The Beach

∨ The Beach ∧

94

Don’t Mean Nothing

The atmosphere in the hospital tent was the kind where you feel uncomfortable if you cough or make a hurried movement. Contemplative, detached; I felt like I was in a temple. Even more so because I was praying.

‘Die,’ went the prayer. ‘Make this breath the last one.’

But every time, Christo would breathe again. Despite all the odds, despite the achingly long gaps, his chest would suddenly inflate and deflate. He’d still be alive, and the waiting would start all over again.

For much of the time, I studied Jed. He looked strange because his hair and beard were completely slick, flattened down with blood and sweat. I could see the shape of his head in a way I never had before. It was more angular than I’d imagined. Smaller, and where his scalp showed between the wet curls, shockingly white.

He didn’t look at me once, neither had he acknowledged my presence when I climbed in. His eyes were set on Christo’s calm face, and weren’t going to budge until they were good and ready. Christo’s face, I noticed, was just about the only clean thing in the tent. Under his chin you could see the dark smear-marks where Jed had wiped him down, and by the time you reached his neck you couldn’t see past the dirt to his skin.

Another thing that caught my attention was that a little bag – which had been sitting just to the right of Jed until yesterday – was now gone. Karl’s bag. I’d known it was his because peeking out of its top flap had been the Nike swim-shorts he sometimes wore. Although the missing bag was my only evidence, and remains my only evidence, I felt sure that Karl must have visited Christo before he left. I liked that idea. Visiting his friend, taking his bag, stealing the boat. Cured all right.

Time passed much faster than I estimated. When I looked at my watch I was expecting it to read four thirty, but instead it read five ten. I’d been in there for a whole hour. Forty minutes; that’s a long way out. But watching Christo was absorbing. It set my mind thinking about stuff like the afterlife, because there was something about the way Christo was dying that made an afterlife seem particularly unlikely. It’s hard to explain what the something was. His eyes maybe, which were slightly open even though he was obviously unconscious. The two glittering slits made him look so dysfunctional. Just a machine that, for whatever reason, happened to be packing in.

♦

When I saw my watch, I realized I had to go. The rest of the camp would be returning soon, so I decided that I had no choice but to break the temple atmosphere.

‘Jed,’ I said in a soothing, priestly manner. ‘There’s something we should talk about.’

‘You’re leaving,’ he said bluntly.

‘…Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight…Tonight, when everyone’s crashed out after Tet. Will you come?’

‘If Christo is dead.’

‘…And if he isn’t?’

‘I’ll stay.’

I bit the inside of my lip. ‘You understand that unless you come tonight, there’ll be no way off the island.’

‘Mmm.’

‘You’ll be stuck here with whatever’s coming. And the problem isn’t going to be more travellers turning up. Karl’s taken the boat. If he contacts his family or Sten and Christo’s families…’

‘It isn’t the Thai police that are coming.’

‘…And when Sal finds out we’re gone tomorrow, the shit’s going to…’

‘It’s already hit.’

‘…I won’t be able to wait for you.’

‘I don’t expect you to.’

‘I want you to come.’

‘I know.’

‘And do you know that it makes zero difference to Christo if you’re here or not? Do you know that too? With the amount of oxygen he’s taking in, most of his brain has already shut down.’

‘He isn’t dead until he stops breathing.’

‘OK…’ I thought hard for a couple of seconds. ‘So what if we stop him breathing. We could cover up his mouth. It would only take five minutes.’

‘No.’

‘You don’t have to do it. I’ll do it for you. You could hold his hand or something. It would be a nice way for him to go. It would be very tranquil and…’

‘Fuck it, Richard!’ Jed snapped, spinning his head round and looking at me for the first time. But as soon as he did so, his expression softened. I was biting my lip again. I didn’t like Jed shouting at me.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Christo should be dead by tonight, so I should be able to come with you.’

‘But…’

‘Now why don’t you go? I don’t think Sal would like it if you were in here.’

‘…No, but…’

‘You’ll check on me before you leave.’

I sighed. Jed turned back to Christo. I stuck around for a minute or so, then backed out of the tent.

♦

Outside, I saw Keaty scurrying off towards the Khyber Pass with an armful of something soggy and unrecognizable in his arms. When he came back I asked him what he was doing.

‘I took the dope out of the cooking pots,’ he explained, drying his sticky chest with a T–shirt. He smelt of lemon grass and his hands were shaking.

‘What?’

‘I had to. It kept floating to the surface. Unhygienix would have seen it immediately. But it was in there for an hour so…’

‘Your shorts,’ I said.

‘Shorts?’

‘They’re covered in stew. Go and change them.’

His eyes flicked down. ‘Shit!’

‘Just go and change them. It’s no big deal.’

‘Change them. Right.’

Before he’d returned, the rest of the camp began pouring into the clearing. Singing, laughing, arm in arm. Tet was about to kick off.