Seabirds of various sorts loll about in the grass. A brown bird sings some kind of song. There’s no need for me to know what they are. Indiscriminacy is very much part of the point.
I’m not angry. I’m not even disappointed. These things happen. When you’ve been around as long as I have you understand that this only ends one way. The word ‘eventually’ is a great comfort. If what must happen sometimes takes a little longer, if occasionally there are setbacks, delays, reversals, well – time is something I have.
The sunlight is white and soft. There’s a violent northerly wind ripping through the grass (I suppose it’s some sort of grass). A white bird bobs in the air above my head as if on a length of elastic. I ought to be going. In the distance I can see a man in a grey hat and vivid red down jacket patrolling the seal-strewn strand. There’s nothing for me to do here now. My boat is concealed in a cove a little way behind me. I’ll return to it once it’s safe for me to stand. The man in the red jacket shouts to a man in a blue jacket. The man in the blue jacket gives, I think, a thumbs-up (the distance and his heavy gloves make it hard to be sure).
It has taken them 200 years to undo what I did. They don’t have any idea how quickly and how easily I can do it again. I say this without pleasure. When you’ve been around as long as I have you say most things without pleasure.
Sometimes there is a certain dry and clerical satisfaction in knowing that the work has been done. There can be a moment’s excitement in the danger of discovery or denunciation. That might be called pleasure, if all you knew about pleasure was what you had read about it in a book.
I miss the warm places. Cairo. Thrilled, mad, uprising Dubai. The fronded shadows on the sands of Savave. The close black canals beneath Babylon. But then, when I am in the warm places, I miss the cold places. This relates (obliquely) to my being always somewhat foreign. At Spitsbergen I was too swarthy, at Madagasikara too pale; at Aitutaki I was too tall and narrow, and they called me pūnu, the spoon.
There has been so much to remember it’s a wonder I remember anything.
Two dogs or perhaps three bark at one another, a half-mile away. They belong to the men in the jackets. I have nothing against dogs, especially.
