Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [95]
‘Good mouth,’ Barton said in his ear. ‘They chews on a piece o’ bark.’
With Barton murmuring at his side like some confidential assistant, full of hints and instances, he peered at the negro’s eyeballs and into the pink whorls of his ears. He prodded his chest and listened to his heart and felt the glands of his throat. He examined the surface of the body for evidence of disease but found only the whip marks and extensive contusions in the upper arms caused by his bonds; he had been bound very tightly and for considerably longer than it had taken to ferry him from shore.
‘Don’t forget the cock, Mr Paris,’ Barton said. ‘Seat of pleasure. Lay hold his arms, Libby. They sometimes strikes out. Big ’un, ain’t he?’
The man was circumcised. Paris drew the loose skin back to look at the whole crown of the penis. He was aware again of that light, continuous trembling. He spread the man’s thighs to look for venereal lues in the region of the groin. There was nothing. Straightening up, he saw the fluttering of fear or shock at the base of the negro’s throat. The man panted suddenly, a single deep gasp. His eyes were unseeing. ‘He is in good condition,’ Paris said. He experienced a momentary giddiness. I must have got up too suddenly, he thought. There was a sweetish, musky odour in his nostrils.
‘Let’s have a look at his arse,’ Barton said. ‘Get him down on his knees. Get his head down, Deakin, will you? And you, Calley – press him by the nape. You fool, what are you doing? I want his head touchin’ the deck an’ his tail in the air. That’s right. You have got to be up to their tricks, Mr Paris. I have known these rogues of dealers to plug up slaves’ arses with corks to keep in the bloody flux long enough to sell ’em. You wouldn’t credit what they will stoop to.’
‘I think I would,’ Paris said. The examination seemed to have passed out of his hands. He looked away from the bowed form of the black man, still as stone on the deck, to the sea, the distant wildness of the surf, the wall of forest beyond. They had come from somewhere behind there, perhaps from far inland. They were forest people. It came to Paris, like so much these days, as a shaft, a missile that found him, which he would have avoided if he had been able – broken sunshine, river banks, clearings of villages, always cover somewhere near, always enclosure. And now this terrible openness of sea and sky …
‘We have got to make him caper,’ Barton said, cheerfully. He was his usual loquacious self now, having apparently recovered from his disappointment over the rum. ‘Make sure he has full possession of his limbs,’ he said. ‘Step back, Mr Paris, out of the line of the whips. Let us see the brute jump a bit. They are idle devils. Here, you beggar, like this.’ He jumped up and down and kicked out sideways. ‘Like that, you sabee? Quashee do same-same ting me. Jump, damn you. Here, Cavana, wake him up with your whip, will you?’
The negro panted when he felt the lash, and seconds later cried out on a high-pitched note that sounded more of despair than pain.
‘He is givin’ us a song when we wants a dance,’ Libby said with a grin, turning his good eye round on his henchman Tapley.
‘That’s it, oopla!’ Barton clapped his hands.
The negro had begun a shuffling motion, kicking out his feet and flapping his arms. Paris, again with a sense of being impaled on his own perceptions, saw that thick tears had gathered in the man’s eyes.
‘We have one to start with, Captain,’ Barton said, going up to Thurso where he sat under the awning with the king. ‘Prime male, ’bout thirty years old, no pox, no flux, clean as a whistle.’
‘We’ll start with him then,’ Thurso said. ‘Tell Mr Paris not to waste his