Nation Read online

  Even so, the shadows were getting longer by the time he continued on toward the forest, with the oozing, beery mash dripping in a woven punk-wood bag under one arm and a small calabash under the other. It was the best one he could find: Someone had been very careful to scrape out as much of the orange flesh as possible and dry the rind with care so that it was light and strong, without any cracks.

  He left his spear propped up outside the Women’s Place. For a lone man, a spear was no good against an angry hog—a furious boar would bite one in half, or spit itself on the shaft and keep on going, a ball of biting, slashing rage that didn’t know when it was dead. And the sows were worse when they had piglets at heel, so he was probably going to die if the beer didn’t work.

  At least there was a little piece of luck. There was a fat old sow on the track, piglets all around her, and Mau saw her before she saw him, but only just. He stopped dead. She gave a snort and shifted her big wobbling body, uncertain at the moment whether to charge but ready to do so if he made a wrong move.

  He took the big ball of mash out of the bag and tossed it toward her. He was running before it hit the forest floor, crashing away like a frightened creature. He stopped after a minute and listened. From some way behind him came some very satisfied grunting.

  And now for the dirty bit. He moved a lot more quietly now, making a big circle to bring himself back onto the path past where the sow lay. She’d come from the big mucky wallow the pigs had made where a stream crossed the track. They loved it, and it was filthy. It stank of pig, and Mau rolled in it until he did, too.

  Globs of the slimy stuff slithered off him as he crept back along the track. Well, he certainly didn’t smell human anymore. He probably never would again.

  The old sow had trampled herself a nest in the undergrowth and was making happy, beery snoring noises, with her family crawling and fighting all over her.

  Mau dropped to the ground and began to crawl forward. The sow’s eyes were shut. Surely she wouldn’t smell him through all the muck? Well, that was a risk he had to take. Would the piglets, already shoving one another aside to get at the teats, work out what he was? They squealed all the time in any case, but did they have a special squeal that would set the sow on him? He’d find out. Would he even be able to get the milk out? He’d never heard of anyone milking a pig before. Something else to find out. He’d have to learn a lot in a short time. But he’d fight Locaha everywhere he spread his dark wings.

  “Does not happen,” he whispered, and slid forward into the brawling, squalling mass of pork.

  Daphne tugged another log onto the fire, straightened up, and glared at the old man. He might do a bit of work, she thought. Some clothes could only help, too. But all he did was sit by the fire and nod at her occasionally. He’d eaten more than his fair share of the baked fish (she’d measured it with a stick) and she had been the one to mash up some of the fish with her own hands and feed it to the Unknown Woman, who looked a bit better now and had at least eaten a few mouthfuls. She was still clutching her baby, but it wasn’t crying anymore, and that was more worrying than the crying had been….

  Something screamed up in the hills, and went on screaming, and then went on screaming louder.

  The old man creaked to his feet and picked up Mau’s club, which he could barely lift. When he tried to raise it over his shoulder, he went over backward.

  The scream arrived, followed by the screamer, something that looked human but was dripping green mud and smelled like a swamp on a very hot day. It thrust a warm, heavy gourd toward Daphne, who took it before she could stop herself. Then it shouted “MILK!” and ran on into the dark. There was a splash as it dived into the lagoon.

  The smell hung in the air for quite a long time. When a faint breeze blew it over the fire, the flames burned blue for a moment.

  Mau spent the night much farther along the beach, and went for another swim as soon as it was light. The smell had this about it: He could sit on the bottom of the lagoon and scrub himself with sand and weeds and then swim underwater in any direction and yet, as soon as he surfaced, there the smell was, waiting for him.

  He caught some fish and left them where people could see them. At the moment they were fast asleep; the mother and her baby were curled up in their blanket, sleeping so peacefully that Mau envied them, and the old man was sleeping with his mouth open and looked as if he was dead, although by the sound of it he wasn’t. The girl had gone back to the Sweet Judy, for some strange trouserman reason.

