Bogeymen
Pain, sharp. A pull, a tugging sensation, as if my soul has been spun thin, to be siphoned through the chamber of the barrel. I am being drained. I am drowning.
~
My eighteenth birthday. Father sits in his favorite high-backed chair by the fireplace, stolid, unmoving, hostage to his back injuries, quietly sipping sherry. Mother weeps into her handkerchief; a blue M.D. is embroidered in its corner. The white linen soon grows grey from her tears. I guide her to the other chair before she falls down from grief; her body is so frail these days.
“I’ll return soon,” I say, and her sobs grow louder. I feel racked with guilt; I’ve only just returned from my schooling in London the week before, and now I must leave again. “The East Indies are not so far away.”
“My baby boy, my baby boy,” is all that she can gasp between breaths.
“I must do this, Mother, to prove to myself that I am now a man.”
Father grunts and says, “What’s the name of this ship of yours?”
“The Swift,” I say. I want to correct him—it is not my ship, I’ll only be working as captain’s scrivener—but I dare not. Father’s temper is short these days.
“Good name,” he says.
“Mister Brooke chose me himself,” I tell Mother. It is a point of pride, that out of seven applicants, I was picked by the ship’s patron for such a noteworthy position. It is clear that the headmaster’s recommendation was a boon, but I am confident that it was my skills and experience that won over my new employer. “I’ll be recording Captain Kennedy’s log entries. It is a very important post.”
Mother looks up at me, eyes shining. “You were always good at your letters.”
Father lumbers out of his chair with help from his cane, and shuffles across the Oriental rug, his steps slow and deliberate; the pain must be particularly bad today. Were it not for my mother, his wishes would not even be made known to the servants, as they fear his wrath in the midst of such agony, and hide from his threats and insults in the far corners of the house. His hand is heavy on my shoulder.
“I’ve just one piece of advice for you, my boy,” he says. “Be wary of the Bugis.”
I cannot help but smile. “Father, the Bogeyman is a story told to make children behave. I am no longer a child.”
“Where you’re going, boy, the Bugis are no children’s story. A very real danger, Henry, and you’d best not forget it.”
“Yes, sir,” I say and Father pulls me into a quick unexpected embrace. He pats me on the back, then returns to his chair. Mother stands and grips me tightly. I kiss her on the cheek and whisper reassurances, but she can say no more.
“Have Charles drive you down to the wharf,” Father says. “Experience a last indulgence before plunging into honest work.”
“Thank you, sir, but no. It’s too much trouble to prepare the horses at this hour, and I prefer to walk. Two miles is not too far.”
He grunts, says, “Suit yourself,” and lifts his hand in a small wave. I heft my rucksack before Mother can detain me further, and depart, closing the front door behind me. I hear her sobs outside, down the path to the main road, over the cobbled streets, echoing throughout the Brighton docks, all the way to my destination.
~
I cannot stop heaving. It is incomprehensible to me that the crew can keep their feet in such turbulent waters. They laugh at me behind my back, then assure me I’ll soon gain my sea legs. I do not know whether to believe them.
The smell is at times overpowering. Wet hemp, pitch, sea salt, fish oil, and the increased odor of unwashed bodies. I myself have not yet become accustomed to the nigh-constant sweating, the oily dirty sensation of life at sea. Several of the men display the signs of scurvy, irregular spots that decorate the skin; I hoard the several clementines that Mother packed in my rucksack, rationing them by wedges until I can find more.
I ponder the possibility that I have made a horrible mistake in accepting this post.
Still, Captain Kennedy is an extraordinary man. He commands the crew with confidence and foresight, although quick to temper. Insubordination results in time spent in the brig and wages docked; a second offense sends one overboard to the depths and Devil Jonah. As such, he keeps a tight ship and an obedient crew.
My scrivening duties are not yet begun, as I am still incapable of concentrating on pen and paper in my current nauseated state.
The captain’s cabin, being in the exact center of the ship, is the most stable spot, and Captain Kennedy has set up a corner of the room with hammock and shelves as my living quarters, so that I will be easily accessible to log entries at a moment’s notice. Other crew members have given me the evil eye, and make remarks behind my back loud enough that there can be no doubt were meant to be heard, accusing me of becoming the captain’s new pet, his toady, or his whore. However these words may impugn my good name, I dare not retaliate; I am still the newest member of the crew, and the youngest, and it would be no bother for these work-hardened men to see me disappeared over the side. As of now, having not yet made visible contribution, I would not be missed.
I must soon conquer this queasy stomach and prove myself to the captain. It is the only way to begin earning my keep and gain the respect of the crew.
~
Time has ceased to be measured. How long has it been since we set sail from Brighton? Weeks? Months? Each day bleeds into the next. My sea legs have thankfully extended themselves, and I have dutifully recorded the captain’s daily dictations in the days since. Captain Kennedy still writes the date at the top of each entry, a marking of the time for himself. It is an odd sensation, that I can read the date but still not believe it.
The crew pass the time with games of dice or tales of bawdy encounters in ports the world over. I remain belowdecks, poring over the captain’s atlases. He has spent considerable time in the East Indies, and has acquired a voracious appetite for knowledge of the various peoples there. Maps of Malacca, Penang, and the various other sultanates of Malaya occupy an entire shelf.
The captain has also begun to instruct me in the craft of navigation, so that I may chart our progress. I rarely see the rest of the crew now, and it is as I prefer. A solitary being I have always been, and I create fantasies of the lands we are soon to visit whilst swinging in my hammock. I no longer care that the crew sees me in a position of privilege. I am content surrounded by worlds of imagination.
