Need to Want

Epigraph

"Civilisation is a hopeless race to discover remedies

for the evils it produces." (Rousseau)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer

Chapters

Epigraph

1.    Moonlight

2.    Deception

3.    Water Master

4.    My Man, My Woman

5.    Tamers

6.    The Fence

7.    The Intersection

8.    Civilised

9.    Prey

10.    Where?

11.    Sailors

About the Author

Copyright Information

1.    Moonlight

Matron opened her eyes, instantly awake as usual, but could not see any chinks of light yet between the tightly woven sticks making up the entrance hatch of the cave. She rose and, in the darkness, walked blindly but confidently and without bumping into anything or anybody towards the entrance. When her extended hand felt the hatch, she pulled it slightly to one side, held it ajar, and peered outside. Although evening had fallen, the silhouette of a low hill nearby was still visible against the sky, appearing dark grey with a hint of reddish reflection of the recent sunset. The outside air was still too warm on her face. She put her arm through the opening and touched the rocky slope by the entrance – it was too hot as well.

‘Too early to go outside,’ Matron murmured into her chin. ‘Let them sleep a bit longer.’

She closed the hatch, lowering herself slowly to the stone floor with her back against the rocky, uneven wall. Her arms and legs were spread a little – an instinctive posture to help cooling. In her mind, she went through the schedule for the night ahead. The planning was a habit, rather than a need; every night they did almost the same things, in the same way and at the same time. She would change the routine only when she noticed some health problem or troubling mood within the group.

Matron listened to the sounds, heightened by their reflection off the walls of the roomy cave. Nobody’s coughing or wheezing, good, she thought. Her brother Greg, younger by four years and sleeping alongside the wall on the left next to his partner Frida, snored as ever. Her own partner, Bruce, two years younger than her, and Frida’s brother, also snored heavily in his berth by the opposite wall. Only Bruce was making a louder and deeper noise than Greg. Funny how their snoring differs in the same way as their speech; why is that, she wondered.

Frida breathed quietly; she passed noisy wind periodically though. Good, seems her bloat isn’t worse than usual, so she’ll be able to work normally tonight, Matron thought. Why Frida hadn’t ever been able to digest porridge and greens as well as the rest of them, she wondered for the thousandth time; they did not know. The children slept along the middle of the wide corridor-like cave in a head-to-feet row. They were her and Bruce’s eight-year-old Morgan and Ken aged four, as well as Greg’s and Frida’s six-year-old Linda and Erika, aged two. She could not hear them; no blocked noses among them, good, she said in her mind.

A thought – there’s nobody to listen whether I’m all right – flashed through her head. Well, it just happened that I’m the oldest, she rushed to silence her mind. As a child, she had always wished she had an older sibling. Now, as a twenty-five-year-old adult, she still wished the same. They knew everybody’s age because Matron continued to do what their parents had done ever since they landed on the shore in their small boat. At the end of each night, she added a small cut-mark to the long rows of marks on the back wall of cave. Sometimes, she wondered whether her parents had decided she was to be Matron, in charge of the group and its principal decision maker, only because she was the eldest child.

That was the reason they had stressed when ordering the other children to accept it unquestionably. But maybe there was more to it… Maybe they would have given her that role even if she had been younger? She had always wanted to know. But it did not matter any more, and there was no opportunity to ask them now. One night, Bruce’s and Frida’s parents took the boat and rowed to the offshore bar to examine the silhouette of a large mass stranded there at low tide. It looked like a dead whale, which would have been a rare boon for them, but they were unsure, looking from the beach under a young moon. They never returned, and no trace of the boat ever appeared on the beach. Perhaps a rogue wave overturned the boat and the currents swept them out to the open ocean. As long as they lived, Matron’s parents looked after the orphaned children as if they were their own.

However, a few years later, they tried eating the leaves of a small bushy plant they spotted at the far end of the island, and which they had never seen before but which looked promising. That year was lean, and the group struggled to find enough edible materials for bare survival. As always, her parents banned the youngsters from eating the new plant until they had first checked it on themselves. During the following daytime, both adults woke up feeling sick and became increasingly weak, so they assembled the children and, with difficulty, gave a few key directions for how to live in the future. By the end of the day, they lost consciousness, and they both died during the next night, nearly at the same time.

Matron vividly remembered the feelings she had had while watching the people who meant the whole world to her going away. She sensed a similar fear and hopelessness come back now. As if something heavy slumped on her, she felt like she was sinking through the stone floor, into the underneath, somewhere empty but horrifying. Others! Take care of the others! She yelled inside herself, trying to order her limbs to move but – as in a nightmare – they would not. Finally, she broke free with a jerk and stood up, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.

