The Last Duck - short story

As there is nothing much to discuss other than the usual nonsense about Hillary Clinton and why she won't give in to reality, I will offer this short piece from my uncollected, unwanted, unfinished, unknown, and unpublished volume entitled, "Encounters, The Short Stories of Morialekafa."


“Masta! Masta! Masta b’long kofi, i kom!” Aipa, my houseboy, almost out of breath, was excited by his news.
“Wonem Masta i kom?” I demanded.
“Masta b’long kofi, long hap,” he replied, pointing to the west.
I had been living in the village for almost three months. I knew there was a coffee planter living several miles away. I wondered what would bring him to visit me. Two minutes later a Land Rover drove up to my house and stopped on the bare ground of the village square. This was no mean feat, as no one before had driven into our small village; there was only a wide footpath from the main road above. The Land Rover was the most decrepit looking vehicle I’d seen among the few that existed in the Highlands at that time. It had a badly weathered canvas top and leaned awkwardly to the driver’s side with a broken spring. The original dark green color had faded and was caked with mud. Emerging from this apparition was my nearest neighbor. I extended my hand, and said “hi.”
The stranger looked at me briefly while he held out his hand, then he inspected my new and modest house of woven cane and grass. “Stan Kostka,” he said, shaking my hand. “your neighbor from up the road. I’ve come to invite you to dinner.”
“Adrian Brant,” I replied.“Dinner?”
“Yes. I know it’s unusual, but I have only one duck left, so I decided to eat it before the kanakas got it. I thought you might enjoy it.”
“One duck?” I said.
“Yeah, I had twelve, but the kanakas got them all, except this one. So come on, get in. I’ll bring you back later.” He spoke English remarkably well, but had an obvious Slavik accent. He looked the part: stocky, wide shoulders, a large head with a pompadour of generous brown hair just beginning to grey, bluish grey eyes, and strong legs that added to a picture of strength and durability. His face and arms were brown from the tropical sun.
“I’ll get my stuff,” I said, relishing the opportunity to meet my neighbor and enjoy a meal outside my usual menu of tinned corned beef and an occasional piece of badly cooked pork. I had learned not to travel anywhere without being prepared. My shoulder bag held my notebooks and pens, a flashlight, a small canteen, a Swiss Army Knife, a tightly folded plastic poncho, malaria pills, and a much treasured can of sardines.
Kostka said nothing as the Land Rover bounced along what was euphemistically referred to as the “Highlands Highway.” A heavy rain could render it impassable. The small plantation was off the road far enough as to be invisible unless you knew exactly where it was. As we drove in I estimated it to be ten, perhaps twelve acres, planted with neat rows of coffee trees shaded by casuarina trees. The coffee looked healthy and well tended. Three natives were weeding with machetes as we drove by.
Kostka’s “house” was essentially a warehouse, with one room set aside for living quarters. It was constructed of the same materials as my temporary dwelling, but was more substantial, having heavy rough plank floors rather than just woven cane on the otherwise bare earth. The walls were of the same tough woven cane, but they were securely fastened to stout posts with nails rather than tied in place with ropes of vine. The grass roof was weathered to the point of needing repairs. One generous room served as kitchen, living, dining, and utility room. The remainder of the building, one other much large room, was mostly filled with burlap bags of coffee. In one corner a bunk bed had been fashioned.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked, after we seated ourselves on benches at a large plank table. The room, like the coffee, was neat and tidy and quite comfortable.
“Six, seven years,” he replied. “I think I came in 1948. Maybe it was 49.”
“Did you start this place?”
“No, it was here when I came. But it was all run down and overgrown with weeds. Some of the coffee trees were dying. I had to replace them. It was a big job. It took me a long time.”
“Well, it certainly looks fine now,” I observed. “But how did you manage to end up managing a coffee plantation in the New Guinea Highlands? You must have come here from somewhere. Where did you learn about coffee?”
Kostka opened two cans of Foster’s beer and handed one to me. “I didn’t know anything about coffee,” he said. “I just learned about it when I came here.”
“What did you do before?” Kostka paused for a moment before answering, as if perhaps he thought I was being overly inquisitive.
