Ratbird, page 1
RATBIRD By Brian Aldiss
... To warn and warn: that one night, never more
To light and warm us, down will sink the lurid sun Beneath the sea, and none
Shall see us more upon this passionate shore.
The disintegration of the old world? Easy. I’ll manage it. Everything will end not with a bang but a whisper — a whisper of last words. Words. So it began. So it will end. When I grow up.
Here I lie on this crimson equatorial shore, far from where the great electronic city dissolves itself under its own photochemical smogs.
Here I lie, about to tell you the legend of the Other Side. Also about to go on a journey of self-discovery which must bring me back to my beginnings. As sure as I have tusks, this is ontology on the hoof.
So to begin with what’s overhead. The sun disputes its rights to rule in the sky above. Every day it loses the struggle, every morning it begins the dispute over again. Brave, never-disheartened sun!
I lie under the great sea almond tree which sprouts from the sand, looking up into its branches where light and shade dispute their rival territories. This is called beauty. Light and shade cohabit like life and death, the one more vivid for the dread presence of the other.
In my hand I clutch –
... But the great grave ocean comes climbing up the beach. There’s another eternal dispute. The ocean changes its colours as it sweeps towards where I lie. Horizon purple, mid-sea blue, shore-sea green, lastly golden. Undeterred by however many failures, the waves again attempt to wet my feet. Brave remorseless sea!
(What should a legend contain? Should it be of happiness or of sorrow? Or should it permit them to be in — that word again — dispute?)
— What I clutch in my hand is a fruit of the sea almond. It’s not large, it’s of a suitable nut shape, it’s covered with a fine but coarse fibre like pubic hair. In fact, the nut resembles a girl’s pudendum. Else why clutch it? Is that not where all stories lie, in the dumb dell of the pudendum? The generative power of the story lies with the organ of generation — and veneration.
* * * *
Let me assure you, for it’s all part of the legend, at the miracle of my birth I came forth when summoned by my father. He tapped. I emerged. A star burned on my forehead. I’m unique. You believe you are unique? But no, I am unique. In their careless journeys across the worlds, the gods create myriads of everything, of almond trees, of waves, of days, of people. But there’s only one Dishayloo, with no navel and a star on his forehead.
So my journey and tale are about to commence. Knowing as much, my friends, who sit or stand with me under the tree, stare out to sea in silence. They think about destiny, oysters or sex. I have on my t-shirt saying ‘Perestroika Hots Fax’.
A distant land. That’s what’s needed. I’ve met old men who never went to sea. They speak like spiders and don’t know it. They have lost something and don’t know what they have lost. Like all young men I must make a journey. The dispute between light and shade must be carried elsewhere, waves must be surmounted, pudenda must open with smiles of welcome, fate must be challenged. Before the world disappears.
We all must change our lives.
So I rise and go along the blazing beach to the jetty, to see Old Man Monsoon. They call him Monsoon. His real name has been forgotten in these parts, funny old garbled Christian that he is. He can predict the exact hour the rains will come. And many more things.
Once Monsoon was called Krishna. Once he visited the Other Side, as I will relate.
He saw me coming and stood up in his boat. He’s a good storyteller. He says, What is the human race (looking obliquely at my tusks as he speaks) but a fantastic tale? Told, he might add, with a welter of cliche and a weight of subordinate clauses, while we await a punchline.
The friends accompany me to the jetty. At first in a bunch, then stringing out, some hastening, some loitering, though the distance is short. So with life.
Monsoon and I shake hands. He wears nothing but a pair of shorts. He is burnt almost black. His withered skin mummifies him, though those old Golconda eyes are golden-black still. People say of Monsoon that he has a fortune buried in a burnt-out refrigerator on one of the many little islands standing knee-deep in the sea. I don’t believe that. Well, I do, but only in the way you can believe and not believe simultaneously. Like Rolex watches from a different time zone.
He shows yellow teeth between grey lips and says in a voice from which all colour has faded, ‘Isn’t there enough trouble in the world without youngsters like you joining in?’
Grey lips, yellow teeth, yet a colourless voice ... Well, let us not linger over these human paradoxes.
I make up something by way of reply. ‘I’ve lost my shadow, Monsoon, and must find it if I have to go to the end of the Earth. Perhaps you can foretell when the end of the Earth will be?’
He points to the puddle of dark at my feet, giggling, raising an eyebrow to my friends for support.
‘That’s not my shadow,’ I tell him. ‘I borrowed this one off a pal who wants it back by nightfall. He has to wear it at his mother’s wedding.’
When I have climbed into the boat, Monsoon starts the engine with one tug of the starter rope. It’s like hauling at a dog’s lead. The hound wakes, growls, shakes itself, and with a show of haste begins to pull us towards the four corners of the great morning.
The craft creaks and murmurs to itself, in dispute with the waters beneath its hull. And the sweet playful sound of the waves against old board. The ocean, some idiot said, is God’s smile.
Monsoon picks up my thought and distorts it. ‘You smile like a little god, Dishayloo, with that star on your brow. Why always so happy?’
