Savages

  “What do you mean by self-defense?” Annie asked timidly.

  “You’ve spent a week in the jungle. You’ve had to kill to live. You’re ready for it now,” Jonathan said. “So I’m going to teach you thirteen quick, easy ways for a small woman to kill a man. You’ll pick it up in half an hour. It’s easy.”

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23

  The following morning after foot inspection, the women squatted around Jonathan. They couldn’t sit on the ground or the ants would be at them, and after days in the jungle, squatting had become automatic.

  In the same matter-of-fact voice he’d used for instructing them to fish or build a fire, Jonathan said, “You’d better realize there’ll be no time for hesitation. If you don’t kill him, he’ll kill you. You ain’t got time for scruples, you ain’t got time to think, you’ll only have a split second to recognize a life-or-death situation and do what I’m going to train you to do. You don’t think—you react to the situation, as soon as you recognize it. If you don’t act fast enough, if you stop to think, then some big brute is going to kill you—and your friend, and the group.” He looked around the ragged circle to check the impact of his words. Everyone looked scared.

  Annie said nervously, “Suppose we make the wrong decision, suppose we kill somebody by accident?”

  “You’ll have to plead manslaughter, but at least you’ll be alive to do it,” he said. “Don’t take a risk, don’t think ‘Maybe I will,’ don’t think how frightened or nervous you are, or that you ain’t never done it before—because that may be the last thought you think. If you recognize a kill situation, then you get in there and kill.”

  Silvana said firmly, “Killing is against the teaching of the church. I don’t think I could do it.”

  Patty looked exasperated. “What about army chaplains? They encourage people to kill just by being in the army.” She added, “If you’re going to go by the Bible, Silvana, then how about remembering what they did to Arthur? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

  Silvana looked sick. Jonathan noticed, but didn’t comment, as he continued, “Now you can kill a man in two ways—directly, or indirectly. The easy way is to pull a trigger, or press a button. Somehow, that trigger or button puts you at one remove from the fact. It absolves you from the horror of what you’re doing.” He looked at the serious semi-circle of faces around him, “Button or trigger is impersonal—but when you kill a human being with your own hands, it’s very personal. You’ve been taught, ‘Thou shalt not kill’—and there you are, doing it.”

  Patty said, “But you’ve just outlined a situation in which it’s morally correct.”

  “Justification is easy,” Jonathan said. “Doing it ain’t.”

  “Isn’t killing against the human instinct?” Annie asked, dubiously. “Are you sure women can do it?”

  Jonathan said, “Females will kill when necessary, without hesitation.” Against a chorus of dissent he continued, “Females will kill, without a second thought, to protect their young.”

  There were reluctant nods of agreement.

  Carey said, “If I didn’t want to learn how to kill, I wouldn’t be squatting here now. But what worries me is that when it comes to the point—I just won’t be able to do it.”

  Jonathan said, “Man or woman, when you’re put in a life-or-death situation, you instinctively fight for your life with everything you’ve got. And you can always do more than you think you can. D’you remember when Suzy couldn’t swim, because she was frightened? She learnt to swim because she had to—to survive. So if you have to kill to survive, then you will.”

  Silvana said firmly, “I will never do such a thing.”

  Suzy snapped, “If it’s for survival of the group, you’d better do it. You don’t think I’m going to get blood on my hands for you, if you’re not prepared to accept the same responsibility.”

  “Never!” Silvana said with conviction. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  Jonathan said, “If there’s anyone here who’s sensitive, or squeamish, or who faints at the sight of blood, then she’d better face them feelings and deal with ’em in advance. You all saw what happened on the beach at Paradise Bay. The question you have to answer is simply this: ‘If some bloke is trying to kill me, am I prepared to kill him?’”

  In a low voice Patty said, “I’ll do it—if I have to. Tell us how.”

  Annie was apologetic but firm. “I’m sorry, but I think I’d be too frightened by guns or painted faces. I haven’t got the guts.”

  “You’ll have the guts,” Jonathan said.

  “How can you be so sure?” Annie asked anxiously.

