‘WELL, THIS IS quite something, isn’t it?’ said Sandy Beach. They were squatting side by side on the shitting beach. Dr Gold had modestly positioned himself some twenty feet or so away, whence came the constipated grunts of an overweight man who wasn’t getting enough fibre in his diet.
It sure is, thought William. I’m on the beach with Sandy Beach!
‘Who’d ever have thought it, all those years ago,’ continued Beach, ‘that the two of us would be together here today, sitting on a beach.’
Or rather, shitting on a beach, William almost said but stopped himself just in time. Only someone crass and vulgar would think that was amusing.
‘Or rather, shitting on a beach,’ said Sandy Beach.
William groaned aloud, he just couldn’t help it, but the way Beach immediately echoed it you could tell he hadn’t realized it was a comment upon his sense of humour but had assumed instead that it was a vocal aid to defecation, a cousin to the tennis player’s grunt assist on a service.
The enthusiasm of Beach’s groan said it all. You could tell from that one elongated syllable that he had taken to the idea of alfresco communal shitting with gusto. He had no embarrassment, something William put down to the fact that merely being Sandy Beach was such an embarrassment in itself the man had long ago grown a skin any turtle would be proud of. Shitting in public couldn’t be any worse than being who he was.
‘Wow, I sure needed that,’ said Beach, pulling up his pants. He turned to inspect what he had produced and found a posse of natives also staring down at it. He had no idea they were using his dump as a control in a scientific inquiry into William’s. Whatever peculiarity they had detected in the latter could now be compared to another white man’s production to ascertain whether it was unique or universal in the developed world.
Beach was entirely undismayed by the examination. ‘I wouldn’t get too close to that, guys,’ he said. ‘I had a fearsome red curry day before yesterday.’
After the shitting they returned to the Captain Cook, where the three of them had slept in a line on the mahogany dining table, to collect their briefcases. Beach was in a lively mood. ‘I won’t be recommending your hotel to anyone, William,’ he said. ‘The bed was too hard and you’re liable to find another guest sleeping in your soup.’
‘Ha ha, that’s very funny,’ said Dr Gold. ‘That’s some sense of humour you have, Beach.’
‘It’s not so much that I have a great sense of humour,’ said Beach, with a meaningful glance at William, ‘although of course I do. It’s more about a world view. You have to laugh about these things or life just gets you down.’
On their way to the village Beach treated William to the tale of his encounter with a six-foot New Zealand girl in a bar in Wellington that William had caught the tail end of him telling to Dr Gold when the helicopter landed.
‘Man, she was big!’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Gold with a chuckle, ‘and you like them big.’
‘Hey, sorry, I forgot,’ said Beach. ‘I told you this already.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Gold. ‘I can stand hearing it again. Nothing like this ever happens to me in bars. I go to a bar, I get drunk, that’s all that happens.’
Beach had barely resumed his story when he was interrupted again, this time by the sight of a figure coming towards them.
‘Wow!’ said Beach. ‘Fucking bow wow, man!’
It was Kiroa. The way her hips swung from side to side you’d have thought she was teasing the three white men, but William knew it was just her normal walk.
Kiroa stopped and said to William, ‘Hello, gwanga, is be good for see you again. Lintoa is tell me you is come back.’
There was something in the way her lips lingered over the she-boy’s name that made William suspect her affections had not changed during his absence. The hopelessness of unrequited love is always obvious to an objective observer with an unreturned passion of his own. Kiroa seemed not to notice Beach whose eyes were level with her nipples. He was slavering like a hungry dog confronted by a bone.
‘It’s good to see you too,’ William said. She smiled, somewhat sadly, he thought, and continued on her way along the shore.
The three men stood and watched her go.
‘She is BIG!’ said Beach.
‘And you like them big,’ repeated Gold.
Beach turned to William. ‘Is it true they don’t have any morals? They just go into the jungle with one another and do it? I mean, you don’t even have to buy them a drink first?’
‘It’s not quite so simple as that. They have morals all right. They’re just different morals from the ones we have.’
‘Hot banana!’ said Beach.
As William had arranged, the amputees and other claimants were waiting in the village centre. William did a rough head count to make sure all thirty-seven were present.
There were fifty-two.
He counted again and again arrived at fifty-two. So next time he was careful to include only those people who were missing something, a leg, an arm, a hand or a foot, plus a couple who had been blinded by shrapnel and one or two like Purnu who’d lost a wife or husband. Thirty-seven. He couldn’t work out where he was going wrong.
They began a long day of interviews. Dr Gold examined each claimant to make sure their injuries were consistent with landmine damage. William was surprised at the speed with which he was able to do this.
‘Oh, there’s not much to it, it’s a knack,’ said the doctor in an offhand way. ‘It comes with experience. It’s an area where American expertise is second to none. You see, for decades now US-manufactured mines have been blowing off limbs all over the world. I’ve seen so many cases I can spot them straight away.’
