Free Euphoria by Lily King Page B

the turn. In a motorized boat it would come fast.
    ‘Here.’ I pointed right.
    ‘Here? Where?’
    ‘Right here.’ We were nearly past it.
    The boat lurched, then slid into a tiny dark canal between what Teket called kopi, bushes that looked like freshwater mangroves.
    ‘You cannot be serious, Bankson,’ Fen said.
    ‘They’re fens, aren’t they?’ Nell said. ‘Fen among the fens.’
    ‘This is a fen? Jesus, help us,’ he said. The passage was wide enough for only one canoe. Branches scraped our arms and because we’d slowed down, insects came at us in clouds. ‘You could get bloody lost in here.’
    Teket had told me there was only one path through. ‘Just follow the water.’
    ‘Like I’m going to do anything else. Fuck, the bugs are thick.’
    We motored through this close corridor a long time, their trust in me weakening by the minute. I wanted to tell them everything I’d heard about the Tam, but best to have them arrive discouraged.
    ‘Sure you have enough petrol for this?’ Fen asked.
    And just then the passage opened up.
    The lake was enormous, at least twelve miles across, the water jet black and ringed by bright green hills. Fen pulled up on the throttle to idle and we swayed there for a moment. Across the water was a long beach, and, mirroring it in the water twenty yards offshore, a bright white sandbar. Or what I thought was a sandbar, until all at once it lifted, broke apart, and thinned into the air.
    ‘Osprey,’ I said. ‘White osprey.’
    ‘Oh my, Bankson,’ Nell said. ‘This is glorious.’

7
    I didn’t meet Helen Benjamin until 1938 when we both attended the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences conference in Copenhagen. I went to her panel discussion on eugenics, at which she was its only opponent and the only one who made sense. The way she spoke and moved her hands reminded me of Nell. I rose as soon as the discussion was over and made for the door. But somehow she got down off the stage and overtook me in the entrance hall before I could slip away. She seemed to know all my feelings, and merely thanked me for coming to her panel and handed me a large envelope. It was the kind of thing I’d grown used to, people hoping I’d help them publish their manuscripts, but from Helen it made no sense. Her
Arc of Culture
had been a great success, and whatever acclaim I had garnered by then, with the Grid and my book on the Kiona, owed a significant debt to her work.
    I didn’t open the packet until I was on the train back to Calais. Such a cavalier gesture, my hand reaching into that brown envelope. It was not a manuscript. It was a booklet made of white typing paper covered by bark cloth, folded in half and sewn down the middle seam. Attached with a paper clip was a note from Helen:
She made one of these each time she arrived in a new place, and kept them tucked in the fabric liner of a trunk, away from prying eyes. I have kept the others, but I thoughtyou should have this one.
There were no more than forty pages, a good many blank at the end. The writings spanned three and half months, beginning with her first days on Lake Tam.
    1/3
    1/4 Stitched up this new book yesterday then was too intimidated by all these fresh empty pages to put down any words. I wanted to write about Bankson but felt I shouldn’t. Wrote Helen instead & managed not to mention him once. My body feels better. Pitiful that a great amount of my pain disappeared when someone paid a bit of attention to it.
    This temporary house they’ve given us is called the House of Zambun. Or maybe I should spell it Xambun—more Greek sounding. From the way they say it, Xambun, low & hopeful, as if its utterance could bring something powerful closer, I am certain it’s a spirit or ancestor, though I can’t feel anything in here the way I have in other houses reserved for the dead. And if it is a spirit, why would they let us desecrate its house?
    I want to write more but too many feelings are