Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [165]
‘Pretendin’ part of linguister’s job,’ Jimmy said with dignity. ‘Dis boy speak one Vai language. Nobody unnerstan’ what dis boy says ’cept mebbe few hunnert people round the Gallinas River. Dat ten-twelve days’ sail from here, sir.’
The boy looked at their faces with his wide, strained stare, in which, however, there was something of appeal. He knew he was being discussed. He was quite naked. His teeth were chattering faintly and Paris could see the rise and fall of his thin chest. With an austere avoidance of Jimmy’s gaze, he took off his shirt and placed it round the boy’s shoulders.
Their departure had been witnessed by several people and it formed a subject of discussion among a group, clustered together forward, below the jib boom.
‘Thurso never does owt without a reason,’ Wilson said. ‘An’ there’s nobbut one reason why he would put a slave ashore an’ lose the price. The boy has got sommat wrong wi’ him.’
‘The flux or the smallpox, them is the two worst,’ Cavana said. The monkey sat on his shoulder, turning its black muzzle to watch their faces, and repeatedly raising the loose skin on its scalp. Cavana was making a cage for it, constructed out of bamboo canes which he had cut ashore.
‘Why is that animal always makin’ faces,’ Libby demanded, his solitary eye fixing the monkey with a look of dark disapproval. ‘Monkeys spread the pox. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t him that is spreadin’ it now.’
Cavana split one of the canes down the middle with his knife. He was clever at making things, all the movements of his hands were neat and certain. ‘He don’t do it so much when he is just with me,’ he said. ‘Bein’ in a crowd unsettles him.’
Blair winked at Sullivan. ‘What it is,’ he said, ‘he does it when he gets to windward of bleddy great farts like those you’ve been lettin’ go of, Libby. If I had a loose scalp, I would do the same.’
‘He is clever,’ Cavana said with pride. ‘He knows what’s goin’ on. He knows me already. He won’t go to no one else.’
The monkey, aware of being the centre of attention, retracted its head and tucked in its chin shyly. After a moment, with a languid and fastidious gesture of one reddish arm, strangely human and hairless on the inside, it reached out, fumbled gently in Cavana’s matted hair, found something there, peered at it closely with wise, amber-coloured eyes and then swallowed it.
‘Ha, ha!’ Calley said. ‘He found somethink. He found a nit.’ His eyes were round. ‘You are full o’ nits, Cavana,’ he said with delight. ‘What is his name?’
‘I’m callin’ him Vasco,’ Cavana said. There was a certain quality of defensiveness in his tone. ‘That’s a sea-goin’ name I’ve heard tell of. He’s a regglar sailor – the feller that sold him told me he will eat salt beef and biscuit.’ He had begun binding the cross-pieces with strands of yarn and he lowered his head over the task to conceal his pride in the versatile and omniverous Vasco.
‘A monkey can be the savin’ of a ship,’ Sullivan said, glancing round with his usual haunted expression. ‘They have the gift of second sight. I knew of a monkey once, he was kept on a bit of rope like this one; the ship was standin’ off the Bahama Bank. She was a two-masted ship with a square rig, like this one. Same type of monkey, same type of ship. That’s a funny thing now … But she wasn’t carryin’ slaves.’
‘I wish you’d keep to the bleddy point,’ Blair said irritably. ‘What the jig does it matter what type o’ ship she was?’
‘Thim channels are dangerous for any vessel,’ Sullivan said, ‘let alone a square-rig merchantman that can’t keep close to the wind. Anyway, they are sailin’ into the wind when the monkey slips his rope an’ makes a dart for the riggin’. He climbs up to the crow’s nest before anyone can stop him, looks out to sea, then starts gibberin’ an’ pointin’. No one can see anythin’. There is nothin’ to see. The monkey is goin’ frantic an’ frothin’ at the jaws. He runs down an’ gets the captain’s telescope from his cabin an’ brings it to him, but the captain can’t see anythin’ wrong. Then the monkey