  “Fear creates adrenaline, which helps you do the job. Nature thinks of everything.” Annie still looked dubious, Jonathan added, “Natives paint their faces and yell to frighten the other bloke; under the feathers and the yellow paint and the hollering, they’re just ordinary men—but out to kill you.”

  Patty added, “In their old-fashioned way, they’re just psyching you out.”

  Jonathan nodded. “So forget being frightened or nervous or doubtful if you can kill, or will kill. Forget you ain’t never done it before, forget it’s a person, forget it’s an enemy. It’s simply a moving target and you’ve got to strike it fast. You must simply act. Be impersonal, make the decision and go into your drill—one, two, three, wham! And get it right the first time, because you won’t get a second chance. You’ll be dead.”

  Suzy said, “What about me? I’m so small. What chance will I have against a man? I’ve seen women get hit. They didn’t stand a chance against a bigger man.”

  “That’s because they didn’t have a teacher,” Jonathan told her. “Being small can be an advantage, Suzy. You’ll soon see how.”

  Carey said firmly, “Let’s stop yakking and start the first lesson.”

  “You just had your first lesson,” Jonathan said. “The first lesson is sorting out your moral and mental attitude. I don’t want anyone at the second lesson who ain’t prepared to defend herself and the group.”

  Before they started work on the raft, Jonathan took Silvana to one side. “I don’t want the others to know,” he said, “but I killed a rat this morning—knocked it out with me slingshot, then hit it on the head. He’s about fourteen inches long. I’m going to try and kill a few more. We’ll all work better if we eat animal flesh instead of fish. I’ve hung the rat behind the hut. Don’t handle it until it’s cold, because the fleas won’t leave it until then, and fleas transmit plague.”

  Silvana thought she was going to be sick.

  Seeing her face, Jonathan said crossly, “You’re the cook, it’s your job. Don’t tell the others what it is. Say it’s rabbit, and boil it for about thirty minutes.”

  “How would I know what to do with a dead rat?”

  “Come round to the back of the hut and I’ll show you.”

  Behind the hut Jonathan, wearing fishing gloves, laid the dead rat on the grass. He lifted his knife. “You cut off the head, then the paws; you make two cuts from the knees up the inner back legs to the body, then one cut straight up the belly to the throat.” As he spoke he demonstrated. “From the belly, make a cut down each foreleg. Once you’ve slashed the belly open, all the innards will fall out.”

  “Do I cook them?”

  “No. Maybe bits, like liver, are safe to eat, but it’s safer to throw the lot away.”

  When Silvana rejoined them at the raft, Carey said, “Are you okay? You look awful.”

  Silvana laughed nervously. “We all look awful.”

  Carey nodded and grinned.

  Within twenty-four hours of their flight into the jungle, with the exception of Suzy, the women had lost all interest in their personal appearance. They were now tanned and had lost weight, but their hands and feet were filthy, their nails were black-rimmed and torn, their clothes were limp and ragged. Every evening Annie sewed up the tears, but the thread from the hotel sewing kit had long been finished, so for thread she unraveled part of a
shirt thread by thread, wound it around a twig and used a thorn as a needle.

  Carey’s long, honey-colored hair had been cut short, because of the heat and because the top had been such a mess, where Jonathan had hacked the bat free. Annie had done her best with the sewing-kit scissors to give Carey a boyish cut, like Patty’s, but when she held up the pocket mirror Carey said gloomily, “We’d better ask Vidal Sassoon along on our next trip.”

  Carey wasn’t suffering quite so badly now from her abrupt cigarette withdrawal. (Jonathan had used the last of her cigarettes to clear the hut of mosquitoes on the night when they had diarrhea.) Nevertheless, she was drying out some leaves on a flat rock, and after each meal she rolled a different sort of weed in a leaf and tried to smoke it without gagging.

  Annie had also cut Silvana’s hair. She had chopped straight across the back of Silvana’s neck, and this new pageboy cut made her look ten years younger. Although she was tired, Silvana felt better and fitter than she’d felt for years. She was losing weight fast and starting to feel that, instead of being imprisoned in her body, it belonged to her, and she fitted it with ease.