“I was a gardener, a master gardener. In Prague. During the war, when the Fascists took over my country, I escaped to Australia. But I couldn’t find work there. Then I heard about this job and I’ve been here ever since. The coffee isn’t much different from other plants, you just have to tend it and take good care of it.”
“You don’t own it then? “ Again he paused, as if wondering if he should answer any more questions. Finally, he continued.
“No,” he replied. “It belongs to a man in Sydney. He’s a bookie. He doesn’t really care about it. He just uses it for some kind of tax purposes. He never comes here. In fact, he doesn’t even pay me regularly. I haven’t been paid for three months. I don’t have enough money to keep the place going. I need some new machinery. I keep writing and asking, but he only sends me money sometimes, I guess maybe when he has it.”
“Why don’t you quit?”
He looked at me with a strange look of disbelief. “Quit?” he said. “I can’t quit. Where would I go? What would I do? This is all I have. It’s my home. My only home. I left my wife and daughter behind when I fled Czekoslovakia. I was going to send for them when I could. Now I don’t know where they are. I never hear from them. I don’t even know if they are still alive.” Kostka blurted this out quickly, as if wanting to get rid of it, but strangely there was no tone of bitterness or despair, merely a hint of resignation and acceptance. “Let’s have some music,” he said, obviously wanting to change the subject. He rose, went to an old battery powered record player and a small pile of records, and carefully selected one.
The strains of “Moonlight Becomes You,” struck me as absolutely surreal, sitting as we were in the New Guinea Highlands, miles from anyone except the natives that surrounded us, most of whom still carried their bows and arrows and wore ornaments in their noses. I watched while he lighted a small gas stove and placed a large cast-iron Dutch oven over the flame.
“What about you?” he queried, upon returning to his seat. “What are you doing here, living down there with the kanakas?” Oddly, when Kostka said “kanakas,” clearly a term of disrespect, it was more like a factual description than a term of disdain.
“I’m an anthropologist. I guess you must already know that. I’m interested in learning how they live, and especially in how they are coping with change.”
“Do you like living with them? Don’t they steal everything? They steal everything here, all the time. That’s what happened to my ducks.”
“As far as I know they haven’t stolen anything. I know all the Europeans here think they steal, but they don’t steal from me. Maybe it’s because I don’t employ them and order them around and abuse them. Do you have a lot of trouble with them?”
“No, just the stealing,” he said, “I try to treat them well but they still steal. Here, let me get us something.” From a screened in food safe he took a smoked pork belly and some homemade bread. He brought them with a pair of sharp knives. The bacon was virtually pure fat. I watched as he carefully cut a piece and spread it on a slice of bread. I’d never seen this before, but I did likewise, and found it pleasantly appetizing. Kostka opened two more beers and pushed open a large window at our end of the room. There was no windowpane, just a window made of the same woven cane as the house. He pushed it open and propped it with a stick. The only view it provided was of an enormous pile of discarded cans and bottles, testimony to his presence there for some time.
“I bury everything else,” he explained. “But there’s not much point in trying to bury cans and bottles. The Andrews Sisters were singing in the background, “I’ll be with you in apple blossom time…” He excused himself and left the house. Shortly I heard him speaking in pidgin to one of the workers. It had something to do with feeding his “line.” I noticed that he treated the man with a kind of respect unusual between an employer and his native help. While waiting, I gazed casually around the room. The kitchen consisted of a high countertop, beneath which were shelves containing a few dishes, pots and pans, and a stack of neatly folded dishtowels. On the counter, in addition to the stove, were a number of tins that obviously held flour, sugar, rice, and other things, protected from the rodents I knew had to be ever-present. A large tin can held an assortment of mixed silverware. At the far end of the room was another set of open shelves containing his modest wardrobe. Some nails driven into the posts held the remainder, including coats and some well-worn hats. There were two heavy metal patrol boxes secured with padlocks. The raised food safe and a huge crock with a metal dipper hanging nearby completed the scene.
Kostka returned carrying some carrots and a few small potatoes that he placed in a cheap enameled pan. He added a generous dipperful of water.