Collect yourself, you fool, Matron ordered herself repeatedly in her mind and, in a while, she grabbed the hatch with shaky hands and pulled it open. The warm air rushing in and the sight of the still, indifferent stars brought back reality. She shook her head, closed the hatch, picked up the prepared kindling and two pieces of flint, kept on a small rock ledge next to the entrance, and knelt. They did have the metal fire-starting kit her parents had brought with them, but it was becoming gradually used-up over the years so they kept it for emergencies only. Working only by touch, she struck the flints against each other, started a fire in the kindling and used it to light a lamp – whale oil burning in a stone receptacle. She walked back to the centre and placed it on a large rock with a wide, flattened top that served as their table.

Matron sighed, glanced around, and said: ‘It’s time. Now then. Time.’

Everybody, even the children, lifted their heads and squinted and blinked for a few moments, although the light from the flickering lamp was dim. When they started moving around the cave, everything was visible enough to them, despite their large shadows dancing around the floor and walls. Everyone put on the skirts they wore during their night-time activities, a piece of fabric wrapped around the hips, knee-length and tied around the waist with rope or vine. That turned them into a colourful sight, as the fabrics – remaining from their parents or found washed-up on the shore – were all in different colours and faded more or less. They wore the skirts only to protect their behinds and genitals from scratches and burns when sitting on rocks or dirt, but slept naked and with no covers. Their parents had worn knee-length trousers on their arrival to the island but later ripped them apart and used the fabric to make skirts that enabled better cooling and needed no stitching.

One by one, alone or with a younger child in tow, they went outside to pay a visit to the toilet. It was a hole, dug in the ground thirty or so steps downhill from the cave, covered with a lid made of woven sticks when not in use. When they gathered inside again, a cacophony of voices and laughter filled the cave.

‘Mum! Mum! Linda’s shaking the cow stomach too much, the air bubbles will get in the porridge! She’s going to spoil the porridge!’ Morgan yelled over his shoulder and continued to hold and gently shake a plastic container bigger than him, but Linda kept jiggling the other container next to his, regardless.

‘Son, you could simply and nicely explain to Linda how to do it properly instead of yelling,’ Matron, watching them, said calmly, but as nothing changed, added more firmly: ‘Frida, please sort out Linda.’

Frida walked over and held her daughter’s arm with one hand to stop her, while stroking her golden hair with the other and looking deeply into her blue eyes: ‘Linda, we have to shake the cow stomach only gently, so we don’t make air bubbles inside the contents. Otherwise, the porridge will become bad, and we wouldn’t be able to eat it.’

‘But, I watched how Dad and Bruce do it, I know how…’ Linda said, on the verge of tears.

‘No, nobody did it like that!’ Morgan was quick.

‘All right, all right, you two!’ Frida said. ‘I know you know how to do it, my dear, but it’s too heavy for you, you can’t control it fully… You’ll be able to, when you grow as big as Morgan is now.’

‘But, Mum, I want to help with this!’

‘You will! You know we have to shake the cow stomachs regularly. So, maybe next year. But you can help me now around the table,’ Frida took her hand and led her away.

Bruce and Greg had already brought two large, plastic trays from outside, and left them on the floor next to the table. Each contained a finger-thick layer of jelly at the bottom. Frida gathered up empty bowls, being cut-off bottom thirds of larger plastic bottles, and plastic spoons, from the back of the cave. She gave them one by one to Linda to align them in rows on the table. Then she knelt and, using a wide plastic spatula, started scraping off the jelly they called porridge, and transferring it into the bowls. She judged the portions carefully – equal amounts for adults, but for children depending on their individual size.

As soon as Frida had placed a spoon into each filled bowl, Matron said casually but decidedly: ‘Time, people. Breakfast.’

They sat on the floor around the table and she passed a bowl to each; they ate in silence. The porridge needed no chewing, so soon they put their empty bowls back on the table. Frida fetched a plastic canister with drinking water from the back, poured some in the bowls and passed them around again. Everybody moved their bowl in a circular motion to rinse it and, sipping from it, looked up at Matron as she stood. Her frame was tall and slim but somehow irradiated solidity and strength. She pushed aside a cowlick of her black, short hair from her frowning forehead and her piercing dark eyes flashed across the faces encircling her.

‘Well, let’s see. It’s full moon tonight. We’ll work on the beach first. Me – dishes, Frida – writing, Bruce and Greg – high tideline. For bit-time only. Afterwards, we’ll go for supplies.’

