The Raft: A Novel (26 page)

I walked for what must have been ten minutes before an astonishing new part of the jungle revealed itself.

Fruit.

The trees were now garlanded in clusters of bright and luscious fruit. This new vegetation didn’t make sense either. The variety of fruit was contradictory to what I remembered about where and how fruit was grown. In the orchard beyond the paddock in the house I had left behind me, apples grew next to apples, and oranges nowhere near those at all. Bananas were tropical fruits, that fact floated in as I looked at the trees. So maybe they belonged here, in this clammy, humid forest. But here an orange tree grew beside an apple tree beside a banana tree, all hanging thick with the largest and most colourful fruits, big enough to feed two or three people. And that wasn’t all. I saw pineapples the size of watermelons, watermelons scattered like boulders. There were unusual fruits too. Mulberries and pomegranates. Jujubes and kumquats. Quinces and lychees and kiwi fruit.

But still, there were no animals.

No flies or butterflies or monkeys or lizards. Just the fruit, perfectly and conveniently arranged, ready for a traveller’s banquet.

As appealing as each fruit was to me—who had hardly had a thing to eat in days now—I was sceptical. They were simply too perfect. They had been put there to be eaten, but that instilled no faith in the motives of the caterer. There were many ways to ensnare an animal, and a sumptuous bowl of food left out in the open was one of them. I resisted the urge to pick one and carried on walking.

As I walked, however, the sweet fragrances of the fruits began to fill my nose. The smell of them was deliciously potent, far more tantalising than anything I had ever encountered. I found myself struggling to compose myself. Struggling to resist.

Nothing this wonderful can possibly be bad for you
, I told myself as I trudged through the bushes beneath the hanging garden of fruit.
Why are you denying yourself these fruits? Because they’re too inviting, too delicious and fragrant? For God’s sake, stop being so paranoid! You’re starving!

My stomach gurgled loudly and that sound decided me. I’d walked almost a kilometre through the fruit trees and I could contain myself no longer.

I reached up to a conveniently low treetop to pluck a football-sized pear. The surface of its smooth and perfect skin shone in the light. I wiped the dew on it and plunged it into my mouth, taking as big a bite as I could.

My sense of taste had never done me so proud. The juices ran into my mouth and down my throat like the liquid essence of life itself. The sweetness ripened in my mouth, developing complexity as it lingered, filling each small space and gap, nursing and refreshing. Almost instantly, my eyes widened and my body came alive. I was sure nothing had tasted, or ever would taste, as good in my life.

I took another bite and walked on, reinvigorated. And now I felt something else, a pleasant tingling and warmth expanding within me.

I looked up.

The jungle, I realised in that moment, was a
paradise.
A place of pure and painstaking beauty, bathed in a golden aura. Each leaf glistened before me. Each shaft of light through the leaves was a passage to a divine tier above the known world, one that had always been there, sheltering me. The trunks of the trees glowed. The fatigue in my muscles and joints began to lift. My skin prickled. My head cleared. Every fear I’d had about these unknown surroundings was flushed away by the juices of the fruit.

The
fruit.
Was this all because of the fruit?

I didn’t know and didn’t care. I was overwhelmed by the sense that I was complete in every way. Nothing more was needed. How could I have not realised this? How much time had I wasted trying to figure out the world when the world had already figured itself out?

I am alive! I am free! Time is an illusion!

The past and the future vanished and I floated across the land in the euphoric glory of
now,
seamlessly at one with myself and the cosmos. I no longer cared about where I was going, what I was expecting to find. I was where I was and that was all that mattered. Destination was a cruel misconception posed as a plan and purpose.
Fear is a fabrication! Loneliness is a lie! How can any of us be lonely when we’re surrounded by so much life?

It was not long before my stomach was full.

I stopped eating and kept walking.

It was about then—a while after having taken my last bite—that the sense of enlightenment began to slip away.

It began with the jungle.

