Mister Pip Read online

  AT NIGHT WE LISTENED TO GUNFIRE. There were no battles. This was the loose gunfire of rambos drunk on jungle juice trying to scare the redskins. They took aim at the stars and blasted up through the treetops. But there were also other nights of gunfire where stems of smoke greeted the dawn and we knew we were seeing the aftermath of something we did not want to send our minds to.

  We were back to waiting for the redskin soldiers, and like before, the tension rose. People squabbled. Voices were raised. Wives fought with their husbands, and vice versa. Kids were shouted at. You saw little kids squirt across yards where we used to see roosters.

  And one morning we saw Mr. Watts pull his wife, Grace, along in that trolley. For the occasion Mr. Watts had put on his red clown’s nose. He was back to being Pop Eye, and that came as a shock—to see him slip once more into that role, but also to see how quickly we changed back to our old idea of him.

  When people saw him pulling Grace along it dawned on them, as a mob, that the Wattses’ house had been spared. Mr. Watts and Grace must still have their possessions. The proof was that stupid red clown’s nose and the cart. No one could remember seeing their things dragged to the bonfire. But then no one would have expected it either because Mr. Watts was white and therefore lived outside the world in which these things happened.

  It then occurred to people that Mr. Watts might have the missing book that would save their houses.

  I did not join the rush on Mr. Watts and Grace’s house. Of course not. I did not want Mr. Watts to look up and see his Matilda as part of that mob. Besides, I knew their search was a waste of time. Great Expectations was rolled up in my father’s sleeping mat hanging from the rafter above the floor where my mum slept. Never in my life, not up to that moment or since, really, have I held such valuable information.

  Now I knew something of the moral confusion my mum had experienced. As my neighbors rushed towards Mr. Watts’ house I had the information that could have stopped them, but I said nothing, and did nothing.

  Here is how a coward thinks: If I stay inside my house I won’t have to witness the ransacking of the Wattses’ house. I won’t have to know.

  I don’t know whether they looked for the book at the house, then, after searching far and wide for it, fell to anger and frustration. There was no way of knowing the precise nature of the mood of the mob.

  But when I moved to the edge of the door and looked out I saw people carrying all the possessions belonging to the Wattses. Nothing was too small. Useless appliances with cords and plugs bouncing behind in the dirt. One woman carried a plastic clothes basket. She looked like she might be interested in hanging on to that for herself. But no one took things for themselves. They dragged the larger items. Men carried some of the furniture between them like a pig about to be spit-roast. I counted one or two smiles. But, I’m glad to say, I heard no cheering.

  I had never seen an event like this before; I had never seen anything as vengeful as this, and yet, once again, the people went about it as if they knew what to do. No one had to tell them where to put everything. And they had many, many things. Stuff that was of value to us, but no one took anything. There were clothes. Photographs. Chairs. Ornaments made of wood. Carvings. A small table. And books. I had never seen so many books—I thought Mr. Watts might have given them to us kids to read.

  Everything went up in flames.

  This bonfire was more spectacular than the last. There was more wood. We watched the flames in silence. No one tried to hide their involvement, nor did the Wattses try to put out the blaze. There were no words of anger or blame.

  Mr. Watts stood before the blaze with one arm around the shoulders of Grace. They looked as if they were farewelling someone. If he stopped short of appearing as a participant, Mr. Watts made what was happening seem necessary and acceptable.

  THIS TIME WHEN the redskins reappeared it was as if they melted out of the jungle. They came upon us like cats. The last one out of the jungle was their commanding officer.

  Some of the soldiers wore bandages that had bloodstains on them. Some of the bandages were strips torn from their shirts. Their officer looked to be sick with fever. His skin was jaundiced. The eyes of his men were inflamed and red, whereas his were yellow. Sweat coated his face; it oozed from him. He seemed too tired and ill for anger.

  Once more we gathered without an order to do so. Some of the soldiers wandered off on their own, their weapons swinging lightly from their shoulders. I saw one enter a house and undo his trousers to urinate.

  We all looked back at the officer. Surely he would have something to say about this—one of his men urinating in our houses? But he either didn’t want to know or didn’t care. When he spoke he sounded tired; that’s when I noticed he was having trouble standing. He was very sick.

  He told us he wanted food and medicines. Mabel’s father held up his hand to speak on our behalf. “We have no medicines,” he said. This was true. It was also bad news. Very bad news. The bonfire must have slipped the officer’s memory, because now we saw the reason why we had no medicines dawn on his sick face.

  He rolled his head back on his shoulders and gazed up at the blue sky. He didn’t have a reason to be annoyed with us. Mabel’s father had given the information politely and without mention of the bonfire. All the same, the news appeared to deflate the officer. He was tired of being who he was: tired of his job, tired of this island, of us, and of the responsibility he carried.

  One of his men brought him a pineapple. Perhaps it was to cheer him up. The soldier held it in both hands as an offering. The officer acknowledged the pineapple with a nod, but he waved it away. When he raised his fevered eyes we knew what was coming next.

  “Last time we were here you concealed a man from us. You saw what happened because of your foolishness. I decided to give you time to think about your decision. That is why we went away. To give you time to think. Now we are back with our request.”

