We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [65]
"But still, something remains. His old mother would recognize him, don't you think?"
"It's a white man," I said.
"Yes, of course it's a white man. Do you think I'd keep the head of a cannibal? No, a white man's head is a great rarity. I had to pay five rifles for it on Malaita. They're all headhunters there. It was a bargain. I handed over the guns and taught the cannibals how to shoot. Then they aimed them at me, so I shot all five of them before they had time to count to three. Which incidentally they wouldn't have been capable of. I was a more experienced shot, of course. But I'd failed to mention they needed to release the safety catch before pulling the trigger. Sadly, I can't put the shrunken head of a white man on public display. But when I'm alone or in company I trust, I'll take it out and contemplate it." He placed the thing back on the table. I stared at its horribly distorted features. They were still recognizably human, and that was the worst of it. "If I have a religion, then it's him. He can't say a word, but he tells me everything I need to know about life. Look! What are we? A trophy for others? An enemy? Yes, that too—but above all, a commodity. There's nothing that can't be bought or sold. I paid with rifles. If those miserable cannibals had known about money, I'd have paid the right price and we could have avoided all that unfortunate shooting. Which, by the way, I don't regret. That too was a trade. In my favor. Another drink?"
I wanted to say no, but I needed another one. So we sat there drinking in Captain Jack Lewis's cabin with a shrunken head on the table between us. I glanced at it out of the corner of my eye until slowly I grew used to its presence.
"Who was he?" I asked.
"Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. Let's just say that I call him Jim and leave it at that. Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror?" Jack Lewis fixed his eye on me.
We had a small mirror at home, but it was hidden away in one of my mother's drawers and it rarely came out. I'd seen myself reflected in a windowpane more often than I'd stood before a mirror; none of the ships I had sailed kept one in the fo'c'sle.
"Not often," I replied.
The question didn't interest me, nor could I grasp where Jack Lewis was going with it.
"A wise decision. You should never study yourself in a mirror. It tells you nothing but lies. When a man looks at his reflection, he starts getting all sorts of wrong notions about himself. I'm not talking about what a mirror does to a woman. A man doesn't look to find out how handsome he is. A man's vanity isn't in his face; it's found elsewhere. Still, the mirror gives him the idea that he's unique, totally different from everyone else. But it only looks that way. Do you know how we come across to others, in this mirror, here?"
He pointed to his eyes.
"Let me show you."
He grabbed hold of Jim's pigtail with his clawlike hand and dangled him in front of my face. Startled, I jumped up.
Jack Lewis laughed triumphantly.
"That's you," he said. "That's how you look to me. And it's me. That's how I look to you. That's how we seem to each other. The first question we ask ourselves when we meet someone is this: what use is he to me? We're all shrunken heads to one another." He sat down again and poured himself another drink. He gave me an encouraging look. "Another one?"
I shook my head. All I wanted was to get away from this man as quickly as possible. But it wasn't an option. I'd traveled too far to meet him, and without him I'd never find my papa tru. I had yet to ask him where he was, but Jack Lewis beat me to it.
"I know where your father is," he said. "And I'm offering you a deal. I'll take you to him. But there's a price, of course." He looked at Jim and laughed again. "This is the deal. You don't get something for nothing. I'm bored with having only Kanaks for company,