Outside, they walked along the beaten path cutting between two low hills, down a small gulley. As ever, they formed a single line with everyone instinctively taking their usual position – Bruce in the lead, followed by Frida guiding the three children, Greg carrying Erika behind them, and Matron making up the tail position. It was a no-time walk. Having no working watch, they judged time by trusting their inner sense. Within a single night, they used three broad categories: no-time for brief periods, bit-time for periods which their parents called two or three hours, and half-night time. For time beyond a single night, they counted the number of nights. They had learnt from their parents how to measure time based on the position of shadow from a stick driven into the ground during the day. Also, they worked it out by judging the positions of the moon and stars in the sky during the night. They trained their own children in that too. Yet, in everyday life, they never used those more accurate ways to measure time.

Similarly, they had learnt about weeks, months and years from their parents, and kept those records by markings in stone, but did not use them either. There was no need to measure time beyond a few nights. The climate was constantly searing-hot and rainfall was rare and unreliable, so changes in their environment were small. There were no distinct seasons, so they did not need to register the days as they slept through them, and indistinguishable routines fulfilled their nights. So the passing of long periods of time was almost irrelevant to them. Only the changes in their children growing up occasionally warned them about it.

Before even breaking a sweat in the warm breeze, they broke out onto the beach. The wide strip of white sand, marking a long-arch dip in the shore rather than a bay, shone in the moonlight, gradually fading and melting into darkness only nearer the horizons on left and right. It was low tide, so a thick, dark track of debris, mainly a mass of kelp and other algae deposited by the surf at high tide, ran along it as far as they could see. The water was shallow until twenty or so paces offshore and, led by the screaming older children, they ran into the low, foaming waves. They enjoyed the only way they could cool down – compared with the hot air, the water felt fresh, although it was far from cold.

‘Keep your chin above the water always! Don’t get it into your mouth and nose!’ Matron repeatedly shouted over the surf thunder, as usual.

She always claimed she instructed only the children, but she never convinced adults she meant to exempt them. In a while, holding Erika screaming with delight in her arms, she got out of the water, and the others followed without a word.

‘The high tideline’s nicely thick, might mean rich pickings tonight,’ Bruce rumbled, glanced askance at Greg and smiled with the corner of his mouth: ‘You think you’ll produce as much as I will?’

Greg said nothing but waved his hand dismissively, turned around and walked away head down along the debris track. Bruce looked for several moments at his skinny, slightly hunched figure, the thin limbs moving a little uncoordinatedly, awkwardly, almost resembling a lobster’s movements, then laughed into his chin, and walked away in the opposite direction.

‘I wish they’d let us eat that.’ Linda studied the fresh, fleshy and juicy-looking kelp on the sand. ‘It looks so good.’

‘But they don’t, so stop talking about it,’ Morgan said while holding and closely inspecting the contents of a shellfish he had picked up and managed to open by using another, empty half-shell. ‘I don’t talk about how this shellfish looks good, do I, it’s forbidden to eat it.’

‘And, why’s that?’ Frida asked quickly, slowly stroking the heads of the two younger children who sat on the sand between her spread legs, leaning against her plump thighs and belly and resting their heads on her bulging breasts.

‘I know!’ Linda quickly made her point. ‘Because they’re poisonous. Eating or drinking poisonous is deadly. I’d get sick, and Master’d be angry. He’d take me away from my group. He’d put me on another island, far away. I’d never get back here. I’d be totally alone, and for ever and ever.’

The sheer horror on her daughter’s face made Frida’s heart sink, but she was happy that Linda clearly would not challenge the ban under any circumstances. I know I could die after eating or drinking forbidden materials, Frida thought, but children don’t know what dying is. Although dying is deeply sad and frightful, it’s not bad enough to them. That’s why fear of punishment by Master is so important.

‘Master’s always watching us, he always sees if we do forbidden, we can’t hide anything from him,’ Morgan said.

‘Correct. But should we be afraid if we live normally?’ Frida asked.

‘No! If we don’t do forbidden, Master’ll never get angry,’ he said, looking confident.

Matron approached them, carrying dishes washed in the sea and shaking them one by one, to remove the last drops: ‘You aren’t writing. Why?’

‘Don’t worry, Una. We’re talking about Master, it’s important. We’re going to write now.’ Frida turned her face, with big eyes shining above rounded, spotless cheeks and contrasting small nose, towards her and smiled widely.

‘Frida, I’m Matron. So you call me only that. I’ve told you many times!’

