Falling Down
I must get them out? Me? I couldn't believe my ears. He'd been the one who'd kept his head when the dope guards were coming. I'd lost my shit. I felt like saying, 'You fucking get us out!'
But just by looking at him I could tell he wasn't about to take control of the situation. And neither was Françoise. She was gazing at me with the same scared, expectant expression as Étienne.
So, not having a choice, it ended up being me who took the decision to go on. In one direction there were gunmen, walking along the tracks we had ignorantly assumed were made by animals. Perhaps they were even on the way to the beach and would find a chocolate-wrapper or footprints that would betray our presence. In the other direction we didn't know what we might find. Maybe more fields, maybe more gunmen, maybe a beach full of westerners, and maybe nothing at all.
Better the devil you know is a cliché I now despise. Hidden in the bushes, shivering with fright, I learnt that if the devil you know is the guard of a drug plantation, then all other devils pale in comparison.
I have almost no recollection of the few hours after leaving the plateau. I think I was concentrating so hard on the immediate that my mind couldn't afford space for anything else. Maybe to have a memory you need time for reflection, however brief, just to let the memory find a place to settle.
What I do have is a couple of snapshot images: the view from the pass looking back on the dope fields below us; and a more surreal one — surreal because it's a sight I could never have seen. But if I close my eyes I can see it as clearly as I can see any image in my mind.
It's the three of us making our way down the mountain on the far side of the pass. I'm looking from behind, so I can only see our backs, and the image is elevated slightly as if I'm standing further up the slope. We don't have our bin-liner bags. My arms are empty and outstretched, like I'm trying to steady myself, and Étienne is holding one of Françoise's hands.
The other strange thing is that beyond us I can see the lagoon and a white smear of sand over the treetops. But that isn't possible. We never saw the lagoon until we reached the waterfall.
It was the height of a four-storey building—the kind of height I hate to stand upright near. To gauge the drop I had to crawl to the cliff edge on my belly, afraid that the sense of balance which allows me to stand on a chair would desert me and I would lunge drunkenly forward to my death.
On either side the cliff continued, eventually curving around into the sea, then, unbroken, rejoining the land on the far side. It was as if a giant circle had been cut out of the island to enclose the lagoon in a wall of rock - just as Zeph had described. From where we sat, we could see that the sea-locked cliffs were no more than thirty metres thick, but a passing boat could never guess what lay behind them. They would only see a continuous jungle-topped coastline. The lagoon was presumably supplied by underwater caves and channels.
The falls dropped into a pool from which a quick-flowing stream ran into the trees. The highest trees were more than equal to our height. If they'd been a little closer to the precipice we could have used them to get down—and getting down was the big problem. The drop was too sheer and too far to consider climbing.
'What do you think?' I said, crawling back from the cliff edge towards Étienne and Françoise.
'What do
you
think?' Étienne replied, apparently not yet ready to let control pass from my hands.
I sighed. 'I think we've definitely found the right place. It's where Mister Duck's map says it is, and it fits Zeph's description perfectly.'
'So near and so far.'
'So near and yet so far,' I corrected vacantly. 'That's about it.'
Françoise stood up and stared over the lagoon towards the seaward rock-face.
'Perhaps we should walk around there,' she suggested. 'It may be easier to climb.'
'It's higher than here. You can see where the land rises.'
'We could jump into the sea. It is not too high to jump.'
'We'd never clear the rocks.'
She looked irritated and tired. 'OK, Richard, but there must be a way down, no? If people go to this beach, there must be a way.'
'If people go to this beach,' I echoed. We hadn't seen any sign that people were down there. I'd been carrying an idea that when we reached the beach we'd see groups of friendly travellers with sun-kissed faces, hanging out, coral diving, playing Frisbee. All that stuff. As it was, from what we could see the beach looked beautiful but completely deserted.
'Maybe we can jump from this waterfall,' said Étienne. 'It is not so high as the cliff in the sea.'
I thought for a moment. 'Possibly,' I replied, and rubbed my eyes. The adrenalin that had kept me going over the pass had faded and now I was exhausted, so exhausted I couldn't even feel relief at having found the beach. I was also dying for a cigarette. I'd thought of lighting up several times but was still too jumpy about who might smell the smoke.
Françoise seemed to read my mind. 'If you want a cigarette, you should have one,' she said, smiling. I think it was the first time one of us had smiled since leaving the plateau. 'We saw no fields on this side of the pass.'