It was changing …

The glistening leaves grew dull and grey, decaying on the ends of their stalks. The bright colours of the world faded, leached by some terrible, chemical agent. Shadows flickered in their corners, stretching and reaching with twisted black hands.

Paradise? This wasn’t paradise. What had I been thinking? This was a dungeon. A dungeon constructed of dying things. Fear and anxiety leaped back. The world began to take on strange and menacing undertones …

But this is the real world, Kayle. Everything choking, struggling and gasping for a chance to live out a painful and exhausting life—one that inevitably comes to nothing. Cruelty! Deterioration! Death! This is how things truly are.

How lost I really was. How alone. What if I didn’t find anything here? Or anyone? What if my son was being abused or tortured or enslaved? What could I possibly do about that? I could barely keep myself alive, let alone save him. Besides which, I had no idea where I was.

I stared down at the remnants of the pear in my hand. It wasn’t juicy and succulent. It was bloated and tumorous, the red and green streaks patterning the skin like the hard veins of a dead thing. The juices on my hands felt like the gummy secretions of some abominable creature’s saliva.

My head began to spin. I could no longer tell which direction I had come from, or where I had planned on going. Light and darkness were mixing and forming bizarre new shapes. My heartbeat accelerated and my face spat sweat. Absolute fear filled me like hot acid.

The last thing I saw was a young man’s face staring down at me. And then I lost the strength in my legs and disappeared into unconsciousness.

Cartoon elephants

O
h man. Oh man oh man. Here’s yet another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Mr. Kayle.

I
thought I was on the raft but I was on a bed in a room. The lights were dim and there was the strong smell of food being cooked somewhere. I tried to lift my head but felt nauseous and wanted to throw up. I turned to my side and my wrist tightened and burned, tugging me back. I’d been tied to the bedposts with rough but effective rope. My eyes adjusted to the light slowly, to the dark blur of a person approaching my bedside.

“Well, look. You’ve made it,” came the jubilant voice of what I figured to be a young man. “Congratulations,” he said as he took form before me. “I have to say, I wouldn’t have
buh
-bet on it, but you never know. People can be tough ol’ bastards. And you’re clearly tough, that’s for sure. Still gotta figure out whether you’re a
b-b-bastard.”

The person sat down on a chair beside my bed. I blinked hard to better see him. He was a young man in his early twenties, at a guess. Lean. Handsome. Harmless-looking, but for the long white scar running from the bottom of his left ear to his nose. In his hand he was holding a large blade. It gleamed in the light of a candle on my bedside table.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“In my bed. I don’t usually give up my bed but you were in luck, sir. The sheets were in need of a clean and I hadn’t
gurguh-
gotten around to it. So now my sheets are all yours, Columbus.”

“Who—”

“Okay. I’m no good at answering questions. Really. Not my thing. But I’ll ask a couple questions and make a big red cross next to all the ones you get wrong.” He held up his knife. “All out of pens.”

“Look—”

“Look? No,
you
look. You’re on
my
island. It may look like your island, I don’t know, but it’s definitely mine. And you see, I don’t get to keep an island like this with complimentary slippers and by serving breakfast in the morning. I hold on to it the old fashioned way. So let me lay it down. You turned up on a raft, right? That’s your raft out there?”

“Yes.”

“Hm. And you came here for a reason?”

“No—”

“No? So why
are
you here? That fruit did a number on you, didn’t it? One minute you were in your own
mur-muh
-mountain-top musical and the next you were drooling in my dirt.”

“Water.”

“What?”

“I need water.”

“Of course you do.”

The man got up and grabbed a mug at my bedside. He held it to my lips and I drank the lukewarm water messily, spilling it on my chin. I sighed with relief and closed my eyes. The man snapped his fingers at me and put the mug back on the table.

“Talk,” he said. “Explain.”

“I was on a raft. It washed up. I had no control. I’m sorry.”

He paused to consider my words, his finger running over the edge of the bedside table, pressing against the splintered corners.

“I see. Where are you from?”

“A beach.”

“A beach? A commune?”

