The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 71

milk and honey, rather one of ice and wretchedness. The differences between us are profound and entire. David was artful, daring, boastful, faithful, sly, arrogant, sharp-minded, weak of flesh and strong of spirit, generous to his people and unmovable before his enemies, a wise statesman and patient judge, a visionary and builder, above all a man who worshiped his God, the true God, with humility and zeal. Grim Fiddle was not any of that. He might have been. He was not. Grim Fiddle lost and fought for vengeance and lost the more. Grim Fiddle betrayed, ran away, succumbed to every temptation, turned from every friend, coveted power, murdered multitudes, stands condemned as the darkest of black princes, a monster.

Then there is a final philosophical consideration, since I have haphazardly and unintentionally permitted this to become a discussion of my identity. It is my notion, was no one else’s, though it was Abigail, Longfaeroe’s daughter and Samson’s heavyhearted widow, who introduced it to me in passing. It does not threaten me, as the savior talk does and the David talk did; indeed, it fetches me.

It was my third summer on South Georgia. It was about the time of the visit of the British man-o’-war—no, that was earlier. It was about the time of the foundered plague ship. It was certainly about the time Abigail and I became lovers. Abigail had been the one who supervised my nursing after I was landed on South Georgia and taken to the Frazer camp. I did not see her again for a year, saw her infrequently when I went down to the Frazer camp on shepherding matters. The first she spoke to me was about a lamb she wanted for a pet for one of her sons. I thought her curt, very sad, aloof, lean like her father and hard like the Frazers. Then, one day in early summer, with the sun breaking through to flash gold on the gray landscape of the high moors, she came up to my hut with her eldest son and three other of the Frazer brood. She said they were on a hike. I gave them the shelter of the hut while I roamed outside, self-conscious of my looks, shy of people other than Longfaeroe and Germanicus. I was afraid I would have one of my spells, start babbling or ranting. She came out to me to ask me why I was looking west, toward one of the stark passes through the surrounding mountains. I had not been aware that I was, and when I thought that looking west had become my routine stance, to where I had abandoned my family, I turned away from her to weep. I was pathetic, a huge, tearful, clumsy shepherd; perhaps that is what attracted her back the next day, alone.

The incident I am thinking of happened later that summer. Abigail was cooking for me at the time, on the hearth fire Germanicus had helped me build in my hut. She was a good cook, a better listener—a tall, limber woman, her hair cut as short as a boy’s, small breasts and tight composure, her thin arms swinging over the pots. I recall mentioning that her father had visited the day before, that he had promised to return that day. I hinted at my difficulty with him and the David talk. I had been cautious not to complain to her about her father, unsure of her opinion, presuming she would not welcome my criticism, would see me as an ingrate. Abigail surprised me then, drew me out on my complaint, then lost her temper, “Not that again, Grim. That’s Dad’s sickness. Him and his holy visions on the cliffs. He killed mum with ’em. She went up to fetch him down and fell.”

I said that it was me having those visions. I saw Grandfather searching for me endlessly. I saw Cleopatra in chains. I saw Peregrine dead.

“Mind me, Dad’s using you to make himself swell up. Dad did that to dear Samson, and he believed him. The lot did. Don’t you tell me the Frazers have their ways. The Frazers’re weak minds, and are already swelled up. Them and their Volunteers. It was a fool’s chance and stripped this island of its boys and left us women for what? I mark them, mark Dad special for it. He knows. I told him when they sailed, that if he didn’t bring my Samson back, he was no father to me. That’s why he don’t come up when he knows me here. Fight him, with your mind. Samson was a good man, kind when he wanted, but Lordie, he was not clever. You be that, good and kind and clever. You have learning, enough, and you have that Israel friend of your dad’s. Keep at it. Never give Dad a handhold. Don’t ever let me see you with a harp. Ah, Grim, it ain’t funny. Stay what you are, sweet and sad. Be more reluctant than Moses. Eat.”

It was just an image to her, “more reluctant than Moses.” She never mentioned Moses again. I have kept it in my heart, with memories of her. Abigail was as full of images as she was of passion, a gentle lover, no, that is not accurate, a ravenous woman. She chewed on me, that lithe body and those sharp teeth, all over me in my hut, in the wind, content with my dogs and melancholy. She said sexual intercourse might be the only softness people like us would ever enjoy, and it was ours to be as hard in calamity as it was to be “terrible hot” in love. I never saw her naked; it was the cold, and her temperament, for she said she wanted me to know there was a needful part of her that was for me alone to touch and smell and remember, but not for the sins of the eyes. That was her Presbyterian soul in conflict with a heated-up nature. She