Alastair Bruce - Wall of Days

I lean in closer and sniff the body. I am only half aware of what I’m doing. It smells of peat. It smells of earth, of water, silt, mud. It smells of the island.

I don’t know what to do with him now.

I reach out to his face and try to close the eyelid. It does not move. I don’t want to be too rough with him. I place my hand on his forehead. I take his hand in mine. It is cold to the touch and the limbs don’t move. I reach into his mouth and run my fingers along his teeth.

I feel something in there, something that is not his tongue. Thinking it is a piece of wood I prise it loose. I hold it to the light. It is the tip of a finger. I examine his hands. It is not one of his own. I imagine him in a struggle. A man’s hand reaches around his neck but is not careful enough. The body, in rage, in fear, grabs a finger in its teeth and bites.

The man reaches for his knife and draws the line across the victim’s throat, releasing his finger but not before part of it has been lost. The killer clutches his hand to his breast.

So I am not the first.

I pick up the body. I am surprised by how light it is. It is lighter than the same amount of peat would be. I wade further into the bog and let him go. He sinks slowly into the water. Legs and arms first, then his chest. Finally his head with one staring eyeball disappears.

There are bubbles for a few seconds. Then the water becomes still once more. Something touches my leg – the body settling perhaps – and I jump out of the water as quickly as I can. There is no reason to fear a body that has lain dead for thousands of years, I tell myself. Out here though, in the silence, there is reason enough.

I pick up the peat I have cut and my spade. It is not as much as I wanted but I am in no mood to continue the work. I begin the walk back to the cave. After a minute I glance back at the bog. It is still. A gull has landed near where I was working and pecks at the ground.

I find myself looking over my shoulder frequently on the walk back.

I don’t know what it is I expect to see.

Walking up the hill to the cave I look back again. It is far away now.

I shield my eyes against the rain. It is getting dark. I cannot make out the pool but I know where it is.

In the cave I stoke up the fire and sit shivering. I cough every now and then from the smoke. I lie on my bed, half awake, half asleep.

Whether awake or dreaming my mind is flooded with images of the body and of the killing. There is now a group of men, a group of ten leading the victim by a rope tied round his neck down a path towards the peat bog. There is a village on the island. They lead him down the path, make him kneel. They say words, they chant, there is a struggle.

It ends the same way.

He is led out, though in truth he leads himself out. His head held high, he is dressed in robes, proud of his fate. His subjects follow willingly, in awe at the bravery of the man, of the man-god. To them he is not being murdered but being sacrificed so as to rise again, to protect them from afar, to become one of the ancestral spirits who seep out of the marshes every night and hang a protective cloud over the town.

Some say they hear them whisper to each other. A last minute panic when being held under water, when feeling the knife on his throat. His bravery soiled at the very last. The people silent, wondering what it means. They’ve never had this before: one of their chosen refusing to go quietly, refusing to do his godly duty.

A killer. A cannibal. Dragged out of the woods where he had been hiding. Beaten. Spat upon. His face contorted in rage, in fear. His were unspeakable crimes, even for that age. A last second revenge before succumbing to the waters. Was he staked to the ground to prevent him rising again? How similar the fate of killers and gods.

His face parades before me. It grins, out of fear or mirth. One eye is closed, the other open.

Now he lies beneath the water of the island, breathing silt, his wounds sutured by the mud and by time.

I am not alone. He is the true man of the island. I am just one in a line.

There have been others. There will be more. It does not end with me.

In the morning I lie on my reed bed, wide awake but unmoving. I think of the settlement. I think of Elba, of Amhara, my daughter. I think of the promise of a life. Is it that bad to have to publicly ignore your past, to live as another? To be reborn another: alien, empty. It could have its merits.

I catch a glimpse of a shadow beneath the door and move my head sharply. It does not re-appear and outside it is utterly silent. A gull I think, or a greyer cloud than normal. But it is my signal. I climb out of the bed shivering.

I walk aimlessly out of the cave and down the hill. I only know I do not want to go back to the peat beds, back to the man in the marsh.

A couple of hours later I find myself at the top of the cliffs looking out onto the red sea below. The tide is out and the beach stretches a long way. The cliffs have eroded badly since I was here all those weeks ago. I have lost more of my island to the sea than I should have. The rate of erosion has increased it would seem and my island is disappearing fast. I find I am not unduly bothered by the thought.

Out on the sand, on the black sand, I see the rock, large and white, lying there, unmoving. I sit down on the grass. Or, rather, I kneel down. Kneel first then slump to one side to sit. I watch the thing. I watch, I do not think. It is too much now. I see the white mass on the black sand and I sit on the grass watching it. Then I roll onto my back. It is still there when I sit up again. I close my eyes.

A shadow swims through the mud beneath me, shapeless. It forms a head, a pale eye, arms. It reaches out to me, mouth open. I jump up, brushing myself off.

The white rock is still there. I realise I must go to it.

The rock is wet and smells of the sea. Seaweed clings to the base.

Around it are smaller stones partly submerged in sand. Perhaps parts of the whole. If you half close your eyes, make it darker, they look like fingers. The rock is a body in the sand. I think of the myth of the man encased in rock. This rock, if you look closely enough, if you will yourself to see it, has a face etched in it, a face that cannot speak, frozen forever.

In the end it is not Andalus. The fragile imagining of him is gone.

I sit on the sand, my back against the rock. I take hold of some of the stones, let them drop through my fingers. I am surrounded by black rocks spewed out by the crumbling cliffs. And this white one, alien, out of place. A hallucination.

I think back to the dead. The nine hundred and seventeen. Washed away like the cliffs in the rain.

I walk back to the cave, back through the rain, the wet grass, the grey light. A seagull follows me overhead. The whole way I look behind me, not at the horizon but directly behind me at the ground, the mud. I see my own prints leave a slight mark on the sedge. They fill with water.

In mud my feet slip in and as I pull them out there is a sucking noise and the mud closes over them. I stand for a moment in the mud. I feel my feet sink in, mud sliding through my toes. I imagine something cold beneath them: a stone, an urn, a face. I imagine a hand reaching through the earth to try to touch me. I pull my feet out and walk on.

After a few paces the marks have gone completely. I stop again. Sink again. I run this time. I run through the mud till I reach grass and am not sinking. I bend over to catch my breath. I should not be shivering like this.

In the cave I build up the fire and sit in front of it, not caring about the smoke. I sit in front of it till the steam rises from my clothes. To a stranger it might seem as if I am melting. But there is no getting dry here. Not completely. If my front is dry, my back is wet. If I turn around the wet air gets to work again. There is no keeping the water out. I curl up on the bed of reeds and close my eyes.