I nodded.

The man paused again and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. “I’ve seen what they do,” he said. “The people in the communes. They put people on the raft … leave you all out like laundry. It’s a
puh-puh
-pun-ish-ment, am I right?” He stopped again, sighed and rested his palms on his knees. “You were punished for something, is
that
right?”

“Right.”

“Why were you punished?”

I said nothing.

The man continued: “Did you kill someone?”

“No,” I said. My throat was still burning. “I helped a woman.”

“A woman?”

“A woman on the beach. She was pregnant, had her baby. She needed to escape. I helped her escape.”

The man didn’t say anything again for a while. He got up from his chair and circled the bedroom floor, flicking the sharp edge of the knife blade with his thumb.

“You helped a woman escape,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“Her name?”

“What?”

“What was her name?”

“Jai-Li.”

“Huh. And have you got a plan, or were you planning on bobbing across the seas on crime patrol, Raft Man?”

“My son.”

“Speak up.”

“I need to find my son. He’s somewhere. In another commune, I think.”

“How old is he?”

I took a moment to respond. “I’m not even sure any more. Things have been … confusing.”

The man nodded then. He rubbed his face and turned to look out the window. From the bed I could see nothing out there except the stars of a clear night sky.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Then, without a word, he left the room. I expected him to return soon, but he didn’t. I closed my eyes and thought about my son’s face. How could I not remember how old he was? I’d thought about him every day, dreamed about him almost every night, but the specifics of time had been lost along the way. For as long as I could recall, time had been reduced to the rise and set of a sun, the wax and wane of a moon.

At that point I passed out again, pulled into a deep and lucid dream.

I’m standing in a room. I’m sweating even though I can see through the windows that it’s night. Standing in front of me is a young boy in a yellow t-shirt. He’s looking back at me without expression. All I can think of saying to him is,
Your father was a hero today.
I’m not sure why I say that.

His lips stretch from side to side and become a thin and devious smirk. I’m trying to comfort a child but this child does not need comforting. His sneering grin reveals that I’m the one in need of comfort; I’m the one sweating and trembling and filling with fear. Then the boy slides into the shadows behind him, his feet not moving, his smile growing and growing. There’s more heat now, a dull heat that draws the oxygen from the room, and the sweat keeps coming.

My eyes opened heavily. I was drenched with perspiration, burning up. The young man with the scar was standing over me, the same leer on his face as the boy in my dream. He raised a rag and laid it on my forehead. The rag was cold and wet.

“Raft Man,” he said. “You’re alive, in case you’re wondering.”

I passed out again, falling into a place too cold and deep to permit even a dream.

I came around some time later, but there was no way to tell how long I’d been out. I turned my head and saw a blurry figure standing in the corner of the room, wiping his hands with a cloth.

“Your son,” the man said. He folded the cloth and threw it neatly over the back of a wooden chair beside him. “I take it you plan on finding him.” My head was spinning, my throat dry. He was speaking as if we had kept the previous conversation going without interruption, but for all I knew, it was hours later. “That is what you’re going to do, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And what will you do after you find him? T-
tuh
-take him back to the commune?”

“No.”

“Haven’t really thought this through, have you, Raft Man?”

“My name’s Kayle.”

“And your son, what’s his name then?”

“Andy.”

“Andy. That’s a nice name. Friendly. Easy to remember. So, you find Andy. Lovely. What then? Where do you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Well, maybe he’s better off where he is right now. Have you thought of that? After all, look where
you
are. Doesn’t exactly instil a great deal of faith in your capacity to protect anyone, does it?”

The man reached towards a desk and took the same large knife into his hand. He wiped the blade on the cloth hanging over the chair. First the one side, then the other. He spun it in his hand and approached the bed, blade towards me, the metal sparkling in the dim light.

He smiled at me, the white scar on his face crinkling like a thin skin of boiled milk on the surface of a mug. He stepped to the bed, leaned over, hacked my wrists free, and slid the blade to my throat.