Prabir took comfort in the usual routine: wading to the beach, insect repellent, mine detector checks. Looking back at the reef as he pulled on his boots. They’d gather some samples and return to the boat. It would be a day like any other.
He’d estimated GPS coordinates for the kampung, from his notepad’s log of its position the previous day and his recollection of the treetop view. They picked their way laboriously through the shrubs; this was the first time they’d had no choice about their destination, no option of taking an easier route. Grant had once tried clearing a path in the undergrowth using a parang she’d bought in Ambon, but it had been a waste of effort; the machete was perfect for chopping through occasional vines, but the knee-high thicket was too tangled, there were too many strands to sever.
Grant was unusually quiet; she might have done this easily enough alone, but his presence must be making her feel more like a trespasser. Prabir said, ‘You wouldn’t believe it only took me half an hour a day to maintain this path.’
‘That was one of your jobs?’
‘Yeah.’
She smiled. ‘I thought I was hard done by having to clean the bath. And at least I had somewhere to spend my pocket money. I suppose you got paid in net privileges?’
‘I don’t remember.’
Prabir’s eyes kept filling with sweat. As he wiped them clear, he could almost see the approach as it had once been. He’d heard the thud of the mine and raced towards the kampung with Madhusree in his arms. Sailing past the trees ever faster, as if he was falling.
Grant spotted one of the huts before he did: it was leaning precariously, covered in fungus and lianas. Unlike the roofing panels he’d seen from above, the walls were stained and encrusted to the point where they might as well have been deliberately camouflaged. Prabir was suddenly much less sure that they’d followed the old path; he didn’t expect the hut to be recognisable, but its position was not where he’d imagined it. Maybe they’d taken a different route entirely, one that had always been uncleared jungle.
Even when they were standing at the edge of the kampung, it took him a while to find all six huts amid the trees. He said numbly, ‘I don’t know where we are. I don’t know where to start.’
Grant put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s no rush. I can look inside one of these buildings and describe it for you, if you like.’
‘No. It’s all right.’ He turned and walked towards the hut on his right. The doorway facing the centre of the kampung was hidden beneath a dense mat of creepers, but the walls had split apart at one corner, leaving a gap that made a much easier entrance.
Grant came after him. ‘You need a torch, and we need to do this slowly. We don’t know what’s in there.’
Prabir accepted the flashlight from her. She unslung her rifle and followed behind him as he ducked down to enter the hut. Enough soil had blown in, and enough sunlight came through the gap in the walls and the vine-draped windows to cover the floor in pale weeds. There was a hook on one wall, and the cracked, shrivelled remnants of a rectangle of canvas curled up beneath it.
He said, ‘This was mine.’ He gestured at the hammock. ‘That was where I slept.’
‘Right.’
Termites must have devoured the packing crate where he’d kept his clothes, once the preservative had leached out of the wood. The hut looked barer than a prison cell now, but it had never been full of gadgets and ornamentation; all the possessions he’d valued most had been stored in his notepad.
He’d looked out at night from this hut, his stomach cramped with anxiety. And then he’d thought of an act that would justify everything he was feeling: a crime to match his sense of guilt, an alibi to explain it.
Guilt about what, though? Had he stolen something, broken something? What could be worse than sabotaging his parents’ work?
‘The butterfly hut.’ He backed out, then tried to orient himself. ‘It was straight across the kampung.’
He threaded his way between the trees, with Grant walking beside him in silence. It was the most direct route, but he lost sight of the surrounding huts, lost count of their position in the circle.
The door had fallen off the hut he approached, leaving an entrance curtained with creepers. Grant handed him the parang and he slashed them away. Then he pointed the flashlight into the darkness.
Madhusree’s plastic cot was covered in fungus, warped and discoloured but still intact. Behind it, his parents’ folding bunk was strewn with debris, the foam mattress rotted, the metal frame a shell of corrosion.
He’d been afraid for them. Afraid the war would reach them, in spite of the island’s obscurity, in spite of his father’s reassurances.
But why would he feel guilty? Why would he imagine that he’d be to blame if the war came to the island? Even if he’d fought with his parents and wanted them punished — even if he’d shouted from the slopes of the volcano that he’d wanted them dead — he’d never been superstitious enough to believe that his wishes would be granted.
Prabir said, ‘Wrong hut. It’s the next one.’
One wall of the butterfly hut had collapsed outwards, leaving the two half-supported roofing panels to swing down almost to the ground. The result was a rickety triangular prism, with a narrow space between one standing wall and the tilted roof through which Prabir could just squeeze. Grant followed him.
The wall that had fallen had borne the hut’s windows and door, and the soft forest light hit the gaps in the structure at the wrong angle to penetrate the darkness ahead. Prabir played the flashlight beam along the floor, looking for signs of the lab bench, but the wood had all gone to termites and fungus. The hut was knee deep in twigs and rotting leaves, debris that had blown in and never found its way out again.
In the far corner, two yellow eyes caught the beam. There was a python, maybe half the size of the one in the mangroves, coiled on top of a pile of litter. Prabir felt his legs turn to water at the sight of it, but he didn’t want it killed unnecessarily.