'Yes,' Étienne added. 'And maybe it can help... The nicotine... It helps.'
'Good point.'
I lit up and crawled back to the cliff edge.
If, I reasoned, the waterfall had been pounding down into the pool below for a thousand years, then it was likely that a basin had been eroded into the rock. A basin deep enough to accommodate my leaping into it. But if the island had been created relatively recently, maybe the result of volcanic activity two hundred years ago, then there might not have been time for a deep enough pool to have formed.
'But what do I know?' I said, exhaling slowly, and Françoise looked up to see if I was talking to her.
The pebbles in the water were smooth. The trees below were tall and old.
'OK,' I whispered.
I stood up cautiously, one foot an inch from the cliff, the other set back at a stabilizing angle. A memory appeared of making Airfix aeroplanes, filling them with cotton wool, covering them in lighter fuel, setting fire to them, dropping them from the top window of my house.
'Are you jumping?' called Étienne nervously.
'Just taking a better look.'
As the planes fell, they would arc outwards, then appear to curve back towards the wall. The point where they landed, exploding into sticky, burning pieces, always seemed to be nearer to the edge of the house than I expected. The distance was difficult to judge; the model planes always needed a harder shove than seemed necessary if they were to clear the doorstep, and the head of anyone coming to investigate the patches of flame around the yard.
I was turning this memory over when something happened. An overwhelming sensation washed over me, almost boredom, a strange listlessness. I was suddenly sick of how difficult this journey had become. There was too much effort, too many shocks and dilemmas to dissect. And this sickness had an effect. For a vital few seconds it liberated me from a fear of consequences. I'd had enough. I just wanted it over with.
So near and so far.
'So jump,' I heard my voice say.
I paused, wondering if I'd heard myself correctly, and then I did. I jumped.
Everything happened as things are supposed to happen while one falls. I had time to think. Stupid things flashed through my head, such as how my cat slipped off the kitchen table one time and landed on its head, and how once I misjudged a dive from a springboard and the water felt like wood — not concrete or metal, but wood.
Then I hit the pool, my T-shirt shot up my chest and jammed under my neck, and seconds later I bobbed to the surface. The basin was so deep I never even touched the bottom.
'Ha!' I shouted, thrashing the water around me with my arms, not caring who might hear. 'I'm alive!'
I looked up and saw Étienne and Françoise's heads poking over the cliff.
'You are OK?' called Étienne.
'I'm fine! I'm brilliant!' Then I felt something in my hand. I was still holding my cigarette - the tobacco part had been torn away, but the brown filter sat in my palm, soggy and nicotine-stained. I started laughing. 'Fucking brilliant! Chuck down the bags!'
I sat on the grassy shore, my feet dangling in the water, and waited for Étienne and Françoise to jump. Étienne was having some difficulty psyching himself up, and Françoise didn't want to jump first and leave him up there on his own.
The man appeared just as I was lighting another cigarette to make up for the one I'd ruined. He walked out of the trees a few metres away from me. If it hadn't been for his features and his full beard I could hardly have told he was a Caucasian. His skin was as dark as an Asian's, although a slightly bronze colour hinted it had once been white. All he had on was a pair of tattered blue shorts and a necklace made of sea shells. With the beard it was hard to tell his age, but I didn't think he was much older than me.
'Hey,' he said, cocking his head to one side. 'Pretty quick, for an FNG. You did the jump in twenty-three minutes.' His accent was English and regionless. 'It took me over an hour, but I was alone so it was harder.'
FNG
I covered my eyes with an arm and lay back. Over the sound of the waterfall Étienne's disembodied voice called to me, saying he was about to jump. From his angle, he wouldn't have been able to see the man in the trees. I didn't bother to answer him.
'You OK?' I heard the man ask, and the grass rustled as he took a few steps towards me. 'I'm sorry, I should have... You must be really freaked out.'
'Freaked out?' I thought. 'Not really. I feel quite relaxed.'
Extremely relaxed. Floaty. Between my fingers I could feel the cigarette warming my skin, burning closer to my hand.
'Who are you calling an FNG?' I murmured.
A shadow passed across my face as the man bent over to check I hadn't fainted. 'Did you say something?'
'Yeah. I did.'
Étienne shrieked as he fell, and the noise of his splash merged into the pounding of the water, and the pounding of the water sounded like the pounding of a helicopter.
'I said, who are you calling an FNG?'
The man paused. 'You've been here before? I don't recognize you.'
