The Pesthouse

Synopsis:

In this post-apocalyptic picaresque from Whitbread-winner Crace (for Quarantine), America has regressed to medieval conditions. After a forgotten eco-reaction in the distant past, the U.S. government, economy and society have collapsed. The illiterate inhabitants ride horses, fight with bows and swords and scratch a meager living from farming and fishing. But with crop yields and fish runs mysteriously dwindling, most are trekking to the Atlantic coast to take ships to the promised land of Europe, gawking along the way at the ruins of freeways and machinery yards, which seem the wasteful excesses of giants. Heading east, naïve farm boy Franklin teams up with Margaret, a recovering victim of the mysterious "flux" whose shaven head (mark of the unclean) causes passers-by to shun her. Their love blossoms amid misadventures in an anarchic landscape: Franklin is abducted by slave-traders; Margaret falls in with a religious sect that bans metal and deplores manual labor, symbolically repudiating America's traditional cult of progress, technology and industriousness (masculinity takes some hits, too). Crace's ninth novel leaves the U.S. impoverished, backward, fearful and abandoned by history. Less crushing than Cormac McCarthy's
The Road
and less over-the-top than Matthew Sharpe's
Jamestown
(to name two recent post-apocalyptos), Crace's fable is an engrossing, if not completely convincing, outline of the shape of things to come.

EVERYBODY DIED at night. Most were sleeping at the time, the lucky ones who were too tired or drunk or deaf or wrapped too tightly in their spreads to hear the hillside, destabilized by rain, collapse and slip beneath the waters of the lake. So these sleepers (six or seven hundred, at a guess; no one ever came to count or claim the dead) breathed their last in passive company, unwarned and unexpectedly, without any fear. Their final moments, dormant in America.

But there are always some awake in the small times of the morning, the lovemakers, for instance, the night workers, the ones with stone-hard beds or aching backs, the ones with nagging consciences or bladders, the sick. And animals, of course.

The first of that community to die were the horses and the mules, which the travelers had picketed and blanketed against the cold out in the tetherings, between the houses and the lake, and beyond the human safety of stockades. They must have heard the landslide — they were so close and unprotected — though it was not especially bulky, not bulky enough, probably, to cause much damage on its own. In the time that it would take to draw a breath and yawn, there was a muted stony splash accompanied by a barometric pop, a lesser set of sounds than thunder, but low and devious nevertheless, and worrying — for how could anyone not know by now how mischievous the world could be? The older horses, connoisseurs of one-night stands when everything was devious and worrying, were too weary after yet another day of heading dawnways, shifting carts, freight and passengers, to do much more than tic their ears and flare their nostrils. Even when, a moment later, the displaced waters of the lake produced a sloshing set of boisterous waves where there had not been any waves before, the full-growns would not raise their heads. But the younger horses and the ever-childish mules tugged against their ropes, and one or two even broke free but hadn't the foresight to seek high ground in the brief time that remained.

What happened next was almost silent. The landslip had hit the deepest side of the lake and, therefore, took some moments to reach the bottom, ten man heights from the surface, and then took some moments more for the avalanche of stone, earth, swarf and ancient buried scrap to show how heavy it was and squeeze the life out of the gas-rich sediments, the volatile silt and compacted weeds, the soda pockets, which had settled on the bed through centuries and were now ready — almost eager — for this catalyst. Shaken up and shaken out in one great flatulence, the water fizzed and belched until all the gases were discharged, to form a heavy, deadly, surface-hugging cloud, not as high as the pines but higher, certainly, than animals. There wasn't any wind that night to thin the suffocating vapors and no longer any rain to wash the poison from the air, but there was gravity to direct them down, beyond the rapids and cascades, along the valley, past the tetherings, past the secret wooden bridge, past the metal fields, past the stone footings of the one-time shoe factory and tanning works, to seep between the palings of the pine stockades and settle on the town at the river's crossing point, where almost everyone was sleeping and dreaming of the ruined, rusty way ahead and all the paradise beyond.

Too near the lake and not sleeping was the boy called Nash, whose job that night was to protect the animals from cougars, wolves or thieves, or bush fish such as rattlers, possibly — though there'd be nothing he could do but shout and draw attention to himself if any of these many perils did approach the tetherings. He'd been too cold and wet even to doze, but not as cold and wet as usual. He huddled over his stove stones — which, following the midnight downpour, produced more smoke than heat — in his new and somehow terrifying coat. He'd traded for it only that day (with a man half his height again and three times his weight), giving a good supply of dried fruit, some pork twists and a leather water bag, hardly distinguishable from one another in taste or texture, and a flagon of apple juice that the giant, like a giant, had dispatched on the spot. So when the boy heard the landslip and the waves and stood to hear them better, should they come again, his coat spread out around him on the ground like chieftain robes intended for display but — at least for anybody as short as him — not ideal for walking.

Now Nash spotted the two loose mules and hurried out into the night to picket them again. He was not surprised when the coat snagged around his ankles and feet and brought him down. The coat had already toppled him several times that night. He didn't hurt himself — boys bounce — but he felt more winded than made sense, more dislocated than he should, and stayed on the ground for a few moments to catch his breath and find his balance. His coat of farm goatskins and hair was as good as a bed and thick enough to keep the moisture out for a while. He'd have to shorten it, he thought. He'd have to cut off half a goat and turn the trimmings into belts or gloves, turn the trimmings into profit, actually. When he had time.