  My mum closed her eyes, and this time I followed her example. So the next part I only heard. “I must warn you all,” I heard the officer say, “I do not have the patience that I had when you last saw me.”

  There was a pause. As it lengthened I felt the thick heat of the midday sun. I heard the too joyful screech of a crow. Then I heard the redskin say, “Bring me this man Pip.”

  There were people who might have spoken up. Mr. Watts, for one, had he been there. The soldiers must have forgotten where to find his house. Either that or they chose not to. I knew Grace had come down with fever, and I understood Mr. Watts was nursing her as best he could.

  The other person who could have saved us was my mum. But she could not produce the book, not after the bonfire, which happened because of her failure to produce the book the first time. She couldn’t do that, any more than I could betray her and lead the soldiers to my father’s sleeping mat.

  Under these circumstances, silence among such a large group of people is an uncomfortable thing to experience. Guilt spreads around even to those who have nothing to feel guilty about. Many held their breath. Or, as I heard later, many did what me and my mum did and closed their eyes. We closed our eyes in a bid to remove ourselves.

  I remember hearing a wave slap playfully onto the beach. It had not occurred to me before to think of the ocean as a dumb useless thing.

  “Very well,” said the officer without enthusiasm. It was almost possible to imagine that he wished he hadn’t said that. It was almost possible to think that we had forced him to act, that we had given him no choice. That we were the ones to blame for everything.

  I will say this for the soldiers. They went about burning our houses with appropriate solemnity. There were no wild shouts of joy. They didn’t let off rounds of ammunition. It wasn’t what you might expect. No. They asked us to burn our homes. They splashed kerosene in the doorway, then stepped back for the owner of the house to throw a lit torch in the doorway. My mother did so knowing that Mr. Watts’ copy of Great Expectations would be lost forever.

 
; As we watched the flames devour our houses it was like saying good-bye to a part of our lives. We missed that space. We hadn’t thought of it in that way until then. Now some of us had an idea of what Mr. Watts had given up. People shut their eyes and recalled smells of meals eaten, old scents, conversations—some arguments, but also perhaps important decisions—celebrations, all of which had happened under a roof. Some of our neighbors spoke of a quiet stillness. Things you would have thought could be found elsewhere. There is stillness out to sea and under tall trees as well, but I suppose they didn’t know about this other quality of stillness until their houses were destroyed.

  In the first fire people had lost gifts and favorite things. A ball. A lucky fishhook. In my case, the shoes my father had sent me. The postcards. This time what people lost was their privacy. Where would they hide themselves now? I shared that same concern.

  I had discovered that the plainest house can crown a fantasy or daydream. An open window can be tolerated. So can an open door. But I discovered the value of four walls and a roof. Something about containment that at the same time offers escape.

  I worried about my secret life with Pip. Would I find him again under the trees or along the beach? I worried that the world around me would speak too loudly and want my company too much.

  We slept outside the smoking ruins of our houses. We discovered that without a house your life feels bare. We had only the clothes we slept in. Yet some things cannot be taken or set fire to or shot. We still had the air. We still had the freshwater streams. We had fruit. We had our gardens. We were even left our pigs. And, by some stroke of good fortune, the redskin soldiers had also overlooked Gilbert’s father’s boat. It was up the dry creek bed where he always hauled it. When I saw its blue hull tipped over on its keel I felt a fish leap in my heart. We pounced on his nets and fishing tackle like the gifts they were. These were small, important victories in our bid to survive.

  Gilbert’s father suddenly looked like a man who had just awoken to his responsibilities. He was an expert fisherman who knew where to set his nets and where to find fish at night. He had been born with this fish sense. He knew fish better than the fish knew themselves, which was just as well because night was the only time he could risk fishing. If the redskin patrols saw his boat they would shoot on sight. We knew this because we had heard of such events happening further up the coast.

  After two days the smoldering stopped, and we saw there was nothing left. Soon you could hear the chop-chop of machetes. People came and went out of the jungle. They carried spear leaves and long stripped branches. Two men could carry a heavy beam between them.

  Within a week we had built new houses. These were not as good as our old ones. We didn’t have milled timber or wooden floors. But they were as good as we could make with what we had. We stitched and wove them together. Everyone has seen a bird build its nest—well, that was us too.

  The classroom block was one of only two buildings left standing. That was odd. My mum thought it was because the block was government property. It made no sense for the redskins to destroy it. It would be like destroying a bit of Moresby. The other place was Mr. Watts’ house. Again, my mum thought she knew why, saying it was because Mr. Watts was white. The redskins wouldn’t do anything to cause white displeasure. Port Moresby was dependent on Australian aid, which came in many forms—teachers, missionaries, canned fish, and even the helicopters used to drop the rebels out to sea.

  This time no one rushed to set fire to Mr. Watts’ house. People knew about Grace’s fever, but it wasn’t just that. I think they learned from the first time, after throwing Mr. Watts’ things onto the fire, that it didn’t make them feel any better.

  Possibly this also explains why no one stopped their kids from attending Mr. Watts’ class.

