Kk 8a

Beyond the work bench were three large wooden chests in which he would frequently rummage around for a shell, perhaps, or a clean sheet. We had clean sheets every night.He kept the cave house immaculately clean, sweeping it down once a day at least.The floor was entirely covered with mats made of woven rushes, like our sleeping mats. And everywhere, all around the cave, to head height and above, the walls were lined with bamboo. It was simple, but it was a home. There was no clutter. Everything had its place and its purpose. As I got better, Kensuke would go off, and leave me on my own more and more but, thankfully, never for too long. He’d return later, very often singing, with fish, perhaps fruit, coconuts or herbs, which he’d bring over to show me proudly. The orang-utans would sometimes come with him, but only as far as the cave mouth. They’d peer in at me, and at Stella, who always kept her distance from them. Only the young ones ever tried to venture in, and then Kensuke only had to clap at them and they’d soon go scooting off.During those early days in the cave house I so much wished we could talk. There were a thousand mysteries, a thousand things I wanted to know. But it still hurt me to talk, and besides I felt he was quite happy with our silence, that he preferred it somehow. He seemed a very private person, and content to be that way.

Then one day, after hours of kneeling hunched over one of his paintings, he came over and gave it to me. It was a picture of a tree, a tree in blossom. His smile said everything. “For you. Japan tree,” he said. “I, Japanese person.” After that Kensuke showed me all the paintings he did, even the ones he later washed off.

They were all in black and white wash, of orang-utans, gibbons, butterflies, dolphins and birds, and fruit. Only very occasionally did he keep one, storing it away carefully in one of his chests. He did keep several of the tree paintings, I noticed, always of a tree in blossom, a ‘Japan tree’, as he called it, and I could see he took particular joy in showing me these. It was clear he was allowing me to share something very dear to him. I felt honoured by that.

In the dying light of each day he would sit beside me and watch over me, the last of the evening sun on his face. I felt he was healing me with his eyes. At night, I thought often of my mother and my father. I so much wanted to see them again, to let them know I was still alive. But, strangely, I no longer missed them.

The paralysis gradually lost its grip on me and my strength flowed back. Now I could go out with Kensuke, whenever he invited me, and he often did.To begin with, I would squat on the beach with Stella and watch him spear-fishing in the shallows.Then one day he made me my own spear. I was to fish with him. He taught me where the bigger fish were, where the octopus hid under the rocks, how to stand still as a heron and wait, I tell you, spearing a fish for the first time was like scoring a winning goal for the Mudlarks back home – just about the best feeling in the world.

Kensuke seemed to know every tree in the forest, where all the fruit grew, what was ripe and what was not, what was worth climbing for. He climbed impossible trees nimbly, footsure and fearless. Nothing in the forest alarmed him, not the howling gibbons swinging above his head to drive him off their fruit, not the bees that swarmed about him when he carried down their comb from a hollow high in a tree (he used the honey for sugaring and bottling fruit).

In all this time – I suppose I must have been some months on the island by now – Kensuke had said very little. The little English he did speak was clearly hard for him. When words were used between us they proved to be of little help in our understanding of each other. So we resorted for the most part to smiles and nods, to signing and pointing. Sometimes we even drew pictures in the sand to explain ourselves. It was just about enough to get along. But there was so much that I was burning to find out. How had he come to be here all alone on the island? How long had he been here? And how had he come by all those pots and pans and tools, and the knife he always wore in his belt? How come one of his wooden chests was stuffed with sheets? Where had they come from? Where had he come from? And why was he being so kind to me now, so considerate, when he had clearly resented me so much before? But whenever I ventured any such question, he would simply shake his head and turn away from me like a deaf man ashamed of his affliction. I was never quite sure whether he really did not understand, or just did not want to understand. Either way I could see it made him uncomfortable, so I probed no more. Questions, it seemed, were an intrusion. I resigned myself to waiting.

