We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [83]
I examined the Kanak's shoulder the following day. There were yellow stains on the white bandage and pus oozed from the gash. It had almost closed, but its edges were red and swollen. I cleaned it as well as I could. The Kanak's blue face stayed passive, but his shoulder twitched every time I touched the swollen wound. So I poured whiskey over it and left it to his fellow Kanaks to change the bandage. I knew they fiddled with his wound too. They had their own medicines, which I wasn't going to interfere with: I already doubted the value of my own methods.
The Kanak's infection gave me the frightening impression that the stagnant air around us was somehow poisoned. We were in the middle of the sea, yet it felt as if we were in a dense jungle, surrounded on all sides by the toxic breath of rotting plants. Was I the only man here who felt that a giant hand was squeezing his chest?
I watched the Kanaks. Their movements too seemed more sluggish. Were they suffocating too? Did this calm, which had nailed us to the vast floor of the ocean, sit on them too, like a dead weight? Were anxious questions beginning to show in the dark eyes behind the blue masks? Were superstitious terrors rising in them like bubbles from the bottom of a stale swamp, demanding some explanation for our cursed immobility? And might their answer be me, the stranger, who didn't belong among them and who could be used as ransom in the face of the inexplicable?
We cast lines, but no fish bit. Again I got the feeling that all life around us had vanished. The depths of the sea had become just as still as its surface. It wasn't the fear of sharks that prevented me from seeking refreshment in a swim. It was the notion that the sea would suck me down the moment I came into contact with it, and I'd disappear into its darkness forever.
On the fourth day I checked our provisions. We had half a sack of taro roots and a few kilos of rice left. I wasn't afraid we would starve, for I had enough common sense left to expect that the sea would, at some point, give up some of its riches and land a tuna on our deck. Our big problem was fresh water. We hadn't picked up sufficient supplies on the island and we were about to run out. A good rainfall would have fulfilled our needs, but the sky remained mercilessly blue. I had to ration the water, but I feared that this in itself might trigger a mutiny. So I decided that from now on we'd all eat our meals together on the deck: that way the Kanaks could see that everyone received the same amount of water.
We weren't equals, nor should we be. A ship's written and unwritten laws must be obeyed. But we had to be equal in our sufferings; otherwise we'd never get through them together. Slowly it began to dawn on me that being becalmed like this could, for a newly fledged captain, prove a far greater challenge than any storm.
Every day we continued to cast our lines but caught nothing. The fish shunned our ship, and I could see a perplexed look on the faces of the experienced Kanaks, who'd spent their entire lives on these waters. We were in the middle of the sea and there wasn't a single fish to be had! Were we cursed?
I handed out one mug of water to each man at every meal. One day I peered into the last water barrel and saw that it was close to empty: enough for two more days, at most. Our only hope was that the trade wind would start to blow and bring rain with it.
On the seventh day, the water ran out. Soft moans came from the hammock where the wounded Kanak was drifting in and out of his fever. No more relief came to his cracked lips, and his eyes rolled upward, as if he hoped to escape via the rigging. When he closed them again, he carried on whimpering. No other sound broke the silence on board. It was at once a sign of life and an omen of the fate that awaited us.
THE SECOND DAY after the water ran out, we were eating our taro roots, which we'd boiled in salt water, when suddenly one of the Kanaks pointed at the horizon.