The Beach

Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of loudspeakers, tracer-fire and paddy-field scenery, the smell of napalm in the morning.

Long time.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for my name is Richard. I was born in 1974.

The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Khao San Road. Khao San Road was backpacker land. Almost all the buildings had been converted into guest-houses, there were long-distance-telephone booths with air-con, the cafés showed brand-new Hollywood films on video, and you couldn’t walk ten feet without passing a bootleg-tape stall. The main function of the street was as a decompression chamber for those about to leave or enter Thailand, a halfway house between East and West.

The map was beautifully colored in. The islands’ perimeters were drawn in green biro and little blue pencil waves bobbed in the sea. A compass sat in the top-right-hand corner, carefully segmented into sixteen points, each with an arrow tip and appropriate bearing. At the top of the map it read “Gulf of Thailand” in thick red marker. A thinner red pen had been used for the islands’ names. It was so carefully drawn that I had to smile. It reminded me of geography homework and tracing paper.[…]

Then, on one of a cluster of small islands I noticed a black mark. An X mark. I looked closer. Written underneath in tiny letters was the word “Beach.”

If Étienne was the one who turned the idea of finding the beach into a possibility, it was Françoise who made it happen. The odd thing was, she did it almost accidentally, simply by taking it for granted that we were going to try.

They were Harvard students. Sammy was studying law, Zeph was studying Afro-American literature. Their surf act was a reaction to the condescending Europeans they kept meeting in Asia. “It’s a protest against bigotry,” Zeph explained, pulling knots out of his tangled blond locks. “Europeans think all Americans are stupid, so we act stupid to confirm your prejudices.”

I wouldn’t call it a dream. Nothing with Mister Duck was like a dream. In this case, it was more like a movie. Or news footage, swaying on a hand-held camera.

“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. […]

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.

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.

“Of course this is more than a beach resort. But at the same time, it is just a beach resort. We come here to relax by a beautiful beach, but it isn’t a beach resort because we’re trying to get away from beach resorts. Or we’re trying to make a place that won’t turn into a beach resort. See?”

One face stuck out. It belonged to a black guy sitting alone, his back against a storeroom hut. He looked around twenty, he had a shaved head, and his eyes were fixed intently on a small grey box in his hands — the Nintendo Game Boy I’d spotted earlier.

[…]The schoolyard atmosphere was telling me to stick with the people I knew, but then I looked back at the Nintendo guy. His face suddenly screwed up and over the murmur of talking I heard him hiss, “Game Over.”

Just as people were drifting off, a sleepy voice from somewhere in the darkness would say, “‘Night John-Boy.” Then there’d be a short pause while we waited for the cue to be picked up, and eventually you’d hear someone say “‘Night, Frankie,” or Sal, or Gregorio, or Bugs, or anyone they felt like saying good night to. Then the named person would have to say good night to someone different, and it would go around the whole longhouse until Bugs, or anyone they felt like saying good night to. Then the named person would have to say good night to someone different, and it would go around the whole longhouse until everyone had been mentioned.

Anybody could start the game off and there was no order to the names called out. When there were only a few names left it got difficult remembering which people had been mentioned and which hadn’t, but that was part of the game. If you screwed it up, then there’d be loud tuts and exaggerated sighs until you got it right.

I stubbed out the cigarette. “And the zeros. What are they about?”

Keaty smiled. “That was Daffy’s idea. It’s a date.”

“A date? The date of what?”

“The date they first arrived.”

“I thought that was eighty-nine.”

“It was.” Keaty stood up and patted the stabilizer fin. “But Daffy used to call it year zero.”

I knew there was something wrong as soon as I took a breath. The air was foul. So bad that even though I was bursting for oxygen, I could only manage short breaths before I started gagging. Instinctively, pointlessly, I looked around me, but the absence of light was so absolute that I couldn’t see my fingers an inch from my face.

Eventually I hit on a good idea. I would drag the guy’s body away to the bushes and hide it. Then, when she woke up, she’d just think he’d gone for a walk. After a day or so she’d realize he was missing and might worry about what had happened to him, but at least she wouldn’t know he was dead. By that time he would probably have been eaten by ants and beetles, and no one but me would be any the wiser.

I busied myself with the task at hand, keeping half an eye on my watch. Jed would be awake soon and then it would be time to leave.