A little later William saw him questioning a man and shaking his head. William didn’t recognize the man as anyone he remembered interviewing himself. He looked for his name on the list of claimants and found it wasn’t there.
‘What’s his injury?’ he asked the doctor.
‘Bomb is blow off all toes on this foot,’ said the man, indicating his right foot. ‘I is not can walk properly now.’
‘Machete,’ said Dr Gold.
‘Machete?’ said William. He thought the doctor was asking for one, the way doctors always said ‘scalpel’ in TV hospital dramas.
‘Machete,’ repeated the doctor. ‘He cut off his toes himself with a machete.’
‘No, no, no,’ protested the man. ‘Is be bomb.’
The doctor thrust his face into the man’s. ‘Are you trying to tell me I don’t know a machete wound when I see one? Are you?’
The man shook his head. ‘N-no, but—’
‘No buts, please, my good man. See here, Mr Hardt, the straight line of the toe stumps? A landmine doesn’t do that. It’s not so precise. Not so neat. A landmine blast will leave everything uneven. You end up with frayed toe stumps. And look here, this gash above the point of severance. A blow that missed the target when he was hacking the toes off. Typical of a fraudulent claim.’
‘OK,’ said the man, ‘is be machete that is chop off toes, but you is must still give me dollars. Is be bomb is make me lose toes.’
‘How do you reckon that?’ demanded the doctor.
‘Well, is be like this. I is go cut coconut open with machete. I is have coconut on ground and I is hold steady against stump of tree with this foot. I is just go hit coconut when someone is step on bomb. BOOM! I is miss coconut and is chop off toes instead.’
The doctor looked at William and smiled. He looked back at the man. ‘Very interesting. But I’m afraid it doesn’t quite explain this.’ He ran his fingers over the gash.
‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘Ah yes, now I is remember. Is be two bombs. First bomb is go bang, I is strike foot there. Is not cut toes off. Then I is lift machete again for have another go at coconut. Just as I is strike, is be second bomb.’
‘Two bombs, huh?’ said the doctor. ‘What bad luck.’
‘I is know,’ said the man. ‘Is be plenty bad magic. Who is believe this is can happen?’
‘Not me, I’m afraid, my friend,’ said the doctor, patting him on the shoulder. ‘Now run along and stop wasting my time.’
The doctor was a kindly man and this last remark was not meant as a joke. He watched, somewhat chastened, as the man hobbled away with the aid of a stick.
William understood now where his extra claimants came from. They were opportunists hoping to cash in on the anticipated bonanza. Next up was a middle-aged woman who said she was blind. She was steered towards the doctor by her hopeful-looking husband. She held her arms out in front of her to prevent herself from colliding with anything.
‘Your eyes?’ said Gold.
‘Yes, I is not can see thanks for bomb. Blast is take away my sight.’
The doctor produced a pencil flashlight and shone it in her eyes. He switched it on, waited a moment or two, then switched it off. ‘Hmm, interesting. Normal pupil dilation.’
He turned away from her and bent to his medical bag. The woman stood staring patiently into space. Quick as a flash the doctor whirled round. He had a large knife in his hand which he swung at the woman’s face.
She ducked.
As she walked away without the assistance of her husband Gold smiled at William. ‘Not easy to fake, blindness.’
William was getting worried that all the false claimants would damage his case. They might undermine the credibility of the genuine victims.
It was especially difficult to believe that anyone was going to get anything out of Beach. He questioned the natives remorselessly, going over and over every detail of how their injuries had occurred, tripping them up over inconsistencies and, when they got through that, expressing doubt that their lives were materially affected by what he referred to as their ‘so-called disability’.
‘How does having an artificial leg stop you fishing? You’re in a boat floating on the water, for Christ’s sake. What’s it matter whether your foot is made of flesh and blood or wood or plastic?’
Or, to a woman: ‘Anyone can cook with a prosthetic hand. Just wedge your spoon in it, like so—’ he demonstrated with a pen, ‘and stir away. What’s the problem?’
By late afternoon they had worked through a quarter of the claimants. They sent the rest home until the next day. Sandy Beach stretched his arms. ‘What do you do for entertainment around here?’
‘There isn’t any,’ said William. ‘Read a book.’
Beach stood up, ‘Aw, come on . . .’
‘OK,’ said William. ‘If that’s too dull, there’s always the kassa house.’
‘Aha, I knew it. Slip them a few dollars and enjoy a bit of the old . . .’ He went into a pelvic-thrusting pose that caused a few of the natives to gather round and stare.
‘He is eat orange fungi?’ asked one of them.
‘It’s men-only,’ William explained to Beach. ‘You just lie around getting stoned on a hallucinogenic drug.’
‘And afterwards the sex is marvellous,’ said Beach. ‘I get the picture. Lead me to it. You coming, Gold?’
‘No, I think I’ll pass. It’s not exactly sensible to toy with un-researched hallucinogenic substances. They can alter your mind.’
Maybe it’ll change Beach’s for the better, William thought.