  He tried to keep away from the others during the day, but the ghost girl seemed to be watching for him all the time, and he was running out of nonchalant ways to avoid her. In the end she found him in the evening, while he was repairing the field fences with fresh thorns, to keep the pigs out. She didn’t say anything but just sat and watched him. That can be quite annoying when people do it for long enough. A big cloud of silence builds up like a thunderstorm. But Mau was good at silence, and the girl wasn’t. Sooner or later she had to talk or burst. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t understand nearly everything she said. She just had to talk, to fill up the world with words.

  “My family owns more land than there is on this whole island,” she said. “We have farms, and once a shepherd gave me an orphan lamb to look after. That’s a baby sheep, by the way. I haven’t seen any here, so you probably don’t know what they are. They go maaaa. People say they go baaa, but they don’t. Sheep can’t pronounce their bs, but people still go on saying it because they don’t listen properly. My mother made me a little shepherdess outfit, and I looked so sweet it would make you sick, and the wretched creature used to take every opportunity to butt me in the—to butt me. Of course, all this won’t mean very much to you.”

  Mau concentrated on weaving the long thorns between the stakes. He’d have to go and get some more from the big thickets on the north slope, he thought. Perhaps I ought to go and get some right now. If I run, perhaps she won’t try to follow me.

  “Anyway, the thing is that the shepherd showed me how to get a lamb to suck milk off your fingers,” the girl went on relentlessly. “You have to sort of dribble the milk slowly over your hand. Isn’t that funny? I can speak three languages and play the flute and the piano, but it turns out that the most useful thing I’ve ever learned is how to make something small and hungry suck milk off my fingers!”

  That sounds as though she’s said what she thinks is an important bit, Mau told himself, and so he nodded and smiled.

  “We also own lots of pigs. I’ve seen them with the little piglets and everything,” she continued. “I’M TALKING ABOUT PIGS. Oink oink, grunt grunt.”

  Ah, thought Mau, this is about pigs, and milk. Oh, good. Just what I wasn’t hoping for.

  “Oink?” he said.

  “Yes, and, you see, I want to get something sorted out. I know you can’t milk a pig like you can a sheep or a cow because they don’t have”—she touched her chest for a moment, and then rapidly put her hands behind her back—“they don’t have uddery parts. There’s just the little…the little…tubes.” She coughed. “THEY CAN’T BE MILKED, UNDERSTAND?” And now she moved her hands up and down, as if she was pulling ropes, while at the same time making squish-squish noises for some reason. She cleared her throat. “Er…so I think the only way you could have got the baby’s milk, excuse me, is to sneak up on some sow with a litter of little ones, which would be very dangerous indeed, and crawl up when she was feeding them—they make such a noise, don’t they?—and, er…” She screwed up her lips and made a sucking sound.

  Mau groaned. She’d worked it out!

  “And, er, well, I mean, YUCK!” she said. “And then I thought, Well, all right, yuck, but the baby is happy and has stopped crying, thank goodness, and even his mother is looking better…so, well, I thought, I bet even great heroes of history, you know, with helmets and swords and plumes and everything, I bet they wouldn’t get down in the dirt because a baby was dying of hunger and crawl up to a pig and…I mean, when you
think about it, it’s still YUCK, but…in a good way. It’s still yucky, but the reason you did it…it makes it sort of…holy….” At last her voice trailed away.

  Mau had understood baby. He was also pretty sure about yuck, because her tone of voice practically drew a picture. But that was all. She just sends words up into the sky, he thought. Why is she going on at me? Is she angry? Is she saying I did a bad thing? Well, around about the middle of the night I’m going to have to do it again, because babies need feeding all the time.

  And it’ll be worse. I’ll have to find another sow! Ha, ghost girl, you weren’t there when she realized something was going on! I’d swear her eyes had shone red! And run? Who’d have thought that something that big could go that fast that quickly! I only outran her because the piglets couldn’t keep up! And soon I’ll have to do it all again, and go on doing it until the woman can feed the baby herself. I must, even though I may have no soul, even though I may be a demon who thinks he’s a boy. Even though I may be an empty thing and in a world of shadows. Because…

  His thoughts stopped, just there, as if they had run into sand. Mau’s eyes opened wide.

