Sir

(an extract from a novel-in-progress - Aristotle’s Lantern).

Mary Daya

The bargain Pati strikes with Capt. Esau Jacobs is simple. The Catherine May will sail the Lomaiviti waters for a month. She will not touch land. Her sailors will collect rain. The cook will toss manta ray with soy for dinner. He will make the devilfish last four weeks. He will cook anything and everything the boat hauls in. If the manta goes to worm and the thrown lines do not tighten for a pull, he will boil the first frigate or tern the sailors stun from the air. Then the hungry shall eat. But the Catherine May will not touch land, not pick passengers, not pick copra.

A day out at sea, the boat will kill its diesel engine and set herself adrift. Capt. Esau will tell the sailors to throw the Jacob’s ladders down starboard and stern. The engine will not smoke and splutter until the crew has painted from gunwale to watermark, from white with jade trim to the colour of the sea. Not until the colour of the sea does not leave a stain on Pati’s thumb will Capt. Esau Jacobs stand at the wheel. The Catherine May will melt into the Lomaiviti waters for thirty-one and twelve days. She will slip through the Na Tubari at the end of the thirty-one and twelve. In the hour when Levuka’s Chinese bakers and their Fijian boys are up to their elbows in flour for six o’clock morning bread, the Catherine May will place us on the verandah of the Ports Authority building on the pier and slip away as silently as it came; so that when Edna Stanhope asks, how did you come? Pati will squint down at the pier and say, my word that was fast, the boat that brought us has left already!

The deal is simple. Do these things. Only then will Pati remove the gilt framed portrait of Queen Victoria from within her skirts and place it before him. Then she will take it back.

There is only one main street in Levuka, Capt. Esau says, Beach Street. You will walk north until you see a hill with cement steps right to the top. This is Mission Hill. The steps are one hundred ninety-nine. At the top are four big houses. Say you are looking for Edna. Her grandfather from her father’s side was a beachcomber, not a gentleman. She speaks fluent Fijian like her mother from Batiki. Her house was a German house. Her father bought it for £28- after the Germans were kicked out in 1914. It was like buying a ton of sugar for the price of a kilo. When you meet, show her the queen.

For some time afterward, I do not remember Liverpool. The name, that is. Atteh and Horatio, I remember. I remember everything but the name of the coconut plantation we have left a woman alone in. I live like my life began when Fijian sailors carry me up a Jacob’s ladder. I forget Pati’s frantic packing. Eight trunks, five of Herbert’s, three of Opal’s. I forget Pati’s tossing and tearing. Her running from room to room. Her pouring kerosene all over the ferns , the mother-in-law’s tongue, the planter’s chairs, threatening to make a bonfire. I forget her packing heron eggs and orchids. Her chopping tables to firewood.

I remember Atteh’s eyes. Sitting in a rattan chair in the long verandah. Watching her mother run from room to room, making her mother’s antics look clownish. Her gaze did that, reduced another woman’s grief and anger to a cheap circus act. But what I remember most is how Atteh watches with nothing in her eyes when a sailor carries me to the dinghy Capt. Esau has sent to shore. When the dinghy is pushed to the deep, she wades until the sea is up her chest. Look, she calls over the sea, Poonai is here. And I see the orange tom, nose high, kicking for the dinghy.

It is an old game. At first, Pati says it’s evil. That we must tie him in a sack and toss it in the ocean. Or tie a dry crackling leaf to his tail and let him run. Or beat him into leaving. But the kitten stays. In Opal’s bedroom with me. At the first sign of the hardening of furred twin beads in his rear, Pati says, he could stay, couldn’t he? Keep Dewane company when we’re busy? She says this to Horatio, as if he were the one who objected to the feline staying in the first place. The game is in water. Poonai swims like a dog, nose up, paws doing the dog paddle. To Horatio’s boat and back. To a rock not submerged by the tide and back. Then he dries himself on the gunwale of the wood boat. Eyes in the water. Fur fluffing into a dry puff in the sun. Then Horatio fetches us.

On the day of the Catherine May, Atteh’s eyes are on me. Look, she says, Poonai is here! The tom is pushing against the rising tide. The muscles of the crew straining at the oars carrying Pati and I out of the still lagoon. Atteh in an ocean up to her chest. Then Pati pulls my face into her cotton sari. I almost don’t hear one of the Fijian sailors say - Shark! Fucking shark’s going to get that stupid cat!

Pati’s voice is matter-of-fact formal in the cabin of the Catherine May. It is the voice she later uses in the District Office in Levuka when she goes to complain about the half-caste boys who run by our cottage in the evenings, calling out, Cowshit! Cowshit!  They do this because it is possible to smell the cow dung Pati spreads between her cabbages and tomatoes. She buys it from Abraham Lazarus in Vagadaci. Abraham delivers a barrowful on Friday nights. Pati is the only person in Levuka who buys cow dung. She sits on the wooden bench at the District Office waiting to be called. I peer through the louvered window listening for her complaint to be lodged in Fijian. Her voice is matter-of-fact formal. Like in the Catherine May.

Poonai had no business swimming, she says. Poonai is a cat. He should have been satisfied with milk and fish and all the extra stolen food you give him from the kitchen. A swimming cat deserves to be eaten by a shark. Now he’s learned his lesson. He should never have been following you around. Ever. But who listens to an old goose’s words, eh? Not your Atteh, not Horatio, not you. Look where that’s gotten us. In a rotten boat with a bunch of Fijians and a half-breed captain.

Why are we in this rotten boat with a bunch of Fijians and a half-breed captain? I ask. You mind your tongue, she says, don’t go repeating everything I say. Speak nice words.

Well, why are we in this boat? I say. It’s plain, Pati says, when you’re not on dry land, you’re either swimming or in a boat. We’re not swimming, are we? That’s why we’re in a boat! Because we’re not swimming!