I gaze back at my friends ashore. They shrink as they wave. Everything grows smaller. Hasten, hasten, Dishayloo, before the globe itself shrinks to nothing!
‘The smile’s so as not to infect others with sorrow. It’s therapy—a big hospitable hospital. Antidote to the misery virus. Did you ever hear tell of the great white philosopher Bertrand Russell?’
The Golconda eyes are on the horizon to which our boat is hounding us, but Monsoon’s never at a loss for an answer. ‘Yes, yes, of course. He was a friend of mine. He and I used to sail together to the Spice Islands to trade in vitamin pills and conch shells. I made a loss but Bertra Muscle became a rupee millionaire. These days, he lives in Singapore in a palace of unimaginable concrete and grandeur.’
Now the friends form no more than a frieze, spread thin along the shore, like bread on a lake of butter. Soon, soon, the dazzle has erased them. My memory does the same. Sorry, one and all, but the legend has begun.
Talk’s still needed, of course, so I say, ‘This was a different man, pappy. The guy I mean said ...’
But those words too were forgotten.
‘. .. Why should I recall what he said? Are we no better than snails, to carry round with us a whole house of past circumstance?’
My hands were trailing in the water. Prose was not my main concern. Monsoon picked up on that.
‘Pah. “House of past circumstance ...” What are you, a poet or something?
Something or nothing? The Lord Jesus had a better idea. He knew nothing dies. Even when he snuffed it on Mount Cavalry, he knew he would live again.’
‘Easy trick if you’re the son of God.’
The Golconda gold eyes flared at me. ‘He was a bloke in a million. Go anywhere, do anything.’
‘“Have mission, will travel.”‘ All the time the dear water like progress under the prow.
‘Born in India, I believe, sailed in Noah’s boat because there was no room at the Indus.’ His face had taken on the expression of imbecile beatitude the religious sometimes adopt. ‘Jesus was poor, like me. He couldn’t pay Noah one cent for the trip. Noah was a hard man. He gave him a broom and told him to go and sweep the animal turds off the deck.’
‘What happened?’
‘Jesus swept.’
Cloud castles stood separately on the horizon, bulbous, like idols awaiting worship.
Something above moving over a smooth sea prompted Monsoon to chatter. I scarcely listened as he continued his thumbnail portrait of Jesus.
‘He wasn’t exactly a winner but he was honest and decent in every way. Or so the scriptures tell us. And a good hand with a parable.’
The little boat was in the lap of the ocean. The shoreline behind was indistinct; it could have been anything—like a parable. Ahead, two small humps of islands lay stunned with light. I began to feel the charge of distance, its persuasive power.
Perhaps the islands were like humpbacked whales. But the world’s old. Everything has already been compared with everything else.
The old man said, ‘You’ll soon have left us. We’ll be no more in your mind, and will die a little because of it. So I’ll tell you a story — a parable, perhaps —
suitable for your life journey.’
And he began the tale of the ratbird.
Monsoon spoke in more than one voice. I abridge the tale here, there being only so many hours in a day. Also I’ve removed his further references to Jesus, diluting it. Same tale, different teller, only coconut milk added.
* * * *
There was this white man—well, two white men if you include Herbert—this white man Monsoon knew as a boy, before he was Monsoon. This white man — well, he and Herbert—arrived at this port in Borneo where Boy Monsoon lived in a thatched hut with Balbindor.
Like many whites, Frederic Sigmoid was crazed by the mere notion of jungle. He believed jungles were som
Back in Europe, Sigmoid had cured people by his own process, following the teaching of a mystic called Ouspensky and adding a series of physical pressures called reflexology. Now here he was in Simanggang with his mosquito nets, journals, chronometers, compasses, barometer, medicine cabinet, guns and one offspring, out to cure himself or discover a New Way of Thought, whichever would cause most trouble in a world already tormented by too much belief. Seek and ye shall find. Find and ye shall probably regret.
With Sigmoid was his pale son, Herbert. Monsoon and his adoptive father, Balbindor, were hired to escort the two Sigmoids into the interior of Borneo. Into the largely unexplored Hose Range, and an area called the Bukit Tengah, where lived a number of rare and uncollected species, including the ratbird, happy until this juncture in their uncollected state. Animal and insect: all congratulated themselves on failing to make some Cambridge encyclopaedia.
Balbindor was a coastal Malay of the Iban tribe. However, he had been into the interior once before, in the service of two Dutch explorers who, in the manner of all Dutch explorers, had died strange deaths: though not before they had communicated to civilization a mysterious message, ‘Wallace and Darwin did not know it, but there are alternatives.’ Balbindor, four foot six high, brought the word hot-foot back to the coast.
Sigmoid was keener on alternatives than his son Herbert. Confidence men always have an eye for extra exits. Thirteen days into rainforest, led by Balbindor and sonlet, and the doctor remained more determined than his offspring. The night before they reached the tributary of the Baleh river they sought, Balbindor overheard a significant exchange between father and son.
