I am dying. I am no longer young: if I bend my head towards my chest, I see that the end of my long beard contains traces of white. Death is no stranger to me, nor I to him; we have glimpsed one other many times with sharp mutual recognition. Now I am reconciled to his soft presence around the places where I sleep, where I eat, where I make love to my wives. Perhaps, in the final hours of my malingering illness, I shall be reconciled to the God of my youth, be taken into His bosom like the Prodigal Son. Who will read this account of cracked memories? A rhetorical question. My earthly property will be divided among those who are unable to make anything of my scribblings. I have not spoken or written in my mother tongue for many years; of my adopted language, I have never been able to learn more than the rudiments. After I have completed my tale, I shall request, largely through mime, that these sheets of manuscript, together with my pens and other tools of scholarship, be sealed inside a watertight vessel and cast out into the ocean. Perhaps my words will end up in the belly of a whale, discovered by a latter-day Jonah, bored of his sojourn and desperate to hear from his fellow man. Perhaps they will decay, sink without trace, like my body is shortly to do. Fate shall arbitrate. My name is Thomas Dewey, Clerk and Scholar, latterly Missionary. This is my confession. London, the place of my birth: vast, smoky, a hive of unseeing and unthinking souls. The Great Exhibition. Wandering through all manner of exotica, we found ourselves drawn to a crowd, slack-jawed with awe at the sight of the savages on the brass podium: coal black, alert musculature, gazes of unfathomable intensity. Isobel, my betrothed, turned her slim, white neck and looked at me with fierce bearing and earnest eyes: “what they need is God’s grace, do they not? His Instruction”. I nodded in agreement but, as I looked back into the faces of the savages, I was seized with a terrible doubt, for who knows what lies within the soul of man? Nevertheless, it was decided: she was adamant; I loved her. As soon as we had wed, we boarded one of the missionary boats, to begin our new life on the African continent. She offered her thin, forked body to me as we left the docks. Our disastrous voyage: privation, sickness, the monotony of sea biscuits and conversation, the screams of the sailors as the tempest climbed to ever-greater heights; I recall the sound of the ship grinding against the reef, the cold slap of the water as we were forced to stagger through the waves, towards land, the sailors and our brothers and sisters in Christ ahead of us. An island: trees, a vast mountain rising from the waves like the New Jerusalem. God forgive me, I was as concerned about our chest of worldly goods as I was about the wellbeing of my wife. There, at the edge of the surf, we saw the savages from the exhibition, headdresses glinting in the rising sun, waiting to greet us. You, my dear Jonah, might have expected a tragic history from my pen. But Isobel and I were treated like a king and queen from the moment we hauled up at their feet in our torn, sodden rags. Our hair was rubbed with unguent; we were fed rich dishes seasoned with pungent herbs. We were kept in glorious isolation, away from our fellow voyagers; bound at night with delicate cords, our wounds were bathed with warm caresses. We both began to glow with robust health. So, why a confession, then? The guilt of the lone survivor, perhaps. Led down to the beach one morning, Isobel and I were confronted with the most appalling sight: a row of human heads, buzzing with flies, like overripe fruit. Isobel shrieked and fell into a deep swoon. From that moment, she became a stranger both to me and to her own reality; her eyes retreated into her skull; she would smile and sing snatches of old psalm tunes while the maidens from the tribe took care of her every bodily need. I, however, must acknowledge that I felt precious little at the loss of my old life, the certainty of my faith nailed to a spike like those ghastly heads. In hindsight, I can see that I had begun an involuntary kind of metamorphosis, due to the addling of my brain from the potions and sweetmeats of the savage tribespeople. But that is only part of the truth. I actively desired the transformation, so intoxicated had I become by their caresses, by the seductive tones of their language. Within a few months of my incarceration in the midst of this earthly Paradise I had — may I be forgiven — become one of Them, as surely as if it had been me held captive in that hall of glass and iron back in the city of my birth. Yes, I began to live in my new sun-browned body with as much fullness of spirit as I had previously been Thomas Dewey, Clerk, Scholar, Man of God. One thing remains to be documented: Isobel, her last minutes. The beach at sundown. The remains of the ship still visible on the reef. The buzzing heads. A breeze, half sweet, half corrupted. The cries of the savages. Dressed in her bridal gown. My throat was stopped. Half carried in yielding arms. She sprang free. Laughing, dancing. Singing. The Lord is my Shepherd. The sun was dripping blood, sinking beneath the waves. I’ll not want. Dancing and dancing. I could hardly see through the veil of my tears. Her dress mingled with the surf. I remember the pounding of my heart. She walked into the hereafter, vanishing into a final full stop.