The Stone Gods Read online

  I do not know if Man has a Soul, but if he does, then it follows in the wake of his Ship, like an albatross or frigate-bird. I do not believe that he carries it within him like a shadowy shape of himself inside himself, and that is the reason his Soul is nowhere to be found at death, for it does not keep its residence in a man’s body, but in his purpose. As I go forward my Soul comes after me to see what it is that I do, for there is a curiosity there, like that of a seabird, that ploughs the wake of a Ship and then flies away no man knows where.

  The Ship, the Crew, the Voyage, and what am I but a Ship in little, and above me the white throat of a winged bird?

  I was now satisfied in my mind that the Idols had been worked for magical purposes and in veneration of unseen powers. Rival wars had begun the deadly destruction of vying Idols – for if I can keep my ancestor, while losing you yours, I increase my Mana. The waste of such an enterprise seems hardly to have struck them, but I admit that my countrymen do the same in their warring and burning. Mankind, I hazard, wherever found, Civilized or Savage, cannot keep to any purpose for much length of time, except the purpose of destroying himself.

  Spikkers took my hand and walked with me back round the island towards the site of the felling of the tree. I was as much vexed by that as I had been by the Idols, and urged him to make an explanation.

  It was a ghastly history.

  In ‘back-time’, the god MakeMake had filled the island with forests and springs and fishes and birds so that no man could want who could stretch out his hand. Into this abundance came the Ancestors in boats, making houses and ceremonial dwellings and living only by the word of the White Man – the Ariki Mau.

  Wood was needed for fires and building, and land was needed for plantains and bananas and sundry crops. The Palms that were so tight together that a man must walk sideways to pass through them were felled, one by one by one, until, slow by slow by slow, the seabirds no longer visited the island, and the rain no longer fell, and the ground crumbled and burned, and the soil turned to red dust that grew nothing.

  Yet I was perplexed by this, for a man must need a mighty number of fires to clear a forest, and the Islanders did not seem so many that they could use up a whole world. Happen it was the rats that had eaten the nuts of the Palm and harmed its generation – we had seen infestations of rat-kind in Tahiti – yet the natives there had managed their land with broad sense.

  Spikkers pointed to the Idols, and mimed to me that the great stones must be pulled from the quarry on wooden sledges, and that entire Palms must be used as raft-lengths to float the stone down the coast, and that the kiln-work and the carving-work required ever greater amounts of wood, and no man dreamed that the wood gone would never return.

  ‘And this tree yesterday that I saw drop, was it the last tree of them all?’

  Spikkers nodded his head. The Ariki Mau had ordered its protection as a sacred tree, and the Bird Man had ordered its felling.

  ‘Is it to be believed,’ I said, ‘that an island abundant in all things necessary has been levelled to this wasteland through the making of a Stone God and then by his destruction?’

  Spikkers nodded his head.

  In the days that followed he made me to visit the South and West of the island, and truly all that he had spoken had its truth in the deadened land and the eerie sight of the stone Mo’ai – some remaining upright, their smooth backs to the sea, their unseeing eyes fixed on the inland, and countless more felled in savage attacks on their purpose.

  To the East of the island we did not venture, for that part, said Spikkers, is home to the Bird Man and his followers, and a place of utmost danger to us.

  I began to understand that Spikkers was preparing for some conquest of his own.

  He had revealed to me that the Bird Man’s reign lasted for only twelve moons, making it a little less than a Solar year, and that every year, at the appointed time, there was a competition, or some manner of sport, that decided the winner or leader of the Bird Man cult for the year to come.

  I tried not to laugh at his serious description, and half thought that I had misfathomed his explanation, for the thing seemed to be an Egg Race – and the one who could gather the first Egg laid by the visiting Sooty Terns would claim for himself the privileges of the Bird Man.

