The Raft: A Novel (11 page)

I continued walking towards the botanical garden.

I didn’t think I’d see Moneta, but there was no other place to look. I thought again about her story—each inspired detail. I thought about her running between those trees, and long-legged Burt chasing her the way some horrible thing chases you in a nightmare. Tearing through those bushes until the bushes began to tear through him. Now, perhaps old Moneta had chosen to run again, run from this commune the way her memory told her she had, that day in the woods.

But was there anywhere left to run?

A warm wind passed through the trees, ruffling the leaves and startling brightly coloured birds. They took to the sky like shreds of a rainbow. Below, an arcade of palm trees shuffled in the stiff breeze. My path ran alongside the beach and then snaked between the trees. Soon, the glistening glass dome came into view. I passed through the wild grasses and could see Moneta’s plants through the shimmering glass walls.

Junyap was hobbling awkwardly out of the front door, carrying a blue bucket, tipping his body to the side to counter the weight of it. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and flapped the top of his shirt to pull cooler air in. He caught sight of me. I waited for a reaction, but he did little but stare. I redirected my gaze to the dome.

Everything seemed to be as it had been when I’d left it: the perfect green ferns, the vegetables, the bushels of herbs, the radiant petals of the flowers. And there were the bags of fertiliser, the pots I’d moved and the large wooden crate I had dragged.

The crate.
The six-foot-long crate was now packed with soil and blanketed in tufts of large-leafed plants.

(
The trees, it seems, will take the body of a dead thing as quickly as they want it, or want to get
rid
of it
)

I swung to Junyap to confirm my conclusion. He placed the bucket on the ground beside him. Holding my gaze, he raised his right hand and put a finger to his pursed lips …

Sssshhh.

A chill ran through me, but I nodded. I understood, immediately and completely. There was nothing left to be said: I already knew more than had been intended. Any questions would only betray Moneta’s final wish.

Unhurriedly, and without looking over my shoulder, I strolled away—away from Junyap, away from the greenhouse—and back through the long green undergrowth towards the path.

The weather was changing again. As I made my way back to the commune, the wind whistled listlessly overhead. But it was also carrying something. Something that made me sick to the bottom of my stomach. The wind, an unscrupulous messenger spirit flitting over the ocean and beach, carried the stench of oil smoke and burning flesh.

Extracts

(Excerpt from the
The Age of Self Primary
)

The day every person on earth lost his and her memory was not a day at all. It couldn’t be slotted in a schedule or added to a calendar. In people’s minds, there was no actual event—no earthquake, tsunami, or act of terror—and thus whatever had happened could be followed by no period of shock or mourning. There could be no catharsis. Everyone was simply reset to zero.

This moment of collective amnesia could not be understood within any context because it was the context itself that had been taken away. There was nothing anyone could do to repair themselves because they didn’t know what was broken. Before the resetting, they had created for themselves lives of routine and were motivated to participate in the world because they knew where they had come from. They knew what they were capable of doing and clung on to the mistakes they’d made like the maps of dangerous roads they knew not to take. They were driven by their aspirations as well as the fears they’d built up over the course of their lives like solitary fortresses on the peaks of mountains. But with no recollection of their aspirations, no remembrance of their fears, they were not propelled at all.

And so everything stopped. Industry. Commerce. Politics. Religion. Technology. They could no longer remember what their gods had needed of them. They no longer knew how to use the machines they’d once made, let alone how to improve upon them. Money was of no use because the values of various notes, coins and currencies could not be designated. So they became loiterers. Ghostly wanderers, doomed to haunt a world that no longer belonged to them.

When a few memories did begin to filter back to them, gradually and in no particular order, there was, at first, a mood of hope. Some families drifted back together. Homes and towns were faintly remembered. People hoped that over time enough memories would return to remind them of what their purpose had been before the resetting. Their memories would show them the significance of the lives they were supposed to now resume. But even as memory upon memory slunk back in their minds—a familiar face, a friend, a place from their childhood, a talent and a job they had once done—the purpose of their existence did not follow.

Instead, as they hunched down, picking up each new memory like the charred and scattered remains of a burned-down house, they were filled with a new sense of despair. The despair of realising the things in their world did not add up to any whole, and that there was no meaning in any of it. All the things they’d been desperate to recall were little more than the trivial knick-knacks of a species that had not lost—in that one global moment—any meaning, but that had never had any real meaning to begin with …

A functional version of earth

F
inally, I am on the raft.

I’ve seen so many others out here before and been curious about the experience. Now I am here: tied down at the neck, wrists and ankles. Spread open like the Vitruvian Man. Eyes fixed on the sky. Mouth dry. Skin beginning to burn. Stomach digesting what’s left of my final breakfast, as well as the hallucinogenic flower I was forced to ingest a short time earlier.

Soon, that flower will begin to take effect.

When it does, my thoughts will start to slip. My reason will lose its shape and my ideas will fold like a sheet of paper, forming finally into an elaborate origami figure I will not understand. I probably won’t even realise it’s happening (that’s the point, I suppose)—I’ll just slide into it.

I feel the cold seawater rise through the gaps in the logs. It wets my back, and retreats. The water dries in the sun, caking my skin in salt and aggravating my sunburn. Beneath my leather constraints, my neck, wrists and ankles are beginning to chafe. The moisture between the pelt and my broken skin forms warm and sticky incubators for infection. With my head fastened, I can’t see how bad the blistering has become. I can only feel it.