The call comes from above. Tomorrow we round the Cape of Good Hope. Several sailors remark on the possibility of viewing The Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship that is condemned to haunt these waters. A foolish bedtime story, but the men are the most superstitious lot I have yet seen.
~
Tempests plague our journey, as if following us from the cape. Our entry into the Indian Ocean has brought a constant rain, and if the retching sounds above are any indication, it seems I am not the only man suffering from increased nausea. The sea and wind toss The Swift about as if we were the prey of a particularly sadistic feline. I can only remain supine in my hammock.
Captain Kennedy enters the cabin, sodden, out of sorts. “Boy, log,” he says.
I stagger out of the hammock and drag myself to the large wooden desk covered with the maps and navigating tools, open the logbook, dip my quill in the inkwell, and press nib to paper.
“We make good time to Ceylon,” he says, “though my crew grow restless. The continual storms dampen their spirits and their health. I have now lost three men to dysentery, good men, strong in the rigging, and they were given burials at sea. Our stores have dwindled to half-capacity. At Ceylon we shall resupply and take on fresh crew. Then, into the straits. Lord help us if we encounter the Sea Dayaks or the Bugis.”
The latter name induces a powerful tremor, but if the captain notices, he makes no mention of it. We may soon face pirates, and what shall I do then? Face them with my pen?
~
Relief. I needn’t have worried. We passed successfully and uneventfully, if rain-soaked, through the Strait of Malacca, and have at long last dropped anchor in the port of Singapura. An incredibly efficient harbor, in constant motion as cargo is loaded, unloaded, marked in ledgers, inventoried, inspected. Much clanging and sawing in the wharf. Fishing boats, junks, and small canvas-covered boats from the Chinese, Dutch, and Portuguese queue in the port waters. Above us fly a welter of colorful tropical birds, the like I’ve never before seen, sporting rashes of blues, reds, and greens. Our benefactor, Mister James Brooke, greets us at the quay, bounding down the dock in silks and finery I have only dreamt of, sporting a waistcoat the hue of freshly spilt blood.
He greets the captain as if an old friend, although I have been privy to Captain Kennedy’s none-too-subtle grumblings concerning our employer. The captain performs the necessary social niceties, a false front under which can be detected annoyance and impatience. He does, however, provide the ship’s owner with a detailed report of our travel from England, and assures him that the delivered consignment is undamaged and all accounted for.
“And this must be the young scrivener I hired,” Mister Brooke says and takes my hand in both of his. His palms are large and muscular, engulfing my own.
“Henry Davenport, sir,” I say.
“Yes,” Captain Kennedy says, “the boy has been most helpful.”
“Wonderful, wonderful!” Mister Brooke says. “I’ve recently acquired something that will revolutionize your profession, my boy. Come. Words cannot describe it. Action, action!”
He steps lively away from the ship, the captain and I pulled in his wake. We are led through the warehouse district, where native coolies carry goods on their backs and their British and Chinese masters loudly instruct their directions, an area occupied by nets and wooden casks and retired fishing boats now used for storage, into the merchant quarter, full of exotic produce and the sharp smells of spices in the air, and through a small village of stilt-raised huts with simple thatched roofs and men and women in varying stages of poverty, up a dusty thoroughfare to an immense timber dwelling under construction, surrounded by bamboo scaffolding upon which hundreds of workers dance or hang paper lanterns in Moorish windows, topped with a dome of gold. My breath escapes me; it is simply the most beautiful structure I have ever seen.
“My home away from home,” Mister Brooke says, and winks. “Well, one of them anyway.”
Inside, on the walls, scrolls of exquisite Asian beauty, punctuated by those odd Chinese vertical pictographs. At intervals along the floor stand a variety of stone statues, no more than waist-high, of figures both ordinary and demonic. And sitting grandly within an intricate shrine decorated in gold and precious jewels is a jolly bald fat man with a large sack, holding in one hand a coin with a square hole in it. Underneath him is a great flower, petals splayed outward.
“The Buddha,” Mister Brooke says, and bows to the fat man, hands pressed in prayer to his forehead. Captain Kennedy sniggers, and Mister Brooke turns to him, eyes wild. “You may not believe in him, Captain, but if you please, in my own house, do me the courtesy of not disparaging him.”
“I mean no offense, sir,” the captain says. “I only wish to point out that this is not the Buddha.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A common mistake. This is Hotei, a buddha of prosperity and wealth, as indicated by his sack that never goes empty. The image of this deity has become conflated with the actual Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and often local merchants either don’t know the difference, or choose not tell the entire truth during transactions. But I assure you, sir, this is not him.”
“Enough,” Mister Brooke says. “I did not hire you to tutor me on culture, seadog. Return to the ship and await further orders from me.”
For once, the captain has nary a word to say, but rage at this casual dismissal seethes beneath the surface. I have grown to realize that the best course of action when Captain Kennedy is in such a mood is to simply stay out of the man’s way. As he stomps from the room and out of the front entrance, I in no way envy the other crew members of The Swift who will have to endure his wrath.
Mister Brooke turns to me, and smiles. I am pinned under his expression of triumph, of confidence, of power.
“So,” he says, “now that he’s gone, shall we continue?”
Mister Brooke leads me through a passage to a locked door. On its surface are written words in an unknown language, possibly that of the native workers outside, as well as a skull and crossbones painted in white. The intent is clear: no trespassing. He produces a key, unlocks the door, and ushers me inside. A single candle resting on a table in the center of the small room is the only illumination, and the details of what is located at the room’s perimeter are obscured by the darkness. I briefly wonder if he lit the candle before meeting us at the docks, and why he would do such a wasteful thing as to expend tallow and wax. Two chairs are stationed at the low table; he is seated in one, and motions me to do the same in the other.
