Chapter Nineteen
Thijmen and Pieter paddled their make-shift fishing boat back to the shore, Pieter hopping out in the surf, pulling it onto the sand and tying it off to a stake. The morning’s catch had been typical: meager, but enough for the day’s dinner. Maybe one of the other boats had had better luck, but none were in, yet.
He and Pieter had been quiet since the night before, neither broaching the subject of the conversation outside the mansion grounds. If they hadn’t been daily fishing companions, each aware of the other’s habits, the day’s fishing would’ve resulted in petty arguing over what lines to cast or where to fish. Instead, the two had been quiet, listening only to the lapping of waves against the boat and the occasional call of an ocean bird above. Not that that was unusual; the two often fished in silence for long periods of time, each staring out over the water at the horizon, wondering what was beyond, if anything was beyond.
There were stories handed down from the company’s elders, passed down from captain to captain, from first mate to deck hands, of the lands from which their forbears had come. Tales of a country of white skinned men like the white-haired man, where there were four seasons to mark the passing of the year and an endless stretch of land in every direction to the horizon. They in the company all knew about the solstices, the ways to mark the passing of the seasons, but of the seasons themselves; nobody had ever experienced what it meant for the weather to change. Even the yearly storms always left behind the same weather.
And then there were the stories passed down about the lands of their dark-skinned ancestors, where strange animals prowled thick jungles and the tribesmen went on hunts. The lands there extended infinitely, and no ancestor had ever been to the end of the earth; the weather was constant, beautiful. There had been the battle over hunting grounds and river access, the capture of the ancestors by the enemy and the arrival of the white men in boats. The stories of long days and nights in the darkness of the bottom of the boat always ended with the storm, the ship being tossed about as the ancestors screamed inside the ship in terror.
And then there was the beach. The storm had spared many lives, leaving a collection of white and black ancestors sopping wet on the sand, a blue sky and rising sun mocking the perils of the night before. For a few weeks, the Dutch ancestors had made trips to the wreckage of the main ship, bringing back supplies or dismantling bits of it for use on shore. But another storm eventually came and swept what was left of the ship away, stranding the Dutch and African ancestors on the island together.
Nobody knew what to make of the stories from the past. Not Thijmen, whose title in the company was boson’s mate and whose father had been First Mate under Captain Mbunde Thorvald on the Eighth Failure. Each generation had tried to make it over the horizon, back to the lands from which the lore told them they had come. Each had failed. And each generation blamed the failure, somehow, on the white-haired man in the mansion.
Thijmen leaned against the bow of the boat and stared at the tree line on the other side of the sand, beyond which lay the wood and thatch structures in which they lived. Their plaats. The women and girls would be getting the dinner preparations started, waiting for the day’s catch to come in off the boats, while the boys would be on their way soon to help with the nets and the repair of the fishing tackle, as required. Thijmen shook his head for a moment, recalling a half-remembered bit of a story about how the homeland, in Nederlands, had large stone buildings like the white-haired man’s mansion and collections of people so large it was impossible to know everyone or, even, to know the layout of the entire area. A werelstad was the Dutch term; there was no similar word in African. Thijmen had no way of imagining it, no more so than had any of his ancestors in describing what snow was.
Thijmen only knew that there was much more to know of the world than he knew of it, much more than the island and the surrounding sea. And he was sure the white-haired man was somehow responsible.
“Did you feel it out there?” Pieter asked.
Thijmen looked up, returning his focus to the real world. “Yeah.”
“Weird how it gets like that,” Pieter said. “It’s almost as if the island knows.”
Thijmen looked at the sand, then the trees, and nodded. “Maybe it’s the water.”
Pieter shrugged and smiled. “Maybe God wants to keep us here; maybe this is Eden and this time, God won’t let us fall from grace.”
Thijmen laughed. It was the oldest argument among them, for those that still believed in the Dutch religion, for those that could still remember much of it: man had failed God once before; this time, God would not fail man, but keep him in paradise.
“I’d give anything to know what an apple tasted like,” Thijmen said, “to know that one existed, even.”
Just then, Sofia slipped from the tree line and stopped on the edge of the sand, her face awash with a mixture of hope, fear and uncertainty. It was a face he had seen before, upon discovery she was pregnant with their first child, only it was different this time. There was more uncertainty and fear.
“What?” Thijmen asked.
“Larumba saw Dedrick this morning.”
Thijmen turned his head quickly to Pieter. Larumba was a rigger’s mate, barely a teenager, and one of the boys tasked with observing the mansion during the day.
“He saw Dedrick?” Pieter said, closing the distance with Sofia, his voice urgent, anxious. “Where?”
“In the back of the mansion where the white-haired man has his gatherings,” Sofia said.
“In the Dead Calm?” Pieter asked, glancing at Thijmen.
“Yes,” Sofia said.
They called it the Dead Calm because nobody had ever heard anything come from it, no matter how many people they watched in it. The white-haired man held gatherings in it on the summer and winter solstices, affairs in which dozens of others would chant and dance in complete silence, their mouths making no sounds, their movements upon the stone surfaces silent. It was almost like being at sea, just out of sight of the island, where the surface of the ocean was still and no wind stirred. The doldrums, some of their ancestors had called it, a place from which no one could escape.
“What was he doing? Was he with the white-haired man or Nereika?” Thijmen asked.
Sofia shook her head. “He was with the man from the beach.”
