1
On the first anniversary of his wife’s death, Xavier Redchoose got up before light and went downstairs to salt the cod. He sat in his kitchen, green notebook in hand, rubbing his left thumb along the stained pages, waiting for delivery. Through the restaurant window, he could see the golden stalk of a fading moon. Around him, the Torn Poem was silent, except for the morning wind, making the front doors shiver.
It was going to be a trying day, of that he was sure.
The local fisherman arrived promptly, his adolescent son trailing behind him, father genuflecting, son’s eyes downcast and fixed on the backs of their silver-blue catch. It was this same boy who had found Xavier’s wife floating in the sea, limbs tentacled, and carried her corpse onto the beach. He said Nya’s dead voice sounded like rotting pineapple: sweet and grating as she tapped his chest.
You can put me down now, boy. It gone bad, already.
The fisherman’s son watched her walk down the sand until he couldn’t see her anymore.
Why you never hold her there? snapped Xavier. Call for me? Something.
I never know how, the boy whined.
Take me two day to get him up here to tell you, macaenus! the father said. Damn fool go hide in a bush!
When people died alone, without proper burial rites, the carcass wandered for years, rudderless, rotting and shrinking. They had all seen these ghosts, rebuilding their bodies with bits of rubbish, hanging on, half-maddened. People who died alone: heart attack, stroke, old age, sleep-and-dream-and-dead. Fall and lick your head on a rock. Poverty. Murder. Suicide. Drowning. People whispered behind their hands. All of them dead of the same thing, you know. Loneliness.
It hurt Xavier, to think of his fierce wife, so.
* * *
Xavier paid for the fish – two thick bellies and a sack of velvety cod livers – and watched the youth’s trembling mouth as he hoisted it onto the kitchen table. He didn’t forgive the boy. How hard was it to restrain a dead woman, when so much was at stake?
‘Blessings, macaenus,’ said the fisherman. He patted the cod. ‘Walk good today, you hear?’
Xavier nodded.
He leaned against the kitchen door, listening to them make their way back through his cliff-top garden, imagining every plant they passed: his pearly bougainvillea; the night-blooming cereus clambering up the mango tree; his pawpaws and twin almond trees; his hot pepper, pumpkins and white roses. He liked flowering plants between the herbs; they attracted the right kind of insect. Down the sheer steps they went, calling softly to each other: mind how you go. He liked the fisherman’s voice. It reminded him of being young. Before you got so very speaky-spokey, macaenus, his brother Io liked to say, grinning all over his face. Xavier sucked his teeth. He wasn’t too fancy, whatever his elder brother said. He still knew how to curse a man in the language of their ancestors.
He rubbed his palm-heel across his jaw. His beard needed trimming.
Chse, Io’s seven-year-old daughter, would be in here soon, demanding breakfast from him. She was an early riser, too. In the months just after Nya died, Chse was the only person who dared come to his room without invitation, jumping into his hammock and swinging her legs. She told him he looked far too tall, and why didn’t he do something about it, and when the room smelled – ooh, so bad! – she’d stretched her arm to open the window and turned his face towards the sunshine.
You going out today, Uncle?
Not today, Chse.
She pulled his nose until he gave in and tossed her, giggling, into the air.
Don’t drop me, Uncle Speaky-Spokey!
* * *
Xavier took a deep breath and stepped out into his yard. The dark garden poured out in front of him, and beyond that, the islands of Popisho. The Torn Poem was perfectly located on Battisient: right inside the capital Pretty Town but still private, on the cliff above the harbour. Up here, he could see his diners snaking across the sand towards him, then away afterwards, a silvery line of nourished people stretching back to the sea, like foam.
After he fed them, some swam, some danced.
An orange sliver climbed the horizon, no more than the peeping eye of an egg. He closed his eyes and began turning a single, slow circle, back straight, arms out and palms up. Beaches east and west, at the end of his fingertips; the old-gold bay and its harnessed fishing boats splintered across the soft water; the tall, thin schoolhouse; Bend Down Market; the solemn chiming Temple – why, his finger might just touch it; one of the toy factories, painted ugly green, like something you found up your nose after a bad cold; squat, creamy cottages spiralling into the hills, lit by front-yard cook-fires at night. Sometimes he visited the owners and offered them fire-dye in particular colours, so that his diners could admire the light. Yes, macaenus, they said, smiling at his quiet face. Of course, for you, and the gods that chose you.
He stopped circling and opened his eyes. Battisient’s sister island, Dukuyaie, glimmered in the distance, its thick hide grainy in the dawn. You could see the Dead Islands if you looked north and squinted: like a spray of wet, blue pebbles. It had been so long since he’d walked them.
The world was stirring awake again, and he had a list of things to do today in his green notebook.
1. Fish delivery
2. Fuckery
* * *
They didn’t have Nya’s body to bathe or bind, so he had prepared a ceremony by the ocean. He stood, linking arms with his mother-in-law, their family and friends crowded around them, silent obeah women in golden robes scattering herbs and making rum libation in the water. Tragic, people muttered, too loud for his liking. She was never a strong swimmer.
She going come to you Xav, Mamma Suth said, standing composed in his day room, patting his shoulder. You know they haunt the one they love the most. He kissed her forehead. Her eyes were dry. She’d screamed when she heard her one-child was dead, and pitched herself backward, only caught by her husband, who wrapped his arms around her waist, clutched her belly and shook it fiercely.
She will want her mother, Xavier murmured. But they both knew she was right. Nya would come back to him, looking freedom. And the only way to free a ghost was to … dispense with whatever was left.
He was ready to do what was necessary. What the fisherman’s son couldn’t do.
After the funeral he’d changed into work clothes and begun preparations for evening service. He hadn’t neglected a single one. Even in those early months when he slept whole days, his back to Nya’s empty hammock, he had still gotten up and staggered into the kitchen when the sun went down, eyes slitted, hoisting slabs of goat and coney on his shoulder, eating crusts and vegetable ends, needing to break bone and use his knives.
His sous-chef Moue came into the kitchen in her funeral whites to ask what he was doing.
Xavier paused over the sputtering pans, noticing absently that his hands were shaking.
Copyright © 2021 by Leone Ross