’ Then she slid a piece of paper toward me.

Bankson—

I know you wanted to get back, but what’s another few days in paradise, right? It’s now or never. Don’t be miffed I didn’t invite you along. Someone needs to stay with Nell and you’re clearly the Southern man for the job.

‘He’s taken your canoe,’ she said. ‘That was Umi, Xambun’s girl. He’s broken it off with her, told her he was going to go away soon. Move to Australia. And now he’s gone with Fen. This whole time — all those times Fen kept leaving the house — he was scheming with Xambun. Not even interviewing him, just plotting to get that goddamn flute.’

I thought of the way he kept disappearing, the way his moods shifted, the way his attention slipped in and out. The way Xambun had moved toward me the night before, expectantly, then shrunk back when he saw I wasn’t Fen.

‘I’m such a dope not to have seen this coming,’ she said. ‘He’s been lying to me for weeks.’

What had he told me? That he knew the route, that it would change the next moon. That he would go in upriver of the village. No one would hear him. No one would know. I’d underestimated him entirely. I’d thought his inertia was permanent, that he luxuriated in his sense of missed opportunity and bad luck.

‘He’s promised Xambun money, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Money to move to Australia.’

Without an engine it would take more than a day to catch up to them. Maybe I could find a pinnace to take me to the Mumbanyo. I stood. ‘I’ll get some men. We’ll find a way to stop them.’

‘At this point you’ll only give them away, make it worse.’

I remained in place, indecisive, weak.

‘Stay here. Please.’

They were hours ahead of me. This was the only time I would have with her alone. I sat back down.

‘Are you worried for his safety?’ I said.

‘He took his gun. I’m more worried for theirs.’

‘Won’t they follow him back up here?’

‘If they see him, they might. But there are other tribes I think they’d suspect first. The Mumbanyo have a lot of enemies.’ She crushed the note in her hand. ‘Damn him.’

Five or six heads of children appeared at the bottom of the doorway, halfway up the steps, ready to climb up the rest at the slightest invitation.

She looked at them longingly. They were what made sense to her.

‘Let’s get back to work,’ I said.

She waved the children in.

I spent the rest of the morning observing the observer. She was back in her element, cross-legged on the floor with a circle of children fanned out around her and three more squished in her lap. They played a clapping game in which you keep a rhythm and have to shout out in turn some sort of response. She was able to keep the beat against her thigh with her left hand while taking notes with her right and shout out an answer in Tam when it was her turn. When the littlest girl called out her answer everyone collapsed on the ground with laughter. Nell didn’t understand, and once an older boy had gotten control of himself he explained it and Nell let out a big laugh and they all collapsed again.