Raphael gave up waiting, slipped very quickly and ended up sitting in a doorway and begging. He slept in a ditch on the road to Beau Bassin.
All he’d ever wanted to be was what he’d been but now his nose dripped and his mind was bowled by hazed memories, swinging backwards and forwards and back again. The distant sound of waves breaking on a reef came, stayed for a second and went. Tourists saw him, folded their arms and said, ‘Well of course they do it because they want to.’ He held out a hand but no one gave him a coin. He wanted to die.
‘Why don’t they go home?’ said Mauritians. ‘They don’t like it here.’
‘No…’
‘They’ve got their own place.’
‘The Chagos.’
‘It’s beautiful there.’
Raphael had no shoes. His last pair had broken. He left them by a drain and walked barefoot.
People stepped off the pavement to avoid him. He smelt. His hair was dirty and his face covered in scabs. He pissed his pants and sat down again.
A dog sniffed him, yelped and jumped away. His torn trousers exposed sores on his knees and feet. A policeman shook him by the shoulder.
‘Hey!’
Raphael groaned.
‘Up! You’re blocking the way.’
‘I’m getting up.’
What Raphael saw swam. He was starving. His stomach ballooned, the light hurt his eyes, all he’d been able to shit for a fortnight was blood.
The movement of traffic confused him. The smell of a roasting chicken made him cry. He mumbled about fishing and hooks, the policeman helped him up. Passers-by shook their heads and asked each other questions. Beggars were beggars but people who came from a paradise to be beggars and not go back made them scratch their heads. ‘It’s very beautiful there.’
‘We learnt about them in school.’
Raphael disappeared into a side-street. It was damp but no one bothered him there. He lay down beside a pile of tyres. A rat crawled over his chest, sniffed his coat and gnawed a corner of it. Steam spewed out of a restaurant window and drifted in clots down the street.
Raphael took shallow breaths, licked his lips and squinted at the wall opposite him. A torn poster advertised a film. He had never been in a cinema, didn’t know what the word meant. He had seen televisions switched on in rows in a shop; he had stood and watched for a minute, but confused and with his mouth taut had walked away and sat outside a church.
Raphael closed his eyes and his mouth. His skin was dry and a graze on his cheek hadn’t healed. It wept; he didn’t scratch it.
He smelt a copra factory and the hanging scents of the jungle plantations. Children calling for someone. The noise of a sheet of canvas flapping over a veranda. Maude mending a shirt on the veranda, the lights of East Point flitting through haze.
Maude talking to Leonard. ‘Sweep the floor and take the rubbish away. Be a good boy…’ Odette taking the broom before her brother stood up, swatting him with it and running down to the beach. Maude shouting, ‘Come back with it!’ but shrugging and turning away from her children. Raphael saw himself in the Chagos Archipelago waiting for a tide to fall… the clatter of saucepans from the restaurant and another blast of steam brought him round. He opened his eyes, squinted at the wall opposite and moved.
Raphael moved only once more before he died. He moved his head to make himself more comfortable. The sun set with a slur of light and it began to rain. His body was found the next day by a Chinese cook. After a designated period of time during which no one came forward to claim him, he was buried in an unmarked grave by a priest who was late for something he’d already had to put off twice. A week later, The Nordvaer arrived in Mauritius, and Odette and the others disembarked.