Also on the table is a small wooden chest, inscribed with sigils and pictorial symbols. From the same iron key ring he unlocks the chest and opens the lid. Within lies an odd-looking pistol, constructed completely of metal, its barrel flared out into a bell, along with seven small cylindrical amber glass bottles.
“What do you think, lad?”
“Very impressive, sir.”
“You have no idea what this is, do you?”
“It isn’t a gun?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “The Illanun traders called it senapang kenangan. It translates to something like ‘memory gun.’ Come, I saw it demonstrated but need to know myself if it works.”
Mister Brooke removes his wig. His natural hair color is a rich chestnut brown; it suits him far more than the powdered wigs in current fashion. He extracts the gun and one of the glass bottles from the chest, then slides the bottle into a hollow in the side of the gun’s handle. He places it in my hands; the metal is cool and light.
“Make sure that lever there is set in the backward position,” he says, “so that it points toward you.”
I check the indicated lever, a tiny switch where the hammer would normally be located, and it is indeed pointing toward me. I affirm this, and then Mister Brooke reaches out, takes the barrel of the gun while it is still in my hands, and places it against the side of his head. Does he intend me to shoot him?
“Very well, my boy. Pull the trigger.”
“Sir?”
“Not to worry, Master Davenport, it will not harm me. My life is too rich and full to end it in such an undistinguished manner. Pull the trigger.”
“But sir ...”
“Do it, boy.”
I pull the trigger.
And instead of the expected loud report and kickback of pistol shot, the gun hums softly and grows warm in my hands. Mister Brooke winces slightly, but gives no other indication of physical or mental distress. A hazy reddish fog slowly oozes into the amber glass bottle in the gun’s handle, threaded through with thin ghost-like filaments that pulse erratically with beats of light. The sight is beautiful and terrifying.
“Very well,” he rasps after the bottle has filled, “your turn.”
“I don’t understand, sir, any of this.”
“A captain’s time is best spent on the deck of his ship, not squirreled away inside his cabin dictating the day’s events. This device extracts a day’s worth of memories, my own experiences now there in that bottle, and you will implant them into your own thick skull.”
I stare at the magical gun in my hands, unwilling to accept the insanity of such a suggestion. Will the injection of the man’s memories also infect me with his character? Am I endangering my immortal soul by contaminating it with another man’s? And what if the process leaves me an imbecile, unable to function, to write, to think? But before I have the slightest chance to challenge my patron’s assertions, and possibly risk punishment and humiliation, Mister Brooke in one swift movement grabs the gun, flips the small lever so that it points forward, presses the barrel to my temple, and pulls the trigger.
Colors, shapes, whirls of experience, a storm at sea in my own mind. The images are disjointed, unconnected, nonlinear, a rush of twenty-four hours worth of memory. Vertigo overtakes me, my gorge rises, my pulse pounds violently in my ears, my skull. It is as if the world itself has turned inside out, and language no longer makes sense, and identity is but a phantom, so adrift am I in this maelstrom of thought. And then slowly, slowly, the feeling recedes, and understanding blossoms, to reveal Mister Brooke’s memories of that morning and the previous day, chronologically, as if happening directly to me, and with this comprehension an incredible feeling, a wonderful bliss, as if all my worries and pains and cares matter not at all, and the corners of my mouth involuntarily stretch upward, and I imagine I appear euphoric. Lost in my ecstasy, but after a time, too short, the feeling fades and I open my eyes. Mister Brooke stares at me, as if studying a newly discovered breed of lizard.
“Well?”
“Remarkable, sir.”
“Yes,” he says. “And useful in more ways than one. It is publicly intended as a scrivening aid, but you will also receive the captain’s unfiltered memories of the days’ events. You will know things that only Captain Kennedy knows, secret things, things he may even be hiding from me. This is an untrustworthy world, my boy, and I must be able to protect my investments.
“I am entrusting you with this technology, Master Davenport. You will use it once a day on Captain Kennedy under the auspices of your duties, but you will also keep a separate log on the captain himself, which you will periodically deliver back to me. If the senapang kenangan is lost or damaged, or if you fail to report in, things will not go well for you. However, if you cooperate, I will make it worth your while. Are we clear?”
We are indeed. “Yes, sir,” I say.
“Good man.”
~
Captain Kennedy proves naturally resistant to being subjected to the memory gun, but after further threats from Mister Brooke, and assurances that his own memories will be but copied and not stolen, he at last relents. We perform the extraction procedure each evening at dusk, and the captain soon warms to the experience. An intimate trust grows between us, as I begin to inhabit his ambitions and his fears.
As yet, he is completely unaware of my clandestine recordings, written hurriedly on scrolls provided by Mister Brooke, and stashed away among my belongings.
~
The world has gone red, completely red, as if a blood fog has engulfed me. Stone and wood and damp. Tired, so tired, so ready for the end of it all.
~
Two years of shipping antimony, precious metals, spices, silks, cotton, linen, sugar, opium, and porcelain in a steady triangle: Singapura to Jakarta to Kuching. Commodore Kennedy commanding Mister Brooke’s growing fleet—The Royalist, The Clarion, The Aurelia, The Pickle, The Dolphin, and The Tiger—and lording his promoted position over the other captains. He has grown suspicious of my private meetings with Mister Brooke whenever we drop anchor in Singapura, and has seen fit to confine me to the ship at all other times. Stuck as I am belowdecks, I would never know of the people with whom we barter or the places we visit, but through the commodore’s memories, I see and experience everything firsthand. Commodore Kennedy now extracts his memories at an alarming pace, filling up the amber jars almost too fast for me to empty them again. At times, the experiences leave me feeling soiled and embarrassed, such as the commodore’s violent actions against the natives who inadvertently raise his ire, or his carnal visits with whores, all of which I dutifully report to my employer, but the rapturous euphoria that accompanies the ingestion of each memory is a necessary balm against such unpleasantness.