“You have a garden?”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s small but I raise most everything. You know, you can grow almost anything here, anything, at least, that doesn’t require a cold dormant period.” Of course you have to keep it fenced if you don’t want the pigs to destroy it.”
“You raise pigs?”
“No. But there are wild pigs. And there’s a village not far from here and sometimes their pigs wander over here. They can be a real nuisance.”
“You seem to get along well with the natives,” I observed. “I notice most of the other Europeans here treat them like dirt.”
“Yes,” he said, “I treat them as well as I can. But you do have to discipline them sometimes. They don’t always seem to understand what’s yours and what’s theirs. I get along with them well, but they still steal everything that isn’t tied down. I guess you can’t blame them. They naturally want what we have, knives, axes, shovels, stuff like that. And of course I can’t afford to pay them very well. I try to be as generous as I can, but you can’t be very generous if you want to make any money raising coffee on a small plantation up here.”
“I stayed for a few days with some of your compatriots up near town. I was appalled at the way they treated them, kicking and punching them and treating them like animals, cheating them out of money, and taking every advantage of them you can imagine. I wanted to say something but I knew it would be of no use. Who am I to come here and tell people how to behave? The villagers tell me all kinds of horror stories about working there and refuse to do it anymore.”
“Yes, I know,” Kostka said. “That’s the way things are here. Everyone takes advantage of them. They all want to get rich and they think that’s the way to do it.”
“And you, you don’t want to get rich?”
“No, not like that. I gave up wanting to be rich a long time ago. I just want to live in peace. I’ve had quite enough of this world. I’m happy here. At least as happy as I can be without my wife and daughter. I’ve no hope now of ever seeing them again.” A look of profound sadness crept over his face. For an instant I thought he might cry, but it passed as quickly as it came. As he reached for the bacon I noticed the tattoo on his left forearm, a number, six digits. He noticed my staring at it.
“Theresienstadt,” he said. “A concentration camp. I was there for a time.” Kostka related this with no particular emotion as he rose and went for still another beer. The smell of the cooking duck was filling the air. He lifted the lid of the pot and dropped in carrots, potatoes and some small onions. The phonograph was silent. The predictable afternoon rain began to fall. I felt isolated in space and time, as if nothing existed except this room, the present moment, and the two of us.
“Where?” I said. “I never heard of that place. I don’t know anything about it. Can you tell me about it? Will you tell me about it? I’d like to know because… you know… it was before my time and, well, I just want to know.
“As he handed me a beer he said softly, “I don’t like to talk about it. It was a terrible time. I was very lucky, very lucky. I don’t like to think of those who were not so lucky. Hundreds died there. Thousands more were sent to Auschwitz where they all died in the gas chambers. I was to be sent there, too, but I managed to escape.”
“Why were you there in the first place? You’re not Jewish are you?”
“It’s not really a long story,” Kostka replied. “Theresienstadt was originally an armed city built for the nobility. Now it’s called Terezin. It’s about 60 kilometers from Prague. The Nazis converted it into a concentration camp for Jews early in the war, certainly by 1940. They needed labor to do the job so many of us were rounded up and taken there to work on it. It didn’t matter who you were, they just took you anyway. They might have thought I was Jewish because my wife’s parents were Jewish, I don’t know. Anyway, I was held there and forced to work for over two years. That’s when I got this number. When the place was finished, it was kind of a fake city so the Germans could dupe people into seeing how nice it was for the Jews. When they had no further use for us we were to be sent us to Auschwitz. We learned of this because one of us worked in the office and found out about it. This was in the early fall of 1943. They weren’t as well organized then as they were later. Three of us managed to escape during the confusion of loading the train. I managed to get to Austria where I had friends who helped me get to Switzerland. From there I eventually made it to Australia. That’s it, the story of my life.” Kostka finished his third beer and tossed he can out the window onto the pile. “Let’s eat,” he said.
“But what happened to the others, the other two?”
“I don’t know. We separated. I don’t know if they made it or not.” I know things became much worse there later. So many passed through there on their way to Auschwitz, and many died there before they could even be processed.” Kostka rose and put on another record. We ate our duck to the sounds of Benny Goodman. It was all quite delicious.