Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [139]
Jimmy came forward. ‘I don’ know if he unnerstan’ me,’ he said. ‘Mebbe unnerstan’ Malinka.’
Paris drew closer to the man and crouched down beside him as he half sat, half lay against the foot of the steps. ‘Tell him I want him to eat this rice,’ he said. He felt suddenly helpless and ridiculous. How could he persuade the man to eat? ‘Tell him I want him to live,’ he said to Jimmy urgently and impatiently.
Jimmy squatted and spoke close to the man’s ear.
‘Wha’ll tak a wee bet?’ McGann said. ‘I’ll gie ye ten to one. Five shillin’ to saxpence the doctor will no’ get a crumb doon his gullet.’
‘A penny to a shillin’ he gets sommat in,’ Wilson said.
‘Aye, in his mouth,’ Libby said. ‘That’s easy, man, that’s not what McGann is layin’ odds on. His mouth is open already. Naw, he’s got to swaller, to win the bet.’
The negro showed no sign of hearing. His eyes looked at nothing, his head hung down at an awkward angle. ‘I think this man goin’,’ Jimmy said. ‘This man finish. I try him pidgin.’ He brought his mouth close to the man’s ear again: ‘Dis buckra man doctor say you nyam-nyam, say you nyam an’ dringi kaba, everythin’ fine-fine.’
Paris freighted the spoon with rice, then put it back down on the plate again: he saw now that the spoon was too big. He took some of the moist and sticky rice between his thumb and first two fingers and extended this towards the man. He was aware of the silence among the people looking on – some of the women slaves had joined the circle of seamen. There was a ring round him, cutting off the air. The stench of captivity came to him, from the man before him, the spectators white and black, the massed bodies of the slaves under the awning.
‘Eat,’ he said. ‘I want you to eat.’ He could read no expression on the broad, flat-boned face, unless the approach of death can be an expression. The eyes were fixed on the strip of plank between his long and narrow feet. The mouth hung open, a spongy ellipse, allowing the pale loll of the tongue to show within it. As Paris crouched there, holding out in his fingers the sticky ball of rice, he knew that he was alone with this man, that the two of them were quite alone. The pale sky had clutched at them, gathered them into privacy, into some area of seclusion. He did not know whose was the greater arrogance, his or this dying man’s.
‘Eat it,’ he said harshly. He reached forward and put the rice between the man’s lips, feeling the helpless softness of the mouth as he did so, pushing the food between the barrier of the teeth. He dipped his fingers again into the dish, moulding a new ball. The man’s mouth made no movement, his lips still hung slackly open; but as Paris again reached forward the eyes for the first time looked at him, registered his presence there, directly, immediately. Paris saw in the eyes the desire for death and recognized it as his own familiar; but in these same eyes that longed for the burden of pain to be removed there was what the surgeon had seen in his own looking-glass while the bread dissolved in his mouth – inveterate, unquenchable, the hope of life, the appeal to be saved. And Paris knew in that same moment that he had done a wicked thing to sail with this ship out of mere despair.
‘Eat it,’ he said again. He saw a blaze in the man’s eyes, saw the mouth work to gather its contents. The negro raised himself a little and his face strained forward with a curiously patient effort. With a deep gasp, almost a groan, the mouth opened and sprayed out its contents. Paris felt the warm shock of the rice and spit on his face and saw the negro’s head fall back against the ladder and his eyes turn upward.
Haines took a step forward, half raising his whip. ‘Let me give him a go with this,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach him spittin’.’
Paris got to his feet. ‘Stand