  ’Tis not strange that the Bird be such a symbol for the Natives, for the Bird may travel where he will, across the sea to other lands, and the Natives make no distinction between the lands of the Dead and the lands of the Living. That they themselves cannot travel at all, having not even a piece of wood remaining with which to fashion a deep-sea canoe, lends the Bird an increase of power. The Bird that flies, and the man that cannot, lies at the bottom of all their thoughts.

  And Spikkers would have me know that birds were once abundant here, like fishes and trees and water, and their departure is the anger of the gods.

  Spikkers is no friend of the Bird Man: he worships the old way of Ariki Mau, and has formed a plan to win back for the old gods the rights of the new power.

  He shall climb the cliffs and find the Egg and give it to the Ariki Mau, so that once more the power of the island lies in one place. This, he said, will end the destruction and the civil war and bring peace and prosperity to the island. The trees will grow and the birds will return.

  He does believe this, truly, and his shining face causes me to drop my eyes for fear of hurting his happiness.

  He shows me the cliffs where the Terns will come, as high and impossible as a moon landing, and he shows me a chart, hidden in his cave, where he has scratched the calendar of their flights over many years – or moons, as he understands time. He is made ready, and for his reward, he says, he will ask only to leave the island with me when the next Ship sails this way. I do not say to him that I have no hope of such a Ship.

  There are many things I do not say.

  In the back of the cave is a piece of blue cloth. Wrapped in the piece of blue cloth is a Delft tile. The tile is a picture of a tall house with its door open. A man in a hat waits inside the hall.

  It is six month since I found myself abandoned here, as foolish as a dog that leaps from the deck in some stray port.

  Through these six month I have lived in Spikkers’ cave, and he has fed me and made much of me and kept the rest at bay, for he has authority of some sort with the Ariki Mau in that he has learned writing, which imparts ceremonial power. This script, which they name Rongorongo, does not use our alphabet, yet rather forms characters and signs that stand in place of whole phrases or expressions. This powerful Mana is translated on to spears and holy objects, and is now employed for the Egg Race, for so I shall call it, as servants of the Ariki Mau begin to gather beneath the cliffs, waving flags to attract the Tern.

  This is a magical observance, but not so strange to me for mine own country uses a flag as its symbol, which it waves to attract attention and to signify dominion. The Land we claim for our own we claim by flag, and why should not these Natives do the same, except that the territory they desire be a spiritual holding?

  It is as if, here, everything signifies some other thing: the Bird, the Egg, the flag, the writing, the winning, the winner, the Stone Gods, even the island, even the world are symbols for what they are not.

  I have a sixpence in my pocket and a pair of trousers that allows me to have a pocket. I was a seaman and I had a mother. Bundle it all together and what does it stand for? Is it that I am Nothing that I must always stand for Something? Six month have passed and I cling to my Self as an Englishman, as I clung to my trousers on the sands when they made fain to undress me.

  I must have some covering, the world must have some covering for its nakedness, and so the simplest things come to impart the greatest significance – a piece of bread becomes a body, a sip of wine, my life’s blood. That one thing should stand for another is no harm, until the thing itself loses any meaning of its own. The island trees and all of this good land were sacrificed to a meaning that has now become meaningless.
To build the Stone Gods, the island has been destroyed, and now the Stone Gods are themselves destroyed.

  It is the day of the Race.

  The Tern has been sighted.

  The cliff face is sheer as Judgement Day. Myself, I could not climb it to save my Soul, but if I am right-minded that our Souls are Birds, they will have gone before us to that high place, and have no more use for bodies like mine.

  The cliff-stone is like a puzzle – where now for fingers and feet?

  I count twenty-three of the Natives running for the honour of the prize, and none thinks he will fail. The Bird Man clan has picked a proxy for the Race, a swaggering oaf who will win the Egg for his master, or so he believes.

  And I think to myself that I could as well be on the dock-side at Chatham for all the vanity and preening that I see before me. This may be a wasteland but here, as in every place the world can shew, men will gamble and plot and fight and fall, all for the winning of a trophy. A woman’s heart, a piece of land, a kingdom, a lordship, a contract, a ship, an egg – it hardly matters the which or the what, as soon as it is seen to be desired by one, another will make a prize of it.