I smiled. 'Sure I've been here before,' I replied. 'In my dreams.'
Fragging. Bagging. Klicks. Grunts. Gooks. Charlie. MIA. KIA. LZ. DMZ. FNG.
FNG. Someone who's just starting their first tour in Vietnam. A Fucking New Guy.
Where do I learn these things?
I saw
84 Charlie Mopic
in 1989. I saw
Platoon
in 1986. My friend Tom said, 'Rich, you want to see
Platoon
?' 'OK,' I said, and he grinned. 'Then you'd better find someone to go with.' He was always making jokes like that - it was as natural to him as breathing. We went to see it that night at the Swiss Cottage Odeon, screen one, 1986.
1991, standing in an airport lounge, looking for something to pass the hours over a long flight to Jakarta. 'Eric Lustbader?' suggested Sean, and I shook my head. I'd seen Michael Herr sending dispatches. The hours flew by.
Fucking New Guy? Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley.
New to what?
We followed the man through the trees. Sometimes we crossed the stream from the pool as it meandered through the jungle, and sometimes we passed glades - one with a smouldering camp-fire and charred fish-heads strewn around it.
We didn't talk much as we walked. The only thing that the man would tell us was his name—Jed. The rest of our questions he waved aside. 'Simpler to deal with the talking at the camp,' he explained. 'We've got as many questions for you as you've got for us.'
At first glance the camp was close to how I'd imagined it might be. There was a large, dusty clearing surrounded by the rocket-ship trees and dotted with makeshift bamboo huts. A few canvas tents looked incongruous, but otherwise it was very like the kind of South-East-Asian village I'd seen many times before. At the far end was a larger construction, a longhouse, and beside it the stream from the waterfall re-emerged, bending around to run along the edge of the clearing. From the straightness of its banks, it had obviously been deliberately diverted.
It was only after taking all this in that I noticed there was something strange about the light. The forest had been both dark and bright by turns, but here everything was lit in an unchanging twilight, more like dusk than midday. I looked up, following the trunk of one of the giant trees. The height of the tree alone was breathtaking, accentuated by the fact that the lower branches had been cut away, so it was possible to appreciate its size. Higher up the branches began to grow again, curving upwards across the clearing like gables until they joined with the branches from the other side. But their point of joining seemed too dense and thick, and as I looked harder I began to see that they were coiled around each other, intertwining to form a cavernous ceiling of wood and leaves, hanging with the stalactite vines that now became magically appropriate.
'Camouflage,' said Jed, behind me. 'We don't want to be seen from the air. Planes sometimes fly over. Not often, but sometimes.' He pointed upwards. 'Originally the branches were tied together with ropes but now they just grow that way. Every so often we have to cut them back a bit, or it gets too gloomy. Impressive, huh?'
'Stunning,' I agreed, and was so captivated by this sight that I didn't even register that people had begun to emerge from the longhouse and were walking over the clearing towards us. Three people to be exact. Two women and a man.
'Sal, Cassie and Bugs,' said one of the women as they reached us. 'I'm Sal, but don't try to remember our names.' She smiled warmly. 'You'll only get confused when you meet the others, and you'll learn them all eventually.'
I'm not likely to forget Bugs, I thought to myself, just managing to suppress a laugh. I frowned and put a hand up to my temples. Since jumping off the waterfall my head had been feeling increasingly light. Now it had started to feel like it might float off my shoulders.
Françoise stepped up to the woman and said, 'Françoise, Étienne and Richard.'
'You're French! Lovely! We've only got one other French person here.'
'Richard is English.' Françoise gestured to me and I tried to nod politely, but I overran the motion forwards and the nod turned into a little bow.
'Lovely!' exclaimed the woman again, watching me curiously out of the corner of her eye. '...Well, let's get you some food, because I know you're all hungry.' She turned to the man. 'Bugs, you want to fix some stew? Then we can all have a good long chat and get to know each other. Does that sound good?'
'It sounds great, Sal,' I said loudly. 'You know, you're quite right. I do feel hungry.' The laugh I'd suppressed before suddenly worked its way out. 'We've only eaten these cold Magi-Noodles and chocolate. We couldn't take the Calor gas stove... Étienne's stove... And...'
Jed lunged to catch me as I fainted, but too late. His alarmed face spun out of view as I toppled backwards. The last thing I saw was a blue pinprick of sky through the canopy ceiling, before darkness rushed in and engulfed it.