‘Maybe we can work around it,’ he suggested. ‘Or drive it out with sticks.’
Grant shook her head. ‘Normally I’d agree, but right now we can do without the aggravation.’ She raised her rifle. ‘Stand aside and cover your ears.’ She dropped a pinprick of laser light between the snake’s eyes, then blew its head off. Clumps of white fungus rained from the ceiling. The snake’s decapitated body twitched and rose into a striking position, uncoiling enough to reveal a clutch of fist-sized blue-white eggs.
Grant held the flashlight while Prabir sifted through the mess on the floor. It was slow work, and the humid air above the decaying leaves was suffocating. When he found the metal stage of his father’s microscope he gave up all pretence of being in control and let tears of grief and shame run down his face.
He knew what he’d done. He knew why he’d poisoned the chrysalis, he knew what he’d needed to hide.
He’d killed them. He’d brought the plane to the island, he’d brought the mines.
It was too much to face. He couldn’t live, staring into that light — but he’d lost all power to avert his gaze, and every lie he’d held up as a shield was transparent now. He had to let it melt him, he had to let it burn him away.
He was determined to find the specimens first; they were the last things left that he could hope to salvage. Grant stopped asking him if he wanted to rest or swap positions. Beetles and pale spiders fled as he plunged his hands into the leaves, again and again.
He pulled out a slab of light, cool plastic, thirty centimetres wide, covered in filth. He wiped it on his jeans. It was an adult butterfly, embedded in something like lucite. An adult from twenty years ago, with the old concentric green-and-black stripes.
Grant said something encouraging. Prabir nodded dully. There was a bar code engraved in the plastic; any pigmentation it had once held was gone, but the ridges still felt sharp, the code could still be read. The numbers wouldn’t mean a lot without matching computer records, but they’d probably be sequential. He delved around in the same spot, and his fingers hit another slab.
They left the hut with twelve preserved specimens: eight adults and four larvae. Prabir looked around, getting his bearings.
He turned to Grant. ‘You might as well go back to the boat now. I’ll follow you in a little while.’ He handed her his backpack, in which they’d placed all the specimens. She accepted it, but remained beside him, waiting for an explanation.
He said, ‘I want to visit my parents’ grave.’
Grant nodded understandingly. ‘Can’t I come with you? I don’t want to intrude, but we should be careful.’
Prabir pulled his shirt over his head, mopped his face with it, then held it bunched at his side to conceal his hand as he switched off the mine detector. He tried to compose his face into an appropriate mask.
He said, ‘Look, how many snakes that size can there be in this area? I’ll be fine. You might as well start working on the samples. I just want to be alone here for a few minutes.’
She hesitated.
‘Is that too much to ask?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve given you everything you wanted. Can’t you show some respect for my feelings?’
Grant bowed her head, chastened. ‘All right. I’m sorry. I’ll see you back there.’ She turned and headed across the kampung.
Prabir made his way around to what he thought was the storage hut. But he didn’t trust his memory, he had to be sure. The door had fallen away; he squeezed through the vines. When his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he saw the two life jackets hanging on the wall.
He walked out of the hut and headed for the garden.
Suddenly the device on his belt started chanting, ‘Mine at seventeen metres! Mine at seventeen metres!’ He stared down at the machine: a red arrow was flashing on its upper surface, pointing to the hazard. He flicked the ON switch back and forth; it had no effect whatsoever. You couldn’t turn the fucking thing off. All he’d done was stop it wasting power by showing its usual reassuring green light.
He heard Grant call his name from a distance.
Prabir backed away until the detector fell silent, then he shouted in a tone of light-hearted exasperation, ‘It’s all right! I knew there’d be mines here! The detector’s working, and I’ll stay well clear of them! I’ll be fine!’
There was a long pause, then she shouted back reluctantly, ‘OK. I’ll see you on the boat.’
He waited a couple of minutes to be sure that Grant was gone, then he unclipped the detector and tossed it away towards the centre of the kampung. He’d noted the direction the arrow had pointed. He was very tired, but there was nothing left to do now. He turned and started walking.
Something sharp pierced his right shoulder. He felt the skin turn cold, then numb. He reached back and pulled it out. It was a tranquilliser dart.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or to weep with frustration. He looked around for Grant, but he couldn’t see her. He called out, ‘I weigh seventy kilograms. Do the arithmetic. You don’t have enough.’
She shouted back, ‘I can blow a hole in your knee if I have to.’
‘And what would that achieve? I’d probably bleed to death.’
Grant showed herself. She was at least twenty metres away. Even if she was capable of tackling him to the ground, she wouldn’t stop him with anything but a bullet before he could reach the mine.
She said, ‘Maybe I’ll risk that.’
He pleaded irritably, ‘Go back to the boat!’
‘Why are you doing this?’
Prabir rubbed his eyes. Wasn’t it obvious? Wasn’t the evidence all around them?
He said, ‘I killed them. I killed my parents.’
‘I don’t believe you. How?’