‘Oh, Una! I obey you, always. Does it matter what I call you?’

‘It does! Our parents said I must be Matron first and foremost, before being anything else to anybody. The lives of our whole group depend on it, they said. We can’t be sloppy about it. You know that.’

‘Matron, I know that,’ Frida said gently and smiled. ‘Leave us alone now, to do writing.’

She gave a small stick to each child to write in the sand, and asked Morgan and Linda to write some sentences and the younger children some letters, which she slowly and distinctly pronounced. As they finished, and even Erika managed some meaningless scribbling, she made corrections, wiped the sand flat and gave them more tasks. There was no need to pressure the children into doing it, as it was one of their favourite games. They giggled and shouted over each other while trying to complete their own task and watch what the others were doing at the same time. When Bruce and Greg returned, they had already switched to dealing with numbers. Frida always felt that being able to understand and use numbers was more useful to them than being able to write words. So did the other adults, yet all always took care to diligently preserve the reading and writing skills in the group. Reading the three books they had, brought by their parents and carefully looked after since, showed them how written words preserved knowledge more accurately and for longer than spoken ones.

‘Little you gathered tonight, and nothing much useful, as usual?’ Bruce laughed heartily looking at the few objects Greg dropped on the sand, and picked up a two-palm sized, dark object with a strange shape and some moving parts. ‘What’s this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Greg shrugged, ‘but I thought…’

Bruce interrupted him, while holding it in his big hand and moving it up and down to judge the weight: ‘Obviously wouldn’t float, must’ve been a strong surf during daytime to beach this…looks like it wouldn’t burn…and no sharp edges. Useless.’

‘Maybe so, but only now. If we think about it more, in time, perhaps we’ll find we can use it. For something new.’

‘Then, we should take it home, you think? So you can add it to the mass of useless stuff you’ve already collected. Always hoping you’ll turn them into something new, but nothing ever happens. New! Who needs new? We just need more of what we use already, to restock what we consume.’

‘Bruce, leave him alone. If he carries the useless by himself, if he keeps it away from home, and if completes his normal duties – he can collect whatever he wants.’ Matron glanced at the ground behind Bruce: ‘What’ve you got? Plastic bottles, two hardwood planks, piece of rope, plastic knife, sharp shells…good. But that piece of fabric – it’s rotted too much.’

‘Ha! Useless!’ Greg said victoriously.

‘All right, it’s no good for a skirt or covering dry grass on your berth. But, after it dries, excellent to soak in oil and burn in the lamp, or in a torch.’ Bruce started seriously, but then smiled and patted Greg on his shoulder: ‘Didn’t think of that, did you? And you reckon you’re a thinker?’

Greg smiled back and opened his mouth to say something, but Matron was quicker: ‘You two, no time for playing your games…we’re going for supplies.’

When they returned to the cave, they put away the collected materials and drank some water first. The adults started preparations without hesitation. Everybody knew what to do, and they did it silently. Filling some plastic bottles with water from the large canister. Making a torch by tying dry plant materials to the end of a stick and soaking it in whale oil. Pulling out the metal tools they had – an axe and three knives – as they did not carry bulky stone tools on longer trips. Rolling up two large sacks and several smaller ones. That was it, they were ready to go. They headed inland. Although it was up to Matron to choose the direction, she made no effort to point out or explain it. There was a plan for their ever-changing gathering trips, and all adults knew it by heart.

To prevent overuse and secure the natural renewal of edible and usable materials, they never went along the same path two nights in a row. They always moved in parallel with but some distance from their path the night before, so they would return to any previously visited place only after many nights. The small island was oval, and a return walking trip shore-to-shore would take around two nights lengthwise and a single night across. Their home was near the shore and centrally located on the island’s long axis, which allowed them to reach any point on the island and return within a single night.

That is, if they planned and carried out trips accurately; there was no space for error. Remaining in the open during daytime at any serious distance from home would be life-threatening. There was no way to walk in the heat which their parents estimated to be, using their pre-island diction, at least mid-fifties degrees Celsius in the shade. The chances of daytime survival even if they stayed put in the shade were slim. And that was even if plenty of drinking water was available; deadly heatstroke was a killer. Anyway, they could not carry more water than for one night only, considering they carried loads of gathered supplies and children if exhausted, and constantly sweated.

As soon as their home disappeared from their sight, sunk in the moonlight shade of a small hill, Linda squealed victoriously from the middle of the line: ‘I see good leaves over there! So good! But I know we shouldn’t pick them.’

