We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [80]
So instead I took the wheel.
I REALIZED THAT the first thing I had to do was overcome my fear of the Kanaks, which Jack Lewis had planted so cleverly. As long as I was in thrall to it, Lewis was still on board and in control. I had to issue my own orders and assume they'd be executed. I had to enter my cabin without dreading an ambush and to go to sleep safe in the knowledge that I'd wake up again. In short, I had to do what men have done on ships for thousands of years: I had to be the captain.
But I was young and I'd never commanded a ship before. I was alone with four Kanaks, one of them out of action, and we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I knew very little about the destination we'd been headed for, and I was aware that even if I skippered the Flying Scud to a safe haven, that wouldn't solve my problems. Who would believe my story?
I was still weighing my prospects when I happened to look at the deck. There lay the shrunken head of James Cook, just where it had been when Jack Lewis bade it farewell. I steadied my voice and ordered one of the Kanaks to take the wheel. Then I picked up the shrunken head, carried it down to the cabin, and settled it on Jack Lewis's berth.
I can't explain why I didn't throw it overboard immediately, because I had no desire to keep it or ever cast my eyes on it again. But when I cupped it in my hands and gazed out over the shimmering sea, something held me back. I'd unwrapped the head for Jack Lewis when he'd asked to see it for the final time, but I'd been so preoccupied by his imminent death that I forgot I was handling the horrifying remains of a human being.
Now I became more conscious of the feel of James Cook's leathery skin and straw-dry hair, and the physical contact seemed to link me to the man he'd been before he'd been shrunk into a symbol of barbarism. I could ease my captain's dead body over the rail. But I couldn't do the same to James Cook.
It wasn't just because Jack Lewis had told me Jim's true identity. Did I believe him? Yes and no. But ultimately it made no difference: the whole thing seemed completely unreal anyway. If this was indeed the head of James Cook, it should probably be returned to England—though I had no idea what the people of England would do with it. Keep its existence a secret because the whole business was somehow embarrassing? Hold a ceremony to lay it to rest? Even provide it with its own coffin, perhaps? But how many times can you bury a man? What if a foot was to turn up someday? Would the funeral have to be staged a second time?
Naming this shrunken head Jim in the first place had seemed a malicious joke. But now the joke involved James Cook too. I thought it best to let him rest in peace, but his head was still here, the last vestige of a man who'd suffered a horrific death. I couldn't just toss it overboard like some broken object or a piece of meat that had started to smell.
It was at that point that I understood the difference between me and Jack Lewis. To Lewis, Jim was a shrunken head. To me, he was a human being.
I've often wondered whether Jim appeared more human to me than the Kanaks, whose individual features were hidden in the unfathomable darkness of the blue tattoos etched across their faces. I looked for something human in their eyes, but I found nothing but foreignness, as if their eyes were also tattoos. I never heard Jack Lewis talk to them, and I was never to do so either. I gave my orders and they carried them out. When I bandaged the wounded Kanak, I noticed he was the one with the missing ear. He looked away when I tried to clean his wound, and continued to look away while I bandaged it. A line lay between us and it was never crossed. But as the days passed, my fear of them faded. The ship told us who we were: I was the captain, they were the crew, and the trade wind, which always came from the same direction and blew with the same strength, assured