John Amos Comenius. Orbis Sensualium Pictus: A Facsimile (1659 / 1968): 184.June 15th, 1996.
This morning, early, the ship struck. I say “struck” though that is really only a guess. At the time I knew nothing of it. I awoke to find myself tossed this way and that by the tumbling pillows of the main. My mouth was full of sea-water. I coughed and spluttered, went under, surfaced, went under again – but all the time, without conscious volition, my arms were beating steadily, my legs flailing like a metronome, propelling me towards that distant shore.
When did I first become aware of it – that long, low, black line of substance hanging like a cloud on the horizon? I must have swum many leagues – for weeks, it seemed – legs and arms moving purposefully up and down. Had it been there all the time? Or was it a more recent apparition – drawn up from the ocean floor, perhaps, by my own desperate need for land?
•
Some time later …
My mind, I have discovered, is a well-stocked library. People usually say things like that casually, half-mockingly. In my case, however, I have found it to be true.
I was rummaging around there this afternoon when I found a volume of verses. Two of them struck me particularly – one beginning: “I am monarch of all I survey” [1]; and another about a castaway:
But I beneath a rougher seaFor a moment all that I have achieved here – the raft, the vegetable-plot, the windmill, even the hut itself – seemed singularly futile and pointless. I wondered why I had even bothered when the means of rest lay so readily to hand: the ocean and the rocks, with their constant traffic of waves.
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he. [2]
Nor did this melancholy quit me for the rest of the day, though I sought to combat it with gunpowder manufacture and other employments of manual skill. Even the monkeys, chattering and playing above, afforded me no delight. Their lives seemed somehow so separate from my own.
•
There is a ghost on the island. It does not show itself by night when (thanks be to God) I sleep soundly and well. No, it is a different kind of spectre altogether.
I first became aware of it three days ago, at noon, when I was standing on the dry sandy plateau which tops off the island. I was gathering twigs and brush for the signal fire which I hope to establish there when I first glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye. It was more of a shimmer in the air than a fully-formed figure. Nor was it clear what its intentions were.
When I turned and looked at it directly, it disappeared.
Next day it was back again. Not in the same spot, but down on the beach where I gather seaweed and shellfish. I was careful not to react, but kept on bustling about the rock-pools. Gradually its form and features became clearer to me. It was a woman, of course: brunette, and somewhat buxom in figure. She was, I am sure, totally unfamiliar to me – or at any rate had become so.
[I leave the last sentence as it stands although, in transcribing it, I observe that it makes little sense.]
•
The ants are back. I have not mentioned them before because they have not been evident for quite a while and – least said soonest mended. Now they are crawling around again.
It is hard to know what they are doing in there. Excavating little tunnels, I should think: perhaps establishing a nest. I have thought of trying to drown them, but there does not seem to be any obvious way, short of making my head burst or asphyxiating myself.
The sensation is rather an odd one – not pain, exactly: more of an indefinable discomfort demanding immediate relief. Twitching the side of my face violently seems to help sometimes. I have also had to throw myself on the ground very suddenly and without warning once or twice.
Other means of relief include:
- Slapping myself in the face, very hard, once or twice (seldom effective);
- Punching a tree or rock-wall with my bare knuckles (better);
- Running in a straight line as fast as possible until the lungs begin to spit fire and bile (better still); or – best and simplest –
- Walking a long way along the beach or the rocks until it is time for tea or a hot meal.
They are a problem, though. What shall I do if they will not stay quiet? I have thought of burning off my hand or infecting myself with coral cuts, but these admittedly extreme measures could only be said to work as distractions, not remedies for the principal affliction. There is only one real cure for that – cutting off my own head – and for that I lack both the facilities and the will.
•
Catechism
- What is life?Fear of death. One wax vesta.
- What is God?General of the Union forces.
- Who is J. C.?Search me.
- What is a Christian?A naturally cold person counterfeiting warmth.
- What is Heaven?Sleep and oblivion.
- What is Hell?Mockery and humiliation.
- Where am I?The Mysterious Island.
- What is its name?Auckland.
- What is the date?May 14th, 1866.
•
I have a shelter near my cave where I keep a lot of useful things which are not needed every day – mainly rocks of various shapes and sizes. Yesterday I realised that it was getting too cluttered to move around in easily, so I determined to reorganise it. This was a long job. The rocks have to be lifted down in a certain order, or else they get muddled up and obstruct all movement within the room. Also, some of them are too heavy to move at all without a lot of effort – and if one is bent at a sharp angle over another rock the effort cannot easily be applied. Mostly I worked around those rocks and contented myself with rearranging the smaller and more manageable ones.
Halfway through the work, when I had cleared one aisle almost completely (thus allowing freer access to the things stored on either side), I realised that something would have to go. I finally settled on a particularly handsome piece of granite which I could move quite easily by carrying it tipped over on my back. It is not very far from there to the cave, although the way down the ravine is rather slippery and steep, so it was not long before I had the slab positioned in a vacant corner of my dwelling. It looked very fine, I must say, though it has developed an alarming list which I must correct sometime by applying some suitable wedges to the bottom. I am looking for some now, but have not yet found any sticks or shards of the correct shape.
Back in the shelter, the work now proceeded easily. I was able to clear the other aisle of obstructions almost entirely, and by the end of the day I could walk almost unimpeded around the storeroom. It was, I think, a good day’s work, and my aching muscles testified to the good this exercise must be doing my physique!
Lay awake half the night, plotting new schemes for improvement.