“The man from the beach,” Pieter said, his right hand unconsciously moving to the knife he had taken from the man’s clothing. “Doing what?”
“Watching him, Larumba said,” Sofia said. “The new man was out in the Dead Calm late this morning, just standing on it and looking around. Larumba said the man seemed to be examining it for something, and then Dedrick came through the doors and just stood there, watching the man.”
“Just watched him?” Thijmen asked.
Sofia nodded.
“And?” Pieter asked.
Sofia shrugged. “Then the man turned, saw Dedrick, said something to him and went into the mansion.”
“That’s it?” Pieter said.
“That’s good news, Pieter,” Thijmen said, “because at least we know he’s still alive.”
“Where’s Larumba, now?” Pieter asked.
A minute later the three were in the center of the plaats, the rest of the ship’s crew waiting, except for the two boats still on the water, their crews fishing. Captain Aald sat on the captain’s chair, nearest the fire, and watched them as they approached. All eyes were on Thijmen and Pieter, the leaders of the crew’s two boarding parties. Anticipation crackled through the silence of the men and women; the children hovered in the back, in the shadows of the trees, observing.
From behind the captain’s chair, First Mate Mirenga placed his hand on Larumba and walked the teenager forward, in front of the gathering. Mirenga gave the boy a couple of pats on the shoulder for encouragement, then stepped back into the gathering.
“Did he look alright?” Pieter asked, his words a rush.
Larumba nodded.
“
How did he look?” Thijmen asked.
Larumba scuffed the ground with his toe. “He looked normal, I guess. He was just standing there, staring at the man from the beach.”
“That’s all?”
“He was wearing different clothes. New clothes. Brown pants and a blue shirt,” Larumba said.
Pieter and Thijmen exchanged looks.
Captain Aald stood and took a step forward. “Yes, just like we’ve seen Nereika wearing. It doesn’t mean anything we can know.”
“Perhaps the white-haired man intends to keep Dedrick as he’s kept Nereika these past few years,” Pieter said, scanning the rest of the crew. “Can we let this devil of a man do this to us again whenever he wants? To just take us at will, never to be heard from again? How many of us must disappear into that mansion before we strike at it?
“I say we take to arms, now, and strike while we know Dedrick is still alive, while there’s still a chance of freeing him, of maybe even freeing Nereika, finally, from the clutches of this man.”
There was complete silence for a moment. Everybody agreed but nobody would assent. Everyone knew the history. Aald raised his palm.
“You speak good counsel, Pieter, but hasty counsel,” Aald said. “I trust I do not need to remind anybody of General Order Number One?”
Aald surveyed the group for a moment. “Should we really risk what we have, now, to save Dedrick and Nereika? We have built up a good life here, improved upon our situation and made life more comfortable, do we really want to risk our lives to help two of our members who, and we all know this is true, were taken before they were ever made full members of the crew? This is not to say that we do not have affection for them or wish them back, but Nereika has been gone a while now, her parents have passed on, and there is no one to speak for her among us. And Dedrick’s parents know he is still several years from full-membership in the crew, and as such has no stake.
”We have never been successful against the men who have lived in that building. Many of us have died over the years trying, and remember: the last time such a thing was tried, all but one member of the raiding parties were lost, and the one that did return was never the same man as went out, so altered was his mind he swam out to sea and drowned himself to rid himself of whatever curse the white-haired man put upon him.”
“That raid was more than four generations ago, Captain,” Pieter said. “And since then how many have we lost? How many have been taken from the jungle or the beaches, never to be seen or heard from again? Who of us will be next? Is it better to live here on this island, trapped here in the plaats, surviving on fishing and foraging, none of us to ever return to the lands of our mothers and fathers?”
“We all hear you, Pieter, and I do not doubt that all of us wish the same as you, to go back to the lands from which our ancestors came, to see the sights and wonders of the world that have been handed down to us in stories,” Aald said. “But every generation has tried, and every generation has failed. Some have never come back from the water’s edge, where the seas grow calm. But none have ever come back who have trod upon the lawn of that mansion, not those who were taken nor those who wandered upon it by accident.”
“This is true, so the lore tells us, but last night Pieter threw a rock on the grass and nothing happened,” Willem said, pushing through the back of the gathering, late to the gathering but having heard enough.
“A rock is not a man,” Aald said, turning to Willem.
Willem stared at Pieter a moment. “He also stood upon the grass and was not destroyed.”
There was a sudden silence among the group, and all eyes turned to Pieter. He turned his head through the members of the crew, returning their gazes.
“You did this?” Aald asked.
Pieter nodded. “It is why I say we should go today, now. Perhaps the arrival of this stranger has unsettled things. We watched him yesterday go down to the beach with Nereika in the morning. Later, he walked the mansion grounds freely and nothing happened to him.”
Aald turned to Larumba. “And what of today? Did you see this man after he was on the Dead Calm?”
Larumba nodded. “He strolled the grounds a bit, took the path from the mansion to the beach again and stared out at the sea for a while before returning to the mansion. Nothing happened to him.”
First Mate Mirenga stepped forward. “Perhaps he is with the white-haired man, a visitor like we have seen before.”
Thijmen shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. This man washed ashore on the beach at night. The others we have seen have never been watched arriving; they simply are there when they are, then they are gone.
“I think Pieter may be on to something. Perhaps this new man is different.”