  But there was one change. Our class was only half the size it had been. Some of the older boys had run off to join the rebels. And one girl, Genevieve, who was probably the one least interested in school and Great Expectations, had joined her brothers and sisters to walk to their relatives’ village up in the hills.

  MR. WATTS BEGAN BY THANKING US FOR turning up. He had been unsure whether he would make it himself. Mrs. Watts was very sick. But here he was, and here we were, almost like old times, he might have said. Except what we had lost and what we had taken from Mr. Watts and his wife came between us in small but telling ways. We found ourselves looking away rather than meeting Mr. Watts’ eyes. And his own steady gaze sought the corners of the ceiling at the far end of the room. We slipped under that gaze and watched what he did with his hands. We prepared ourselves to listen out for any hard-done-by note to slip into his voice.

  “We have all lost our possessions and many of us our homes,” he said. “But these losses, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations.”

  Daniel stuck up his hand.

  “Yes, Daniel?”

  “Where are our imaginations?”

  “Out there, Daniel.”

  We all turned to see what Mr. Watts was pointing to out the door.

  “And in here.”

  Our heads switched back to see him tap the side of his head.

  “Close your eyes,” he said to Daniel, “and in a voice only you can hear, say your name. Say it to yourself only.”

  I had moved to a desk two behind Daniel, so I could see the sides of his cheeks move with the spoken sound of his name.

  “Have you found it, Daniel?”

  “Yes, Mr. Watts. I have.”

  “Let’s all do it,” said Mr. Watts. “Close your eyes and silently recite your name.”

  The sound of my name took me to a place deep inside my head. I already knew that words could take you into a new world, but I didn’t know that on the strength of one word spoken for my ears only I would find myself in a room that no one else knew about. Matilda. Matilda. Matilda. I said it over and over. I tried out different versions, dragging the word out and expanding that room. Ma til da.

  “Another thing,” Mr. Watts said. “No one in the history of your short lives has used the same voice as you with which to say your name. This is yours. Your special gift that no one can ever take from you. This is what our friend and colleague Mr. Dickens used to construct his stories with.”

  Mr. Watts stopped to look, checking to see if he was traveling too fast for us and whether what he had said had sunk in.

  I replied with a nod and Mr. Watts continued.

  “Now, when Mr. Dickens sat down in 1860 to write Great Expectations, the first thing he did was clear a space for Pip’s voice. That is what we did. We located that little room in ourselves where our voice is pure and alive. Mr. Dickens closed his eyes and waited until he heard that first line.”

  Mr. Watts closed his eyes and we waited. He must have thought this was something he could test us with, because he snapped open his eyes to ask if anyone remembered that first line. None of us did. So he remembered for us. And as he closed his eyes a second time he quoted a line which is now ingrained in me as much as my own name. I will take to the grave the words Mr. Watts recited to us kids: My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

  At another time, all this talk of rooms and voices might have confused us. But the loss of our houses helped us to understand that what they had kept safe was more than our possessions; our houses had concealed our selves that no one else ever saw when we lay on our sleeping mats at night. Now Mr. Watts had given us all another room to lounge around in. The next stage was to furnish it.

  To that end Mr. Watts announced a special task. We would retrieve Great Expectations.

  Some of us were not sure what Mr. Watts meant by the word retrieve. Then when it became clear—thanks to Daniel’s question—we still wondered if we understood. Great Expectations had gone up in flames and could not be retrieved f
rom the ashes. Of course Mr. Watts had a different approach in mind. “Let’s see if we can remember it,” he said.

  And that’s what we did; not in an hour but over many weeks, more likely it was months. After my pencil and calendar were lost in the burning of our houses, I didn’t bother with recording the passing of time. One day blended into the next.

  Mr. Watts instructed us to dream freely. We did not have to remember the story in any order or even as it really happened, but as it came to us. “You won’t always remember at a convenient moment,” he warned us. “It might come to you in the night. If so, you must hang on to that fragment until we meet in class. There you can share it, and add it to the others. When we have gathered all the fragments we will put together the story. It will be as good as new.”

  We had done this sort of thing before. In the past, when we still had our nets and lines, we would divide up the catch on the beach. That’s what we set out to do now with Great Expectations.

  In the class that day we did not retrieve much. It was hard to hold a thought steady. You only had to look out the door to see a scrub fowl wander into view, or stare ahead to consider the white whiskers emerging in Mr. Watts’ beard. A stray thought like that could hook you. There was nothing left in the world to think about after remembering the taste of scrub fowl or wondering about Mr. Watts getting older so quickly.

  Once I began to turn up fragments of Great Expectations it was surprising where and when I found them. This was most often at night, when I needed another world to escape to, but it also would occur in unexpected moments. I might be gazing out to sea thinking of nothing in particular, and then, without warning, I would find myself with Pip walking up to Satis House with its cobwebs and gloom, and its determination to look backwards.

  I remembered how I felt, how protective I had been towards Pip. I didn’t like the way Estella spoke to him, and I didn’t like the way Sarah Pocket teased and taunted him with gossip. I could never understand why Pip would accept the baiting of those two and never spat back.