•
This morning, walking on the beach, I found a little glass bottle with square corners bobbing around in the surf. Perhaps it had been there for some time – perhaps not. It certainly looked rather mildewed inside.
Opening it up took some time, as I had no corkscrew on me. As I had hoped, it contained a note. Lord knows, I was not expecting much – just a little glimmer of human companionship on this boundless ocean and desolate rock – just an “I am here; where are you? Please help me.”
The letter read: “The trip was a great success, and I enjoyed myself very much. Auntie has a poor sense of direction, so we ended up getting lost on many occasions! But the new places were just as interesting as the ones we were heading for, so no harm was done!
Back home, we had Helena coming to stay. She was an ideal guest, and a good time was had by all. Pinkie is well, as is Bunkum – no nasty men about! …”
I say “letter,” but really it was just a torn-off scrap of paper without an address or a recipient. Why did it anger me so much, I wonder? Was it the idea that of all the people in the world, I should pick up a portion of this one’s private correspondence. The triviality, the banality of it all! Why should anyone even dream of writing such a letter? Who could take pleasure in receiving it (with the possible exception of Helena or Auntie)? Of all the scraps of paper in the world … it could have been a poem, or a cri de coeur of some kind!
Another part of my anger came, I think, from my impotence in the face of this self-satisfied complacency. All day I have to scour the rocks in search of food (stockpiling for winter, as well as my daily needs). In my spare time I have to think of escape plans – there are always rafts to build, boxes to pack – and now this letter comes, speaking as you, speaking of much but not to come.
I meditated smashing the glass bottle to pieces and shredding the letter with my teeth, but either one might come in handy for a number of things. Or, alternatively, I could write a reply, squeeze it back inside, and throw it out past the breakers. Pointless, perhaps, but decanting some vitriol onto paper would at least stop it percolating around inside my head. I spent the rest of the day planning my answer, but finally decided that a dignified silence would be the best way of getting the full extent of my revulsion across to her. The author, I mean. Otherwise she might not write back.
•
I dreamt a dream
– What can it mean? –
That Marianne came back to me
On some jewelled beach in Tahiti.
I doubt this presages a change
(Though who can say? for love is strange)
But while the message is obscure
My joy was limitless and pure.
I woke inside the darkling bach
But somehow it was not so black.
I felt she really had loved me
Till parted by fatality.
•
The ghost is back again. Sometimes I think it is more tenuous in appearance, at other times more solid. It accompanies me on my rounds – the circuit of the island I have established. It never speaks to me, but I fancy it looks in my direction from time to time. Am I projecting it, I ask myself? Is it a figment of my imagination, a product of my loneliness? I am very lonely here on the island with nobody to talk to. I have even started conversing with rocks and trees for want of anything better. One particularly handsome and lissom palm-tree seemed – no doubt only in my imagination – to make a special bow or inclination in my direction as I passed it each day. Encouraged by this, I took to having my lunch at that spot, but this must have been too forward of me, for she immediately assumed a peculiar rigidity towards me, though still nodding and bowing to the other plants and breezes.
The ghost is a welcome diversion, then. It is not in the least bit fearsome, but neither does it seem very accommodating to my wishes – which might argue against its being a picture in my head.
I miss it when it isn’t there.
•
I have been thinking about drowning myself, or perhaps jumping from one of the island’s high cliffs onto the rocks. I do not like it here – it is hard to get enough to eat off the oyster-beds, and catching fish is almost impossible without a hook or a net. Besides that, it is lonely, and there is not much to do once it gets dark.
I decided that the best thing to do would to be to have a practice first, so I went up to one of the cliffs overhanging deep water. I knew I could come to no harm there – or presumed as much, at any rate.
The higher I got, the more timorous I felt. It had never really looked very high or dangerous before, but now that I was intending to jump from it the height looked positively dizzying. Talk about Shakespeare’s cliff at Dover!
Finally I stood at the edge and started to breathe heavily – pumping my arms up and down, and doing my countdown. Nothing. I simply could not get myself to move. It was fear, yes, but more than that as well – complete paralysis of the will, a protest of the biological organism against any threat to its integrity. I tried running up to the edge with my eyes closed, but I was too afraid of stumbling and hurting myself.
The thing had begun to assume a real importance to me now. I knew that if I let myself retreat, I was really here for good. So I sat down gingerly at the edge and began to inch my way out on shaking hands. It took some time, but eventually my grip released and I found myself falling, eyes closed, through the air. It was not a particularly pleasant sensation – no free-fall raptures for me. It was more like a sudden loss of all control or volition – a sudden rush, too fast for anything as coherent as terror, and then the cold shock of the water.
It seems, then, that I have decided to stay – or rather, my body, the house of my life, has done so for me. If I could have taken a running jump – well, then, perhaps. But my tentative crab-like tumble over the edge of the cliff seems to me to tell a different story.
Nevertheless, I did jump, I did go over the cliff, and that should count for something. I said I would do it, and I did – not with elegance, not with panache, crawling rather than running, cringing rather than standing tall, but with a shout on my lips and a sense of something overcome. Inelegant, lumpish, but there, finally, when the chips were down – and God knows when I replay it in my head I feel the same fear all over again.
Back to the kelp beds again, I suppose.
Notes:
[1] William Cowper, 'Verses, Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk, during his Solitary Abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez.' Poetry and Prose. Ed. Brian Spiller. The Reynard Library. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968), 56-58.
[2] William Cowper, 'The Cast-Away.' Poetry and Prose, 138-40.
The Pander 2 (1997)[18/8-9/10/96]
[2467 words]
[Published in the Pander 2 (1997): 14-15;
Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004): 11-18.]
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