  Spikkers, clad in my trousers to bring him luck – or, as he calls it, to add my Mana to his own – bends his head so that I can tie his head-band. He has sewn a pouch to the front of it, and in the manner of the Kangaroos will carry the Egg in that pouch. He tells me he has had a dream, and that his father came to him and gave him the Egg in one hand, and with the other hand took him to live in Amsterdam, in a house, he says, made all of wood, and him the richest man on the earth.

  It is sure that here their word for wood – ‘rakau’ – also means ‘riches’, and that if they were, this day, to find a mine of gold or a cave of rubies, they would account it as nothing against a wormy plank washed up by the sea.

  The signal given, the competitors begin their run and climb – some with crude home-made pegs hung round their waists to cram into the rock for a foothold, and some with human bones strapped to their forearms as levers or grips.

  Near all the people of the island have turned forth to watch the Race, and there is great shouting and cheering among the rivals, as at a cockfight.

  Up they go, fast as rats.

  And my heart is beating.

  Truth tell, anywhere is a life, once there is a love.

  I took to sea in that I could not stay at home, in that I could not stay at home for James Hogan had took to sea.

  Now that I have Nothing and am Nothing, I have shrunk this pod of an island further and made our cave an everywhere. When everywhere is here there is no further to travel, and tho’ I have flung out my message in a bottle, I care nothing if the world catches my signal or no, and tho’ I scan the seas for a ship, I care nothing that it come or no, and have employed myself with yams and Wells and small fish, and wait for him who rescued me.

  Where is he?

  I waded into the sea and swam round the point. There was Spikkers, high, higher than any, and climbing towards the sun like a god. Above him the Tern swooped and flew, her agitation betraying her. I saw him pause, reach, find. I saw the jubilation in his body, the way a fox is jubilant when it takes a rabbit – its very blood and bone caught rejoicing, his back stiff with pleasure.

  I saw him pack the Egg into his headband, and begin his descent, quick and clean as rain over the rock-face, moving down and down towards success.

  And then, him still high, and a light wind rippling him, I saw his rival, the oaf, grabbing his way round the cliff with heavy hands, dislodging rocks with his feet like paddles, and I saw him meet a ledge and crouch on it, and as Spikkers came down, light and quiet as a new beginning, this oaf grabbed him by the back of the neck and took the Egg.

  I cried out, but the wind tore my voice away, and if either man heard me, he gave no sign. Spikkers struggled and fought, but the lightness of his body and his quick strength were no match for the brute who seized him above his head and dashed him over the cliff.

  And in the air a body falling. And in the air a body falling like a star. And in the air a body falling like a star out of its orbit. And in the air a body falling like a star out of its orbit and coming to earth and seen no more.

  I swam to him and lifted him from the rock into the sea and towed his limp body round the coast to the shore of our cave and carried him out of the water.

  I broke his Bible box into bits and lit a fire and laid his body beside it and felt where the bones were broken in his back and chest and legs and licked the blood from his mouth and tried to give him my breath and I would have given him one of my legs and one of my arms and one of my kidneys and half of my liver and four pints of my blood and all easy for I had already given him my heart.

  Do not die.

  Night comes long and straight and his breath comes in shorter bursts like an animal that has run too far.

  In the sky there is a star called Holland and the tall wooden houses of Amsterdam are clear to be seen.

  ‘In my dream,’ he says, ‘the island is thick-forested like fur, and green and dark and alive. The waterfalls flow again and there is a lake as hidden as sleep. Where are we going, Billy?’ he says.

  To him I say, ‘We are coming by Ship to the Amstel River, and look at us now with bales of cloth and a palm tree in a barrel. A canal-boat will take us along the Singel and stop us at a house where the door is open.’ I held up the Delft tile, like a mirror to his face.

  He smiled.

  ‘Go in,’ I say to him. ‘Go in.’

