The Complete Short Stories: Volume 2. Adam Thirlwell

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      ‘Tonight, Mechippe,’ Gifford told him, ‘you sleep in my tent. Understand? I want you near me. Use my bed, if you want. Will you hear if I call?’

      ‘Of course, sir. I hear you.’ The head-boy’s polished ebony face regarded Gifford circumspectly. He now tended Gifford with a care that indicated that the latter, however much a novice, had at last entered the world of absolute values, composed of the delta and the snakes, the brooding presence of the Toltec ruin and his dying leg.

      After midnight, Gifford lay quietly in the stretcher-chair, watching the full moon rise over the luminous beaches. Like a Medusa’s crown, thousands of the snakes had climbed the crests of the beaches and were spreading thickly across the margins of the plain, their white backs exposed to the moonlight. ‘Mechippe.’

      The head-boy had been squatting silently in the shadows. ‘Dr Gifford?’

      Gifford spoke in a low but clear voice. ‘Crutches. Over there.’ As the head-boy passed the two carved sticks Gifford tossed aside the blankets. Carefully he withdrew his leg from the cradle, then sat up and lifted it on to the ground. He leaned forward into the crutches and found his balance. The bandaged foot, like a white club, stuck out in front of him. ‘Now. In the field-desk, right-hand drawer, there’s my gun. Bring it to me.’

      For once the head-boy hesitated. ‘Gun, sir?’

      ‘Smith & Wesson. It should be loaded, but there’s a box of cartridges.’

      Again the head-boy hesitated, his eyes roving to the two tents spaced in a line away from them, their entrances hooded by the dust canopies. The whole camp lay in silence, the light stirring of the wind muted by the still warm sand and the dark talcum-like air. ‘Gun,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir.’

      Easing himself slowly to his feet, Gifford paused uncertainly. His head swam with the exertion, but the huge anchor of his left foot held him to the ground. Taking the pistol, he gestured with it towards the delta.

      ‘We’re going to see the snakes, Mechippe. You help me. All right?’

      Mechippe’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. ‘The snakes, sir?’

      ‘Yes. You take me halfway there. Then you can come back. Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.’

      Mechippe nodded slowly, his eyes looking out over the delta. ‘I help you, doctor.’

      Labouring slowly across the sand, Gifford steadied himself on the head-boy’s arm. After a few steps he found his left leg too heavy to lift, and dragged the dead load through the soft sand.

      ‘Christ, it’s a long way.’ They had covered twenty yards. By some optical freak the nearest snakes now seemed to be half a mile away, barely visible between the slight rises. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

      They plodded on a further ten yards. The open mouth of Lowry’s tent was on their left, the white bell of the mosquito net looming in the shadows like a sepulchre. Almost exhausted, Gifford tottered unsteadily, trying to focus his eyes through the tinted air.

      There was a sudden flash and roar as the revolver discharged itself, cannoning out of his hand. He felt Mechippe’s fingers stiffen on his arm, and heard someone emerge from Lowry’s tent, a woman’s startled cry of fear. A second figure, this time a man’s, appeared and with a backward glance at Gifford darted away like a startled animal among the tents, racing head down towards the terrace city.

      Annoyed by these interruptions, Gifford searched blindly for the revolver, struggling with the crutches. But the darkness condensed around him, and the sand came upwards to strike his face.

      The next morning, as the tents were dismantled and packed away, Gifford felt too tired to look out across the delta. The snakes never appeared until the early afternoon, and the disappointment of failing to reach them the previous night had drained his energy.

      When only his own tent remained of the camp, and the naked shower scaffoldings protruded from the ground like pieces of abstract sculpture marking a futuristic cairn, Louise came over to him.

      ‘It’s time for them to pack your tent.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact but guarded. ‘The boys are building a stretcher for you. You should be comfortable.’

      Gifford gestured her away. ‘I can’t go. Leave Mechippe with me and take the others.’

      ‘Charles, be practical for once.’ Louise stood before him, her face composed. ‘We can’t stay here indefinitely, and you need treatment. It’s obvious now that Mechippe’s boy never reached Taxcol. Our supplies won’t last for ever.’

      ‘They don’t have to last for ever.’ Gifford’s eyes, almost closed, surveyed the distant horizon like a pair of defective binoculars. ‘Leave me one month’s.’

      ‘Charles –’

      ‘For heaven’s sake, Louise …’ Wearily he let his head loll on the pillow. He noticed Richard Lowry supervising the stowage of the stores, the Indian boys moving around him like willing children. ‘Why all the hurry? Can’t you stay another week?’

      ‘We can’t, Charles.’ She looked her husband straight in the face. ‘Richard feels he must go. You understand. For your sake.’

      ‘My sake?’ Gifford shook his head. ‘I don’t give a damn about Lowry. Last night I was going out to look at the snakes.’

      ‘Well …’ Louise smoothed her bush shirt. ‘This trip has been such a fiasco, Charles, there are many things that frighten me. I’ll tell them to dismantle the tent when you’re ready.’

      ‘Louise.’ With a last effort Gifford sat up. In a quiet voice, in order not to embarrass his wife by letting Richard Lowry hear him, he said: ‘I went out to look at the snakes. You do understand that?’

      ‘But Charles!’ With a sudden burst of exasperation his wife snapped: ‘Don’t you realize, there are no snakes! Ask Mechippe, ask Richard Lowry or any of the boys! The entire river is as dry as a bone!’

      Gifford turned to look at the white beaches of the delta. ‘You and Lowry go. I’m sorry, Louise, but I couldn’t stand the trip.’

      ‘You must!’ She gestured at the distant hills, at the terrace city and the delta. ‘There’s something wrong with this place, Charles, somehow it’s convinced you that …’

      Followed by a group of boys, Richard Lowry walked slowly towards them, signalling with his hands to Louise. She hesitated, then on an impulse waved him back and sat down beside Gifford. ‘Charles, listen. I’ll stay with you for another week as you ask, so that you can come to terms with these hallucinations, if you promise me that you’ll leave then. Richard can go ahead on his own, he’ll meet us in Taxcol with a doctor.’ She lowered her voice, ‘Charles, I’m sorry about Richard. I realize now …’

      She leaned forward to see her husband’s face. He lay in his seat in front of the solitary tent, the circle of boys watching him patiently from a distance. Ten miles away a solitary cloud drifted over one of the mesas, like a plume of smoke above a dormant but still active volcano.

      ‘Charles.’ She waited for her husband to speak, hoping that he would reprove and so perhaps even forgive her. But Charles Gifford was thinking only of the snakes on the beaches.

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