We are now vulnerable to attack.
Mister Brooke, in defiance of Crown law prohibiting the sale, transport or possession of unregistered senapang kenangan devices (I suspect because the Empire wishes a monopoly on such remarkable surveillance technology, although they will not admit as much), has taken to all three actions, and I am frequently used in the demonstration of the use of the memory gun. All profits from these transactions are made off the books. Though we are seven ships strong, I fear for our safety. Word has spread of our current black market dealings, and we are set upon more often than not by pirate ships, long low vessels with a number of triangular sails, constructed with a dark iron wood. Thus far have we withstood significant damage to our fleet, thanks to favorable winds and the speed of our ships in outrunning trouble, but I fear our luck will not hold.
~
A cry from above, an announcement I have been dreading since departing from Brighton: “Bugis!”
I race to the porthole and behold a massive naval fleet, dozens of vessels, blockading our path to Singapura, so close that I can see the harbor in the distance. The same ships that have attacked us for months, now displaying black sails and their own Jolly Roger of a blazing yellow sun against a dark field. The sight inspires an equal sense of awe and terror.
Shouts from the crew, to arms, echo throughout the ship, and a moment of dread washes over me like the tide. This is it. We will not survive this time. The Bugis, grown brave after having sunk The Aurelia the previous week, appear to have decided on a great stand of force.
The sounds of cannonade and pistol shots are too enticing for me to ignore any longer, and I wish to experience the battle myself, rather than through the vicarious eyes of my commodore. If I am to die, I will do so in full sight of the action, rather than squirreled away in my warren. I emerge from the cabin into air thick with sea salt and gunpowder, and a confusion of noise. To port, The Royalist and The Clarion are enveloped in flames, being quickly boarded; to starboard are the wreckages of The Pickle, The Dolphin, and The Tiger. It appears that The Swift alone is left. From the crow’s nest comes the cry, “The Dido! It’s the Dido!” The HMS Dido, under the command of Captain Henry Keppel, pirate-hunter extraordinaire, but it will not reach us in time.
Commodore Kennedy stands proudly at the ship’s wheel, barking orders to the crew, and I reach his side. He glowers at me, and I aver the impression he will order me back below, but the look in my eye must reach him, for he says, “Just stay out of the way.” Then sounds in rapid succession: cannonfire, thundering impact with the mizzenmast, thick timbers splintering and shattering, shouts and yelps from the crew, rigging and rope and sails tumbling to the deck. The commodore tries to push me out of the way, but his effort is in vain.
I lay on the deck, vision blurring almost to darkness, a heavy weight on my legs. The sky above is a lovely azure, white fluffy clouds close enough to pluck from the firmament, dark birds of prey cawing and diving all around, several wisps of smoke obscuring. The commodore’s face, and other members of the crew, may as well be strangers, yelling to each other, lifting the mass from my legs. Such a beautiful day.
Then an overwhelming blinding white of pain. Something is wrong, I cannot move my legs, I cannot breathe through this agony, I long for the rapture of the memory gun, I am dying, I am dying, an explosion, another, screams, I slide on the deck, I list with the ship, the ocean so close, the waves overlapping, rushing up to me, comforting, enveloping, dragging me away from pain and noise and battle, into the briny warm depths, home, home, I miss my mother.
~
Muzzy. Unfocused. A bald woman wielding a pistol. No, now a white man with a handsaw. Now back to the woman, but sporting long dark hair, standing above. She says words to someone outside my vision. The world retreats. Blue. Black. Back into the black.
~
Awake, afraid. I swing lightly in a hammock, momentarily disoriented, under the impression I am still on the ship, rocking back and forth at sea, though no ocean sounds reach my ears. A large room, dark, although a soft light seeps in from hidden corners, revealing a cotton curtain partitioning the room in half, as well as an array of frightening sights on earthen shelves: a large glass jar inhabited by a preserved python, a clump of severed lizard heads missing their eyes, smaller glass bottles containing a variety of colored powders, a pile of twisted tubers and roots, a nest of dead flattened frogs, the skins of a dozen small birds, and a string of what I at first assume to be dried sausages, but upon closer inspection are revealed to be stumpy animal penises. Also on the wall stands an impressive cabinet of dark wood, its doors clasped with an iron lock, and it is this sight that frightens me most of all, for if all of these other abominations are presented in plain view, what in the Lord’s name is hidden away in the cabinet?
I raise my head in an attempt to extricate myself from the hammock, but all my strength, such as it was, has left me, and my head throbs in concert with my heartbeat. The bile rises to my throat, and I breathe hard through my nostrils, willing it back down. The sickness subsides and I lay back. What will become of me in such a place?
~
My legs, my legs, what has happened to my legs?
~
I know not how much time has passed before my captor reveals herself. A handsome native woman, older, Mother’s age, clothed in a thick low-cut red dress, small bones twined in her unruly black hair streaked with grey. Around her neck hang half a dozen amulets, trinkets against superstition between her breasts. Her skin is sallow, as if she suffers from infection, though her eyes blaze with intelligence and erudition. Metal rings adorn every finger on her right hand and none on her left. After she enters from outside, at first a silhouette against the blazing daylight, she approaches slowly, tentatively, as though not wanting to spook a wild animal, all the time clicking her rings together.
“How you feel, ah?” Her accent is heavy, but it is undeniably English that she speaks.
I cough, my throat raw and sore, as if I spent the past week screaming.
“Thirsty.”