  And he passes through the door. And in the house he must make ready till I have finished my business here and come back to him.

  A white Bird opens its wings.

  Post-3 War

  I was travelling home on the Tube tonight and I noticed that someone had left a pile of paper on the seat opposite. It was late, I was a bit drunk, a bit bored, a bit restless, so I swung across the centre gap from one bum-soiled seat to another and carefully shifted the bundle on to my knees. It was yellow, pre-war, you don’t see much paper these days, maybe scrap, maybe rubbish, maybe old instruction manuals translated into English from the Japanese.

  The Stone Gods, said the title. OK, must be anthropology. Some thesis, some PhD. What’s that place with the statues? Easter Island?

  I flicked through it. No point starting at the beginning – nobody ever does. Reading at random is better: maybe hit the sex scenes straight away.

  At night in the belly of the Ship, I lay beside Spike and thought how strange it was to lie beside a living thing that did not breathe.

  A love story, that’s what it is – maybe about aliens. I hate science fiction.

  There’s a name and address on the front page. I wonder if there’ll be a reward? Or is that just for cats and dogs?

  I had another look: Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.

  Is that true?

  This is the story of my life. Before I was born, curled up like a universe waiting to happen, my mother heard that my father was not going to marry her. It was too late to do anything about me: I was coming, ready or not, and whatever I was, I was there. She was going to give birth.

  My grandmother believed in Trial by Baby. Take the thing in your arms and go from door to door until someone says yes.

  They had no television, no phone, no car. They hadn’t been long off rationing. The streets where they lived were a junk-yard of bomb damage and scrap. I was born on a metal-framed bed, horsehair mattress, spring coils, so much blood they had to burn the sheet. But I was born, and nothing anyone can do about that.

  My advice to anyone is, ‘Get born.’

  So here I come, turning like a skydiver, head first, my skull soft and open where the stars come in, and one star just visible like the bud of a horn. Here I am, using the edge of the star like a laser to cut through the tissue of the uterus, a light-edged baby into a star-cut world.

  The bed broke. The springs in the middle had been tied together with fencing wire. It sna
pped. My mother folded in half, and I was pulled out like a calf from under her. Don’t cut the cord: get some fencing wire and tie me to her.

  The line that fed me, the line that breathed me, the line that tapped messages from the world outside, the line that was a tightrope between her fear and my joy, the line I would have to cross, some day, and never come back. The line that is the first line of this story – I was born. The line that had nothing to read between it – being only one, one only, my lifeline.

  Cut it.

  My grandmother cut the cord with her teeth. Her teeth were false and the greasy, bloody umbilical cord caught in her top plate and pulled it out. She went to soak it in Steradent and left my mother to her first milking.

  Joy. I wanted to be born. I wanted to be here. Fear. She didn’t know what to do next. She was young, seventeen. My grandmother was not yet forty. But it was a different world then because the world is always remaking itself, and after the war there was a lot of remaking to be done. I was born in the ashes of the fire, and I learned how to burn.

  I remember reading that Samuel Beckett remembered life in the womb. Everyone believes him because he won the Nobel Prize; I doubt that anyone will believe me, or if they do they won’t understand that it’s possible to be telling the truth even in the moment of invention.

  I remember my mother telling my grandmother that she wanted to make a new life. They’d been going to Ireland on a boat, her and my dad, but now he was going and she wasn’t, and she said she couldn’t sit at home and look after me. I was knocking on her stomach wall trying to be heard –‘Don’t stay at home! We can go together. I don’t eat much.’ She didn’t hear me.

  She was frying bacon in a burned pan on the gas stove. I was pressed against the slot where the grill pan goes. There’s not much room in there, unless you’re a grill pan. I can see why no one wants to spend their life in front of an oven.

  We did mopping and washing. She was tired. We went to sleep under the quilt, and it was the last night that I would ever spend inside her. Keep me in the mop bucket or the slot where the grill pan goes, but don’t let me go because I love you.