Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [105]
I must have fallen asleep. Ishbel and me, same as ever, walking along the Highway. Everything clear and bright. She wore a white dress like a ballet dancer’s, and was unpainted, as if she’d just got up. Then I was in our old house in Watney Street, our room with the curtain across and old Silky and Mari-Lou snoring on the other side of it. Then back on the sea once more, the lullullullullullull of the waves, the sound of Skip snoring. Someone was poking me.
“We didn’t give him a send-off!”
“What?”
Tim’s voice. “We didn’t give him a send-off!” His angry claw tight on my arm. It would leave a bruise.
“What?”
“It’s wrong! It’s wrong!”
“Who? What?”
“Poor Wilson,” he said. “You should always give a man a send-off.”
“Ah!”
“That’s us damned!”
Towards dawn someone in the other boat commenced praying in a deep belly voice: “Plea-ea-ease. Plea-ease! Pleaseplease! Plea-ea-ease oh please. Please please. Plea-ea-ea-plea-ease! Aaah! Plea-ea-ea-ease!”
“Shut up!” Another voice, weary.
Dan gave a long, guttural sigh. He put a hand over my ear, a great flap to keep out sound. His belly was under my other ear going up and down, weird little creakings in it.
“I cannot do this,” I whispered. “I don’t want to die.”
“Take no notice,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
When I slept I dreamed of groaning tables and feasts of plenty, and woke adrool to see Dan with his head tilted back, storm-battered face talking to the sky. “Well, well,” he said, a low sing-song, “my sore runs in the night and ceases not, indeed it does. Oh indeedy.” His tongue, swollen and grey like a giant tick, flipped uselessly over his lips. “I breathe therefore I am. Thinking doesn’t come into it.” He sucked a little blood from his arm, a meditative look on his face. Caught my eye and cracked a V-shaped smile. His brows had dropped and grown fierce and hairy.
“You know you used to say, Don’t worry, I’ve been in worse than this?” I said. “Well, you can’t now, can you? Not anymore. You haven’t been in worse than this, have you?”
Dan thought for a moment. “No,” he said, “that’s true. But don’t worry.”
Dag was half sitting up, propped against the gunwale, talking in his own language, a constant mumble pierced occasionally by a throaty yell like a boy hailing his dog.
“Look what’s happening.” Sharp and cracked, the voice of Simon, rarely heard these days. “Oh no!” He moved backwards.
The captain wrung out a filthy rag. “Won’t be long now,” he murmured.
“What is it?”
Dag was sweating blood. His jutty face and swollen neck, sun blackened, oozed a fine, rose-tinted dew.
“Here, Simon.”
The captain handed Simon the rag and he wiped Dag’s face. The rag came away stained.
“Give him a drink,” the captain said, “wet his lips at least.”
Dag’s blue eyes opened wide.
“God!” cried Gabriel. “God! He knows! He knows!”
“Ssh!”
They trickled water on his lips, poured it through his jaws. His tongue shot out. “Mama,” he croaked. “Mama …” then a torrent of words, another burst of pink sweat on his skin, a sudden horrible awareness in his eyes.
“It’s all right,” said Simon, wiping away with the rag, “it’ll be better soon.”
But Dag knew, and he gripped Simon’s wrist.
“It’s all right,” said Simon, “lie down now.”
What a day that was, the day of Dag’s dying. He wouldn’t stay down. Up and down like a jack-in-the-box. His voice came and went, sometimes silent for a whole hour at a time and you’d wonder if he’d gone, but no, then you’d hear his awful breath still scraping at the world like claws trying to hold on. Skip was going barmy too, snivelling sulkily like a big stupid kid, occasionally shouting about a thing that walked alongside us on the water, a hoofed thing like a goat and a man and a fish all at once. He said it grinned and was stalking us. Still, we were all mad in our different ways, sitting there helpless, with the sea still twinkling like eternity everywhere, with never a sail or an island or a rock or a bird even. Mid-afternoon,