Dark in the cabin, the long, low creaks of the ship slapped to and fro on roaring waves, water running down from the deck, voices calling and faint above. With time, he had lost the ability to see in darkness, could make out nothing, not unless a taper was lit and then it was little more than shadows flickering, with no sense of what or where. Still, three times these past few hours he had been about the ship, once a taper knocked out of his hand by the tossing waves, the flame sizzling out in the ankle-deep water that ran through the passageways. He had to feel his way slowly by gripping hold of the walls, finding his way on deck at last, into that other darkness, where the waves crashed and rolled, sending up spray that wet him all over, muting his calls for help.
There was, he already knew, no one who could help, not since the ship’s surgeon had succumbed to the flux a week before, though he managed to grab hold of a sailor, one of the older men, and persuaded him to come down to the cabin and see what could be done for his master. The sailor listened to the master’s gurgling breath and said, “Nah, too late now,” but at Pegu’s pleading had taken out a knife. Again the waves knocked them off their balance, and the man lunged forward with his knife, the blade nicking the master’s upper arm where it lay exposed. “Hold fast, damn you, hold fast his arm!” he shouted, then took aim again and sliced open the vein at the elbow joint, releasing the poisons inside. Long after the last of the tapers had burnt out, Pegu saw still in his weakened eyes the trickling of the nick and, beneath it, the slow ooze of thick black blood.
*
The bed banged into his neck as he sat on the damp floor, and he pushed against it, trying to keep it still, make the ship come to rest, pushing against the entire ocean. Wet, lurching breaths continued to come from the master, and then a sudden silence. Pegu rose, felt the bed in the dark, sensed a shifting force, and it was his master’s bare head raised, soft with the fluff that still grew in patches above his ears, his arms outstretched, reaching for something, something in the darkness that Pegu could not see, then fell back out of his silence into crackling, gasping breath.
*
Still on his jacket he could smell the master’s vomit from hours before, from when the pains had struck and brought him to his bed. The room hot, foetid, his own breath just as bad, sitting with his face in his hands, willing that haggard breathing to end, let it end, by God, let it come to an end. Remembering his first time on ship, his own heaving and distress, the laughter at him and others new to the ship who had not yet found their sea-legs. Only a boy then, given clothes like these, this jacket with its golden braid, this same silver collar, this wig which was flea-ridden now, balding, twenty years or more he’d had it, had rescued it from storms and winds, from thieves, had come to know the sea with it upon his head, to know hunger and deprivation, the stink of foul water, of worm-eaten biscuits, and little else inside him now than those windswept years, only sometimes below deck, when they had cattle on board, or if he walked the markets of some stranger town and saw goats, the smell of their droppings and hides bringing him back to something, a thing towards which his mind grasped, but which he could not reach. A faint thing, beyond memory, and the whisper of his name, not Pegu, something else, a name he had ceased to know.
*
By daylight the storm had settled and he stepped out of the cabin, still blind in the murky insides of the ship, heard the crack of bones being broken, the sullen men wrapping his master’s body in a winding sheet, the third that morning, so many of them dying or dead, that it had become a chore. He followed them out onto the deck, sunlight bright, returning his sight to him, seeing first where the others lay, waiting to be committed to the deep. The captain spoke his words of prayer, and Pegu felt the sunlight glistening off his braid, off his silver collar, a halo around him, as the master hit the water, still topped with white crests of foam, as though he were watching from a great height, the sinking body his own.
*
More than a year before he was able to work his way to the Cape. Leaping out of the rowboat as it moved away from the ship and made its way to the shore, stumbling in the shallows, soaked by the coming waves that dumped hard around them, the wind strong, waters grey with rage. Walking out of the town, past the tumbling cottages, the scraggly plots of farmland, ignoring warnings of beasts and savages, walking out into the rocky, stippled veld, until he came upon a herder with his flock, smelled that smell that took hold of him and sent his memory searching for something to grab hold of. Speaking his perfect Dutch to the herder, saying he wished to make an exchange, his clothes for those of the herder. The herder laughed at his luck, stripping down at once, grabbing the wig, placing it crooked on his head, while Pegu fumbled with the loin cloth and kaross, his body strange and naked, free to the sky and that angry wind. Then going out into the wilderness to find that place where once he had lived and where they had known his name.
_____________________________
This story was inspired by Pegu or Bego, a Khoikhoi of the Cochoqua tribe (in present-day South Africa), who was westernised by Dutch colonisers in the seventeenth century. Years later he returned to the Cape from the East, put his servant’s livery away, and resumed a Khoikhoiway of life, possibly becoming a captain of his people. For more on this see Seven Khoi Lives by Karel Schoeman.
KAREN JENNINGS is a South African writer whose novel An Island was longlisted for the
Booker Prize in 2021. Her most recent novel, Crooked Seeds, came out in April 2024 across the globe.She is currently writer-in-residence as a post-doctoral fellow at the
Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past (LEAP), Stellenbosch University,
Karen co-founded The Island Prize for unpublished African authors to help them get
published globally. Now in its third year the prize has helped authors from all over the
continent, with both winners so far being published in the UK. Karen lives in Cape Town with her two dogs.