He stared at her despairingly; he was ready to confess everything, but it would be a slow torture to explain. ‘I sent a message to someone. A woman in New York, a historian I met on the net. But I was pretending to be my father, and what I said made him sound like an ABRMS supporter. The Indonesians must have read it. That’s why they flew over and dropped the mines.’
Grant absorbed this. ‘Why did you pretend to be your father?’
‘He wouldn’t let me tell anyone my real age. He was paranoid about it — maybe something happened to him as a child. But I didn’t know how to pretend to be anyone else, and I didn’t know how to say nothing at all.’
‘OK. But you don’t know that the message was intercepted, do you? They might have dropped the mines anyway. It might have all been down to aerial surveillance, rebel activity in the area, deliberate misinformation from someone. It might have had nothing to do with you!’
Prabir shook his head. ‘Even if that’s true: I heard the plane come over, and I didn’t warn them. And it was my job to weed the garden, but I went swimming instead. If I didn’t kill them three times, I killed them twice.’
Grant said, ‘You were nine years old! You might have done something foolish, but it was the army who killed them. Do you really imagine that they’d blame you?’
‘I was nine years old, but I wasn’t stupid. After I’d sent the message, I knew what I’d done. But I was too afraid to tell them. I was so full of guilt I went and poisoned one of the butterflies, to try to fool myself. To make myself believe that was why I felt so bad.’
Grant hesitated, searching for some escape route. But she had to see that there was none.
She said, ‘However much it hurts, if you’ve lived with this for eighteen years, you can keep on doing it.’
He laughed. ‘Why? What’s the point? Madhusree doesn’t need me any more. You know why I came after her? You know why I followed her here? I was afraid she’d work it out. I was afraid she’d find something here that would tell her what I’d done. I wasn’t trying to protect her. I just wanted to keep her from discovering the truth.’
‘So how am I going to explain your death to her?’
‘As an accident.’
‘I’m not going to perjure myself. There’ll be an official inquiry, it’ll all come out.’
‘Are you blackmailing me now?’
Grant shook her head calmly. ‘I’m telling you what will happen. That’s not a threat, it’s just the way it will be.’
Prabir covered his face with his arms. The prospect seemed unbearable, but maybe it would help Madhusree put his death behind her if she understood that she owed him nothing. He hadn’t acted out of love for her, or some sense of duty towards their parents. He hadn’t even been protecting their shared genes. Everything he’d ever done for her had been to conceal his own crime.
He turned and started walking towards the minefield. Grant shouted something, but he ignored her. A rain of darts hit his upper back; he lost all feeling after the fourth or fifth, he could no longer count them. He began to feel slightly giddy, but it didn’t slow him down. Grant still had no chance of catching up with him.
He felt a sting on the side of his right leg, like a hot sharp blade passing over the skin. He lost his footing, more from surprise than from the force of the bullet, and toppled sideways into the undergrowth. With his shoulders paralysed he had no strength in his arms: he couldn’t right himself, he couldn’t even crawl.
A minute later, Grant knelt beside him and plucked out the darts, then helped him to his feet. He was bleeding almost as much from the barbed-wire shrubs as from the grazing wound she’d made in his leg.
She asked, ‘Are you coming back to the boat now?’
Prabir met her eyes. He wasn’t angry with her, or grateful. But she’d robbed him of all momentum, and complicated things to the point where it would have been farcical to keep opposing her.
Farcical, and monumentally selfish.
He was silent for a while, trying to come to terms with this. Then he said, ‘There’s something I want to do here, if you’re willing. But we’ll need some tools, and I’ll have to wait until this shit wears off.’
*
They returned to the kampung in the afternoon, with a chainsaw and a mallet. Grant cut branches into metre lengths and Prabir drove them into the ground, making a small fence all the way around the mined garden. He nailed warning signs to each side, in six languages, using his notepad to translate the message. There wasn’t much chance of fishermen coming this far into the jungle, but when the next biologists arrived it would be one small extra safeguard.
Grant said, ‘Do you want to put up a plaque?’
Prabir shook his head. ‘No shrines. They’d have hated that.’
Grant left him, trusting him now. Prabir stood by the fence and tried to picture them, arm in arm, middle-aged, with another half-century ahead of them. In love to the end, working to the end, living to see their great-great-grandchildren.
That was what he’d destroyed.
Grant had kept insisting: They wouldn’t have blamed you! But what did that mean? The dead blamed no one. What if his mother had survived, crippled by grief, knowing he was responsible? She might have tried to shield him at first, when he was still a child. But now? And for the rest of his life?
And his father—
He had no right to test them like this, asking them to choose between rejection and forgiveness. And whatever excuses they might have made for him, however much compassion they might have shown, it made no difference in the end. He didn’t want their imaginary blessing, he didn’t want any kind of plausible solace. He only wanted the impossible: he wanted them back.
He sat on the ground and wept.
Prabir made his way back to the beach, before the light failed. He’d lost the will to die, to anaesthetise himself out of existence.
But to live, he’d have to live with the pain of what he’d done, not the hope that it could be extinguished. That would never happen. He’d have to find another reason to go on.