Watching it, I realized I’d never killed anything as large before, or anything that fought so violently for its survival. As if to complement my thought, the shark increased the intensity of its thrashing, and became obscured behind a cloud of disturbed sand and shredded seaweed. Occasionally, like in a comic-book fight, its tail or head would appear out of the cloud before darting back inside again. The sight made me grin, and salt-water eased through the sides of my mouth. I resurfaced. I needed to spit and I needed some air. Then, with no intention of going near it while it was in that frantic state, I floated face down and waited for it to die.

It took me over two hours to get to sleep that night, and the thoughts that kept me awake were as unusual as the rest of the day had been. For the first time since arriving on the beach, I started thinking about home. Almost, in fact, wishing I could return. Not to leave the beach permanently — just to contact a few important people and let them know I was still alive and OK. My family particularly, and a few of my friends. I suppose it may have had as much to do with my earlier conversation with Françoise as with the subsequent unsettling events. The thought of parents had hovered in the back of my mind, reluctant to fall under the beach’s amnesiac spell.

I thought for a minute. Then I started to creep backwards along the track. Jed stared at me as if to say, “Where the fuck are you going?” but I raised a hand to tell him not to worry. I knew what to do because I’d seen it done on Tour of Duty.

His face contorted as though he was going to yell at me. I looked at him impassively while he held the expression, then he gurgled and another stream of shit splashed on to the ground. “No!” he wailed, then his legs buckled and he slipped backwards.

I took a step sideways to keep clear of the spreading dark puddle. “Jesus, Bugs. Can’t you hold on?”

Bugs whimpered and doubled up into the fetal position, tried to straighten, and doubled up again.

I continued watching him, still breathing into my elbow though it did nothing to block the stench. The giddy feeling was getting stronger, mixing with intense rushes of irritation.

Then I heard Sal call behind me, “What’s happened?’, and at once Karl began yelling at the top of his lungs. For a minute he yelled non-stop, filling the longhouse with high, frantic sound that made some people cover their ears or yell equally loudly, for no apparent reason other than to block him out. It was only after Keaty had grabbed him, shouting at him to shut up, that he managed to form an intelligible word: “Shark.”

“I’ll add that matters have not been helped by certain individuals who have hardly tried to patch things up. In fact, I might say they’ve deliberately made things worse. And yes, Richard, before you even dream of denying it, I mean you. I don’t want to repeat anything that was said in the longhouse a few nights ago, but I will say that if anything like it ever happens again, the one who’ll be chucking spears is me. Clear?”

“If we’d taken him the day after the attack, maybe two days after, he might have been OK. And I’d have taken that chance, even if it meant losing the beach. I think Sal would have too… But now… what would be the point?”

Within five or six seconds the silence was exploded by a burst of gunfire. It was entirely unambiguous, somehow managing to ripple through the trees like a quick breeze and tear through them with shocking loudness. A single burst, but a long one. Long enough for me to blink and hunch my shoulders, and then be aware that the shooting was still going on.

“Living with death. Time-limits on everything you enjoy. Sitting on a beautiful beach, waiting for a fucking time-limit to come up. Affecting the way you look at the sand and the sunsets and the way you taste the rice. Then moving on and waiting for it to happen all over again. For eleven years!” Mister Duck shivered. “… Then to have that cancer lifted. To think you’ve found a cure… That’s what you can’t imagine, Rich.”

I reached Christo’s head by simply sliding around the left-hand side of the tent. Then, just as I’d suggested earlier, I pinched his nose and covered his mouth. There was no twitching, no resistance. A few minutes later I took my hands away, counted to one hundred and twenty and slid back to the cool outdoors. And that was it. It really was that simple.

As I returned across the clearing, clicking my fingers in time with my footsteps, I saw the reason for the cheering I’d heard. Both the Yugoslavian girls were in the central circle of candles, heads resting on each other’s shoulder, slow dancing to the buzz of noise.

It wasn’t completely clear through the shadows, and most of the view was blocked by Bugs’ broad back. I only saw when he rose up. He’d cut Sammy’s head off. Cut it off, and was swinging it by the hair.

And suddenly Jean had a knife and was cutting at the thin German girl, slicing into her belly and pulling out her insides. Then Cassie joined them, hunched over Zeph, working on his thighs. Étienne vomited, and within seconds the corpses were swarmed.

I’m fine. I have bad dreams, but I never saw Mister Duck again. I play video games. I smoke a little dope. I got my thousand-yard stare. I carry a lot of scars.

I like the way that sounds.

I carry a lot of scars.