She exits quickly, exposing my eyes once again to the brilliance outside, then returns with a dipper of water. A cooler or more delicious liquid I have never tasted, and it soothes both throat and chapped lips. She retracts the dipper before I have finished, perhaps knowing that I will drink until I become ill with water. She examines my legs and I follow her gaze; the stumps end just above the knees. Everything below—knees, calves, shins, feet, toes—is gone, replaced by blank air, and the stumps itch as if infested with a dozen dozen ants, though I dare not scratch them. The woman checks the dressings, tightening, loosening, adjusting until they meet her satisfaction. She lowers her face and inhales deeply, and the aromas emanating from my amputations must satisfy her for she smiles widely, exposing teeth and gums stained with red. Blood?
“Healing,” she says. “Hurt still, ang moh?”
“Who are you? What ... what is this place? Where is the ship, the crew? What have you done to my legs?”
The woman makes shushing noises, and produces from within a pocket of her dress a betel nut, a large seed I recognize from Commodore Kennedy’s memories as a mild stimulant. She places the betel nut in my hands and “Chew,” she says. I do so reluctantly, gnawing at the fibrous husk of the nut. Spices have been added to the surface, and possibly some of the concoctions located on her shelves. A soothing calm subsumes through me, and the pain of my severed legs subsides slightly. She produces a small tin can, and I spit bright red sputum into it.
“Your legs crushed, lorh,” she says. “Ruined, make you sick. So, they gone.”
I do not want to cry in front of a woman, but the tears gush out of me, all my fears, my frustration, my sadness a torrent of emotion in front of this strange woman who has apparently saved my life. I am only twenty years of age and will never walk again.
She turns and opens the door, leaving me to my grief. “You cry,” she says, “you cry and be sad, and then you stop. Dzurina fix you, and then a surprise she give you, ah? Make you happy happy again.” She closes the door, plunging me back into my darkness.
I must escape. Bomoh, bomoh, the word echoes in my head, drawn from the commodore’s memories, bomoh, the Malayan word for a witch doctor. How can I trust such a woman in league with the devil himself? How can I believe her words about my legs? Perhaps they could have been saved instead of amputated. I shudder. Did she eat them?
The door is not so far away. I shall crawl, crawl on my stomach as the lowest of animals, crawl all the way home to England if need be. The horrors of my situation overwhelm my weakness, and I swing the hammock in my efforts to tumble out, landing on the dirt floor and producing a fresh wave of throbbing pain from my stumps. My vision swims, objects drifting out of focus, and I fear I may go unconscious again. My fingers reach out and claw at dirt; every speck and pebble is magnified in my proximity. The muscles in my arms strain and quiver, and I move forward hardly at all, aware painfully of the lack of assistance from my missing feet. Slowly, slowly, in measured piecemeal fits toward the door, exhausted, out of breath, layered in reddish dirt and my own sweat, and it seems as if I make no progress at all.
I collapse, unable to continue, and weep.
~
I awaken on the floor, Dzurina standing above, scowling.
“Stupid!” she says in her accent, emphasis on the second syllable, making the word somehow even more insulting.
She leaves my field of vision, returning several minutes later with a native man approximately my age, but bulging with musculature, a coolie or laborer for certain, his hairless chest sheened with sweat. So this is to be my punishment, a beating suffered under the blows of this much stronger man, to be pummeled for my simple desire for freedom and a return to my old life.
I flinch as he reaches down with both hands, looming enormous, and then he gathers me up into his arms and places me gently back in my netted cradle, all as if I weigh no more than a child.
They talk for several minutes following in a rapid tonal dialogue, and she doles out a bone-colored powder into a sachet, carefully measuring each grain, then gives it to him. Payment for services rendered? Or a bribe to quiet his tongue? He smiles before turning to leave, his expression generous and without malice.
“Stay, lah,” the witch commands, pointing hard at my chest. “You still sick, is it?”
“Please,” I say, “where am I?”
“My home, what,” she says, as if this fact should be painfully obvious.
“No, where ... what nation? What port?”
“Pulau Blakang Mati you on. Island Behind Death, near to Singapura. The Bugis come, pillage, rape, leave death.” She draws a three-legged stool from another corner and sits, motions at my stumps with her chin. “Your legs they take, ah?”
“You should know.”
“My life also,” she says. “My father bomoh, very respected man near Malacca. Teach me to prepare spells, gather clients. I help him, lah, and he help me. Then Bugis come, kill my parents, younger brother, slit they throats. I wish they kill me also. But they come, one man, another man, another man, again, again, sio kàn, until all is through.” She spits this last word, dropping the aitch so that it sounds like true, the rage in her eyes pressing me back against the hammock. “Only a girl and they do this. After finish, they leave, laughing. A disgrace to the village I am, outcast, orphan. But I smart, make cures for aunties and uncles out of sight, for the poor, and survive. Save money, sail to Pulau Blakang Mati. If Bugis come again, I take they butuh and they bodek and I cut.” She draws an invisible knife upward through the air, making a zwick! sound in the back of her throat, and her rings clack together on her fingers.
The air sits thick and awkward between us. Never has a woman revealed so much of a personal nature to me. I am momentarily at a loss for words. She breathes heavily, her amulets rising and falling with the motion.
“Is that why you saved me?” I ask.
“Victims of Bugis we both,” she says. “Stick together, ah? Strong are many.”
~
Time, meaningless time spent swinging my days, weeks, months away. But I do heal and eat and regain my strength, an unexpected addition to Dzurina’s assortment of oddities. Customers to her home come and go, a steady trickle of impoverished Malay and Chinese, as well as initiates from the nearby Buddhist monastery, paying with coin when possible, and bartering when not with pottery, fish, spices, live chickens or herbs. All of these people looking at my crippled form swaying in the corner and asking about me in hushed tones. I do not understand the words, but can infer the content.