  The third time Annie caught Suzy sneaking a depressed look into her pocket mirror, Annie threatened to throw it away. Beneath her blond mane Suzy’s black roots were showing, but she had no intention of cutting her long hair and had twisted it into two braids, which she tied with thin rattan. Suzy was also gloomy about her eyebrows, the true shape of which could now clearly be seen, shadowed above and below the thin, arched line.

  More than the others, Silvana suffered from lack of privacy. She had lived in her private shell for so many years, finding comfort in solitude as she read or listened to music. She was the only one of the group who really enjoyed being alone, and she hadn’t been alone since her last shower in the luxurious bathroom of the Paradise Bay Hotel. Convent-educated in Tuscany, she had also been raised to be modest to a ridiculous degree. She could not shake off her reluctance to show herself naked, as the others did when they swam with unselfconscious freedom; Silvana envied this, but could not attain it. Normally Jonathan wore his jeans and a fishing shirt. But whenever Silvana glimpsed Jonathan’s lean, muscular body, she would quickly turn her head away and rush to the canvas lean-to pretending to check her growing pile of bamboo containers, some filled with dried fish, some with filtered fresh water.

  * * *

  All day, in the steaming heat, they worked on the raft. Having cut and unraveled all the vines that they’d lashed and knotted the day before, the women wearily set about redoing their work; they worked slowly, more carefully and without complaining. The name-calling and accusations of the previous day seemed to have cleared the air. Their feelings were no longer disguised. They all knew exactly what they thought of each other and, surprisingly, were more at ease.

  “I’ve found a lazy way to bind the vines,” Suzy said. She demonstrated her invention to the others. “See? You bind one log to the next by winding the rope around the two of them in a figure eight; then you tighten the binding like a tourniquet, by twisting the knot with a stick.”

  By common consent, Suzy was given a double portion of fish that evening.

  After supper, the women gathered around Jonathan for their second self-defense lesson. Patty, Carey and Suzy were eager to learn, Annie was apprehensive, but Silvana was still unwilling.

  “You just remember that Jonathan was going to leave me behind to die rather than put the group in danger,” Suzy warned her.

  “I know,” Silvana said unhappily.

  “Shut up, you two,” said Jonathan, and started his lesson.

  Briskly he said, “Basically, what you do depends on four things—whether you’re surprised by the enemy or whether you have the advantage of surprise, whether you have been attacked from the front or the rear, whether you’re going to attack from the front or the rear, and whether there’s only one of you or more.”

  “So what do we do?” Suzy asked eagerly.

  “If your target is alert, try to distract his attention. From his rear, you can use your slingshot or throw a stone to the right or forward of him. If he looks in the direction of the stone, that’s fine. But if he’s been properly trained, he’ll look in the opposite direction—because he’ll be expecting a decoy.

  “Whatever he does, quickly throw a second stone—in the opposite direction to the way he’s looking. Then take him fast from the rear.”

  Patty said, “Suppose he’s …”

  “If your target’s busy attacking one of your mates, then distract him by throwing a stone or knife at his back. We’ll practice knife-throwing tomorrow morning.”

  “Do we use our fish knives?” Patty asked.

  Jonathan nodded. “They’ve got an eight-inch blade, like an ordinary kitchen knife; that’s long enough to reach a man’s heart. Your knife mustn’t have a needle point, it must be rounded, so that it slides off the rib bone and continues onwards, instead of sticking in the bone. So you’ll have to file the tip of your knife.”

  “Does it matter if you’re left-handed?” asked Patty, who was.

  “No, you just reverse instructions. But there’s one knifing technique that’s perfect for a left-hander. I’ll show you later.”

  Using Patty as an opponent, Jonathan then demonstrated basic methods of self-defense. In a casual, comforting voice he called out, “Don’t attack him from the front, because then he’s got two arms and two legs to use against you. Always try to attack from the rear, or don’t bother.”

  He stood up and beckoned to Patty, then demonstrated as he spoke.