  Because what? Because “Does not happen”? Because…I must act like a man, or they will think less of me?

  Yes, and yes, but more than that. I need there to be the old man and the baby and the sick woman and the ghost girl, because without them I would go into the dark water right now. I asked for reasons, and here they are, yelling and smelling and demanding, the last people in the world, and I need them. Without them I would be just a figure on the gray beach, a lost boy, not knowing who I am. But they all know me. I matter to them, and that is who I am.

  Daphne’s face glistened in the firelight. She’d been crying. All we can do is talk baby talk, Mau thought. So why does she talk all the time?

  “I set some of the milk to keep cool in the river,” said Daphne, idly drawing on the sand with a finger. “But we will need some more tonight. MORE MILK. Oink!”

  “Yes,” said Mau.

  They fell into another of those awkward silences, which the ghost girl ended with: “My father will come, you know. He will come.”

  Mau recognized this. He looked down at what she had absentmindedly been drawing in the dirt. It was a picture of a stick girl and a stick man, standing side by side on a big canoe, which he knew was called a boat. And when he watched her, he thought: She does it, too. She sees the silver line into the future, and tries to pull herself toward it.

  The fire crackled in the distance, sending sparks up toward the red evening sky. There wasn’t much wind today, and the smoke rose to the clouds.

  “He will come, whatever you think. The Rogation Sunday Islands are much too far away. The wave could never reach them. And if it did, Government House is built of stone and very strong. He is the governor! He could send out a dozen ships to look for me if he wanted! He already has! One will be here in a week!”

  She was crying again. Mau hadn’t understood the words, but he understood the tears. You’re not sure of the future either. You thought you were, it was so close you could see it in your head, and now you think it’s washed away, so you’re trying to talk it into coming back.

  He felt her hand touch his. He didn’t know what to do about that but squeezed her fingers gently a couple of times, and pointed at the column of smoke. There couldn’t be many fires burning in the islands now. It was a sign that must show up for miles.

  “He will come,” he said.

  Just for a moment, she looked astonished. “You think he will come?” she said.

  Mau rummaged around in his small collection of phrases. Repetition should do it. “He will come.”

  “See, I told you he would come,” she said, beaming. “He’ll see the smoke and steer right here! A pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day, just like Moses.” She jumped up. “But while I’m still here, I’d better go and see to the little boy!”

  She ran off, happier than he’d ever seen her. And all it had taken was three words.

  Would her father come to find her in his big boat? Well, he might. The smoke of the fire streamed across the sky.

  Someone would come.

  The Raiders, he thought….

  They were a story. But every boy had seen the big wooden club in the chief’s hut. It was studded with shark teeth, and Mau hadn’t even been able to lift it the first time. It was a souvenir from the last time the Raiders came as far east as the Nation. After that, they knew better!

  Every boy tried to lift the trophy club. Every boy listened wide-eyed to the descriptions of the big dark canoes, their prows hung with bloody skulls, their oars rowed by captives who were near skeletons themselves, and tales of how those prisoners were lucky, because when they were too weak to row anymore, they were beheaded just for their skulls. The prisoners who were taken back to the Land of Fires weren’t treated quite so well, even before they got turned into dinner. You got told this in detail.

  At this point, when you were sitting there with your mouth open or perhaps your fingers over your ears, you were just trying not to wet yourself.

  But then you were told about Aganu, the chief who fought the leader of the Raiders in single combat, as was their custom, and took the shark-tooth club from his dead hand, and the Raiders had run back to their war canoes. They worshipped Locaha himself, and if He was not going to give them a victory, there was no point in staying, was there?

  After that you were given another chance to lift the club, and Mau had never heard of a boy failing to lift it this second time. And only now did he wonder: Was it really because the story made boys stronger, or did the old men have some way of making the club heavier?

  YOU INSULT THE MEMORY OF YOUR ANCESTORS!