Several times an older white man arrives, makes a hurried transaction in murmured English, and departs without even a glance at me. His movements are nervous, his eyes sunken. Dzurina tells me that he used to serve as ship’s surgeon on a royal schooner, but was discharged because of his addiction to narcotics, and now lives on the other side of the island. He is the one taught her the small amount of English she knows. It was also he who expertly removed my destroyed legs, in exchange for opium. As the only other fluent English-speaker on the island, it would make sense for us to congregate and share our tales of woe, but I find myself fundamentally repulsed by the man. He may well have saved my life, but something about his character produces a primal revulsion in me, and I am thankful that his visits occur infrequently.
Dzurina cooks in a building separate from the small house, and her dishes are more spicy and flavorful than anything I have tasted before, often served on a large banana leaf. At first, this new cuisine does not at all agree with my constitution, but I have grown to tolerate and even enjoy it. At night, she sleeps on the other side of the curtain, and her soft snores are a kind of reassurance that I am not alone.
However, before sleep, in the darkening evening hours after her business has concluded, she produces a cacophony of noises from what I assume to be the courtyard adjacent to the house. The clangs of metal against metal, as if Vulcan himself were at work at his forge. Sawings and poundings and scrapings and loud female curses after hard thumps, possibly tools dropping to the ground or on a wayward thumb.
And, this evening, a low throbbing hum, as though Satan’s minions have struck up the sound, a harmonic of devilry, intensifying until the noise shakes the items on the shelves and rumbles the ground beneath me, a quake of preternatural intensity. The sound building and building, filling the air and the dirt and the entire world, and then abruptly stopping, the silence become unbearable, assuaged only by my nervous breathing.
Several minutes pass before Dzurina shuffles through the door with a candle, the flickering light playing across her excited features, turning her wide grin demonic. She places the candle on a low table, walks outside, and then enters again, her arms laden with two metal monstrosities, vaguely cylinder-shaped, with a thick disc on one end and a ball socket on the other, bulging with cables and pulleys and springs and toothed gearwheels, a bricolage of machinery. She stands each cylinder vertically on the ground in front of my hammock, two metallic columns, and the realization of their significance strikes me with the force of a timber to the forehead.
Legs. She has created prosthetic legs.
“So?” she says. “You like, ah?”
“What ... how ...”
She pulls me up to a sitting position and maneuvers me perpendicular to the hammock, facing the mechanical legs. My stumps fit perfectly into the cool ball sockets constructed to act as knees, and the pain immediately vanishes. Its absence is strange after having endured it so miserably these past months. Leather straps from the exterior of the metal are harnessed around my waist and thighs so as to secure me to the devices. After tightening them to her satisfaction, she steps back and admires her handiwork.
“Do you believe this will work?” I say.
“Up to you. You believe, it work.”
Could it be possible? Might I walk again? Such an invention should not be possible, but then neither should be ingesting another man’s memories. This exotic region of the globe seems suffused with improbabilities, as if the laws of the natural world hold no sway. It is as if sheer belief can construct reality.
I nod.
Dzurina bends down and whispers, “Hidup,” and the metal cylinders hum with life. Pendulums swing and gears turn, clicking and whirring loudly in the confines of the small shop. A vibration starts in my stumps and travels throughout my body. Hairs stand on end and my skin pebbles, a truly odd sensation in the tropical heat. She reaches out both hands, veined with age but strong as iron, and grips me by the armpits, assists me in leaning forward. Using her strength for support, I rise, slowly, until I am vertical.
I am standing. For the first time in months I am standing upright. On clockwork legs.
“I don’t know what to say.”
She steps forward and kisses me full on the lips, her mouth tasting of betel juice and spices. I am abruptly aware of my precarious balance, but she holds me tight, erect.
“Say you no leave,” she says.
~
A whirlpool, a hurricane worse than any at sea, a recession back, back, backward to the start, the days, weeks, months, years. The stone against my back, just a sensation, no longer real, nothing, nothing is real, the vastness of the universe is mere illusion, shadows on a cave wall, we hold the world in our memories and when mine are gone the world will disappear, void, oblivion.
~
Five years. Five years of suffering under the indignity of being unable to walk under my own power, but that I must rely on these monstrous appendages, always ticking and dripping lubrication fluids, as if I were a clanking beast from legend. Five years of legal impropriety, acquiring pirated silks, spices, and senapang kenangan devices, and then selling them, discreetly, to the foreigners who visit our home, all while staying beneath the notice of Captain Henry Keppel, who is determined to rid all of Singapura of those who would flout the authority of the Crown. Five years of rarely venturing outside to expose my lurching gait, relying on Dzurina for support, for sustenance, for a reason to continue. Never did I thank her for my current limited ability to perambulate through the rest of my days, so ashamed am I.
Five years and a live-in marriage, and she still refuses to reveal what is hidden in the locked wooden cabinet.
Tun Perak, named after an ancient Malayan warrior, who gently replaced me in my hammock all those years ago, and who, I learned recently, was the fisherman scooped me out of the waters after that fateful battle with the Bugis, acts as Dzurina’s client liaison for those souls too trepidatious to venture ashore and deal with her in the flesh. He is increasingly adept at avoiding the royal patrols as he delivers payment to us and goods to her clients. Although our small island lies only slightly south of Singapura, many of the transactions take place far from the prying eyes of the harbormasters. For Perak’s trouble, he receives a twenty-five percent commission on all successful dealings, which, with the increased business due to her trade in illegal goods, is no small amount.