Where are we going? I ask. Wherever this boat takes us, she says. I’m hoping we reach the end of the earth and drop into a big dark hole. Somewhere far from Makare and Liverpool. You’re a silly old woman, I say. If this boat takes us to that hole, I’ll leave you there and sail right back home to Atteh and Horatio. I’m not going with you.

Oh, you stupid child, she says softly, we don’t have a home anymore. You and I. This boat is home now. For a while. But Liverpool is no more. You will never go back. The police have taken Horatio. Soon they will go back and take your Atteh.

Who will light the lamps? I ask. It’s only people that need lamps, she says, so once they take Atteh away, there will be no need for lamps. And where they’re taking her, you just press a button on the wall and light pours from the ceiling.

Who will feed the chickens and the ducks? I ask. No one will, she says. They will find their own food. They may eat each other. Who knows?

Tell me about the police, I say. They wear blue clothes, she says, and they put you away in gaol if you do something bad. Gaol is where you break rocks with big hammers. This is where you get rocks and small stones to put in the bottom of creeks and rivers. They also build roads with broken rocks. Sometimes you spend your whole life breaking rock.

Will Kamla feed the chickens when she returns to Liverpool? I ask. Hush, she whispers, if Kamla had returned to feed the chickens we wouldn’t be on this boat. Kamla’s gone and the police will keep Horatio until she’s found.

Pati lies stretched out in the cabin bunk. The smell of engine oil and copra heavy in the air. She lifts a finger to brush a wisp of hair from my brow. Her lips quaver when she asks. Oh, my God, Dewane, you did see something, didn’t you, child? Is that what you told the police? My words sit quiet. My sleep will be troubled, just as my waking has been for the last two weeks. There has been no milking. I dream of my red calf. Born fourteen days before my seventh birthday.

He has come a little early, Horatio says in the chill. Come, touch him Dewane. He’s warm. Let him know you. Speak to him. Say something… I’ll step away so I won’t hear.

The calf watches me with new eyes. His coat a deep rust under the green tamarinds. Poonai washing his whiskers. My three sea urchins watching from their can. My name is Dewane, I say, I’m not afraid of the dark. Are you?

In Edna’s house I smell the Catherine May. For six days I smell diesel oil and smoked coconut flesh. Even when I stick my nose into Edna’s garlic teapot. That’s what Pati calls it. Look how stupid these half-castes can get, she says, they will keep garlic in a teapot. So that’s what it became. Edna’s garlic teapot. It wasn’t a teapot though. It was a samovar that found its way from the frozen port of Vladivostok into Japan into Canton into Levuka. Pati keeps it gleaming.

My nose is glued to the flakes of English soil on a potato when Edna’s box pleats walk into the kitchen. You never told me what you call the girl, she says. So? What are you going to call her? She needs a name. The Coopers next door have been asking. And I’ll take her to Mr. Steinmetz on Monday. She will start school. She can’t hang around the house all day.

Pati and Edna fall into whispers. Edna fetches a pen and lists names of girls. Matilda Helen Joy Hope Esther Rebecca Barbara Cynthia Ella Beatrice Vivian Anne Dora… You said you want an English name, she says, so you have to choose one. I’ll write it on this piece of paper and you’ll have her registered at the district office. You should have a birth certificate in about two months. Pati picks a name for me. Edna writes it down. Patricia Anne.

On the day Pati registers me, Edna slips a piece of scribbled brown paper into Pati’s hand. That’s dinner, she says, you’ll pick it up from Bob Griffiths’. The butcher behind the tobacco shop. I watch Edna wash carrots for her Thursday night stew. She scrubs potatoes under a gushing tap. You may look into the binoculars, she says. Watch your Pati go to the district office. Watch other people in town.
Pati’s feet are rapid on hot asphalt. On the bowling club road she walks on grass. I feel the sudden cool of her feet through the binoculars. Her toes are relieved. She walks slower. Past the Royal Hotel. Past the Masonic Lodge. Past the Town Hall. Over the bridge onto Hennings Street. Past the Water Office. Then she turns into the District Office. I head for the kitchen.

I don’t want a new name, I say. That’s not up to you, says Edna. Plus, you don’t have a name anyway. You don’t exist in the government records. From today, you exist. It’s like being born a second time. My name sounds funny, I say. It could be a dog’s name. I haven’t come across a dog called Patricia, says Edna. Patricia is a girl’s name. It’s quite English, you know. But I don’t want to be English, I say, they don’t have their bath for weeks and they stink and they beat horses up. Tch! Tch! says Edna, who’s been feeding your brain such tasteless fodder?

Pati returns with a brown paper bag of pork belly. For heaven’s sake, says Edna, what became of Bobby Griffiths today? I ask for steak and he sends me pork belly! She washes the white meat. Lays it out flat on the kitchen bench. Rolls it with shredded cabbage, green ginger juice, spring onions, tomatoes, last night’s potatoes. She tosses it into the oven with a brush of corn oil.

A few weeks later, Edna walks up the hill with a manila envelope from Suva. From the Office of Registration of Births, Deaths & Marriages. Pati is all hushed at the kitchen table as Edna unfolds the white sheet of paper. What the bloody hell is this? Edna says. Sir? You named her Sir? The man asked me, Pati says, is it one name or two? I said two. Then the bloody arse-hole registers her as Sir Loin! Edna says. Sir Loin! She’s become a piece of meat!

What is her name? Pati asks. It’s Sir Loin, Edna says, and we could call her Sir for short. Her name is Sir. It will be Sir until I have this shit sorted.

Mary Daya is a creative writing student at USP. Her first collection of short stories is due to be published by Institute of Pacific Studies in 2007.