Free The Persimmon Tree by Bryce Courtenay Page B

I was sobbing as I waded into the shallow waves that were breaking at my ankles. I reached down and grabbed the head in both hands, not looking, the wet hair soft to my touch. Stumbling and running up the beach, I deposited it above the dead man’s shoulders and made myself look at the dead sailor’s head, only to see that I had placed it sideways, his left ear resting on the top of his severed neck. I was forced to pick it up and look into the blackened face for the first time. The dead sailor’s eyes were open, staring at me, a piercing blue colour almost identical to the colour of Anna’s. I screamed, dropping the head, where it rolled away from the body and was covered in sand. Still sobbing, I retrieved it and placed it more or less correctly onto the neck. I didn’t have the means or the courage to wipe the sand from his face. I sat on the beach, my hands resting on my knees and my head lowered between them, panting and whimpering, mucus running from my nose.
    I was emotionally exhausted and, rising unsteadily, I placed the last of the crosses in place. In my confused and overwrought mind I was not sure if I could remember the words, or at least some of the words, to the Anglican burial service. I stood more or less at the centre of the nine men laid out in a row and with my palms held in front of me in the manner of an open prayer book began to recite as I had so often heard my father do at a native funeral. In my panicked state of mind I decided to choose only two small and very common passages I thought might be appropriate.
    ‘“I am the resurrection, and the life”, saith the Lord: “he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die…”’
    I suddenly mistook the sharp cry of a gull for a human voice and glanced backwards, terrified, very nearly wetting my pants. It took several moments to regain my composure. With my knees trembling, and still breathless from the effects of the sudden rush of adrenalin brought on by fear, I pronounced the remaining words in a voice that seemed to alter pitch every few moments:
    ‘neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
    ‘Earth to earth; ashes to ashes; dust to dust; in the sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life.
    ‘Amen.’
    I ended by saying the Lord’s prayer, adding in retrospect, ‘May you rest in peace’.
    The performance of the small, hastily improvised ceremony had a strangely calming effect on me. I felt as if I had brought some measure of decency into the horrific deaths the sailors had suffered. If, like many of the sons of ministers of religion, I wasn’t religious myself, I nevertheless had a deep respect for the calming process of sacred words.
    Despite trying to put him from my mind, my thoughts kept reverting to the poor guy with no head. His blue eyes, so reminiscent of Anna’s, had shaken me badly, somehow his death seemed worse than that of the other men. Poor bugger didn’t even possess a shirt as a shroud.
    Oh God! He must have been the one who had removed his shirt for the dead man they’d placed under the bushes. The man under the bushes! I’d entirely forgotten about him. I began to shake. When was the horror going to end? I’d have to repeat everything! The thought filled me with terror.
    I walked the small distance up the beach to where I thought they’d placed the dead sailor under a line of bushes. I fell to my knees in the soft sand so I could peer under the low-hanging leaves. The first thing I saw was a naked foot, then it moved and I heard a groan.
    I RAISED THE LOWER branches of a bush from where I imagined the sound of the groan had come. It revealed a black head and torso lying face upwards. The sailor’s eyes were closed and from his