I imagine my parents proud of my current merchant status, even if my contribution is small—keeping the books and suggesting new commodities to trade—but I know not how to explain all the events proceeding from my “death at sea,” and so I do not write to them. However it pains me, I cannot imagine how they might react to my crippled status, native wife (though our union is not legally or religiously recognized by the Empire, as we have chosen to remain beneath the notice of the Crown), dangerous and illegal dealings in addition to her witch doctor cures, association with pirates (although we refuse to do business with the Bugis), and an everyday co-existence with thaumaturgy. Pious God-fearing people both, Mother and Father simply would not understand.
I have also reacquainted myself personally with the ecstasy of contact with senapang kenangan bottles, sneaked from our bountiful stores. How I missed savoring the bliss upon the ingestion of another’s memories, more potent than the most passionate night with my lover. I also have come to experience the lives of dozens of men and women, from the nearby southern island archipelago, from the vast mainlands of China and India, and from as far away as my English homeland. I also note an alarming recent trend of terrifying memories, of villages being sacked by pirates and privateers, of rapine, of pressganging to tiny cramped dwellings with memories being extracted forcefully, of the frightened sobs of the persecuted. The hue of memories in these bottles has also changed from red to a sickly yellow, and I fear we may need to halt trafficking in the technology, lest it continue to be supplied by such ruthless means.
Rumors have also spread round our little island of an evil spirit, a puaka, who has been spied late in the nights prowling the shores and thoroughfares. Although I have taken to patrolling our section of the island due to an impossibly chronic insomnia, I have not yet been witness to such a spirit. Even tonight, as the moon shines down a muted pale light, and as the breeze from off the sea has quit, leaving the air in a sultry stillness, the very climate lends itself to supernatural speculation, and yet the only soul awake at this hour is me.
The insomnia has driven me from Dzurina’s side, true, but I lately notice an increasing tendency in my prostheses to build up a thaumaturgic charge in my person, to levels recently where the very top of my skull felt as if it might launch itself away at any moment. I know not whether this is the result of technological aging, or whether it is a mingling of magics, a result of my senapang kenangan habit. The only solution I have devised to bleed away this accretion of energies is to run. And to jump. During the day, I lurch and stomp and shuffle through the hours, but at night, at night I am a tiger, a great cat speeding through the villages of Pulau Blakang Mati, gamboling and cavorting and reveling in the unbridled joy of such freedom.
Far from my home and my warm bed, I race over dusty trails, vault thatched rooftops, and weave between large palms trees and vines, aware of the clicking and clacking of all my cables and gears now transformed to a steady hum, the same unearthly noise I first heard emanating from Dzurina’s courtyard as she constructed my legs. The air whistles past, in my ears, through my clothes. A dangerous predator I am, stalking imaginary prey.
A child’s cry behind me, and I stop. A small home in the jungle, and I do not recognize her, but she shouts again, “Puaka! Puaka menggelinjang! Puaka!”
I flee, an impulse that shames me, racing for home and comfort and safety, leaves and branches whipping at my face and my arms, escaping from a little girl, and suddenly aware of the revelation that the evil spirit I have been chasing, the puaka, has actually been myself. All those nights running down a fearsome spirit, investigating the unknown, leaping through brush and high over simple dwellings, and all that time the villagers were in fact frightened of me. I see myself through the child’s eyes: malformed, grotesque, unearthly, predatory, a monster.
A bogeyman.
~
Alarm. Shouts from outside. I claw through layers of sleep, drifting upward through consciousness until one word snaps me fully awake: “Bugiiiiiiiiis!” Dzurina and I jump from out of bed; in an odd bit of prescience, I neglected to remove my clockwork legs before sleep overcame me. After almost getting caught by the young girl several nights previous, I have scaled back my nocturnal ventures, causing increasing forgetfulness, fitful sleep and nightmarish dreams. However, it appears now that the nightmare has arrived in the flesh.
The Bugis are here.
Dzurina and I have an unspoken agreement in the case of this eventuality: kill all we can. I grip the blacksmithing hammer leaning against the wall, and my love unsheathes a nasty Malay kris, its wavy blade hungering for the bite of flesh after so long as an object of ornamentation. We race out of the house, and the night is on fire.
Huts and houses ablaze further toward the shore, but growing ever near. Screams, the piercing screams of those cut down with blade or spear or pistol shot. We reach Tun Perak’s home on the beach as he is felled by a volley of spears, dagger still in his hand, swinging all the way to the ground. Our friend and co-conspirator, a man of kindness and bravery and strength, and he is no more. A howl erupts from my throat as Dzurina and I burst into full view of the dozen Bugis warriors that have killed our friend.
Thaumaturgy crackles in the air as I leap into the fray, my hammer connecting with skulls and arm bones, as Dzurina stabs with her kris and hurls electric curses at her victims. I am consumed by my fury, at all the lives and livelihoods these pirates have destroyed, at the brutal loss of the innocence of my beloved, at the theft of my flesh-and-blood legs. I rage, blood full of vengeance and magics, not feeling the small slashes on my arms and chest. The simple name of the Bugis strikes terror into the hearts of thousands, so let them fear me!
After the battle is over, and I am streaked with the blood of half a dozen men, for all appearances a demon incarnate, Dzurina rushes to the fallen body of Tun Perak. She wails for this man, this adopted brother, this boon companion. She touches each of the stab wounds, whispers something inaudible into his now unhearing ear, closes his eyes with fingers incarnadine, steps back and recites a spell in song, her voice watery and disconsolate. Tun Perak’s body darkens, blackens, and then collapses to ash. The ash drifts out to sea, borne on the gentle winds. I hold my sobbing wife, her body feeling as frail as all her forty-some years.