There is only one thing I’m capable of seeing.

The sky.

I’ve been staring at it for hours now. I have no choice. The blue is a blank wall. It fills my vision, a maddening thing that goes on forever with no depth. No corners. No shape or texture. It could be a centimetre in front of my face or a million kilometres away. It is so absolute and empty that after a while it doesn’t look blue at all—just another strange form of nothing. Am I really seeing it at all, or am I losing my sight …

No. Focus. Hold on.

I can’t let such notions take control of me. I need to ground myself with facts, with what I know.

I’ve seen plenty of others cast out on the rafts, attached to the pier by about a hundred metres of rope, so that’s one thing I know: I’m not far out at sea. I may as well be, though. I can hear nothing from the shore, see no land, no matter how far I roll my eyes. I know the three others are floating beside me, each on their own rafts for committing the same offence, but I can’t see or hear them either.

Calling out won’t matter. We are too far away to distinguish anything more than muffled shouts—but really, what is there to say? Shouting will only dry our throats.

That’s the last thing we want.

We have no idea when we’ll be pulled back in, our recalibration complete, but sooner or later the thirst will come, regardless of the anti-diuretic compound we’ve been given to conserve our fluids. We’ll feel the dryness in our mouths and throats long before our bodies reach the critical stages of dehydration.

Hold on, Kayle.

The sea moves, a restless, gelatinous creature. I am disturbing it in its ancient sleep. I am glad I’m not suffering motion sickness. That would be devastating, and is a horrible thought: if it becomes unbearable—all the rocking back and forth—there’s always the possibility of retching, up, and onto my own face …

I don’t want to think about that either.

Three birds fly overhead and across the blue wall. They are so high I can hardly see the movement of their wings. I zone in on their small dark bodies, relishing each tiny flutter. They fly in a staggered formation, three rafts on their own blue sea, the projection of a more functional version of Earth held up against mine.

Then they are gone, out of range, and I am once again alone. Strapped to the raft, drifting in blue limbo, with nothing more than my thoughts …

So what
do
you remember?

This is what you remember …

Y
ou were on the beach.

It was late in the afternoon.

The sun was low in the sky, blistering the horizon with redness. The clear blue water hushed gently, and you were crouched beside it, watching a young girl use a wooden branch to draw a picture in the sand. Is that right? Yes, that’s right. It was Angerona, the mute girl. Her new name, the one you’d given her, since she had no name of her own. Angerona: the goddess of inner voice, a permanent finger to her lips to conceal the secret name of Rome that could not be spoken aloud.

And what was she drawing?

In the sand, she was drawing a house.

A house on a hill.

There was a long winding path from the bottom of the hill to the crooked front door. Beside the house she drew four crosses in a row, tombstones, or possibly crucifixes, but that place—that house, path, hill and those four crosses—had been her home. That much was clear to you.

She held out the stick and you took it from her. She rubbed out her drawing with her foot and flattened the sand.

Draw yours, her face seemed to suggest. Your house, Kayle. Your home.

You shook your head. You couldn’t, you said, you didn’t remember, but that wasn’t true. Finally, you took the stick from her hand, put the end to the soft sand, and reluctantly drew a line …

The line became a house.
Your
house.

You drew a long fence, and the fence became an enclosure and you scratched two horses in the sand. You wondered if she could tell they were supposed to be horses. You were never much of an artist. You gave up on the horses and drew a tree beside the house, and then a number of small, round apples.

At that point you stopped. You were done.

No more,
you said.
I’m sorry. I’m too tired right now. Maybe later, okay?

Angerona smiled, understanding and accepting, and you put your hand on her shoulder. She nodded, waved, and dashed across the sand. You examined your drawing: a house, a tree, two horses. Then you scuffed out the lines with your foot until there was no hint of what had once been there.

You decided to go for a walk—by yourself.

You needed to clear that picture out of your head, so you left the beach and went towards the woods. You were used to taking walks by yourself, but this time you found yourself going in a direction you had never taken, the route laid out perfectly in your mind. The idea of going that way wasn’t so much a thought as a voice, the words clear enough to almost be heard.
Go,
it said.
Go into the woods, Kayle. Follow your feet and go into the woods. It’s time to pay back what you owe. So go, Kayle, between those crooked trees. See what you can see …

You walked under the swaying palms and along the winding path. You reached a river and crossed without rolling up your pants. When you looked over your shoulder, you could no longer see the beach or the ocean and the trees had changed from a few hanging palms into a thick forest, blanketing the mountain.

As you walked you thought about many things, mostly about life in the commune. You were walking away from the beach and it was as if you were putting it all behind you. Not that you imagined you were escaping right then (you were sure you’d know if you were doing that), but something told you that when you came back to the commune it would seem like a different place and you would be a different person.

As you walked, you thought about Moneta.

It had been three months since Moneta left and despite endless searching, her body had never been recovered. All causing more fuss than The Body were prepared to allow. Thus, The Body sent out a message telling the commune that she’d drowned at sea while attempting an escape. That wasn’t true, of course, but it did the trick. Everyone settled down, as if their imaginations had been shot with tranquilliser darts. Routines promptly resumed. Rusted trawlers arrived every few weeks with new communers. Large bonfires burned on the beach into the early hours of the morning, each a small sun at the centre of lonesome bodies dancing in orbit. The tide came in and went out. The white house watched. Dreams owned the night, dullness, the day—and still, everyone waited.