LITMIR.BIZ

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do it.’

      It was true; his hands were trembling too much. Was there any chance he’d be well enough by the time of the escape? Then again, the thing about fevers is that you never know how they’ll play out. A bad one can carry a man off within hours. But some pass in a day or two, with no real consequences.

      As he rolled Say-Say a cigarette, Sabir went through the escape plan he and Carpette had worked out, dropping to a low whisper when he thought one of the other convicts was taking too close an interest. Here in the Colony, Sabir has by now realised, it’s not the guards who are your main enemy, it’s the other convicts. He kept talking as they smoked together – explaining about the boat, the sail, the provisions, the paddle down the river before dawn, the ocean crossing to Trinidad, then along the coast to Colombia. The plan had been formed in bits and pieces over several meetings and, spoken out loud like that in its entirety, it sounded too fantastic. As if Sabir were recounting one of those escape yarns you’d hear from someone who’d heard it from someone else. Like so many of the tales that do the rounds here, you can’t quite bring yourself to believe it.

      ‘We’re not going to hang about until you’re better, though. Either you’re well enough by next week, or we’ll have to find someone else.’

      Say-Say leant towards him, gripped Sabir’s arm. ‘Listen, I’m not as bad as I look. I’ve been smoking quinine.’

      Quinine: one of the tricks for shamming sickness. You add it to your tobacco and it puts your temperature up, makes you look as if you’ve got a fever.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Had to get out of barracks. I owe Pierrot. Not that much! But he started threatening me. Now he’s sent word here. I’ve got to get out of camp, too. It’s that or …’

      Sabir looked around the hall. Men lying flat, their bodies glistening, staring up into nothing. Only one of them was sitting up: a man counting endlessly on his fingers: ‘27, 28, 29 – 27, 28, 29 – 27, 28, 29 …’ A few mattresses down from him, Sabir noticed Antillais, Masque’s co-murderer. He, too, was shivering away a fever. With him was a kitten, attached to his wrist with a length of twine. So he’d wasted no time in getting another pet. The kitten jumped onto his chest, mistaking his shaking as a desire to play.

      Say-Say grabbed at him again. ‘Did I ever tell you what I got done for?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Smuggling. We used to run a fishing boat from Bayonne to San Sebastian.’

      ‘Really. What did you smuggle?’

      ‘Oh, all sorts of things. People. And arms. To the fighters.’

      ‘What fighters?’

      Another shaking fit took hold of Say-Say. He was trying to convince Sabir he knew about boats – except that the story was so fanciful as to be unbelievable. Sabir wasn’t even sure that Say-Say was shamming his fever: if he already had gambling debts, then where would he get the money to buy the quinine? He was one of those nervy convicts who was always making up stories to impress the others. Nonetheless, Sabir remembered the promise he’d made to the country boy Gaspard, that he’d now silently transferred to Say-Say. He’d been swindled out of his money by the forts-à-bras; it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t survive here. He’d have to get transferred, or escape. And Sabir would help him escape. In some way, it was liberating to help someone else. It was even liberating to feel pity for someone other than himself.

      ‘I’ll be back up on Monday. If you’re clear of fever, then it’s on. Otherwise …’

      ‘I’ll be all right. Don’t worry. I can’t go back to barracks, though. Either they let me stay on here, or I’ll have to hide out in the forest.’

      ‘If it comes to that, make your way down to the river. There’s a trail that runs thirty metres to the right of the main path. Use that. As you approach the house, you’ll see the garden to your right. Track round to the other side of it. You’ll find a path that leads to a small circular building. Go inside, stay put. I’ll come by in the evening. I’ll bring food.’

      

      The Boni ferrymen are unloading crates onto the riverbank. Sabir thought there’d be pots, not crates, and he has no clear idea of what to expect inside them. In the book on orchids he’s borrowed from the commandant’s library, there are careful line drawings of intricate, bizarre flowers, of a sort he’s never seen before. One of them has wavy, drooped petals like hair extending all the way down the stem; another is like a cat with its jaws open; another like a dragon; yet another like a wizened head. Some are repulsive, some lushly sensual, some crudely sexual. Most look like anything but flowers. In fact they are curiously animal-like, and what they remind Sabir of are the thin, fantastical creatures in a picture book his mother gave him as a child. Although the creatures were supposed to be comical, Sabir was frightened of them; in his dreams, they’d emerge from under his bed like grotesque insects. When he finally confided his fear to his mother, she laughed at him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing living under your bed.’

      Foliage peeks out through the slats of the crates. Once they’ve been transported to the nursery, Sabir prises off a lid. What he finds inside is a chaotic jumble of bulbous, gnarled roots, stems, browning leaves, earth … but no flowers. It looks like a box of weeds removed from a flower bed. The plants are all sodden, as well – no doubt the crates were doused with water on board. Perplexed, Sabir stands there staring. What would Edouard do under these circumstances? He’s the real gardener, the real expert. Not for the first time, Sabir feels guilty that it’s he who’s in this relatively exalted position, who’s lied his way to privilege, while his old comrade Edouard’s out there somewhere chopping wood.

      One of the convicts on his team says: ‘Well, what’s all this muck, then?’

      Another remarks: ‘Whatever they were, they’re all dead now.’

      Not quite. Here and there a plant seems to be alive – and then on closer inspection, maybe a good quarter of them are.

      ‘You’re right,’ answers Sabir, after a minute’s sun-struck silence. ‘Looks like they’re good for nothing.’ They remove the lids from the rest of crates. It occurs to Sabir to put two of the deadest-looking crates aside, to show the commandant when he comes down. ‘We’ll get rid of the rest of them, though. You can dump the lot in the jungle, behind the folly.’

      Once his men have gone with the crates, Sabir turns back to the house. Halfway across the garden he has second thoughts. It’s a relief that most of the plants are dead. It’s even more convenient to say that they all are. The commandant won’t be down from the main camp for another hour. Sabir goes back to the two crates the convicts have left behind and carefully sifts through them, pulling out any plants that look as if they’re still alive and tossing them into the river.

      Working under the noon sun can produce a kind of delirium. Afterwards, Sabir sits down under a tree with his back to the river, at the point at which the garden reaches the water. Sometimes there’s a breeze here, but not today. This wet heat that permeates everything, that even has its own colour, its own smell. Men in the distance seem hazy, uncertain against the background, like wraiths on the shoreline.

      Sabir can hear a low buzz, which at first he takes to be an insect. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spots something high up in the sky, glistening in the brilliant light. It’s vividly red, like a tiny drop of blood against the blue infinity. A biplane, following the river into the interior. But there’s no airfield at Saint-Laurent. Beyond Saint-Laurent there’s another camp and then nothing – just Boni and Indian villages carved out of the forest, plus various mining camps. Certainly nowhere to land a plane. Sabir watches the red splotch as it continues deeper and deeper into the jungle until it disappears altogether.

      Now he’s thinking about the orchids again. With or without them, he realises, the garden is nonetheless taking shape. Gazing out at the shimmering expanse of newly laid lawn, Sabir is seized with a certain proprietorial pleasure. The layout is the same as the one

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