Kensuke’s Kingdom

Stella Artois barked her farewells at them, and at every boat we passed in The Solent. But as we were sailing out past the Isle of Wight, she fell strangely quiet. Maybe she sensed, as we did, that there was no turning back now. This was not a dream. We were off around the world. It was real, really real.

Mom gets quite snappy with us sometimes when we don’t do things right. Dad doesn’t seem to mind, not out here, not at sea. He just winks at me and we forget about it. They play a lot of chess together, when it’s calm enough. Dad's winning so far, five games to three. Mom says it doesn't bother her, but it does. I can tell.

We only spent a couple of days in La Coruña. Mom slept a lot. She was really tired. Dad did some work on the rudder cable while we were there. He’s still not happy with it, though. We set off for the Azores two days ago.

We passed south of an island called St. Helena a few days ago. No need to stop. Nothing much there, except it's the place where Napoléon was exiled. He died there. Lonely place to die. So, of course, I had to do a history project on Napoléon. […]

I saw a sail today, another yacht. We shouted Merry Christmas and waved, and Stella barked her head off, but they were too far away. When the sail disappeared, the sea felt suddenly very empty.

The sun was blazing down. I had not really felt the burning heat of it until then. I scanned the horizon. If there was a sail somewhere out there in the haze, I could not see it. And then it came to me that even if I were to see a sail, what could I do? I couldn’t light a fire. I had no matches. I knew about cavemen rubbing sticks together, but I had never tried it. I looked all round me now. Sea. Sea. Sea.

Nothing but sea on all sides. I was on an island. I was alone.

“Water, we’ll need water. But so do those monkeys, right? We’ve just got to find it, that’s all. And there must be food, too –– fruit or nuts, something. Whatever it is that they eat, we’ll eat.”

It helped to speak my thoughts out loud to Stella, helped to calm the panic that came over me now in waves. More than anything, it was Stella’s companionship that helped me through those first hours on the island.

The jungle droned and cackled and croaked, and all night long the mosquitoes were at me, too. They whined in my ears and drove me crazy. I held my hands over my ears to shut out the sound of them. I curled myself around Stella, tried to forget where I was, to lose myself in my dreams. I remembered then that it was my birthday, and thought of my last birthday back at home with Eddie and Matt, and the barbecue we’d had in the garden, how the hot dogs had smelled so good. I slept at last.

The next morning […] It took me some moments to remember where I was, and all that had happened to me. I was suddenly overwhelmed by one cruel reality after another: my utter aloneness, my separation from my mother and father, and the dangers all around me.

I do not know for how many days I lay there, drifting in and out of sleep, only that whenever I woke, Kensuke was always there sitting beside me. He rarely spoke and I could not speak, but the silence between us said more than any words. My erstwhile enemy, my captor, had become my savior. He would lift me to pour fruit juice or warm soup down my throat. He would sponge me down with cooling water, and when the pain was so bad that I cried out, he would hold me and sing me softly back to sleep. It was strange. When he sang to me it was like an echo from the past, of my father’s voice, perhaps –– I didn't know. Slowly the pain left me. Tenderly he nursed me back to life.

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 orangutans, 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 honored by that.

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. […] 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 recognized the word, as if he was greeting an old friend. […] Now at last we could talk more easily to each other, 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.

“Soon engine stop, but ship not go down. Big wind come, big storm. I think I die for sure now. But sea take ship and bring me here on this island. Ship come onto beach, and still I am not dead.

“Very soon I find food. I find water also. I live like beggar man for long while. Inside I feel bad person. I think, all my friends dead, all my family dead, and I alive. I not want to live. But soon I meet orangutans. They very kind to me. This very beautiful, very peaceful place. No war here, no bad people. I say to myself, Kensuke, you very lucky person to be alive. Maybe you stay here.”