But for the moment, unaccountably, he was too comfortable to move. He had no time or energy for anything, not even sleep. He lost himself in the hairs and skins, forgot the night-time and the mud. He did feel sleepy, finally, but not alarmed. Too lost to be alarmed. The air was weighty, and its smell was stupefying — somewhere between the smell of mushrooms, eggs and rotting, clamped potatoes. He'd stand up in a moment, shuck off his dreams of belts and gloves, remove the coat and catch the mules. He'd be in trouble, otherwise. A mule was wealth. But, though his dreams soon ended, he never caught his breath and never caught the mules and never found out what had happened at the lake. This wasn't sleep oppressing him. He dimly recognized as much himself. He was the victim of magic, possibly, or fever — there was already fever in the town, he had heard — or a curse, the sort that storytellers knew about — or else some dead air from the grave, encouraged by the rain, had come to press its clammy lips on his. He'd tasted it. His lungs were rigid, suddenly. He was in the gripping custody of hair and skins. He'd been a fool to trust a giant. It must have seemed the coat had always meant to smother him, was trained to kill. This was a homing coat that now would flee, as loyal and cunning as a dog, to rejoin the tall man who had traded it and, no doubt, would trade it many times again, exchanging death for apple juice.

Down in Ferrytown, not sleeping either, were two passengers from ten days west, a beauty boy — no beard — not twenty yet, and his slightly older wife. They'd found a berth in the loft of the dormitory, against the guest-house rules that naturally put the women behind locked doors in different quarters from the men but two-a-bed nevertheless. It was less comfy and colder than those first-floor beds where his parents and his sisters were but more private and consoling. These newly-weds didn't have to share their air with anyone. No wonder they'd been making love, as usual. Moving on each day and spending every night in some new space was oddly stimulating, they'd found, as was having sex as quietly as they could in sleeping company, against the rules. But now that lovemaking was concluded, they were quarreling in whispers, despite the likelihood that everything they said could be heard by strangers. The consolations of lovemaking don't last long when you are fearful, regardless of the massive hope beyond the fears. How many days would it be before they reached the ocean and the ships? The beauty boy thought one more month. He'd not pretend that things were better than they were. The far side of the river was an odd, perplexing place, he'd heard, haunted, wrecked and hard underfoot, with prairies of rubble where people had once lived in bastions and towers. The way ahead would be difficult beyond imagining. His wife did not believe such stories. She was uncompromisingly optimistic, hopeful beyond reason. The rain that night had been more salty than she'd expected. When the rain tastes like tears, the sea is close. She'd seen a white bird ('That's a sign') and she'd heard another passenger say they'd reach the shore — the mighty river with one bank — in just three more days. Then the future could begin. So much for rubble, bastions and towers. Her husband was too easily impressed. She drifted off to thoughts of boarding ship in three days' time, and no more quarreling...

Not sleeping and on the verge of calling out for the busy couple in the loft to keep quiet was a woman who had strained her back. She'd been too eager earlier in the day to help her horse negotiate the steep descent into the valley and had fallen awkwardly. She sat up in her cot and flexed her spine, hoping not to wake the woman at her side. The pain shot down the outside of her left leg and cramped her toes. She crossed her fingers, willing it to go, and in a while the pain had disappeared....

Not sleeping was the ferryman who, having heard the rain, knew that he would have to drag himself from bed too soon, call his four sons and go down to the crossing to fasten the raft more securely and further in to the shore before the water surge. Not sleeping were the baker and his daughter who had just got up to start preparing flat bread, ash cake and pea loaf for the morning, enough dough and cornmeal for at least one hundred and sixty passengers who'd need to eat before they were ferried on the raft to the east bank of the river and yet another day of lugging to the coast...

Not sleeping was a woman who had been alarmed by travel and by travelers — all her life — and was not much liked by anyone she met, but who had been much more terrified of staying put where she was born, while all her family and neighbors emigrated east, fired up by boredom, hope and poverty. Now she was sick from too much wayside grain and drinking sullied water for more than a month. She'd rather breathe her last than gag anymore, she'd told her husband. 'I should have stayed at home.' He'd said, 'You should have.' She pulled her knees up to her chest and tried to belch the colic out...

Not sleeping was a tall man from the plains — not quite a giant, except to boys — who had to go out, barefooted, in the cold to the town palisade for the second time that night to urinate. He would have worn his goatskin coat if he'd not traded it that day. He was standing with his trousers down and pissing apple juice when what had come out of the lake with such a show just moments previously arrived without a sound and almost without a shape to overwhelm whomever it could find, the wakeful and the slumbering.

This used to be America, this river crossing in the ten-month stretch of land, this sea-to-sea. It used to be the safest place on earth.

FRANKLIN LOPEZ had not been sleeping in Ferrytown, though he'd wanted to. He'd not been sleeping anywhere, in fact. Couldn't sleep. He'd weathered such pain the day before that he'd been forced to consider what anyone (other than his brother) who'd seen the wincing recoil in his limp or examined his inflamed leg had already told him, that he shouldn't walk another step. Certainly he shouldn't walk downhill on such a long and hazardous gradient, unless he wanted to damage his knee beyond repair and put paid to any hopes of getting to the coast and boarding ship before the worst of the fall storms. He and his brother, Jackson (named for their parents' small home town on the plains), had left the journey rather late as it was. Too late, perhaps. The prairie tall-grass had already whitened and buckled. Apart from nuts and mushrooms, there was little free food to be gathered at the trackside. The first rains had arrived, and soon the winds and snow would get to work. Traveling would become more hazardous and then impossible. Only the ill prepared, the ill fated and the ill timed were still strung out thinly along the previously busy route, hoping to make the final sailings before ice and squalls shut down the sea and, anyway, made shore to ship or ship to shore impossible. The wayside going east was already Uttered with the melancholy camps and the shallow graves — soon to be torn up by wolves — of those whose bodies couldn't take the journey, those who had been fatally chilled by wading through rivers, those who had starved and weakened, those who had been thrown by their horses or poisoned by their suppers, those who had been crushed between the fears of going forward and the dread of going back.