Our life together was always busy, and regular as clockwork. We would wash our sheets and clothes here, too (he’d made me my own kimono by now), slapping and pounding them on the rocks, before hanging them out to dry on the branch of a nearby tree. Watching him paint was best of all. On the table in front of him he put out three saucers: one saucer of octopus ink (for Kensuke, octopuses were not just for eating), one saucer of water and another for mixing. He always held his brush very upright and very steady in his hand, fingers down one side, thumb on the other. He would kneel bent over his work, his beard almost touching the shell he was painting – I think perhaps he was a little short-sighted. I would watch him for hours on end, marvelling at the delicacy of his work, at the sureness of his touch. I found he’d set out a shell for me, my own three saucers and my own paint-brush. He took such a delight in teaching me, in my every clumsy attempt. I remember early on I tried to paint the jellyfish that had attacked me. He laughed out loud at that, but not in a mocking way, rather in recognition, in memory, of what had brought us together.

He’d made his own paint-brushes as well, and I was soon to find out how. Kensuke had a favourite orang-utan, a large female he called Tomodachi, who would often come and sit by him to be groomed. Kensuke was grooming her one day just outside the mouth of the cave house, the other orang-utans looking on, when I saw him quite deliberately pluck out the longest and darkest hairs from her back. He held them up to show me, grinning conspiratorially.Kensuke seemed to have found ways to satisfy his every need.

We were silent at our painting one day, the rain thundering down on the forest below, when he stopped, put down his paint-brush, and said very slowly, in a very measured way, as if he’d thought about how to say it for a long time, “I teach you painting, Mica.” (This was the first time he had ever called me by my name.) “You teach me speak English. I want speak English. You teach me.”

It was the beginning of an English lesson that was to last for months. Every day, dawn to dusk, I translated the world around him into English. We did what we had always done, but now I talked all the while and he would echo every word, every phrase he wanted to. His brow would furrow with the effort of it.

It was as if by saying each word he simply swallowed it into his brain. Once told, once practised, he would rarely forget, and if he did, he was always very annoyed with himself. Sometimes as I enunciated a new word, I noticed that his eyes would light up. He would be nodding and smiling almost as if he recognised the word, as if he was greeting an old friend. He would repeat it again and again, savouring the sound of it before committing it to memory for good. And, of course, the more words he knew, the more he tried to experiment with them. Single words became clipped phrases, became entire sentences. His pronunciation, though, never did improve, however hard he tried. Michael was always Mica – sometimes Micasan. Now at last we could talk more easily to one another, the long silence in which our friendship had been forged was over. It had never been a barrier between us, but it had been limiting.“You see now if I understand, Micasan. You tell me story, story of you, where you live, why you come here my island. From baby to now. I listen.”

So I did. I told him about home, about my mother and father, about the brick factory closing, about football with Eddie and the Mudlarks, about the Peggy Sue and our voyage round the world, about football in Brazil and lions in Africa and spiders in Australia, about my mother being ill, about the night I fell overboard.

“Very good. I understand. Very good,” he said when I had finished. “So, football you like. When I little, I play football too. Very happy time, long ago now, in Japan, in my home.” He sat in silence for some moments. “You very long way from home, Micasan. You very sad sometimes. I see. So, I make you happy. Tomorrow we go fishing and maybe I tell you my story too. My story, your story, maybe same story now.” The sun had suddenly gone. We stood up and bowed to one another. “Oyasumi masai,” he said.

“Good night,” I said. It was the only time of the day he ever spoke Japanese, though he did sing in Japanese – mostly. I had taught him ‘Ten Green Bottles’, which always made him laugh when he sang it. I loved his laugh. It was never loud, more a prolonged chuckle; but it always warmed my heart.

 “Today we catch big fish, Mica, not small fish,” he announced. He was taking us to the part of the island where I had been washed up all those months before, but rarely had cause to visit since, because there was little or no fruit to be found there.Suddenly, Kensuke caught me by the arm. “You look, Micasan. What you see?” His eyes were full of mischief. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for. “Nothing here, yes? I very clever fellow. You watch. I show you.”

 I saw first what looked like a log lying in the sand but then, as he dragged away more branches, I saw it was part of a boat, an outrigger, a long wide dugout with a frame of outriggers on either side. It was covered in canvas which he folded back very slowly, chuckling to himself as he did so.

And there lying in the bottom of the boat beside a long oar was my football. He reached in and tossed it to me. It was softer now and much of the white leather was cracked and discoloured, but in places I could still just make out Eddie’s name.