A war cry from behind, and I am unable to turn round before a blade slices through my prosthetic right leg, severing cables and belts, once more stumping me, pitching me into the sand and away from Dzurina’s arms.
I drop my hammer as a phalanx of thirty Bugis explode into the clearing, bare-chested, oiled skin gleaming in the moonlight, weapons raised. A spear runs through my mechanical left leg, anchoring it to the ground, and then hands are on me, restraining my movement, forcefully removing me from my now non-functioning artificial legs. Iron manacles are clapped around my wrists, although I am unsure of their use, for without my legs how would I escape? I shriek at the night, at this continued injustice, at the unfairness of the world, and Dzurina is gone, is missing, what have they done with her, what have they done with my wife?
Into view walks a middle-aged white man in full Royal Navy regalia, his uniform spotless, proudly displaying a number of medals, fat with the spoils of Empire, depilated, smiling a cruel smile, his eyes wrinkling at the sides. The man exudes authority, a casual aura of power that I abruptly yearn to snuff out. He leers above me, gazing down with satisfaction at my capture. Behind him stands an entire platoon of Her Majesty’s soldiers, rifles at the ready.
“Henry Keppel,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You presume correctly, young man. Lieutenant!” he barks to the officer behind him. “Please be so kind as to place Mister Davenport under arrest. Let him feel the result of crossing swords with the greatest Empire on this Earth!”
~
The charges are read by an officer in a monotone, as if reciting the weather: miscegenation, trade in illegal goods, consorting with pirates, use of thaumaturgic enhancements, treason. The punishment: death by hanging.
The Bugis, smart and ruthless and canny, operate now under a treaty with the British, who employ them as privateers to further “civilize” their claim on the East Indies. I rail and froth at this development, raving to anyone who will hear about the attacks on the fleet of Commodore Kennedy, but none will listen. I yell until my throat goes hoarse, but my only audience is the bevy of cockroaches that also occupy my prison cell. In the eyes of the Crown, it matters not what justification I had for my crimes. The law is the law, and any who oppose it are a menace, rabid dogs to be put down for the common good.
Word arrives that our home has been ransacked, razed, and then burned to the ground. Everything we worked for is gone, obliterated. No news has come of Dzurina. I do hope my beloved did not suffer much before she was killed.
~
It is almost over, I can feel it. My life slipping away, my identity evaporating into the mists, my thoughts and memories annihilated, my very soul returning to the wellspring from which it—
~
In the hours before death, I sit quietly in my stone cell, attempting to take some pleasure from the cool breeze that enters my one barred window, resigned to my fate at the hangman’s noose. It is still difficult for me to fathom how my life has come to this, from meek ship’s scrivener to enemy of the Crown. But had I do it again, I would change not a thing. A life not spent alive is not a life at all.
At least my death will happen on a pleasant day, the heat subdued somewhat by the recent monsoon season, the sky a sparkling cerulean, the vocal birds a symphony of avian musicality. I hear the hangman is especially skilled, so that upon the trapdoor dropping, one’s neck is snapped and death is instant, rather than the humiliation and indignity of slow strangulation.
A key turns, and the door of my cell opens. I expect guards with their rifles, ready to accompany me to my fate, but instead a Buddhist monk enters, head shaven and bowed to the floor, robes the deep color of freshly turned mud. His face obscured, I cannot tell if he is an acquaintance from the island, but he must be if he is visiting me in my final hour. The door closes behind him, and he sits down beside me on the simple wooden bench.
“Here to give me last rites?”
“No, lah,” he says, no, a she, a woman’s voice, and she looks me square in the face. At my expression, she clamps a hand over my mouth and makes a shushing noise. It is appropriate that she arrives in such garb, as she often commented that she would join the sisterhood after my death; naïvely, optimistically, I assumed this would occur many many years from now. It is not her lack of hair that strikes me most of all, but her missing rings; I have never see her so naked.
“But how did you escape?” I whisper.
“It not matter,” she says and kisses me hard. Her lips are familiar and strange, changed inexplicably with her shaven head and nun’s robes. I say her name and we embrace and weep quietly, for our situation, for our impending separation, for her continued survival in this cruel world. I grip her and never want to let her go. My beautiful, fiercely intelligent, wildly inventive true love. “I soon lose you,” she breathes.
I can think of nothing I can say, I am lost in my sorrow. I hold her, frightened and joyous at once. She will live on, she will grow old, she will continue to be. “I shall always be with you,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “I know.”
She reaches beneath her robes and unstraps a senapang kenangan, but no model I have ever seen. It is smaller, the size of a Derringer, and adorned with her aesthetic touch, flourished with knobs and curlicues, brass filigrees and inlaid thaumaturgical symbols. It is a work of art as much as a functional tool.
“Improved,” she says. “We take seven years worth.”
And all at once, her plan becomes apparent.
“Yes,” I say. “Do it. Quickly.”
She presses the barrel of the memory gun to my temple. How will it feel, to empty my mind, seven years of my memories, all of our experiences together, every drop? The experience can only leave me a simpleton, the extraction of so much of myself, but my doomed physical form will not soon require a mind to fuel it. After she ingests me, consumes me, incorporates me into herself, will some part of me continue to live within the mind of my lover, even as my body rots in the ground? To exist as a spirit, momok, nestled within the mind of my life’s love, to travel to her new monastery, to gain peace and enlightenment, to become one with the world ... there are worse fates to embrace.
As she squeezes the trigger, I briefly think to ask her about the locked wooden cabinet in our home, and whether she retrieved the contents inside before it all burned down, but it matters not. In a moment, I will not remember the answer anyway.