THE FAR COUNTRY.

The callous sun beat down from an expansive cloudless sky. Relentless, merciless and strong it just carried on until its strength was gone and then it set. Chem, the old fisherman contemptuously kicked the dead crabs back into the sea from whence they came. He stared down at the lifeless rock, so cruelly robbed of its life force and ruminated on yet another failure. The rock, both barren and deserted filled his heart with pity. Sadly he rowed away as he thought of how his skill had not been as strong as the sun and left the old man to clear up the debris with his scythe and sickle.

Emme was born and brought up here. This to her was paradise – Endless sea and sand; palm trees and coconuts – Everything in balance. The occupants of this paradise never warred but instead lived in quiet contentment. The army patrolled, looking for trouble but there never was much to speak of. Emme’s parents, now resident in the far country never left until the demolition squad came in and took away their homes. Emme was safe for now. She loved to row and dream and went wherever the waves took her. She was now in Middle Ocean. One peep through her binoculars told her the landscape was changing ever so slightly. She didn’t mind or think it worth worrying about. When she reached the shore she saw them – The two disgusting crabs, Mal and Mel. They swam endlessly, waiting to quit the waters of the salty sea and swim the river Flemsy. They seemed to grin at Emme – To goad her and to tease, to menace and to come too close for comfort. Last week she felt the first stab of a claw as one of them appeared on the sand. It nestled where her child had once fed.

She’d seen him then while in the shower, vulnerable and naked. She surveyed the rock where a dark blemish had appeared on its surface. The landscape once visible through the lens of her binoculars was now in close-up. Still Emme toiled. Weeks had turned to months. Then one morning as she ran her fingers through the sand she found a little hill. She tried to flatten it. It would not disappear and then an ache began – Dull at first, increasing in intensity. Mal and Mel had really come ashore; had gained a claw hold; had found a home. Panic had seized Emme and she sailed alone to look for Chem the fisherman who may be able to rid her of the crabs. When he had seen her last she was in robust health but now she looked so changed. She was thinning in inverse proportions to the hill which was turning to a mountain in the sand.

“You’ve left it a bit late you know Emme,

Chem said.

Mal and Mel have bred. Ever moving sideways they have multiplied, causing chaos in your paradise home. How did they get such a firm and vicious hold”?

Chem asked.

“I failed to grease the rock”,

Emme admitted. Chem frowned. The seaweed growing on the rock had gone. He’d stripped it all away while trying to kill the crabs. Mal and Mel had metastasised. They were draining the river Flemsy dry as they engaged upon their feeding frenzy. They were killing the army which had kept the peace in paradise for so long. They were destroying and devastating their and Emme’s home without thought of tomorrow. The sun competed with the other source of heat. Men with pick axes gouged lumps out of the rock and drew their own lines in the sand but Mal and Mel clung on. Moving ever sideways they clung on, burrowing, breeding, consuming – True parasites in paradise. When they retreated it was just to plan their strategy, to gather and to mobilise anew. Emme knew that when she ate in order to maintain her strength she was sustaining her adversaries too. Her army now was all but defeated. Her children gathered as she slipped in and out of sleep. Sometimes she fancied that she heard her children saying:

“Why did you never grease the rock? You should have greased the rock with the oil which would have stopped the crabs from clinging and kept the callous sun at bay”.

Mal and Mel were laughing in her dreams. Assuming goblin shapes they too hacked away and struck at Emme’s form.

Eventually the men made Emme lopsided, returning with new pick axes and shovels. They saw though that there was no part of the river unpolluted. While Emme tried to sleep Mal and Mel just partied. Drumming sounded loud between Emme’s ears. The street lights flickered and finally went out as she appeared to be giving up the struggle. The phone wires had been cut and sustenance was brought in via a tube. Chem’s power too was waning. This obscene orgy of the crabs was almost over. Then Emme opened up one useless eye and gathered her last vestiges of strength as Chem made one final bid to save her. Mal and Mel were on the run once more, almost scurrying back into the open sea. However, Mal and Mel now had so many relatives to help them win the battle that Emme’s feeble folk were overwhelmed; their spears were as match sticks in their hands. Eventually she was lain waste and spent.

Chem, along with Emme’s grief stricken relations, stared at the devastation. The river Flemsy had now ceased to flow. The rock was put into a boat which was covered in barnacles and set alight by other men. The generals in the army were also dead along with the crabs which colonised, metastasised mobilised. In the darkness of the night the moon shone from the far country as the stars danced to a tune as yet unheard by those of us still too far away to hear. There was singing, dancing and celebration as Emme was greeted by her parents. They were shocked to see the haggard cragginess of the vital rock whose life force they once celebrated the beginning of so very long ago but which now had become spent long before its time. In their celestial arms they gathered her, comforted her and greeted her like an old friend from whom they had been parted for so long. They looked down to our earth at other crabs swimming, waiting, waiting, waiting for a chance to come ashore and the question which would not leave their haunted eyes was simply:

“Why oh why oh why oh why! Why did you not think to grease the rock”?

Only the waves of their tears, which we call rain, breaking on the surface of the water as it falls, is all that we shall ever have in answer.