Free The Persimmon Tree by Bryce Courtenay Page A

come.
    I guess self-preservation is a primal instinct. The tide was still coming in, though it had not yet reached the bodies sprawled on the beach. I waited almost an hour until eight o’clock when the attackers were well gone before making my way down to the beach. By this time the tide was in and spent waves were breaking over the dead men, white spume bubbles popping and water swirling in patterns around their inert bodies, the force of the water not sufficiently strong to wash them back into the surf. Some, lying on their backs, still had their eyes open and seemed to be staring at me accusingly. I avoided looking at the bloke with the missing head.
    Several small wallets and pieces of paper were being carried in and out of the surf and I gathered these frantically into a pile. Not stopping to examine them, I shoved them into my knapsack. I was berating myself, telling myself to act calmly. I’d seen dead bodies before, even those that had been mutilated. My father was a missionary and was often called in after a tribal fight. Though most of the outlying New Britain villagers were ‘heathen’, as he called them, they nevertheless didn’t mind having a spare whitefella god in attendance at burial ceremonies.
    I began to drag the mutilated bodies above the high-tide mark. Some began to bleed again as I moved them, leaving traces of blood and oil in the sand. Several had their arms all but severed, blood and sinew, muscle and viscera scarlet against their shining oil-blackened bodies; others carried great gashes to their torsos with ribs protruding like bloodied and broken cages. The vicious parang blades had slashed willy-nilly at their bodies, cutting deeply wherever they landed.
    I fought back the need to sit down and howl and on two occasions I threw up violently. I was also near crapping myself, I was so afraid the murderers would return and find me. I knew I should do the decent thing and bury the bodies. The sand was soft enough to scoop out a ditch for each. But it would take too long and I was too scared. All I could think was that I must somehow tidy things up. So I began placing them in a straight row, each about two feet from the next. I had left the headless bloke until last, unable to summon the courage to drag him up to the other bodies.
    Then the thought entered my befuddled mind that I was the son of an Anglican missionary who was a clergyman and I had attended hundreds of funerals in the past. I knew the funeral litany by heart. I must do something. Say a prayer or recite a passage from the Bible. I started collecting driftwood from the beach and with a ball of twine I carried in my knapsack hurriedly fashioned nine crude crosses, every minute or so looking towards where the attackers had gone. I tried to tell myself that they had no reason to return, they’d taken everything they could find — the Carley float, Mae West jackets, watches, money; they’d even taken the boots, though they couldn’t have any possible use for them as these men were all barefoot and had probably discarded the boots they’d once worn in the Dutch forces before deserting. These reassurances didn’t work, I was still damn near messing in my pants, glancing every few moments in the direction they’d gone.
    I placed a cross above the head of every corpse and then with one cross left I could delay the gruesome task no longer and forced myself to walk further down the beach. Not looking at the severed neck, I grabbed him by the boots and dragged his body up the beach, averting my head for as long as possible and finally placed him in line with his mates.There seemed something profane about a body lying with all the others but without a head. Then I saw it, the head. It was being pushed up onto the beach by an incoming wave and then dragged back again as the wave receded, in a manner I had seen so often with a coconut washed ashore.
    I knew I mustn’t stop to think about it and I dashed towards the water, not conscious that