  “Forget any rubbish about crippling a bloke by kicking him in the crotch. He’ll just catch your foot and pull it upwards, then you’ll be on your back. A kick in the balls is a defense tactic. If you’re being attacked and find yourself in hand-to-hand combat, then of course you bring your knee up, as hard and fast as you can. Follow it with your foot to the same place, using all the strength of your leg to push behind the thrust of your heel.”

  Seeing Silvana’s look of distaste, he said, “That ain’t nearly so nasty as what he might be thinking of doing to you. If you’re being attacked from the front and you can get one of your hands free, then pull your elbow back and with the full force of your arm behind it, punch the base of his nose with the heel of your palm.”

  “Would that really hurt him enough?” Suzy thought it sounded too easy.

  Jonathan said, “If you do it right, you can knock his nose bone into his brain. You can also use the same punch aimed at his Adam’s apple. It’s very painful—and easy to do, no matter how small and frail the woman is, Suzy.”

  “Suppose you can’t pull your elbow back?” Suzy asked.

  “Push his eyeball with your thumb; push on the outside toward the nose, with the full force of your arm behind it. Bend the elbow, then straighten it fast, to jab….” He staggered. “Hey, careful, Patty…. But when you’re attacking him somewhere else, you don’t look at his eyes. As with a tennis ball, you focus on what you intend to hit.”

  They hung the tire from the tree nearest the campfire, with the top at the same height as Jonathan’s head. With fish glue, they pasted on leaves to represent eyes, nose, mouth and Adam’s apple.

  Vigorously, Jonathan swung the tire, explaining, “There ain’t a man in this world that’s gonna stand still while you push his eyeball in.”

  They practiced on the tire and then they practiced on Jonathan. In a surprisingly short time, they realized that fighting back was much easier than they had expected it to be. Even Silvana started to enjoy a new feeling of power.

  “Why don’t they teach this stuff to fourteen-year-old girls in school?” Suzy panted. “There might be less rape if guys thought this might happen!” She grabbed Jonathan’s lips between her finger and thumb, dug her nails in, then pulled her wrists inward, twisting the lips in opposite directions.

  By the end of the lesson, each woman had a favorite hold. If Annie was grabbed around the throat, she turned sideways and
forced her fingers down into the hollow below Jonathan’s Adam’s apple. When he grabbed Carey by her shirtfront, she swiftly pushed two fingers under his earlobes while her thumbs pushed up under his cheekbones. Patty preferred punching and dutifully concentrated on punching through the body, rather than at it. She punched Jonathan’s chin, aiming for the back of his head; she punched his chest, aiming for his spine.

  Even Silvana found that if Jonathan had her in a headlock, with her head caught between the crook of his elbow and the side of his body, she could sink her fingers and thumb into the inside of his thigh, then pinch, twist and pull.

  “Feels just like being burned,” Jonathan gasped.

  As Silvana released her grip, she panted, “I still don’t understand why we have to learn to kill, when we’ll shortly be leaving this wretched place.”

  “Never know when it might come in useful,” Jonathan said. He didn’t want to tell them that the most likely moment for a native attack, as revenge for desecrating the taboo site, would be at the moment of embarkation.

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24

  They finished the raft at four o’clock on Saturday afternoon. Jonathan gave it a final inspection, but they all knew that he would find nothing wrong with their work. As he slowly walked around the raft, the women looked at each other and grinned.

  The exhausted women gazed at the raft with surprise and pride. Under pressure, in a short time, they had tapped unsuspected strength and perseverance—which is self-control. They had learned their own capacities and limitations, and how to deal with them—which is self-confidence.

  They had worked hard. The harder they pushed themselves, the more they developed self-control. Jonathan had noticed a new sense of tolerance and compassion, as well as a growing brisk toughness and confidence. Under pressure, in eleven days, the small group had learned to work together, with unsuspected ingenuity and enterprise.

  Jonathan grinned and said, “Well done, lads.”

  Suzy whooped, Silvana clapped and they all grinned with delight at Jonathan’s understated praise.