Lily King: Euphoria

It was understood that I was not welcome in the village, and Teket waited with me on the beach. After a long time, they came. They walked close together, Malun in the middle, her face stiff and grim. She and Sali were covered in mourning mud.

We all squatted in the sand as I gave out Nell’s gifts.

Bani pushed the silver bracelet up tight on his arm above his elbow, and Wanji ran off with his comb, screaming out to his friends as he tore up the path. Sali gasped when I pulled the dress out of the bag, as if I were pulling out Nell herself. She put it in the sand beside her, but laid a hand on top, as if it might walk away. She and Malun each had a crusted scab at the top of a finger stub, cut off at the middle knuckle for Xambun.

I handed Malun the bag that held the shoes. After a long while she tipped her head in to see but did not bring them out. Her gaze remained hard. I was glad Nell was not here to see it. I asked Teket’s cousin to tell them that Nell was so very sorry, that she wanted to make amends in any way she could. I told Malun she was tight in Nell-Nell’s stomach. At this Malun’s face gave way but she remained still and did not wipe away her tears that cut dark lines through the dry mud.

Bani asked to speak with me privately. We walked a few yards down the beach. With the English Nell had taught him he said, ‘Fen is bad man.’ Then, in case I didn’t understand, he said it in pidgin, which I didn’t know he knew: ‘Em nogut man.’

I nodded but he wasn’t satisfied so he switched back to English. ‘He break her.’

It was true, then. I did the tally, too late, of all the broken things: her ankle, her glasses, her typewriter.

When I left, Malun was standing in her brown shoes and Sali was wearing her dress like a scarf, and the men were still standing on the bluff above.

Teket gave us a push out. We called our last farewells to each other. Neither of us felt like it was a real goodbye, and it wasn’t. I would return to the Kiona many times.

Minton put the boat in reverse and we turned slowly away from the beach. I’d wire my mother for more money, I decided, and go directly to New York from Sydney. I would not wait. The boat gained speed and skimmed fast to the canals.

‘Not the most hospitable tribe, are they?’ Minton said. ‘Those boongs up on the embankment looked like they’d cark you given half a chance.’

3/? I have done it. Full fathom five it lies. Hiding out here in the 3rd class library for the time being. Strange how a ship was our doing and now our undoing. Let him rage. Let him rage across the oceans. But he will rage alone. I am getting off tomorrow at Aden. Doubling back to Sydney. He is wine and bread and deep in my stomach.

When I reached Sydney, I found there was no boat coming in for a fortnight, so I kicked around there impatiently, setting up an office of sorts at the Black Opal, but getting no work done. I frequented a pub called the Cat and Fiddle far too early and too often. My mother cabled more money, though I didn’t tell her that I would see her only for the two days the boat was docked at Liverpool, that I was going to go on to America.

The day before I sailed, I worked up the courage to go back and see the bark paintings at the Art Gallery. I simply wanted to walk where we had walked, stand where we had stood. She would have nearly reached the Continent by now, I calculated. On the way I passed the shop where I’d gotten the plasters, and the New Yorker restaurant. Across the lobby of the museum I heard my name.

‘My, my, someone’s taken a bath.’

It was Mrs. Swale, my dinner partner at the Iyneses’. She took my arm and never looked back at the group she’d come in with. I was aware of the scent of her, not the humid root smell of Kiona women or Nell by the time I met her, but an inorganic smell meant to cover it all up.

We went up the stairs to the exhibit. She began her questioning: How long had I been here, when would I leave, not tomorrow, couldn’t I change my ticket? And then just before we entered the hall, she looked at me quite gravely, more gravely than I expected her face to be able to look. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your friend’s wife.’

‘What do you mean?’ My lips went all rubbery in an instant. In fact my whole body seemed to be pulling away from me.

She covered her mouth and shook her head and with an intake of breath she said she was sorry, she thought for sure I’d know.

‘Know what?’ I said loudly into the vast room.

Hemorrhaging. Just before they reached Aden. Mrs. Swale put her hand over mine and I wanted to swat it away.

‘Did you know she was pregnant?’

‘Twins,’ I said before I turned away from her. ‘She thought it might be twins.’

I went to see Claire directly from the museum. She wasn’t home and I waited for several hours in her enormous house, listening to clocks chime and dogs bark and servants hustle about as if the world were on fire. When she did arrive and saw my face she dropped her parcels and called out for whiskey. I’d held out a faint hope that Isabel Swale, with her poor aptitude, had gotten it all wrong, but Claire doused it within seconds. They couldn’t stop the bleeding.’ She paused, guessing how much more I could handle. I held her gaze and took in a steady breath. ‘The ghastly thing is, Fen insisted on a sea burial. Her parents are apoplectic. Think he’s hiding something. They’ve started proceedings against him and the ship’s captain. It’s all been such a drama.’ She sounded quite bored by Nell’s death.

She poured me another drink and in the light breeze of her movements I smelled again the manufactured smell of these women. Her husband, she told me quite pointedly, was away for several days.

All I wanted was to call a cab and be delivered to my room. But I could not seem to ask for that, and sat in silence, willing my glass to stop shaking as I lifted it to my lips. I couldn’t seem to pull air into my lungs. I thought of Fen and Nell meeting on the boat: I’m having trouble breathing, she’d said. And then I broke down. No Southerner, Claire did her best to comfort me with palaver and awkward pats on the arm, but as soon as I could stand, she put me in a car that took me back down to the city.

On my ship, the SS Vedic , I walked the decks, stood at the rails, spoke to no one except the sea. There were times when I thought I saw her out there on the water, sitting cross-legged, surprised and grinning as if I’d just walked into the room. There were other times when the water was black as space, sinister in its enormity. She was out there. I did not know where. Fen had dumped her in the sea. She couldn’t even swim. Facts I still only half believed. I leaned over the rail and hollered out at the emptiness. I didn’t mind who heard. I’d hoped John and Martin, whose voices had always come to me when I was cracking up, would chime in but they were silent, too sorry for me, or too appalled, to make their usual fun.

We crossed into the Java Sea. The moon swelled to full.

Once, Nell had told me, there was a Mumbanyo man who wanted to kill the moon. He had discovered his wife bled each month and accused her of having another husband. She laughed and told him all women were married to the moon. I will kill this moon, the man said, and he got in his canoe and after many days he came to the tree from which the moon, tied to the highest branch by raffia string, jumped into the sky. Come down here so I can kill you, the man said to the moon, for you have stolen my wife. The moon laughed. Every woman is my wife first, he said. So in fact you stole this wife from me. This only made the man angrier and he climbed the tree to the highest branch and pulled at the raffia string. It would not move so he began to climb the string toward the moon. Soon his arms grew heavy and though he had climbed far from the tree he still was no closer to the moon. Let go now, the moon said. And the man, who had no more strength left, let go and fell directly into his canoe and paddled home to share his wife, as all men did, with the moon.