Herbert complained of heat and hardship, declaring that what he longed for most in the world was a marble bathroom with warm scented water and soft towels. To which his father rejoined that Herbert was a gross materialist. Going further, Sigmoid retreated into one of his annoying fits of purity, declaring, ‘To achieve godliness, my boy, you must give up all possessions . ..’
Herbert replied bitterly, ‘I’m your one possession you’ll never give up.’
Had this been a scene in a movie, it would have been followed by pistol shots and, no doubt, the entry of a deadly snake into the Sigmoid tent. However, the story is now Balbindor’s. He shall tell it in his own excruciating words. And Balbindor, never having seen any movie, with the solitary exception of The Sound of Music (to which he gave three stars), lacked a sense of drama. Father and son, he reported, kissed each other as usual and went to sleep in their separate bivouacs.
* * * *
If my story, then I tell. Not some other guy. Many error in all story belong other guy. I Iban man, real name no Balbindor. I no see Sound Music ever. Only see trailer one time, maybe two. Julie Andrews good lady, I marry. My kid I take on no call Monsoon. Monsoon late name. Kid, he come from India. I take on. I no call Monsoon, I call Krishna. My son they die logging camp all same place three time. Too much drink. I very sad, adopt Krishna. He my son, good boy. Special golden eye. I like, OK.
This Dr Sigmoid and he son Herbert very trouble on journey. We go on Baleh river, boat swim good. All time, Herbert he complain. White men no sweat pure, too many clothe. No take off clothe. Then boat swim up tributary Puteh, no swim good. Water he go way under boat. Mud he come, stop boat.
We hide boat, go on feet in jungle. Very much complain Herbert and father he both. They no understand jungle. They no eat insect. Insect eat them.
Jungle many tree, many many tree. Some tree good, some tree bad, some tree never mind. I tell number tree. Tamarind tree, he fruit bitter, quench throat thirst. Help every day. Sigmoid no like, fear poison. I no speak him. All same jungle olive, good tree. We drink pitcher plant, all same like monkey.
Monkey they good guide. Krishna and me we do like monkey. I understand jungle. Wake early, when first light in jungle. Deer trail fresh, maybe catch deer along blowpipe. Monkey wake early, eat, sing, along branches. Sigmoids no like wake early. Day cool. I like wake early, make Sigmoids rise up. Go quiet. Creep along, maybe catch kill snake for pot.
Many ant in Hose Range, big, little, many colour. All go different way. I speak ant, ant speak me. Go this way, go that. Every leaf he fall, he mean a something. I understand. I plenty savvy in jungle.
One week, two week, three week, we walk in jungle, sometime up, sometime down. For Sigmoids, very hard to go. Both smell bad. Too much breath. No control. Dutch men control of breath good. Herbert he very scare. No like jungle, all same long time. No good man, swear me. I understand. Herbert he no think I understand.
Three week, get very near area Bukit Tengah. Now all path go up, need more care. Many cliff, many rock. One fall, maybe finish. Waterfall, he pour bad water. I know smell bad water nose belong me. Krishna and two bearer and I, we no drink bad water. Come from Other Side. I tell Sigmoids no drink water come Other Side. They no care, no understand, they drink bad waterfall water plenty. Take on bad spirit. Understand. I shout much, Krishna he cry all same long time. Herbert he shout me, try hit little Krishna.
I tell Herbert, ‘You drink water belong Other Side. Now you got bad spirit. You no get back Europe. You finish man.’
Herbert no savvy. He plenty sick. I see him bad spirit. It suck him soul. Now I plenty scare.
Every day more slow. Other Side he come near. Bearer man they two, they no like go more far. I hear what they speak together. I savvy what Orang Asli speak, I tell Dr Sigmoid. He swear. No please me. Both Sigmoids have fever. Black in face, very strange. Smell bad more.
Big storm come over from Other Side, maybe hope drive us away. Thunder he flatten ears, lightning he blind eyes, rain he lash flesh, wind he freeze skin. We hide away under raintree, very fear. Night it come, big wizard, I no understand. Too black. In night bearer they go, I no hear. Two bearer they run off. Steal supply. I very sad I no hear. In morning dawnlight I say to doctor sorry. Bearer they scare, go back wife. Doctor he swear again. I say, no good swear. Who hear swear with good nature? Best leave alone, keep silent. He no like. Make bad face.
Day after storm, we come Other Side. I see how monkey they no go Other Side. Different monkey on Other Side, speak different language. Different tree, grow other different leaf. Fruit they different, no wise eat. Insect different.
Also one more bad thing. I see men belong Other Side in jungle. They move like ghost but I see. Krishna he see, he point. Plenty eye in jungle belong Other Side. No like. Other Side men they much difference. How they think different, no good.
I see, I understand, Krishna he understand. I no make Sigmoids understand.
‘Geology,’ I explain Sigmoids. I speak they language good. ‘He change. Different earth begin now since many many old time. All thing different, different time. Different inside time. Womb bring forth different thing. Bad go there, no go. Only look one day.’
‘Balls,’ he say.
I sick with him doctor. I make speak, ‘I keep my ball belong me. You go, and Herbert. I no go one more pace. Krishna, he no go one more pace.’