‘You’re looking on the wrong side, Linda!’ Morgan did not wait for anybody else to react.

‘No, I’m not, Morgan! I know we look at plants only to our left when we walk. And I’m doing just that!’

‘No, you’re looking to the right. You always mix left and right. We harvest only on the left, because we’ll turn around at the end, and we’ll pick supplies from the opposite side while returning along the same path. Why don’t you just check which side us others look?’

‘Still, Linda knew we won’t start harvesting anything just yet. Good on you Linda!’ Bruce said.

She giggled with delight: ‘I knew it! Yes! We won’t because it’s too close to home.’

‘And, what’d be wrong with that?’ Morgan rushed to add, and, as she remained silent, continued: ‘We don’t harvest near home, because we’re saving these supplies for… Surprises… No, evidences.’

‘For emergencies. It’s called emergencies.’ Greg sounded patient as always. ‘That is, if we get in serious trouble, meaning we can’t walk far, so we couldn’t gather at any distance.’

‘But we’ll never get in trouble, because we’ll always think what we do, and plan, and be careful when walking and working. Isn’t that right, Dad,’ Morgan said firmly.

‘That’s right, Morgan, excellent!’ Bruce replied, and Greg added: ‘Also, the farther you are from home, the more careful you have to be. Because, if you break a leg, or fall off the cliff, or get stung by poisonous thorns, but home is far away – well, you’d be in real trouble. So would the whole group.’

‘Bruce’d carry me if something bad happened, he’s so strong!’ Linda sounded concerned and turned towards Frida. ‘Mum, he would, wouldn’t he?’

‘Of course I would, Linda!’ Bruce responded quickly, and after a pause laughed loudly: ‘And your Dad would carry me carrying you, if needed. Of course, if he’d ever manage to stop producing his great ideas for a moment, though.’

‘Frida, shall we?’ Matron said with a hint of impatience in her voice.

Without replying, Frida started singing a slow song, and her resonant and melodious voice spread over the line as gently as the moonlight: ‘I sail, under the stars watching over me, I talk, to the stars leading me…’ It was a song their mothers sang to them when they were small children. The two couples, their parents, had sung that song every night on their small sailing boat, throughout their dangerous journey, and all the time while desperately scanning the horizon for land. And when their search became increasingly hopeless, they sang it even during the daytime. That song was the only means they had to keep their spirits up. They sang it while cooling in water up to their chins, clinging to the side of the boat and trying to hide in its narrow shade. They sang it while splashing water over their caps in the hope of postponing heatstroke for yet another day. Now, Greg was the first to join in the song, and the children quickly followed, even Erika enthusiastically trying. Matron waited to hear Bruce’s deep voice somehow lifting the sound of the chorus from underneath before she contrasted it with her unexpectedly high-pitched support. Now, the longer the group sang, the more carried away they got, their hearts thumping in their chests. The sense of belonging, of closeness with one another was almost physical.

Yet, they took notice and quietened down at once, when Matron shouted: ‘Time to work. Pay attention to what you’re doing.’

The adults turned to the knowledge their parents had hammered into their memories with every-night repetition over years. Each took a child to shadow them and, moving in pairs several steps apart and straight forwards, focused on systematically combing the vegetation on their left. No trees grew on the island; there was only sparse, overgrown shrubbery peppered across savannah-like open space. Patches of bushy greenery and rocky clearings interrupted the monotony of dry, yellow-brown grassy undergrowth. The greenery was what they were mainly after – young leaves, shoots and flowers of waist-high bushes or the vines hanging onto some of them, whole herbs, and thick trunks of some cacti. The rules of gathering were simple. Do not touch toxic plants. Pick up edible greens. Take some roughage too. However, it was challenging to follow the rules in the darkness.

The front pair, Bruce and Morgan, armed with the axe, was gathering only roughage. Bruce’s body, short and stocky, appeared from behind as a rolling boulder opening a path directly through the bushes, although he smoothly walked between them. After carefully identifying usable bushes and shrubs, they broke off by hand or cut only a few smaller branches and twigs from each and amassed them in their large sack.

‘Dad, you missed good twigs, see, right there!’ Morgan proclaimed it loudly. ‘They even have some buds and a flower or two. Lucky I spotted them.’

‘Good spotting, well done son!’ Bruce rumbled. ‘So, we’ll memorise them for when we come back here the next time. But we’ll leave them for now.’

‘There’re some better bushes yet to come?’

‘I don’t know. But remember what we’ve said before, how bushes grow slowly, because it’s so hot and dry? If we take too many twigs in one go, the plant could stop growing altogether,