Eden by Jim Crace

Author:Jim Crace [Crace, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

10

EBON IS SUNK in the body hollows of his mattress and dreaming that he’s in his orchard raking up the debris and the strew with Tabi at his side, like any normal day, when his sleep is ended by a string of wether bells, no larger than acorns, shaken in his ear. Two kitchen-men, often chosen as Alum’s reluctant conscripts when it’s demanded—they’re in his debt for as yet unreported felonies, so they hardly have a choice—are standing at the dark end of his bed with a coil of toughened twine and a hardwood drinking mazer, slopping with cold water. There are no greetings, just the sort of hurried dedication you might expect from any worker doing any job of which he is ashamed.

Ebon means to offer them his good mornings, as he should, despite their silence and their late attempts to hide their faces in the shadows. But, as he lifts his head from the pillow, a sudden wriggling weight pins him to the bed. It’s Alum sitting on his chest, smiling viciously. Stay very still, he tells the orchardman, and beckons one of his helpers to lean forward and grip his captive by the ankles.

Alum has his open palm pressed down on Ebon’s mouth. He wags the pointing finger of his other hand in warning. You’re not to make a sound, it says. Or try to struggle free. His neighbours must not wake to witness any scuffle. If any are aroused already by the tinny jangle of the bells, they will turn away and close their eyes, if they are wise.

Ebon can’t imagine why he should be gripped and pinioned like a truss of hay by these three men. Perhaps he was observed offending with that windfall and betrayed. Perhaps the gatekeeper himself has decided to report the sacred altar orbs of fruit that concealed the mush in Ebon’s basket of alms. Infringements, yes, though only puny ones, deserving a reprimand, no doubt, or exclusion from some evening meals, but nothing more. What else was there that might explain this body squatting on his chest and those shame-faces at his feet?

Ebon has seen other habitants restrained. Tempers can be frayed after a punishing day of work when, say, the earth is heavy or the seasons are unkind or tasks take longer than they should. What once was only irritating amongst his neighbours becomes offensive, given time. It is unseemly but not entirely rare that a man or woman might want to push another or even wrestle them. Then it is a kindness, actually, to pin those angry bodies to the ground, to still those flailing arms and legs, until their hearts and tongues are calmed.

Ebon, though, has never been a man to argue or to push, and so his treatment this morning makes no sense to him. Except that Alum is involved. The man now sitting on his chest has always been too fond of beating compliance into people and disobedience out of them, sometimes with reason though mostly without any.

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