  Aargh. They had been quiet all day. They hadn’t even said anything about him milking the pig.

  “It’s not insulting,” he said aloud. “I’d use a trick, if it was me. A trick to give them hope. The strong boys wouldn’t need it and the boys who are not so strong would feel stronger. Every one of us dreamed of being the one who’d beat their champion. Unless you believe that you might, you can’t! Weren’t you ever boys?”

  There was no grumbling roar in his head.

  I don’t think they think, he thought. Perhaps they used to really think, but the thoughts have worn out from being thought so often?

  “I will keep the baby alive if I have to milk every pig on this island,” he said, but it was horrible to think that he might have to.

  No reply.

  “I thought you might like to know that,” he said, “since he will be taught about you. Probably. He’ll be a new generation. He’ll call this place home. Like I do.”

  The reply came slowly and sounded grinding and cracked: YOU SHAME THE NATION! HE IS NOT OF OUR BLOOD….

  “Do you have any?” snapped Mau out loud.

  “Do you have any?” a voice echoed.

  He looked up into the ragged crown of a coconut tree. The gray parrot looked down on him with its mouth open. “Show us yer drawers! Do you have any? Do you have any?” it squawked.

  That’s what they are, Mau thought. They’re just parrots.

  Then he stood up, grasped his spear, turned to face the sea, and guarded the Nation from the darkness.

  He didn’t sleep, of course, but at some point Mau blinked, and when he opened his eyes again the stars were bright and it was not long before dawn. That was not too much of a problem. A snoring old sow would be easy enough to find. She wouldn’t ask any questions if she found a nice big beery mash in front of her, and when the time came to run, he might even be able to see where he was going.

  He told himself this to cheer himself up, but you couldn’t get away from it: Milking a pig would be much harder the second time, because you’d have to forget how horrible it had been the first time.

  In the dark the surf shone where it broke over the reef, and it was time to go through it all again. He’d rather have been going into battle.

/>   The Grandfathers certainly thought he should. They’d had time to pull some pig thoughts together. IS THIS THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR? they growled. DOES THE WARRIOR ROLL IN THE MUCK WITH HOGS? YOU SHAME US!

  Mau thought, as loudly as he could: This warrior is fighting Death.

  The baby was already whimpering. The young woman gave Mau a sad little smile when he took the empty calabash and washed it out. She never said anything even now.

  Once again, he didn’t bother to take the spear. It’d only slow him down.

  The old man was sitting on the slopes above the beach, staring up at the fading night. He nodded at Mau. “Going milking again, demon boy?” he said, and grinned. He had two teeth.

  “Want to try it, sir? You’ve got the mouth for it!”

  “Ha! But not the legs! I did my bit, though. Last night I begged the gods to let you succeed!”

  “Well, have a rest tonight,” said Mau, “and I’ll go and lie in the muck without a prayer. And tomorrow I’ll get some sleep and you can pray to the gods to make it rain milk. I think you will find lying in the muck is more reliable.”

  “Are you trying to be smart, boy?”

  “Trying not to be dumb, sir.”

  “Games with words, boy, games with words. The gods are in everything we do. Who knows? Perhaps they see a use for your sorrowful blasphemy. You mentioned beer yesterday…,” he added hopefully.

  Mau smiled. “Do you know how to make beer?” he said.

  “No,” said Ataba. “I have always seen it as my duty to do the drinking part. Making beer is women’s business. The trouserman girl does not know how to make beer, no matter how much I shout at her.”

  “I’ll need all that is left,” said Mau firmly.

  “Oh, dear, are you sure?” said Ataba, his face falling.

  “I’m not going to try to suck milk out of a sober pig, sir.”

  “Ah yes,” said Ataba sadly. “Well, I shall pray…and for the milk, also.”

  It was time to go. Mau realized that he had just been putting things off. He should have been listening to himself; if you didn’t believe in prayer, then you had to believe in hard work. There was just enough time to make a dash and find a sow before they woke up. But the old man was still staring at the sky.